The Yellow Claw Part 15

Then, he asked himself what he had to fear, and conjuring up a mental picture of his white bedroom below, he planted his foot firmly upon the first step, and from thence, descended to the bottom, guided by the faint light which shone out from the doorway beneath.

But the door proved to be only partly opened, and Soames knocked deferentially. No response came to his knocking, and he so greatly ventured as to push the door fully open.

The cave of the golden dragon was empty. Half frightfully, Soames glanced about the singular apartment, in amid the mountainous cus.h.i.+ons of the leewans, behind the pedestal of the dragon; to the right and to the left of the doorway wherein he stood.

There was no one there; but the door on the right-the door inlaid with ebony and green stone, which he had never yet seen open was open now, widely opened. He glided across the floor, his wet boots creaking unmusically, and peeped through. He saw a matting-lined corridor identical with that known as Block A. The door of one apartment, that on the extreme left, was opened. Sickly fumes were wafted out to him, and these mingled with the incense-like odor which characterized the temple of the dragon.

A moment he stood so, then started back, appalled.

An outcry-the outcry of a woman, of a woman whose very soul is a.s.sailed-split the stillness. Not from the pa.s.sageway before him, but from somewhere behind him-from the direction of Block A-it came.

"For G.o.d's sake-oh! for G.o.d's sake, have mercy! Let me go!... let me go!" Higher, shriller, more fearful and urgent, grew the voice-"LET ME GO!"...

Soames' knees began to tremble beneath him; he clutched at the black wall for support; then turned, and with unsteady footsteps crossed to the door communicating with the corridor which contained his room. It had a lever handle of the Continental pattern, and, trembling with apprehension that it might prove to be locked, Soames pressed down this handle.

The door opened...

"Hina, effendi!-hina!"

The voice sounded like that of Said....

"Oh! G.o.d in Heaven help me!... Help!-help!"...

"Imsik!"...

Footsteps were pattering upon the stone stairs; someone was descending from the warehouse! The frenzied shrieks of the woman continued. Soames broke into a cold perspiration; his heart, which had leaped wildly, seemed now to have changed to a cold stone in his breast. Just at the entrance to the corridor he stood, frozen with horror at those cries.

"Ikfil el-bab!" came now, in the voice of Ho-Pin,-and nearer.

"Let me go!... only let me go, and I will never breathe a word. ... Ah! Ah! Oh! G.o.d of mercy! not the needle again! You are killing me!... not the needle!"...

Soames staggered on to his own room and literally fell within-as across the cave of the golden dragon, behind him, SOMEONE-one whom he did not see but only heard, one whom with all his soul he hoped had not seen HIM-pa.s.sed rapidly.

Another shriek, more frightful than any which had preceded it, struck the trembling man as an arrow might have struck him. He dropped upon his knees at the side of the bed and thrust his fingers firmly into his ears. He had never swooned in his life, and was unfamiliar with the symptoms, but now he experienced a sensation of overpowering nausea; a blood-red mist floated before his eyes, and the floor seemed to rock beneath him like the deck of a s.h.i.+p....

That soul-appalling outcry died away, merged into a sobbing, moaning sound which defied Soames' efforts to exclude it.... He rose to his feet, feeling physically ill, and turned to close his door....

They were dragging someone-someone who sighed, shudderingly, and whose sighs sank to moans, and sometimes rose to sobs,-across the apartment of the dragon. In a faint, dying voice, the woman spoke again:- "Not Mr. King!... NOT MR. KING!... Is there no G.o.d in Heaven!... AH! spare me... spare"...

Soames closed the door and stood propped up against it, striving to fight down the deathly sickness which a.s.sailed him. His clothes were sticking to his clammy body, and a cold perspiration was trickling down his forehead and into his eyes. The sensation at his heart was unlike anything that he had ever known; he thought that he must be dying.

The awful sounds died away... then a m.u.f.fled disturbance drew his attention to a sort of square trap which existed high up on one wall of the room, but which admitted no light, and which hitherto had never admitted any sound. Now, in the utter darkness, he found himself listening-listening...

He had learnt, during his duties in Block A, that each of the minute suites was rendered sound-proof in some way, so that what took place in one would be inaudible to the occupant of the next, provided that both doors were closed. He perceived, now, that some precaution hitherto exercised continuously had been omitted to-night, and that the sounds which he could hear came from the room next to his own-the room which opened upon the corridor that he had never entered, and which now he cla.s.sified, mentally, as Block B.

What did it mean?

Obviously there had been some mishap in the usually smooth conduct of Ho-Pin's catacombs. There had been a hurried outgoing in several directions... a search?

And by the accident of his returning an hour earlier than he was expected, he was become a witness of this incident, or of its dreadful, concluding phases. He had begun to move away from the door, but now he returned, and stood leaning against it.

That stifling room where roses shed their petals, had been opened to-night; a chill touched the very center of his being and told him so. The occupant of that room-the Minotaur of this hideous labyrinth-was at large to-night, was roaming the pa.s.sages about him, was perhaps outside his very door....

Dull moaning sounds reached him through the trap. He realized that if he had the courage to cross the room, stand upon a chair and place his ear to the wall, he might be able to detect more of what was pa.s.sing in the next apartment. But craven fear held him in its grip, and in vain he strove to shake it off. Trembling wildly, he stood with his back to the door, whilst muttered words, and moans, ever growing fainter, reached him from beyond. A voice, a harsh, guttural voice-surely not that of Ho-Pin-was audible, above the moaning.

For two minutes-three minutes-four minutes-he stood there, tottering on the brink of insensibility, then... a faint sound-a new sound,-drew his gaze across the room, and up to the corner where the trap was situated.

A very dim light was dawning there; he could just detect the outline of an opening-a half-light breaking the otherwise impenetrable darkness.

He felt that his capacity for fear was strained to its utmost; that he could support nothing more, yet a new horror was in store for him; for, as he watched that gray patch, in it, as in a frame, a black silhouette appeared-the silhouette of a human head... a woman's head!

Soames convulsively clenched his jaws, for his teeth were beginning to chatter.

A whistle, an eerie, minor whistle, subscribed the ultimate touch of terror to the night. The silhouette disappeared, and, shortly afterwards, the gray luminance. A faint click told of some shutter being fastened; complete silence reigned.

Soames groped his way to the bed and fell weakly upon it, half lying down and burying his face in the pillow. For how long, he had no idea, but for some considerable time, he remained so, fighting to regain sufficient self-possession to lie to Ho-Pin, who sooner or later must learn of his return.

At last he managed to sit up. He was not trembling quite so wildly, but he still suffered from a deathly sickness. A faint streak of light from the corridor outside shone under his door. As he noted it, it was joined by a second streak, forming a triangle.

There was a very soft rasping of metal. Someone was opening the door!

Soames lay back upon the bed. This time he was past further panic and come to a stage of sickly apathy. He lay, now, because he could not sit upright, because stark horror had robbed him of physical strength, and had drained the well of his emotions dry.

Gradually-so that the operation seemed to occupy an interminable time, the door opened, and in the opening a figure appeared.

The switch clicked, and the room was flooded with electric light.

Ho-Pin stood watching him.

Soames-in his eyes that indescribable expression seen in the eyes of a bird placed in a cobra's den-met the Chinaman's gaze. This gaze was no different from that which habitually he directed upon the people of the catacombs. His yellow face was set in the same mirthless smile, and his eyebrows were raised interrogatively. For the s.p.a.ce of ten seconds, he stood watching the man on the bed. Then:- "You wreturn vewry soon, Mr. Soames?" he said, softly.

Soames groaned like a dying man, whispering: "I was... taken ill-very ill."...

"So you wreturn befowre the time awranged for you?"

His metallic voice was sunk in a soothing hiss. He smiled steadily: he betrayed no emotion.

"Yes... sir," whispered Soames, his hair clammily adhering to his brow and beads of perspiration trickling slowly down his nose.

"And when you wreturn, you see and you hear-stwrange things, Mr. Soames?"

Soames, who was in imminent danger of becoming physically ill, gulped noisily.

"No, sir," he whispered,-tremulously, "I've been-in here all the time."

Ho-Pin nodded, slowly and sympathetically, but never removed the glittering eyes from the face of the man on the bed.

"So you hear nothing, and see nothing?"

The words were spoken even more softly than he had spoken hitherto.

"Nothing," protested Soames. He suddenly began to tremble anew, and his trembling rattled the bed. "I have been-very ill indeed, sir."

Ho-Pin nodded again slowly, and with deep sympathy.

"Some medicine shall be sent to you, Mr. Soames," he said.

He turned and went out slowly, closing the door behind him.

XX

ABRAHAM LEVINSKY b.u.t.tS IN

At about the time that this conversation was taking place in Ho-Pin's catacombs, Detective-Inspector Dunbar and Detective-Sergeant Sowerby were joined by a third representative of New Scotland Yard at the appointed spot by the dock gates. This was Stringer, the detective to whom was a.s.signed the tracing of the missing Soames; and he loomed up through the rain-mist, a glistening but dejected figure.

"Any luck?" inquired Sowerby, sepulchrally.

Stringer, a dark and morose looking man, shook his head.

"I've beaten up every 'c.h.i.n.k' in Wapping and Limehouse, I should reckon," he said, plaintively. "They're all as innocent as babes unborn. You can take it from me: Chinatown hasn't got a murder on its conscience at present. BRR! it's a beastly night. Suppose we have one?"

Dunbar nodded, and the three wet investigators walked back for some little distance in silence, presently emerging via a narrow, dark, uninviting alleyway into West India Dock Road. A brilliantly lighted hostelry proved to be their objective, and there, in a quiet corner of the deserted billiard room, over their gla.s.ses, they discussed this mysterious case, which at first had looked so simple of solution if only because it offered so many unusual features, but which, the deeper they probed, merely revealed fresh complications.

"The business of those Fry people, in Scotland, was a rotten disappointment," said Dunbar, suddenly. "They were merely paid by the late Mrs. Vernon to re-address letters to a little newspaper shop in Knightsbridge, where an untraceable boy used to call for them! Martin has just reported this evening. Perth wires for instructions, but it's a dead-end, I'm afraid."

"You know," said Sowerby, fis.h.i.+ng a piece of cork from the brown froth of a fine example by Guinness, "to my mind our hope's in Soames; and if we want to find Soames, to my mind we want to look, not east, but west."

"Hear, hear!" concorded Stringer, gloomily sipping hot rum.

"It seems to me," continued Sowerby, "that Limehouse is about the last place in the world a man like Soames would think of hiding in."

"It isn't where he'll be THINKING of hiding," snapped Dunbar, turning his fierce eyes upon the last speaker. "You can't seem to get the idea out of your head, Sowerby, that Soames is an independent agent. He ISN'T an independent agent. He's only the servant; and through the servant we hope to find the master."

"But why in the east-end?" came the plaintive voice of Stringer; "for only one reason, that I can see-because Max says that there's a Chinaman in the case."

"There's opium in the case, isn't there?" said Dunbar, adding more water to his whisky, "and where there's opium there is pretty frequently a Chinaman."

"But to my mind," persisted Sowerby, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown of concentration, "the place where Mrs. Vernon used to get the opium was the place we raided in Gillingham Street."

"Nurse Proctor's!" cried Stringer, banging his fist on the table. "Exactly my idea! There may have been a Chinaman concerned in the management of the Gillingham Street stunt, or there may not, but I'll swear that was where the opium was supplied. In fact I don't think that there's any doubt about it. Medical evidence (opinions differed a bit, certainly) went to show that she had been addicted to opium for some years. Other evidence-you got it yourself, Inspector-went to show that she came from Gillingham Street on the night of the murder. Gillingham Street crowd vanished like a beautiful dream before we had time to nab them! What more do you want? What are we up to, messing about in Limehouse and Wapping?"

Sowerby partook of a long drink and turned his eyes upon Dunbar, awaiting the inspector's reply.

"You both have the wrong idea!" said Dunbar, deliberately; "you are all wrong! You seem to be under the impression that if we could lay our hands upon the missing staff of the so-called Nursing Home, we should find the a.s.sa.s.sin to be one of the crowd. It doesn't follow at all. For a long time, you, Sowerby,"-he turned his tawny eyes upon the sergeant-"had the idea that Soames was the murderer, and I'm not sure that you have got rid of it yet! You, Stringer, appear to think that Nurse Proctor is responsible. Upon my word, you are a hopeless pair! Suppose Soames had nothing whatever to do with the matter, but merely realized that he could not prove an alibi? Wouldn't YOU bolt? I put it to you."

Sowerby stared hard, and Stringer scratched his chin, reflectively.

"The same reasoning applies to the Gillingham Street people," continued Dunbar. "We haven't the slightest idea of THEIR whereabouts because we don't even know who they were; but we do know something about Soames, and we're looking for him, not because we think he did the murder, but because we think he can tell us who did."

"Which brings us back to the old point," interrupted Stringer, softly beating his fist upon the table at every word; "why are we looking for Soames in the east-end?"

"Because," replied Dunbar, "we're working on the theory that Soames, though actually not accessory to the crime, was in the pay of those who were"...

"Well?"-Stringer spoke the word eagerly, his eyes upon the inspector's face.

"And those who WERE accessory,"-continued Dunbar, "were servants of Mr. King."

"Ah!" Stringer brought his fist down with a bang-"Mr. King! That's where I am in the dark, and where Sowerby, here, is in the dark." He bent forward over the table. "Who the devil is Mr. King?"

Dunbar twirled his whisky gla.s.s between his fingers.

"We don't know," he replied quietly, "but Soames does, in all probability; and that's why we're looking for Soames."

"Is it why we're looking in Limehouse?" persisted Stringer, the argumentative.

"It is," snapped Dunbar. "We have only got one Chinatown worthy of the name, in London, and that's not ten minutes' walk from here."

"Chinatown-yes," said Sowerby, his red face glistening with excitement; "but why look for Mr. King in Chinatown?"

"Because," replied Dunbar, lowering his voice, "Mr. King in all probability is a Chinaman."

"Who says so?" demanded Stringer.

"Max says so..."

"MAX!"-again Stringer beat his fist upon the table. "Now we have got to it! We're working, then, not on our own theories, but on those of Max?"

Dunbar's sallow face flushed slightly, and his eyes seemed to grow brighter.

"Mr. Gaston Max obtained information in Paris," he said, "which he placed, unreservedly, at my disposal. We went into the matter thoroughly, with the result that our conclusions were identical. A certain Mr. King is at the bottom of this mystery, and, in all probability, Mr. King is a Chinaman. Do I make myself clear?"

Sowerby and Stringer looked at one another, perplexedly. Each man finished his drink in silence. Then: "What took place in Paris?" began Sowerby.

There was an interruption. A stooping figure in a shabby, black frock-coat, the figure of a man who wore a dilapidated bowler pressed down upon his ears, who had a greasy, Semitic countenance, with a scrubby, curling, sandy colored beard, spa.r.s.e as the vegetation of a desert, appeared at Sowerby's elbow.

He carried a br.i.m.m.i.n.g pewter pot. This he set down upon a corner of the table, depositing himself in a convenient chair and pulling out a very dirty looking letter from an inside pocket. He smoothed it carefully. He peered, little-eyed, from the frowning face of Dunbar to the surprised countenance of Sowerby, and smiled with native amiability at the dangerous-looking Stringer.