Lala Huang lay listening to the vague sounds which disturbed the silence
of the night. Presently her thoughts made her sigh wearily. During the
lifetime of her mother, who had died while Lala was yet a little girl,
life had been different and so much brighter.
She imagined that in the mingled sounds of dock and river which came to
her she could hear the roar of surf upon a golden beach. The stuffy
air of Limehouse took on the hot fragrance of a tropic island, and she
sighed again, but this time rapturously, for in spirit she was a child
once more, lulled by the voice of the great Pacific.
Young as she was, the death of her mother had been a blow from which it
had taken her several years to recover. Then had commenced those
long travels with her father, from port to port, from ocean to ocean,
sometimes settling awhile, but ever moving onward, onward.
He had had her educated after a fashion, and his love for her she did
not doubt. But her mother's blood spoke more strongly than that part of
her which was Chinese, and there was softness and a delicious languor in
her nature which her father did not seem to understand, and of which he
did not appear to approve.
She knew that he was wealthy. She knew that his ways were not straight
ways, although that part of his business to which he had admitted her as
an assistant, and an able one, was legitimate enough, or so it seemed.
Consignments of goods arrived at strange hours of the night at
the establishment in Limehouse, and from this side of her father's
transactions she was barred. The big double doors opening on the little
courtyard would be opened by Ah Fu, and packing cases of varying sizes
be taken in. Sometimes the sounds of these activities would reach her in
her room in a distant part of the house; but only in the morning would
she recognize their significance, when in the warehouse she would
discover that some new and choice pieces had arrived.
She wondered with what object her father accumulated wealth, and hoped,
against the promptings of her common sense, that he designed to return
East, there to seek a retirement amidst the familiar and the beautiful
things of the Orient which belonged to Lala's dream of heaven.
Stories about her father often reached her ears. She knew that he
had held high rank in China before she had been born; but that he had
sacrificed his rights in some way had always been her theory. She had
been too young to understand the stories which her mother had told her
sometimes; but that there were traits in the character of Huang Chow
which it was not good for his daughter to know she appreciated and
accepted as a secret sorrow.
He allowed her all the freedom to which her education entitled her. Her
life was that of a European and not of an Oriental woman. She loved him
in a way, but also feared him. She feared the dark and cruel side of his
character, of which, at various periods during their life together, she
had had terrifying glimpses.
She had decided that cruelty was his vice. In what way he gratified
it she had never learned, nor did she desire to do so. There were
periodical visits from the police, but she had learned long ago that her
father was too clever to place himself within reach of the law.
However crooked one part of his business methods might be, his dealings
with his clients were straight enough, so that no one had any object in
betraying him; and the legality or otherwise of his foreign relations
evidently afforded no case against him upon which the authorities could
act, or upon which they cared to act.
In America it had been graft which had protected him. She had learned
this accidentally, but never knew whether he bought his immunity in the
same way in London.
Some of the rumours which reached her were terrifying. Latterly she had
met many strange glances in her comings and goings about Limehouse. This
peculiar atmosphere had always preceded the break-up of every home which
they had shared. She divined the fact that in some way Huang Chow
had outstayed his welcome in Chinatown, London. Where their next
resting-place would be she could not imagine, but she prayed that it
might be in some more sunny clime.
She found herself to be thinking over much of John Hampden. His bona
fides were not above suspicion, but she could scarcely expect to meet a
really white man in such an environment.
Lala would have liked to think that he was white, but could not force
herself to do so. She would have liked to think that he sought her
company because she appealed to him personally; but she had detected
the fact that another motive underlay his attentions. She wondered if he
could be another of those moths drawn by the light of that fabled wealth
of her father.
It was curious, she reflected, that Huang Chow never checked--indeed,
openly countenanced--her friendship with the many chance acquaintances
she had made, even when her own instincts told her that the men were
crooked; so that, knowing the acumen of her father, she was well aware
that he must know it too.
Several of these pseudo lovers of hers had died. It was a point which
often occurred to her mind, but upon which she did not care to dwell
even now. But John Hampden--John Hampden was different. He was not
wholly sincere. She sighed wearily. But nevertheless he was not like
some of the others.
She started up in bed, seized with a sudden dreadful idea. He was a
detective!
She understood now why she had found so much that was white in him,
but so much that was false. His presence seemed to be very near her.
Something caressing in his voice echoed in her mind. She found herself
to be listening to the muted sounds of Limehouse and of the waterway
which flowed so close beside her.
That old longing for the home of her childhood returned tenfold, and
tears began to trickle down her cheeks. She was falling in love with
this man whose object was her father's ruin. A cold terror clutched
at her heart. Even now, while their friendship was so new, so strange,
there was a query, a stark, terrifying query, to stand up before her.
If put to the test, which would she choose?
She was unable to face that issue, and dropped back upon her pillow,
stifling a sob.
Yes, he was a detective. In some way her father had at last attracted
the serious attention of the law. Rumours of this were flying round
Chinatown, to which she had not been entirely deaf. She thought of a
hundred questions, a hundred silences, and grew more and more convinced
of the truth.
What did he mean to do? Before her a ghostly company uprose--the shadows
of some she had known with designs upon her father. John Hampden's
design was different. But might he not join that mysterious company?
Now again she suddenly sprang upright, this time because of a definite
sound which had reached her ears from within the house: a very faint,
bell-like tinkling which ceased almost immediately. She had heard it one
night before, and quite recently; indeed, on the night before she had
met John Hampden. Cohen--Cohen, the Jew, had died that night!
She sprang lightly on to the floor, found her slippers, and threw a silk
kimono over her nightrobe. She tiptoed cautiously to the door and opened
it.
It was at this very moment that old Huang Chow, asleep in his cell-like
apartment, was aroused by the tinkling of a bell set immediately above
his head. He awoke instantly, raised his hand and stopped the bell.
His expression, could anyone have been present to see it, was a thing
unpleasant to behold. Triumph was in it, and cunning cruelty.
His long yellow fingers reached out for his hornrimmed spectacles
which lay upon a little table beside him. Adjusting them, he pulled the
curtains aside and shuffled silently across the large room.
Mounting the steps to the raised writing-table, he rested his elbows
upon it, and peered down at that curious blotting-pad which had so
provoked the curiosity of Durham. Could Durham have seen it now the
mystery must have been solved. It was an ingenious camera obscura
apparatus, and dimly depicted upon its surface appeared a reproduction
of part of the storehouse beneath! The part of it which was visible
was that touched by the light of an electric torch, carried by a man
crossing the floor in the direction of the lacquered coffin upon the
gilded pedestal!
Old Huang Chow chuckled silently, and his yellow fingers clutched the
table edge as he moved to peer more closely into the picture.
“Poor fool!” he whispered in Chinese. “Poor fool!”
It was the man who had come with the introduction from Mr. Isaacs--a new
impostor who sought to rob him, who sought to obtain information from
his daughter, who had examined his premises last night, and had even
penetrated upstairs, so that he, old Huang Chow, had been compelled to
disconnect the apparatus and to feign sleep under the scrutiny of the
intruder.
To-night it would be otherwise. To-night it would be otherwise.
X