It was a moot point whether Lady Pat Rourke merited condemnation or
pity. She possessed that type of blonde beauty which seems to be a
lodestone for mankind in general. Her husband was wealthy, twelve
years her senior, and, far from watching over her with jealous care--an
attitude which often characterizes such unions--he, on the contrary,
permitted her a dangerous freedom, believing that she would appreciate
without abusing it.
Her friendship with Lou Chada had first opened his eyes to the perils
which beset the road of least resistance. Sir Noel Rourke was an
Anglo-Indian, and his prejudice against the Eurasian was one not lightly
to be surmounted. Not all the polish which English culture had given to
this child of a mixed union could blind Sir Noel to the yellow streak.
Courted though Chada was by some of the best people, Sir Noel remained
cold.
The long, magnetic eyes, the handsome, clear-cut features, above all,
that slow and alluring smile, appealed to the husband of the wilful
Pat rather as evidences of Oriental, half-effeminate devilry than as
passports to decent society. Oxford had veneered him, but scratch the
veneer and one found the sandal-wood of the East, perfumed, seductive,
appealing, but something to be shunned as brittle and untrustworthy.
Yet he hesitated, seeking to be true to his convictions. Knowing what he
knew already, and what he suspected, it is certain that, could he have
viewed Lou Chada through the eyes of Chief Inspector Kerry, the affair
must have terminated otherwise. But Sir Noel did not know what Kerry
knew. And the pleasure-seeking Lady Rourke, with her hair of spun gold
and her provoking smile, found Lou Chada dangerously fascinating; almost
she was infatuated--she who had known so much admiration.
Of those joys for which thousands of her plainer sisters yearn and
starve to the end of their days she had experienced a surfeit. Always
she sought for novelty, for new adventures. She was confident of
herself, but yet--and here lay the delicious thrill--not wholly
confident. Many times she had promised to visit the house of Lou Chada's
father--a mystery palace cunningly painted, a perfumed page from the
Arabian poets dropped amid the interesting squalor of Limehouse.
Perhaps she had never intended to go. Who knows? But on the night when
she came within the ken of Chief Inspector Kerry, Lou Chada had urged
her to do so in his poetically passionate fashion, and, wanting to go,
she had asked herself: “Am I strong enough? Dare I?”
They had dined, danced, and she had smoked one of the scented cigarettes
which he alone seemed to be able to procure, and which, on their arrival
from the East, were contained in queer little polished wooden boxes.
Then had come an unfamiliar nausea and dizziness, an uncomfortable
recognition of the fact that she was making a fool of herself, and
finally a semi-darkness through which familiar faces loomed up and
were quickly lost again. There was the soft, musical voice of Lou Chada
reassuring her, a sense of chill, of helplessness, and then for a while
an interval which afterward she found herself unable to bridge.
Knowledge of verity came at last, and Lady Pat raised herself from the
divan upon which she had been lying, and, her slender hands clutching
the cushions, stared about her with eyes which ever grew wider.
She was in a long, rather lofty room, which was lighted by three silver
lanterns swung from the ceiling. The place, without containing much
furniture, was a riot of garish, barbaric colour. There were deep divans
cushioned in amber and blood-red. Upon the floor lay Persian carpets
and skins of beasts. Cunning niches there were, half concealing and half
revealing long-necked Chinese jars; and odd little carven tables bore
strangely fashioned vessels of silver. There was a cabinet of ebony
inlaid with jade, there were black tapestries figured with dragons of
green and gold. Curtains she saw of peacock-blue; and in a tall, narrow
recess, dominating the room, squatted a great golden Buddha.
The atmosphere was laden with a strange perfume.
But, above all, this room was silent, most oppressively silent.
Lady Pat started to her feet. The whole perfumed place seemed to be
swimming around her. Reclosing her eyes, she fought down her weakness.
The truth, the truth respecting Lou Chada and herself, had uprisen
starkly before her. By her own folly--and she could find no
tiny excuse--she had placed herself in the power of a man whom,
instinctively, deep within her soul, she had always known to be utterly
unscrupulous.
How cleverly he had concealed the wild animal which dwelt beneath
that suave, polished exterior! Yet how ill he had concealed it! For
intuitively she had always recognized its presence, but had deliberately
closed her eyes, finding a joy in the secret knowledge of danger. Now at
last he had discarded pretense.
The cigarette which he had offered her at the club had been drugged. She
was in Limehouse, at the mercy of a man in whose veins ran the blood of
ancestors to whom women had been chattels. Too well she recognized that
his passion must have driven him insane, as he must know at what cost
he took such liberties with one who could not lightly be so treated. But
these reflections afforded poor consolation. It was not of the penalties
that Lou Chada must suffer for this infringement of Western codes, but
of the price that she must pay for her folly, of which Pat was thinking.
There was a nauseating taste upon her palate. She remembered having
noticed it faintly while she was smoking the cigarette; indeed, she had
commented upon it at the time.
“The dirty yellow blackguard!” she said aloud, and clenched her hands.
She merely echoed what many a man had said before her. She wondered at
herself, and in doing so but wondered at the mystery of womanhood.
Clarity was returning. The room no longer swam around her. She crossed
in the direction of a garish curtain, which instinctively she divined to
mask a door. Dragging it aside, she tried the handle, but the door was
locked. A second door she found, and this also proved to be locked.
There was one tall window, also covered by ornate draperies, but it
was shuttered, and the shutters had locks. Another small window she
discovered, glazed with amber glass, but set so high in the wall as to
be inaccessible.
Dread assailed her, and dropping on to one of the divans, she hid her
face in her hands.
“My God!” she whispered. “My God! Give me strength--give me courage.”
For a long time she remained there, listening for any sound which should
disperse the silence. She thought of her husband, of the sweet security
of her home, of the things which she had forfeited because of this mad
quest of adventure. And presently a key grated in a lock.
Lady Pat started to her feet with a wild, swift action which must have
reminded a beholder of a startled gazelle. The drapery masking the door
which she had first investigated was drawn aside. A man entered and
dropped the curtain behind him.
Exactly what she had expected she could not have defined, but the
presence of this perfect stranger was a complete surprise. The man,
who wore embroidered slippers and a sort of long blue robe, stood there
regarding her with an expression which, even in her frantic condition,
she found to be puzzling. He had long, untidy gray hair brushed back
from his low brow; eyes strangely like the eyes of Lou Chada, except
that they were more heavy-lidded; but his skin was as yellow as a
guinea, and his gaunt, cleanshaven face was the face of an Oriental.
The slender hands, too, which he held clasped before him, were yellow,
and possessed a curiously arresting quality. Pat imagined them clasped
about her white throat, and her very soul seemed to shrink from the man
who stood there looking at her with those long, magnetic, inscrutable
eyes.
She wondered why she was surprised, and suddenly realized that it was
because of the expression in his eyes, for it was an expression of cold
anger. Then the intruder spoke.
“Who are you?” he demanded, speaking with an accent which was unfamiliar
to her, but in a voice which was not unlike the voice of Lou Chada. “Who
brought you here?”
This was so wholly unexpected that for a moment she found herself unable
to reply, but finally:
“How dare you!” she cried, her native courage reasserting itself. “I
have been drugged and brought to this place. You shall pay for it. How
dare you!”
“Ah!” The long, dark eyes regarded her unmovingly. “But who are you?”
“I am Lady Rourke. Open the door. You shall bitterly regret this
outrage.”
“You are Lady Rourke?” the man repeated. “Before you speak of regrets,
answer the question which I have asked: Who brought you here?”
“Lou Chada.”
“Ah!” There was no alteration of pose, no change of expression, but
slightly the intonation had varied.
“I don't know who you are, but I demand to be released from this place
instantly.”
The man standing before the curtained door slightly inclined his head.
“You shall be released,” he replied, “but not instantly. I will see the
one who brought you here. He may not be entirely to blame. Before you
leave we shall understand one another.”
Tone and glance were coldly angry. Then, before the frightened woman
could say another word, the man in the blue robe robe withdrew, the
curtain was dropped again, and she heard the grating of a key in the
lock. She ran to the door, beating upon it with her clenched hands.
“Let me go!” she cried, half hysterically. “Let me go! You shall pay for
this! Oh, you shall pay for this!”
No one answered, and, turning, she leaned back against the curtain,
breathing heavily and fighting for composure, for strength.