IX

Blake stood regarding the door. Then he lifted his revolver from his

breast pocket and dropped it into his side pocket, with his hand on the

butt. Then with his left hand he quietly opened the door, pushed it back,

and as quietly stepped into the room.

On the floor, in the center of a square of orange-colored matting, he saw

a white woman sitting. She was drinking tea out of an egg-shell of a cup,

and after putting down the cup she would carefully massage her lips with

the point of her little finger. This movement puzzled the newcomer until

he suddenly realized that it was merely to redistribute the rouge on

them.

She was dressed in a silk petticoat of almost lemon yellow and an

azure-colored silk bodice that left her arms and shoulders bare to the

light that played on them from three small oil lamps above her. Her feet

and ankles were also bare, except for the matting sandals into which her

toes were thrust. On one thin arm glimmered an extraordinarily heavy

bracelet of gold. Her skin, which was very white, was further albificated

by a coat of rice powder. She was startlingly slight. Blake, as he

watched her, could see the oval shadows under her collar bones and the

almost girlish meagerness of breast half-covered by the azure silk

bodice.

She looked up slowly as Blake stepped into the room. Her eyes widened,

and she continued to look, with parted lips, as she contemplated the

intruder’s heavy figure. There was no touch of fear on her face. It was

more curiosity, the wilful, wide-eyed curiosity of the child. She even

laughed a little as she stared at the intruder. Her rouged lips were

tinted a carmine so bright that they looked like a wound across her white

face. That gash of color became almost clown-like as it crescented upward

with its wayward mirth. Her eyebrows were heavily penciled and the lids

of the eyes elongated by a widening point of blue paint. Her bare heel,

which she caressed from time to time with fingers whereon the nails were

stained pink with henna, was small and clean cut, as clean cut, Blake

noticed, as the heel of a razor, while the white calf above it was as

thin and flat as a boy’s.

“Hello, New York,” she said with her foolish and inconsequential little

laugh. Her voice took on an oddly exotic intonation, as she spoke. Her

teeth were small and white; they reminded Blake of rice, while she

repeated the “New York,” bubblingly, as though she were a child with a

newly learned word.

“Hello!” responded the detective, wondering how or where to begin. She

made him think of a painted marionette, so maintained were her poses, so

unreal was her make up.

“You’re the party who’s on the man hunt,” she announced.

“Am I?” equivocated Blake. She had risen to her feet by this time, with

monkey-like agility, and showed herself to be much taller than he had

imagined. He noticed a knife scar on her forearm.

“You’re after this man called Binhart,” she declared.

“Oh, no, I’m not,” was Blake’s sagacious response. “I don’t want

Binhart!”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want the money he’s got.”

The little painted face grew serious; then it became veiled.

“How much money has he?”

“That’s what I want to find out!”

She squatted ruminatively down on the edge of her divan. It was low and

wide and covered with orange-colored silk.

“Then you’ll have to find Binhart!” was her next announcement.

“Maybe!” acknowledged Blake.

“I can show you where he is!”

“All right,” was the unperturbed response. The blue-painted eyes were

studying him.

“It will be worth four thousand pounds, in English gold,” she announced.

Blake took a step or two nearer her.

“Is that the message Ottenheim told you to give me?” he demanded. His

face was red with anger.

“Then three thousand pounds,” she calmly suggested, wriggling her toes

into a fallen sandal.

Blake did not deign to speak. His inarticulate grunt was one of disgust.

“Then a thousand, in gold,” she coyly intimated. She twisted about to

pull the strap of her bodice up over her white shoulder-blades. “Or I

will kill him for you for two thousand pounds in gold!”

Her eyes were as tranquil as a child’s. Blake remembered that he was in a

world not his own.

“Why should I want him killed?” he inquired. He looked about for some

place to sit. There was not a chair in the room.

“Because he intends to kill _you_,” answered the woman, squatting on the

orange-covered divan.

“I wish he’d come and try,” Blake devoutly retorted.

“He will not come,” she told him. “It will be done from the dark. _I_

could have done it. But Ottenheim said no.”

“And Ottenheim said you were to work with me in this,” declared Blake,

putting two and two together.

The woman shrugged a white shoulder.

“Have you any money?” she asked. She put the question with the

artlessness of a child.

“Mighty little,” retorted Blake, still studying the woman from where he

stood. He was wondering if Ottenheim had the same hold on her that the

authorities had on Ottenheim, the ex-forger who enjoyed his parole only

on condition that he remain a stool-pigeon of the high seas. He pondered

what force he could bring to bear on her, what power could squeeze from

those carmine and childish lips the information he must have.

He knew that he could break that slim body of hers across his knee. But

he also knew that he had no way of crushing out of it the truth he

sought, the truth he must in some way obtain. The woman still squatted on

the divan, peering down at the knife scar on her arm from time to time,

studying it, as though it were an inscription.

Blake was still watching the woman when the door behind him was slowly

opened; a head was thrust in, and as quietly withdrawn again. Blake

dropped his right hand to his coat pocket and moved further along the

wall, facing the woman. There was nothing of which he stood afraid: he

merely wished to be on the safe side.

“Well, what word’ll I take back to Ottenheim?” he demanded.

The woman grew serious. Then she showed her rice-like row of teeth as she

laughed.

“That means there’s nothing in it for me,” she complained with

pouting-lipped moroseness. Her venality, he began to see, was merely the

instinctive acquisitiveness of the savage, the greed of the petted child.

“No more than there is for me,” Blake acknowledged. She turned and caught

up a heavily flowered mandarin coat of plaited cream and gold. She was

thrusting one arm into it when a figure drifted into the room from the

matting-hung doorway on Blake’s left. As she saw this figure she suddenly

flung off the coat and stooped to the tea tray in the middle of the

floor.

Blake saw that the newcomer was a Chinaman. This newcomer, he also saw,

ignored him as though he were a door post, confronting the woman and

assailing her with a quick volley of words, of incomprehensible words in

the native tongue. She answered with the same clutter and clack of

unknown syllables, growing more and more excited as the dialogue

continued. Her thin face darkened and changed, her white arms gyrated,

the fires of anger burned in the baby-like eyes. She seemed

expostulating, arguing, denouncing, and each wordy sally was met by an

equally wordy sally from the Chinaman. She challenged and rebuked with

her passionately pointed finger; she threatened with angry eyes; she

stormed after the newcomer as he passed like a shadow out of the room;

she met him with a renewed storm when he returned a moment later.

The Chinaman now stood watching her, impassive and immobile, as though he

had taken his stand and intended to stick to it. Blake studied him with

calm and patient eyes. That huge-limbed detective in his day had

“pounded” too many Christy Street Chinks to be in any way intimidated by

a queue and a yellow face. He was not disturbed. He was merely puzzled.

Then the woman turned to the mandarin coat, and caught it up, shook it

out, and for one brief moment stood thoughtfully regarding it. Then she

suddenly turned about on the Chinaman.

Blake, as he stood watching that renewed angry onslaught, paid little

attention to the actual words that she was calling out. But as he stood

there he began to realize that she was not speaking in Chinese, but in

English.

“Do you hear me, white man? Do you hear me?” she cried out, over and over

again. Yet the words seemed foolish, for all the time as she uttered

them, she was facing the placid-eyed Chinaman and gesticulating in his

face.

“Don’t you see,” Blake at last heard her crying, “he doesn’t know what

I’m saying! He doesn’t understand a word of English!” And then, and then

only, it dawned on Blake that every word the woman was uttering was

intended for his own ears. She was warning him, and all the while

pretending that her words were the impetuous words of anger.

“Watch this man!” he heard her cry. “Don’t let him know you’re listening.

But remember what I say, remember it. And God help you if you haven’t got

a gun.”

Blake could see her, as in a dream, assailing the Chinaman with her

gestures, advancing on him, threatening him, expostulating with him, but

all in pantomime. There was something absurd about it, as absurd as a

moving-picture film which carries the wrong text.

“He’ll pretend to take you to the man you want,” the woman was panting.

“That’s what he will say. But it’s a lie. He’ll take you out to a sampan,

to put you aboard Binhart’s boat. But the three of them will cut your

throat, cut your throat, and then drop you overboard. He’s to get so much

in gold. Get out of here with him. Let him think you’re going. But drop

away, somewhere, before you get to the beach. And watch them all the

way.”

Blake stared at the immobile Chinaman, as though to make sure that the

other man had not understood. He was still staring at that impassive

yellow face, he was still absorbing the shock of his news, when the outer

door opened and a second Chinaman stepped into the room. The newcomer

cluttered a quick sentence or two to his countryman, and was still

talking when a third figure sidled in.

Those spoken words, whatever they were, seemed to have little effect on

any one in the room except the woman. She suddenly sprang about and

exploded into an angry shower of denials.

“It’s a lie!” she cried in English, storming about the impassive trio.

“You never heard me peach! You never heard me say a word! It’s a lie!”

Blake strode to the middle of the room, towering above the other figures,

dwarfing them by his great bulk, as assured of his mastery as he would

have been in a Chatham Square gang fight.

“What’s the row here?” he thundered, knowing from the past that power

promptly won its own respect. “What’re you talking about, you two?” He

turned from one intruder to another. “And you? And you? What do you want,

anyway?”

The three contending figures, however, ignored him as though he were a

tobacconist’s dummy. They went on with their exotic cackle, as though he

was no longer in their midst. They did not so much as turn an eye in his

direction. And still Blake felt reasonably sure of his position.

It was not until the woman squeaked, like a frightened mouse, and ran

whimpering into the corner of the room, that he realized what was

happening. He was not familiar with the wrist movement by which the

smallest bodied of the three men was producing a knife from his sleeve.

The woman, however, had understood from the first.

“White man, look out!” she half sobbed from her corner. “Oh, white man!”

she repeated in a shriller note as the Chinaman, bending low, scuttled

across the room to the corner where she cowered.

Blake saw the knife by this time. It was thin and long, for all the world

like an icicle, a shaft of cutting steel ground incredibly thin, so thin,

in fact, that at first sight it looked more like a point for stabbing

than a blade for cutting.

The mere glitter of that knife electrified the staring white man into

sudden action. He swung about and tried to catch at the arm that held the

steel icicle. He was too late for that, but his fingers closed on the

braided queue. By means of this queue he brought the Chinaman up short,

swinging him sharply about so that he collided flat faced with the room

wall.

Then, for the first time, Blake grew into a comprehension of what

surrounded him. He wheeled about, stooped and caught up the papier-mâché

tea-tray from the floor and once more stood with his back to the wall. He

stood there, on guard, for a second figure with a second steel icicle was

sidling up to him. He swung viciously out and brought the tea-tray down

on the hand that held this knife, crippling the fingers and sending the

steel spinning across the room. Then with his free hand he tugged the

revolver from his coat pocket, holding it by the barrel and bringing the

metal butt down on the queue-wound head of the third man, who had no

knife, but was struggling with the woman for the metal icicle she had

caught up from the floor.

Then the five seemed to close in together, and the fight became general.

It became a mêlée. With his swinging right arm Blake battered and pounded

with his revolver butt. With his left hand he made cutting strokes with

the heavy papier-mâché tea-tray, keeping their steel, by those fierce

sweeps, away from his body. One Chinaman he sent sprawling, leaving him

huddled and motionless against the orange-covered divan. The second,

stunned by a blow of the tea-tray across the eyes, could offer no

resistance when Blake’s smashing right dealt its blow, the metal gun butt

falling like a trip hammer on the shaved and polished skull.

As the white man swung about he saw the third Chinaman with his hand on

the woman’s throat, holding her flat against the wall, placing her there

as a butcher might place a fowl on his block ready for the blow of his

carver. Blake stared at the movement, panting for breath, overcome by

that momentary indifference wherein a winded athlete permits without

protest an adversary to gain his momentary advantage. Then will triumphed

over the weakness of the body. But before Blake could get to the woman’s

side he saw the Chinaman’s loose-sleeved right hand slowly and

deliberately ascend. As it reached the meridian of its circular upsweep

he could see the woman rise on her toes, rise as though with some quick

effort, yet some effort which Blake could not understand.

At the same moment that she did so a look of pained expostulation crept

into the staring slant eyes on a level with her own. The yellow jaw

gaped, filled with blood, and the poised knife fell at his side, sticking

point down in the flooring. The azure and lemon-yellow that covered the

woman’s body flamed into sudden scarlet. It was only as the figure with

the expostulating yellow face sank to the ground, crumpling up on itself

as it fell, that Blake comprehended. That quick sweep of scarlet,

effacing the azure and lemon, had come from the sudden deluge of blood

that burst over the woman’s body. She had made use of the upstroke,

Mexican style. Her knife had cut the full length of the man’s abdominal

cavity, clean and straight to the breastbone. He had been ripped up like

a herring.

Blake panted and wheezed, not at the sight of the blood, but at the

exertion to which his flabby muscles had been put. His body was moist

with sweat. His asthmatic throat seemed stifling his lungs. A faint

nausea crept through him, a dim ventral revolt at the thought that such

things could take place so easily, and with so little warning.

His breast still heaved and panted and he was still fighting for breath

when he saw the woman stoop and wipe the knife on one of the fallen

Chinaman’s sleeves.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” she whimpered, as she caught up the

mandarin coat and flung it over her shoulders, for in the struggle her

body had been bared almost to the waist. Blake saw the crimson that

dripped on her matting slippers and maculated the cream white of the

mandarin coat.

“But where’s Binhart?” he demanded, as he looked stolidly about for his

black boulder.

“Never mind Binhart,” she cried, touching the eviscerated body at her

feet with one slipper toe, “or we’ll get what _he_ got!”

“I want that man Binhart!” persisted the detective.

“Not here! Not here!” she cried, folding the loose folds of the cloak

closer about her body.

She ran to the matting curtain, looked out, and called back, “Quick! Come

quick!” Then she ran back, slipped the bolt in the outer door and

rejoined the waiting detective.

“Oh, white man!” she gasped, as the matting fell between them and the

room incarnadined by their struggle. Blake was not sure, but he thought

he heard her giggle, hysterically, in the darkness. They were groping

their way along a narrow passage. They slipped through a second door,

closed and locked it after them, and once more groped on through the

darkness.

How many turns they took, Blake could not remember. She stopped and

whispered to him to go softly, as they came to a stairway, as steep and

dark as a cistern. Blake, at the top, could smell opium smoke, and once

or twice he thought he heard voices. The woman stopped him, with

outstretched arms, at the stair head, and together they stood and

listened.

Blake, with nerves taut, waited for some sign from her to go on again. He

thought she was giving it, when he felt a hand caress his side. He felt

it move upward, exploringly. At the same time that he heard her little

groan of alarm he knew that the hand was not hers.

He could not tell what the darkness held, but his movement was almost

instinctive. He swung out with his great arm, countered on the crouching

form in front of him, caught at a writhing shoulder, and tightening his

grip, sent the body catapulting down the stairway at his side. He could

hear a revolver go off as the body went tumbling and rolling down—Blake

knew that it was a gun not his own.

“Come on, white man!” the girl in front of him was crying, as she tugged

at his coat. And they went on, now at a run, taking a turn to the right,

making a second descent, and then another to the left. They came to still

another door, which they locked behind them. Then they scrambled up a

ladder, and he could hear her quick hands padding about in the dark. A

moment later she had thrust up a hatch. He saw it led to the open air,

for the stars were above them.

He felt grateful for that open air, for the coolness, for the sense of

deliverance which came with even that comparative freedom.

“Don’t stop!” she whispered. And he followed her across the slant of the

uneven roof. He was weak for want of breath. The girl had to catch him

and hold him for a moment.

“On the next roof you must take off your shoes,” she warned him. “You can

rest then. But hurry—hurry!”

He gulped down the fresh air as he tore at his shoe laces, thrusting each

shoe in a side pocket as he started after her. For by this time she was

scrambling across the broken sloping roofs, as quick and agile as a cat,

dropping over ledges, climbing up barriers and across coping tiles. Where

she was leading him he had no remotest idea. She reminded him of a

cream-tinted monkey in the maddest of steeplechases. He was glad when she

came to a stop.

The town seemed to lay to their right. Before them were the scattered

lights of the harbor and the mild crescent of the outer bay. They could

see the white wheeling finger of some foreign gunboat as its searchlight

played back and forth in the darkness.

She sighed with weariness and dropped cross-legged down on the coping

tiles against which he leaned, regaining his breath. She squatted there,

cooingly, like a child exhausted with its evening games.

“I’m dished!” she murmured, as she sat there breathing audibly through

the darkness. “I’m dished for this coast!”

He sat down beside her, staring at the searchlight. There seemed

something reassuring, something authoritative and comforting, in the

thought of it watching there in the darkness.

The girl touched him on the knee and then shifted her position on the

coping tiles, without rising to her feet.

“Come here!” she commanded. And when he was close beside her she pointed

with her thin white arm. “That’s Saint Poalo there—you can just make it

out, up high, see. And those lights are the Boundary Gate. And this sweep

of lights below here is the _Praya_. Now look where I’m pointing. That’s

the Luiz Camoes lodging-house. You see the second window with the light

in it?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Well, Binhart’s inside that window.”

“You know it?”

“I know it.”

“So he’s there?” said Blake, staring at the vague square of light.

“Yes, he’s there, all right. He’s posing as a buyer for a tea house, and

calls himself Bradley. Lee Fu told me; and Lee Fu is always right.”

She stood up and pulled the mandarin coat closer about her thin body. The

coolness of the night air had already chilled her. Then she squinted

carefully about in the darkness.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to get Binhart,” was Blake’s answer.

He could hear her little childlike murmur of laughter.

“You’re brave, white man,” she said, with a hand on his arm. She was

silent for a moment, before she added: “And I think you’ll get him.”

“Of course I’ll get him,” retorted Blake, buttoning his coat. The fires

had been relighted on the cold hearth of his resolution. It came to him

only as an accidental afterthought that he had met an unknown woman and

had passed through strange adventures with her and was now about to pass

out of her life again, forever.

“What’ll you do?” he asked.

Again he heard the careless little laugh.

“Oh, I’ll slip down through the Quarter and cop some clothes somewhere.

Then I’ll have a sampan take me out to the German boat. It’ll start for

Canton at daylight.”

“And then?” asked Blake, watching the window of the Luiz Camoes

lodging-house below him.

“Then I’ll work my way up to Port Arthur, I suppose. There’s a navy man

there who’ll help me!”

“Haven’t you any money?” Blake put the question a little uneasily.

Again he felt the careless coo of laughter.

“Feel!” she said. She caught his huge hand between hers and pressed it

against her waist line. She rubbed his fingers along what he accepted as

a tightly packed coin-belt. He was relieved to think that he would not

have to offer her money. Then he peered over the coping tiles to make

sure of his means of descent.

“You had better go first,” she said, as she leaned out and looked down at

his side. “Crawl down this next roof to the end there. At the corner,

see, is the end of the ladder.”

He stooped and slipped his feet into his shoes. Then he let himself

cautiously down to the adjoining roof, steeper even than the one on which

they had stood. She bent low over the tiles, so that her face was very

close to his as he found his footing and stood there.

“Good-by, white man,” she whispered.

“Good-by!” he whispered back, as he worked his way cautiously and

ponderously along that perilous slope.

She leaned there, watching him as he gained the ladder-end. He did not

look back as he lowered himself, rung by rung. All thought of her, in

fact, had passed from his preoccupied mind. He was once more intent on

his own grim ends. He was debating with himself just how he was to get in

through that lodging-house window and what his final move would be for

the round up of his enemy. He had made use of too many “molls” in his

time to waste useless thought on what they might say or do or desire.

When he had got Binhart, he remembered, he would have to look about for

something to eat, for he was as hungry as a wolf. And he did not even

hear the girl’s second soft whisper of “Good-by.”

X

That stolid practicality which had made Blake a successful operative

asserted itself in the matter of his approach to the Luiz Camoes house,

the house which had been pointed out to him as holding Binhart.

He circled promptly about to the front of that house, pressed a gold coin

in the hand of the half-caste Portuguese servant who opened the door, and

asked to be shown to the room of the English tea merchant.

That servant, had he objected, would have been promptly taken possession

of by the detective, and as promptly put in a condition where he could do

no harm, for Blake felt that he was too near the end of his trail to be

put off by any mere side issue. But the coin and the curt explanation

that the merchant must be seen at once admitted Blake to the house.

The servant was leading him down the length of the half-lit hall when

Blake caught him by the sleeve.

“You tell my rickshaw boy to wait! Quick, before he gets away!”

Blake knew that the last door would be the one leading to Binhart’s room.

The moment he was alone in the hall he tiptoed to this door and pressed

an ear against its panel. Then with his left hand, he slowly turned the

knob, caressing it with his fingers that it might not click when the

latch was released. As he had feared, it was locked.

He stood for a second or two, thinking. Then with the knuckle of one

finger he tapped on the door, lightly, almost timidly.

A man’s voice from within cried out, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” But

Blake, who had been examining the woodwork of the door-frame, did not

choose to wait a minute. Any such wait, he felt, would involve too much

risk. In one minute, he knew, a fugitive could either be off and away, or

could at least prepare himself for any one intercepting that flight. So

Blake took two quick steps back, and brought his massive shoulder against

the door. It swung back, as though nothing more than a parlor match had

held it shut. Blake, as he stepped into the room, dropped his right hand

to his coat pocket.

Facing him, at the far side of the room, he saw Binhart.

The fugitive sat in a short-legged reed chair, with a grip-sack open on

his knees. His coat and vest were off, and the light from the oil lamp at

his side made his linen shirt a blotch of white.

He had thrown his head up, at the sound of the opening door, and he still

sat, leaning forward in the low chair in an attitude of startled

expectancy. There was no outward and apparent change on his face as his

eyes fell on Blake’s figure. He showed neither fear nor bewilderment. His

career had equipped him with histrionic powers that were exceptional. As

a bank-sneak and confidence-man he had long since learned perfect control

of his features, perfect composure even under the most discomforting

circumstances.

“Hello, Connie!” said the detective facing him. He spoke quietly, and his

attitude seemed one of unconcern. Yet a careful observer might have

noticed that the pulse of his beefy neck was beating faster than usual.

And over that great body, under its clothing, were rippling tremors

strangely like those that shake the body of a leashed bulldog at the

sight of a street cat.

“Hello, Jim!” answered Binhart, with equal composure. He had aged since

Blake had last seen him, aged incredibly. His face was thin now, with

plum-colored circles under the faded eyes.

He made a move as though to lift down the valise that rested on his

knees. But Blake stopped him with a sharp movement of his right hand.

“That’s all right,” he said. “Don’t get up!”

Binhart eyed him. During that few seconds of silent tableau each man was

appraising, weighing, estimating the strength of the other.

“What do you want, Jim?” asked Binhart, almost querulously.

“I want that gun you’ve got up there under your liver pad,” was Blake’s

impassive answer.

“Is that all?” asked Binhart. But he made no move to produce the gun.

“Then I want you,” calmly announced Blake.

A look of gentle expostulation crept over Binhart’s gaunt face.

“You can’t do it, Jim,” he announced. “You can’t take me away from here.”

“But I’m going to,” retorted Blake.

“How?”

“I’m just going to take you.”

He crossed the room as he spoke.

“Give me the gun,” he commanded.

Binhart still sat in the low reed chair. He made no movement in response

to Blake’s command.

“What’s the good of getting rough-house,” he complained.

“Gi’ me the gun,” repeated Blake.

“Jim, I hate to see you act this way,” but as Binhart spoke he slowly

drew the revolver from its flapped pocket. Blake’s revolver barrel was

touching the white shirt-front as the movement was made. It remained

there until he had possession of Binhart’s gun. Then he backed away,

putting his own revolver back in his pocket.

“Now, get your clothes on,” commanded Blake.

“What for?” temporized Binhart.

“You’re coming with me!”

“You can’t do it, Jim,” persisted the other. “You couldn’t get me down to

the water-front, in this town. They’d get you before you were two hundred

yards away from that door.”

“I’ll risk it,” announced the detective.

“And I’d fight you myself, every move. This ain’t Manhattan Borough, you

know, Jim; you can’t kidnap a white man. I’d have you in irons for

abduction the first ship we struck. And at the first port of call I’d

have the best law sharps money could get. You can’t do it, Jim. It ain’t

law!”

“What t’ hell do I care for law,” was Blake’s retort. “I want you and

you’re going to come with me.”

“Where am I going?”

“Back to New York.”

Binhart laughed. It was a laugh without any mirth in it.

“Jim, you’re foolish. You couldn’t get me back to New York alive, any

more than you could take Victoria Peak to New York!”

“All right, then, I’ll take you along the other way, if I ain’t going to

take you alive. I’ve followed you a good many thousand miles, Connie, and

a little loose talk ain’t going to make me lie down at this stage of the

game.”

Binhart sat studying the other man for a moment or two.

“Then how about a little real talk, the kind of talk that money makes?”

“Nothing doing!” declared Blake, folding his arms.

Binhart flickered a glance at him as he thrust his own right hand down

into the hand-bag on his knees.

“I want to show you what you could get out of this,” he said, leaning

forward a little as he looked up at Blake.

When his exploring right hand was lifted again above the top of the bag

Blake firmly expected to see papers of some sort between its fingers. He

was astonished to see something metallic, something which glittered

bright in the light from the wall lamp. The record of this discovery had

scarcely been carried back to his brain, when the silence of the room

seemed to explode into a white sting, a puff of noise that felt like a

whip lash curling about Blake’s leg. It seemed to roll off in a shifting

and drifting cloud of smoke.

It so amazed Blake that he fell back against the wall, trying to

comprehend it, to decipher the source and meaning of it all. He was still

huddled back against the wall when a second surprise came to him. It was

the discovery that Binhart had caught up a hat and a coat, and was

running away, running out through the door while his captor stared after

him.

It was only then Blake realized that his huddled position was not a thing

of his own volition. Some impact had thrown him against the wall like a

toppled nine-pin. The truth came to him, in a sudden flash; Binhart had

shot at him. There had been a second revolver hidden away in the hand

bag, and Binhart had attempted to make use of it.

A great rage against Binhart swept through him. A still greater rage at

the thought that his enemy was running away brought Blake lurching and

scrambling to his feet. He was a little startled to find that it hurt him

to run. But it hurt him more to think of losing Binhart.

He dove for the door, hurling his great bulk through it, tossing aside

the startled Portuguese servant who stood at the outer entrance. He ran

frenziedly out into the night, knowing by the staring faces of the

street-corner group that Binhart had made the first turning and was

running towards the water-front. He could see the fugitive, as he came to

the corner; and like an unpenned bull he swung about and made after him.

His one thought was to capture his man. His one obsession was to haul

down Binhart.

Then, as he ran, a small trouble insinuated itself into his mind. He

could not understand the swishing of his right boot, at every hurrying

stride. But he did not stop, for he could already smell the odorous

coolness of the water-front and he knew he must close in on his man

before that forest of floating sampans and native house-boats swallowed

him up.

A lightheadedness crept over him as he came panting down to the water’s

edge. The faces of the coolies about him, as he bargained for a sampan,

seemed far away and misty. The voices, as the flat-bottomed little skiff

was pushed off in pursuit of the boat which was hurrying Binhart out into

the night, seemed remote and thin, as though coming from across foggy

water. He was bewildered by a sense of dampness in his right leg. He

patted it with his hand, inquisitively, and found it wet. He stooped down

and felt his boot. It was full of blood. It was overrunning with blood.

He remembered then. Binhart had shot him, after all.

He could never say whether it was this discovery, or the actual loss of

blood, that filled him with a sudden giddiness. He fell forward on his

face, on the bottom of the rocking sampan.

He must have been unconscious for some time, for when he awakened he was

dimly aware that he was being carried up the landing-ladder of a steamer.

He heard English voices about him. A very youthful-looking ship’s surgeon

came and bent over him, cut away his trouser-leg, and whistled.

“Why, he’s been bleeding like a stuck pig!” he heard a startled voice,

very close to him, suddenly exclaim. And a few minutes later, after being

moved again, he opened his eyes to find himself in a berth and the

boyish-looking surgeon assuring him it was all right.

“Where’s Binhart?” asked Blake.

“That’s all right, old chap, you just rest up a bit,” said the placatory

youth.

At nine the next morning Blake was taken ashore at Hong Kong.

After eleven days in the English hospital he was on his feet again. He

was quite strong by that time. But for several weeks after that his leg

was painfully stiff.