SAM TÛK MOVES
Chinatown was being watched as Chinatown had never been watched before,
even during the most stringent enforcement of the Defence of the Realm
Act. K Division was on its mettle, and Scotland Yard had sent to aid
Chief Inspector Kerry every man that could be spared to the task. The
River Police, too, were aflame with zeal; for every officer in the
service whose work lay east of London Bridge had appropriated to
himself the stigma implied by the creation of Lord Wrexborough’s
commission.
“Corners” in foodstuffs, metals, and other indispensable commodities
are appreciated by every man, because every man knows such things to
exist; but a corner in drugs was something which the East End police
authorities found very difficult to grasp. They could not free their
minds of the traditional idea that every second Chinaman in the
Causeway was a small importer. They were seeking a hundred lesser
stores instead of one greater one. Not all Seton’s quiet explanations
nor Kerry’s savage language could wean the higher local officials from
their ancient beliefs. They failed to conceive the idea of a wealthy
syndicate conducted by an educated Chinaman and backed, covered, and
protected by a crooked gentleman and accomplished man of affairs.
Perhaps they knew and perhaps they knew not, that during the period
ruled by D.O.R.A. as much as £25 was paid by habitués for one pipe of
_chandu_. The power of gold is often badly estimated by an official
whose horizon is marked by a pension. This is mere lack of imagination,
and no more reflects discredit upon a man than lack of hair on his
crown or of color in his cheeks. Nevertheless, it may prove very
annoying.
Towards the close of an afternoon which symbolized the worst that
London’s particular climate can do in the matter of drizzling rain and
gloom, Chief Inspector Kerry, carrying an irritable toy spaniel, came
out of a turning which forms a V with Limehouse Canal, into a narrow
street which runs parallel with the Thames. He had arrived at the
conclusion that the neighborhood was sown so thickly with detectives
that one could not throw a stone without hitting one. Yet Sin Sin Wa
had quietly left his abode and had disappeared from official ken.
Three times within the past ten minutes the spaniel had tried to bite
Kerry, nor was Kerry blind to the amusement which his burden had
occasioned among the men of K Division whom he had met on his travels.
Finally, as he came out into the riverside lane, the ill-tempered
little animal essayed a fourth, and successful, attempt, burying his
wicked white teeth in the Chief Inspector’s wrist.
Kerry hooked his finger into the dog’s collar, swung the yapping animal
above his head, and hurled it from him into the gloom and rain mist.
“Hell take the blasted thing!” he shouted. “I’m done with it!”
He tenderly sucked his wounded wrist, and picking up his cane, which he
had dropped, he looked about him and swore savagely. Of Seton Pasha he
had had news several times during the day, and he was aware that the
Home office agent was not idle. But to that old rivalry which had leapt
up anew when he had seen Seton near Kennington oval had succeeded a
sort of despair; so that now he would have welcomed the information
that Seton had triumphed where he had failed. A furious hatred of the
one-eyed Chinaman around whom he was convinced the mystery centred had
grown up within his mind. At that hour he would gladly have resigned
his post and sacrificed his pension to know that Sin Sin Wa was under
lock and key. His outlook was official, and accordingly peculiar. He
regarded the murder of Sir Lucien Pyne and the flight or abduction of
Mrs. Monte Irvin as mere minor incidents in a case wherein Sin Sin Wa
figured as the chief culprit. Nothing had acted so powerfully to bring
about this conviction in the mind of the Chief Inspector as the
inexplicable disappearance of the Chinaman under circumstances which
had apparently precluded such a possibility.
A whimpering cry came to Kerry’s ears; and because beneath the mask of
ferocity which he wore a humane man was concealed: “Flames!” he
snapped; “perhaps I’ve broken the poor little devil’s leg.”
Shaking a cascade of water from the brim of his neat bowler, he set off
through the murk towards the spot from whence the cries of the spaniel
seemed to proceed. A few paces brought him to the door of a dirty
little shop. In a window close beside it appeared the legend:
SAM TÛK
BARBER.
The spaniel crouched by the door whining and scratching, and as Kerry
came up it raised its beady black eyes to him with a look which, while
it was not unfearful, held an unmistakable appeal. Kerry stood watching
the dog for a moment, and as he watched he became conscious of an
exhilarated pulse.
He tried the door and found it to be open. Thereupon he entered a dirty
little shop, which he remembered to have searched in person in the grey
dawn of the day which now was entering upon a premature dusk. The dog
ran in past him, crossed the gloomy shop, and raced down into a tiny
coal cellar, which likewise had been submitted during the early hours
of the morning to careful scrutiny under the directions of the Chief
Inspector.
A Chinese boy, who had been the only occupant of the place on that
occasion and who had given his name as Ah Fung, was surprised by the
sudden entrance of man and dog in the act of spreading coal dust with
his fingers upon a portion of the paved floor. He came to his feet with
a leap and confronted Kerry. The spaniel began to scratch feverishly
upon the spot where the coal dust had been artificially spread. Kerry’s
eyes gleamed like steel. He shot out his hand and grasped the Chinaman
by his long hair. “Open that trap,” he said, “or I’ll break you in
half!”
Ah Fung’s oblique eyes regarded him with an expression difficult to
analyze, but partly it was murder. He made no attempt to obey the
order. Meanwhile the dog, whining and scratching furiously, had exposed
the greater part of a stone slab somewhat larger than those adjoining
it, and having a large crack or fissure in one end.
“For the last time,” said Kerry, drawing the man’s head back so that
his breath began to whistle through his nostrils, “open that trap.”
As he spoke he released Ah Fung, and Ah Fung made one wild leap towards
the stairs. Kerry’s fist caught him behind the ear as he sprang, and he
went down like a dead man upon a small heap of coal which filled the
angle of the cellar.
Breathing rapidly and having his teeth so tightly clenched that his
maxillary muscles protruded lumpishly, Kerry stood looking at the
fallen man. But Ah Fung did not move. The dog had ceased to scratch,
and now stood uttering short staccato barks and looking up at the Chief
Inspector. Otherwise there was no sound in the house, above or below.
Kerry stooped, and with his handkerchief scrupulously dusted the stone
slab. The spaniel, resentment forgotten, danced excitedly beside him
and barked continuously.
“There’s some sort of hook to fit in that crack,” muttered Kerry.
He began to hunt about among the debris which littered one end of the
cellar, testing fragment after fragment, but failing to find any piece
of scrap to suit his purpose. By sheer perseverance rather than by any
process of reasoning, he finally hit upon the piece of bent wire which
was the key to this door of Sin Sin Wa’s drug warehouse.
One short exclamation of triumph he muttered at the moment that his
glance rested upon it, and five seconds later he had the trapdoor open
and was peering down into the narrow pit in which wooden steps rested.
The spaniel began to bark wildly, whereupon Kerry grasped him, tucked
him under his arm, and ran up to the room above, where he deposited the
furiously wriggling animal. He stepped quickly back again and closed
the upper door. By this act he plunged the cellar into complete
darkness, and accordingly he took out from the pocket of his
rain-drenched overall the electric torch which he always carried.
Directing its ray downwards into the cellar, he perceived Ah Fung move
and toss his hand above his head. He also detected a faint rattling
sound.
“Ah!” said Kerry.
He descended, and stooping over the unconscious man extracted from the
pocket of his baggy blue trousers four keys upon a ring. At these Kerry
stared eagerly. Two of them belonged to yale locks; the third was a
simple English barrel-key, which probably fitted a padlock; but the
fourth was large and complicated.
“Looks like the key of a jail,” he said aloud.
He spoke with unconscious prescience. This was the key of the door of
the vault. Removing his overall, Kerry laid it with his cane upon the
scrap-heap, then he climbed down the ladder and found himself in the
mouth of that low timbered tunnel, like a trenchwork, which owed its
existence to the cunning craftsmanship of Sin Sin Wa. Stooping
uncomfortably, he made his way along the passage until the massive door
confronted him. He was in no doubt as to which key to employ; his
mental condition was such that he was indifferent to the dangers which
probably lay before him.
The well-oiled lock operated smoothly. Kerry pushed the door open and
stepped briskly into the vault.
His movements, from the moment that he had opened the trap, had been
swift and as nearly noiseless as the difficulties of the task had
permitted. Nevertheless, they had not been so silent as to escape the
attention of the preternaturally acute Sin Sin Wa. Kerry found the
place occupied only by the aged Sam Tûk. A bright fire burned in the
stove, and a ship’s lantern stood upon the counter. Dense chemical
fumes rendered the air difficult to breathe; but the shelves, once
laden with the largest illicit collection of drugs in London, were
bare.
Kerry’s fierce eyes moved right and left; his jaws worked
automatically. Sam Tûk sat motionless, his hands concealed in his
sleeves, bending decrepitly forward in his chair. Then:
“Hi! Guy Fawkes!” rapped Kerry, striding forward. “Who’s been letting
off fire-works?”
Sam Tûk nodded senilely, but spoke not a word.
Kerry stooped and stared into the heart of the fire. A dense coat of
white ash lay upon the embers. He grasped the shoulder of the aged
Chinaman, and pushed him back so that he could look into the bleared
eyes behind the owlish spectacles.
“Been cleaning up the ‘evidence,’ eh?” he shouted. “This joint stinks
of opium and a score of other dopes. Where are the gang?” He shook the
yielding, ancient frame. “Where’s the smart with one eye?”
But Sam Tûk merely nodded, and as Kerry released his hold sank forward
again, nodding incessantly.
“H’m, you’re a hard case,” said the Chief Inspector. “A couple of
witnesses like you and the jury would retire to Bedlam!”
He stood glaring fiercely at the limp frame of the old Chinaman, and as
he glared his expression changed. Lying on the dirty floor not a yard
from Sam Tûk’s feet was a ball of leaf opium!
“Ha!” exclaimed Kerry, and he stooped to pick it up.
As he did so, with a lightning movement of which the most astute
observer could never have supposed him capable, Sam Tûk whipped a
loaded rubber tube from his sleeve and struck Kerry a shrewd blow
across the back of the skull.
The Chief Inspector, without word or cry, collapsed upon his knees, and
then fell gently forward—forward—and toppled face downwards before his
assailant. His bowler fell off and rolled across the dirty floor.
Sam Tûk sank deeply into his chair, and his toothless jaws worked
convulsively. The skinny hand which clutched the piece of tubing
twitched and shook, so that the primitive deadly weapon fell from its
wielder’s grasp.
Silently, that set of empty shelves nearest to the inner wall of the
vault slid open, and Sin Sin Wa came out. He, too, carried his hands
tucked in his sleeves, and his yellow, pock-marked face wore its
eternal smile.
“Well done,” he crooned softly in Chinese. “Well done, bald father of
wisdom. The dogs draw near, but the old fox sleeps not.”