COIL OF THE PIGTAIL
The inner room was in darkness and the fume-laden air almost
unbreathable. A dull and regular moaning sound proceeded from the
corner where the bed was situated, but of the contents of the place and
of its other occupant or occupants Kerry had no more than a hazy idea.
His imagination supplied those details which he had failed to observe.
Mrs. Monte Irvin, in a dying condition, lay upon the bed, and someone
or some _thing_ crouched on the divan behind Kerry as he lay stretched
upon the matting-covered floor. His wrists, tied behind him, gave him
great pain; and since his ankles were also fastened and the end of the
rope drawn taut and attached to that binding his wrists, he was
rendered absolutely helpless. For one of his fiery temperament this
physical impotence was maddening, and because his own handkerchief had
been tied tightly around his head so as to secure between his teeth a
wooden stopper of considerable size which possessed an unpleasant
chemical taste and smell, even speech was denied him.
How long he had lain thus he had no means of judging accurately; but
hours—long, maddening hours—seemed to have passed since, with the
muzzle of Sin Sin Wa’s Mauser pressed coldly to his ear, he had
submitted willy-nilly to the adroit manipulations of Mrs. Sin. At first
he had believed, in his confirmed masculine vanity, that it would be a
simple matter to extricate himself from the fastenings made by a woman;
but when, rolling him sideways, she had drawn back his heels and run
the loose end of the line through the loop formed by the lashing of his
wrists behind him, he had recognized a Chinese training, and had
resigned himself to the inevitable. The wooden gag was a sore trial,
and if it had not broken his spirit it had nearly caused him to break
an artery in his impotent fury.
Into the darkened inner chamber Sin Sin Wa had dragged him, and there
Kerry had lain ever since, listening to the various sounds of the
place, to the coarse voice, often raised in anger, of the Cuban-Jewess,
to the crooning tones of the imperturbable Chinaman. The incessant
moaning of the woman on the bed sometimes became mingled with another
sound more remote, which Kerry for long failed to identify; but
ultimately he concluded it to be occasioned by the tide flowing under
the wharf. The raven was silent, because, imprisoned in his wicker
cage, he had been placed in some dark spot below the counter. Very
dimly from time to time a steam siren might be heard upon the river,
and once the thudding of a screw-propeller told of the passage of a
large vessel along Limehouse Reach.
In the eyes of Mrs. Sin Kerry had read menace, and for all their dark
beauty they had reminded him of the eyes of a cornered rat. Beneath the
contemptuous nonchalance which she flaunted he read terror and remorse,
and a foreboding of doom—panic ill repressed, which made her dangerous
as any beast at bay. The attitude of the Chinaman was more puzzling. He
seemed to bear the Chief Inspector no personal animosity, and indeed,
in his glittering eye, Kerry had detected a sort of mysterious light of
understanding which was almost mirthful, but which bore no relation to
Sin Sin Wa’s perpetual smile. Kerry’s respect for the one-eyed Chinaman
had increased rather than diminished upon closer acquaintance.
Underlying his urbanity he failed to trace any symptom of apprehension.
This Sin Sin Wa, accomplice of a murderess self-confessed, evident head
of a drug syndicate which had led to the establishment of a Home office
inquiry—this badly “wanted” man, whose last hiding-place, whose keep,
was closely invested by the agents of the law, was the same Sin Sin Wa
who had smilingly extended his wrists, inviting the manacles, when
Kerry had first made his acquaintance under circumstances legally very
different.
Sometimes Kerry could hear him singing his weird crooning song, and
twice Mrs. Sin had shrieked blasphemous execrations at him because of
it. But why should Sin Sin Wa sing? What hope had he of escape? In the
case of any other criminal Kerry would have answered “None,” but the
ease with which this one-eyed singing Chinaman had departed from his
abode under the very noses of four detectives had shaken the Chief
Inspector’s confidence in the efficiency of ordinary police methods
where this Chinese conjurer was concerned. A man who could convert an
elaborate opium house into a dirty ruin in so short a time, too, was
capable of other miraculous feats, and it would not have surprised
Kerry to learn that Sin Sin Wa, at a moment’s notice, could disguise
himself as a chest of tea, or pass invisible through solid walls.
For evidence that Seton Pasha or any of the men from Scotland Yard had
penetrated to the secret of Sam Tûk’s cellar Kerry listened in vain.
What was about to happen he could not imagine, nor if his life was to
be spared. In the confession so curiously extorted from Mrs. Sin by her
husband he perceived a clue to this and other mysteries, but strove in
vain to disentangle it from the many maddening complexities of the
case.
So he mused, wearily, listening to the moaning of his fellow captive,
and wondering, since no sign of life came thence, why he imagined
another presence in the stuffy room or the presence of someone or of
some _thing_ on the divan behind him. And in upon these dreary musings
broke an altercation between Mrs. Sin and her husband.
“Keep the blasted thing covered up!” she cried hoarsely.
“Tling-a-Ling wantchee catchee bleathee sometime,” crooned Sin Sin Wa.
“Hello, hello!” croaked the raven drowsily. “Smartest—smartest—smartest
leg.”
“You catchee sleepee, Tling-a-Ling,” murmured the Chinaman. “Mrs. Sin
no likee you palaber, lo!”
“Burn it!” cried the woman, “burn the one-eyed horror!”
But when, carrying a lighted lantern, Sin Sin Wa presently came into
the inner room, he smiled as imperturbably as ever, and was unmoved so
far as external evidence showed.
Sin Sin Wa set the lantern upon a Moorish coffee-table which once had
stood beside the divan in Mrs. Sin’s sanctum at the House of a Hundred
Raptures. A significant glance—its significance an acute puzzle to the
recipient—he cast upon Chief Inspector Kerry. His hands tucked in the
loose sleeves of his blouse, he stood looking down at the woman who lay
moaning on the bed; and:
“_Tchée, tchée_,” he crooned softly, “you hate no catchee die, my
beautiful. You sniffee plenty too muchee ‘white snow,’ _hoi, hoi!_
Velly bad woman tly makee you catchee die, but Sin Sin Wa no hate got
for killee chop. Topside pidgin no good enough, lo!”
His thick, extraordinary long pigtail hanging down his back and
gleaming in the rays of the lantern, he stood, head bowed, watching
Rita Irvin. Because of his position on the floor, Mrs. Irvin was
invisible from Kerry’s point of view, but she continued to moan
incessantly, and he knew that she must be unconscious of the Chinaman’s
scrutiny.
“Hurry, old fool!” came Mrs. Sin’s harsh voice from the outer room. “In
ten minutes Ah Fung will give the signal. Is she dead yet—the
doll-woman?”
“She hate no catchee die,” murmured Sin Sin Wa, “She still vella
beautiful—_tchée!_”
It was at the moment that he spoke these words that Seton Pasha entered
the empty building above and found the spaniel scratching at the paved
floor. So that, as Sin Sin Wa stood looking down at the wan face of the
unfortunate woman who refused to die, the dog above, excited by Seton’s
presence, ceased to whine and scratch and began to bark.
Faintly to the vault the sound of the high-pitched barking penetrated.
Kerry tensed his muscles and groaned impotently feeling his heart
beating like a hammer in his breast. Complete silence reigned in the
outer room. Sin Sin Wa never stirred. Again the dog barked, then:
“Hello, hello!” shrieked the raven shrilly. “Number one p’lice chop,
lo! Sin Sin Wa! Sin Sin Wa!”
There came a fierce exclamation, the sound of something being hastily
overturned, of a scuffle, and:
“Sin—Sin—Wa!” croaked the raven feebly.
The words ended in a screeching cry, which was followed by a sound of
wildly beating wings. Sin Sin Wa, hands tucked in sleeves, turned and
walked from the inner room, closing the sliding door behind him with a
movement of his shoulder.
Resting against the empty shelves, he stood and surveyed the scene in
the vault.
Mrs. Sin, who had been kneeling beside the wicker cage, which was
upset, was in the act of standing upright. At her feet, and not far
from the motionless form of old Sam Tûk who sat like a dummy figure in
his chair before the stove, lay a palpitating mass of black feathers.
Other detached feathers were sprinkled about the floor. Feebly the
raven’s wings beat the ground once, twice—and were still.
Sin Sin Wa uttered one sibilant word, withdrew his hands from his
sleeves, and, stepping around the end of the counter, dropped upon his
knees beside the raven. He touched it with long yellow fingers, then
raised it and stared into the solitary eye, now glazed and sightless as
its fellow. The smile had gone from the face of Sin Sin Wa.
“My Tling-a-Ling!” he moaned in his native mandarin tongue. “Speak to
me, my little black friend!”
A bead of blood, like a ruby, dropped from the raven’s beak. Sin Sin Wa
bowed his head and knelt awhile in silence; then, standing up, he
reverently laid the poor bedraggled body upon a chest. He turned and
looked at his wife.
Hands on hips, she confronted him, breathing rapidly, and her glance of
contempt swept him up and down.
“I’ve often threatened to do it,” she said in English. “Now I’ve done
it. They’re on the wharf. We’re trapped—thanks to that black, squalling
horror!”
“_Tchée, tchée!_” hissed Sin Sin Wa.
His gleaming eye fixed upon the woman unblinkingly, he began very
deliberately to roll up his loose sleeves. She watched him, contempt in
her glance, but her expression changed subtly, and her dark eyes grew
narrowed. She looked rapidly towards Sam Tûk but Sam Tûk never stirred.
“Old fool!” she cried at Sin Sin Wa. “What are you doing?”
But Sin Sin Wa, his sleeves rolled up above his yellow, sinewy
forearms, now tossed his pigtail, serpentine, across his shoulder and
touched it with his fingers, an odd, caressing movement.
“Ho!” laughed Mrs. Sin in her deep scoffing fashion, “it is for _me_
you make all this bhobbery, eh? It is me you are going to chastise, my
dear?”
She flung back her head, snapping her fingers before the silent
Chinaman. He watched her, and slowly—slowly—he began to crouch, lower
and lower, but always that unblinking regard remained fixed upon the
face of Mrs. Sin.
The woman laughed again, more loudly. Bending her lithe body forward in
mocking mimicry, she snapped her fingers, once—again—and again under
Sin Sin Wa’s nose. Then:
“Do you think, you blasted yellow ape, that you can frighten _me?_” she
screamed, a swift flame of wrath lighting up her dark face.
In a flash she had raised the kimona and had the stiletto in her hand.
But, even swifter than she, Sin Sin Wa sprang...
Once, twice she struck at him, and blood streamed from his left
shoulder. But the pigtail, like an executioner’s rope, was about the
woman’s throat. She uttered one smothered shriek, dropping the knife,
and then was silent...
Her dyed hair escaped from its fastenings and descended, a ruddy
torrent, about her as she writhed, silent, horrible, in the death-coil
of the pigtail.
Rigidly, at arms-length, he held her, moment after moment, immovable,
implacable; and when he read death in her empurpled face, a miraculous
thing happened.
The “blind” eye of Sin Sin Wa opened!
A husky rattle told of the end, and he dropped the woman’s body from
his steely grip, disengaging the pigtail with a swift movement of his
head. Opening and closing his yellow fingers to restore circulation, he
stood looking down at her. He spat upon the floor at her feet.
Then, turning, he held out his arms and confronted Sam Tûk.
“Was it well done, bald father of wisdom?” he demanded hoarsely.
But old Sam Tûk seated lumpish in his chair like some grotesque idol
before whom a human sacrifice has been offered up, stirred not. The
length of loaded tubing with which he had struck Kerry lay beside him
where it had fallen from his nerveless hand. And the two oblique, beady
eyes of Sin Sin Wa, watching, grew dim. Step by step he approached the
old Chinaman, stooped, touched him, then knelt and laid his head upon
the thin knees.
“Old father,” he murmured, “Old bald father who knew so much. Tonight
you know all.”
For Sam Tûk was no more. At what moment he had died, whether in the
excitement of striking Kerry or later, no man could have presumed to
say, since, save by an occasional nod of his head, he had often
simulated death in life—he who was so old that he was known as “The
Father of Chinatown.”
Standing upright, Sin Sin Wa looked from the dead man to the dead
raven. Then, tenderly raising poor Tling-a-Ling, he laid the great
dishevelled bird—a weird offering—upon the knees of Sam Tûk.
“Take him with you where you travel tonight, my father,” he said. “He,
too, was faithful.”
A cheap German clock commenced a muted clangor, for the little hammer
was muffled.
Sin Sin Wa walked slowly across to the counter. Taking up the gleaming
joss, he unscrewed its pedestal. Then, returning to the spot where Mrs.
Sin lay, he coolly detached a leather wallet which she wore beneath her
dress fastened to a girdle. Next he removed her rings, her bangles and
other ornaments. He secreted all in the interior of the joss—his
treasure-chest. He raised his hands and began to unplait his long
pigtail, which, like his “blind” eye, was _camouflage_—a false queue
attached to his own hair, which he wore but slightly longer than some
Europeans and many Americans. With a small pair of scissors he clipped
off his long, snake-like moustaches....