unspoken question. "He left me in charge of thy shop and thy goods."
Leh Shin nodded silently and closed the door. When he turned, the Burman
beckoned to him with a studied suggestion of mystery.
"What is thy message?" asked Leh Shin. He believed the Burman to be
afflicted with a madness, and his odd and persistent movement of his arm
hardly conveyed anything to the drowsy, drugged brain of the Chinaman.
The Burman made no reply, but beckoned again, pointing to the floor
beside him in dumb show, and Leh Shin advanced slowly and took up his
place on a grass mat a little distance off. Silently, and very softly,
the Burman crept near to him, and putting his mouth close to his ear,
talked in a rapid, hissing whisper. His words were low, but their effect
upon Leh Shin was startling, for he recoiled as though touched by a hot
needle. His hands clutched his clothes, and his whole frame stiffened.
Even when he drew away, he listened with avidity as the Burman continued
to pour forth his story.
He had a friend in the household of Hartley Sahib, so he told Leh Shin,
a friend who had sensitive ears and had heard much; had heard in fact
the whole story of the stained rag, and of Mhtoon Pah's wild appeal for
justice against the Chinaman.
"Well for thee, Leh Shin, that I have a friend in the house of that
_Thakin_ who rules the Police. But for him I should not have been
informed of the plot against thy life, for, 'on this evidence,' saith
he, 'assuredly they will hang the Chinaman, and Mhtoon Pah is witness
against him.'"
"Mhtoon Pah, Mhtoon Pah!" said Leh Shin, and he needed to add no curses
to the name, spoken as he said it.
When Coryndon had fully explained that his friend, who was in the
service of Hartley, had not only given him a circumstantial account of
how the rag was to be used as final and conclusive evidence of Leh
Shin's guilt, but that he had also stolen the rag out of Hartley Sahib's
locked box, to be safely returned to him later, Leh Shin almost tore it
from between Coryndon's fingers.
"Nay, I cannot deliver it unto thee. My word is pledged. Look closely at
it, if thou wilt, but it may not leave my hand or I break my oath."
He held it under the circle of lamplight, and the Chinaman leaned over
his shoulder to look at it. For a long time he examined it carefully,
feeling its texture and touching it with light fingers.
Coryndon watched him with some interest. The Chinaman was applying some
definite test to the silk, known to himself. At last he turned his eyes
on the Burman, staring with a gaunt, fierce look that saw many things,
and when he spoke his words grated and rattled and his voice was almost
beyond his control.
"See now, O servant of Justice, I am learned in the matter of silks, and
without doubt this comes surely from but one place."
Again he fell to touching the silk, and his crooked fingers shook as he
explained that the fragment was one he could identify. It was not the
product of the silk looms of Burma, or Shantung; it could not be
procured even in Japan. It was a rare and special product fashioned by
certain lake-dwellers in the Shan states, and so small was their output
that it went to no market.
"In one shop only in Mangadone," he said; "nay, in one shop only in the
whole world may such silk be found. Thus, in his craft, hath mine enemy
overreached himself."
"Thou art certain of this?"
"As I am that the sun will rise."
Coryndon looked again at the silk, and sat silently thinking.
"The piece is cut off roughly," he said, after a moment of reflection.
"Yet, could it be fitted into the space left in the roll, then thou art
cleared, and hast just cause against Mhtoon Pah."
"If thy madness comprehends so much, let it carry thee further still, O
stricken and afflicted," said Leh Shin, imploring him with voice and
gesture. "Night after night have I stood outside his shop, but who may
enter through a locked door? A breath, a shadow, or a flame, but not a
man." He lay on the ground and dug his nails into the floor. "I know the
shop from within and without, and I know that the lock opens with
difficulty but to one key, the key that hangs on a chain around the neck
of Mhtoon Pah."
Silence fell again as Leh Shin wrestled with the problem that confronted
him.
"What saidst thou?" said the Burman, suddenly coming to life. "A key?"
He gave a low, chuckling laugh and rocked about in his corner.
"Knowest thou of the story of Shiraz, the Punjabi?"
"I have no mind for tales," said Leh Shin, striking at him with a futile
blow of rage.
"Nay, restrain thy wrath, since thou hast spoken of a key. With a key
that was made by sorcery, he was enabled to open the treasure-box of the
Lady Sahib, and often hath he told me that all doors may be opened by
it, large or small. It is not hard for me to take it from under his
pillow while he sleeps."
The Chinaman's jaw dropped, and he cast up his hands in mute
astonishment. If this was madness, sanity appeared only a doubtful
blessing set beside it. He drew his own wits together, and leaning near
the Burman laid before him the rough outline of a plan.
Mhtoon Pah's ways were known to him. Usually he went to the Pagoda after
the shop was closed, and he returned from there late; it was impossible
to be accurate as to the exact hour of his return. To risk detection was
to shatter all chance of success, and it was necessary to make sure
before attempting to break into the shop and identify the silk rag with
the original roll, if that might be done.
There was only one course open to the Burman and Leh Shin, and that was
to wait until there was a _Pwé_ at the Pagoda, which Mhtoon Pah would
certainly attend, as his new shrine drew many curious gazers to the
Temple. It would also draw the inhabitants of Paradise Street out of the
quarter, and leave the place practically deserted. For many reasons it
was necessary to wait such an opportunity, though Leh Shin raved at the
delay. It seemed to him that the whole plan was of his suggesting, and
he did not realize that every vague question put by the Burman led him
step by step to the complicated scheme.
"To-morrow I will send forth my assistant to bring me word of the next
_Pwé_, so that the night may be marked in my mind, and that I shall gain
pleasure in considering the nearing downfall of my enemy."
Coryndon slipped off to his house. He was tired mentally and physically,
but before he slept, he took a bundle of keys from his dispatch-box and
tied them to the waist of his _loongyi_.
In the morning there was a fresh surprise for Leh Shin. His assistant
refused to leave the river house, and no persuasion would lure him out
to look after his master's shop. He was afraid of something or someone,
and he wept and entreated to be left where he was. Leh Shin beat him and
tried to drive him out, to no purpose, and in the end he prevailed over
his master, whose mind was occupied with other and more weighty affairs.
Like a black shadow, Leh Shin crept about the streets, and he questioned
one and another as to the festivities to be held at the Pagoda.
Everywhere he heard of Mhtoon Pah's shrine, and of the great holiness of
the curio dealer. Mhtoon Pah was giving a feast at the Pagoda with
presents for the priests, and the night chosen was the night of the full
moon.
"Art thou bidden?" asked one who remembered the day of Leh Shin's
prosperity.
"It is in my thoughts, friend, to make my peace," said Leh Shin, with an
immovable face. "On the night when the moon is full, I am minded to do
so."
His words were carried back to Mhtoon Pah, who pondered over them,
wondering what the Chinaman meant, finding something sinister in the
sound that added to his rage against his enemy.
The day of the feast was dark and overcast, and the inhabitants of
Paradise Street looked at the sky with great misgiving, but the curio
dealer refused to be alarmed.
"The night will be fine, for I have greatly propitiated the _Nats_," he
said with conviction, and he lolled and smoked in his chair at an
earlier hour than was usual with him.
Even as he had said, the evening began to clear, and by sunset the heavy
clouds were all dispersed. A red sunset unfolded itself in a scroll of
fire across the sky, and Mangadone looked as though it was illuminated
by the flames of a conflagration. A strange evening, some said then, and
many said after. Even the pointing man lost his jaundice-yellow and
seemed to blush as he pointed up the steps. He had nothing to blush for.
His master was at the summit of his power. The _Hypongyis_ lauded him
openly in the streets, and he was giving a feast at the Temple at which
the poorest would not be forgotten.
Yet Mhtoon Pah was not altogether easy. His eyes rolled strangely from
time to time, and it was remarked by several that he walked to the end
of Paradise Street and looked down the Colonnade of the Chinese quarter,
standing there in thought. Old stories of the feud between him and Leh
Shin were recalled in whispers and passed about.
The red of the sunset died out into rose-pink, and the effect of colour
in the very air faded and dwindled. People were already dressed out in
gala clothing, and streaming towards the Pagoda. The giver of the feast
did not start with them. He sat in his chair, and then withdrew into his
shop. A light travelled from thence to the upper story, and then with
slow hesitation, Mhtoon Pah came out by the front of the house and
locked the clamped padlock. He stood still for a few minutes, and then
he gasped and shook his fist at the empty air, and he, too, took his way
across the bridge and was lost in the shadows.
Still the stream from Wharf Street and the confluent streets flowed on
up Paradise Street, and gradually only the maimed and the aged, or the
impossibly youthful, were left behind, to hear of the wonders afterwards
at secondhand, a secondhand likely to add rather than detract from what
actually took place. Even the Colonnade was empty and silent. Shiraz had
gone with the crowd to see what might be seen, and Leh Shin's assistant,
furtive and watchful, and in great terror of the Burman's knife, was
also in the throng that climbed the Pagoda steps.
The moon that was to have shone on Mhtoon Pah's feast rose in a yellow
ring, and clouds came up, hazy, gaudy clouds that dimmed its light and
made the shadows in the silent streets dense and heavy. Usually there
was a police guard at the corner where Paradise Street met the
Colonnade, but that night Hartley considered the police would be more
necessary in the neighbourhood of the Pagoda. Mhtoon Pah did not think
of this. His conscience was easy, he had propitiated the _Nats_.
The Pagoda was one blaze of light, and a thousand candles flamed before
every shrine; even the oldest and most neglected had its ring of light.
Small coloured lamps dotted the outlines of some of the booths, and the
whole spectacle presented a moving mass of brilliant colour. Sahibs had
come there. Hartley Sahib had agreed to appear for half an hour, and he
too looked at the crowd with curious, travelling eyes. Coryndon might be
among them, and probably was, he thought, but in any case there was
little chance of his recognizing him if he were.
Mhtoon Pah had not spared magnificent display, and the crowd told each
other that it was indeed a night to remember in Mangadone. Whispering
winds came out and rang the Temple bells, but even when the breeze
strengthened, the rain-clouds held off. It became a matter for
compliment and congratulation, and Mhtoon Pah accepted his friends'
flattery without pride. He was a good man, a benefactor, a
shrine-builder who followed "the Way" with zeal and fervour, and
besides, he had propitiated _Nats_; _Nats_ who blew up storms, caused
earthquakes and were evilly disposed towards men.
Mhtoon Pah would have been at the point where a man's life touches
sublimity, but for one thing. The words of Leh Shin echoed in his ears
over all the applause and adulation.
"It is in my thought, friend, to make my peace. On the night of the full
moon I am minded to do so."
The moon riding clear of clouds, shone out over the concourse of men and
women. Anywhere among them all might be Leh Shin, the needy Chinaman,
and gripping his large hands into fists, Mhtoon Pah watched for him and
expected him, but watch as he might, he did not come, neither was there
any sign of him among all the crowd of faces that passed and repassed
before the new shrine.
XXIII
DEMONSTRATES THE TRUTH OF THE AXIOM THAT "THE UNEXPECTED ALWAYS HAPPENS"
At the time when Mhtoon Pah was standing in the centre of a gazing group
before the new shrine, and trying to forget that nothing except the news
of Leh Shin's hanging would give him real satisfaction, the Chinaman,
accompanied by the Burman, slipped up the channel of gloom under the
Colonnade and made his way into Paradise Street.
The Burman walked with an easy unconscious step, but Leh Shin crept
close to the wall and started when he passed a sleeping form in a
doorway. Night fears and that trembling anxiety that comes when
fulfilment is close at hand were upon him. He knew that the point in
view was to effect an entrance into the curio shop, the threshold of
which he had not crossed since his last black hour of misfortune had
struck and he had gone out a beggar.
Everything in his life lay on the other side of the shop door; all his
happy, prosperous, careless days, all the good years. Every one of them
was stored there just as surely as Mhtoon Pah's ivories and carved
screens and silks were stored safe against the encroachment of damp and
must. His old self might even be somewhere in the silent house, and it
takes a special quality of courage for a man to return and walk through
a doorway into the long past. For the first time for years he remembered
how he had brought his little son into the shop, and how the child had
laughed and crowed at the sight of amber and crystal chains.
Even Mhtoon Pah grew dim in his mind, and he dallied with the forgotten
memories as he stood shaking in an archway watching the Burman cross the
street. Insensibly the Burman's mania had waned in the last few hours,
and he had grown silent and preoccupied, a fact that escaped Leh Shin's
notice. His owl eyes blinked with the strain of staring through the
wavering light, and his memories strove with him as though in physical
combat. Mhtoon Pah was no longer in the house, and instead of his shadow
another influence seemed to brood there, something that called to Leh
Shin, but not with the wild cry of hate. Before the days of still
greater affluence Leh Shin had lived there with his little Burmese wife.
The Burman was on his knees, having some difficulty with the lock. He
could see him fighting it, and at last he saw the jerk of his hand that
told that the key had turned, and that the way was clear. Leh Shin dived
out of the recess and ran, a flitting shadow, across the road. The door
was open, but the Burman for all his madness was not satisfied. There
was a way out through the back by which they could emerge, and if the
front door hung loose, careless eyes might easily be attracted to the
fact. The pointing man was not there for nothing. Almost everyone
looked up the steps. Even in his fury of impatience, Leh Shin saw the
reason for caution, and agreed to open a window, and admit the Burman
after he had locked the door again.
The moments were full of the tense agony of suspense, and he peered
cautiously out from under the silk blind. A late passer-by went slowly
up the street, and Leh Shin's heart beat a loud obbligato to the sound
of his wooden pattens. By craning his neck as the man passed, he could
just distinguish the Burman crouching behind the wooden man, who blandly
indicated the heavy padlock. The wooden man lied woodenly to the effect
that all was well within the curio shop, and a few minutes later the
Burman swung himself over the balustrade and climbed with cat-like
agility on to the window-ledge.
The darkness of the room was heavy with scent, and Leh Shin stumbled
over unknown things. Coryndon struck a match and held it in the hollow
of one palm as he opened the aperture in the dark lantern he carried,
and lighted it. When he had done so he looked up, and taking no notice
of the masses of beautiful things, he went quickly to the silk cupboard,
opening it with another key on the ring.
"Leh Shin," he said, speaking in a commanding whisper, "turn thyself
into an ear, and listen for me while I search."
Leh Shin nodded silently, half-stupidly it seemed, and went on tip-toes
to the door that opened into the passage. All the power of the past was
over him, and though he heard the Burman's curt command he hardly seemed
to understand what he meant. For a little time he stood at the door,
hearing the rustling whisper of yards of silk torn down and glanced over
and discarded, and then he wandered almost without knowing it up the
staircase and through the rooms, until the sight of Mhtoon Pah's bed and
some of Mhtoon Pah's clothing recalled his mind to the reason of his
being there.
He hurried down, his bare feet making no sound on the stairs, and looked
into the shop again. The Burman was seated on the floor, a width of silk
over his knees; all the displaced rolls had been put back. He had worked
swiftly and with the greatest care that no trace of his visit should be
known later.
Leh Shin slid out again. The passage was dark as pitch, but he knew
every turn and twist of its windings, and he knew that it led down to
the cellars below the house. He was awake and alert now as Coryndon
himself, and as he strained his ears he caught a sound. He listened
again with horrible eagerness, looked back into the shop and saw the
stooping head going over every yard of a roll of fine silk faithfully;
and then he gripped the knife under his belt and, feeling along the wall
with his free hand, followed along the corridor. Once only he glanced
round and then the darkness of the corridor swallowed him from sight.
Coryndon, busy with the silk made by the lake-dwellers spread over his
knees, knew nothing of Leh Shin's disappearance. The fever of chase was
in his blood, and he threw the flimsy yards through his hands. Nothing,
nothing, and again nothing, and again--he felt his heart swell with
sudden, stifled excitement. Under his hand was a three-cornered rent, a
damaged piece where a patch rather larger than his palm had been roughly
cut out. His usually steady hand shook as he put the stained rag over it
and fitted it into the place.
"Leh Shin," he called, as he rose, but he called softly.
No sound answered his whisper, and he stiffened his body and listened.
He had been wrong. There was a sound, but it did not come from inside
the shop: it was the slow footstep of a heavy man pausing to find a key.
Coryndon listened no longer. He closed the door of the silk cupboard,
bundled up the yards of silk in his arms and extinguishing the lamp
darted behind a screen. It was a heavy carved teak screen, inset with
silk panels embroidered with a long spray of hanging wistaria on a dark
yellow ground. As he hid himself, he cursed his own stupidity. In the
excitement of his desire to enter the curio shop, he had forgotten to
hamper the lock with pebbles.
After what seemed an age, the door opened slowly and Mhtoon Pah came in.
Something, he knew not what, had dragged him away from the Pagoda, and
dragged him back to his shop. His eyes looked mad and unnatural in the
light of the lantern he held in his hand, and he shut the door and stood
like a dog who scents danger, and stared round the room. He walked to
the silk cupboard and looked in through the glass panes, but did not
open it or discover that it was unlocked. He paced round the room,
stopping before the screen, his eyes still reflecting his trouble of
mind.
From behind the screen, Coryndon watched every stir he made; he saw the
look on his face and noted Mhtoon Pah's smallest movement. There was no
evidence of thieves, and yet suspicion made itself plain in every line
of the curio dealer's body. At last, with a gasping sigh, he sat before
the small figure of an alabaster Gaudama and stared at it with unwinking
eyes.
"I shed no blood," he said, in a low rattling voice. "I shed no blood.
My hands are clean."
Over and over he repeated the words, like an incantation, his voice
rising and falling, until Coryndon could have emerged from his hiding
and taken him by the throat.
The thought of coming out upon Mhtoon Pah crossed his mind, but his
instinct held him back. He wondered desperately where Leh Shin had gone,
and if he would come in upon the Burman making his strange prayer. Still
Mhtoon Pah repeated the words and swayed to and fro before the image of
the Buddha, and the very moments seemed to pause and listen with
Coryndon. The shop was close and the air oppressive. Little trickles of
sweat ran down his neck and made channels in the stain on his skin, and
still Coryndon waited in tense suspense.
For nearly ten minutes Mhtoon Pah continued to rock and mutter on the
floor, and then he got up, and, taking his lantern, went out by the door
into the passage. Coryndon waited for the sound of a scuffle and a
fall, but none came, and he was in the dark, surrounded by silence once
more.
Without waiting to consider, he followed across the room and saw the
swinging light go down the passage and disappear suddenly. It seemed to
Coryndon that Mhtoon Pah had disappeared, as though he had gone through
the wall at the end of the passage, and he followed slowly. Silence
locked him in again, the dark, motionless silence of enclosed space.
He did not dare to call out again to Leh Shin, and for all that he could
tell, the Chinaman might have been an arm's-reach away from him in the
darkness, also waiting for some sudden thing to happen. The dark passage
was an ante-chamber to some event: Coryndon's tingling nerves told him
that; and he steadied himself, holding in his imagination in a close,
resolute grip.
He had no way of judging the time that passed, but he guessed that it
seemed longer to him than it possibly could have been; when from
somewhere far below him, he heard a cry and the noise of several voices,
all raised into indistinct clamour.
"More than one man," he thought, as his heart beat quickly. "_More than
two_," he added, in wonder as he strained in the effort of listening.
The noise died out, and one low wail, continuous and plaintive, filled
the blank of dark silence. Coryndon felt for his matches, and knelt on
the floor, feeling before him with his hands. The crying had ceased, and
he touched the edge of a step. A long, steep flight began just under his
hand.
He leaned back and held the match-box in his hand, knowing that he
could not venture the descent in the dark, and as he took out a match a
new sound caught his ear. A man was running in the dark. He heard him
stumble over the lower steps as he panted fiercely and he broke into a
cry as he ran, a strange, mad, sobbing cry, and he still gasped and gave
out his wordless wail as he tore past Coryndon and on along the passage
and into the shop.
Coryndon heard the door bang behind him, he heard the sound of some
heavy thing being dragged before it. The footsteps and the voice were
not those of Leh Shin, and Coryndon knew that Mhtoon Pah had fled like a
man pursued by devils, and had barricaded himself in.
For a moment Coryndon paused, and then lighted a match. Close under his
feet was the perilous edge of a staircase leading sheer down into a
well-like depth of blackness. A thin scream came up to him, and without
waiting to consider, he ran down quickly. At the bottom he found Mhtoon
Pah's overturned lantern, and relighting it, he followed the
intermittent call of fear that echoed through the damp, cavernous place
he found himself in.
A closed door stood at the end of a narrow passage, and from the further
side of the door a stifled sound of terror came persistently. Leh Shin
sat in a huddled heap against the door, and Coryndon stooped over him,
throwing the light from the lantern he carried upon him.
"I looked into his eyes," said the Chinaman, in a weak voice, "and once
more he overcame me. His knife rent my arm, and I fell as though dead."
Coryndon supported him to his feet. His mind was working quickly.
"Canst thou stand by thyself?" he asked impatiently.
The Chinaman gave a nod of assent, and Coryndon hammered on the door,
throwing all his weight against it, until it cracked and fell inwards
under the nervous force of his slight frame.