“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.
IV
ZANI CHADA, THE EURASIAN
“I can't help thinking, Chief Inspector,” said the officer in charge at
Limehouse Station, “that you take unnecessary risks.”
“Can't you?” said Kerry, tilting his bowler farther forward and staring
truculently at the speaker.
“No, I can't. Since you cleaned up the dope gang down here you've been
a marked man. These murders in the Chinatown area, of which this one
to-night makes the third, have got some kind of big influence behind
them. Yet you wander about in the fog without even a gun in your
pocket.”
“I don't believe in guns,” rapped Kerry. “My bare hands are good enough
for any yellow smart in this area. And if they give out I can kick like
a mule.”
The other laughed, shaking his head.
“It's silly, all the same,” he persisted. “The man who did the job out
there in the fog to-night might have knifed you or shot you long before
you could have got here.”
“He might,” snapped Kerry, “but he didn't.”
Yet, remembering his wife, who would be waiting for him in the cosy
sitting-room he knew a sudden pang. Perhaps he did take unnecessary
chances. Others had said so. Hard upon the thought came the memory of
his boy, and of the telephone message which the episodes of the night
had prevented him from sending.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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