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Page 14
"No, he has not paid the price, not in full. He merely died. It could
have been paid only at the end of a rope. His crime was atrociously
brutal, the culmination of a fiend's desire for revenge. We will wipe
off his name. But I can not wipe away the regret. I would sacrifice a
year of my life if he were in this room with you now. It would be worth
it. God, what a thing for the Service--to have brought John Keith back
to justice after four years!"
He was rubbing his hands and smiling at Keith even as he spoke. His
eyes had taken on a filmy glitter. The law! It stood there, without
heart or soul, coveting the life that had escaped it. A feeling of
revulsion swept over Keith.
A knock came at the door.
McDowell's voice gave permission, and the door slowly opened. Cruze,
the young secretary, thrust in his head.
"Shan Tung is waiting, sir," he said.
An invisible hand reached up suddenly and gripped at Keith's throat. He
turned aside to conceal what his face might have betrayed. Shan Tung!
He knew what it was now that had pulled him back, he knew why
Conniston's troubled face had traveled with him over the Barrens, and
there surged over him with a sickening foreboding, a realization of
what it was that Conniston had remembered and wanted to tell him--when
it was too late. THEY HAD FORGOTTEN SHAN TUNG, THE CHINAMAN!
VI
In the hall beyond the secretary's room Shan Tung waited. As McDowell
was the iron and steel embodiment of the law, so Shan Tung was the
flesh and blood spirit of the mysticism and immutability of his race.
His face was the face of an image made of an unemotional living tissue
in place of wood or stone, dispassionate, tolerant, patient. What
passed in the brain behind his yellow-tinged eyes only Shan Tung knew.
It was his secret. And McDowell had ceased to analyze or attempt to
understand him. The law, baffled in its curiosity, had come to accept
him as a weird and wonderful mechanism--a thing more than a
man--possessed of an unholy power. This power was the oriental's
marvelous ability to remember faces. Once Shan Tung looked at a face,
it was photographed in his memory for years. Time and change could not
make him forget--and the law made use of him.
Briefly McDowell had classified him at Headquarters. "Either an exiled
prime minister of China or the devil in a yellow skin," he had written
to the Commissioner. "Correct age unknown and past history a mystery.
Dropped into Prince Albert in 1908 wearing diamonds and patent leather
shoes. A stranger then and a stranger now. Proprietor and owner of the
Shan Tung Cafe. Educated, soft-spoken, womanish, but the one man on
earth I'd hate to be in a dark room with, knives drawn. I use him,
mistrust him, watch him, and would fear him under certain conditions.
As far as we can discover, he is harmless and law-abiding. But such a
ferret must surely have played his game somewhere, at some time."
This was the man whom Conniston had forgotten and Keith now dreaded to
meet. For many minutes Shan Tung had stood at a window looking out upon
the sunlit drillground and the broad sweep of green beyond. He was
toying with his slim hands caressingly. Half a smile was on his lips.
No man had ever seen more than that half smile illuminate Shan Tung's
face. His black hair was sleek and carefully trimmed. His dress was
immaculate. His slimness, as McDowell had noted, was the slimness of a
young girl.
When Cruze came to announce that McDowell would see him, Shan Tung was
still visioning the golden-headed figure of Miriam Kirkstone as he had
seen her passing through the sunshine. There was something like a purr
in his breath as he stood interlacing his tapering fingers. The instant
he heard the secretary's footsteps the finger play stopped, the purr
died, the half smile was gone. He turned softly. Cruze did not speak.
He simply made a movement of his head, and Shan Tung's feet fell
noiselessly. Only the slight sound made by the opening and closing of a
door gave evidence of his entrance into the Inspector's room. Shan Tung
and no other could open and close a door like that. Cruze shivered. He
always shivered when Shan Tung passed him, and always he swore that he
could smell something in the air, like a poison left behind.
Keith, facing the window, was waiting. The moment the door was opened,
he felt Shan Tung's presence. Every nerve in his body was keyed to an
uncomfortable tension. The thought that his grip on himself was
weakening, and because of a Chinaman, maddened him. And he must turn.
Not to face Shan Tung now would be but a postponement of the ordeal and
a confession of cowardice. Forcing his hand into Conniston's little
trick of twisting a mustache, he turned slowly, leveling his eyes
squarely to meet Shan Tung's.
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