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Page 12
"No," replied Durham, "I don't. As a matter of fact, I came down
here to-night in the hope of seeing you again."
"Did you?"
The girl glanced up at him doubtfully, and his distaste for the
task set him by his superior increased with the passing of every
moment. He was a man of some imagination, a great reader, and
ambitious professionally. He appreciated the fact that Chief
Inspector Kerry looked for great things from him, but for this
type of work he had little inclination.
There was too much chivalry in his make-up to enable him to play
upon a woman's sentiments, even in the interests of justice. By
whatever means the man Cohen had met his death, and whether or no
the Chinaman Pi Lung had died by the same hand, Lala Huang was
innocent of any complicity in these matters, he was perfectly
well assured.
Doubts were to come later when he was away from her, when he had
had leisure to consider that she might regard him in the light of
a third potential rifler of her father's treasure-house. But at
the moment, looking down into her dark eyes, he reproached
himself and wondered where his true duty lay.
"It is so gray and dull and sordid here," said the girl, looking
down the darkened street. "There is no one much to talk to."
"But you have your business interests to keep you employed during
the day, after all."
"I hate it all. I hate it all."
"But you seem to have perfect freedom?"
"Yes. My mother, you see, was not Chinese."
"But you wish to leave Limehouse?"
"I do. I do. Just now it is not so bad, but in the winter how I
tire of the gray skies, the endless drizzling rain. Oh!" She
shrank back into the shadow of a doorway, clutching at Durham's
arm. "Don't let Ah Fu see me."
"Ah Fu? Who is Ah Fu?" asked Durham, also drawing back as a
furtive figure went slinking down the opposite side of the
street.
"My father's servant. He let you in this morning."
"And why must he not see you?"
"I don't trust him. I think he tells my father things."
"What is it that he carries in his hand?"
"A birdcage, I expect."
"A birdcage?"
"Yes!"
He caught the gleam of her eyes as she looked up at him out of
the shadow.
"Is he, then, a bird-fancier?"
"No, no, I can't explain because I don't understand myself. But
Ah Fu goes to a place in Shadwell regularly and buys young birds,
always very young ones and very little ones."
"For what or for whom?"
"I don't know."
"Have you an aviary in your house?"
"No."
"Do you mean that they disappear, these purchases of Ah Fu's?"
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