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Page 33
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.
He remembered, too, something which his fearless nature had
prompted him to forget: he remembered how, just as he had arisen
from beside the body of the murdered man, oblique eyes had
regarded him swiftly out of the fog. He had lashed out with a
boxer's instinct, but his knuckles had encountered nothing but
empty air. No sound had come to tell him that the thing had not
been an illusion. Only, once again, as he groped his way through
the shuttered streets of Chinatown and the silence of the yellow
mist, something had prompted him to turn; and again he had
detected the glint of oblique eyes, and faintly had discerned the
form of one who followed him.
Kerry chewed viciously, then:
"I think I'll 'phone the wife," he said abruptly. "She'll be
expecting me."
Almost before he had finished speaking the 'phone bell rang, and
a few moments later:
"Someone to speak to you, Chief Inspector," cried the officer in
charge.
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