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Page 23
"I think," said I, "that I prefer you to Bray."
"Good boy!" he answered. "You have not gone wrong. And you can do
me a service this evening, which is why I was on the point of coming
here, even before you telephoned me. I take it that you remember
and could identify the chap who called himself Archibald Enwright
--the man who gave you that letter to the captain?"
"I surely could," said I.
"Then, if you can spare me an hour, get your hat."
And so it happens, lady of the Carlton, that I have just been to
Limehouse. You do not know where Limehouse is and I trust you never
will. It is picturesque; it is revolting; it is colorful and wicked.
The weird odors of it still fill my nostrils; the sinister portrait
of it is still before my eyes. It is the Chinatown of London
--Limehouse. Down in the dregs of the town--with West India Dock
Road for its spinal column--it lies, redolent of ways that are dark
and tricks that are vain. Not only the heathen Chinee so peculiar
shuffles through its dim-lit alleys, but the scum of the earth, of
many colors and of many climes. The Arab and the Hindu, the Malayan
and the Jap, black men from the Congo and fair men from Scandinavia
--these you may meet there--the outpourings of all the ships that
sail the Seven Seas. There many drunken beasts, with their pay in
their pockets, seek each his favorite sin; and for those who love
most the opium, there is, at all too regular intervals, the Sign of
the Open Lamp.
We went there, Colonel Hughes and I. Up and down the narrow
Causeway, yellow at intervals with the light from gloomy shops,
dark mostly because of tightly closed shutters through which only
thin jets found their way, we walked until we came and stood at
last in shadow outside the black doorway of Harry San Li's so-called
restaurant. We waited ten, fifteen minutes; then a man came down
the Causeway and paused before that door. There was something
familiar in his jaunty walk. Then the faint glow of the lamp that
was the indication of Harry San's real business lit his pale face,
and I knew that I had seen him last in the cool evening at
Interlaken, where Limehouse could not have lived a moment, with the
Jungfrau frowning down upon it.
"Enwright?" whispered Hughes.
"Not a doubt of it!" said I.
"Good!" he replied with fervor.
And now another man shuffled down the street and stood suddenly
straight and waiting before the colonel.
"Stay with him," said Hughes softly. "Don't let him get out of
your sight."
"Very good, sir," said the man; and, saluting, he passed on up the
stairs and whistled softly at that black depressing door.
The clock above the Millwall Docks was striking eleven as the
colonel and I caught a bus that should carry us back to a brighter,
happier London. Hughes spoke but seldom on that ride; and, repeating
his advice that I humor Inspector Bray on the morrow, he left me in
the Strand.
So, my lady, here I sit in my study, waiting for that most important
day that is shortly to dawn. A full evening, you must admit. A
woman with the perfume of lilacs about her has threatened that unless
I lie I shall encounter consequences most unpleasant. A handsome
young lieutenant has begged me to tell that same lie for the honor
of his family, and thus condemn him to certain arrest and
imprisonment. And I have been down into hell, to-night and seen
Archibald Enwright, of Interlaken, conniving with the devil.
I presume I should go to bed; but I know I can not sleep. To-morrow
is to be, beyond all question, a red-letter day in the matter of
the captain's murder. And once again, against my will, I am
down to play a leading part.
The symphony of this great, gray, sad city is a mere hum in the
distance now, for it is nearly midnight. I shall mail this letter
to you--post it, I should say, since I am in London--and then I
shall wait in my dim rooms for the dawn. And as I wait I shall be
thinking not always of the captain, or his brother, or Hughes, or
Limehouse and Enwright, but often--oh, very often--of you.
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