A very faint buzz directly above his head resulted in slitlike eyes being opened in the death mask. Sam Pak turned, glanced up. A tiny disc of blue light showed. Slowly he nodded his shrivelled head and watched this blue light. Two, three, four minutes elapsed—and the blue light still prevailed. Where upon that man of vast knowledge and experience acted. There was something strange here.
The appearance of the blue light was in order, for a seventh representative even now was expected by way of the river-gate. The blue light indicated that the river-gate had been opened by one of the two men on duty who knew its secret. Its persistence indicated that the river-gate had not been re-closed; and this was phenomenal.
But even as Sam Pak stood up and began silently to shuffle in the direction of the door, the blue light flickered, dimmed, flickered again and finally went out.
Something definitely was wrong!
A lesser man would have alarmed the council, but Sam Pak was a great man. Quietly he opened the iron door and ascended the stairs beyond. He opened a second door and mounted higher, switching on lights. Half-way along a stone-faced corridor, stone-paved, he paused beneath a pendant lamp. Reaching up he pulled this pendant.
It dropped, lever fashion, and a section of the seemingly solid wall some five feet high and three feet wide dropped backward like a drawbridge. So perfectly was it fitted, so solid its construction, that he would have been a clever detective indeed who could have found it when it was closed.
Sam Pak, stooping, went into the dark opening. An eerie lapping of moving water had become audible at the moment that the secret door had dropped back. There was a dank, unwholesome smell. He reached for, and found, an iron rail;
then from beneath his blue robe he produced a torch and shone its ray ahead.
He stood on a gallery above a deep sewer, an inspection-gallery accessible to, and sometime used by, the sanitary authorities of the city. Into this a way had been struck from the secret warren below Chinatown and another way out at the farther end by the river bank.
He moved slowly along, a crouched, eerie figure in a whispering, evil place.
At a point where the oily waters disappeared beneath an arch, the gallery seemingly ended, and before a stone wall he paused.
His ancient, clawlike hands manipulated some piece of mechanism, and a small box came to light, a box in which a kind of telephone stood. Sam Pak raised the instrument; he listened.
“Chee, chee, chee!” he hissed.
He hung up the telephone, re-closed the box in which it was hidden and began to return along the iron gallery, moving now with extraordinary rapidity for a man of his years. The unexpected, but not the unforeseen, had happened.
The enemy had forced the water-gate.
IV
At the corner of Doyers Street a crowd had gathered beyond the barricade. Those who wished to pass were referred by the police officer on duty to another point, which necessitated a detour. A tall, bearded man, his coat collar turned up and his hat brim pulled down, stood beside a big car, the windows of which were bullet-proof, lurking in shadow and studying the group beyond the barricade. A messenger from local police headquarters made his way to his side.
“Captain Hepburn?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“We seem to have lost contact with the party operating under Federal Officer Smith down on East River.”
“No news?”
“Not a thing.”
Mark Hepburn experienced a sudden, great dread. The perils of the river-gate, although a large party had been assembled, were unknown—unknown as the resources of the formidable group which Nayland Smith sought to break up. His quick imagination presented a moving picture of things which might have happened. Johnson was perfectly capable of taking charge of routine here on the street; indeed, Johnson had done most of the work, Hepburn merely supervising and taking reports. On the other hand, a dash to the waterfront would be technically to desert his post. He turned to the man beside him.
“Go personally,” he directed in his monotonous way; “take a launch if you can’t make it on shore. Then hurry right back to me to report just what you have seen.”
“All right, Captain.”
The man set out.
Mark Hepburn entered the bullet-proof car and gave brief directions to the driver.
Outside Wu King’s Bar the car stopped. Mark Hepburn went in, followed by the three men who had accompanied him. The place was almost wholly patronized by Asiatics, except when squads of sightseers were brought there, Wu King’s being one of the show places in Chinatown tours.
A buzz of conversation subsided curiously as the party entered. Following Hepburn’s lead they walked through the restaurant to the bar at the farther end, glancing keenly at the groups of men and women occupying the tables set in cubicles. Behind the bar Wu King, oily and genial, presided in person, his sly eyes twinkling in a fat, pock-marked face.
“Ah, gen’I’men,” he said, rubbing his hands and speaking with an accent which weirdly combined that of the Bowery and Shanghai, “you want some good beer, eh?”
Everyone in the place except Wu King spoke now in a lowered voice; this serpentine hissing created a sinister atmosphere.
“Yes,” said Hepburn, “some beer and some news.”
“Anything Wu King know, Wu King glad to tell.” He pumped up four glasses of creamy lager. “Just say what biting you and Wu King put right, if know enough, which probably not.”
Mark Hepburn paid for the beer and nodded to his companions. Leaning against the bar they all directed their attention toward the groups in the little cubicles. There was another room upstairs, and according to the local police, still another above that where fan-tan and other illegal amusements sometimes took place.
“You seem to be pretty busy?” Hepburn said.
“Yes,” The Chinaman revealed a row of perfect but discoloured teeth. “Plenty busy. Customers complain funny business outside. You gen’I’men know all about it I guess?”
“My friends here may know. What I want is copy.”
“Oh sure! You a newspaperman?”
“You’ve got it, Wu. I guess you know most of your customers?”
“Know ‘em all, mister. All velly old friend. Some plenty money, some go tick, but all velly good friend. Chinaman good friend to each other, or else”—he shrugged his shoulders— “What become of Chinaman?”
“That’s true enough. But I’m out for a story.” He turned, fixing deep-set eyes upon the fat face of the proprietor. “I’m told that one of the Seven is in town. Is that right, Wu?”
Less experienced than Nayland Smith in the ways of the Orient, he looked for some change of expression in the pock-pitted face—and looked in vain. Wu King’s immobile features registered nothing whatever.
“The Seven?” he said innocently. “What seven’s that, mister?”
“I’ll say I’m glad to get out,” said Corrigan as, assisted by willing helpers, he crawled under the partly raised door. “I don’t like the looks of that tunnel.”
From out of the echoing hollow under the dock came a shouted order:
“Silence!”
A buzz of excited words ceased. The men crowded into the narrow space between the two doors—the outer one partly jammed open by the spar—became silent.
“That’s Eastman,” said Corrigan. “Let’s see what’s new.”
Outside in a Dantesque scene peopled by moving shadows:
“Launch just been signalled from the bridge,” the invisible Eastman explained. “Are you held up there?”
“We were,” Corrigan replied shortly. He turned to Nayland Smith. “What now?”
Nayland Smith, a parody of his normal self, wearing a shabby suit and a linen cap which had once been white pulled down over one eye, stood silent behind the speaker. He was tugging at the lobe of his left ear.