Fool!
I am an outcast of society. The courts are closed to me because of my criminal record. I would be laughed out of court if I should try to present even the clearest case. It would make a feature story for the newspapers.
Very well. Society had closed its doors to me. I would organize a society of my own. I would be my own judge and jury. Yes — if occasion demanded — I would be my own executioner. I would condemn Paul Boardman to death.
I left the café and turned my steps toward the gambling house of Lip Kee. From a rear exit of Lip Kee’s place a passage ran to the joss room, the room of which Chuck Gee was the official custodian, the room whose innermost secrets were in his exclusive control, the unofficial headquarters for the gunmen of Chinatown.
I paused for a moment at Lip Kee’s gambling tables, listening to the click of Chinese dominoes and the rattle of Chinese tongues. Gossip was rife. The Chinks were all excited. Play was slow and talk was fast. A police line had been established about the Chinatown district. Every person who sought to leave was being finger-printed. A great census of Chinatown was being taken, a hundred Chinese spies were scouting the shadows. Somewhere in Chinatown, disguised as a Chinese, was Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, and the police had him surrounded, bottled up, were gradually closing the net.
I listened, yawned, and slipped through the back entrance, into a corridor, and then on noiseless feet toward the joss room. Within me, all emotion seemed suspended. I had never been a killer. I had always been on the defensive in a war with society on the one hand, and the underworld on the other. Occasionally I had slipped out of some trap and some other person had taken my place as the corpse — witness the killing of Captain Ransome. Had he not left positive orders that I was to be taken dead rather than alive he would not have fallen victim to the bullets of his own men.
But now I felt differently. Had Helen Chadwick been harmed, Chuck Gee would die, and Paul Boardman would die, and their deaths would be brought about in such a manner that they would know the reason they were being executed.
And yet I did not even have a weapon, nor did I have time to find one. I must depend on my luck and my wits, my ability to turn a situation to my advantage. Single-handed, I must see that justice was done.
As became a humble worshiper, I slipped with bowed head to the teakwood door which guarded the joss room, pushed it back and entered.
At that moment I was ready for anything. Perhaps Chuck Gee figured that I would come, perhaps he was lying in wait with his men. Perhaps there was a police trap set for me. I was not at liberty to plan, to pick and choose. I was working against time, and for the safety of one who meant more to me than life.
This much only did I know: the joss room was open at all times to devout Chinese, and once within the door, I must trust to my wits.
I stepped within.
There was murky gloom. Incense laden half-darkness. Wicks floating in peanut oil gave a weird light. Grouped in a great semi-circle were the six great idols who dominated the room. Each idol a creation of tough, colored paper on a bamboo frame. Each god grinning into space with the same fixity of expression, Behind the gods distorted shadows danced upon the rear walls of the room. Nearer the ceiling were boxes of ivory idols. Before me were bowls of rice, red prayer papers impelled upon pointed sticks, thrust into cans of earth, smoking incense sticks.
The room was silent, impregnated with that heavy blanket of suffocating silence which hints of hidden menace. There was no living soul within the room that I could see, but my vision was cut midway by the great semi-circle of paper gods. That part of the room which lay behind them was shrouded in gloom, and some intuition warned me that it would be death to step back of that sacred semi-circle.
The six gods stood shoulder to shoulder, barely four feet between the bases of each, forming a great semi-circle. They were some twelve or fifteen feet high, massive in appearance, yet light in weight, made to be readily transported at times of festival parade.
I advanced to the center of the semi-circle, bowed down as though to worship, lifted a prayer paper or two so that my hands might be legitimately occupied in case I was questioned.
One of these gods was the god of battle, and while I bent there I almost breathed a prayer to him. There was something heartening in the manner of those huge idols as they grinned away into space. After all, life is but a game, the significance of which is not in the result but in the playing. These gods stood cheek by jowl and grinned fixedly into space, seeming to see beyond the feverish futility of mortal action. Their grim humor strengthened me at the same time their huge bulk emphasized my puny insignificance. I could feel my face twist into a grim grin which matched their own, and, with that grin, I felt a confident strength in my mind. It was as though the god of battle had smiled upon me.
The six great paper gods sat there in a semi-circle, grinning fixedly. I crouched at their base, facing an unknown danger which must be mastered, and, also, grinned. And in that minute I sensed that death was close, knew also that death loses its terror to him who grimly grins into the face of the unknown.
As though moved by inspiration, my hands sought my pocket, took out my razor-edged pocket-knife, and then I bowed reverently before the huge girth of the center god and inserted the knife.
The paper cut easily, silently. My blade was sharp and the paper held on a tension by the bamboo frame. Quickly I cut a little flap, wide enough for a door, looked about to see if my motions were detected, and then crawled inside.
Within was a circle some seven or eight feet in diameter, surrounded by hoops of bamboo, covered with painted paper. Crouching in this circle of darkness, I listened carefully. There was no sound.
I took my knife, crept to the other side, inserted the blade, surreptitiously cut a small peephole.
Behind me I could hear the teakwood door of the chamber open and close. Another worshiper? I turned toward the flap I had cut in the god. I had pulled the paper back into place, but a fine line of light showed where the cut had been made. It would stand casual inspection, but a close examination would result in instant detection. Tensed, ready, I waited.
The steps did not approach the idol, but worked toward one end of the semi-circle of grinning gods. I returned to my peephole.
From the darkness of my concealment I could see what was taking place in the back part of the room, back where the shadows of the huge gods blended into a thick gloom of invisible menace.
At first my eyes made out merely a huddled patch of darkness, but a flicker of motion showed, the darkness separated into forms, outlines. Someone was in a chair, sitting with the rigidity of a bound captive. Two other forms moved about, looking like black witches getting ready a hell broth.
So there were only two, then?
I reached forward with the knife, and then another shadow came into view.
“Soo Hoo Duck orders that the woman be released at once and returned unharmed to her car.”
The words were intoned in excited Cantonese.
A match scraped, a light flickered, another taper floated around in its container of peanut oil.
Two Chinese inspected the newcomer, and the light of the floating wick illuminated the three faces. There was Chuck Gee, heavy of feature, the broad nostrils of his coarse nose shadowing his cheeks as the light flared upward. His eyes glittered above the shadow of his nostrils; weird, evil eyes.
One other, his face an impassive mask of incarnate evil. He looked at Chuck Gee impassively. A jade-handled dagger was in his hand.