If you could only understand you would not be so cruel." Her slight
accent added charm to the musical voice. "I am not free, as your
English women are. What I do I must do, for it is the will of my
master, and I am only a slave. Ah, you are not a man if you can give
me to the police. You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to
save you once."
I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
had tried to save me from a deadly peril once--at the expense of my
friend. But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder? And
now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.
"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think; but what
have YOU to do with the police? It is not your work to hound a woman
to death. Could you ever look another woman in the eyes--one that you
loved, and know that she trusted you--if you had done such a thing?
Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here. Do not
be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am; be my friend, and
save me--from HIM." The tremulous lips were close to mine, her breath
fanned my cheek. "Have mercy on me."
At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must come
to. After all, what proof had I that she was a willing accomplice of
Dr. Fu-Manchu? Furthermore, she was an Oriental, and her code must
necessarily be different from mine. Irreconcilable as the thing may be
with Western ideas, Nayland Smith had really told me that he believed
the girl to be a slave. Then there remained that other reason why I
loathed the idea of becoming her captor. It was almost tantamount to
betrayal! Must I soil my hands with such work?
Thus--I suppose--her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
in an abandonment of pleading despair. Then I remembered the fate of
the man in whose room we stood.
"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.
"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me. "No, I swear by the holy
name I did not! I did not! I watched him, spied upon him--yes! But,
listen: it was because he would not be warned that he met his death. I
could not save him! Ah, I am not so bad as that. I will tell you. I
have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
Look! in the grate. The book was too big to steal away. I came twice
and could not find it. There, will you let me go?"
"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes."
Her hands dropped and she took a backward step. A new terror was to be
read in her face.
"I dare not! I dare not!"
"Then you would--if you dared?"
She was watching me intently.
"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.
And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant of justice
that I would have had myself, I felt the hot blood leap to my cheek at
all which the words implied. She grasped my arm.
"Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?"
"The authorities--"
"Ah!" Her expression changed. "They can put me on the rack if they
choose, but never one word would I speak--never one little word."
She threw up her head scornfully. Then the proud glance softened again.
"But I will speak for you."
Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.
"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody, and I will no
longer be his slave."
My heart was beating with painful rapidity. I had not counted on this
warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt
of. For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her
personality and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my
judgment seat--had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to
justice. Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary. What should I do?
What COULD I do? I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in
which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.
Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I
stepped across the room until I glanced back. But she had gone!
As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.
"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to trust you--yet.
Be comforted, for there is one near who would have killed you had I
wished it. Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and
hide me."
Light footsteps pattered down the stairs. I heard a stifled cry from
Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her. The front door
opened and closed.
CHAPTER V
"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff
Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.
"'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it. It's a center for some of the
Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it.
There have never been any complaints that I know of. I don't
understand this."
We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of
foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor
Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that
combustion had not been complete.
"What do we make of this?" said Smith. "'. . . Hunchback . . . lascar
went up . . . unlike others . . . not