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Tales of Chinatown

S >> Sax Rohmer >> Tales of Chinatown



Produced by Alan Johns





TALES OF CHINATOWN

BY SAX ROHMER

1916





CONTENTS

THE DAUGHTER OF HUANG CHOW
KERRY'S KID
THE PIGTAIL OF HI WING HO
THE HOUSE OF GOLDEN JOSS
THE MAN WITH THE SHAVEN SKULL
THE WHITE HAT
TCHERIAPIN
THE DANCE OF THE VEILS
THE HAND OF THE MANDARIN QUONG
THE KEY OF THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN






THE DAUGHTER OF HUANG CHOW






I

"DIAMOND FRED"



In the saloon bar of a public-house, situated only a few hundred
yards from the official frontier of Chinatown, two men sat at a
small table in a corner, engaged in earnest conversation. They
afforded a sharp contrast. One was a thick-set and rather
ruffianly looking fellow, not too cleanly in either person or
clothing, and, amongst other evidences that at one time he had
known the prize ring, possessing a badly broken nose. His
companion was dressed with that spruceness which belongs to the
successful East End Jew; he was cleanly shaven, of slight build,
and alert in manner and address.

Having ordered and paid for two whiskies and sodas, the Jew,
raising his glass, nodded to his companion and took a drink. The
glitter of a magnificent diamond which he wore seemed to attract
the other's attention almost hypnotically.

"Cheerio, Freddy!" said the thick-set man. "Any news?"

"Nothing much," returned the one addressed as Freddy, setting his
glass upon the table and selecting a cigarette from a packet
which he carried in his pocket.

"I'm not so sure," growled the other, watching him suspiciously.
"You've been lying low for a long time, and it's not like you to
slack off except when there's something big in sight."

"Hm!" said his companion, lighting his cigarette. "What do you
mean exactly?"

Jim Poland--for such was the big man's name--growled and spat
reflectively into a spittoon.

"I've had my eye on you, Freddy," he replied; "I've had my eye on
you!"

"Oh, have you?" murmured the other. "But tell me what you mean!"

Beneath his suave manner lay a threat, and, indeed, Freddy Cohen,
known to his associates as "Diamond Fred," was in many ways a
formidable personality. He had brought to his chosen profession
of crook a first-rate American training, together with all that
mental agility and cleverness which belong to his race, and was
at once an object of envy and admiration amongst the fraternity
which keeps Scotland Yard busy.

Jim Poland, physically a more dangerous character, was not in the
same class with him; but he was not without brains of a sort, and
Cohen, although smiling agreeably, waited with some anxiety for
his reply.

"I mean," growled Poland, "that you're not wasting your time with
Lala Huang for nothing."

"Perhaps not," returned Cohen lightly. "She's a pretty girl; but
what business is it of yours?"

"None at all. I ain't interested in 'er good looks; neither are
you."

Cohen shrugged and raised his glass again.

"Come on," growled Poland, leaning across the table. "I know,
and I'm in on it. D'ye hear me? I'm in on it. These are hard
times, and we've got to stick together."

"Oh," said Cohen, "that's the game, is it?"

"That's the game right enough. You won't go wrong if you bring
me in, even at fifty-fifty, because maybe I know things about old
Huang that you don't know."

The Jew's expression changed subtly, and beneath his drooping
lids he glanced aside at the speaker. Then:

"It's no promise," he said, "but what do you know?"

Poland bent farther over the table.

"Chinatown's being watched again. I heard this morning that Red
Kerry was down here."

Cohen laughed.

"Red Kerry!" he echoed. "Red Kerry means nothing in my young
life, Jim."

"Don't 'e?" returned Jim, snarling viciously. "The way he
cleaned up that dope crowd awhile back seemed to show he was no
jug, didn't it?"

The Jew made a facial gesture as if to dismiss the subject.

"All right," continued Poland. "Think that way if you like. But
the patrols have been doubled. I suppose you know that? And
it's a cert there are special men on duty, ever since the death
of that Chink."

Cohen shifted uneasily, glancing about him in a furtive fashion.

"See what I mean?" continued the other. "Chinatown ain't healthy
just now."

He finished his whisky at a draught, and, standing up, lurched
heavily across to the counter. He returned with two more
glasses. Then, reseating himself and bending forward again:

"There's one thing I reckon you don't know," he whispered in
Cohen's ear. "I saw that Chink talking to Lala Huang only a week
before the time he was hauled out of Limehouse Reach. I'm
wondering, Diamond, if, with all your cleverness, you may not go
the same way."

"Don't try to pull the creep stuff on me, Jim," said Cohen
uneasily. "What are you driving at, anyway?"

"Well," replied Poland, sipping his whisky reflectively, "how did
that Chink get into the river?"

"How the devil do I know?"

"And what killed him? It wasn't drowning, although he was all
swelled up."

"See here, old pal," said Cohen. "I know 'Frisco better than you
know Limehouse. Let me tell you that this little old Chinatown
of yours is pie to me. You're trying to get me figuring on
Chinese death traps, secret poisons, and all that junk. Boy,
you're wasting your poetry. Even if you did see the Chink with
Lala, and I doubt it-- Oh, don't get excited, I'm speaking
plain--there's no connection that I can see between the death of
said Chink and old Huang Chow."

"Ain't there?" growled Poland huskily. He grasped the other's
wrist as in a vise and bent forward so that his battered face was
close to the pale countenance of the Jew. "I've been covering
old Huang for months and months. Now I'm going to tell you
something. Since the death of that Chink Red Kerry's been
covering him, too."

"See here!" Cohen withdrew his arm from the other's grasp
angrily. "You can't freeze me out of this claim with bogey
stuff. You're listed, my lad, and you know it. Chief Inspector
Kerry is your pet nightmare. But if he walked in here right now
I could ask him to have a drink. I wouldn't but I could. You've
got the wrong angle, Jim. Lala likes me fine, and although she
doesn't say much, what she does say is straight. I'll ask her
to-night about the Chink."

"Then you'll be a damned fool."

"What's that?"

"I say you'll be a damned fool. I'm warning you, Freddy. There
are Chinks and Chinks. All the boys know old Huang Chow has got
a regular gold mine buried somewhere under the floor. But all
the boys don't know what I know, and it seems that you don't
either."

"What is that?"

Jim Poland bent forward more urgently, again seizing Cohen's
wrist, and:

"Huang Chow is a mighty big bug amongst the Chinese," he
whispered, glancing cautiously about him. "He's hellish clever
and rotten with money. A man like that wants handling. I'm not
telling you what I know. But call it fifty-fifty and maybe
you'll come out alive."

The brow of Diamond Fred displayed beads of perspiration, and
with a blue silk handkerchief which he carried in his breast
pocket he delicately dried his forehead.

"You're an old hand at this stuff, Jim," he muttered. "It
amounts to this, I suppose; that if I don't agree you'll queer my
game?"

Jim Poland's brow lowered and he clenched his fists formidably.
Then:

"Listen," he said in his hoarse voice. "It ain't your claim any
more than mine. You've covered it different, that's all. Yours
was always the petticoat lay. Mine's slower but safer. Is
anyone else in with you?"

"No."

"Then we'll double up. Now I'll tell you something. I was
backing out."

"What? You were going to quit?"

"I was."

"Why?"

"Because the thing's too dead easy, and a thing like that always
looks like hell to me."

Freddy Cohen finished his glass of whisky.

"Wait while I get some more drinks," he said.

In this way, then, at about the hour of ten on a stuffy autumn
night, in the crowded bar of that Wapping public-house, these two
made a compact; and of its outcome and of the next appearance of
Cohen, the Jewish-American cracksman, within the ken of man, I
shall now proceed to tell.




II

THE END OF COHEN



"I've been expecting this," said Chief Inspector Kerry. He tilted
his bowler hat farther forward over his brow and contemplated the
ghastly exhibit which lay upon the slab of the mortuary. Two
other police officers--one in uniform--were present, and they
treated the celebrated Chief Inspector with the deference which
he had not only earned but had always demanded from his
subordinates.

Earmarked for important promotion, he was an interesting figure
as he stood there in the gloomy, ill-lighted place, his pose that
of an athlete about to perform a long jump, or perhaps, as it
might have appeared to some, that of a dancing-master about to
demonstrate a new step.

His close-cropped hair was brilliantly red, and so was his short,
wiry, aggressive moustache. He was ruddy of complexion, and he
looked out unblinkingly upon the world with a pair of steel-blue
eyes. Neat he was to spruceness, and while of no more than
medium height he had the shoulders of an acrobat.

The detective who stood beside him, by name John Durham, had one
trait in common with his celebrated superior. This was a quick
keenness, a sort of alert vitality, which showed in his eyes, and
indeed in every line of his thin, clean-shaven face. Kerry had
picked him out as the most promising junior in his department.

"Give me the particulars," said the Chief Inspector. "It isn't
robbery. He's wearing a diamond ring worth two hundred pounds."

His diction was rapid and terse--so rapid as to create the
impression that he bit off the ends of the longer words. He
turned his fierce blue eyes upon the uniformed officer who stood
at the end of the slab.

"They are very few, Chief Inspector," was the reply. "He was
hauled out by the river police shortly after midnight, at the
lower end of Limehouse Reach. He was alive then--they heard his
cry--but he died while they were hauling him into the boat."

"Any statement?" rapped Kerry.

"He was past it, Chief Inspector. According to the report of the
officer in charge, he mumbled something which sounded like: 'It
has bitten me,' just before he became unconscious."

"'It has bitten me,'" murmured Kerry. "The divisional surgeon
has seen him?"

"Yes, Chief Inspector. And in his opinion the man did not die
from drowning, but from some form of virulent poisoning."

"Poisoning?"

"That's the idea. There will be a further examination, of
course. Either a hypodermic injection or a bite."

"A bite?" said Kerry. "The bite of what?"

"That I cannot say, Chief Inspector. A venomous reptile, I
suppose."

Kerry stared down critically at the swollen face of the victim,
and then glanced sharply aside at Durham.

"Accounts for his appearance, I suppose," he murmured.

"Yes," said Durham quietly. "He hadn't been in the water long
enough to look like that." He turned to the local officer. "Is
there any theory as to the point at which he went in?"

"Well, an arrest has been made."

"By whom? of whom?" rapped Kerry.

"Two constables patrolling the Chinatown area arrested a man for
suspicious loitering. He turned out to be a well-known
criminal--Jim Poland, with a whole list of convictions against
him. They're holding him at Limehouse Station, and the theory is
that he was operating with------" He nodded in the direction of
the body.

"Then who's the smart with the swollen face?" inquired Kerry.
"He's a new one on me."

"Yes, but he's been identified by one of the K Division men. He
is an American crook with a clean slate, so far as this side is
concerned. Cohen is his name. And the idea seems to be that he
went in at some point between where he was found by the river
police and the point at which Jim Poland was arrested."

Kerry snapped his teeth together audibly, and:

"I'm open to learn," he said, "that the house of Huang Chow is
within that area."

"It is."

"I thought so. He died the same way the Chinaman died awhile
ago," snapped Kerry savagely.

"It looks very queer." He glanced aside at the local officer.
"Cover him up," he ordered, and, turning, he walked briskly out
of the mortuary, followed by Detective Durham.

Although dawn was not far off, this was the darkest hour of the
night, so that even the sounds of dockland were muted and the
riverside slept as deeply as the great port of London ever
sleeps. Vague murmurings there were and distant clankings, with
the hum of machinery which is never still.

Few of London's millions were awake at that hour, yet Scotland
Yard was awake in the person of the fierce-eyed Chief Inspector
and his subordinate. Perhaps those who lightly criticize the
Metropolitan Force might have learned a new respect for the
tireless vigilance which keeps London clean and wholesome, had
they witnessed this scene on the borders of Limehouse, as Kerry,
stepping into a waiting taxi-cab accompanied by Durham, proceeded
to Limehouse Police Station in that still hour when the City
slept.

The arrival of Kerry created something of a stir amongst the
officials on duty. His reputation in these days was at least as
great as that of the most garrulous Labour member.

The prisoner was in cells, but the Chief Inspector elected to
interview him in the office; and accordingly, while the officer
in charge sat at an extremely tidy writing-table, tapping the
blotting-pad with a pencil, and Detective John Durham stood
beside him, Kerry paced up and down the little room, deep in
reflection, until the door opened and the prisoner was brought
in.

One swift glance the Chief Inspector gave at the battle-scarred
face, and recognized instantly that this was a badly frightened
man. Crossing to the table he took up a typewritten slip which
lay there, and:

"Your name is James Poland?" he said. "Four convictions; one,
robbery with violence."

Jim Poland nodded sullenly.

"You were arrested at the corner of Pekin Street about midnight.
What were you doing there?"

"Taking a walk."

"I'll say it again," rapped Kerry, fixing his fierce eyes upon
the man's face. "What were you doing there?"

"I've told you."

"And I tell you you're a liar. Where did you leave the man
Cohen?"

Poland blinked his small eyes, cleared his throat, and looked
down at the floor uneasily. Then:

"Who's Cohen?" he grunted.

"You mean, who was Cohen?" cried Kerry.

The shot went home. The man clenched his fists and looked about
the room from face to face.

"You don't tell me------" he began huskily.

"I've told you," said Kerry. "He's on the slab. Spit out the
truth; it'll be good for your health."

The man hesitated, then looked up, his eyes half closed and a
cunning expression upon his face.

"Make out your own case," he said. "You've got nothing against
me."

Kerry snapped his teeth together viciously.

"I've told you what happened to your pal," he warned. "If you're
a wise man you'll come in on our side, before the same thing
happens to you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," growled Poland.

Kerry nodded to the constable at the doorway.

"Take him back," he ordered.

Jim Poland being returned to his cell, Kerry, as the door closed
behind the prisoner and his guard, stared across at Durham where
he stood beside the table.

"An old hand," he said. "But there's another way." He glanced at
the officer in charge. "Hold him till the morning. He'll prove
useful."

From his waistcoat pocket he took out a slip of chewing gum,
unwrapped it, and placed the mint-flavoured wafer between his
large white teeth. He bit upon it savagely, settled his hat upon
his head, and, turning, walked toward the door. In the doorway
he paused.

"Come with me, Durham," he said. "I am leaving the conduct of
the case entirely in your hands from now onward."

Detective Durham looked surprised and not a little anxious.

"I am doing so for two reasons," continued the Chief Inspector.
"These two reasons I shall now explain."




III

THE SECRET TREASURE-HOUSE



Unlike its sister colony in New York, there are no show places in
Limehouse. The visitor sees nothing but mean streets and dark
doorways. The superficial inquirer comes away convinced that the
romance of the Asiatic district has no existence outside the
imaginations of writers of fiction. Yet here lies a secret
quarter, as secret and as strange, in its smaller way, as its
parent in China which is called the Purple Forbidden City.

On a morning when mist lay over the Thames reaches, softening the
harshness of the dock buildings and lending an air of mystery to
the vessels stealing out upon the tide, a man walked briskly
along Limehouse Causeway, looking about him inquiringly, as one
unfamiliar with the neighbourhood. Presently he seemed to
recognize a turning to the right, and he pursued this for a time,
now walking more slowly.

A European woman, holding a half-caste baby in her arms, stood in
an open doorway, watching him uninterestedly. Otherwise, except
for one neatly dressed young Chinaman, who passed him about
halfway along the street, there was nothing which could have told
the visitor that he had crossed the borderline dividing West from
East and was now in an Oriental town.

A very narrow alleyway between two dingy houses proved to be the
spot for which he was looking; and, having stared about him for a
while, he entered this alleyway. At the farther end it was
crossed T-fashion, by another alley, the only object of interest
being an iron post at the crossing, and the scenery being made up
entirely of hideous brick walls.

About halfway along on the left, set in one of these walls, were
strong wooden gates, apparently those of a warehouse. Beside
them was a door approached by two very dirty steps. There was a
bell-push near the door, but upon neither of these entrances was
there any plate to indicate the name of the proprietor of the
establishment.

From his pocket-book the visitor extracted a card, consulted
something written upon it, and then pressed the bell.

It was very quiet in this dingy little court. No sound of the
busy thoroughfares penetrated here; and although the passage
forming the top of the "T" practically marked the river bank,
only dimly could one discern the sounds which belong to a
seaport.

Presently the door was opened by a Chinese boy who wore the
ordinary native working dress, and who regarded the man upon the
step with oblique, tired-looking eyes.

"Mr. Huang Chow?" asked the caller.

The boy nodded.

"You wantchee him see?"

"If he is at home."

The boy glanced at the card, which the visitor still held between
finger and thumb, and extended his hand silently. The card was
surrendered. It was that of an antique dealer of Dover Street,
Piccadilly, and written upon the back was the following: "Mr.
Hampden would like to do business with you." The signature of the
dealer followed.

The boy turned and passed along a dim and perfectly unfurnished
passage which the opening of the door had revealed, while Mr.
Hampden stood upon the step and lighted a cigarette.

In less than a minute the boy returned and beckoned to him to
come in. As he did so, and the door was closed, he almost
stumbled, so dark was the passage.

Presently, guided by the boy, he found himself in a very
business-like little office, where a girl sat at an American
desk, looking up at him inquiringly.

She was of a dark and arresting type. Without being pretty in
the European sense, there was something appealing in her fine,
dark eyes, and she possessed the inviting smile which is the
heritage of Eastern women. Her dress was not unlike that of any
other business girl, except that the neck of her blouse was cut
very low, a fashion affected by many Eurasians, and she wore a
gaily coloured sash, and large and very costly pearl ear-rings.
As Mr. Hampden paused in the doorway:

"Good morning," said the girl, glancing down at the card which
lay upon the desk before her. "You come from Mr. Isaacs, eh?"

She looked at him with a caressing glance from beneath half-
lowered lashes, but missed no detail of his appearance. She did
not quite like his moustache, and thought that he would have
looked better cleanshaven. Nevertheless, he was a well-set-up
fellow, and her manner evidenced approval.

"Yes," he replied, smiling genially. "I have a small commission
to execute, and I am told that you can help me."

The girl paused for a moment, and then:

"Yes, very likely," she said, speaking good English but with an
odd intonation. "It is not jade? We have very little jade."

"No, no. I wanted an enamelled casket."

"What kind?"

"Cloisonne."

"Cloisonne? Yes, we have several."

She pressed a bell, and, glancing up at the boy who had stood
throughout the interview at the visitor's elbow, addressed him
rapidly in Chinese. He nodded his head and led the way through a
second doorway. Closing this, he opened a third and ushered Mr.
Hampden into a room which nearly caused the latter to gasp with
astonishment.

One who had blundered from Whitechapel into the Khan Khalil, who
had been transported upon a magic carpet from a tube station to
the Taj Mahal, or dropped suddenly upon Lebanon hills to find
himself looking down upon the pearly domes and jewelled gardens
of Damascus, could not well have been more surprised. This great
treasure-house of old Huang Chow was one of Chinatown's secrets--
a secret shared only by those whose commercial interests were
identical with the interests of Huang Chow.

The place was artificially lighted by lamps which themselves were
beautiful objects of art, and which swung from the massive beams
of the ceiling. The floor of the warehouse, which was partly of
stone, was covered with thick matting, and spread upon it were
rugs and carpets of Karadagh, Kermanshah, Sultan-abad, and
Khorassan, with lesser-known loomings of almost equal beauty.
Skins of rare beasts overlay the divans. Furniture of ivory, of
ebony and lemonwood, preciously inlaid, gave to the place an air
of cunning confusion. There were tall cabinets, there were
caskets and chests of exquisite lacquer and enamel, loot of an
emperor's palace; robes heavy with gold; slippers studded with
jewels; strange carven ivories; glittering weapons; pots, jars,
and bowls, as delicate and as fragile as the petals of a lily.

Last, but not least, sitting cross-legged upon a low couch, was
old Huang Chow, smoking a great curved pipe, and peering half
blindly across the place through large horn-rimmed spectacles.
This couch was set immediately beside a wide ascending staircase,
richly carpeted, and on the other side of the staircase, in a
corresponding recess, upon a gilded trestle carved to represent
the four claws of a dragon, rested perhaps the strangest exhibit
of that strange collection--a Chinese coffin of exquisite
workmanship.

The boy retired, and Mr. Hampden found himself alone with Huang
Chow. No word had been exchanged between master and servant,
but:

"Good morning, Mr. Hampden," said the Chinaman in a high, thin
voice. "Please be seated. It is from Mr. Isaacs you come?"




IV

PERSONAL REPORT OF DETECTIVE JOHN DURHAM TO
CHIEF INSPECTOR KERRY, OFFICER IN CHARGE OF
LIMEHOUSE INQUIRY



Dear Chief Inspector,--Following your instructions I returned and
interviewed the prisoner Poland in his cell. I took the line
which you had suggested, pointing out to him that he had nothing
to gain and everything to lose by keeping silent.

"Answer my questions," I said, "and you can walk straight out.
Otherwise, you'll be up before the magistrate, and on your record
alone it will mean a holiday which you probably don't want."

He was very truculent, but I got him in a good humour at last,
and he admitted that he had been cooperating with the dead man,
Cohen, in an attempt to burgle the house of Huang Chow. His
reluctance to go into details seemed to be due rather to fear of
Huang Chow than to fear of the law, and I presently gathered that
he regarded Huang as responsible for the death not only of Cohen,
but also of the Chinaman who was hauled out of the river about
three weeks ago, as you well remember. The post-mortem showed
that he had died of some kind of poisoning, and when we saw Cohen
in the mortuary, his swollen appearance struck me as being very
similar to that of the Chinaman. (See my report dated 31st
ultimo.)

He finally agreed to talk if I would promise that he should not
be charged and that his name should never be mentioned to anyone
in connection with what he might tell me. I promised him that
outside the ordinary official routine I would respect his
request, and he told me some very curious things, which no doubt
have a bearing on the case.

For instance, he had discovered--I don't know in what way--that
the dead Chinaman, whose name was Pi Lung, had been in
negotiation with Huang Chow for some sort of job in his
warehouse. Poland had seen the man talking to Huang's daughter,
at the end of the alley which leads to the place. He seemed to
attach extraordinary importance to this fact. At last:

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