'SOAMES!… SOAMES!'…
Soames stopped dead, breathing very rapidly, and looking about him right and left. He could hear the muted pulse of sleeping London. Then, in the dark doorway of the house before which he stood, he perceived, dimly, a motionless figure. His first sensation was not of relief, but of fear. The figure raised a beckoning hand. Soames, conscious that his course was set and that he must navigate it accordingly, opened the iron gate, passed up the path and entered the house to which he thus had been summoned… .
He found himself surrounded by absolute darkness, and the door was closed behind him.
'Straight ahead, Soames!' said the familiar voice of Gianapolis out of the darkness.
Soames, with a gasp of relief, staggered on. A hand rested upon his shoulder, and he was guided into a room on the right of the passage. Then an electric lamp was lighted, and he found himself confronting the Greek.
But Gianapolis was no longer radiant; all the innate evil of the man shone out through the smirking mask.
'Sit down, Soames!' he directed.
Soames, placing his bag upon the floor, seated himself in a cane armchair. The room was cheaply furnished as an office, with a roll-top desk, a revolving chair, and a filing cabinet. On a side-table stood a typewriter, and about the room were several other chairs, whilst the floor was covered with cheap linoleum. Gianapolis sat in the revolving chair, staring at the lowered blinds of the window, and brushing up the points of his black mustache.
With a fine white silk handkerchief Soames gently wiped the perspiration from his forehead and from the lining of his hat-band. Gianapolis began abruptly:—
'There has been an—accident' (he continued to brush his mustache, with increasing rapidity). 'Tell me all that took place after you left the Post Office.'
Soames nervously related his painful experiences of the evening, whilst Gianapolis drilled his mustache to a satanic angle. The story being concluded:
'Whatever has happened?' groaned Soames; 'and what am I to do?'
'What you are to do,' replied Gianapolis, 'will be arranged, my dear Soames, by—Mr. King. Where you are to go, is a problem shortly settled: you are to go nowhere; you are to stay here.'…
'Here!'
Soames gazed drearily about the room.
'Not exactly here—this is merely the office; but at our establishment proper in Limehouse.'…
'Limehouse!'
'Certainly. Although you seem to be unaware of the fact, Soames, there are some charming resorts in Limehouse; and your duties, for the present, will confine you to one of them.'
'But—but,' hesitated Soames, 'the police'…
'Unless my information is at fault,' said Gianapolis, 'the police have no greater chance of paying us a visit, now, than they had formerly.'…
'But Mrs. Leroux'…
'Mrs. Leroux!'
Gianapolis twirled around in the chair, his eyes squinting demoniacally:—'Mrs. Leroux!'
'She—she'…
'What about Mrs. Leroux?'
'Isn't she dead?'
'Dead! Mrs. Leroux! You are laboring under a strange delusion, Soames. The lady whom you saw was not Mrs. Leroux.'
Soames' brain began to fail him again.
'Then who,' he began… .
'That doesn't concern you in the least, Soames. But what does concern you is this: your connection, and my connection, with the matter cannot possibly be established by the police. The incident is regrettable, but the emergency was dealt with—in time. It represents a serious deficit, unfortunately, and your own usefulness, for the moment, becomes nil; but we shall have to look after you, I suppose, and hope for better things in the future.'
He took up the telephone.
'East 39951,' he said, whilst Soames listened, attentively. Then:—
'Is that Kan-Suh Concessions?' he asked. 'Yes—good! Tell Said to bring the car past the end of the road at a quarter-to-two. That's all.'
He hung up the receiver.
'Now, my dear Soames,' he said, with a faint return to his old manner, 'you are about to enter upon new duties. I will make your position clear to you. Whilst you do your work, and keep yourself to yourself, you are in no danger; but one indiscretion—just one—apart from what it may mean for others, will mean, for YOU, immediate arrest as accessory to a murder!'
Soames shuddered, coldly.
'You can rely upon me, Mr. Gianapolis,' he protested, 'to do absolutely what you wish—absolutely. I am a ruined man, and I know it—I know it. My only hope is that you will give me a chance.'…
'You shall have every chance, Soames,' replied Gianapolis—'every chance.'
Chapter 15 CAVE OF THE GOLDEN DRAGON
When the car stopped at the end of a short drive, Soames had not the slightest idea of his whereabouts. The blinds at the window of the limousine had been lowered during the whole journey, and now he descended from the step of the car on to the step of a doorway. He was in some kind of roofed-in courtyard, only illuminated by the headlamps of the car. Mr. Gianapolis pushed him forward, and, as the door was closed, he heard the gear of the car reversed; then—silence fell.
'My grip!' he began, nervously.
'It will be placed in your room, Soames.'
The voice of the Greek answered him from the darkness.
Guided by the hand of Gianapolis, he passed on and descended a flight of stone steps. Ahead of him a light shone out beneath a door, and, as he stumbled on the steps, the door was thrown suddenly open.
He found himself looking into a long, narrow apartment… . He pulled up short with a smothered, gasping cry.
It was a cavern!—but a cavern the like of which he had never seen, never imagined. The walls had the appearance of being rough-hewn from virgin rock—from black rock—from rock black as the rocks of Shellal—black as the gates of Erebus.
Placed at regular intervals along the frowning walls, to right and left, were spiral, slender pillars, gilded and gleaming. They supported an archwork of fancifully carven wood, which curved gently outward to the center of the ceiling, forming, by conjunction with a similar, opposite curve, a pointed arch.
In niches of the wall were a number of grotesque Chinese idols. The floor was jet black and polished like ebony. Several tiger-skin rugs were strewn about it. But, dominating the strange place, in the center of the floor stood an ivory pedestal, supporting a golden dragon of exquisite workmanship; and before it, as before a shrine, an enormous Chinese vase was placed, of the hue, at its base, of deepest violet, fading, upward, through all the shades of rose pink seen in an Egyptian sunset, to a tint more elusive than a maiden's blush. It contained a mass of exotic poppies of every shade conceivable, from purple so dark as to seem black, to poppies of the whiteness of snow.
Just within the door, and immediately in front of Soames, stood a slim man of about his own height, dressed with great nicety in a perfectly fitting morning-coat, his well-cut cashmere trousers falling accurately over glossy boots having gray suede uppers. His linen was immaculate, and he wore a fine pearl in his black poplin cravat. Between two yellow fingers smoldered a cigarette.
Soames, unconsciously, clenched his fists: this slim man embodied the very spirit of the outre. The fantastic surroundings melted from the ken of Soames, and he seemed to stand in a shadow-world, alone with an incarnate shadow.
For this was a Chinaman! His jet black lusterless hair was not shaven in the national manner, but worn long,
