A fine mess! It sounded like a child’s game. But even with all this frosting on the cake our young chump hadn’t tumbled. He took it seriously.
“So that’s how it’s done!” I said. “You’d better get there as soon as you can, and stay there until my messenger gets to you. You’ll know him by the cast in one of his eyes, and maybe I’d better give him a password. ‘Haphazard’—that’ll be the word. The street door—is it locked?”
“No. I’ve never found it locked. There are forty or fifty Chinamen—or perhaps a hundred—living in that building, so I don’t suppose the door is ever locked.”
“Good. Beat it now.”
X
At 10:15 that night I was pushing open the door opposite the grocery in Waverly Place—an hour and three-quarters early for my date with Hsiu Hsiu. At 9:55 Dick Foley had phoned that The Whistler had gone into the red-painted door on Spofford Alley.
I found the interior dark, and closed the door softly, concentrating on the childish directions Garthorne had given me. That I knew they were silly didn’t help me, since I didn’t know any other route.
The stairs gave me some trouble, but I got over the second and third without touching the handrail, and went on up. I found the second door in the hall, the closet in the room behind it, and the door in the closet. Light came through the cracks around it. Listening, I heard nothing.
I pushed the door open—the room was empty. A smoking oil lamp stunk there. The nearest window made no sound as I raised it. That was inartistic—a squeak would have impressed Garthorne with his danger.
I crouched low on the balcony, in accordance with instructions, and found the loose floorboards that opened up a black hole. Feet first, I went down in, slanting at an angle that made descent easy. It seemed to be a sort of slot cut diagonally through the wall. It was stuffy, and I don’t like narrow holes. I went down swiftly, coming into a small room, long and narrow, as if placed inside a thick wall.
No light was there. My flashlight showed a room perhaps eighteen feet long by four wide, furnished with table, couch and two chairs. I looked under the one rug on the floor. The trapdoor was there—a crude affair that didn’t pretend it was part of the floor.
Flat on my belly, I put an ear to the trapdoor. No sound. I raised it a couple of inches. Darkness and a faint murmuring of voices. I pushed the trapdoor wide, let it down easily on the floor and stuck head and shoulders into the opening, discovering then that it was a double arrangement. Another door was below, fitting no doubt in the ceiling of the room below.
Cautiously I let myself down on it. It gave under my foot. I could have pulled myself up again, but since I had disturbed it I chose to keep going.
I put both feet on it. It swung down. I dropped into light. The door snapped up over my head. I grabbed Hsiu Hsiu and clapped a hand over her tiny mouth in time to keep her quiet.
“Hello,” I said to the startled Garthorne; “this is my boy’s evening off, so I came myself.”
“Hello,” he gasped.
This room, I saw, was a duplicate of the one from which I had dropped, another cupboard between walls, though this one had an unpainted wooden door at one end.
I handed Hsiu Hsiu to Garthorne.
“Keep her quiet,” I ordered, “while—”
The clicking of the door’s latch silenced me. I jumped to the wall on the hinged side of the door just as it swung open—the opener hidden from me by the door.
The door opened wide, but not much wider than Jack Garthorne’s blue eyes, nor than this mouth. I let the door go back against the wall and stepped out behind my balanced gun.
The queen of something stood there!
She was a tall woman, straight-bodied and proud. A butterfly-shaped headdress decked with the loot of a dozen jewelry stores exaggerated her height. Her gown was amethyst filigreed with gold above, a living rainbow below. The clothes were nothing!
She was—maybe I can make it clear this way. Hsiu Hsiu was as perfect a bit of feminine beauty as could be imagined. She was perfect! Then comes this queen of something—and Hsiu Hsiu’s beauty went away. She was a candle in the sun. She was still pretty—prettier than the woman in the doorway, if it came to that—but you didn’t pay any attention to her. Hsiu Hsiu was a pretty girl: this royal woman in the doorway was—I don’t know the words.
“My God!” Garthorne was whispering harshly. “I never knew it!”
“What are you doing here?” I challenged the woman.
She didn’t hear me. She was looking at Hsiu Hsiu as a tigress might look at an alley cat. Hsiu Hsiu was looking at her as an alley cat might look at a tigress. Sweat was on Garthorne’s face and his mouth was the mouth of a sick man.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated, stepping closer to Lillian Shan.
“I am here where I belong,” she said slowly, not taking her eyes from the slave-girl. “I have come back to my people.”
That was a lot of
