"And that is all the story," said the boy, beating his hands on the floor, and returning from the momentary forgetfulness of the narrative to the immediate fear of the knife. "Further than that, I know nothing. The hour is late and if I am not at the river house I shall feel the wrath of my master."
"It is a poor tale, a paltry tale," said the Burman, in tones of disgust. "One that hardly requites me for my patience in hearing it out."
He slipped his knife back into his belt and got up from his heels with a leisurely movement. The boy, still on all fours, watched him closely, and the Burman, his eye attracted by a bright tin kettle hanging among the other goods dependent from the ceiling, stood looking at it, and as he looked the boy dodged out with a rush, overturning a bale of goods, and tearing at the door like a mad dog, disappeared into the street.
Coryndon watched him go, and went back to his corner to wait until Leh Shin should return from either the gambling den or the Joss House. He had something to say to Leh Shin, something that could not wait to be said, and he composed himself to the necessary patience that is part of all close, careful search, and while he waited, he turned over the evidence that had arisen from the little clue that Joicey had given him. Absalom had a parcel under his arm, and that parcel was the gold lacquer bowl that had passed from Mhtoon Pah's curio shop to Mrs. Wilder's writing-table.
Coryndon fiddled with his fingers in the dust of the floor, and took a blood-stained rag out of his pocket and spread it over his knee. Here was another tangible piece of evidence brought by Mhtoon Pah to Hartley. So the record of circumstance closed in. Coryndon thought again. A lacquer bowl and a stained rag of silk, that was all. If he handed over the case to Hartley and Mhtoon Pah was really guilty, other evidence would in all probability be found, and the whole mystery made clear.
He leaned against the wall and watched the throbbing lamp-wick, fighting his passion for completed work and his conviction that only he could see it through to its ultimate conclusion. He knew that he was dealing with wits quite as crafty as his own, and argued the point from the other side. Mhtoon Pah had given the rag himself to Hartley, and had sworn that the bowl was left on the steps of his shop. If no further proof was forthcoming, these two facts unsupported were almost worthless. Unless a complete denial of his story could be set against it, Hartley stood to be checkmated.
Coryndon had nearly decided against Leh Shin. He drew his knees up under his chin and came to a definite conclusion. He could not give up the case as it stood; he was absolved from any hint of professional jealousy, and he could count himself free to follow the evidence until it led him irrevocably to the spot where the whole detail was clear and definite.
All the faces of the men who had figured in the drama floated across his mind, and he thought of the strange key that turned in the lock of one small trivial destiny, opening other doors as if by magic. Absalom's life or death had no outward connection with the Head of the Mangadone Banking Firm, it had nothing in all its days to bring it into touch with Rydal and Rydal's tragedy—Rydal whom Coryndon had never seen. It lay apart, severed by race and every possible accident of birth or chance, from the successful wife of a successful Civil Servant, or an earnest, hard-working clergyman, and yet the great net of Destiny had been spread on that night of the 29th of July, and every one of them had fallen into its meshes.
All the immense problem of the plan that so decides the current of men's lives came over him, and he saw the limitless value of the insignificant in life. Absalom was only a little floating piece of jetsam on the great waters that divided all these lives, yet he was the factor that had taken the place of the keystone in the arch; the pivot around which the force that guided and ruled the whole apparent chaos had moved. Coryndon wandered a long way in his thoughts from the shop where he sat on the dusty floor, waiting for the return of Leh Shin. He was so still that the cockroaches and black-beetles crept out again and formed into marauding expeditions where the shadows of the hanging clothes fell dark.
He turned himself from the pressure of his thought and closed his eyes, resting his brain in a quiet pool of untroubled silence. He knew the need and the art of absolute relaxation from the strain of thought, and though he did not sleep, he looked as though he slept, until he heard the sound of approaching feet and a hand pushed against the door.
When Leh Shin opened the shop door and pushed in his grey, gaunt face, he looked around as though wondering in a half-dreamy, half-detached abstraction where some object he had expected to see had gone. At length his eyes wandered to the Burman, who sat on the ground eyeing him with a curiously intent and concentrated regard.
"Thine assistant hath gone to the river house," he said, answering the unspoken question. "He left me in charge of thy shop and thy goods."
Leh Shin nodded silently and closed the door. When he turned, the Burman beckoned to him with a studied suggestion of mystery.
"What is thy message?" asked Leh Shin. He believed the Burman to be afflicted with a madness, and his odd and persistent movement of his arm hardly conveyed anything to the drowsy, drugged brain of the Chinaman.
The Burman made no reply, but beckoned again, pointing to the floor beside him in dumb show, and Leh Shin advanced slowly and took up his place on a grass mat a little distance off. Silently, and very softly, the Burman crept near to him, and putting his mouth close to his ear, talked in a rapid, hissing whisper. His words were low, but their effect upon Leh Shin was startling, for he recoiled as though touched by a hot needle. His hands clutched his clothes, and his whole frame stiffened. Even when he drew away, he listened with avidity as the Burman continued to pour forth his story.
He had a friend in the household of Hartley Sahib, so he told Leh Shin, a friend who had sensitive ears and had heard much; had heard in fact the whole story of the stained rag, and of Mhtoon Pah's wild appeal for justice against the Chinaman.
"Well for thee, Leh Shin, that I have a friend in the house of thatThakinwho rules the Police. But for him I should not have been informed of the plot against thy life, for, 'on this evidence,' saith he, 'assuredly they will hang the Chinaman, and Mhtoon Pah is witness against him.'"
"Mhtoon Pah, Mhtoon Pah!" said Leh Shin, and he needed to add no curses to the name, spoken as he said it.
When Coryndon had fully explained that his friend, who was in the service of Hartley, had not only given him a circumstantial account of how the rag was to be used as final and conclusive evidence of Leh Shin's guilt, but that he had also stolen the rag out of Hartley Sahib's locked box, to be safely returned to him later, Leh Shin almost tore it from between Coryndon's fingers.
"Nay, I cannot deliver it unto thee. My word is pledged. Look closely at it, if thou wilt, but it may not leave my hand or I break my oath."
He held it under the circle of lamplight, and the Chinaman leaned over his shoulder to look at it. For a long time he examined it carefully, feeling its texture and touching it with light fingers.
Coryndon watched him with some interest. The Chinaman was applying some definite test to the silk, known to himself. At last he turned his eyes on the Burman, staring with a gaunt, fierce look that saw many things, and when he spoke his words grated and rattled and his voice was almost beyond his control.
"See now, O servant of Justice, I am learned in the matter of silks, and without doubt this comes surely from but one place."
Again he fell to touching the silk, and his crooked fingers shook as he explained that the fragment was one he could identify. It was not the product of the silk looms of Burma, or Shantung; it could not be procured even in Japan. It was a rare and special product fashioned by certain lake-dwellers in the Shan states, and so small was their output that it went to no market.
"In one shop only in Mangadone," he said; "nay, in one shop only in the whole world may such silk be found. Thus, in his craft, hath mine enemy overreached himself."
"Thou art certain of this?"
"As I am that the sun will rise."
Coryndon looked again at the silk, and sat silently thinking.
"The piece is cut off roughly," he said, after a moment of reflection. "Yet, could it be fitted into the space left in the roll, then thou art cleared, and hast just cause against Mhtoon Pah."
"If thy madness comprehends so much, let it carry thee further still, O stricken and afflicted," said Leh Shin, imploring him with voice and gesture. "Night after night have I stood outside his shop, but who may enter through a locked door? A breath, a shadow, or a flame, but not a man." He lay on the ground and dug his nails into the floor. "I know the shop from within and without, and I know that the lock opens with difficulty but to one key, the key that hangs on a chain around the neck of Mhtoon Pah."
Silence fell again as Leh Shin wrestled with the problem that confronted him.
"What saidst thou?" said the Burman, suddenly coming to life. "A key?"
He gave a low, chuckling laugh and rocked about in his corner.
"Knowest thou of the story of Shiraz, the Punjabi?"
"I have no mind for tales," said Leh Shin, striking at him with a futile blow of rage.
"Nay, restrain thy wrath, since thou hast spoken of a key. With a key that was made by sorcery, he was enabled to open the treasure-box of the Lady Sahib, and often hath he told me that all doors may be opened by it, large or small. It is not hard for me to take it from under his pillow while he sleeps."
The Chinaman's jaw dropped, and he cast up his hands in mute astonishment. If this was madness, sanity appeared only a doubtful blessing set beside it. He drew his own wits together, and leaning near the Burman laid before him the rough outline of a plan.
Mhtoon Pah's ways were known to him. Usually he went to the Pagoda after the shop was closed, and he returned from there late; it was impossible to be accurate as to the exact hour of his return. To risk detection was to shatter all chance of success, and it was necessary to make sure before attempting to break into the shop and identify the silk rag with the original roll, if that might be done.
There was only one course open to the Burman and Leh Shin, and that was to wait until there was aPwéat the Pagoda, which Mhtoon Pah would certainly attend, as his new shrine drew many curious gazers to the Temple. It would also draw the inhabitants of Paradise Street out of the quarter, and leave the place practically deserted. For many reasons it was necessary to wait such an opportunity, though Leh Shin raved at the delay. It seemed to him that the whole plan was of his suggesting, and he did not realize that every vague question put by the Burman led him step by step to the complicated scheme.
"To-morrow I will send forth my assistant to bring me word of the nextPwé, so that the night may be marked in my mind, and that I shall gain pleasure in considering the nearing downfall of my enemy."
Coryndon slipped off to his house. He was tired mentally and physically, but before he slept, he took a bundle of keys from his dispatch-box and tied them to the waist of hisloongyi.
In the morning there was a fresh surprise for Leh Shin. His assistant refused to leave the river house, and no persuasion would lure him out to look after his master's shop. He was afraid of something or someone, and he wept and entreated to be left where he was. Leh Shin beat him and tried to drive him out, to no purpose, and in the end he prevailed over his master, whose mind was occupied with other and more weighty affairs.
Like a black shadow, Leh Shin crept about the streets, and he questioned one and another as to the festivities to be held at the Pagoda. Everywhere he heard of Mhtoon Pah's shrine, and of the great holiness of the curio dealer. Mhtoon Pah was giving a feast at the Pagoda with presents for the priests, and the night chosen was the night of the full moon.
"Art thou bidden?" asked one who remembered the day of Leh Shin's prosperity.
"It is in my thoughts, friend, to make my peace," said Leh Shin, with an immovable face. "On the night when the moon is full, I am minded to do so."
His words were carried back to Mhtoon Pah, who pondered over them, wondering what the Chinaman meant, finding something sinister in the sound that added to his rage against his enemy.
The day of the feast was dark and overcast, and the inhabitants of Paradise Street looked at the sky with great misgiving, but the curio dealer refused to be alarmed.
"The night will be fine, for I have greatly propitiated theNats," he said with conviction, and he lolled and smoked in his chair at an earlier hour than was usual with him.
Even as he had said, the evening began to clear, and by sunset the heavy clouds were all dispersed. A red sunset unfolded itself in a scroll of fire across the sky, and Mangadone looked as though it was illuminated by the flames of a conflagration. A strange evening, some said then, and many said after. Even the pointing man lost his jaundice-yellow and seemed to blush as he pointed up the steps. He had nothing to blush for. His master was at the summit of his power. TheHypongyislauded him openly in the streets, and he was giving a feast at the Temple at which the poorest would not be forgotten.
Yet Mhtoon Pah was not altogether easy. His eyes rolled strangely from time to time, and it was remarked by several that he walked to the end of Paradise Street and looked down the Colonnade of the Chinese quarter, standing there in thought. Old stories of the feud between him and Leh Shin were recalled in whispers and passed about.
The red of the sunset died out into rose-pink, and the effect of colour in the very air faded and dwindled. People were already dressed out in gala clothing, and streaming towards the Pagoda. The giver of the feast did not start with them. He sat in his chair, and then withdrew into his shop. A light travelled from thence to the upper story, and then with slow hesitation, Mhtoon Pah came out by the front of the house and locked the clamped padlock. He stood still for a few minutes, and then he gasped and shook his fist at the empty air, and he, too, took his way across the bridge and was lost in the shadows.
Still the stream from Wharf Street and the confluent streets flowed on up Paradise Street, and gradually only the maimed and the aged, or the impossibly youthful, were left behind, to hear of the wonders afterwards at secondhand, a secondhand likely to add rather than detract from what actually took place. Even the Colonnade was empty and silent. Shiraz had gone with the crowd to see what might be seen, and Leh Shin's assistant, furtive and watchful, and in great terror of the Burman's knife, was also in the throng that climbed the Pagoda steps.
The moon that was to have shone on Mhtoon Pah's feast rose in a yellow ring, and clouds came up, hazy, gaudy clouds that dimmed its light and made the shadows in the silent streets dense and heavy. Usually there was a police guard at the corner where Paradise Street met the Colonnade, but that night Hartley considered the police would be more necessary in the neighbourhood of the Pagoda. Mhtoon Pah did not think of this. His conscience was easy, he had propitiated theNats.
The Pagoda was one blaze of light, and a thousand candles flamed before every shrine; even the oldest and most neglected had its ring of light. Small coloured lamps dotted the outlines of some of the booths, and the whole spectacle presented a moving mass of brilliant colour. Sahibs had come there. Hartley Sahib had agreed to appear for half an hour, and he too looked at the crowd with curious, travelling eyes. Coryndon might be among them, and probably was, he thought, but in any case there was little chance of his recognizing him if he were.
Mhtoon Pah had not spared magnificent display, and the crowd told each other that it was indeed a night to remember in Mangadone. Whispering winds came out and rang the Temple bells, but even when the breeze strengthened, the rain-clouds held off. It became a matter for compliment and congratulation, and Mhtoon Pah accepted his friends' flattery without pride. He was a good man, a benefactor, a shrine-builder who followed "the Way" with zeal and fervour, and besides, he had propitiatedNats;Natswho blew up storms, caused earthquakes and were evilly disposed towards men.
Mhtoon Pah would have been at the point where a man's life touches sublimity, but for one thing. The words of Leh Shin echoed in his ears over all the applause and adulation.
"It is in my thought, friend, to make my peace. On the night of the full moon I am minded to do so."
The moon riding clear of clouds, shone out over the concourse of men and women. Anywhere among them all might be Leh Shin, the needy Chinaman, and gripping his large hands into fists, Mhtoon Pah watched for him and expected him, but watch as he might, he did not come, neither was there any sign of him among all the crowd of faces that passed and repassed before the new shrine.
At the time when Mhtoon Pah was standing in the centre of a gazing group before the new shrine, and trying to forget that nothing except the news of Leh Shin's hanging would give him real satisfaction, the Chinaman, accompanied by the Burman, slipped up the channel of gloom under the Colonnade and made his way into Paradise Street.
The Burman walked with an easy unconscious step, but Leh Shin crept close to the wall and started when he passed a sleeping form in a doorway. Night fears and that trembling anxiety that comes when fulfilment is close at hand were upon him. He knew that the point in view was to effect an entrance into the curio shop, the threshold of which he had not crossed since his last black hour of misfortune had struck and he had gone out a beggar.
Everything in his life lay on the other side of the shop door; all his happy, prosperous, careless days, all the good years. Every one of them was stored there just as surely as Mhtoon Pah's ivories and carved screens and silks were stored safe against the encroachment of damp and must. His old self might even be somewhere in the silent house, and it takes a special quality of courage for a man to return and walk through a doorway into the long past. For the first time for years he remembered how he had brought his little son into the shop, and how the child had laughed and crowed at the sight of amber and crystal chains.
Even Mhtoon Pah grew dim in his mind, and he dallied with the forgotten memories as he stood shaking in an archway watching the Burman cross the street. Insensibly the Burman's mania had waned in the last few hours, and he had grown silent and preoccupied, a fact that escaped Leh Shin's notice. His owl eyes blinked with the strain of staring through the wavering light, and his memories strove with him as though in physical combat. Mhtoon Pah was no longer in the house, and instead of his shadow another influence seemed to brood there, something that called to Leh Shin, but not with the wild cry of hate. Before the days of still greater affluence Leh Shin had lived there with his little Burmese wife.
The Burman was on his knees, having some difficulty with the lock. He could see him fighting it, and at last he saw the jerk of his hand that told that the key had turned, and that the way was clear. Leh Shin dived out of the recess and ran, a flitting shadow, across the road. The door was open, but the Burman for all his madness was not satisfied. There was a way out through the back by which they could emerge, and if the front door hung loose, careless eyes might easily be attracted to the fact. The pointing man was not there for nothing. Almost everyone looked up the steps. Even in his fury of impatience, Leh Shin saw the reason for caution, and agreed to open a window, and admit the Burman after he had locked the door again.
The moments were full of the tense agony of suspense, and he peered cautiously out from under the silk blind. A late passer-by went slowly up the street, and Leh Shin's heart beat a loud obbligato to the sound of his wooden pattens. By craning his neck as the man passed, he could just distinguish the Burman crouching behind the wooden man, who blandly indicated the heavy padlock. The wooden man lied woodenly to the effect that all was well within the curio shop, and a few minutes later the Burman swung himself over the balustrade and climbed with cat-like agility on to the window-ledge.
The darkness of the room was heavy with scent, and Leh Shin stumbled over unknown things. Coryndon struck a match and held it in the hollow of one palm as he opened the aperture in the dark lantern he carried, and lighted it. When he had done so he looked up, and taking no notice of the masses of beautiful things, he went quickly to the silk cupboard, opening it with another key on the ring.
"Leh Shin," he said, speaking in a commanding whisper, "turn thyself into an ear, and listen for me while I search."
Leh Shin nodded silently, half-stupidly it seemed, and went on tip-toes to the door that opened into the passage. All the power of the past was over him, and though he heard the Burman's curt command he hardly seemed to understand what he meant. For a little time he stood at the door, hearing the rustling whisper of yards of silk torn down and glanced over and discarded, and then he wandered almost without knowing it up the staircase and through the rooms, until the sight of Mhtoon Pah's bed and some of Mhtoon Pah's clothing recalled his mind to the reason of his being there.
He hurried down, his bare feet making no sound on the stairs, and looked into the shop again. The Burman was seated on the floor, a width of silk over his knees; all the displaced rolls had been put back. He had worked swiftly and with the greatest care that no trace of his visit should be known later.
Leh Shin slid out again. The passage was dark as pitch, but he knew every turn and twist of its windings, and he knew that it led down to the cellars below the house. He was awake and alert now as Coryndon himself, and as he strained his ears he caught a sound. He listened again with horrible eagerness, looked back into the shop and saw the stooping head going over every yard of a roll of fine silk faithfully; and then he gripped the knife under his belt and, feeling along the wall with his free hand, followed along the corridor. Once only he glanced round and then the darkness of the corridor swallowed him from sight.
Coryndon, busy with the silk made by the lake-dwellers spread over his knees, knew nothing of Leh Shin's disappearance. The fever of chase was in his blood, and he threw the flimsy yards through his hands. Nothing, nothing, and again nothing, and again—he felt his heart swell with sudden, stifled excitement. Under his hand was a three-cornered rent, a damaged piece where a patch rather larger than his palm had been roughly cut out. His usually steady hand shook as he put the stained rag over it and fitted it into the place.
"Leh Shin," he called, as he rose, but he called softly.
No sound answered his whisper, and he stiffened his body and listened. He had been wrong. There was a sound, but it did not come from inside the shop: it was the slow footstep of a heavy man pausing to find a key.
Coryndon listened no longer. He closed the door of the silk cupboard, bundled up the yards of silk in his arms and extinguishing the lamp darted behind a screen. It was a heavy carved teak screen, inset with silk panels embroidered with a long spray of hanging wistaria on a dark yellow ground. As he hid himself, he cursed his own stupidity. In the excitement of his desire to enter the curio shop, he had forgotten to hamper the lock with pebbles.
After what seemed an age, the door opened slowly and Mhtoon Pah came in. Something, he knew not what, had dragged him away from the Pagoda, and dragged him back to his shop. His eyes looked mad and unnatural in the light of the lantern he held in his hand, and he shut the door and stood like a dog who scents danger, and stared round the room. He walked to the silk cupboard and looked in through the glass panes, but did not open it or discover that it was unlocked. He paced round the room, stopping before the screen, his eyes still reflecting his trouble of mind.
From behind the screen, Coryndon watched every stir he made; he saw the look on his face and noted Mhtoon Pah's smallest movement. There was no evidence of thieves, and yet suspicion made itself plain in every line of the curio dealer's body. At last, with a gasping sigh, he sat before the small figure of an alabaster Gaudama and stared at it with unwinking eyes.
"I shed no blood," he said, in a low rattling voice. "I shed no blood. My hands are clean."
Over and over he repeated the words, like an incantation, his voice rising and falling, until Coryndon could have emerged from his hiding and taken him by the throat.
The thought of coming out upon Mhtoon Pah crossed his mind, but his instinct held him back. He wondered desperately where Leh Shin had gone, and if he would come in upon the Burman making his strange prayer. Still Mhtoon Pah repeated the words and swayed to and fro before the image of the Buddha, and the very moments seemed to pause and listen with Coryndon. The shop was close and the air oppressive. Little trickles of sweat ran down his neck and made channels in the stain on his skin, and still Coryndon waited in tense suspense.
For nearly ten minutes Mhtoon Pah continued to rock and mutter on the floor, and then he got up, and, taking his lantern, went out by the door into the passage. Coryndon waited for the sound of a scuffle and a fall, but none came, and he was in the dark, surrounded by silence once more.
Without waiting to consider, he followed across the room and saw the swinging light go down the passage and disappear suddenly. It seemed to Coryndon that Mhtoon Pah had disappeared, as though he had gone through the wall at the end of the passage, and he followed slowly. Silence locked him in again, the dark, motionless silence of enclosed space.
He did not dare to call out again to Leh Shin, and for all that he could tell, the Chinaman might have been an arm's-reach away from him in the darkness, also waiting for some sudden thing to happen. The dark passage was an ante-chamber to some event: Coryndon's tingling nerves told him that; and he steadied himself, holding in his imagination in a close, resolute grip.
He had no way of judging the time that passed, but he guessed that it seemed longer to him than it possibly could have been; when from somewhere far below him, he heard a cry and the noise of several voices, all raised into indistinct clamour.
"More than one man," he thought, as his heart beat quickly. "More than two," he added, in wonder as he strained in the effort of listening.
The noise died out, and one low wail, continuous and plaintive, filled the blank of dark silence. Coryndon felt for his matches, and knelt on the floor, feeling before him with his hands. The crying had ceased, and he touched the edge of a step. A long, steep flight began just under his hand.
He leaned back and held the match-box in his hand, knowing that he could not venture the descent in the dark, and as he took out a match a new sound caught his ear. A man was running in the dark. He heard him stumble over the lower steps as he panted fiercely and he broke into a cry as he ran, a strange, mad, sobbing cry, and he still gasped and gave out his wordless wail as he tore past Coryndon and on along the passage and into the shop.
Coryndon heard the door bang behind him, he heard the sound of some heavy thing being dragged before it. The footsteps and the voice were not those of Leh Shin, and Coryndon knew that Mhtoon Pah had fled like a man pursued by devils, and had barricaded himself in.
For a moment Coryndon paused, and then lighted a match. Close under his feet was the perilous edge of a staircase leading sheer down into a well-like depth of blackness. A thin scream came up to him, and without waiting to consider, he ran down quickly. At the bottom he found Mhtoon Pah's overturned lantern, and relighting it, he followed the intermittent call of fear that echoed through the damp, cavernous place he found himself in.
A closed door stood at the end of a narrow passage, and from the further side of the door a stifled sound of terror came persistently. Leh Shin sat in a huddled heap against the door, and Coryndon stooped over him, throwing the light from the lantern he carried upon him.
"I looked into his eyes," said the Chinaman, in a weak voice, "and once more he overcame me. His knife rent my arm, and I fell as though dead."
Coryndon supported him to his feet. His mind was working quickly.
"Canst thou stand by thyself?" he asked impatiently.
The Chinaman gave a nod of assent, and Coryndon hammered on the door, throwing all his weight against it, until it cracked and fell inwards under the nervous force of his slight frame.
What Coryndon expected to see, he did not know. He was following his natural instinct when he threw aside the chase and capture of Mhtoon Pah and burst into the cellar-room. It was small and close, and smelt of the foul, fruity atmosphere of mildew. The ceiling was low, and crouching in one corner was a small boy, clad only in a loin-cloth, who stared at them and screamed with fear.
"The Chinamen, the Chinamen!" he shrieked. "Mhtoon Pah, the Chinamen."
"Absalom," the name came to Coryndon's lips, as he stood staring at him. "My God, it must be Absalom."
He had spoken in English before he had time to think, and he turned to see if his self-betrayal had struck upon the confused brain of Leh Shin, but Leh Shin knew nothing and saw nothing but the face of the boy his enemy loved. He had placed the lamp on the floor and was feeling for his dagger, his eyes fascinated and his lips working soundlessly.
Coryndon caught him by the shoulder and snatched his knife from his hand.
"Fool," he said. "Wouldst thou ruin all at the end? Listen closely and attend to me. Now is the moment to cry for the police. Thine enemy is in a close net; show me swiftly the way by which I may go out of this house, and sit thou here and stir not, neither cry out nor speak until thou hearest the police. By the way I go out will I leave the door open, and some will enter there, and others at the front of the house."
He turned to look at the boy, who pointed at the Chinaman and continued to shriek for Mhtoon Pah. It was no moment for hesitation, though Coryndon's thoughts went to the shop and the front door. By that door Mhtoon Pah might already have escaped, but even allowing for this, there was time to catch him again. He followed the way pointed out by the shaking hand of Leh Shin.
"If thou fail in aught that I have told thee, or if the boy escape or suffer under thy hand, then is thine end also come," he said, as he stood for a moment in the aperture that led into a waste place at the back of the house; and then Coryndon ran through the night.
The rain had come on, teeming, relentless rain that fell in pitiless sheets out of a black sky. The roads ran with liquid mud and the stones cut Coryndon's bare feet, but he ran on, his lungs aching and his throat dry. It is not easy to think with the blood hammering in the pulses and the breath coming short through gasping lungs, but Coryndon kept his mind fixed upon one idea with steady determination. His object was to get into the house unnoticed, and to awake Hartley without betraying himself to the servants.
Hartley's bungalow was closed for the night, and theDurwanslept rolled in a blanket in a corner of the veranda. Coryndon held his sobbing breath and crept along the shadows, watching the man closely until the danger zone was passed, and then he ran on around the sharp angle of the house and dived into Hartley's room. In the centre stood the bed, draped in the ghostly outlines of white mosquito-curtains, and Coryndon walked lightly over the matted floor and shook the bed gently. Hartley stirred but did not wake, and Coryndon called his name and continued to call it in a low whisper. The Head of the Police stirred again and then sat up suddenly and answered Coryndon in the same low undertone.
"Get into your clothes quickly, while I tell you what has happened," said Coryndon, sitting low in the shadow of the bed, and while Hartley dressed he told him the details shortly and clearly.
The bungalow was still in darkness, and, with a candle in his hand to light him, Hartley went into his office and rang up the Paradise Street Police Station. When he came back Coryndon was standing looking through a corner of a raised chick.
"TheDurwanis awake," he said, without turning his head. "Call him round to the front, otherwise he may see me."
"Come on, come on, man," said Hartley impatiently, "there is no time to lose."
Coryndon turned and smiled at him.
"This is where I go out of the case," he said. "I shall be back in time for breakfast to-morrow," and without waiting to argue the point he dived out into the waning darkness of the night, leaving Hartley looking helplessly after him.
Before the Burman left Leh Shin in charge of Absalom, he had pinned the Chinaman by the arms and spoken to him in strange, strong words that scorched clear across the chaos in his mind and made him understand a hidden thing. The fact that this man was not a mad convict, but a member of the great secret society who tracked the guilty, almost stunned the Chinaman, who knew and understood the immense power of secret societies.
Mhtoon Pah might be driving wildly along a road leading out of Mangadone, and though one old Chinaman and a mad Burman could not stop him, the long arm of police law would grab and capture his gross body. Leh Shin sat quite still, content to rest and consider this. Telegrams flashed messages under the great bidding of authority, men sprang armed from stations in every village, the close grip of fate was not more close than the grasp of the awakened machinery of justice, and in the centre of its power Mhtoon Pah was helpless as a fly in the web of a spider.
"He travels fast, and fear is sitting on his shoulder, for he travels to his death," he repeated over and over, swaying backwards and forwards.
He had an opium pellet hidden somewhere in his clothes, and he found it and turned it over his tongue; weariness and sleep conquered the pain, and Leh Shin sat with his head bent forward in heavy stupor. From this condition he awoke to lights and noises and the sound of a file working on iron.
The police had come and Hartley was bending over the boy, talking to him kindly and reassuring him as far as he could. Upstairs, the heavy thud of blows on the outer door of the shop echoed through the house with steady, persistent sound.
Dawn had come in real earnest, and the street, but lately returned from the excitements of the feast at the Pagoda, was thrilled by a new and much more satisfying sensation. Three blue-coated, leather-belted policemen were on the top of the steps that led to the door of the curio shop, forcing it in. The heavy bolts held, and though the padlocked chain hung idle, the door resisted all their efforts.
Hartley was down in the cellars, and his way through to the shop was blocked . . . blocked by the inner door which was also closed from inside, and somewhere within was Mhtoon Pah. He was very silent in his shop. No amount of hammering called forth any response, and even when the door gave way and the bolt fell clattering to the ground, he did not spring out.
People had sometimes wondered at the curious destiny of the wooden man. He had been there so long and had done his duty so faithfully. In rain or shine alike, he had always been in the street, eternally bowing the passers up the steps. Americans had tried to buy him, and had wished to take him home to point at other free and enlightened citizens, but Mhtoon Pah refused all offers of money. The wooden man was faithful to him, and he in his turn was, in some way, faithful to the wooden man. He had been there when Mhtoon Pah was a clerk and had indicated his rise, he had seen him take over possession of the shop, and he had been witness to many trivial things, and now he stood, the crowd behind him, and pointed silently again. It seemed right for him to point, but it was grotesque that he still smiled and bent forward.
The closed gates of the dawn opened and let in the sun, and the pale yellow light ventured across the threshold where the policemen hung back, and even the crowd in the street were silent. The light fell on a thousand small things that reflected its rays; it fell on a heavy carved box drawn across the further entrance, on the swinging glass doors of the open silk cupboard, on bowls of silver and bowls of brass, and it fell full on the thing that of all others drew the horrified eyes of the watchers.
Mhtoon Pah, the wealthy curio dealer, the shrine builder, the friend of the powerful, hung from a beam across the centre of the low ceiling, and Mhtoon Pah was dead, strangled in a fine, silk scarf. Fine, strong silk made only by certain lake-dwellers in a wild place just across the Shan frontier.
Perhaps the destiny which Shiraz believed a man may not escape, be he as fleet as a flying stag, had caught up with him, and it was not without reason that the image had pointed at something not there years ago, not there when youth was there, and hope and love, and when Leh Shin had lived and been happy there, but to come, certainly and surely to come.
Hartley and Coryndon sat long over their breakfast. Coryndon's face was strained and tired, and heavy lines of fatigue were marked under his dark eyes.
"The boy was not in a condition to give any lucid explanation when I brought him back," said Hartley, "so I left him until we could both hear his story together." He called to his Bearer and gave instructions for the boy to be brought in.
Coryndon nodded silently; his eyes lit up with interest and all his listlessness vanished as he watched the door.
Following Hartley's Bearer, a small, thin boy came into the room, dressed in a white suit, with a tight white pugaree folded round his head. He shrank nervously at every sound, and when he salaamed to Hartley and Coryndon his face worked as though he was going to burst into tears.
"You have nothing to be afraid of," said Hartley kindly. "Just tell the whole truth, and explain how it was that you came to be shut up in the curio shop."
The boy's eyes grew less terrified, and he began to speak in a low, mumbling voice. He began in the middle of the account, and Hartley gently but firmly pushed him back to the beginning.
"Start with the story of the lacquer bowl," he said, talking very slowly and clearly. "We want to hear what happened about that first."
The mention of the subject of lacquer threw Absalom once more into a state of panic, but as his story progressed he became more sure of himself, and looked up, forgetting his fear in the excitement of having a really remarkable story to tell, that was listened to by Sahibs with intent interest.
In tearful, stumbling words he admitted that he and Leh Shin's assistant had been friends, and that those evil communications that corrupt not only good manners but good morals had worked with disastrous results upon him. With his brown knuckles to his protruding eyes, he admitted, further, that he had stolen the gold lacquer bowl from the drugged and drunken seaman, and that Leh Shin's assistant had plundered him of more than half his rightful share of the profit. What remained over, he protested, he intended to give to the "Missen," testifying to the fact that his conscience was causing him uneasiness and that his natural superstition made him adopt means, not unknown to other financiers, of squaring things by a donation to a charitable object.
He went on to explain that Mhtoon Pah had required him to come back late by an unfrequented alley, from where his master himself had admitted him into the basement of the shop. There was nothing altogether unusual about this, it appeared, as Mhtoon Pah was very strange in his ways at times. He cooked his own food for fear of poison, and was constantly suspecting some indefinite enemy of designs upon his life. What was unusual was the fact that he had been taken at once into the small cell, and that, once there, Mhtoon Pah had behaved like a madman.
Absalom could recall no coherent account of what the curio dealer had told him. He had spoken to him of murder, and told him that the Chinamen in the Quarter, headed by Leh Shin, were looking for him to kill him, and that, for his safety, he must remain hidden away. Mhtoon Pah told him that he would protect him, and that he would produce evidence to have Leh Shin hanged, and that once he was dead he would then emerge again, but not until then. He told him how Chinamen killed their victims, and his fears and terrors communicated themselves to the boy, who delivered himself up to bondage without resistance.
For weeks Absalom dragged out a miserable existence, loose when Mhtoon Pah was in the shop, but chained to the wall whenever he went out, and only for an hour after midnight was the boy ever allowed to emerge into the dark, waste garden at the back of the house. The rest of the time was spent in the cell, and Absalom broke into incoherent wailing as he called Hartley and Coryndon to witness that it had been a hard life.
As the end of his story approached, Absalom grew more dramatic and quoted the parting words of Mhtoon Pah before he went out to attend thePwéat the Pagoda.
"I leave thee in fear," said he, "for thou art the apple of my eye, O Absalom, and when I am gone some calamity may befall. From whence it comes I know not, but as men look at the heaped clouds behind the hills and say, 'Lo, it will soon fall in rain,' so does my heart look out and observe darkness, and I am ill-satisfied to quit this house."
His words rang in the mind of the boy, shut into the stifling darkness below the ground, and he remembered that he cried out for help, not once but over and over again, and that his cries were eventually answered by the voice of Leh Shin, who had called him a child of vipers and threatened to enter and break him against the wall as he would a plantain. After that Absalom had refrained from crying out, and had waited silently expecting the door to open and admit Leh Shin and his last moment simultaneously. Upon the silence came the sounds of scuffling and hoarse cries, and it seemed to Absalom that Leh Shin had called out that he had already cut the heart from his ribs, and was about to force it down Mhtoon Pah's throat, and then nothing was very clear until voices and lights roused him from stupor to fresh terror and alarm.
He knew that the door had been unlocked and that a light travelled in, held by a strange Burman, and that his terror of Leh Shin had made him see things strangely, as though from a long way off; until, at the last, the police had come and knocked the chain off his leg, and someone had told him that his master was dead and had been found hanging in the shop.
Absalom's face quivered and he began to whimper.
"And now my master is dead, and never in Mangadone shall I find such another who will care for me and give me the pleasant life in Paradise Street."
Hartley handed the boy some money.
"Take him away," he said to the Bearer. "You have told your story very well, Absalom."
He looked across at Coryndon when the room was empty, but Coryndon was fiddling with some crumbs at the edge of the table.
"Madness is the real explanation, I suppose," he said tentatively. "Madness and obsession."
"Obsession," echoed Coryndon. "That word explains almost every inexplicable act in life." He took up a knife and held it level on his palm. "There you have the normal condition, but once one end swings up you get Genius and all the Arts, or madness and crime and the obsession of one idea: one definite, over-mastering idea that drives every force harnessed to its car."
He got up and stretched his arms, and walked out through the veranda into his room, where Shiraz was folding his clothes and laying them in an open portmanteau. The old servant stood up and made a low salaam to his master.
"When the sun is down the wise traveller hurries to the Serai," Coryndon said to him. "I leave to-night for Madras, Shiraz, and you with me."
"The end of all things is just, Huzoor," replied the old man, a strange light of reflection in his dim pebble-like eyes. "Is it not written that none may rise so high, or plunge so deep, that he does not follow the hidden path to the hidden end? For like a wind that goes and returns never, or the shadow of a cloud passing over the desert, is the destiny of a man."