Never-Fail Blake

  VIII

  Blake stood regarding the door. The he lifted his revolver from hisbreast pocket and dropped it into his side pocket, with his hand on thebutt. Then with his left hand he quietly opened the door, pushed itback, and as quietly stepped into the room.

  On the floor, in the center of a square of orange-colored matting, hesaw a white woman sitting. She was drinking tea out of an egg-shell ofa cup, and after putting down the cup she would carefully massage herlips with the point of her little finger. This movement puzzled thenewcomer until he suddenly realized that it was merely to redistributethe rouge on them.

  She was dressed in a silk petticoat of almost lemon yellow and anazure-colored silk bodice that left her arms and shoulders bare to thelight that played on them from three small oil lamps above her. Herfeet and ankles were also bare, except for the matting sandals intowhich her toes were thrust. On one thin arm glimmered anextraordinarily heavy bracelet of gold. Her skin, which was verywhite, was further albificated by a coat of rice powder. She wasstartlingly slight. Blake, as he watched her, could see the ovalshadows under her collar bones and the almost girlish meagerness ofbreast half-covered by the azure silk bodice.

  She looked up slowly as Blake stepped into the room. Her eyes widened,and she continued to look, with parted lips, as she contemplated theintruder's heavy figure. There was no touch of fear on her face. Itwas more curiosity, the wilful, wide-eyed curiosity of the child. Sheeven laughed a little as she stared at the intruder. Her rouged lipswere tinted a carmine so bright that they looked like a wound acrossher white face. That gash of color became almost clown-like as itcrescented upward with its wayward mirth. Her eyebrows were heavilypenciled and the lids of the eyes elongated by a widening point of bluepaint. Her bare heel, which she caressed from time to time withfingers whereon the nails were stained pink with henna, was small andclean cut, as clean cut, Blake noticed, as the heel of a razor, whilethe white calf above it was as thin and flat as a boy's.

  "Hello, New York," she said with her foolish and inconsequential littlelaugh. Her voice took on an oddly exotic intonation, as she spoke.Her teeth were small and white; they reminded Blake of rice, while sherepeated the "New York," bubblingly, as though she were a child with anewly learned word.

  "Hello!" responded the detective, wondering how or where to begin. Shemade him think of a painted marionette, so maintained were her poses,so unreal was her make up.

  "You 're the party who 's on the man hunt," she announced.

  "Am I?" equivocated Blake. She had risen to her feet by this time,with monkey-like agility, and showed herself to be much taller than hehad imagined. He noticed a knife scar on her forearm.

  "You 're after this man called Binhart," she declared.

  "Oh, no, I 'm not," was Blake's sagacious response. "I don't wantBinhart!"

  "Then what do you want?"

  "I want the money he 's got."

  The little painted face grew serious; then it became veiled.

  "How much money has he?"

  "That's what I want to find out!"

  She squatted ruminatively down on the edge of her divan. It was lowand wide and covered with orange-colored silk.

  "Then you'll have to find Binhart!" was her next announcement.

  "Maybe!" acknowledged Blake.

  "I can show you where he is!"

  "All right," was the unperturbed response. The blue-painted eyes werestudying him.

  "It will be worth four thousand pounds, in English gold," she announced.

  Blake took a step or two nearer her.

  "Is that the message Ottenheim told you to give me?" he demanded. Hisface was red with anger.

  "Then three thousand pounds," she calmly suggested, wriggling her toesinto a fallen sandal.

  Blake did not deign to speak. His inarticulate grunt was one ofdisgust.

  "Then a thousand, in gold," she coyly intimated. She twisted about topull the strap of her bodice up over her white shoulder-blades. "Or Iwill kill him for you for two thousand pounds in gold!"

  Her eyes were as tranquil as a child's. Blake remembered that he wasin a world not his own.

  "Why should I want him killed?" he inquired. He looked about for someplace to sit. There was not a chair in the room.

  "Because he intends to kill _you_," answered the woman, squatting onthe orange-covered divan.

  "I wish he 'd come and try," Blake devoutly retorted.

  "He will not come," she told him. "It will be done from the dark. _I_could have done it. But Ottenheim said no."

  "And Ottenheim said you were to work with me in this," declared Blake,putting two and two together.

  The woman shrugged a white shoulder.

  "Have you any money?" she asked. She put the question with theartlessness of a child.

  "Mighty little," retorted Blake, still studying the woman from where hestood. He was wondering if Ottenheim had the same hold on her that theauthorities had on Ottenheim, the ex-forger who enjoyed his parole onlyon condition that he remain a stool-pigeon of the high seas. Hepondered what force he could bring to bear on her, what power couldsqueeze from those carmine and childish lips the information he musthave.

  He knew that he could break that slim body of hers across his knee.But he also knew that he had no way of crushing out of it the truth hesought, the truth he must in some way obtain. The woman still squattedon the divan, peering down at the knife scar on her arm from time totime, studying it, as though it were an inscription.

  Blake was still watching the woman when the door behind him was slowlyopened; a head was thrust in, and as quietly withdrawn again. Blakedropped his right hand to his coat pocket and moved further along thewall, facing the woman. There was nothing of which he stood afraid: hemerely wished to be on the safe side.

  "Well, what word 'll I take back to Ottenheim?" he demanded.

  The woman grew serious. Then she showed her rice-like row of teeth asshe laughed.

  "That means there 's nothing in it for me," she complained withpouting-lipped moroseness. Her venality, he began to see, was merelythe instinctive acquisitiveness of the savage, the greed of the pettedchild.

  "No more than there is for me," Blake acknowledged. She turned andcaught up a heavily flowered mandarin coat of plaited cream and gold.She was thrusting one arm into it when a figure drifted into the roomfrom the matting-hung doorway on Blake's left. As she saw this figureshe suddenly flung off the coat and stooped to the tea tray in themiddle of the floor.

  Blake saw that the newcomer was a Chinaman. This newcomer, he alsosaw, ignored him as though he were a door post, confronting the womanand assailing her with a quick volley of words, of incomprehensiblewords in the native tongue. She answered with the same clutter andclack of unknown syllables, growing more and more excited as thedialogue continued. Her thin face darkened and changed, her white armsgyrated, the fires of anger burned in the baby-like eyes. She seemedexpostulating, arguing, denouncing, and each wordy sally was met by anequally wordy sally from the Chinaman. She challenged and rebuked withher passionately pointed finger; she threatened with angry eyes; shestormed after the newcomer as he passed like a shadow out of the room;she met him with a renewed storm when he returned a moment later.

  The Chinaman now stood watching her, impassive and immobile, as thoughhe had taken his stand and intended to stick to it. Blake studied himwith calm and patient eyes. That huge-limbed detective in his day had"pounded" too many Christy Street Chinks to be in any way intimidatedby a queue and a yellow face. He was not disturbed. He was merelypuzzled.

  Then the woman turned to the mandarin coat, and caught it up, shook itout, and for one brief moment stood thoughtfully regarding it. Thenshe suddenly turned about on the Chinaman.

  Blake, as he stood watching that renewed angry onslaught, paid littleattention to the actual words that she was calling out. But as hestood there he began to realize that she was not speaking in Chinese,but in English.

  "Do you
hear me, white man? Do you hear me?" she cried out, over andover again. Yet the words seemed foolish, for all the time as sheuttered them, she was facing the placid-eyed Chinaman and gesticulatingin his face.

  "Don't you see," Blake at last heard her crying, "he doesn't know whatI'm saying! He doesn't understand a word of English!" And then, andthen only, it dawned on Blake that every word the woman was utteringwas intended for his own ears. She was warning him, and all the whilepretending that her words were the impetuous words of anger.

  "Watch this man!" he heard her cry. "Don't let him know you 'relistening. But remember what I say, remember it. And God help you ifyou haven't got a gun."

  Blake could see her, as in a dream, assailing the Chinaman with hergestures, advancing on him, threatening him, expostulating with him,but all in pantomime. There was something absurd about it, as absurdas a moving-picture film which carries the wrong text.

  "He 'll pretend to take you to the man you want," the woman waspanting. "That's what he will say. But it's a lie. He 'll take youout to a sampan, to put you aboard Binhart's boat. But the three ofthem will cut your throat, cut your throat, and then drop youoverboard. He 's to get so much in gold. Get out of here with him.Let him think you 're going. But drop away, somewhere, before you getto the beach. And watch them all the way."

  Blake stared at the immobile Chinaman, as though to make sure that theother man had not understood. He was still staring at that impassiveyellow face, he was still absorbing the shock of his news, when theouter door opened and a second Chinaman stepped into the room. Thenewcomer cluttered a quick sentence or two to his countryman, and wasstill talking when a third figure sidled in.

  Those spoken words, whatever they were, seemed to have little effect onany one in the room except the woman. She suddenly sprang about andexploded into an angry shower of denials.

  "It's a lie!" she cried in English, storming about the impassive trio."You never heard me peach! You never heard me say a word! It's a lie!"

  Blake strode to the middle of the room, towering above the otherfigures, dwarfing them by his great bulk, as assured of his mastery ashe would have been in a Chatham Square gang fight.

  "What's the row here?" he thundered, knowing from the past that powerpromptly won its own respect. "What 're you talking about, you two?"He turned from one intruder to another. "And you? And you? What doyou want, anyway?"

  The three contending figures, however, ignored him as though he were atobacconist's dummy. They went on with their exotic cackle, as thoughhe was no longer in their midst. They did not so much as turn an eyein his direction. And still Blake felt reasonably sure of his position.

  It was not until the woman squeaked, like a frightened mouse, and ranwhimpering into the corner of the room, that he realized what washappening. He was not familiar with the wrist movement by which thesmallest bodied of the three men was producing a knife from his sleeve.The woman, however, had understood from the first.

  "White man, look out!" she half sobbed from her corner. "Oh, whiteman!" she repeated in a shriller note as the Chinaman, bending low,scuttled across the room to the corner where she cowered.

  Blake saw the knife by this time. It was thin and long, for all theworld like an icicle, a shaft of cutting steel ground incredibly thin,so thin, in fact, that at first sight it looked more like a point forstabbing than a blade for cutting.

  The mere glitter of that knife electrified the staring white man intosudden action. He swung about and tried to catch at the arm that heldthe steel icicle. He was too late for that, but his fingers closed onthe braided queue. By means of this queue he brought the Chinaman upshort, swinging him sharply about so that he collided flat faced withthe room wall.

  Then, for the first time, Blake grew into a comprehension of whatsurrounded him. He wheeled about, stooped and caught up thepapier-mache tea-tray from the floor and once more stood with his backto the wall. He stood there, on guard, for a second figure with asecond steel icicle was sidling up to him. He swung viciously out andbrought the tea-tray down on the hand that held this knife, cripplingthe fingers and sending the steel spinning across the room. Then withhis free hand he tugged the revolver from his coat pocket, holding itby the barrel and bringing the metal butt down on the queue-wound headof the third man, who had no knife, but was struggling with the womanfor the metal icicle she had caught up from the floor.

  Then the five seemed to close in together, and the fight becamegeneral. It became a melee. With his swinging right arm Blakebattered and pounded with his revolver butt. With his left hand hemade cutting strokes with the heavy papier-mache tea-tray, keepingtheir steel, by those fierce sweeps, away from his body. One Chinamanhe sent sprawling, leaving him huddled and motionless against theorange-covered divan. The second, stunned by a blow of the tea-trayacross the eyes, could offer no resistance when Blake's smashing rightdealt its blow, the metal gun butt falling like a trip hammer on theshaved and polished skull.

  As the white man swung about he saw the third Chinaman with his hand onthe woman's throat, holding her flat against the wall, placing herthere as a butcher might place a fowl on his block ready for the blowof his carver. Blake stared at the movement, panting for breath,overcome by that momentary indifference wherein a winded athletepermits without protest an adversary to gain his momentary advantage.Then will triumphed over the weakness of the body. But before Blakecould get to the woman's side he saw the Chinaman's loose-sleeved righthand slowly and deliberately ascend. As it reached the meridian of itscircular upsweep he could see the woman rise on her toes, rise asthough with some quick effort, yet some effort which Blake could notunderstand.

  At the same moment that she did so a look of pained expostulation creptinto the staring slant eyes on a level with her own. The yellow jawgaped, filled with blood, and the poised knife fell at his side,sticking point down in the flooring. The azure and lemon-yellow thatcovered the woman's body flamed into sudden scarlet. It was only asthe figure with the expostulating yellow face sank to the ground,crumpling up on itself as it fell, that Blake comprehended. That quicksweep of scarlet, effacing the azure and lemon, had come from thesudden deluge of blood that burst over the woman's body. She had madeuse of the upstroke, Mexican style. Her knife had cut the full lengthof the man's abdominal cavity, clean and straight to the breastbone.He had been ripped up like a herring.

  Blake panted and wheezed, not at the sight of the blood, but at theexertion to which his flabby muscles had been put. His body was moistwith sweat. His asthmatic throat seemed stifling his lungs. A faintnausea crept through him, a dim ventral revolt at the thought that suchthings could take place so easily, and with so little warning.

  His breast still heaved and panted and he was still fighting for breathwhen he saw the woman stoop and wipe the knife on one of the fallenChinaman's sleeves.

  "We 've got to get out of here!" she whimpered, as she caught up themandarin coat and flung it over her shoulders, for in the struggle herbody had been bared almost to the waist. Blake saw the crimson thatdripped on her matting slippers and maculated the cream white of themandarin coat.

  "But where's Binhart?" he demanded, as he looked stolidly about for hisblack boulder.

  "Never mind Binhart," she cried, touching the eviscerated body at herfeet with one slipper toe, "or we 'll get what _he_ got!"

  "I want that man Binhart!" persisted the detective.

  "Not here! Not here!" she cried, folding the loose folds of the cloakcloser about her body.

  She ran to the matting curtain, looked out, and called back, "Quick!Come quick!" Then she ran back, slipped the bolt in the outer door andrejoined the waiting detective.

  "Oh, white man!" she gasped, as the matting fell between them and theroom incarnadined by their struggle. Blake was not sure, but hethought he heard her giggle, hysterically, in the darkness. They weregroping their way along a narrow passage. They slipped through asecond door, closed and locked it after them, and once more gro
ped onthrough the darkness.

  How many turns they took, Blake could not remember. She stopped andwhispered to him to go softly, as they came to a stairway, as steep anddark as a cistern. Blake, at the top, could smell opium smoke, andonce or twice he thought he heard voices. The woman stopped him, withoutstretched arms, at the stair head, and together they stood andlistened.

  Blake, with nerves taut, waited for some sign from her to go on again.He thought she was giving it, when he felt a hand caress his side. Hefelt it move upward, exploringly. At the same time that he heard herlittle groan of alarm he knew that the hand was not hers.

  He could not tell what the darkness held, but his movement was almostinstinctive. He swung out with his great arm, countered on thecrouching form in front of him, caught at a writhing shoulder, andtightening his grip, sent the body catapulting down the stairway at hisside. He could hear a revolver go off as the body went tumbling androlling down--Blake knew that it was a gun not his own.

  "Come on, white man!" the girl in front of him was crying, as shetugged at his coat. And they went on, now at a run, taking a turn tothe right, making a second descent, and then another to the left. Theycame to still another door, which they locked behind them. Then theyscrambled up a ladder, and he could hear her quick hands padding aboutin the dark. A moment later she had thrust up a hatch. He saw it ledto the open air, for the stars were above them.

  He felt grateful for that open air, for the coolness, for the sense ofdeliverance which came with even that comparative freedom.

  "Don't stop!" she whispered. And he followed her across the slant ofthe uneven roof. He was weak for want of breath. The girl had tocatch him and hold him for a moment.

  "On the next roof you must take off your shoes," she warned him. "Youcan rest then. But hurry--hurry!"

  He gulped down the fresh air as he tore at his shoe laces, thrustingeach shoe in a side pocket as he started after her. For by this timeshe was scrambling across the broken sloping roofs, as quick and agileas a cat, dropping over ledges, climbing up barriers and across copingtiles. Where she was leading him he had no remotest idea. Shereminded him of a cream-tinted monkey in the maddest of steeplechases.He was glad when she came to a stop.

  The town seemed to lay to their right. Before them were the scatteredlights of the harbor and the mild crescent of the outer bay. Theycould see the white wheeling finger of some foreign gunboat as itssearchlight played back and forth in the darkness.

  She sighed with weariness and dropped cross-legged down on the copingtiles against which he leaned, regaining his breath. She squattedthere, cooingly, like a child exhausted with its evening games.

  "I 'm dished!" she murmured, as she sat there breathing audibly throughthe darkness. "I 'm dished for this coast!"

  He sat down beside her, staring at the search-light. There seemedsomething reassuring, something authoritative and comforting, in thethought of it watching there in the darkness.

  The girl touched him on the knee and then shifted her position on thecoping tiles, without rising to her feet.

  "Come here!" she commanded. And when he was close beside her shepointed with her thin white arm. "That's Saint Poalo there--you canjust make it out, up high, see. And those lights are the BoundaryGate. And this sweep of lights below here is the _Praya_. Now lookwhere I 'm pointing. That's the Luiz Camoes lodging-house. You seethe second window with the light in it?"

  "Yes, I see it."

  "Well, Binhart 's inside that window."

  "You know it?"

  "I know it."

  "So he 's there?" said Blake, staring at the vague square of light.

  "Yes, he's there, all right. He's posing as a buyer for a tea house,and calls himself Bradley. Lee Fu told me; and Lee Fu is always right."

  She stood up and pulled the mandarin coat closer about her thin body.The coolness of the night air had already chilled her. Then shesquinted carefully about in the darkness.

  "What are you going to do?" she asked.

  "I 'm going to get Binhart," was Blake's answer.

  He could hear her little childlike murmur of laughter.

  "You 're brave, white man," she said, with a hand on his arm. She wassilent for a moment, before she added; "And I think you 'll get him."

  "Of course I 'll get him," retorted Blake, buttoning his coat. Thefires had been relighted on the cold hearth of his resolution. It cameto him only as an accidental after-thought that he had met an unknownwoman and had passed through strange adventures with her and was nowabout to pass out of her life again, forever.

  "What 'll you do?" he asked.

  Again he heard the careless little laugh.

  "Oh, I 'll slip down through the Quarter and cop some clothessomewhere. Then I 'll have a sampan take me out to the German boat.It 'll start for Canton at daylight."

  "And then?" asked Blake, watching the window of the Luiz Camoeslodging-house below him.

  "Then I 'll work my way up to Port Arthur, I suppose. There 's a navyman there who 'll help me!"

  "Have n't you any money?" Blake put the question a little uneasily.

  Again he felt the careless coo of laughter.

  "Feel!" she said. She caught his huge hand between hers and pressed itagainst her waist line. She rubbed his fingers along what he acceptedas a tightly packed coin-belt. He was relieved to think that he wouldnot have to offer her money. Then he peered over the coping tiles tomake sure of his means of descent.

  "You had better go first," she said, as she leaned out and looked downat his side. "Crawl down this next roof to the end there. At thecorner, see, is the end of the ladder."

  He stooped and slipped his feet into his shoes. Then he let himselfcautiously down to the adjoining roof, steeper even than the one onwhich they had stood. She bent low over the tiles, so that her facewas very close to his as he found his footing and stood there.

  "Good-by, white man," she whispered.

  "Good-by!" he whispered back, as he worked his way cautiously andponderously along that perilous slope.

  She leaned there, watching him as he gained the ladder-end. He did notlook back as he lowered himself, rung by rung. All thought of her, infact, had passed from his preoccupied mind. He was once more intent onhis own grim ends. He was debating with himself just how he was to getin through that lodging-house window and what his final move would befor the round up of his enemy. He had made use of too many "molls" inhis time to waste useless thought on what they might say or do ordesire. When he had got Binhart, he remembered, he would have to lookabout for something to eat, for he was as hungry as a wolf. And he didnot even hear the girl's second soft whisper of "Good-by."