Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

“Meditating a day’s hike?” he queried presently, interrupting the rolling of a cigarette to kick my bag of golf-clubs standing propped against the table.

“Gouldie phoned me from my chambers that there was nothing doing,” I answered, “and I decided to take a day off.”

He glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf.

“Sorry, old son,” he rejoined, “but I’m afraid I’ve got to disappoint you. Parsons and Hodges are due here at ten and they’re bringing a chap named Mortimer with them.

“Hard-bitten little devil Mortimer! — but I assure you, Gray, he’s got a yarn that’ll make your hair stand on end. It’s about the umpteenth time we’ve used this place of yours as a conference chamber, but I know you won’t mind. The fact is he knows more than he cares to tell us about a little bloke with a yellow face and the most murderous disposition I’ve met—”

“Meaning Chanda-Lung, of course?”

“True, O, King! Meaning Chanda-Lung.”

A chunk of white ash from his cigarette dropped on to his knee and he brushed it off.

“Lord, Gray!” he continued, talking rapidly. “I’ve been learning a lot these past few weeks. I’ve barged into the lowest haunts of Bermondsey, Whitechapel and Limehouse, disguised as a coal-heaver, Chinese, anything you like. It’s been tremendously interesting, I can tell you.

“Chanda-Lungism, to coin a phrase, is petering out. He came to Europe a year ago, financed by powerful Eastern syndicates. The confidence of a hemisphere was behind him — and he promised ’em quick returns. They got ’em at first, but they can’t get them now.

“We’ve got him running, don’t you see. He daren’t operate from the same place twice.”

I folded my paper and pitched it into a chair.

“That’s why it’s so deucedly difficult to locate him,” I interposed.

“Precisely. This campaign of his to shift the center of commerce across the globe is not just the effort of a dreamer, with all the tricks of the East in his pocket and a few stanch pals gather about him to back him up. It was a world movement — an underworld movement!

“Every lascar that shipped as a stoker on an ocean-going steamer was in it. It was behind the riots in Calcutta, Java, Rangoon. Wu-Chong-Hi, the defeated dictator of Central China, was in it up to the hilt.

“Communism cut no ice in comparison with a menace that had hundreds of millions behind it.

“When you and I came in, the train of mysterious assassinations, that had begun in Lhassa and Tokyo, was continuing here. Scotland Yard couldn’t tackle it; they didn’t know where to start. I think we can claim that we cramped Mr. Chanda-Lung’s style!”

He rose to his feet and began pacing the room, leaving me watching him curiously, wondering where this rare stream of eloquence was going to lead.

I saw him stop to admire a row of blue hyacinths set in earthenware pots along the window sill.

“The patience of the East isn’t quite what it used to be,” he threw back at me. “Interest is dropping off, Java’s quiet, the Calcutta business has petered out — and General Wu-Chong-Hi was blown to blazes in his own train yesterday!”

I moved impatiently.

“You haven’t told me yet where Mortimer comes in.”

He turned and faced me, his back to the window.

“Mortimer, I honestly believe, is part of Chanda-Lung’s last line of attack — one of those renegade Europeans that for one reason and another have sworn allegiance to the Yellow Scorpion.”

I looked up sharply.

“One of the gang?” I gasped.

Pennington nodded.

“According to his own story, he is a chair-mender by trade, and a member of the Chanda-Lung fraternity by accident!”

“You think he’s reliable?”

“That’s what we have to find out. He seems ready to talk about himself; our job is to persuade him to divulge something about Chanda-Lung. I f we can only manage to do that we may be a deal for’arder.”

I could see that Pennington was in one of his optimistic moods. Personally, the cancelling of a golf appointment: and recollections of many vain chases after our arch-bandit, combined to give me a more skeptical outlook.

II

A tap came on the door presently and my landlady announced Inspector Parsons.

Parsons came in, looking more like a lizard than ever in a gray suit and a hard hat. A still shorter man followed, stocky, ginger-haired and pockmarked, surveying every fresh object he met with an air of suspicion. The burly Hodges brought up the rear.

I offered them chairs and they all sat down, the officers perfectly at their ease in a room that had known many similar gatherings, Joe Mortimer perching himself on the very edge of the seat, nursing his cap. I pushed over a box of cigarettes and Sergeant Hodges gave him one before helping himself.

“Cheer up, Joe!” he cried. “Make yourself at home! They’re not goin’ to eat you!”

The cigarettes were cork-tipped and Mortimer, in his confusion, ignited the wrong end by mistake. Trying to rectify the error, he burned his lips and spat into the fender.

Parsons rose suddenly and joined us at the window.