Page 130 - Adventure Magazine, 1921, July 18th

j Sorcery and Everhard 125

I
more of her company, a gong sounded. And, unfolding a yellow hand that had
"Sin Chang 'ill see you now," she said been resting on the arm of his wonderful
impressively. chair, he disclosed the diamond glittering in
his palm. Hi~ nails were rather long, and
mii9 ALL of this hocus-pocus surrounding for so large a body the hand was claw like,
~ hang made me wonder what could thin. Not the hand I expected to see on one
Sin
be in the air. I could have got through who had been a sampan man - or maybe he
the Seven Gates of the Sacred City with less had only been born in a sampan-or maybe
delay. he had been nothing of the kind, and such
We went through the curtains, passed a story was only told of him.
through a room very richly furnished and I did not answer right away, for though I
well lighted, and came out into a very large was in a hurry to have the business over
room that at first made me think of a Chi- with, I thought that I could be ~ deliberate
nese store, it was so cluttered with all man- as he. I looked at him as it is sometimes
ner of curious stuff. But there was a kind of well to look at a man one is not sure of; but
landing reached by two steps, covered with there was nothing to b~ read in that full,
rugs worked in rare, strong colors; and on jaundiced face-that is, he had the color of
the raised platform was a large, high-backed a jaundiced white man. I asked quietly-
chair, wonderfully inlaid; and in the chair "Y ou are Sin Chang?"
sat a big Chinaman, motionless and ob- He in turn was slow to answer, but posi-
servant. tive enough. He bowed slightly.
Little Miss Plum-Blossom bowed her "I am Sin Chang."
nose to the floor and slowly backed from the I turned my head leisurely, first to right,
imposing presence, leaving me alone in a then to left, and carefully -surveyed the room
vacant spot .of the room. That is, for some in all directions. There were two curtained
twenty feet between me and the stage there entrances to my back; near one of them
was not a piece of furniture, only a rug on Plum-Blossom stood motionless as a little
the floor; and there I stood while the:China- shadow.
man, like a yellow Solomon in all his glory, It was a large room, and as I have said it
imperturbably looked down upon me. was cluttered with junk. To my left, some.
1 looked at him, wondering why he was fifteen feet away, was a big, heavy piece of
called a "fat spider." He was not thin by furniture, a boxlike thing, inlaid ,-..,-ith
anv means; but fat-no. A spider, no ivory-I suppose-and about four feet
do~bt; but somehow I do.not like contemp- higµ.
tuous phrases unless they are accurately de- I gave the room a careful scrutiny, for it
scriptive. He seemed to me to possess a is well to know something about where one
family resemblance tQ the big personal "rep- is when things are likely to be unpleasant.
sentative" I had formerly met; ·but _as all There were only the two people in sight-
Chinamen seem to have a close familv re- the man on the chair-throne and little Plum-
semblance that impression meant nothing. Blossom.
"To what," he said in slow, careful, pre- "Sin Chang," I said slowly, the tips of my
cise English, "does Sin Chang owe the pleas- fingers just inside my coat pockets, ''I came
ure of your presence?" , here to buy a woman."

TO BE CONCLUDED