Tales of Chinatown | Page 9

have your business interests to keep you employed during the
day, after all."
"I hate it all. I hate it all."
"But you seem to have perfect freedom?"
"Yes. My mother, you see, was not Chinese."
"But you wish to leave Limehouse?"
"I do. I do. Just now it is not so bad, but in the winter how I tire of the
gray skies, the endless drizzling rain. Oh!" She shrank back into the
shadow of a doorway, clutching at Durham's arm. "Don't let Ah Fu see
me."
"Ah Fu? Who is Ah Fu?" asked Durham, also drawing back as a furtive
figure went slinking down the opposite side of the street.
"My father's servant. He let you in this morning."
"And why must he not see you?"
"I don't trust him. I think he tells my father things."
"What is it that he carries in his hand?"
"A birdcage, I expect."
"A birdcage?"
"Yes!"
He caught the gleam of her eyes as she looked up at him out of the
shadow.

"Is he, then, a bird-fancier?"
"No, no, I can't explain because I don't understand myself. But Ah Fu
goes to a place in Shadwell regularly and buys young birds, always
very young ones and very little ones."
"For what or for whom?"
"I don't know."
"Have you an aviary in your house?"
"No."
"Do you mean that they disappear, these purchases of Ah Fu's?"
"I often see him carrying a cage of young birds, but we have no birds in
the house."
"How perfectly extraordinary!" muttered Durham.
"I distrust Ah Fu," whispered the girl. "I am glad he did not see me
with you."
"Young birds," murmured Durham absently. "What kind of young birds?
Any particular breed?"
"No; canaries, linnets--all sorts. Isn't it funny?" The girl laughed in a
childish way. "And now I think Ah Fu will have gone in, so I must say
good night."
But when presently Detective Durham found himself walking back
along West India Dock Road, his mind's eye was set upon the slinking
figure of a Chinaman carrying a birdcage.

VI
A HINT OF INCENSE

One Chinaman more or less does not make any very great difference to
the authorities responsible for maintaining law and order in Limehouse.
Asiatic settlers are at liberty to follow their national propensities, and to
knife one another within reason. This is wisdom. Such recreations are
allowed, if not encouraged, by all wise rulers of Eastern peoples.
"Found drowned," too, is a verdict which has covered many a dark
mystery of old Thames, but "Found in the river, death having been due
to the action of some poison unknown," is a finding which even in the
case of a Chinaman is calculated to stimulate the jaded official mind.
New Scotland Yard had given Durham a roving commission, and had
been justified in the fact that the second victim, and this time not a
Chinaman, had been found under almost identical conditions. The link
with the establishment of Huang Chow was incomplete, and Durham
fully recognized that it was up to him to make it sound and
incontestable.
Jim Poland was not the only man in the East End who knew that the
dead Chinaman had been in negotiation with Huang Chow. Kerry knew
it, and had passed the information on to Durham.
Some mystery surrounded the life of the old dealer, who was said to be
a mandarin of high rank, but his exact association with the deaths first
of the Chinaman Pi Lung, and second of Cohen, remained to be proved.
Certain critics have declared the Metropolitan detective service to be
obsolete and inefficient. Kerry, as a potential superintendent, resented
these criticisms, and in his protege Durham, perceived a member of the
new generation who was likely in time to produce results calculated to
remove this stigma.
Durham recognized that a greater responsibility rested upon his
shoulders than the actual importance of the case might have indicated;
and now, proceeding warily along the deserted streets, he found his
brain to be extraordinarily active and his imagination very much alive.

There is a night life in Limehouse, as he had learned, but it is a mole
life, a subterranean life, of which no sign appears above ground after a
certain hour. Nevertheless, as he entered the area which harbours those
strange, hidden resorts the rumour of which has served to create the
glamour of Chinatown, he found himself to be thinking of the great
influence said to be wielded by Huang Chow, and wondering if unseen
spies watched his movements.
Lala was Oriental, and now, alone in the night, distrust leapt into being
within him. He had been attracted by her and had pitied her. He told
himself now that this was because of her dark beauty and the