Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Tales of Chinatown by Sax Rohmer (classic books for 12 year olds TXT) 📖
- Author: Sax Rohmer
Book online «Tales of Chinatown by Sax Rohmer (classic books for 12 year olds TXT) 📖». Author Sax Rohmer
The place was lighted by a hanging lamp from which depended bits of coloured paper and several gilded silk tassels; but dim as the light was it could not conceal those tell-tale stains.
There was blood on the feet of the golden idol!
All this I detected at a glance, but ere I had time to speak:
“You can't tell me that tale, Ma!” cried Harley. “I believe 'e was smokin' in 'ere when we knocked.”
The woman shrugged her fat shoulders.
“No, hab,” she repeated. “You two johnnies clear out. Let me sleep.”
But as I turned to her, beneath the nonchalant manner I could detect a great uneasiness; and in her dark eyes there was fear. That Harley also had seen the bloodstains I was well aware, and I did not doubt that furthermore he had noted the fact that the only mat which the room boasted had been placed before the joss—doubtless to hide other stains upon the boards.
As we stood so I presently became aware of a current of air passing across the room in the direction of the open door. It came from a window before which a tawdry red curtain had been draped. Either the window behind the curtain was wide open, which is alien to Chinese habits, or it was shattered. While I was wondering if Harley intended to investigate further:
“Come on, Jim!” he cried boisterously, and clapped me on the shoulder; “the old fox don't want to be disturbed.”
He turned to the woman:
“Tell him when he wakes up, Ma,” he said, “that if ever my pal Jim wants a pipe he's to 'ave one. Savvy? Jim's square.”
“Savvy,” replied the woman, and she was wholly unable to conceal her relief. “You clear out now, and I tell Kwen Lung when he come in.”
“Righto, Ma!” said Harley. “Kiss 'im on both cheeks for me, an' tell 'im I'll be 'ome again in a month.”
Grasping me by the arm he lurched up the steps, and the two of us presently found ourselves out in the street again. In the growing light the squalor of the district was more evident than ever, but the comparative freshness of the air was welcome after the reek of that room in which the golden idol sat leering, with blood at his feet.
“You saw, Harley?” I exclaimed excitedly. “You saw the stains? And I'm certain the window was broken!”
Harley nodded shortly.
“Back to Wade Street!” he said. “I allow myself fifteen minutes to shed Bill Jones, able seaman, and to become Paul Harley, of Chancery Lane.”
As we hurried along:
“What steps shall you take?” I asked.
“First step: search Kwen Lung's house from cellar to roof. Second step: entirely dependent upon result of first. The Chinese are subtle, Knox. If Kwen Lung has killed his daughter, it may require all the resources of Scotland Yard to prove it.”
“But———”
“There is no 'but' about it. Chinatown is the one district of London which possesses the property of swallowing people up.”
III “CAPTAIN DAN”
Half an hour later, as I sat in the inner room before the great dressing-table laboriously removing my disguise—for I was utterly incapable of metamorphosing myself like Harley in seven minutes—I heard a rapping at the outer door. I glanced nervously at my face in the mirror.
Comparatively little of “Jim” had yet been removed, for since time was precious to my friend I had acted as his dresser before setting to work to remove my own make-up. There were two entrances to the establishment, by one of which Paul Harley invariably entered and invariably went out, and from the other of which “Bill Jones” was sometimes seen to emerge, but never Paul Harley. That my friend had made good his retirement I knew, but, nevertheless, if I had to open the door of the outer room it must be as “Jim.”
Thinking it impolite not to do so, since the one who knocked might be aware that we had come in but not gone out again, I hastily readjusted that side of my moustache which I had begun to remove, replaced my cap and muffler, and carefully locking the door of the dressing-room, crossed the outer apartment and opened the door.
It was Harley's custom never to enter or leave these rooms except under the mantle of friendly night, but at so early an hour I confess I had not expected a visitor. Wondering whom I should find there I opened the door.
Standing on the landing was a fellow-lodger who permanently occupied the two top rooms of the house. Paul Harley had taken the trouble to investigate the man's past, for “Captain Dan,” the name by which he was known in the saloons and worse resorts which he frequented, was palpably a broken-down gentleman; a piece of flotsam caught in the yellow stream. Opium had been his downfall. How he lived I never knew, but Harley believed he had some small but settled income, sufficient to enable him to kill himself in comfort with the black pills.
As he stood there before me in the early morning light, I was aware of some subtle change in his appearance. It was fully six months since I had seen him last, but in some vague way he looked younger. Haggard he was, with an ugly cut showing on his temple, but not so lined as I remembered him. Some former man seemed to be struggling through the opium-scarred surface. His eyes were brighter, and I noted with surprise that he wore decent clothes and was clean shaved.
“Good morning, Jim,” he said; “you remember me, don't you?”
As he spoke I observed, too, that his manner had altered. He who had consorted with the sweepings af the doss-houses now addressed me as a courteous gentleman addresses an inferior—not haughtily or patronizingly, but with a note of conscious superiority and self-respect wholly unfamiliar. Almost it threw me off my guard, but remembering in the nick of time that I was still “Jim”:
“Of course I remember you, Cap'n,” I said. “Step inside.”
“Thanks,” he replied, and followed me into the little room.
I placed for him the arm-chair which our friend the fireman had so recently occupied, but:
“I won't sit down,” he said.
And now I observed that he was evidently in a condition of repressed excitement. Perhaps he saw the curiosity in my glance, for he suddenly rested both his hands on my shoulders, and:
“Yes, I have given up the dope, Jim,” he said—-“done with it for
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