Tales of Chinatown by Sax Rohmer (good books to read for 12 year olds TXT) 📕

As Grantham went out by the side door, Hassan, soft of foot, appeared. Crossing to the main door he opened it and walked down the narrow corridor beyond. Presently came the tap, tap, tap of a stick and a sound of muttered conversation in some place below.

Hassan reentered and went in through the curtained doorway to summon Agapoulos. Agapoulos was dressing and would not be disturbed. Hassan went back to those who waited, but ere long returned again chattering volubly to himself. Going behind the carven screen he rapped upon the door of Zahara's room, and she directed him to come in. To Zahara, Hassan was no more than a piece of furniture, and she thought as little of his intruding while she was in the midst of her toilet as another woman would have thought of the entrance of a maid.

“Two men,” reported Hassan, “who won't go away until they see somebody.”

“Whom do they want to see?” she inquired indifferently, adjusting the line of her eyebrow with an artistically pointed pencil.

“They say whoever belongs here.”

Zahara invariably spoke either French or English to natives, and if Hassan had addressed her in Arabic she would not have replied, although she spoke that language better than she spoke any other.

“What are they like? Not—police?”

“Foreign,” replied Hassan vaguely.

“English—American?”

“No, not American or English. Very black hair, dark skin.”

Zahara, a student of men, became aware of a mild interest. These swarthy visitors should prove an agreeable antidote to the poisonous calm of Harry Grantham. She was trying with all the strength of her strange, stifled soul not to think of Grantham, and she was incapable of recognizing the fact that she could think of nothing else and had thought of little else for a long time past. Even now it was because of him that she determined to interview the foreign visitors. The mystery of her emotions puzzled her more than ever.

She descended to a small, barely furnished room on the ground floor, close beside the door opening upon the street. It was lighted by one hanging lamp. On the divan which constituted the principal item of furniture a small man, slenderly built, was sitting. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, so broad of brim that it threw the whole of the upper part of his face into shadow. It was impossible to see his eyes. Beside him rested a heavy walking-stick.

As Zahara entered, a wonderful, gaily coloured figure, this man did not move in the slightest, but sat, chin on breast, his small, muscular, brown hands resting on his knees. His companion, however, a person of more massive build, elegantly dressed and handsome in a swarthy fashion, bowed gravely and removed his hat. Zahara liked his eyes, which were dark and very bold looking.

“M. Agapoulos is engaged,” she said, speaking in French. “What is it you wish to know?”

The man regarded her fixedly, and:

“Senorita,” he replied, “I will be frank with you.”

Save for his use of the word “senorita” he also spoke in French. Zahara drew her robe more closely about her and adopted her most stately manner.

“My name,” continued the other, “does not matter, but my business is to look into the affairs of other people, you understand?”

Zahara, who understood from this that the man was some kind of inquiry agent, opened her blue eyes very widely and at the same time shook her head.

“No,” she protested; “what do you mean?”

“A certain gentleman came here a short time ago, came into this house and must be here now. Don't be afraid. He has done nothing very dreadful,” he added reassuringly.

Zahara retreated a step, and a little wrinkle of disapproval appeared between her pencilled brows. She no longer liked the man's eyes, she decided. They were deceitful eyes. His companion had taken up the heavy stick and was restlessly tapping the floor.

“There is no one here,” said Zahara calmly, “except the people who live in the house.”

“He is here, he is here,” muttered the man seated on the divan.

The tapping of his stick had grown more rapid, but as he had spoken in Spanish, Zahara, who was ignorant of that language, had no idea what he had said.

“My friend,” continued the Spaniard, bowing slightly in the direction of the slender man who so persistently kept his broad-brimmed hat on his head, “chanced to hear the voice of this gentleman as he spoke to your porter on entering the door. And although the door was closed too soon