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

a consultation, we found it necessary to amputate.”

“I should say he objected fiercely?”

“He was past objecting to anything, otherwise I have no doubt he would have objected furiously. The index finger of the injured hand had one of those preternaturally long nails, protected by an engraved golden case. However, at least I gave him a chance of life. He was under my care for some time, but I doubt if ever he was properly grateful. He had an iron constitution, though, and I finally allowed him to depart. One queer stipulation he had made—that the severed hand, with its golden nail-case, should be given to him when he left hospital. And this bargain I faithfully carried out.”

“Most extraordinary,” I said. “Did you ever learn the identity of the old gentleman?”

“He was very reticent, but I made a number of inquiries, and finally learned with absolute certainty, I think, that he was the Mandarin Quong Mi Su from Johore Bahru, a person of great repute among the Chinese there, and rather a big man in China. He was known locally as the Mandarin Quong.”

“Did you learn anything respecting how he had come by his injury, Doctor?”

Matheson smiled in his quiet fashion, and selected a fresh cigar with great deliberation. Then:

“I suppose it is scarcely a case of betraying a professional secret,” he said, “but during the time that my patient was recovering from the effects of the anaesthetic he unconsciously gave me several clues to the nature of the episode. Putting two and two together I gathered that someone, although the name of this person never once passed the lips of the mandarin, had abducted his favourite wife.”

“Good heavens! truly amazing,” I exclaimed.

“Is it not? How small a place the world is. My old mandarin had traced the abductor and presumably the girl to some house which I gathered to be in the neighbourhood of Katong. In an attempt to force an entrance—doubtless with the amiable purpose of slaying them both—he had been detected by the prime object of his hatred. In hurriedly descending from a window he had been attacked by some weapon, possibly a sword, and had only made good his escape in the condition in which I found him. How far he had proceeded I cannot say, but I should imagine that the house to which he had been was no great distance from the spot where I found him.”

“Comment is really superfluous,” remarked Burton. “He was looking for Adderley.”

“I agree,” said Jennings.

“And,” I added, “it was evidently after this episode that I had the privilege of visiting that interesting establishment.”

There was a short interval of silence; then:

“You probably retain no very clear impression of the shadow which you saw,” said Dr. Matheson, with great deliberation. “At the time perhaps you had less occasion particularly to study it. But are you satisfied that it was really caused by someone moving behind the curtain?”

I considered his question for a few moments.

“I am not,” I confessed. “Your story, Doctor, makes me wonder whether it may not have been due to something else.”

“What else can it have been due to?” exclaimed Jennings contemptuously—“unless to the champagne?”

“I won't quote Shakespeare,” said Dr. Matheson, smiling in his odd way. “The famous lines, though appropriate, are somewhat overworked. But I will quote Kipling: 'East is East, and West is West.'”