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

As I descended to the street the liftman regarded me in a curious and rather significant way. Finally, just as I was about to step out into the hall:

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, having evidently decided that I was a fit person to converse with, “but are you a friend of Mr. Adderley's?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, sir, I hope you will excuse me, but at times I have thought the gentleman was just a little bit queer, like.”

“You mean insane?” I asked sharply.

“Well, sir, I don't know, but he is always asking me if I can see shadows and things in the lift, and sometimes when he comes in late of a night he absolutely gives me the cold shivers, he does.”

I lingered, the box under my arm, reluctant to obtain confidences from a servant, but at the same time keenly interested. Thus encouraged:

“Then there's that lady friend of his who is always coming here,” the man continued. “She's haunted by shadows, too.” He paused, watching me narrowly.

“There's nothing better in this world than a clean conscience, sir,” he concluded.

Having returned to my room at the hotel, I set down the mysterious parcel, surveying it with much disfavour. That it contained the hand of the Mandarin Quong I could not doubt, the hand which had been amputated by Dr. Matheson. Its appearance in that dramatic fashion confirmed Matheson's idea that the mandarin's injury had been received at the hands of Adderley. What did all this portend, unless that the Mandarin Quong was dead? And if he were dead why was Adderley more afraid of him dead than he had been of him living?

I thought of the haunting shadow, I thought of the night at Katong, and I thought of Dr. Matheson's words when he had told us of his discovery of the Chinaman lying in the road that night outside Singapore.

I felt strangely disinclined to touch the relic, and it was only after some moments' hesitation that I undid the wrappings and raised the lid of the casket. Dusk was very near and I had not yet lighted the lamps; therefore at first I doubted the evidence of my senses. But having lighted up and peered long and anxiously into the sandal-wood lining of the casket I could doubt no longer.

The casket was empty!

It was like a conjuring trick. That the hand had been in the box when I had taken it up from Adderley's table I could have sworn before any jury. When and by whom it had been removed was a puzzle beyond my powers of unravelling. I stepped toward the telephone—and then remembered that Paul Harley was out of London. Vaguely wondering if Adderley had played me a particularly gruesome practical joke, I put the box on a sideboard and again contemplated the telephone doubtfully far a moment. It was in my mind to ring him up. Finally, taking all things into consideration, I determined that I would have nothing further to do with the man's unsavoury and mysterious affairs.

It was in vain, however, that I endeavoured to dismiss the matter from my mind; and throughout the evening, which I spent at a theatre with some American friends, I found myself constantly thinking of Adderley and the ivory casket, of the mandarin of Johore Bahru, and of the mystery of the shrivelled yellow hand.

I had been back in my room about half an hour, I suppose, and it was long past midnight, when I was startled by a ringing of my telephone bell. I took up the receiver, and:

“Knox! Knox!” came a choking cry.

“Yes, who is speaking?”

“It is I, Adderley. For God's sake come round to my place at once!”

His words were scarcely intelligible. Undoubtedly he was in the grip of intense emotion.

“What do you mean? What is the matter?”

“It is here, Knox, it is here! It is knocking on the door! Knocking! Knocking!”

“You have been drinking,” I said sternly. “Where is your man?”

“The cur has bolted. He bolted the moment he heard that damned knocking. I am all alone; I have no one else to appeal to.” There came a choking sound, then: “My God, Knox, it is getting in! I can see... the shadow on the blind...”

Convinced that Adderley's secret fears had driven him mad, I nevertheless felt called upon to attend to his urgent call, and without a moment's delay I hurried around to St. James's Street. The liftman was not on duty, the lower hall was in darkness, but I raced up the stairs and found to my astonishment that Adderley's door was wide open.