ted the
suffering soul of savagery repressed for so long. After a quick glance
over his shoulder, which hunters of big game tell us no lion or tiger
omits to give before charging home, Ricardo charged, head down, straight
at the curtain. The stuff, tossed up violently by his rush, settled
itself with a slow, floating descent into vertical folds, motionless,
without a shudder even, in the still, warm air.

CHAPTER TWO

The clock--which once upon a time had measured the hours of philosophic
meditation--could not have ticked away more than five seconds when Wang
materialized within the living-room. His concern primarily was with the
delayed breakfast, but at once his slanting eyes became immovably fixed
upon the unstirring curtain. For it was behind it that he had located
the strange, deadened scuffling sounds which filled the empty room. The
slanting eyes of his race could not achieve a round, amazed stare, but
they remained still, dead still, and his impassive yellow face grew all
at once careworn and lean with the sudden strain of intense, doubtful,
frightened watchfulness. Contrary impulses swayed his body, rooted to
the floor-mats. He even went so far as to extend his hand towards the
curtain. He could not reach it, and he didn't make the necessary step
forward.

The mysterious struggle was going on with confused thuds of bare feet,
in a mute wrestling match, no human sound, hiss, groan, murmur, or
exclamation coming through the curtain. A chair fell over, not with a
crash but lightly, as if just grazed, and a faint metallic ring of the
tin bath succeeded. Finally the tense silence, as of two adversaries
locked in a deadly grip, was ended by the heavy, dull thump of a soft
body flung against the inner partition of planks. It seemed to shake
the whole bungalow. By that time, walking backward, his eyes, his
very throat, strained with fearful excitement, his extended arm still
pointing at the curtain, Wang had disappeared through the back door.
Once out in the compound, he bolted round the end of the house. Emerging
innocently between the two bungalows he lingered and lounged in the
open, where anybody issuing from any of the dwellings was bound to see
him--a self-possessed Chinaman idling there, with nothing but perhaps an
unserved breakfast on his mind.

It was at this time that Wang made up his mind to give up all connection
with Number One, a man not only disarmed but already half vanquished.
Till that m