rn being lifted out and set upon a
rough table near the stove, it became possible to view the apartment and
its occupants.

It was a small, low-ceiled place, having two doors, one opening upon the
street and the other upon a narrow, uncarpeted passage. The window was
boarded up. The ceiling had once been whitewashed and a few limp,
dark fragments of paper still adhering to the walls proved that some
forgotten decorator had exercised his art upon them in the past. A piece
of well-worn matting lay upon the floor, and there were two chairs, a
table, and a number of empty tea-chests in the room.

Upon one of the tea-chests placed beside the cupboard which had
contained the lantern a Chinaman was seated. His skin was of so light
a yellow color as to approximate to dirty white, and his face was
pock-marked from neck to crown. He wore long, snake-like moustaches,
which hung down below his chin. They grew from the extreme outer edges
of his upper lip, the centre of which, usually the most hirsute, was
hairless as the lip of an infant. He possessed the longest and thickest
pigtail which could possibly grow upon a human scalp, and his left eye
was permanently closed, so that a smile which adorned his extraordinary
countenance seemed to lack the sympathy of his surviving eye, which,
oblique, beady, held no mirth in its glittering depths.

The garments of the one-eyed Chinaman, who sat complacently smiling at
the visitors, consisted of a loose blouse, blue trousers tucked into
grey socks, and a pair of those native, thick-soled slippers which
suggest to a Western critic the acme of discomfort. A raven, black as
a bird of ebony, perched upon the Chinaman's shoulder, head a-tilt,
surveying the newcomers with a beady, glittering left eye which
strangely resembled the beady, glittering right eye of the Chinaman.
For, singular, uncanny circumstance, this was a one-eyed raven which sat
upon the shoulder of his one-eyed master!

Mollie Gretna uttered a stifled cry. "Oh!" she whispered. "I knew I was
going to scream!"

The eye of Sin Sin Wa turned momentarily in her direction, but otherwise
he did not stir a muscle.

"Are you ready for us, Sin?" asked Sir Lucien.

"All ready. Lola hate gotchee topside loom ready," replied the Chinaman
in a soft, crooning voice.

"Go ahead, Kilfane," directed Sir Lucien.

He glanced at Rita, who was standing very near him, surveying the evil
little room and its owner with ill-concealed disgust.