you, ape-man, for good! Yes! I killed Lucy, I killed him! He belonged
to me--until that pink and white thing took him away. I am glad I killed
him. If I cannot have him neither can she. But I was mad all the same."

She glanced down at Kerry, and:

"Tie him up," she directed, "and send him to sleep. And understand, Sin,
we've shared out for the last time--You go your way and I go mine. No
stinking Yellow River for me. New York is good enough until it's safe to
go to Buenos Ayres."

"Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres," croaked the raven from his wicker cage,
which was set upon the counter.

Sin Sin Wa regarded him smilingly.

"Yes, yes, my little friend," he crooned in Chinese, while Tling-a-Ling
rattled ghostly castanets. "In Ho-Nan they will say that you are a
devil and I am a wizard. That which is unknown is always thought to be
magical, my Tling-a-Ling."

Mrs. Sin, who was rapidly throwing off the effects of opium and
recovering her normal self-confident personality, glanced at her husband
scornfully.

"Tell me," she said, "what has happened? How did he come here?"

"Blinga filly doggy," murmured Sin Sin Wa. "Knockee Ah Fung on him head
and comee down here, lo. Ah Fung allee lightee now--topside. Chasee
filly doggy. Allee velly proper. No bhobbery."

"Talk less and act more," said Mrs. Sin. "Tie him up, and if you must
talk, talk Chinese. Tie him up."

She pointed to Kerry. Sin Sin Wa tucked his hands into his sleeves and
shuffled towards the masked door communicating with the inner room.

"Only by intelligent speech are we distinguished from the other
animals," he murmured in Chinese.

Entering the inner room, he began to extricate a long piece of thin rope
from amid a tangle of other materials with which it was complicated.
Mrs. Sin stood looking down at the fallen man. Neither Kerry nor Sam Tuk
gave the slightest evidence of life. And as Sin Sin Wa disentangled yard
upon yard of rope from the bundle on the floor by the bed where Rita
Irvin lay in her long troubled sleep, he crooned a queer song. It was in
the Ho-Nan dialect and intelligible to himself alone.

"Shoa, the evil woman (he chanted), the woman of
many strange loves....
Shoa, the ghoul....
Lo, the Yellow River leaps forth from the nostrils
of the mountain god....
Shoa, the betrayer of men....
Blood is on her brow.
Lo, the betrayer is betrayed. Death sits at her elbow.
See, the Yellow River bears a corpse