mimicry, she snapped her fingers, once--again--and again under
Sin Sin Wa's nose. Then:

"Do you think, you blasted yellow ape, that you can frighten me?" she
screamed, a swift flame of wrath lighting up her dark face.

In a flash she had raised the kimona and had the stiletto in her hand.
But, even swifter than she, Sin Sin Wa sprang...

Once, twice she struck at him, and blood streamed from his left
shoulder. But the pigtail, like an executioner's rope, was about the
woman's throat. She uttered one smothered shriek, dropping the knife,
and then was silent...

Her dyed hair escaped from its fastenings and descended, a ruddy
torrent, about her as she writhed, silent, horrible, in the death-coil
of the pigtail.

Rigidly, at arms-length, he held her, moment after moment, immovable,
implacable; and when he read death in her empurpled face, a miraculous
thing happened.

The "blind" eye of Sin Sin Wa opened!

A husky rattle told of the end, and he dropped the woman's body from his
steely grip, disengaging the pigtail with a swift movement of his head.
Opening and closing his yellow fingers to restore circulation, he stood
looking down at her. He spat upon the floor at her feet.

Then, turning, he held out his arms and confronted Sam Tuk.

"Was it well done, bald father of wisdom?" he demanded hoarsely.

But old Sam Tuk seated lumpish in his chair like some grotesque idol
before whom a human sacrifice has been offered up, stirred not. The
length of loaded tubing with which he had struck Kerry lay beside him
where it had fallen from his nerveless hand. And the two oblique, beady
eyes of Sin Sin Wa, watching, grew dim. Step by step he approached the
old Chinaman, stooped, touched him, then knelt and laid his head upon
the thin knees.

"Old father," he murmured, "Old bald father who knew so much. Tonight
you know all."

For Sam Tuk was no more. At what moment he had died, whether in the
excitement of striking Kerry or later, no man could have presumed
to say, since, save by an occasional nod of his head, he had often
simulated death in life--he who was so old that he was known as "The
Father of Chinatown."

Standing upright, Sin Sin Wa looked from the dead man to the dead raven.
Then, tenderly raising poor Tling-a-Ling, he laid the great dishevelled
bird--a weird offering--upon the knees of Sam Tuk.

"Take him with you where you travel tonight, my father," he said. "He,
too, was faithful."

A cheap German cl