“Suppose they are keener than you think?” she said.  “Are you sure you have not led them—­here?”

“The snail may not pursue the hawk,” murmured Sin Sin Wa; “nor the eye of the bat follow his flight.”

“Smartest leg,” remarked the raven.

“Yes, yes, my little friend,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, “very soon now you shall see the paddy-fields of Ho-Nan and watch the great Yellow River sweeping eastward to the sea.”

“Pah!” said Mrs. Sin.  “Much—­very much—­you care about the paddy-fields of Ho-Nan, and little, oh, very little, about the dollars and the traffic!  You have my papers?”

“All are complete.  With those dollars for which I care not, a man might buy the world—­if he had but enough of the dollars.  You are well known in Poplar as ‘Mrs. Jacobs,’ and your identity is easily established—­as ‘Mrs. Jacobs.’  You join the Mahratta at the Albert Dock.  I have bought you a post as stewardess.”

Mrs. Sin tossed her head.  “And Juan?”

“What can they prove against your Juan if you are missing?”

Mrs. Sin nodded towards the bed.

With slow and shuffling steps Sin Sin Wa approached.  He continued to smile, but his glittering eye held even less of mirth than usual.  Tucking his hands into his sleeves, he stood and looked down—­at Rita Irvin.

Her face had acquired a waxen quality, but some of her delicate coloring still lingered, lending her a ghastly and mask-like aspect.  Her nostrils and lips were blanched, however, and possessed a curiously pinched appearance.  It was impossible to detect the fact that she breathed, and her long lashes lay motionless upon her cheeks.

Sin Sin Wa studied her silently for some time, then: 

“Yes,” he murmured, “she is beautiful.  But women are like adder’s eggs.  He is a fool who warms them in his bosom.”  He turned his slow regard upon Mrs. Sin.  “You have stained your hair to look even as hers.  It was discreet, my wife.  But one is beautiful and many-shadowed like a copper vase, and the other is like a winter sunset on the poppy-fields.  You remind me of the angry red policeman, and I tremble.”

“Tremble as much as you like,” said Mrs. Sin scornfully, “but do something, think; don’t leave everything to me.  She screamed tonight—­ and someone heard her.  They are searching the river bank from door to door.”

“Lo!” murmured Sin Sin Wa, “even this I had learned, nor failed to heed the beating of a distant drum.  And why did she scream?”

“I was—­keeping her asleep; and the prick of the needle woke her.”

“Tchee, tchee,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, his voice sinking lower and lower and his eye nearly closing.  “But still she lives—­and is beautiful.”

“Beautiful!” mocked Mrs. Sin.  “A doll-woman, bloodless and nerveless!”

“So—­so.  Yet she, so bloodless and nerveless, unmasked the secret of Kazmah, and she, so bloodless and nerveless, struck down—­”