Sometimes Kerry could hear him singing his weird crooning song, and twice Mrs. Sin had shrieked blasphemous execrations at him because of it.  But why should Sin Sin Wa sing?  What hope had he of escape?  In the case of any other criminal Kerry would have answered “None,” but the ease with which this one-eyed singing Chinaman had departed from his abode under the very noses of four detectives had shaken the Chief Inspector’s confidence in the efficiency of ordinary police methods where this Chinese conjurer was concerned.  A man who could convert an elaborate opium house into a dirty ruin in so short a time, too, was capable of other miraculous feats, and it would not have surprised Kerry to learn that Sin Sin Wa, at a moment’s notice, could disguise himself as a chest of tea, or pass invisible through solid walls.

For evidence that Seton Pasha or any of the men from Scotland Yard had penetrated to the secret of Sam Tuk’s cellar Kerry listened in vain.  What was about to happen he could not imagine, nor if his life was to be spared.  In the confession so curiously extorted from Mrs. Sin by her husband he perceived a clue to this and other mysteries, but strove in vain to disentangle it from the many maddening complexities of the case.

So he mused, wearily, listening to the moaning of his fellow captive, and wondering, since no sign of life came thence, why he imagined another presence in the stuffy room or the presence of someone or of some thing on the divan behind him.  And in upon these dreary musings broke an altercation between Mrs. Sin and her husband.

“Keep the blasted thing covered up!” she cried hoarsely.

“Tling-a-Ling wantchee catchee bleathee sometime,” crooned Sin Sin Wa.

“Hello, hello!” croaked the raven drowsily.  “Smartest—­smartest—­ smartest leg.”

“You catchee sleepee, Tling-a-Ling,” murmured the Chinaman.  “Mrs. Sin no likee you palaber, lo!”

“Burn it!” cried the woman, “burn the one-eyed horror!”

But when, carrying a lighted lantern, Sin Sin Wa presently came into the inner room, he smiled as imperturbably as ever, and was unmoved so far as external evidence showed.

Sin Sin Wa set the lantern upon a Moorish coffee-table which once had stood beside the divan in Mrs. Sin’s sanctum at the House of a Hundred Raptures.  A significant glance—­its significance an acute puzzle to the recipient—­he cast upon Chief Inspector Kerry.  His hands tucked in the loose sleeves of his blouse, he stood looking down at the woman who lay moaning on the bed; and: 

“Tchee, tchee,” he crooned softly, “you hate no catchee die, my beautiful.  You sniffee plenty too muchee ‘white snow,’ hoi, hoi!  Velly bad woman tly makee you catchee die, but Sin Sin Wa no hate got for killee chop.  Topside pidgin no good enough, lo!”

His thick, extraordinary long pigtail hanging down his back and gleaming in the rays of the lantern, he stood, head bowed, watching Rita Irvin.  Because of his position on the floor, Mrs. Irvin was invisible from Kerry’s point of view, but she continued to moan incessantly, and he knew that she must be unconscious of the Chinaman’s scrutiny.