"Yes—yes, I beg only a moment. I wish to show Miss Pauline the—"
"You mean Miss Marvin, do you not?" blazed Harry, striding to
Baskinelli's side and glaring down at him.
"I was interrupted. I had not finished my words. They are, at best, awkward, I beg—"
"You beg nothing," said Harry through clenched teeth. Then slowly, grimly:
"I want to tell you, you little leper, that if anything happens here tonight—it is going to happen to you."
He was so near to the musician that the others did not hear.
Baskinelli backed away. Pauline, with the swift, inexplicable, yet unerring instinct of woman, moved as if to seek the shelter of Harry's towering frame.
He did not see her. He had whirled at the sound of the opening of a door—a peculiar door set diagonally across a corner of the room behind the joss.
Through the yellow silk curtains that hid the entrance came two Chinamen as fantastically hideous as the embroidered dragons on the tapestry.
"Put those men out; they cannot come in here; they are full of opium," commanded Baskinelli.