“I stuck a few things in my pockets to make it look like robbery. Then I started to cut up the body to pack it in a sack and bury it or drop it off the cliff. I weakened and dropped it outside the door and ran. It was dark but I ran for miles around over the sandhills and it seemed she was always right after me. It was awful.
“I got my wits back later. I saw the police and the papers were after the son. I felt easier. There was a big shipment coming in on the Hongkong—$40,000 all told. No one would come out here and take a chance landing it. Afraid the police were watching the house. I volunteered. I figured if any one saw me nosing around I could give them the inspector talk. I hung around last night but the ship was held away out on account of the storm. I had to come out—again—to-night—that’s all, boys—”
The door flung open and through it came Phillips and Castle. McCluskey and Roberts followed. The train had stopped unnoticed, so tense was the interest within the hut in the dying man’s recital.
“Quick, take him up,” said Lanagan. They stooped to lift him.
“Here, what’s all this?” It was Phillips.
“Stand aside!” came Marshall’s blunt command. It was obeyed. Enright’s eyes had closed. He was made as comfortable as possible with cushions on the train, as that ancient rattle-trap strained and tugged to make the greatest speed of its history. Enright’s eyes did not open on the trip in.
They never opened again.
Lanagan filled in for me the details of the story. The bit of red paper, crinkled inside the paper with the Chinese characters, meant but one thing: opium. Here was where his wide acquaintance with the underworld and Chinatown, the customs service and the water front, aided him.
Puzzling over the presence of an opium wrapping in that isolated hut Lanagan had seated himself upon the salt grass hummock to smoke. Into his field of vision steamed the Pacific Mail liner—and his “hunch” came with it. His examination of the shore followed to locate a cove that would give a safe place to float the opium to land from a launch or white hall boat by day or night. Such a cove he had found, where the waters for a sixteenth of a mile deposited their driftwood. His theory was complete. The hut was a smuggler’s runway; the woman was in the ring and for a breach of faith had been slain, an attempt being made to have it appear she was slain by robbers.