The Chinaman stood aside, and the Young Doctor stooped, felt the pulse, touched the heart and lifted up the head and looked into Li Choo’s sightless eyes.
“He is dead,” he said, and he came back again to the Coroner and the others. “Let’s get out of this,” he added. “He is beyond our reach now. No need for an inquest here. He has killed himself.” Then he caught Orlando’s hand in a warm grip.
As they left the chamber, the kinsman of Li Choo was gently laying the body down upon the bamboo mat. At the doorway the other son of the Duke Ki was still monotonously calling back the departed spirit.
The inquest on Joel Mazarine was ended presently, and Nolan Doyle and the Young Doctor set out to tell Louise that a “low man,” once her husband, had paid a high price for all that he had bought of the fruits of life out of due season.
CHAPTER XVIII. YOUTH HAS ITS WAY
“Aw, Doctor dear, there’s manny that’s less use in the wurruld than Chinamen, and I’d like to see more o’ them here-away,” remarked Patsy Kernaghan to the Young Doctor in the springtime of another year. “Stren’th of mind is all right, but stren’th of fingers is better still.”
“You’re a bloodthirsty pagan, Patsy,” returned the Young Doctor.
“Hell to me sowl, then, didn’t Li Choo pull things straight? I’m not much of a murd’ring man meself—I haven’t the stren’th with me fingers, but there’s manny a time I’d like to do what Li Choo done.... Shure, I don’t want to be sp’akin’ ill of the dead, but look at it now. There was ould Mazarine, breakin’ the poor child’s heart, as fine a fella as iver trod the wurruld achin’ for her, and his life bein’ spoilt by the goin’s on at Tralee. Then in steps the Chinky and with stren’th of mind and stren’th of fingers puts things right.”
“No, no, Patsy, you’ve got bad logic and worse morals in your head. As you say, things were put right, but trouble enough came of it.”