He felt a revulsion toward this servant of Ling Soo. The man seemed treacherous. Those half-closed, slitlike eyes returned Cleve’s glance.
If the impression of the servant was any forecast of the master, Ling Soo would be a man to watch.
The stooped Chinaman was gliding along a splendid hallway, with the two visitors traveling in his wake. He reached a pair of doors faced with hammered brass. Fantastic dragons writhed in bas-relief upon the panels.
The servant, as though performing a ceremony, bent low and touched his forehead with his fingertips. The doors swung inward of their own accord. The Americans walked through.
They were in a large, sumptuous reception room — large enough to be a meeting place. It was furnished in pure Chinese style. Oddly carved chairs were stationed about the room.
Cleve did not notice the decorations closely. He was interested in the figure at the end of the room. There, in a thronelike chair, rested a placid Chinaman.
The man’s face was like fine yellow parchment. He might have been fifty years old. He might have been a hundred. To estimate the antiquity of this blinking personage was impossible.
A living joss god, he sat in solemn state, while curls of strangely scented incense smoke rose languidly beside him from dragon-headed burners.
The face of this man — Ling Soo — was cryptic. It had a kindly expression, yet was Sphinxlike in its solemnity. The man’s eyes — almost gentle — blinked mildly through large-rimmed spectacles.
He was like a character in a play, Ling Soo; yet Cleve, as he approached him, realized that this was all a natural and subtle personality.