Gorgeously dressed women appeared upon the stage. Darley explained that they were impersonators. For years there had been a taboo on actresses in China, and that custom was in force here.
Tragic gesticulations and chanting singsong voices became monotonous. Cleve looked over the sea of faces in the theater. He could just distinguish solemn yellow countenances.
He wondered if Ling Soo had fared here tonight. Probably not. Lost in his fantastic dream of a Yellow Empire, the leader of the Wu-Fan would probably have no time for theaters.
The body of the theater was bathed in gloom. The side aisles by the walls were black. All eyes were toward the stage. Hence neither Cleve nor any one else in the vast throng observed a motion there.
A tall, black figure was gliding along the wall. It reached the curtain that marked the entrance to the side boxes, It moved through.
A phantomlike shape stood beside the individual entrance to Box C. Then it passed the last curtain, and stood in the box itself.
Box C was a deep recess, with a high, solid railing. Its black interior was impenetrable while the performance was going on. The black form stationed itself in a corner of the box, and waited there, motionless.
The Shadow was in the Mukden Theater — in the very place that Stephen Laird had tried to designate!
Shrouded in blackness, the invisible man of the darkness was prepared for all who might come this way. A silent, unseen form, he was seeking hidden facts.
What did this visit presage? Only The Shadow knew!