Revenge follows closely on the heels of a woman’s hate, and it is always deadly. One woman can hate another woman and still smile on her as if she was the dearest and best friend in the world, while she is waiting to let go her poisoned shaft. But she has no smiles for the man she hates any more than a cat will purr when it has just had an encounter with a dog.
Many a night when the sightseeing crowds were going through Chinatown’s streets the girl looked at her captor, and let her tapering hand slip inside the loose fold of her silk blouse until it caressed the jade handle of a long, thin and keen-edged blade. If he had known how near death he was he would have put his back against the wall and pulled out that big American revolver he always carried in his sash. But not knowing he went along with his head up in the clouds.
Because her heart was the heart of a woman she stopped feeling for the knife and set her mind on other things, such as any caged animal would under the circumstances. It was finally concentrated on the key—that slim piece of metal which he never let out of his keeping day or night. It gave her courage to live the life she was leading, and the thought spurred her on, for at last she had an object.
The long, lean, gray wolf of the prairies will follow its prey for days. Hungry and thirsty and tired it will trail like a shadow, never once deviating from the heels of its victim. Through snow, and rain, and sleet, and wind, surmounting all obstacles it will stay until the end, and the end to the wolf always means the feast.
Somewhere in the veins of this Chinese girl there must have been one drop of wolf blood, for once she set her mind upon the possession of that key she never wavered. It was before her night and day. She planned a thousand ways to get it, but never one was right. She watched him with furtive eyes, but for all the good it did, she might just as well have been looking out of the window of the dreary brick wall of the other building.
Once when he was sleeping she crept silently to his side and felt for the inner pocket of his blouse. Slight as was her touch he must have felt it, for he moved uneasily and she fluttered to the floor like a leaf from a falling tree. She tried again, but with the same result.
But out of what seems certain failure often comes success.
“I am hungry; get me something to eat quick,” he demanded when he awoke in the morning.
She started up and set about her work while he walked over to the table to get his water pipe. As she passed back and forth from cupboard to stove her glance fell upon the couch where he had slept, and for one brief moment it seemed as though she was going to fall. A sudden weakness came into her knees and it was with a great effort that she kept from crying out, for there in plain view was the key. In an instant she had it, and she had taken the first and easiest step to freedom.
He smoked, then ate, then smoked again, but this last time it wasn’t tobacco that soothed him—it was opium, and when at last his drowsy eyes closed she was by the door pushing the key into the socket. It turned the lock. Then she opened the door, passed out and locked it on the outside. She ran down the steps as if she was pursued; out on the street, when the thought of those white devils—those eaters of human flesh—halted her in terror. But no one spoke to her and she was reassured. Across the way she saw the sign of a temple, and she made for it as a shipwrecked sailor makes for land. She went up one flight of very dark and very dirty stairs and then saw a half-opened door. She peeped in. The room was empty, but at the back were the images of the gods she knew in China; before them was the shrine, and back of them was the sacred place where no one dared go.