“Beautiful!” muttered Kenyon, as he peered through the darkness. “A perfectly lovely place to meet a man with a grudge against one.”
But Faing Sen waddled stumpily along, with never a look to the right or the left. Once the light was extinguished suddenly, and the long Colt came out like a flash, while Kenyon pressed with tight-shut lips against the wall. But in a moment a match scratched crackingly, and he saw Faing Sen calmly rekindling the wick.
Then they moved forward once more. Kenyon counted four times that they passed through openings cut in the foundation walls; then they came to a low, heavy door, upon which the hag knocked.
After some whispering, this was opened and they found themselves in a small, square chamber with plastered walls, some mats upon a cemented floor, and a large oil lamp which hung from the ceiling. It was a shriveled old man who had admitted them. His face was small, bony, and wrinkled like an ape’s; he wore a pair of huge, horn-rimmed Chinese spectacles, and his toothless jaws were in constant motion. He and the hag consulted.
“Who, O daughter of Faing Lo, is this whom you have brought to the place of quietness?”
“A strange white devil whom Hong Yo much wants to see. And he is sharp like the wolf and does not trust women.”
She cackled with laughter and stole a quick look at the young American. The old man bared his purple gums in a horrid grin and nodded his shaven head many times.
“Sometimes men are that way,” mumbled he. “It is wisdom to be so. When a youth I had seven wives.”
They chuckled and grinned like a couple of gleeful ghouls; then the old woman took up the candle and made her way back by the way she had come. The old man turned to Kenyon and motioned for him to be seated upon a mat under the lamp. He bowed and smiled in what was meant for an affable manner, while he said in his native tongue:
“Dog of an unbeliever, thou who art too mean to excite the anger of even the least of the gods, sit there.” Then in English he added: “Velly nice ‘Melican’ young man! Hong Yo will come in glate hully up. Me Sing Wang; velly old and velly nice.”