The Destroying Angel

by Louis Joseph Vance

And all because he had an eye and a weakness for fair women, a lonely path to tread through life, and a gregarious tendency, a humorous faculty and a keen appreciation of a mind responsive to it....

And all in the face of the fact that he was not at liberty to make love....

And all this problem the result of a single day of propinquity!

He went to bed, finally, far less content with himself than with the crazy issue of his handicraft. The latter might possibly serve its purpose; but Hugh Whitaker seemed a hopeless sort of a proposition, not in the least amenable to the admonitions of common sense. If he were, indeed, he would have already been planning an abrupt escape to Town. As matters stood with him, he knew he had not the least intention of doing anything one-half so sensible.

But in spite of his half-hearted perturbation and dissatisfaction, the weariness of a long, full day was so heavy upon him that he went to sleep almost before Sum Fat had finished making him comfortable.

Extinguishing the candle, the Chinaman, moving with the silent assurance of a cat in the dark, closed and latched the shutters, then sat down just outside the living-room door, to wait and watch, sleeplessly alert.

An hour passed in silence, and another, and yet another: Sum Fat sat moveless in the shadow, which blended so perfectly with his dark blue-silk garments as to render him almost indistinguishable: a figure as patient and imperturbable as any bland, stout, graven god of his religion. Slowly the moonlight shifted over the floor, lengthened until it almost touched the toe of one of his felt-soled shoes, and imperceptibly withdrew. The wind had fallen, and the night was very quiet; few sounds disturbed the stillness, and those inconsiderable: the steady respiration of the sleeping man; such faint, stealthy creakings as seemingly infest every human habitation through the night; the dull lisp and murmur of the tide groping its way along the shore; the muted grumble of the distant surf; hushed whisperings of leaves disturbed by wandering airs.

Sum Fat heard all and held impassive. But in time there fell upon his ears another sound, to which he stirred, if imperceptibly—drawing himself together, tensing and flexing his tired muscles while his eyes shifted quickly from one quarter to another of the darkened living-room and the still more dark bedchamber.

And yet, apparently all that had aroused him was the drowsy whistle of a whippoorwill.

Then, with no other presage, a shadow flitted past one of the side windows, and in another reappeared more substantially on the veranda. Sum Fat grew altogether tense, his gaze fixed and exclusively focussed upon that apparition.