The Irishman chuckled in his light-hearted fashion. The invasion of the house appealed to his reckless spirit. His fighting temper made him hope, and his hope found swift expression.
“I’ll be sick to death if it’s white folk,” he said. “I’m yearning to hit up against some of the Euralian gang. Come right on, boss. I’m your man if you’re goin’ to break in on ’em. My guns are sure fixed.”
Their guns were utterly unneeded. As Wilder had surmised the place was completely deserted. Their intrusion had passed unchallenged by any living thing from the moment of entering the clearing. Now at last, having passed through a seemingly endless series of rooms and passages, they found themselves standing in a great central hall, beautiful in its simple display of rich oriental decorations.
The Irishman’s blue eyes were grinning as they surveyed the deserted splendour with which he was surrounded. He was incapable of appreciating the full significance of that upon which he gazed. He had been robbed of a forcible encounter, but he found some sort of compensation in the astounding thing they had discovered.
“Gee!” he cried. “Makes you feel you’ve quit the dam old north country, an’ hit up against some buzzy-headed Turk’s harem. Say, get a peek at them di-vans. An’ them curtain things. An’ them junk china pots. Holy—!”
He broke off and his grinning eyes sobered. A thought had flashed through his impulsive brain and held him silent.
Wilder was regarding him. All that Mike had only just sensed he had realised from the moment they had set foot in the house. The place was a miniature palace, something decaying, but the whole interior told of Eastern tastes, Eastern habits, Eastern life. The place had been furnished for oriental occupation. And realising this the name of one race alone had flashed into his mind. Japanese!
A surge of excitement stirred. He gazed about the great hall, with its silken hangings, heavily encumbered with the dust of years, with its low silken couches. Then the carved wooden screen, and the central fireplace elaborately built under its smoke funnel. He glanced at the bureau bookcase of modern fashioning, and with every detail added conviction came to him.
But desertion, or at least neglect, was stamped everywhere. There was dust on everything. There was a curious musty smell which could not be mistaken. But, somehow, for all that, there were signs, unmistakable signs that desertion was not absolute. There had been remains of food in the pantries. There were ashes in the cookstoves in the kitchen. There was water in various pitchers and buckets. No. Utter neglect, but not complete desertion. This was Wilder’s final verdict, gaining corroboration as he remembered the sounds of breaking bush which Red Mike’s ears had been so swift to detect.