At this moment Kerry groaned loudly, tossed his arm out with a convulsive movement, and rolled over on to his side, drawing up his knees.
The eye of Sin Sin Wa gleamed strangely, but he did not move, and Sam Tûk who sat huddled in his chair where his feet almost touched the fallen man, stirred never a muscle. But Mrs. Sin, who still moved in a semi-phantasmagoric world, swiftly raised the hem of her kimona, affording a glimpse of a shapely silk-clad limb. From a sheath attached to her garter she drew a thin stilletto. Curiously feline, she crouched, as if about to spring.
Sin Sin Wa extended his hand, grasping his wife’s wrist.
“No, woman of indifferent intelligence,” he said in his queer sibilant language, “since when has murder gone unpunished in these British dominions?”
Mrs. Sin snatched her wrist from his grasp, falling back wild-eyed.
“Yellow ape! yellow ape!” she said hoarsely. “One more does not matter—now.”
“One more?” crooned Sin Sin Wa, glancing curiously at Kerry.
“They are here! We are trapped!”
“No, no,” said Sin Sin Wa. “He is a brave man; he comes alone.”
He paused, and then suddenly resumed in pidgin English: