Slow rage filled Ssu Yin—a calm cruelty. Here lay his broken Lotus Bud; a thief, an accomplice, a wanton, or a viperous traitor to his heart’s homage—what did it matter? And here was his “Elder Brother,” his benefactor, the white man—dog, despoiler—who would have robbed him of all.
Well, a simple solution—the fangs of his serpent, slavering for their prey....
But the poise of a hundred philosophical generations began to quiet his thick pulses—the restraints of a race that has schooled itself to play the game of life by meticulous rule. A debt was his—he must pay it.
Ssu Yin realized, suddenly, that an abrupt movement, the slightest translation of Allister’s rigid pose into activity, would bring to him the darting caress of oblivion.
Cautiously, Ssu Yin approached, uttering a curious sound that always, until now, had brought an answering acquiescence into the eyes of the serpent. He came closer, at last laying his parchment-skinned hand upon the vibrant coil, seeking a grip that would keep him safe from a scratch of fangs.
But something was amiss with Ssu Yin’s mastery over the snake. He recognized this in a thrill of terror at the moment when he knew it was forever too late. He would have explained, had there been time for such inquiry, that it was jealousy in the soul of the transmigrated woman who had been his wife—jealousy of the Crimson Lotus. This it was, he would have said, that animated the serpent’s yellow needles of death.
The poison gripped him, but a sense of unfinished justice gave him strength while he battered the cringing reptile into an amorphous, hideous mass.
With Allister, dazed, half understanding, he still had the business of words. A courteous smile crackled the parchment of his face as he took from his sleeve an envelope and held it out to Allister.
“Three lives for two,” he murmured, “and the debt is more than paid. May the August Elder Brother’s voyage into the friendly bosom of the West be as pleasant as the repose of Buddha.”
Allister’s wondering fingers disclosed within the envelope a steamer ticket to Seattle. He put out a protesting hand, began self-accusing phrases, but the seller of opium was beyond argument. Ssu Yin was on his knees murmuring before the shelf of the gods: