Knight stared again at the single end window through which the sun was shining. He stared from it to the face of the strange being who continued to regard him with the impersonal interest of a Buddha. A sense of baffled curiosity arose within him, and he made a nervous, protesting movement with one of his puffy hands.
“Who the devil are you, anyway?” he broke out. “Ah Wing! That doesn’t mean anything to me—as well say ‘Mr. X!’ You are not a Chinaman. What and who are you?”
Ah Wing continued to stare imperturbably down at his guest, but the ghost of a smile showed at the corners of his usually expressionless mouth.
“No,” he agreed, “I am not a Chinaman. And I am not a Caucasian. You see that, dressed as I am today, I look unmistakably Oriental. Dressed like a man of Hong Kong, on the other hand, I look American or English. That has been my curse, and perhaps my blessing: the mixing of two irreconcilable blood lines has made me an outcast. I have no place in the government of any country, and therefore I have organized a government of my own.
“I am the emperor, the president, the king, of an invisible empire. I rule by right of intellect and will, and my first failure will be my death warrant; for, judged even by the standards of a thief like you, Colonel Knight, I am an outlaw—one who is outside the protection of the laws of men!”
He laughed, a short, mirthless laugh. As he crossed toward the door he said over his shoulder, “Remember about the window. I shall be going out from time to time, but if you carry out my instructions to the letter, no harm can come to you even in this house of hidden dangers.”
Try as he would, Colonel Knight could find nothing wrong with his situation as it had been outlined to him by Ah Wing. He spent most of the first day in the room in which he had awakened. From the windows in one direction he could see a landscaped lawn and hillside, dotted with shrubbery and intersected by winding gravel paths.
From the rear window concerning which he had been so curiously warned by the master of the house, he looked out over a bit of lawn bordering a kitchen garden. Beyond the garden lay a marshy field, and in the distance he made out a canal along which an occasional motor boat chugged industriously. No, there was nothing wrong here—he could hardly have hoped for a more peaceful place in which to rest and grow strong.
But—there was an air of brooding watchfulness over the silent house. He heard an occasional padded footstep passing the door of his sitting-room. Once he looked out. At the farther side of an extensive conservatory the brown-faced servant who had brought him his breakfast was spraying some snaky-looking vines bearing huge orange-colored flowers. Colonel Knight closed the door. Something about the place—the quiet and the isolation, perhaps, were getting on his nerves.
The second day passed as the first, but toward noon of the third day Ah Wing knocked at his door and entered noiselessly. He was dressed in his Oriental garb, and again looked like a poorly-disguised white man.