THE HAND OF THE MANDARIN QUONG, Page 2

  It was Adderley.

  He looked even more debauched than I remembered him, for whereas in Singapore he had had a tanned skin, now he looked unhealthily pallid and blotchy. He raised his hand, and:

  "Knox!" he cried, and ran across to greet me.

  His boisterous manner and a sort of coarse geniality which he possessed had made him popular with a certain set in former days, but I, who knew that this geniality was forced, and assumed to conceal a sort of appalling animalism, had never been deceived by it. Most people found Adderley out sooner or later, but I had detected the man's true nature from the very beginning. His eyes alone were danger signals for any amateur psychologist. However, I greeted him civilly enough:

  "Bless my soul, you are looking as fit as a fiddle!" he cried. "Where have you been, and what have you been doing since I saw you last?"

  "Nothing much," I replied, "beyond trying to settle down in a reformed world."

  "Reformed world!" echoed Adderley. "More like a ruined world it has seemed to me."

  He laughed loudly. That he had already explored several bottles was palpable.

  We were silent for a while, mentally weighing one another up, as it were. Then:

  "Are you living in town?" asked Adderley.

  "I am staying at the Carlton at the moment," I replied. "My chambers are in the hands of the decorators. It's awkward. Interferes with my work."

  "Work!" cried Adderley. "Work! It's a nasty word, Knox. Are you doing anything now?"

  "Nothing, until eight o'clock, when I have an appointment."

  "Come along to my place," he suggested, "and have a cup of tea, or a whisky and soda if you prefer it."

  Probably I should have refused, but even as he spoke I was mentally translated to the lounge of the Hotel de l'Europe, and prompted by a very human curiosity I determined to accept his invitation. I wondered if Fate had thrown an opportunity in my way of learning the end of the peculiar story which had been related on that occasion.

  I accompanied Adderley to his chambers, which were within a stone's throw of the spot where I had met him. That this gift for making himself unpopular with all and sundry, high and low, had not deserted him, was illustrated by the attitude of the liftman as we entered the hall of the chambers. He was barely civil to Adderley and even regarded myself with marked disfavour.

  We were admitted by Adderley's man, whom I had not seen before, but who was some kind of foreigner, I think a Portuguese. It was characteristic of Adderley. No Englishman would ever serve him for long, and there had been more than one man in his old Company who had openly avowed his intention of dealing with Adderley on the first available occasion.

  His chambers were ornately furnished; indeed, the room in which we sat more closely resembled a scene from an Oscar Asche production than a normal man's study. There was something unreal about it all. I have since thought that this unreality extended to the person of the man himself. Grossly material, he yet possessed an aura of mystery, mystery of an unsavoury sort. There was something furtive, secretive, about Adderley's entire mode of life.

  I had never felt at ease in his company, and now as I sat staring wonderingly at the strange and costly ornaments with which the room was overladen I bethought me of the object of my visit. How I should have brought the conversation back to our Singapore days I know not, but a suitable opening was presently offered by Adderley himself.

  "Do you ever see any of the old gang?" he inquired.

  "I was in Singapore about six months ago," I replied, "and I met some of them again."

  "What! Had they drifted back to the East after all?"

  "Two or three of them were taking what Dr. Matheson described as a Busman's Holiday."

  At mention of Dr. Matheson's name Adderley visibly started.

  "So you know Matheson," he murmured. "I didn't know you had ever met him."

  Plainly to hide his confusion he stood up, and crossing the room drew my attention to a rather fine silver bowl of early Persian ware. He was displaying its peculiar virtues and showing a certain acquaintance with his subject when he was interrupted. A door opened suddenly and a girl came in. Adderley put down the bowl and turned rapidly as I rose from my seat.

  It was the lady of Katong!

  I recognized her at once, although she wore a very up-to-date gown. While it did not suit her dark good looks so well as the native dress which she had worn at Singapore, yet it could not conceal the fact that in a barbaric way she was a very beautiful woman. On finding a visitor in the room she became covered with confusion.

  "Oh," she said, speaking in Hindustani. "Why did you not tell me there was someone here?"

  Adderley's reply was characteristically brutal.

  "Get out," he said. "You fool."

  I turned to go, for I was conscious of an intense desire to attack my host. But:

  "Don't go, Knox, don't go!" he cried. "I am sorry, I am damned sorry, I———"

  He paused, and looked at me in a queer sort of appealing way. The girl, her big eyes widely open, retreated again to the door, with curious lithe steps, characteristically Oriental. The door regained, she paused for a moment and extended one small hand in Adderley's direction.

  "I hate you," she said slowly, "hate you! Hate you!"

  She went out, quietly closing the door behind her. Adderley turned to me with an embarrassed laugh.

  "I know you think I am a brute and an outsider," he said, "and perhaps I am. Everybody says I am, so I suppose there must be something in it. But if ever a man paid for his mistakes I have paid for mine, Knox. Good God, I haven't a friend in the world."

  "You probably don't deserve one," I retorted.

  "I know I don't, and that's the tragedy of it," he replied. "You may not believe it, Knox; I don't expect anybody to believe me; but for more than a year I have been walking on the edge of Hell. Do you know where I have been since I saw you last?"

  I shook my head in answer.

  "I have been half round the world, Knox, trying to find peace."

  "You don't know where to look for it," I said.

  "If only you knew," he whispered. "If only you knew," and sank down upon the settee, ruffling his hair with his hands and looking the picture of haggard misery. Seeing that I was still set upon departure:

  "Hold on a bit, Knox," he implored. "Don't go yet. There is something I want to ask you, something very important."

  He crossed to a sideboard and mixed himself a stiff whisky-and- soda. He asked me to join him, but I refused.

  "Won't you sit down again?"

  I shook my head.

  "You came to my place at Katong once," he began abruptly. "I was damned drunk, I admit it. But something happened, do you remember?"

  I nodded.

  "This is what I want to ask you: Did you, or did you not, see that shadow?"

  I stared him hard in the face.

  "I remember the episode to which you refer," I replied. "I certainly saw a shadow."

  "But what sort of shadow?"

  "To me it seemed an indefinite, shapeless thing, as though caused by someone moving behind the curtain."

  "It didn't look to you like—the shadow of a hand?"

  "It might have been, but I could not be positive."

  Adderley groaned.

  "Knox," he said, "money is a curse. It has been a curse to me. If I have had my fun, God knows I have paid for it."

  "Your idea of fun is probably a peculiar one," I said dryly.

  Let me confess that I was only suffering the man's society because of an intense curiosity which now possessed me on learning that the lady of Katong was still in Adderley's company.

  Whether my repugnance for his society would have enabled me to remain any longer I cannot say. But as if Fate had deliberately planned that I should become a witness of the concluding phases of this secret drama, we were now interrupted a second time, and again in a dramatic fashion.

  Adderley's nondescript valet came in with letters and a rather large brow
n paper parcel sealed and fastened with great care.

  As the man went out:

  "Surely that is from Singapore," muttered Adderley, taking up the parcel.

  He seemed to become temporarily oblivious of my presence, and his face grew even more haggard as he studied the writing upon the wrapper. With unsteady fingers he untied it, and I lingered, watching curiously. Presently out from the wrappings he took a very beautiful casket of ebony and ivory, cunningly carved and standing upon four claw-like ivory legs.

  "What the devil's this?" he muttered.

  He opened the box, which was lined with sandal-wood, and thereupon started back with a great cry, recoiling from the casket as though it had contained an adder. My former sentiments forgotten, I stepped forward and peered into the interior. Then I, in turn, recoiled.

  In the box lay a shrivelled yellow hand—with long tapering and well-manicured nails—neatly severed at the wrist!

  The nail of the index finger was enclosed in a tiny, delicately fashioned case of gold, upon which were engraved a number of Chinese characters.

  Adderley sank down again upon the settee.

  "My God!" he whispered, "his hand! His hand! He has sent me his hand!"

  He began laughing. Whereupon, since I could see that the man was practically hysterical because of his mysterious fears:

  "Stop that," I said sharply. "Pull yourself together, Adderley. What the deuce is the matter with you?"

  "Take it away!" he moaned, "take it away. Take the accursed thing away!"

  "I admit it is an unpleasant gift to send to anybody," I said, "but probably you know more about it than I do."

  "Take it away," he repeated. "Take it away, for God's sake, take it away, Knox!"

  He was quite beyond reason, and therefore:

  "Very well," I said, and wrapped the casket in the brown paper in which it had come. "What do you want me to do with it?"

  "Throw it in the river," he answered. "Burn it. Do anything you like with it, but take it out of my sight!"

  III. THE GOLD-CASED NAIL

  As I descended to the street the liftman regarded me in a curious and rather significant way. Finally, just as I was about to step out into the hall:

  "Excuse me, sir," he said, having evidently decided that I was a fit person to converse with, "but are you a friend of Mr. Adderley's?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "Well, sir, I hope you will excuse me, but at times I have thought the gentleman was just a little bit queer, like."

  "You mean insane?" I asked sharply.

  "Well, sir, I don't know, but he is always asking me if I can see shadows and things in the lift, and sometimes when he conies in late of a night he absolutely gives me the cold shivers, he does."

  I lingered, the box under my arm, reluctant to obtain confidences from a servant, but at the same time keenly interested. Thus encouraged:

  "Then there's that lady friend of his who is always coming here," the man continued. "She's haunted by shadows, too." He paused, watching me narrowly.

  "There's nothing better in this world than a clean conscience, sir," he concluded.

  *****

  Having returned to my room at the hotel, I set down the mysterious parcel, surveying it with much disfavour. That it contained the hand of the Mandarin Quong I could not doubt, the hand which had been amputated by Dr. Matheson. Its appearance in that dramatic fashion confirmed Matheson's idea that the mandarin's injury had been received at the hands of Adderley. What did all this portend, unless that the Mandarin Quong was dead? And if he were dead why was Adderley more afraid of him dead than he had been of him living?

  I thought of the haunting shadow, I thought of the night at Katong, and I thought of Dr. Matheson's words when he had told us of his discovery of the Chinaman lying in the road that night outside Singapore.

  I felt strangely disinclined to touch the relic, and it was only after some moments' hesitation that I undid the wrappings and raised the lid of the casket. Dusk was very near and I had not yet lighted the lamps; therefore at first I doubted the evidence of my senses. But having lighted up and peered long and anxiously into the sandal-wood lining of the casket I could doubt no longer.

  The casket was empty!

  It was like a conjuring trick. That the hand had been in the box when I had taken it up from Adderley's table I could have sworn before any jury. When and by whom it had been removed was a puzzle beyond my powers of unravelling. I stepped toward the telephone—and then remembered that Paul Harley was out of London. Vaguely wondering if Adderley had played me a particularly gruesome practical joke, I put the box on a sideboard and again contemplated the telephone doubtfully far a moment. It was in my mind to ring him up. Finally, taking all things into consideration, I determined that I would have nothing further to do with the man's unsavoury and mysterious affairs.

  It was in vain, however, that I endeavoured to dismiss the matter from my mind; and throughout the evening, which I spent at a theatre with some American friends, I found myself constantly thinking of Adderley and the ivory casket, of the mandarin of Johore Bahru, and of the mystery of the shrivelled yellow hand.

  I had been back in my room about half an hour, I suppose, and it was long past midnight, when I was startled by a ringing of my telephone bell. I took up the receiver, and:

  "Knox! Knox!" came a choking cry.

  "Yes, who is speaking?"

  "It is I, Adderley. For God's sake come round to my place at once!"

  His words were scarcely intelligible. Undoubtedly he was in the grip of intense emotion.

  "What do you mean? What is the matter?"

  "It is here, Knox, it is here! It is knocking on the door! Knocking! Knocking!"

  "You have been drinking," I said sternly. "Where is your man?"

  "The cur has bolted. He bolted the moment he heard that damned knocking. I am all alone; I have no one else to appeal to." There came a choking sound, then: "My God, Knox, it is getting in! I can see. . . the shadow on the blind. . ."

  Convinced that Adderley's secret fears had driven him mad, I nevertheless felt called upon to attend to his urgent call, and without a moment's delay I hurried around to St. James's Street. The liftman was not on duty, the lower hall was in darkness, but I raced up the stairs and found to my astonishment that Adderley's door was wide open.

  "Adderley!" I cried. "Adderley!"

  There was no reply, and without further ceremony I entered and searched the chambers. They were empty. Deeply mystified, I was about to go out again when there came a ring at the door-bell. I walked to the door and a policeman was standing upon the landing.

  "Good evening, sir," he said, and then paused, staring at me curiously.

  "Good evening, constable," I replied.

  "You are not the gentleman who ran out awhile ago," he said, a note of suspicion coming into his voice.

  I handed him my card and explained what had occurred, then:

  "It must have been Mr. Adderley I saw," muttered the constable.

  "You saw—when?"

  "Just before you arrived, sir. He came racing out into St. James's Street and dashed off like a madman."

  "In which direction was he going?"

  "Toward Pall Mall."

  *****

  The neighbourhood was practically deserted at that hour. But from the guard on duty before the palace we obtained our first evidence of Adderley's movements. He had raced by some five minutes before, frantically looking back over his shoulder and behaving like a man flying for his life. No one else had seen him. No one else ever did see him alive. At two o'clock there was no news, but I had informed Scotland Yard and official inquiries had been set afoot.

  Nothing further came to light that night, but as all readers of the daily press will remember, Adderley's body was taken out of the pond in St. James's Park on the following day. Death was due to drowning, but his throat was greatly discoloured as though it had been clutched in a fierce grip.

  It was I who identified
the body, and as many people will know, in spite of the closest inquiries, the mystery of Adderley's death has not been properly cleared up to this day. The identity of the lady who visited him at his chambers was never discovered. She completely disappeared.

  The ebony and ivory casket lies on my table at this present moment, visible evidence of an invisible menace from which Adderley had fled around the world.

  Doubtless the truth will never be known now. A significant discovery, however, was made some days after the recovery of Adderley's body.

  From the bottom of the pond in St. James's Park a patient Scotland Yard official brought up the gold nail-case with its mysterious engravings—and it contained, torn at the root, the incredibly long finger-nail of the Mandarin Quong!