There is a doctrine in one of the faiths that man is born in original sin, and that unless he is cleansed by sacrament he is until the end of time the property of the evil one. There is an article of dogma in the same faith that one may become possessed of demons. If this is true, then never a sacrament was said over Dreghorn, nor ever was he confronted with the exorcist's mystic and terrible formula. Hell seemed to have employed him all his life and to have made him its brain and hand. The first of the story was bad enough, with its record of treachery, of gainful crimes in the dark lands, of murders concealed and never explained. Even Li Sin's worldly-wise mind was shocked by Hong Kop's report. There was the incident in the Belgian Congo when Dreghorn, allied with a corrupt Belgian official, burned a village with all the inhabitants, shooting down those who tried to escape from the flames. They had not produced enough ivory.
"Even madness will not explain that!" Li Sin shook his head.
There was the incident during the period of the Boxer chaos in Yuen-Lau, when Dreghorn and an associate had tortured an old mandarin, hoping to make him unearth treasure. They had given him the torture of the bowstring, and the water torture, and the torture of red metal at his feet.
"And he an old man," Li Sin thought, "four-score and five!"
There was the incident in Mombasaland when the fiendish natives had captured a lone hunter of ivory, had crucified him on the ground, smeared with honey for the ants, delirious under the smashing sun. Dreghorn could have rescued him, for he was well armed and had a large party of natives. But he contented himself with stealing the man's ivory and leaving him there to die.
"That is one thing for which there is no punishment," Li Sin thought. "No punishment is equal in horror."
Li Sin read another incident, and he read no farther. It was the story of Marie Tirlemont, called _Flancs-de-neige_, whom Dreghorn had brought with him from Maxim's in Paris, down to the Congo. She had ceased to amuse Dreghorn a hundred miles south of Leopoldville, and he had abandoned her alone, in a village of black beasts.
And now Dreghorn, Li Sin mused, wanted to marry. He wanted to marry this fair little American girl, pure and delicate as the petal of a primrose, light and shimmering and gay as iridescence on water--to make a home with her, to have her bear children.
He called for Hong Kop.
"What is the profit of crime, Hong Kop?" he asked.
The Cantonese thought for a moment.
"The profit of crime is death," he answered.
"Death is a sweet and gentle thing, Hong Kop," his master mused. "It comes to the old like a gentle and sweet-scented sleep. It comes to the suffering like a grateful anodyne. On others it falls so quickly and surely that there is no pain. It is not the profit of crime, Hong Kop, except for those who wish much to live."
He mused again, joining his finger-tips together and knitting his brows.
"Unless, instead of being a sweet sleep, it is a nightmare, Hong Kop! Unless, instead of being an anodyne, it is a horror! Unless it comes accompanied by a huge and monstrous fear, a terror that clutches the heartstrings, a fear that kills!"
He was going away on the morrow, Dreghorn said. He would be away for six months, and then he would return, and they would be married. He wanted to buy her something before he left, a ring or a bracelet.
"But she wanted to buy it here," he sneered at Li Sin.
"I wanted to buy it here," she replied warmly, "because here I can get the most beautiful things in the world."
"If you care for that yellow junk," Dreghorn laughed shortly.
"Roderick!" she protested quickly. She was pained through and through. Li Sin smiled reassuringly at her. But Dreghorn wandered on.
"Anything you want," he told Irene; "anything that pleases you."
As he watched him, Li Sin became convinced that the man was in love, head over heels in, as a boy might be. The hunter became garrulous, under his feelings, as under the influence of a drug.
"She spoke of getting the house at Huntingdon decorated in some Oriental style," Dreghorn laughed. "She can have it if she wants it. But I don't see why she could n't have it done in honest white style."
Li Sin smiled blandly as ever. He might have been receiving a compliment.
"You don't seem to have a high opinion of Asia or Africa," he remarked casually.
"I have no use for any color except white," Dreghorn answered brutally. "Black, yellow, brown, or red."
"It is a harsh thing," Li Sin reproved him. Irene Johns stood by, pale, nervous, and hurt. "It is a grievous thing to wound the body, but it is a more grievous thing to wound the soul. And to wound it unjustly is more grievous still."
"I deal in facts," Dreghorn laughed.
"May I show you a fact?" Li Sin went on. "You have been in China, and if I mistake not, you read Chinese."
"Among my many accomplishments," Dreghorn sneered, "is the reading of Chinese."
Irene looked at him with a sort of fearful agony in her eyes. She had never seen his brutality creep out before, and she was shocked at the sight of him lolling across the counter and striving his utmost to hurt the smiling Manchu. Li Sin took up a book from behind him, a broad, thin book, the stiff parchment pages of which were edged with gold. He opened it carefully. The leaves had the stiffness of steel.
"These are the verses of Ling Tai Fu, of Tientsin," the Manchu said, "a poet of the last century who had traveled into Russia. He complains bitterly of the same prejudice, and he deals with facts, which you deal with. Here is his poem 'The Return.' Perhaps you will translate it."
Dreghorn looked down the page smilingly.
"They have laughed at me, they of the North--me, of the race of Chang! Because of my skin like an autumn leaf, because of my slitted eyes, Because they were white as the sun, they said, white as light! And yet--whiter than white is the leper.
White is the hibiscus tree with fluttering blossoms, white as they! But whiter than it is the snow which numbs its roots in the ground! White are the men of the North as the sun, white as light! And yet--whiter than white is the leper."
Dreghorn laughed easily. Irene shivered with a shock of horror. Li Sin smiled.
"Those are facts," the Manchu said.
"Is there any more of this?" the hunter asked. He turned over the leaf.
"No more," Li Sin answered. "I should have warned you about those leaves. You have cut your hand."
Dreghorn looked at his left thumb. The edge of the book-leaf had sheared into it as sharp and as painlessly as the edge of a razor. A few minute drops of blood showed on the skin.
"You had better have a little peroxide," Li Sin suggested.
"I 'm not a child," Dreghorn laughed. "It is n't anything. Come on, Irene."
They left the store together, and, as was his wont with favored customers, Li Sin saw them to the door. The girl was flushed deep with mortification, and she shot the Manchu a mute appeal of apology. Dreghorn smiled again.
"_Au revoir_, my poetical friend," he laughed.
"Good-by!" answered Li Sin, gravely.
Li Sin saw little of Irene Johns for the next six weeks. Once she came into the store, but she was nervous and flushed, as though she thought the Manchu would hold against her the insults Dreghorn had offered him. But he took pains to show her that he and she were as close friends as ever. She was silently grateful, but still nervous.
"Mr. Dreghorn will be back in six months?" the Manchu said.
"In six months," she answered listlessly. "He is gone to Abyssinia."
"And you will be married soon after?"
"Immediately he comes back, he insists," she said.
The glamour and hypnotism and force of the man's presence no longer enthralled her, Li Sin could see. She was fearful of the step she was taking. But she was certain it was going to take place. Once Dreghorn returned, the quality of his masterfulness would grind down all opposition, even were she to show any.
"I want you to come in soon," Li Sin told her. "I have some things coming from Peking that I want you to see."
But she did not come in. In place of her there entered the store, six weeks after Dreghorn had sailed, a tall, heavily built young man with a tanned face, heavy jaw, and gray eyes. He asked for Mr. Sin.
"I am Li Sin," the Manchu told him.
"My name is Gray, surgeon on the Cunarder Hibernia, between New York and Algiers. Miss Johns asked me to tell you something, and she would like to see you, if it is not asking too much. She is prostrated at home. Her fiancé is dead."
"Mr. Dreghorn is dead!" Li Sin commented simply. "How?"
"He came out of the smoking-room one night, after talking to me about his intended," the surgeon went on glibly. He seemed to be repeating something he had rehearsed. "We were off Algiers, and though the night was fine, a cross-sea was running. He said he would not turn in for a half-hour yet, and the last I saw of him he was leaning against the starboard rail of the boat-deck. We never saw anything more of him. There can be no doubt that he fell overboard."