Monte nodded.
“Looks like a private foolish house to me,” he replied in the same cautious tone. “Come on—we’ll get around behind and see what we can make out!”
The musty darkness of the night, which had settled down around them, was now an advantage, as it made it easier for the two Wolves to get close to the house without being seen. They crept past the massive front, with its broad steps and wide porch, and continued till they came opposite the west wing. Most of the windows in this wing were dark, but toward the back they saw several lighted panels.
“Come on!” commanded Monte. “I hope that Chink doesn’t keep a dog, but plug him if one comes at you!”
On they crept till they were close to the windows. Massive and sinister against the light, stood the iron bars which had first caught their attention. They crept closer, and finally Monte hauled himself up into a gnarly pepper tree whose lacy branches almost touched the nearest of the lighted windows.
Next moment he reached down and grasped his companion’s shoulder.
“Come up here!” he grated, speaking half aloud in his excitement. “Don’t slip—catch that limb! There you are!”
He assisted the “Kid” to a foothold beside himself, and together they stared through the foliage and into the lighted room beyond.
The curtains were drawn aside and the shade rolled up. Seated in full view of the two crooks was the man they had been following for five years. He wore a dressing-gown, and beside his easy chair was a low table on which rested a leather covered box.
Suddenly he turned, raised the cover of the box—and Monte and the “Kid” held their breath and stared hungrily. The light was caught and split up into a cascade of vivid colors. The man in the dressing-gown seemed to have in his clutching hands a fountain of fire.
“The Resurrection Pendant!” snarled the “Kid,” reaching for his pistol. “Damn him!”
Monte gripped his companion by the wrist.
“None of that, you fool!” he hissed. “We’ve got to play safe—but the Count is caught in a trap! That Chink must have kidnapped him!”
_CHAPTER FIVE_
ONE OF AH WING’S DOOR KEEPERS
Colonel Knight awoke and lay staring at the ceiling. It seemed a surprisingly long distance from him—and then his glance narrowed.
He turned his head, and suddenly sat up in bed. He had just remembered the events preceding his loss of consciousness.
Ponderingly, he examined his surroundings. He was in a big room, with a high ceiling. There were two windows at his right and one straight ahead, the latter partly open. Several easy chairs, a handsome mahogany house desk, and a row of bookcases flanking a fireplace came to him as successive details of his environment. A bar of yellow sunlight streamed through the end window.
A door behind him opened, and he turned to see a grinning, brown-faced Chinese boy approaching his bedside, bearing a breakfast tray.
“Ah Wing say he coming to see you by-m-by,” the newcomer commented placidly. “You hab breakfast now.”
He drew up a table and placed the tray in position, then skillfully arranged napkin and silverware—which were of the best quality—convenient to Colonel Knight’s hand. Afterward he withdrew.
Knight’s head felt clear enough, but, mentally and physically, he was relaxed to the point of incoherence. He wanted to think, but couldn’t.
Mechanically, he lifted to his lips the cup of steaming coffee that the servant had poured for him. The taste of the hot, bitter fluid—he drank it without cream or sugar—helped him pull himself together. He remembered everything now: his visit to the mysterious Chinaman; the coming of his enemies, and their attack on the basement room; his flight with Ah Wing; and the latter’s ruse for bringing Knight fully within his power.
Sharply he turned his head and looked again at the end window; it was barred with heavy iron rods, and so were the two windows at the side. This room in which he lay was a luxurious prison!
The door opened again, softly, and Colonel Knight turned his head to find Ah Wing advancing toward him, dressed in white flannel trousers, silk shirt, and serge coat. In such a rig the newcomer looked every inch a Chinaman.
“Good morning, Colonel,” Ah Wing greeted his guest courteously. “I am glad to see you looking so fresh and rested this morning!”
Knight began to tremble.
“You yellow crook!” he croaked, his hands drawing up into knots. “So that was your scheme—to rob me, and then kidnap me? But don’t think you can get away with it—”
Ah Wing approached the bed and deftly reached under the nearer of the two pillows. From this place of concealment he drew two things: the morocco jewel case, and a revolver that Knight remembered having carried in his inside coat pocket.
“Here are the principle articles of your property, Colonel Knight,” said the master of the house. “The other things you will find after you are dressed.”
He paused to watch the man in the bed open the leather box and stare hungrily at the flashing jewels. Then he continued.
“There was an ordeal ahead of you, my friend, and you were in no condition to go through with it. You needed rest, but your nerves were screwed up to the snapping point. There was only one way to get you safely out of the city, and I used it.”
“You mean that the Wolves don’t know where I am?” Knight demanded.
“Not yet. I shall remedy that presently.”
Colonel Knight’s voice rose into a snarl:
“Remedy it? You mean you want them to know?”
“Of course I want them to know. I want them here, where I can deal with them. But never fear, my friend. Your old enemies will never be able to hurt you!”
He paused and looked around the apartment, then turned again to the man in the bed.
“These are your quarters. Adjoining your bedroom is the bath. This door opens into your sitting-room, and adjoining that is my conservatory, which you are at liberty to visit when you choose. There are no conditions placed upon your residence here except that you are not to try to leave the house without my permission—_and you are to leave the end window exactly as it is_. Don’t even lay your hand upon it, or upon the sill! This is important!”
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.