“It was this vein,” he said, “pointing to his arm with the point of the needle...”
We watched him with gaping mouths, half stupefied by the strange tones of his voice. Suddenly Meroe lurched toward him, but it was too late. The needle was in his vein and his thumb was pressing home.
“I would rather not be bothered with the red tape of a trial,” he said quietly.
I will not describe in detail the scene which followed. There were screams from the women and somewhat of a panic as they rushed from the room. He did not live more than fifteen minutes.
Meroe left the rest in the hands of Larkin and the coroner. We walked home through the park breathing clean air and sunshine to clear our souls of the unwholesomeness with which we had been steeped since morning.
“You know,” said Meroe, “he would have slipped away with the whole thing right under our noses if he had not described the woman who stared at him as having been dressed in a dark brown dress.”
And that was the last I ever heard Meroe mention of the affair, for it was his custom to forget these things as soon as his part had been played.
In Full Payment
by John B. Hart
I
Chu Kwong listened respectfully to the words of his father.
“My son,” the old man began, “it is written in the books of great wisdom that a son gains virtue who pays his father’s debts. Harken, then, to the story I shall tell you. Thus knowing your father’s debt, it may chance that you can pay it in the land of the white barbarians whither you go in the train of my most honorable and elder brother, Fong Su.”
The old man pulled gently at his pipe, watching the thin, spiral of smoke ascend toward the cloud-flecked sky. He was silent until recalled to the present by the discreet cough of Chu Kwong. He continued:
“It happened in the days before this disease called Democracy descended upon the Middle Kingdom, and the Daughter of Heaven still graced the golden throne.
“It was my task to administer justice in the city of T’sen Pi’en. One day there were led before me five evil men who had brought great pain to the honest citizens by their robberies and their murders. I listened to the stories against them, and because they seemed to be true stories I sentenced them to be flogged and then hung.
“But in the night they escaped from their jail and, coming to my house, sought revenge upon me for having passed just sentence. And they would have succeeded in their evil purpose had it not been for a certain white barbarian who was my guest. With the aid of his weapons, he fought against them, killing four and wounding the fifth.
“Strange are the ways of these white barbarians. This man who had saved my life would accept neither gold nor presents of any kind. Therefore I am in his debt, which is a burdensome state to an honest man.
“Before leaving my house, this man presented me with this card, which bears his likeness and his name written in a strange hand. Take it with you, so that should he cross your path you may know him and perchance befriend him as he befriended your father.”
Chu Kwong bowed low and prepared to withdraw. But his father stopped him, saying:
“One other thing, my son. In this land to which you go there is a dog of a Cantonese to whom I lent some hundreds of tales. He has not returned them. It is also written that a son gains virtue who collects all that is owing to his father. It may be that from this Li Sing there will be no money forthcoming. But a man can pay in other ways. Now you may retire.”
II
When he was just past forty, Gregory Westlake came into his inheritance. He returned to London after a career of hardship and adventure pursued in many lands. He settled down in his father’s house and prepared to enjoy himself.
And for a season he did enjoy himself. The renewal of old friendships, the making of new ones, the going about to this house and that, the solid comfort of English life plus an income that was more than sufficient for his needs — all these were as balm to his hitherto lonely and harassed spirit. Then he married Lady Miriam Stonewald and began a sojourn in a garden of sorrow.
Who ever solved the riddle that was Miriam Stonewald? No one, I’ll wager, unless it was a man or woman who could solve the mysteries of the sea. For, like the sea beside which she was born, she was unfathomable, often unexpectedly kind, often senselessly cruel, and always inconstant as a summer breeze.
She was beautiful and she had wealth and a pretty taste in clothes. But, besides, she had charm and no one who ever came under its influence ever forgot her, ever quite ceased to be her slave.
It is a mystery why she married Gregory Westlake. Certainly she did not love him. Nor was it his income that attracted her, since it totalled less than a fifth of her own. Perhaps it was as Lady Cooper put it, “Oh, Westlake just chanced to be around when the whim to marry seized dear Miriam.”
Stored up in Westlake’s heart was all the love and affection accumulated by a man who has lived a lonely life in strange lands. All of it he lavished on his wife. He gave her himself wholly and for eternity. And the greater tragedy was not that she refused his gift, but that she seemed unaware that it had been offered. A week after they were married she went her usual way — a ceaseless round of receptions, dinners, dances — and her husband had become simply another of those possessions one has but doesn’t think about.
It was shortly after her return from the Glencairn shooting that she met an undersecretary at the Chinese Embassy, a certain Chu Kwong, who was greatly the rage because he could sing exotic love-songs to strange Chinese music.
“Oh, do bring the dear child over and present him,” she said to her host at the Spanish Ambassador’s reception.
Don Ruy Diaz laughed and sent one of his aides to fetch the good-looking young Chinaman.
When Chu Kwong heard Lady Miriam’s name he smiled pleasantly into her eyes.
“Your father — perhaps he is Mr. Gregory Westlake?” he asked in his so-ft, almost feminine, voice.
“That is my husband’s name,” Lady Miriam replied.
Chu Kwong clasped his hands together and bowed very low.
“Then we should be friends, madam, since already I am your husband’s friend.”
“You know my husband?”
“Alas, no, madam,” Chu Kwong answered. “Nevertheless I am his friend.”
And bowing again, he moved slowly away.
Intrigued by his perfect self-possession, his quaint manner, Lady Miriam determined to add Chu Kwong to the host of her admirers.
It was not a difficult task. Chu Kwong was at the age of idealism when any pretty woman who will listen to a young man’s hopes and aspirations is an angel in disguise. And Lady Miriam had the knack of listening.
She let him come to tea and over the cups draw her a picture of a new China with himself in the foreground holding a very important position indeed. She let him bring her little presents — queer fans of sandalwood and ornaments of apple-green jade. It was her whim to captivate him and she gratified it.
Chu Kwong’s attitude toward Westlake was odd. Gifted with the Oriental’s ability to penetrate to another’s moods, he saw clearly beneath Westlake’s mask of nonchalance. He saw that the man was unhappy — unspeakably so. And not knowing that the cause was Lady Miriam’s indifference and neglect, he was possessed with a measure of contempt for his father’s friend.
To a Chinaman, possession of a desirable woman is more than nine points of the law. It is the law complete. How, then, could a man married to Lady Miriam, living in the same house with her, privileged to enjoy the thousand and one intimacies of such living, dare to be anything but overwhelmingly joyous? Did it not augur a lack of taste and appreciation for so enviable a being to be unhappy?