suddenly, he sat up, wide awake.
Night had come, with a vaulted, jetty sky and a sickle-moon of delicate ivory, poised high. The flame of the lamp had flickered out. The opium had fizzled to its last, bitter, stinking dregs.
A slight headache throbbed in his temples. He felt very old, very lonely.
He rose, stretched his aching bones, and yawned elaborately.
The laughter—the tinkly, careless laughter—it had ceased—as life must cease—and passion and love and faith and strength.
He took a step toward the other room, squinting into the dark.
“Chia Shun!” he called. “Ahee! Little Crimson Lotus Bud!”
But no answer came. Was she still downstairs?
He wondered.
Why—they always laughed, those two, when they were together—always—
Butterflies, little, silly, golden butterflies—who loved each other—who—loved—
* * * *
“Say! For the love o’ Gawd! Yer don’t mean it! Yer can’t mean it! Ye’re joshin’, ain’t ye?”
Clear, distinct, his wife’s voice stabbed up, through the dumbwaiter shaft in the kitchen; and Wong Ti rushed back, up to the dumb-waiter, listening tensely, his breath sucked in, his old heart beating like a trip hammer.
“But—say! Lover boy! Sweet lover boy! Ye told me ye loved me, didn’t yer? And now—ye—”
And again, her voice peaking up to a hectic shrieking octave:
“Yer don’t mean it, honeybugs? Tell me yer don’t!”
“I do mean it, little fool!” came En Hai’s smooth, silken voice.
“Yer—do?”
“Yes. How often must I tell you?” The man was becoming embarrassed, too, impatient. “Don’t you understand English? I—” he softened a little—“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, my dear.”
“Hurt my—feelin’s? Christ! Afraid o’ hurtin’ my feelin’s after yer torn the heart out’n my body and trampled on it and spit on it—say! And yer told me yer loved me! And I gave yer wot ye wanted! And all the time ye told me ye’re just waitin’ for my old man upstairs to kick the bucket, and then ye’d marry me and love me for ever—and now ye tell me—”
“Exactly!” En Hai’s voice came chilly, metallic. “You are not the sort of woman I can afford to marry. There is my reputation—my profession—my standing. Try to look at it from my point of view—and—“
“Then—yer don’t—love me?”
“No! If you absolutely insist on hearing the truth! I—of course I was—oh—fond of you—am still fond of you, my dear. But—well—let’s be sensible, my dear. There’s no reason why you and I shouldn’t continue—”
“Don’t ye dare touch me! I hate ye, hate ye, hate ye! Yer skunk! Yer welsher! Yer damned, no-good four-flusher! I hope to Gawd one o’ these days one of them Chinks you treat as if they was doit will slit yer gizzard! Get out o’ my way!”
And a slamming of doors, a pattering of little feet up the stairs, and Chia Shun rushed into the room, straight into the arms of Wong Ti who met her on the threshold.
“Wongee-Pongee! “ she choked through her tears. “Oh, Wongee-Pongee! I—the Doctor and I—he—”
“Hush!” whispered the hatchetman, patting her wet cheeks. “Hush, Little Crimson Lotus Bud!”
He picked her up and put her on the couch, covering her quivering form with a silken robe.
“Wait, Little Piece of my Soul! Wait! Do not break your foolish little heart!”
“I hate him—hate him—” Chia Shun stammered, lying there limp and pitiful, staring upon her husband with stricken eyes and dropped mouth.
“Yes, yes, Little Butterfly—wait!”
* * * *
And, unhurriedly, he left the room and crept down the stairs with that furtive step which had become second nature to him: heels well down, toes slowly gripping through soft duffle soles, arms carefully balanced, hands at right angles from the wrists, and fingers spread out gropingly, like the sensitive antennas of some night insect, to give warning of unfamiliar objects—
He slipped the dagger from his loose sleeve.
Even as he opened the door to the doctor’s office, he wondered subconsciously which of the Cantonese whom En Hai had treated “like doit beneath his feet” would be suspected of the murder.
FEUD
Today he lives in Bokhara, in the old quarter of the desert town that the natives call Bokhara-i-Shereef. He has a store in a bazaar not far from the Samarkand Gate, where he sells the gold-threaded brocades of Khiva and the striped Bokhariot belts that the caravanmen exchange for brick-pressed tea across the border in Chinese Turkestan, and where, methodically filling; his pipe with tobacco from the carved pumpkin-shell at his elbow, he praises the greatness of Russia.
There, at noon every day, his ten-year-old son comes to him, bringing clean and well-spiced food from the market.
“Look at him!” he says often, proudly pinching the supple arms of the lad, and exhibiting him as he would a pedigreed stallion. “Sinews and muscles and a farseeing eye, and no nerves—none at all. Because of which I give thanks to Allah the Wise-judging, the Opener of the Door of Knowledge with the Key of His Mercy. For one day my son will wear a plaited, green coat and a tall chugerma cap of white fur, and serve Russia. He will learn to shoot straight, very straight, and then,” he adds, with a meaning smile, if he happens to be speaking to one of the three men whom he trusts,—“then he will desert. But he will return, perhaps,”—rapidly snapping his fingers to ward off misfortunes,—“he will return to his regiment, and he will not be very much punished.”
A true Russian man he calls himself, and his name, too, has a Russian purring and deep ringing to it—“Pavel Alikhanski.” Also there is talk in the town that he is in the pay of that great Bokharan magnate, the kushbegi, friend of the Russians, bringing tales to them about his Highness the Emir, and receiving milled gold for the telling.
But ten years ago, when I called him friend, his name was not Alikhanski. Then he called himself Wazir Ali-Khan Sulaymani, that last name giving clue to his nation and race; for “Sulaymani” means “descendant of King Solomon,” and it is known in half the world that the Afghans claim this resplendent He brew potentate as their breed’s remote sire.
In those days he lived in a certain gray and turbulent city not far from the northeastern foot-hills of the Himalayas, where three great countries link elbows and swap lies and intrigues and occasional murders, and where the Afghan mist falls down like a purple-gray veil. In those days Russia was not on his lips, and he called himself an Herati, an Afghan from Herat, city-bred and city-courteous, but with a strain of maternal blood that linked him to the mountains and the sharp, red
