Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/137

 Where was Low Soong? Had Low been caught too in the coil? If not, surely Low would come to her presently, if she could. What had they done to Basil? She clenched her hands together in supplication so frenzied that her nails cut into her palms and her rings tore her flesh. What would come now? Or, rather, when would it come, and how? She knew what was to come.

But she could think no more. She could suffer. That faculty was left her, but she could neither reason nor plan. And why should she? The end was absolute, and absolute the uselessness of thought.

Towards morning she found the little tinder-box, stuffed her pipe, and began to smoke. It was innocuous enough a drugging, but gave her growing nervousness something to do. Three or four whiffs empty those tiny pipes. To throw out the ash took a moment, to refill the bowl took another; the drawing on the stem killed a third—over and over again, and one of the terrible night hours had gone. And still the Chinese girl lay on her hard wood floor smoking mechanically, as in Europe a girl so placed might have crocheted, or a woman older but no less desperate have played patience, or tried to play.

When the first streaks of day came to sharpen the familiar outlines of the room and of its furnishings, and sharpen her sense of pain and peril, she threw the tiny silver pipe across the floor. It fell with a clatter on the arabesque of the hard inlaying.

This Kowloon house of Wu was a veritable treasure-house. Not an apartment in it (for the servants lived, and cooked even, outside) but held much that was priceless. And no other room had been plenished with such lavish tenderness as had this room of his one child.