Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/176

 hotel door. She had a night-police pass; and her mistress had given her leave to spend the evening on some errand of her own.

It's a long climb up Hong Kong Peak. Ah Wong was very strong, but her indefatigable little feet ached when she slipped into the room where she had locked the flowers almost twelve hours ago, and day was slipping rosy up the sky.

Day was coming, but she did not lift a blind. She lit a candle. And when she had laid off the long blue cloth in which she had veiled herself, closely in the Chinese quarter, carelessly in English-town, she took from her dress the spoil of her visit to Yat Jung How's blue house: three bottles.

The smallest of the three was filled (it was very small) with a few drops of opalescent green liquid. Ah Wong studied it grimly awhile, and then she knotted the phial in some corner of her garments, and tucked it securely back inside her dress.

The second bottle held about a dram of something that smelt disagreeably when she uncorked it; but she kept it well away from her own face and nose, and turned it instantly into the moss in the basket. It was deadly poison this, and would destroy any reptile or scorpion thing that came within a yard of it, and so potent was it that being near it would render any other poison quite innocuous—Yat had told her so. And she trusted Yat Jung How. She had known a way to make him trustworthy.

The third bottle was a generous, roomy receptacle, squat but wide. It held nearly a pint. And this was disinfectant, warranted to purify a poisoned room, and smelt of an acceptable cool pungence as Ah Wong threw