Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/216

 Also I have a message—but less important—from Madame Sing, my relative." (Gregory grunted curtly.) "Ring!"

"Ring—yourself," the Englishman at bay said sullenly.

"That is a liberty I would not dream of taking in another man's office. You'll ring"—the revolver's barrel repointed insinuatingly. "You will ring now, Mr. Gregory."

Robert Gregory pressed the bell push on his desk and leaned back heavily in his chair, with an unhappy sigh, defeated.

As Murray came in, Wu so moved his body that the clerk could not see the little pistol which still covered Gregory. "Murray," his employer said wearily, "ask Mrs. Gregory to step this way a moment." Then he began breathlessly, "Ce sacré Chinois me"

But Wu interrupted with a contented laugh and, "Oh! this damned Chinaman understands French perfectly. And I've often heard Englishmen pronounce it very much as you do. You are a linguist too, Mr. Murray? E'um dom util—o dom das linguas—e de alto valar em cidades cosmopolitas!"

Poor Murray stood bewildered, quite uncertain what to do. And Wu turned pleasantly to Mr. Gregory with, "Please repeat your instructions, as Mr. Murray does not seem to understand quite."

And Gregory said at once—broken, defeated—in a whipped tone his clerk had never heard from those thin lips before, "Please ask Mrs. Gregory to come here."

And indeed the hard little man was broken and defeated, and he knew it. The Chinese duellist had made but little lunge, but with a gentleness more cruel than any storm, and a suave persistence that under such cir