Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/41

32 dared, a trader in gums and resins, and by a system of the judicious blending of his several wares at that stage his fortunes were assured. Being of an easy-going and abstemious nature, one wife alone had satisfied his needs, and she in turn had lavished all her care upon an only son, to whom the name of San had been applied. Stricken by an obscure malady this one had languished, and in spite of what every healing art could do had lately Passed Above.

Kwok Shen suitably indicated by means of his facecloth and a discarded plate that the effect of the blow upon himself had been calamitous, but when he spoke of the despair of the lesser one of his inner chamber his voice practically ceased to have any sound attached to it. Very soon every interest in life forsook her; she sank into an unnatural langour and not even the cry of a passing comb vendor or the sound of earthenware being shattered by the household slaves moved her to action. The investigation of skilled exorcists, those who had made the malignant humours their especial lore, all tended to one end: without delay another should be found to take the lost one's place and thereby restore the Immortal principles of equilibrity whose disturbance had unbalanced the afflicted mind. To this project she who was most concerned had at last agreed, stipulating, however, that the substitute should bear an exact resemblance to the departed San.

Beyond this point there could be no feasible concealment of the part that Ming Tseuen would be called upon to play, and that person's alert mind began to prepare itself for the arrangement. He had already composed the set terms of his aged father's anguish and chosen a suitable apophthegm to describe his broken-down mother's tears when the words of Kwok Shen's persuasive voice recalled him.