Page:Weird Tales Volume 27 Number 02 (1936-02).djvu/53

. It would not be the first time he had found it convenient to dispose of a body that had ceased to be of use. Zaneen had no desire to get into difficulties with the authorities. Nor had the authorities any desire to prosecute him. The Singapore Hotel was a pleasant place wherein to loiter when the nights were wearisome. The wine was good, the girls were slender.

the next few months, Jan Breedon drifted about from one steamer to another. He usually signed on for a single voyage. He was restless, nervous, haunted by the fact that he had killed a man. Jan Breedon was cursed with a conscience. He had too vivid an imagination. Once in a café in Batavia he had heard a man speak. The voice had sounded like that of Lee Grandon.

As soon as possible he booked passage on a ship for Singapore. He drank heavily to forget. By day he was able to quiet his nerves, but the nights were awful. When he was on shore he always slept with a light burning beside him. On shipboard this was impossible. The other seamen wouldn't stand for it. Night after night he lay staring with hollow eyes into the velvet blackness. Even on those occasions when he had to stand watch, his nerves were flayed to ribbons. Why was there so strange a coldness in the air? It seemed like a wind that had blown through a tomb. And the water lapping against the side of the ship seemed like the moans of the restless dead.

One day as he walked through the streets of Penang, he received a shock that almost unbalanced him completely; for walking along the street was Lee Grandon. He seemed in the best of health. Yet he was dead. He had been dead for weeks. Jan Breedon imagined he could even see the mark between the eyes where the bullet from his gun had plowed through his brain. Jan Breedon staggered so, he almost fell. At the moment he needed a drink. Fortunately he had a flask of whisky in his back pocket. He took a long hard swig of it. Already that day he had drunk an immense quantity of liquor. He decided that he would get blind-drunk. There was no better way to drown sorrow. So he went to a grogshop owned by Charley Tzu, who prided himself that he was half English.

Charley had been born in London's famous Limehouse. His mother had been an Irish waitress who eventually amassed a fortune because she was able to supply her patrons with food they liked. She was a big, bluff, boisterous woman who strode through Limehouse with the arrogance of a queen. And somewhere along the way she acquired a husband, Tom Tzu, who dealt in porcelains and tea and occasionally a few pounds of opium. With such parents and in such an environment it was quite easy for Charley Tzu to pick up a smattering of education, with an over-emphasis on cupidity and shrewdness. Eventually he had drifted to the Orient and opened his establishment in Penang. He was still in the same business as his mother and his father, with numerous ramifications. He still occasionally sold tea and porcelain; though when he sold opium it was in far smaller quantities. At Charley Tzu's bar was sold forgetfulness. In the room beyond was sold oblivion. It was Charley's desire to please all customers. His rates were not high for the solace he dispensed. That is why his place was so often frequented by seafaring men. Whenever Jan Breedon was in town that was where he did his thirst-trading.

But now as he stood at the bar and gulped huge quantities of whisky, he could not get drunk. The liquor failed completely. He might have been