The Day of the Dragon
Adapted from THE CHINESE DRAGON by Anon. Amalgamated Press, 1926.
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Prince Wu Ling!
No. 2 Clayton's Yard was a tall, tumble-down building that backed on to the river — a rabbit warren of a place, infested with both rats and disreputable Chinese. It was partly a lodging-house and partly an opium-den — as the police had of late begun to suspect.
A quarter of a mile from their destination they halted by the blue lamp of a police-station, and there picked up four other men who were waiting ready to join the little expedition.
These were four plain-clothes men who knew the neighbourhood inside-out, and were to act as guides. They also knew most of the yellow scoundrels in Chinatown, by sight at least, and so would be useful for identifying captures. Though to Tinker it was a sheer mystery how any man could tell one Chinese from another.
The narrow streets were deserted save for a few slinking figures as they turned swiftly into the maze of alleys around Clayton's Yard. They drove fast, for the success of the expedition depended largely upon the element of surprise.
Into Clayton's Yard they swung, and with a grinding of brakes drew up outside No. 2. Instantly two or three furtive figures vanished into the various doorways that gave entrance to the rabbit-warren.
"They're raising the alarm." growled Coutts, as he jumped out of the leading car, with Tinker on his tail.
On to the pavement poured the plain-clothes men. Coutts gave one or two crisp commands, and they divided up swiftly into groups, each group diving for one of the narrow doorways.
Tinker found himself stumbling down a flight of five or six stairs, and almost landed on his hands and knees. One of the C.I.D. men was in front, an electric torch in one hand and a Browning pistol in the other. After that hurrying beam of light Tinker stumbled, along a narrow, ill-smelling passage.
Dim figures could be seen racing away ahead of them. Suddenly the youngster tripped down another set of stairs, and found himself in a dimly lit, musty room with a long, low ceiling, near which flickered the reeking oil-lamps, the whole air thick and choking with opium fumes.
A revolver barked somewhere ahead, waking the echoes. The C.I.D. man in front of Tinker fired in answer, and there was a shriek out of the shadows. Then another shot whined through the fume-laden air, and this time the C.I.D. man dropped like a sack of coal.
The torch went out.
Tinker heard rushing feet on either side of him. There had been a stampede for the passage on the part of a number of Chinese. He could see them dimly in the light from the lanterns. But there were more C.I.D. men in the passage, and the yellow men were beaten back. There was a brisk volley of shots, and Tinker heard lead spattering the walls. The Chinese were firing blindly in sheer panic.
Someone collided with Tinker, grasped him, and the next moment he was reeling around with a pigtailed figure. He got his hands on the Chink's throat, even as he felt a long-nailed hand dig into the flesh of his own neck.
They fell together, rolling and squirming through the trampling, surging feet. Then they tumbled into one of the alcoves, where a fat yellow man lay stupefied with opium fumes, his pipe in his hand. By the red light of a hanging lantern, Tinker glimpsed the face of the man with whom he was struggling. He cried out chokingly, the sound made inarticulate by the hand that clutched his throat.
For his enemy was none other than Go Kan, the man who had knifed Qiang Lu in the house at Bloomsbury.
"A-a-a-ah!"
A hissing, whistling breath sounded between Go Kan's clenched teeth. He was half choked, for Tinker had got a terrible grip upon his throat.
But the little Chinese was wiry as an eel. With pigtail flying and garments fluttering, he twisted uppermost, got his knee into Tinker's stomach, and fought free. Out of the alcove he darted. But Tinker flung himself forward and caught the flying figure by the ankle.
Go Kan pitched forward into the seething melee beyond, where knives were out, glittering and sinister in the dim light, as the Chinese, like rats in a trap, fought madly with the "tough dozen" that Coutt's had brought along.
Coutts himself was nowhere to be seen. But Tinker, scrambling up, with dizzy head, glimpsed the tall figure of Blake.
"Good old guv'nor!" he gasped, For Blake had been in the act of lifting a skinny yellow man clean into the air with a powerful straight left.
A reeling figure staggered backwards into the alcove, tearing down a ragged curtain as he came. It was one of the C.I.D. men, an ugly knife wound in his shoulder.
Tinker caught him as he fell.
Out of the gloom glided a silent, slant-eyed figure, a surprisingly calm-looking Chinaman with a palpable aura of power about him, though he wasn't any bigger than Tinker physically, dressed in a loose-sleeved jacket of braided blue, with felt-slippers, and a long knife clutched in one hand. He slipped into the alcove, saw Tinker, struck at the youngster, then tripped over the now unconscious C.I.D. man.
Tinker gasped in astonishment, for this was none other than Prince Wu Ling himself, the head of the Brotherhood of the Yellow Beetle.
Why was he here in London? Tinker couldn't even guess. But without a second thought he flung himself at his old enemy. He was met with a slashing blow of the knife that grazed his temple. He dropped, his senses swimming, and Wu Ling darted to the back of the alcove.
Tinker lay where he had fallen, striving to regain his scattered senses. He could feel the warm blood streaming over his brow.
Through half-closed eyes he watched dazedly the man who had tried to kill him and Sexton Blake on many previous occasions.
The prince, with a quick glance round, seemed to have assured himself that he was unobserved. He had not looked again at Tinker, evidently believing the boy to be dead or unconscious.
With a swift scramble over the drugged Chinese on the cushions at the back of the alcove, Wu Ling ran a perfectly manicured hand over the wall and pressed on the panelling. A dark opening appeared. The next moment his snake-like figure had vanished, and the opening had vanished, too. The wall seemed solid once more.
Tinker sat up and rubbed his eyes. That vision of the opening panel and the disappearing Wu Ling had been like a vague dream. But swiftly his senses were coming back now, and uppermost in the youngster's mind was the grim determination to follow the man who controlled the insidious forces of the Yellow Beetle and, if possible, capture him.
He staggered to his feet, groped his way to the wall, and pressed the point that the prince had pressed. He felt the woodwork move beneath his hand, and the panel swung back noiselessly, mysteriously, revealing the black opening beyond.
Tinker glanced back once and gave an exclamation. Clutched in one of the hands of the unconscious C.I.D. man was an electric torch. Tinker had it in a moment, and then slipped through the open panel into the well of darkness on the farther side.
The light of the torch darted ahead vividly, raking the blackness. At the far end of the long, low passage he caught a glimpse of a running figure.
Prince Wu Ling turned and, as the torchlight fell upon him, his normally placid countenance momentarily cracked as he showed his teeth in an ugly snarl. Then he vanished into a dark, arched opening, downwards, as if steps lay beyond. Tinker was after him in a moment.
They were wooden stairs, he found, and they led him out on to a staging of rotten woodwork that ran under a jutting portion of this weird old house overlooking the river. The dark waters of the Thames streamed by, inky and noiseless, within a few yards of him. At the far end of the staging, in the deep shadows, he saw his quarry.
Wu Ling was in the act of stepping into a dirty, battered boat that was moored to the staging. Another Chinese was cutting the painter by which the boat was moored, and a third was hastily unshipping the oars. With a shout, Tinker darted towards them. As he did so a flung knife streaked past his head, to stick into a post, quivering there like a tongue of silver in the ray of moonlight that slanted down through a crack in the boards above.
The boat was being pushed off now. And suddenly Tinker saw that the man at the oars was Go Kan.
Tinker forgot all sense of caution then. Two of these three fugitives were men whom he was determined should not escape. With a desperate spurt, he dashed forward and clutched at the stern of the boat as it swung out on the inky waters.
His fingers closed on the boat. But the next moment his wrist was seized and he was jerked forward. He fell, struggling, into the moving boat, and a moment later one of the three Chinese was kneeling above him in the bottom of the boat, hands at his throat.
Tinker tried to fight free, but could not. The choking grip was strangling him. His senses reeled, and it was as if very far away that he seemed to hear a voice cry:
"Hands up! Quick!"
There was a load splash, a gun shot, another, and then suddenly the grip upon his throat relaxed, and he realised that the man who had been strangling him was crouching, with his hands raised above his head, whimpering and whining. Go Kan had also raised his arms, but as Tinker rolled his head to the side to look down the length of the boat, he saw that there were but two Chinamen in the boat; the third, Prince Wu Ling, had gone.
The next moment there was a heavy thud as the boat struck broadside against the posts at one end of the staging and stayed there, held by the rush of the river.
Tinker raised himself weakly.
He saw a dark figure at the edge of the staging, an automatic levelled at the occupants of the boat. Another man stood near at hand, and Tinker recognised Detective-Inspector Coutts of Scotland Yard.
And then he realised that the first man, the man whose voice had rung out in that sharp command, was Sexton Blake.
"Guv'nor!" coughed Tinker, "where is he?"
"The third Chink?" said Blake. "He dived overboard. If my bullets didn't get him, I rather expect the river did."
"It was Wu Ling!" gasped Tinker. Then he fell back in the boat in a dead faint.
* * *
When Tinker recovered consciousness it was to find himself in the police station near Clayton's Yard, with the police-surgeon bending over him.
"You're all right," the medical man told him cheerily. "You've been a long time coming round. Don't wonder, with a cut on the head that size! But now you are round you'll stay round."
Blake was standing near at hand, watching Tinker with an anxious face. But now he smiled.
"Guv'nor," muttered Tinker, smiling faintly, "did you get him?"
"Whom?" murmured Blake. "Prince Wu Ling or the chap who killed Jangles? Well, my lad, Wu Ling slipped through our fingers again, I'm afraid, though whether he survived the Thames or not, I cannot say. As for Go Kan, we got him. And we cleaned out that nest of Beetles as well. A good night's work, I'd say!"
"Oh, fine!" grinned Tinker. "And that Chinese dragon — banner thing?"
"Why, didn't you know?" laughed Blake. "That was rolled up in the bottom of the boat that they nearly killed you in. Yes, we've got that all right, too. Now it'll be duly returned to Qiang Lu's tong, and I shall see that the Si Fan pays up for it to Jangles' family. It can afford to — Teng Zao Ping, at the "rat-pie and dog-sausage shop" told me that Qiang Lu's tong, the Si Fan crowd, are one of the richest Chinese tongs in the world. But he was peculiarly tight-lipped on this occasion — I get the impression that there's rather more to the Si Fan than we've learned tonight. Apparently I have to track down a man named Nayland Smith to find out more. I think I shall do just that. My curiosity is piqued!"
"Well, as long as they don't have a fiend like Wu Ling at their head," murmured Tinker.
He felt terribly tired, and suddenly he fell fast asleep, breathing deeply and regularly.
The doctor nodded.
"Best thing for him, Mr Blake."
And Tinker stayed fast asleep when they motored him back through the grey dawn to Baker Street.
The End
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