The Yellow Snake by Edgar Wallace Read Free Book Online

beyond all question a Chinaman!
     

 
CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
        "This is Mr Grahame St Clay," Spedwell introduced the visitor again, and mechanically Stephen Narth put out his hand.
        Until that moment all Chinamen were alike to Stephen Narth, but somehow, as he looked into the brown eyes, he distinguished in this man a difference that he could not exactly define. The eyes were set wide apart; the nose, thin and long, and the thin lips, differed from those features he was used to associating with men of the Mongolian type. Perhaps it was the full chin which gave Grahame St Clay his distinction. Certainly when he spoke he was like no Chinaman that Stephen Narth had ever seen or heard.
        "This is Mr Narth? I am delighted to meet you. In fact, I have sought many opportunities of making your acquaintance."
        It was the voice of an educated man, with just that slight drawl and exaggerated pronunciation which is peculiar to one trained in a public school and finished at one of the great universities.
        "May I sit down?"
        Narth nodded mutely, and the newcomer laid a handsome portfolio on the table before him.
        "You are a little dazed to discover that I am a Chinaman?" Mr St Clay laughed softly. "'Yellow Peril' is the term which is usually employed, is it not? I would object to being called a peril, for I am the most unoffending man that ever came from China," he said good-humouredly.
        As he spoke, he was opening the portfolio, and took out a flat-covered pad, tied with red ribbon. Very carefully he slipped the bow, took off the top layer of cardboard and revealed to the eyes of Stephen Narth a thick pad of banknotes. From where he stood he saw they were thousand-pound notes.
        "Fifty, I think, is the amount you require?" said Mr St Clay presently, and with the dexterity of a bank cashier he counted the requisite number, placed the little bundle on one side, carefully retied the pad, and slipped it back into the leather case. "We are all friends here, I think." Mr St Clay beamed from one of Stephen Narth's partners to the other. "I can speak without restraint?"
        Narth nodded.
        "Very well." He folded the fifty notes and, to the surprise of the senior partner, put the money into his waistcoat pocket. "There is naturally a condition attaching to this loan," he said. "Even I, poor, untutored Chinaman though I be, am not so utterly lost to the practice of commerce that I could loan this large sum of money unconditionally. Frankly, Mr Narth, it is required of you that you should become one of us.".
        "One of you?" said Stephen Narth slowly. "I don't quite get you."
        It was Spedwell who supplied the information.
        "Mr St Clay is running a big organization in this country. It's a sort of——" He paused awkwardly.
        "Secret society," suggested Mr St Clay pleasantly. "That sounds very mysterious and terrifying, does it not? But really there's nothing to it! I have a certain mission in life, and I require the help of intelligent men on whom I can rely. We Chinamen have rather the qualities of children. We love pomp and mystery. We are, in fact, the true exotics of the world. Mostly we like to play at things, and the Joyful Hands is frankly my invention. Our object is to uplift the Chinese people, to bring as it were light into dark places." He paused, and added: "And all that sort of thing."
        Stephen Narth smiled.
        "It seems quite a praiseworthy object," he said. "I shall be delighted to join you."
        The brown eyes had an hypnotic quality. They transfixed him in that second, and he had the terrifying sensation that he had momentarily surrendered his will to a dominating but beneficent power. That was the strange thing about the Chinaman: he created of himself an atmosphere of beneficence.
        "That is well," he said simply, took the wad of notes from his pocket and placed them gently on the table. "No, no,