Mrs. Sin, aroused by her husband from the deep opium sleep, came out into the fume-laden vault. Her dyed hair was disarranged, and her dark eyes stared glassily before her; but even in this half-drugged state she bore herself with the lithe carriage of a dancer, swinging her hips lazily and pointing the toes of her high-heeled slippers.  
“Awake, my wife,” crooned Sin Sin Wa. “Only a fool seeks the black smoke when the jackals sit in a ring.”
 
Mrs. Sin gave him a glance of smiling contempt—a glance which, passing him, rested finally upon the prone body of Chief Inspector Kerry lying stretched upon the floor before the stove. Her pupils contracted to mere pin-points and then dilated blackly. She recoiled a step, fighting with the stupor which her ill-timed indulgence had left behind.
 
At this moment Kerry groaned loudly, tossed his arm out with a convulsive movement, and rolled over on to his side, drawing up his knees.
 
The eye of Sin Sin Wa gleamed strangely, but he did not move, and Sam Tuk who sat huddled in his chair where his feet almost touched the fallen man, stirred never a muscle. But Mrs. Sin, who still moved in a semi-phantasmagoric world, swiftly raised the hem of her kimona, affording a glimpse of a shapely silk-clad limb. From a sheath attached to her garter she drew a thin stilletto. Curiously feline, she crouched, as if about to spring.
 
Sin Sin Wa extended his hand, grasping his wife's wrist.
 
“No, woman of indifferent intelligence,” he said in his queer sibilant language, “since when has murder gone unpunished in these British dominions?”
 
Mrs. Sin snatched her wrist from his grasp, falling back wild-eyed.
 
“Yellow ape! yellow ape!” she said hoarsely. “One more does not matter—now.”
 
“One more?” crooned Sin Sin Wa, glancing curiously at Kerry.
 
“They are here! We are trapped!”
 
“No, no,” said Sin Sin Wa. “He is a brave man; he comes alone.”
 
He paused, and then suddenly resumed in pidgin English:
 
“You likee killa him, eh?”
 
Perhaps unconscious that she did so, Mrs. Sin replied also in English:
 
“No, I am mad. Let me think, old fool!”
 
She dropped the stiletto and raised her hand dazedly to her brow.
 
“You gotchee tired of knifee chop, eh?” murmured Sin Sin Wa.
 
Mrs. Sin clenched her hands, holding them rigidly against her hips; and, nostrils dilated, she stared at the smiling Chinaman.
 
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
 
Sin Sin Wa performed his curious oriental shrug.
 
“You putta topside pidgin on Sir Lucy alla lightee,” he murmured. “Givee him hell alla velly proper.”
 
The pupils of the woman's eyes contracted again, and remained so. She laughed hoarsely and tossed her head.
 
“Who told you that?” she asked contemptuously. “It was the doll-woman who killed him—I have said so.”
 
“You tella me so—hoi, hoi! But old Sin Sin Wa catchee wonder. Lo!”—he extended a yellow forefinger, pointing at his wife—“Mrs. Sin make him catchee die! No bhobbery, no palaber. Sin Sin Wa gotchee you sized up allee timee.”
 
Mrs. Sin snapped her fingers under his nose then stooped, picked up the stiletto, and swiftly restored it to its sheath. Her hands resting upon her hips, she came forward, until her dark evil face almost touched the yellow, smiling face of Sin Sin Wa.
 
“Listen, old fool,” she said in a low, husky voice; “I have done with you, ape-man, for good! Yes! I killed Lucy, I killed him! He belonged to me—until that pink and white thing took him away. I am glad I killed him. If I cannot have him neither can she. But I was mad all the same.”
 
She glanced down at Kerry, and:
 
“Tie him up,” she directed, “and send him to sleep. And understand, Sin, we've shared out for the last time—You go your way and I go mine. No stinking Yellow River for me. New York is good enough until it's safe to go to Buenos Ayres.”
 
“Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres,” croaked the raven from his wicker cage, which was set upon the counter.
 
Sin Sin Wa regarded him smilingly.
 
“Yes, yes, my little friend,” he crooned in Chinese, while Tling-a-Ling rattled ghostly castanets. “In Ho-Nan they will say that you are a devil and I am a wizard. That which is unknown is always thought to be magical, my Tling-a-Ling.”
 
Mrs. Sin, who was rapidly throwing off the effects of opium and recovering her normal self-confident personality, glanced at her husband scornfully.
 
“Tell me,” she said, “what has happened? Ho............