The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
scientific fashion. First he fastened and threaded a length of silk rope through one of the rails of the bed and into the slack of this he lifted Milburgh’s head, so that he could not struggle except at the risk of being strangled.
Ling Chu turned him over, unfastened the handcuffs, and methodically bound first one wrist and then the other to the side of the bed.
“What are you going to do?” repeated Milburgh, but the Chinaman made no reply.
He produced from a belt beneath his blouse a wicked-looking knife, and the manager opened his mouth to shout. He was beside himself with terror, but any cause for fear had yet to come. The Chinaman stopped the cry by dropping a pillow on the man’s face, and began deliberately to cut the clothing on the upper part of his body.
“If you cry out,” he said calmly, “the people will think it is I who am singing! Chinamen have no music in their voices, and sometimes when I have sung my native songs, people have come up to discover who was suffering.”
“You are acting illegally,” breathed Milburgh, in a last attempt to save the situation. “For your crime you will suffer imprisonment”
“I shall be fortunate,” said Ling Chu; “for prison is life. But you will hang at the end of a long rope.”
He had lifted the pillow from Milburgh’s face, and now that pallid man was following every movement of the Chinaman with a fearful eye. Presently Milburgh was stripped to the waist, and Ling Chu regarded his handiwork complacently.
He went to a cupboard in the wall, and took out a small brown bottle, which he placed on a table by the side of the bed. Then he himself sat upon the edge of the bed and spoke. His English was almost perfect, though now and again he hesitated in the choice of a word, and there were moments when he was a little stilted in his speech, and more than a little pedantic. He spoke slowly and with great deliberation.
“You do not know the Chinese people? You have not been or lived in China? When I say lived I do not mean staying for a week at a good hotel in one of the coast towns. Your Mr. Lyne lived in China in that way. It was not a successful residence.”
“I know nothing about Mr. Lyne,” interrupted Milburgh, sensing that Ling Chu in some way associated him with Thornton Lyne’s misadventures.
“Good!” said Ling Chu, tapping the flat blade of his knife upon his palm. “If you had lived in China — in the real China — you might have a dim idea of our people and their characteristics. It is said that the Chinaman does not fear death or pain, which is a slight exaggeration, because I have known criminals who feared both.”
His thin lips curved for a second in the ghost of a smile, as though at some amusing recollection. Then he grew serious again.
“From the Western standpoint we are a primitive people. From our own point of view we are rigidly honourable. Also — and this I would emphasise.” He did, in fact, emphasise his words to the terror of Mr. Milburgh, with the point of his knife upon the other’s broad chest, though so lightly was the knife held that Milburgh felt nothing but the slightest tingle.
“We do not set the same value upon the rights of the individual as do you people in the West. For example,” he explained carefully, “we are not tender with our prisoners, if we think that by applying a little pressure to them we can assist the process of justice.”
“What do you mean?” asked Milburgh, a grisly thought dawning upon his mind.
“In Britain — and in America too, I understand — though the Americans are much more enlightened on this subject — when you arrest a member of a gang you are content with cross-examining him and giving him full scope for the exercise of his inventive power. You ask him questions and go on asking and asking, and you do not know whether he is lying or telling the truth.”
Mr. Milburgh began to breathe heavily.
“Has that idea sunk into your mind?” asked Ling Chu.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mr. Milburgh in a quavering voice. “All I know is that you are committing a most—”
Ling Chu stopped him with a gesture.
“I am perfectly well aware of what I am doing,” he said. “Now listen to me. A week or so ago, Mr. Thornton Lyne, your employer, was found dead in Hyde Park. He was dressed in his shirt and trousers, and about his body, in an endeavour to stanch the wound, somebody had wrapped a silk nightdress. He was killed in the flat of a small lady, whose name I cannot pronounce, but you will know her.”
Milburgh’s eyes never left the Chinaman’s, and he nodded.
“He was killed by you,” said Ling Chu slowly, “because he had discovered that you had been robbing him, and you were in fear that he would hand you over to the police.”
“That’s a lie,” roared Milburgh. “It’s a lie — I tell you it’s a lie!”
“I shall discover whether it is a lie in a few moments,” said Ling Chu.
He put his hand inside his blouse and Milburgh watched him fascinated, but he produced nothing more deadly than a silver cigarette-case, which he opened. He selected a cigarette and lit it, and for a few minutes puffed in silence, his thoughtful eyes fixed upon Milburgh. Then he rose and went to the cupboard and took out a larger bottle and placed it beside the other.
Ling Chu pulled again at his cigarette and then threw it into the grate.
“It is in the interests of all parties,” he said in his slow, halting way, “that the truth should be known, both for the sake of my honourable master, Lieh Jen, the Hunter, and his honourable Little Lady.”
He took up his knife and bent over the terror-stricken man.
“For God’s sake don’t, don’t,” half screamed, half sobbed Milburgh.
“This will not hurt you,” said Ling Chu, and drew four straight lines across the other’s breast. The keen razor edge seemed scarcely to touch the flesh, yet where the knife had passed was a thin red mark like a scratch.
Milburgh scarcely felt a twinge of pain, only a mild irritating smarting and no more. The Chinaman laid down the knife and took up the smaller bottle.
“In this,” he said, “is a vegetable extract. It is what you would call capsicum, but it is not quite like your pepper because it is distilled from a native root. In this bottle,” he picked up the larger, “is a Chinese oil which immediately relieves the pain which capsicum causes.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Milburgh, struggling. “You dog! You fiend!”
“With a little brush I will paint capsicum on these places.” He touched Milburgh’s chest with his long white ringers. “Little by little, millimetre by millimetre my brush will move, and you will experience such pain as you have never experienced before. It is pain which will rack you from head to foot, and will remain with you all your life in memory. Sometimes,” he said philosophically, “it drives me mad, but I do not think it will drive you mad.”
He took out the cork and dipped a little camel-hair brush in the mixture, withdrawing it moist with fluid. He was watching Milburgh all the time, and when the stout man opened his mouth to yell he thrust a silk handkerchief, which he drew with lightning speed from his pocket, into the open mouth.
“Wait, wait!” gasped the muffled voice of Milburgh. “I have something to tell you — something that your master should know.”
“That is very good,” said Ling Chu coolly, and pulled out the handkerchief. “You shall tell me the truth.”
“What truth can I tell you?” asked the man, sweating with fear. Great beads of sweat were lying on his face.
“You shall confess the truth that you killed Thornton Lyne,” said Ling Chu. “That is the only truth I want to hear.”
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