Mrs. Sin ground her teeth together audibly.

“Yes, yes!” she said in sibilant Chinese.  “She is a robber, a thief, a murderess.”  She bent over the unconscious woman, her jewel-laden fingers crooked and menacing.  “With my bare hands I would strangle her, but—­”

“There must be no marks of violence when she is found in the river.  Tchee, chee—­it is a pity.”

“Number one p’lice chop, lo!” croaked the raven, following this remark with the police-whistle imitation.

Mrs. Sin turned and stared fiercely at the one-eyed bird.

“Why do you bring that evil, croaking thing here?” she demanded.  “Have we not enough risks?”

Sin Sin Wa smiled patiently.

“Too many,” he murmured.  “For failure is nothing but the taking of seven risks when six were enough.  Come—­let us settle our affairs.  The ‘Jacobs’ account is closed, but it is only a question of hours or days before the police learn that the wharf as well as the house belongs to someone of that name.  We have drawn our last dollar from the traffic, my wife.  Our stock we are resigned to lose.  So let us settle our affairs.”

“Smartest—­smartest,” croaked Tling-a-Ling, and rattled ghostly castanets.

CHAPTER XXXIV

ABOVE AND BELOW

“Thank the guid God I see ye alive, Dan,” said Mary Kerry.

Having her husband’s dressing-gown over her night attire, and her usually neat hair in great disorder, she stood just within the doorway of the little dining-room at Spenser Road, her face haggard and the fey light in her eyes.  Kerry, seated in the armchair dressed as he had come in from the street, a parody of his neat self with mud on his shoes and streaks of green slime on his overall, raised his face from his hands and stared at her wearily.

“I awakened wi’ a cry at some hour afore the dawn,” she whispered stretching out her hands and looking like a wild-eyed prophetess of old.  “My hairt beat sair fast and then grew caud.  I droppit on my knees and prayed as I ha’ ne’er prayed afore.  Dan, Dan, I thought ye were gene from me.”

“I nearly was,” said Kerry, a faint spark of his old truculency lighting up the weary eyes.  “The man from Whitehall only missed me by a miracle.”

“‘Twas the miracle o’ prayer, Dan,” declared his wife in a low, awe-stricken voice.  “For as I prayed, a great comfort came to me an’ a great peace.  The second sight was wi’ me, Dan, and I saw, no’ yersel’ —­whereby I seemed to ken that ye were safe—­but a puir dying soul stretched on a bed o’ sorrow.  At the fuit o’ the bed was standing a fearsome figure o’ a man—­yellow and wicked, wi’ his hands tuckit in his sleeves.  I thought ’twas a veesion that was opening up tee me and that a’ was about to be made clear, when as though a curtain had been droppit before my een, it went awe’ an’ I kenned it nae more; but plain—­plain, I heerd the howling o’ a dog.”