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.”