“Good evening, John Keith!” It was Shan Tung.  An oriental gown fell about him, draping him like a woman.  It was a crimson gown, grotesquely ornamented with embroidered peacocks, and it flowed and swept about him in graceful undulations as he advanced, his footfalls making not the sound of a mouse on the velvet floors.

“Good evening, John Keith!” He was close, smiling, his eyes glowing, his hand still outstretched, friendliness in his voice and manner.  And yet in that voice there was a purr, the purr of a cat watching its prey, and in his eyes a glow that was the soft rejoicing of a triumph.

Keith did not take the hand.  He made as if he did not see it.  He was looking into those glowing, confident eyes of the Chinaman.  A Chinaman!  Was it possible?  Could a Chinaman possess that voice, whose very perfection shamed him?

Shan Tung seemed to read his thoughts.  And what he found amused him, and he bowed again, still smiling.  “I am Shan Tung,” he said with the slightest inflection of irony.  “Here—­in my home—­I am different.  Do you not recognize me?”

He waved gracefully a hand toward a table on either side of which was a chair.  He seated himself, not waiting for Keith.  Keith sat down opposite him.  Again he must have read what was in Keith’s heart, the desire and the intent to kill, for suddenly he clapped his hands, not loudly, once—­twice—–­

“You will join me in tea?” he asked.

Scarcely had he spoken when about them, on all sides of them it seemed to Keith, there was a rustle of life.  He saw tapestries move.  Before his eyes a panel became a door.  There was a clicking, a stir as of gowns, soft footsteps, a movement in the air.  Out of the panel doorway came a Chinaman with a cloth, napkins, and chinaware.  Behind him followed a second with tea-urn and a bowl, and with the suddenness of an apparition, without sound or movement, a third was standing at Keith’s side.  And still there was rustling behind, still there was the whispering beat of life, and Keith knew that there were others.  He did not flinch, but smiled back at Shan Tung.  A minute, no more, and the soft-footed yellow men had performed their errands and were gone.

“Quick service,” he acknowledged.  “Very quick service.  Shan Tung!  But I have my hand on something that is quicker!”

Suddenly Shan Tung leaned over the table.  “John Keith, you are a fool if you came here with murder in your heart,” he said.  “Let us be friends.  It is best.  Let us be friends.”

XXI

It was as if with a swiftness invisible to the eye a mask had dropped from Shan Tung’s face.  Keith, preparing to fight, urging himself on to the step which he believed he must take, was amazed.  Shan Tung was earnest.  There was more than earnestness in his eyes, an anxiety, a frankly revealed hope that Keith would meet him halfway.  But he did not offer his hand again.  He seemed to sense, in that instant, the vast gulf between yellow and white.  He felt Keith’s contempt, the spurning contumely that was in the other’s mind.  Under the pallid texture of his skin there began to burn a slow and growing flush.