Read Online The Yellow Snake by Edgar Wallace - Free Book Online Page A

eternal damnation!"
        He ignored Narth, but his long finger stretched out, pointing to the Chinaman.
        "Fing-Su," he said, "for the third time I warn you! The Joyous Hands will need a new chief, and that fine factory of yours will go up in smoke, and you with it!"
        Turning, he walked out and slammed the door behind him.
        The girl was waiting in the corridor outside the office. She was bewildered, excited, and running through the web of her emotions was a thread of faith in this strange man who had come so unexpectedly and so violently into her life. She turned as he closed the door and responded to his smile.
        "Let's go to the Ritz," he said brusquely. "I am a very hungry man; I've been up since four."
        He said no word as they went down in the lift to the ground floor, and not until the taxi he called was threading its way through the tangle of traffic at the Mansion House did she speak.
        "Who is Fing-Su?" she asked.
        He started as though she had aroused him from a reverie.
        "Fing-Su?" he said carelessly. "Oh, he's just a Chink; the son of an old Chinese go-getter who wasn't a bad fellow. The old man was missionary-educated, and that, of course, spoilt him. No, I'm not knocking missionaries; they cannot perform miracles. It takes nine generations to make a black man think white, but ten thousand years couldn't change a Chinaman's mentality!"
        "He talks like an educated man," she said wonderingly.
        He nodded.
        "He's a Bachelor of Arts of Oxford. Old Joe Bray sent him there." He smiled at her gasp of astonishment. "Joe did some queer, good-hearted, silly things," he said, "and sending Fing-Su to Oxford was one of them."
        She could never remember exactly what happened at luncheon. She had a dim recollection that he talked most of the time, and only towards the end of the meal had she an opportunity of expressing her fears as to Mr Narth's attitude.
        "Don't worry about him. He's got his troubles, and they're pretty bad ones," he said grimly.
        But there was one matter upon which she must speak. He had ordered a car to be waiting, and insisted upon seeing her home to Sunningdale, and this gave her her opportunity.
        "Mr Lynne——" She hesitated. "This absurd marriage——"
        "No more absurd than other marriages," he said coolly, "and really not so absurd as it seemed when my whiskers were in full bloom. Do you want to get out of it?"
        Joan was pardonably annoyed at the hopefulness in his tone.
        "Of course I don't want to get out of it!" she said. "I've promised."
        "Why?" he asked.
        The colour came to her cheeks.
        "I don't know what you mean."
        "Why did you agree so readily? That rattles me rather," he said. "You're not the kind of girl to take the first man who came along. You're quite different from the stout and sentimental Mabel and the highly-strung Letty. What pull has Narth?"
        The question silenced her.
        "He has a pull, hasn't he? He said to you: 'You've got to marry this queer bird or else I'll'——what?"
        She shook her head, but he was insistent, and his keen grey eyes searched her face.
        "I was ready to marry anything when I came along. But I didn't expect—you!"
        "Why were you ready to accept anything?" she challenged, and a faint smile showed in his eyes.
        "That's fair," he admitted; "and now I'll tell you. I loved old Joe; he saved my life twice. He was the dearest, most fantastical old romance-hound that ever lived, and was mad keen that I should marry one of his family. I didn't know this until he told me he was dying—I didn't believe him, but that crazy Dutch doctor from Canton confirmed the diagnosis. Joe said that he'd die happy if I'd carry on the line, as he called it, though God knows he has no particular representative of the line worth carrying on—with the exception of you," he