‘The last time he came he had an amusing remark to make, something about keeping an aquarium …’
Won Chou was still at his observation post when the door opened again an hour later. Again he sped his message—a different intimation from the last, but conveying a sign of doubt for this time the watcher could not immediately ‘place’ the visitors. These were two, both men—‘a belong number one and a belong number two chop men,’ sagely decided Won Chou—but there was something about the more important of the two that for the limited time at his disposal baffled the Chinaman’s deduction. It was not until they were in the shop and he was attending to them that Won Chou astutely suspected this man perchance to be blind—and sought for a positive indication. Yet he was the one who seemed to take the lead rather than wait to be led and except on an occasional trivial point his movements were entirely free from indecision. Certainly he had paused at the step but that was only the natural hesitation of a stranger to the parts and it was apparently the other who supplied the confirmation.
‘This is the right place by the description, sir,’ the second man said.
‘It is the right place by the smell,’ was the reply, as soon as the door was opened. ‘Twenty centuries and a hundred nationalities mingle here, Parkinson. And not the least foreign—’
‘A native of some description, sir,’ tolerantly supplied the literal Parkinson, taking this to apply to the attendant as he came forward.
‘Can do what?’ politely inquired Won Chou, bowing rather more profoundly than the average shopman would, even to a customer in whom he can recognise potential importance.
‘No can do,’ replied the chief visitor, readily accepting the medium. ‘Bring number one man come this side.’
‘How fashion you say what want?’ suggested Won Chou hopefully.
‘That belong one piece curio house man.’
‘He much plenty busy this now,’ persisted Won Chou, faithfully carrying out his instructions. ‘My makee show carpet, makee show cabinet, chiney, ivoly, picture—makee show one ting, two ting, any ting.’
‘Not do,’ was the decided reply. ‘Go make look-see one time.’
‘All same,’ protested Won Chou, though he began to obey the stronger determination, ‘can do heap wella. Not is?’
A good natured but decided shake of the head was the only answer, and looking extremely sad and slightly hurt Won Chou melted through the doorway—presumably to report beyond that: ‘Much heap number one man make plenty bother.’
‘Look round, Parkinson,’ said his master guardedly. ‘Do you see anything here in particular?’
‘No, sir; nothing that I should designate noteworthy. The characteristic of the emporium is an air of remarkable untidiness.’
‘Yet there is something unusual,’ insisted the other, lifting his sightless face to the four quarters of the shop in turn as though he would read their secret. ‘Something unaccountable, something wrong.’
‘I have always understood that the East End of London was not conspicuously law-abiding,’ assented Parkinson impartially. ‘There is nothing of a dangerous nature impending, I hope, sir?’
‘Not to us, Parkinson; not as yet. But all around there’s something—I can feel it—something evil.’
‘Yes, sir—these prices are that.’ It was impossible to suspect the correct Parkinson of ever intentionally ‘being funny’ but there were times when he came perilously near incurring the suspicion. ‘This small extremely second-hand carpet—five guineas.’
‘Everywhere among this junk of centuries there must be things that have played their part in a hundred bloody crimes—can they escape the stigma?’ soliloquised the blind man, beginning to wander about the bestrewn shop with a self-confidence that would have shaken Won Chou’s conclusions if he had been looking on—especially as Parkinson, knowing by long experience the exact function of his office, made no attempt to guide his master. ‘Here is a sword that may have shared in the tragedy of Glencoe, this horn lantern lured some helpless ship to destruction on the Cornish coast, the very cloak perhaps that disguised Wilkes Booth when he crept up to shoot Abraham Lincoln at the play.’
‘It’s very unpleasant to contemplate, sir,’ agreed Parkinson discreetly.
‘But there is something more than that. There’s an influence—a force—permeating here that’s colder and deeper and deadlier than revenge or greed or decent commonplace hatred … It’s inhuman—unnatural—diabolical. And it’s coming nearer, it begins to fill the air—’ He broke off almost with a physical shudder and in the silence there came from the passage beyond the irregular thuds of Joolby’s sticks approaching. ‘It’s poison,’ he muttered; ‘venom.’
‘Had we better go before anyone comes, sir?’ suggested Parkinson, decorously alarmed. ‘As yet the shop is empty.’
‘No!’ was the reply, as though forced out with an effort. ‘No—face it!’ He turned as he spoke towards the opening door and on the word the uncouth figure, laboriously negotiating the awkward corners, entered. ‘Ah, at last!’
‘Well, you see, sir,’ explained Mr Joolby, now the respectful if somewhat unconventional shopman in the presence of a likely customer, ‘I move slowly so you must excuse being kept waiting. And my boy here—well-meaning fellow but so economical even of words that each one has to do for half a dozen different things—quite different things sometimes.’
‘Man come. Say “Can do”; say “No can do”. All same; go tell; come see,’ protested Won Chou, retiring to some obscure but doubtless ingeniously arranged point of observation, and evidently cherishing a slight sense of unappreciation.
‘Exactly. Perfectly explicit.’ Mr Joolby included his visitors in his crooked grin of indulgent amusement. ‘Now those poisoned weapons you wrote about. I’ve looked them up and I have a wonderful collection and, what is very unusual, all in their original condition. This,’ continued Mr Joolby, busying himself vigorously among a pile of arrows with padded barbs, ‘is a very fine example from Guiana—it guarantees death with convulsions and foaming at the mouth within thirty seconds. They’re getting very rare now because since the natives have become civilized by the missionaries they’ve given up their old simple ways of life—they will have our second-hand rifles because they kill much further.’
‘Highly interesting,’ agreed the customer, ‘but in my case—’
‘Or this beautiful little thing from the Upper Congo. It doesn’t kill outright, but, the slightest scratch—just the merest pin prick—and you turn a bright pea green and gradually swell larger and larger until you finally blow up in a very shocking manner. The slightest scratch—so,’ and in his enthusiasm Mr Joolby slid the arrow quickly through his hand towards Parkinson whose face had only too plainly reflected a fascinated horror from the moment of their host’s appearance. ‘Then the tapioca-poison group from Bolivia—’
‘Save yourself the trouble,’ interrupted the blind man, who had correctly interpreted his attendant’s startled movement. ‘I’m not concerned with—the primitive forms of murder.’
‘Not—?’ Joolby pulled up short on the brink of another panegyric, ‘not with poisoned arrows? But aren’t you the Mr Brooks who was to call this afternoon to see what I had in the way of—?’
‘Some mistake evidently. My name is Carrados and I have made no appointment. Antique coins are my hobby—Greek in particular. I was told that you might probably have something in that way.’
‘Coins; Greek coins.’ Mr Joolby was still a little put out by the mischance of his hasty assumption. ‘I might have; I might have. But coins of that class are rather expensive.’
‘So much the better.’
‘Eh?’ Customers in Padgett Street did not generally,