darin coat and flung it over her shoulders, for in the struggle her
body had been bared almost to the waist. Blake saw the crimson that
dripped on her matting slippers and maculated the cream white of the
mandarin coat.

"But where's Binhart?" he demanded, as he looked stolidly about for his
black boulder.

"Never mind Binhart," she cried, touching the eviscerated body at her
feet with one slipper toe, "or we 'll get what _he_ got!"

"I want that man Binhart!" persisted the detective.

"Not here! Not here!" she cried, folding the loose folds of the cloak
closer about her body.

She ran to the matting curtain, looked out, and called back, "Quick!
Come quick!" Then she ran back, slipped the bolt in the outer door and
rejoined the waiting detective.

"Oh, white man!" she gasped, as the matting fell between them and the
room incarnadined by their struggle. Blake was not sure, but he
thought he heard her giggle, hysterically, in the darkness. They were
groping their way along a narrow passage. They slipped through a
second door, closed and locked it after them, and once more groped on
through the darkness.

How many turns they took, Blake could not remember. She stopped and
whispered to him to go softly, as they came to a stairway, as steep and
dark as a cistern. Blake, at the top, could smell opium smoke, and
once or twice he thought he heard voices. The woman stopped him, with
outstretched arms, at the stair head, and together they stood and
listened.

Blake, with nerves taut, waited for some sign from her to go on again.
He thought she was giving it, when he felt a hand caress his side. He
felt it move upward, exploringly. At the same time that he heard her
little groan of alarm he knew that the hand was not hers.

He could not tell what the darkness held, but his movement was almost
instinctive. He swung out with his great arm, countered on the
crouching form in front of him, caught at a writhing shoulder, and
tightening his grip, sent the body catapulting down the stairway at his
side. He could hear a revolver go off as the body went tumbling and
rolling down--Blake knew that it was a gun not his own.

"Come on, white man!" the girl in front of him was crying, as she
tugged at his coat. And they went on, now at a run, taking a turn to
the right, making a second descent, and then another to the left. They
came to still another door, which they locked behind them. Then they
scrambled up a ladd