secure between his teeth a wooden stopper
of considerable size which possessed an unpleasant chemical taste and
smell, even speech was denied him.

How long he had lain thus he had no means of judging accurately; but
hours--long, maddening hours--seemed to have passed since, with
the muzzle of Sin Sin Wa's Mauser pressed coldly to his ear, he had
submitted willy-nilly to the adroit manipulations of Mrs. Sin. At first
he had believed, in his confirmed masculine vanity, that it would be a
simple matter to extricate himself from the fastenings made by a woman;
but when, rolling him sideways, she had drawn back his heels and run
the loose end of the line through the loop formed by the lashing of
his wrists behind him, he had recognized a Chinese training, and had
resigned himself to the inevitable. The wooden gag was a sore trial,
and if it had not broken his spirit it had nearly caused him to break an
artery in his impotent fury.

Into the darkened inner chamber Sin Sin Wa had dragged him, and there
Kerry had lain ever since, listening to the various sounds of the place,
to the coarse voice, often raised in anger, of the Cuban-Jewess, to the
crooning tones of the imperturbable Chinaman. The incessant moaning of
the woman on the bed sometimes became mingled with another sound more
remote, which Kerry for long failed to identify; but ultimately he
concluded it to be occasioned by the tide flowing under the wharf. The
raven was silent, because, imprisoned in his wicker cage, he had been
placed in some dark spot below the counter. Very dimly from time to time
a steam siren might be heard upon the river, and once the thudding of
a screw-propeller told of the passage of a large vessel along Limehouse
Reach.

In the eyes of Mrs. Sin Kerry had read menace, and for all their dark
beauty they had reminded him of the eyes of a cornered rat. Beneath the
contemptuous nonchalance which she flaunted he read terror and remorse,
and a foreboding of doom--panic ill repressed, which made her dangerous
as any beast at bay. The attitude of the Chinaman was more puzzling. He
seemed to bear the Chief Inspector no personal animosity, and indeed,
in his glittering eye, Kerry had detected a sort of mysterious light of
understanding which was almost mirthful, but which bore no relation to
Sin Sin Wa's perpetual smile. Kerry's respect for the one-eyed
Chinaman had increased rather than diminished upon closer acquaintance.
Underlying his urbanity