The Jade God

Mr. Jarrad was a tall, lean man, with very quiet eyes, an observant air, and an impassive face. His clothing was unobtrusive and seemed to have arrived at that point of age at which clothing shows no further sign of wear. He was standing near the fireplace of an old-fashioned, oak-paneled room, and from his expression one might assume that he beheld its entire contents at a glance. Presently he fingered a bowl on the gray stone mantelpiece.

“One blue six-inch Delft, slightly chipped in two places on the upper edge,” he drawled.

Another man, rather younger, somewhat fatter, was seated at a table. He had something of Mr. Jarrad’s world-weary manner, but the process had not been carried quite so far, and he looked rather less diffident. He raised his eyes from a large book spread open before him and nodded.

“On the upper edge,” he repeated mechanically.

Mr. Jarrad put his ear to the clock. “One black marble timepiece, apparently in good order, lower left-hand corner damaged, complete with key. Keyhole slightly scratched.”

“Yes, we have that.”

The older man paused, took a swift inspection of his surroundings, pulled in his lower lip, and nodded thoughtfully. “Matter of fact, Mr. Dawkins, when I compare this room with several thousand others I’ve inspected, I rather like it. Wouldn’t mind having it myself, and in our profession that’s about as far as one can go.”

Dawkins put down his pen. “I had an idea that by this time you were past liking anything in the line of furnishings.”

Presently the inner edge of one of the heavy curtains that hung over the French window stirred ever so slightly and at one point drew very slowly aside, leaving a narrow oval gap on the border of which a man’s fingers, short, broad, and strong, were visible. This gap widened inch by inch, till, framed in the dull fabric, there appeared a face. A mass of tumbled hair surmounted a low forehead, beneath which moved eyes that were dark, shining, and restless. The man might have been forty, with tanned skin, large and rather uncouth features, a broad mouth, heavy lips⁠—blue-black and unshaven⁠—and a strange, furtive expression. No part of his body was visible below the chin, and the face hung as though suspended like a threatening mask in midair. The roving eyes searched the room, darting from place to place with extraordinary quickness, and reflecting little pinpoints of light from the leaping flames. Finally they rested on Derrick and his sister with a look in which surprise mingled with a certain unconquerable composure. There was no fear in the look but rather the suggestion that this formidable stranger from the dark had been here before and was now making up his mind on some vital matter. Then the lips widened into a grin rendered repulsive by discolored teeth; the gap narrowed as silently as a leaf falls; face and fingers diminished and disappeared; the curtain trembled and hung straight; and there drifted into the room the faintest possible sound from without. It was over, like a baleful dream.

Derrick looked up sharply. “Who was that?”

Edith, perceiving nothing, stared at him. His face was tense, his eyes very wide open. She struggled against a foolish sense of alarm.

It was in the midst of a space of profound silence that he heard the faintest click at the door. He started at that, for his sister had been long in bed, and Perkins’s room was in the far corner of the house. What moved in Beech Lodge now? The door was opening, so slowly that it was almost imperceptible. His hair began to prickle. Was this the evil thing, and what did it seek?

He stood, breathless and motionless, his pulse hammering, till through the widening crack projected a hand, followed by a long arm and white-clad shoulder. The fingers were empty and extended as though feeling blindly. Then a face, pallid as of the dead. It was Perkins!

She glided forward without sound or speech, a wraith, a spirit of the night, so unreal, so remote as to be divested of human attributes, the thin hand still held out, exploring and testing the half-light that filtered through the silent chamber. It was the hand rather than the body that had life, with consciousness in its quivering fingertips. She was only partly dressed and wore a loose white wrapper that accentuated the tall straightness of her figure. Her black hair hung in two thick ropes over her shoulders; her feet were bare; and her face was that of one who sees unspeakable things. The eyes were wide open, and in their glassy stare was a strange hunger and a great question.

She came on like an uncaptured spirit, feeling delicately along the paneled wall, a creature of body and flesh, but directed by some mysterious influence beyond human ken. She did not look toward the window but paused for a moment to survey the portrait with an unearthly and profound recognition.

He was returning from a long and solitary walk when, nearing Beech Lodge, he noted on the road ahead a curious figure. It was that of an elderly-looking man who tramped some hundred yards in advance. His clothing was loose and weather-beaten. He stooped a little forward as he walked, and supported himself on a staff which he had evidently cut by the way. As Derrick drew abreast he took a sidelong glance and at once remarked the brightness of the stranger’s eyes. Physically he did not seem more than fifty years old. A first impression of age was given by the whiteness of his beard, but in spite of both stoop and stick he moved with an agility that belied his apparent years. His skin was a dark olive shade, his nose hooked like a raven’s beak, and his cotton shirt was open at the neck, showing where a thin gold chain lay yellow against the swarthy flesh.

Derrick, meeting a swift look, experienced a sudden thrill. What manner of man was this to find in a Sussex lane? It seemed that something invisible but enormously potent moved down the road beside him. Then, instinctively, he halted at the gate of Beech Lodge and waited till the stranger came up. The latter made a sweeping gesture of salutation, and swung forward the pack that had been balanced on his shoulders.

“Good morning, sir. Will you buy a trinket and help an old man on his way? Cheap, sir, cheap, so cheap that they’re nothing short of presents, trade is that bad. Worse than I ever saw it in this country before.”

He spoke in a thin singsong voice that carried with it a sort of outlandish lilt. No British peddler this, but one from foreign parts. Derrick felt a now familiar thrill, and the spirit of him scented the Orient.

He took a glance at Millicent’s calm face, read in it a mute approval, and, opening the invisible panel, took the jade god from its dark recess.

Setting it a little on one side of the lamp, he stared hard into its pygmy countenance. There still sounded in his ears Blunt’s voice telling of strange gods in strange countries, and there came now the unforgettable whisper of the East, with its mystery, its scarlet passions, its swift terrors, its throbbing invitations, and the jungle call of its fevered life. There was more than that. On these miniature lips was set the smile of sardonic knowledge and the curve of utter evil. The lids that lay over the slant and lazy eyes were heavy with slumber, but it was a repose that carried with it no oblivion. Unnameable knowledge rested on the face, a knowledge that sneered at good and gathered to itself the wickedness of misty centuries. Here was the touch of supreme art, the superb assurance of a master hand, but the issue was to charge the mind with a blinding comprehension of all that decent men most strive to forget.

Still staring, he yielded unconsciously to the spell. Beech Lodge grew oddly indefinite. The landmarks of his mind seemed unsubstantial. He was free as the wind, with neither kith nor kin. He found himself wondering why for months he should have been possessed by the desire to avenge a man he never saw. The tiny green eyes suggested that Millicent, and even Millicent’s daughter, did not matter so much after all.