Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/71

and looked perplexed. Then he assumed the expression of one startled.

"Lee Gow! Me got tip tonight. Didn't believe first, but guess tip was true. Cops coming to search here, for you.

"Yong! No cops—not let cops in, eh?"

"Must let in, Gow—they smash in, chop in."

"Na—na—na—they find me. I kill white girl—I hide in cellar hole."

Lee Gow was on his knees, the iron ring of the cellar hatch in his spidery fingers.

The bell snared again: one long buzz, then several short impatient whirrs.

Lee Gow tried to open the bolt on the cellar door.

"Yong—help, me hide in cellar. You let cops in, not let them look in cellar!"

"Bah—they look in cellar. Here! Yong Lo have good scheme."

Yong already had his robe off.

"You wear my red black mandarin robe. I wear your clothes. You go to front door, let in cops. I stay here. They pinch me. Think me you in your clothes. Find out at station that me Yong Lo. I not kill nobody, police let me go. You skip while me at station. Thousand cash here in pocket of mandarin robe."

Yong helped Lee Gow into his garments.

The annunciator snared again.

The lamp in the bunk room was extinguished, and while Lee Gow, disguised as Yong, slippered toward the front door, Yong donned another red robe.

In the dark bunk room Yong manipulated something that clinked against the heavy chandelier chains. The iron ring of the cellar door in the floor squeaked on its rusty staple, then Yong Lo, in the rôle of Lee Gow, slipped forward to the store and pulled back the entrance door.

A man was crossing the street, coming from the manhole on the corner; a huge man tilting his bulk on tiptoe, much like a hog walking on its hind legs.

The big man came to Yong Lo's door.

"Lee Gow!" Butch Killian growled into the black door opening.

"Sh!" whispered Yong from the darkness.

"Lee Gow, I killed Yong, the cheater—choked him in that red gambling shirt, like you wrote me to. Pushed him down the sewer hole."

"Hee-hee."

Yong's guarded glee was all Butch Killian heard as he followed the slippered mongolian to the bunk room in back.

"Make a light, Lee Gow. Where's the dead chink's money?"

"Give me your hands." Yong whispered covertly.

Yong's bony fingers took Killian's thick hands and led him in the dark.

"Old Yong never piped a word after I got my grippers on his wrinkled turtle neck."

"Hee-hee," Yong Lo bleated in the dark.

Now they were in the bunk room.

Yong Lo raised Butch's hands upward till the big bully touched a heavy chain.

The Chinaman whispered low.

"You strong, like lion. You pull down chandelier chain. Me light lamp. You pull down money bowl. We divvy cash."

Butch Killian pulled on the chain but the fixture did not lower. Then the big brute grabbed the chain with both hands.

As he did so, smooth rings were slipped over his wrists, were compressed on the thick flesh, snapped.

"Butch big strong feller, pull chandelier down."