Weird Tales/Volume 7/Issue 6/The Foot Fetish

​The
Foot Fetish
by Howard R. Marsh

"She shrank from the burning glances of the leering, luring eyes which appraised her golden beau-u-ty!"

June Hubbard struck a dramatic pose, one arm crooked before her face, the other extended as if to ward off a blow. She was jostled forward, almost from her feet, by hurrying pedestrians behind her. Still she maintained her pose, murmuring, "The beady little eyes, set deep in the yellow faces, seemed to caress her beau-u-ty!" With dramatic impulse she hid her face in her furs, mocking fear of those "leering, luring eyes."

A dozen paces ahead of her a tall, gray-haired man, suddenly conscious of her absence from beside him, turned and pushed back. Before his long arms tourists, shoppers and Chinese men in heterogeneous garb fell aside as snow from before a plow. In a moment he was beside the girl.

"June, don't act so like a child!" he ordered, grasping her arm. "What's the use———?"

"Dad, don't be angry with your only daughter!" June's blue eyes begged forgiveness even while their depths brimmed with mirth. "Honestly, I had to have one outburst! For years I have been reading about the 'leering, luring eyes of Chinatown'. Magazines, books full of terrible eyes! And all afternoon I've been watching for some of them. Dad, there isn't a pair of leering, luring eyes in all Chinatown unless they're set in the head of that Irish policeman who's holding up that corner store. I came down into Chinatown expecting to feel cold shivers as 'beady eyes watched and appraised but never promised'. Dad, I haven't been appraised once!"

Mr. Hubbard's scowl of vexation vanished; a smile replaced it. It was a sudden smile, one of the attractions of his lean brown face. "You're forgiven, June." His voice had the same muted vibrancy as the girl's. ​"Of course you haven't been appraised. Only articles of worth or beauty are appraised."

"Ouch!" cried June, shaking her father's arm. "That's a cruel one. You know that I'm———"

"Worthless," finished Mr. Hubbard. "And blemished."

"Ah, the blemish! The fatal blemish!" June attempted to strike a dramatic pose again but her father marched her along too rapidly. "Bear! Well, anyway, the fatal blemish! Only it isn't fatal here in Chinatown. Not even Chinese eyes could possibly see that there's a queer mark on my foot. No sir! Besides, the Chinese eyes aren't sharp at all; they're sleepy, sodden eyes, morning-after eyes, which wouldn't show interest in Venus herself."

"Perhaps, perhaps," Mr. Hubbard agreed. "Of course, all the trash about the fearful, mysterious Chinese character is exaggerated. It's our great American superstitious fear of the unknown. On the other hand the Orientals are strange peoples; their thousands of years of static civilization have made them introspective, with strange desires and worships and———"

"For further references see Stoddard's Lectures," June advised, laughingly. "Dad, I didn't come down here to hear an address on China. I came for thrills. As there don't seem to be any thrills running around loose, I'm going to make some." Her laughter rippled out as she noted apprehension cloud her father's face. "No, I'm not planning to kill a Chinese nor to rob a bank! Haven't you been with me enough to know that a woman's idea of a thrill is to buy something pretty and wildly extravagant? Let's try one of these dark little stores which promise hidden riches! Come on!"

Impulsively she darted into a narrow-doored store, pulling her father after her. Over the door a tiny bell tinkled; simultaneously a Chinese youth pushed aside silken curtains at the back end of the shop and stood, a vivid figure against the red background. Father and daughter hesitated, checked not so much by the sudden appearance of the gold-and-green-clad Oriental as by a sudden sickish-sweet, softly acrid odor which saturated the room. Teak and sandalwood, incense, and back of it all a smothering mist, exotic and nameless—these were combined in the fragrant yet oppressing cloud which settled over the two Americans.

The Chinese youth stood motionless against his gorgeous background; yet his presence seemed to advance down the narrow aisle until it forced itself into intimacy with the Americans.

June Hubbard felt a thrill; there was no doubt of it, for she caught her father's arm impulsively. Even Mr. Hubbard seemed disturbed; involuntarily his eyes turned to the door as though ascertaining that the way of escape was still open. Then June laughed, a tinkling laugh which vibrated gongs and bells and copper kettles and filled the narrow store with smothered sound. "Dad, how wonderful!" There was a forced, false note in her enthusiasm. Her voice seemed to be gathered into the folds of the red and gold silks which lined the wall; it lost its exuberant note. When June spoke again it was in a lower tone.

"There are wonderful things here," she said, pointing down the narrow aisle flanked on one side by mandarin coats, kimonas, tapestries, on the other by cases of beads, carved ivory, jade, statuettes of Buddha, the Three Wise Monkeys of many sizes and materials. She advanced to the nearest showcase. "See those dear monkeys! Their hands over their eyes, their ears, their mouths. 'See ​no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil'. Those little ivory ones, now———"

The Chinese youth padded down the aisle, his black slippers emphasizing the vivid colors of his split sham. He was smiling now, clearly a trade smile which only curved a gash in his graven face.

"Very pretty, Miss," he said, stooping and reaching into the showcase. "Ivory. Very good. Six dollars." He handed the monkeys to June. His cold fingertips touched her hand and she dropped the carving to the floor.

"Oh, we'll take it," she said to cover her confusion and unwarranted repulsion. "Dad, you pay for it."

"We have some new pretty slippers," the Chinese salesman said, almost as though he had been trained in an American school of salesmanship. "Come."

He raised one yellow hand aloft, and, smiling, as though promising great pleasure, beckoned the girl to the back end of the store. "How foolish of me!" June thought. "I really am feeling a little shivery. Come, dad," she said aloud and then whispered, "Don't you dare leave me! There are spooks here!"

The Chinese youth pulled aside a yellow silk curtain; from a low shelf he took some silk slippers, tied together with red cord. He fingered the delicate footwear, staring impersonally at June as though deciding a color scheme. Then he carefully selected a pair of soft blue bedroom slippers with pink and white flowers embroidered in the toes. "Please you sit down," he said, motioning to a massive-armed teak chair glistening with inlaid pearl peacocks.

"The princess on her throne," June said with nervous flippancy.

The Chinese youth pulled off her tan walking shoes. His little eyes studied June's face. "Yes," he said simply. "Princess on throne. That throne once was for Woo Loo ahmu. Ahmu is word for wife, mother-wife. You know? Woo Loo had many wives, but the princess,—she was wife of whole pu, whole tribe, angel of whole pu. Princess of the Sacred Foot, you would call her name. Up in Gobi; Hill Country. She was a child of the gods and——— This slipper goes nice like silk glove! See!" The long yellow fingers smoothed the slipper over June's foot, caressed the soft silk. Suddenly the delicate hands of the Chinese half-clenched; his body grew rigid. For a moment it seemed that he would fall forward on his face. He gained control of himself only with great effort. His fingers were resting over an irregularity on June's instep; his eyes were fixed on a jagged outline which showed through the silk stocking. Suddenly he rose, backed away, disappeared between the red curtains in the back of the store.

Impulsively June kicked off the blue slipper and reached for her walking shoe. "Let's get out," she whispered to her father. "I've had enough. He's crazy! He saw that mark on my foot and———"

Mr. Hubbard nodded. "Opium, maybe. Thought I smelled it here. Hurry! Don't stop to lace your shoe!"

Ts turned to hurry away and almost fell over two old Chinese men who had mysteriously appeared from some side opening in the tapestries. The aged Orientals bowed, smiled ingratiatingly, their black skull caps almost touching the floor. They sensed the fear of the Americans and subtly strove to overcome it.

"Please do not hurry," begged the older man, tucking his arms in the sleeves of his orange sham and bowing low. "My son, he not well. He leave you and come to me. He say you like blue slipper. I know better. I have cloth-of-gold slipper for miss. Sit down just one minute." The other ​Chinese man pushed forward the teak chair and led the wondering June back to it.

Mr. Hubbard was a little angry, a little uneasy, but mostly determined not to make himself ridiculous. "All right, June," he said bruskly. "Only hurry!" He pulled out his watch, making a pretense of being pressed for time.

"Just one minute," the old image of Buddha insisted. Already he was pulling at June's loose shoe.

June jerked her right foot from his hand and extended the other one. "This foot, please," she said, feeling that in some way the birthmark on her foot was provocative of danger.

"Yes, miss," the old Oriental agreed, but he grasped the right foot and pulled off the shoe. It was only a fraction of a second before June jerked her foot away from him and jumped to her feet, tense and angry, but in that half-second the old Chinese fingers had pressed the stocking tight against June's instep so that the blemish was clearly outlined. It was a queerly shaped mark, a tapering rectangle running down her foot and ending in a jagged flare at each lower edge.

Mr. Hubbard had watched the Chinese man's sudden move; now he grasped the old man by the shoulders and pushed him roughly aside. He fell to the floor. From there he chanted guttural excited words to the old man behind the chair.

"Shut up!" shouted Mr. Hubbard, advancing threateningly. "Another word and I'll kick in your yellow ribs!" But still the rush of Chinese words went on, broken by exclamations from the wizened man who cowered behind the chair. Mr. Hubbard, unable to kick a man who was down, turned his attention to June, who was frantically pulling on her shoe. "Come on, June! I don't like this devil-chatter!"

In a moment the two were outside, with the immediate memory of a bell tinkling over their heads and back of that the whole grotesque, inexplainable scene in the Chinese shop.

"Ho!" Mr. Hubbard took a deep breath of the fresh air which swept up Grant Street from the bay. "That tastes good after that stuffiness in there! Now what the devil———"

"Don't swear, dad! But it was an awful sensation, feeling those snaky fingers on my foot. Why do you suppose the whole pack went crazy over that mark? Or was that it, do you suppose?"

"Yes, it was the mark, I believe. It meant something to those fanatics. They were not pure Chinese but Hillmen, I take it, from their reference to the Gobi and the Hill Country. In that country there are strange worships. I believe they have foot fetishes. You know, June, the foot as a fetish is one of the oldest of all———"

"Now, dad, don't stop to give another page from the encyclopedia. Let's get away from here! Ugh! Those fingers!"

Father and daughter walked as rapidly as the crowded sidewalks of Grant Street would permit. It was almost dark now. Already street lights were flickering and from many windows came the reflected glare of polished wood, brass, shiny silk. June held her furs close to her face. No ridicule now of the "leering, luring eyes"! Those old graven faces, the frozen expression of the Chinese youth when he discovered the birthmark, the guttural mouthings of the old man on the floor,—these had all affected her deeply. Like all buoyant natures, when she was not radiantly happy she was almost melancholy. Her father, too, seemed uneasy.

The two were silent as they left ​Chinatown behind them, reached Market Street, turned right, right again toward the hotel. From time to time June cast apprehensive glances over her shoulder. Suddenly she grasped her father's arm.

"Dad! We're being followed. There's a Chinese hoy watching us every minute!" She broke into a half-run, an instinctive flight from danger.

Mr. Hubbard whirled. A dozen feet behind him was a dapper Chinese youth, immaculately dressed in the latest style and swinging a little cane. He hesitated as Mr. Hubbard faced him, then strolled on, apparently unconcerned.

"Dad!" June called from on ahead. There was real fright now in her voice. "Dad! Where are you?" Her father hurried, passing the Chinese youth again. In a moment he had caught June's arm; in another they were in the brilliantly lighted hotel lobby, trying to laugh at their fears. But the mirth was half-hearted, for the Chinese had sauntered nonchalantly past them, stopped near the elevator, pulled a cigarette from a leather case and lighted it, then backed to the wall, from whence he could watch the entire lobby.

Mr. Hubbard was tempted to take June outside again, hoping to lose the lurking Oriental in the crowded streets. He started toward the door, June still on his arm, then seeing that the Chinese was sauntering toward them, turned straight to the elevator. "Ninth floor," he said loudly to the elevator man as he stepped into the cage.

The Chinese youth hesitated, then stepped aside; the door was clanged shut and the elevator started up. "Did I say ninth floor?" Mr. Hubbard asked good-naturedly. "I meant the seventh." He smiled meaningly at June, but the girl was too perturbed to appreciate her father's subterfuge.

In a minute father and daughter had entered their connecting front rooms which faced out over the brilliantly lighted city, with Nob Hill looming up in the middle distance. Inside his room Mr. Hubbard waited a moment, then suddenly peered out into the hall. No one was visible. He closed the door, locked it and threw open the door between the two rooms.

"June, I'm a little tired," he said. "I think it would be better to have dinner brought up to our rooms and stay inside tonight. Tomorrow we'll go down to Los Angeles."

"Yes," June replied, "it will be better to eat in our rooms, I'm sure." She threw aside her coat and furs, walked to the window and looked out. Down on the sidewalk below thousands of people were hurrying along, like so many ants after a rainstorm. Some of them, yes, surely many of them, were Chinese men with long yellow fingers, expressionless faces and hard eyes. She shuddered and backed away from the window.

"Dad," she called. "Won't you find out who have the adjoining rooms?"

Mr. Hubbard realized the worth of the idea and called the room clerk. "Mr. John Powell is in 708," he reported. "Sounds like a good American name. Room 714 is vacant yet." He hesitated. Then, "We're acting like a couple of babies," he declared. "Let's forget the whole thing."

"All right," June agreed. "We'll order dinner,—or let's make it supper. Then read and to bed. I'm anxious to get to Los Angeles. Suppose we'll see Douglas Fairbanks and Bill Hart?"

She tried to assume a light-heartedness she did not feel.

That night Room 714 was engaged by an aristocratic-looking man who might be white, or again might be Mongolian. His face was swarthily gray. He certainly was not pure ​Chinese, still———. The room clerk gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided that he was white. The same room clerk was surprized that this man should always go up to his room, while apparently he never came down. He was more surprized about dawn when he received a call, asking that a porter be sent up to 714 immediately for a trunk. Then the tall, swarthy-faced man came down and paid his bill. "An early train to Seattle," the guest said suavely. Yes, he had his own expressman outside. He'd give directions about the trunk. Looking up at this moment the clerk saw four other tall, swarthy-faced men leave the elevator and walk to the door.

"Friends?" he asked, pointing to the departing men.

"Yes," the suave gentleman explained. "They called for me; we're on a sight-seeing expedition together. We're off for Seattle." He paid his bill and departed to take care of his trunk. But instead of loading it on an express wagon, he and his four "friends" packed it into a big curtained automobile, which sped away toward the wharves of the Embarcadero where the great steamship Empress was coaling for its morning departure for Shanghai.

John Powell enjoyed a restful, although somewhat dreamful night in Room 708. He had spent the hours before midnight strolling the streets of Chinatown, and he was physically tired. Early in the evening he had joined a sight-seeing party and for an hour was content to witness the "show" part of the Chinese sections, to visit the gambling houses and tea rooms which were carefully stage-set to interest tourists. Then, realizing that the whole trip was a cut-and-dried affair, he slipped away from the party and began his own investigation.

A less courageous man would have hesitated to penetrate some of the dark areaways where John Powell's curiosity led him, to tiptoe up some of the stairs whose narrow openings were set flush with the sidewalk, or to sneak into "go downs" and peer through torn curtains at the Chinese faces in the dim, smoky rooms. But John Powell was one of those rare mortals to whom fear is almost unknown. Perhaps his splendid physique, his six feet of lean muscularity, had found that it could take care of itself without aping the caution of others; certainly in his twenty-six years of existence he had learned not cowardice, but confidence.

So the dangers of Chinatown did not exist to John Powell; the exotic sights and mysterious happenings alone interested him. Thus he dreamed, not of Chinese ogres with red-handled knives, living Buddhas demanding a human foot for toll—such dreams as June Hubbard was dreaming in the next room—but of the delicate, cameo faces of the silk-clad Chinese girls he had seen in the garish second-floor room above a canyonlike alley-street; of the emotionless face of a Chinese dandy as he collected the fan-tan markers; of the fragile hand of a slender, yellow wraith who beckoned to him from a half-closed door; of these John Powell dreamed. And toward morning he dreamed a fantasy of dancers around a great copper kettle from which arose an intoxicating, numbing odor and toward which he was being led by some invisible, resistless spirit.

He awoke from this dream just as he was about to faint before the strength of that pervading perfume. For a few seconds dream and actuality were indistinguishable; each struggled for mastery. He seemed drugged, still under the power of that odor. It took effort of will to force ​himself out of bed. Then suddenly he realized that the numbing fumes were real; that his room fairly reeked with them. In an instant he was before the open window, gulping great lungfuls of the air. It was daylight; the sun was beginning to gild the tops of the highest buildings; already it had rolled back the fog which blankets San Francisco for the night. The fresh morning air chilled him and awoke all his senses.

Chloroform! That was the smell! He remembered a brief stay in a hospital and——— But whence did it come? His first thought was that perhaps he had been drugged and robbed, but investigation proved that his room had not been entered. Then he located the origin of the odor; it penetrated around the door between his room and the next to the right.

"Suicide!" John Powell forced himself to consider the idea. Perhaps. Again, it might bo some fumigant which he detected, or some insomnia victim seeking easy sleep. He checked his impulse to telephone for the house detective, and knocked loudly on the door to the next room. There was no response. He knocked louder. Still no sign of life. A moment more he hesitated, then he walked to the room telephone.

"Who's in Room 710?" he asked.

"Mr. Hubbard and Miss Hubbard have rooms 710 and 712," came the quick response. "Shall I have the operator ring them?"

"No thanks, not now." Powell wanted time to think, to decide how far he should allow suspicion to carry him.

He tried the door again; it was bolted on the other side. "Curiosity, thy name is John Powell!" he murmured, stepping back from the door, preparatory to charging it.

Powell had learned line-bucking under the tutelage of one Coach Yost; he hit the door low and hard, then grimaced as he rubbed a bruised shoulder and contemplated the unmoved door. He placed a pillow on his shoulder for a pad, crossed the room and took a running start. But for all its grained veneer the door was steel, set in a steel frame.

"Third down and nothing gained," Powell muttered. "Try a forward pass!"

He hastily donned trousers and coat, then went to the window. By clinging tightly to the right edge of his own window frame he was able to swing his feet across to the sill of room 710. He contorted and twisted, but couldn't balance his body, and hung dangling eighty feet above the sidewalk. Cautiously he released one hand from the frame behind him, grasped the brick-edge ahead and swung across, feeling one dangerous second of flight through space.

Immediately all thought of past peril left him, for through the closed window he saw a man's body sprawled grotesquely on the floor, blankets around his feet, his arms warped behind him. Glass tinkled on the pavement below as John Powell threw himself through the windows. Fumes, the sickish, sweet odor of chloroform smote him, almost drove him back, but he ran across the room and opened the door into the hall. Drafts of fresh air were established, carrying away the deadening fumes. Powell lifted the man from the floor and carried him to the window. There he flexed the inert body. It was several minutes before the man began to gulp the air.

"June!" he cried. "June!"

John Powell held a glass of water to Mr. Hubbard's blue lips. At last the older man spoke, rapidly, incoherently. Piece by piece Powell grasped the story, the sudden night attack, the conviction that his daughter had been stolen, the experience of the previous afternoon,—these Mr. ​Hubbard told, begging piteously for aid.

Powell crossed to the next room, June's room. It was apparently undisturbed; there were no signs of a struggle. The bed had been slept in, but was otherwise undisturbed; feminine clothes were neatly arranged on a chair; there were no signs of violence, but the room was empty. Powell tried the next door, leading into room 714. At first he thought it had not been occupied, but closer examination showed cigarette stubs, muddy tracks.

"The devils worked from here," Powell muttered, pausing to note how the doors between the two rooms had been jimmied. He hastened back to Mr. Hubbard. That gentleman was too nauseated, too numbed, to be of assistance. Yet the situation called for instant action; a man had been attacked in one of San Francisco's leading hotels; his daughter had been abducted.

In less than five minutes John Powell, completely dressed and thoroughly determined, was cross-examining the room clerk. That sleepy-eyed individual knew little beyond the fact that room 714 had been occupied by a tall, swarthy man who was visited by some "friends".

"Luggage?" Powell asked. "What did they have?"

That stirred some cell in the clerk's slow-moving brain. "They called the porter to take out a trunk about daylight," he said. "I'll call him."

The porter came, a stupid hulk of a man, sullen and suspicious. Yes, of course, he remembered the trunk. "I knew I'd get in trouble over that blamed thing," he snorted. "It wasn't my fault, either."

"What wasn't your fault?"

"That it was lifted. I put it down in front of the freight elevator and went to call an express man. When we came back the trunk was gone. I didn't have nothing to do with———"

"We aren't blaming you for anything," Powell quieted the porter. "We merely wish to locate that trunk."

"It wasn't yours, was it?" The porter was still sullen.

"No, it wasn't mine. But we're after it and the owners of it. What did it look like?"

"Say, what are you, anyway? A 'dick' looking for dope? Did them Chinese birds have a trayful of hops?"

"Then they were Chinese?" Powell asked.

"Sure! At least part Chinese. Funny-looking ginks, not exactly yellow, but not white, that's a cinch. You asked what the trunk looked like. It was a wooden box, a kind of chest, covered with carvings. Heavy devil to handle, I'll say. Them Chinks made me carry it right side up with care. So it was hops, huh? Well, I'll be———"

"What color was it? How long? Did it have any handles?"

"Whoa-up! Not so fast! It was wood color, except it had a greenish tinge. Five feet long, I'd guess; five by three by two. Carved brass or something for handles."

"Have you any idea where it dispeared to?"

"I told you 'no'. It was just gone. The only thing in sight on the street was a big car, turning the corner."

Satisfied he could glean no more useful information from the porter, Powell hurried back to Mr. Hubbard. June's father, sick with anxiety, was frantically pulling on his clothes. Powell reported the trunk incident. Already he was satisfied that the chest contained the missing girl, dead or alive. Mr. Hubbard agreed that such an abduction was a possibility. At Powell's request he repeated all he could remember of ​the weird incident in the Chinese shop the day before.

"Of course, that's it," Powell stated. "Your daughter was kidnaped, probably because of some significance attached to the mark on her foot. A foot-fetish people wanted her. Pretty deep for us. But hurry! We'll go down to that store and get the truth from those yellow devils if I have to pound it out of them!"

John Powell and Mr. Hubbard raced into the Chinese section in their chartered taxicab. Before 8 o'clock they whirled up before the dingy store and in a moment assailed the Chinese youth who appeared from behind the curtains. But that gayly-dressed individual was all smiles and urbanity. In reply to the frantic questioning of Mr. Hubbard he shrugged his shoulders. "I not know, I not know," he repeated. "No see lady you talk about."

"Tell us or I'll kill you!" Powell shouted, grasping the Chinese by the shoulder and shaking him. "Tell us, or I'll smash every bone you have!"

The Chinese smiled as if at a joke. "I not know," he reiterated. "Just one minute. I go ask my honored father."

Baffled, helpless, Powell was forced to let the youth disappear through the curtains in the back of the store. A moment later the yellow face peered out. "You wait," he said. "I find out!"

They waited, John Powell and Mr. Hubbard, waited for long minutes. There was no sound from the back room. "I'll see what's going on back there," Powell muttered at last, pushing the draperies aside.

He half expected a savage onslaught; instead he saw three graven-faced Chinese quietly drinking tea and eating rice. They rose when Powell strode into the room.

"Very nice tea!" one of them said graciously. "Will mister have tea?"

Powell stared into the expressionless old face; there was something indefinable shining from the man's eyes, a cunning satisfaction, perhaps, a pleased appreciation of his own cleverness. "Will mister have tea? We talk of ladee."

The Chinese overplayed his part. The solution flashed through Powell's mind. These men were attempting to detain him. Why? To poison him? Attack him when the moment was right? No, hardly that. Then he knew. It was to allow someone else time to get June Hubbard safely away.

He turned quickly toward the curtains, ready to resume the chase, he knew not just where. Immediately the three Chinese plunged after him. The curtains were pulled down and trapped his arms and legs. He tripped and fell. Atop him the Chinese piled. Fingers reached for his throat; the silk was pulled tighter and tighter around his neck. He was slowly smothering.

Slowly, like a giant lifting a family of pigmies, John Powell rose to his feet, the Chinese clinging to his shoulders and throat, his arms, his legs. From the other room came a cry, then the sound of a heavy fall. Other Chinese had downed Mr. Hubbard easily. Well, all the more reason for Powell to fight.

An immense anger rose in him. Who were these yellow men to try to fight John Powell? He straightened his right arm, carrying on it into space one of the clinging Chinese. Using the body of the Oriental as a flail, he whirled to beat off the others. Arms encircled his legs and tripped him; he was falling again. If he went down he was lost. His six feet of muscular body responded to the desperate call on it. There was a flailing of arms and legs, tom bits of silk flying through the air, quick gasps of pain, guttural oaths. Three Chinese bodies came hurtling from the melee and crashed against the walls ​or on the floor. Powell stood in magnificent freedom, breathing defiance. For a moment all thought of the abducted June Hubbard was gone; John Powell was merely an American youth who had fought three aliens to a standstill and was giving them chance for more. Then he saw Mr. Hubbard, lying tied and gagged behind the nearest counter in the outer room. There was his duty—that old man and his daughter!

He ran to pick up Mr. Hubbard and carried him to the taxi. "To the Embarcadero!" he called to the driver. "Fifty dollars if you get there before 9 o'clock!"

Inside the speeding taxicab Powell untied the gasping Mr. Hubbard. June's father seemed to have needed the rough treatment to arouse him from his despairing lethargy. "Don't go!" he begged. "Beat those Chinese until they tell us where June is!"

"They wanted us to stay!" Powell declared. "They would have been beaten willingly if they could have detained us. I think that I know why! The Empress sails at 9 o'clock for China. I know it, for last week I was considering taking a trip on it. June's aboard! I'm sure! That's why they tried to hold us back there!" He leaned from the window and excitedly shouted to the taxi driver for more speed. "It's a matter of seconds, now!" he exclaimed to Mr. Hubbard. "It's sailing time already!"

The little rattling taxicab careened around the last corner and pulled up before Wharf 19. With a checked groan, Powell saw that the gate was closed. He tossed some money to the driver and leaped from the machine, followed by Mr. Hubbard like a tail to a comet.

The paneled gate was not built to withstand the assault of a determined six-footer. It crashed and splintered. Powell and Mr. Hubbard plowed through the wreckage, threw off detaining hands, dashed frantically along the wharf and made a final leap across the widening gap between the Empress and its dock.

Oh the upper deck five swarthy-faced individuals watched the sensational race. They looked at each other meaningly, then, without a word, went down the forward stairs to the main cabin, along the narrow corridor to two adjoining rooms. They filed in quietly, to join a sixth Mongolian who was bowed before a bed surrounded by incense tapers. On the bed, garbed in a mandarin robe of indescribable brilliance, was the white, drugged figure of June Hubbard.

The first few hours on the Empress were a continuous fight for John Powell and Mr. Hubbard. They were unwelcome guests. There was no accommodation for them. The purser promised them that a tug would be signaled and they be sent ashore. In desperation Powell asked to see the captain. That official was on the bridge and wouldn't leave it until the Empress was safely through the Golden Gate.

"Let us wait until we see him," Powell begged. He dared not trust his story to lesser officials; they would not believe him, would laugh at his excuse for remaining aboard. Everything depended upon the captain. "Let us see him," Powell insisted. "If he makes us leave I'll pay the expense of securing a tug to come, after us. Oh, I'm solvent and sane, I tell you!" He pulled a book of travelers' checks from his pocket and dazzled the purser by their size. "I'm a chronic traveler, but this trip is not for pleasure. It's a matter of life and death. Wait until we see the captain."

​Three hours later Powell was closeted with Captain Brand. Soon the purser was summoned.

"Give Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Powell berths in my cabin," the captain ordered. "Place them at my table, Mr. Sims. And send up the passenger list immediately. . . Most remarkable. . . Unbelievable. . ."

Little was gained from studying the passenger list. There were many Chinese aboard the Empress, Hoys, Sings, Moosoongs, Lees, Wus,—more than a hundred in all. If June's abductors were aboard only a magician could pick out their names.

Nor did meal-time bring John Powell any nearer the solution; there were many Oriental men in the dining rooms; most of them answered the description, "tall, swarthy."

"We're stuck," Powell admitted to Mr. Hubbard soon after noon. "It ought to be easy to find your daughter's abductors, but it isn't. We aren't sure enough that they are here so that the captain can order a general search of every room. . . Let me think the thing out. . ."

Half an hour later John Powell went to the captain to get permission to borrow the ship's carpenter and the ship's electrician.

Captain Brand issued a general order at dinner that night. Every person aboard must attend a meeting at 8 o'clock in the grand salon to be instructed in procedure in case of fire or accident, he announced, and his officers carried the word to every part of the ship.

At 8 o'clock the first mate began a talk on the use of life-belts before a crowded salon. Every passenger aboard had been herded into the room. The mate talked rapidly, assigning positions, apportioning boats. Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, the room was plunged into blackness. Every light was out.

Passengers huddled together in the salon; it was weird, fearful, the way the great vessel plunged through the darkness, blind, black. The uncanniness was increased when strains of music sounded somewhere, wild sounds from stringed instruments which grew insistently louder, like a wind gaining in volume. Then the weird climax———

Overhead in the blackness a faint green light appeared. It seemed to float overhead, across the ceiling of the salon. Gradually it grew stronger, a ghastly, phosphorescent glow. It took outline—the outline of a great foot, a giant foot, green and terrible. Suddenly on its side a jagged spot shone, blood-red and shaped like a huge human tooth.

For the fraction of a minute the strange apparition glowed, then the ship's lights flashed on again. For a dazed second the passengers remained staring at the great foot. Then they laughed uneasily. The foot was a wood-and-canvas affair, crude and rough, with a red tooth painted on its side, the whole thing strung with many wires. The spectral foot was a joke of the ship's crew, of course! The passengers crowded forward to examine it. But not John Powell.

In the first flash of the lights he searched the crowded salon; in that second he saw what he had hoped to see and feared he would not see—a group of Chinese men, their heads touching the floor in worship of that great green foot. "There!" Powell called to Mr. Hubbard. "Keep an eye on them until I can get to them!"

But the Orientals quickly rose ​from their worshiping position, their eyes blinking, their feces grave and mystical. Silently they slid away from the crowd, below to the cabin deck. Close behind them pushed John Powell and after him Captain Brand and Mr. Hubbard. The Chinese turned into a stateroom on the main deck; the lock clicked shut.

Powell shook the door. "Open up, there!" he called. "The captain wants to see you. Open!"

There was no sound from behind the locked door. "Hurry!" pleaded Mr. Hubbard to the captain. "Don't give them time to hurt June if she's in there!"

Without more parley John Powell crashed his weight against the door. It splintered before the impact and he fell into the room. Instantly three Orientals were upon him; three more threw themselves on Captain Brand and Mr. Hubbard. But it wasn't a long fight. The three Americans had seen a white figure on the altarlike bed, the beautifully garbed, silent form of June Hubbard. They were fighting for a definite object now.

Blows, guttural exclamations, then the flashing of knives, the smack of fists and finally the bark of the captain's revolver,—all in a few seconds. Then a moment of silence, broken only by rapid breathing and smothered cries of pain.

On the bed, totally oblivious to the strange fight which had occurred, June Hubbard breathed almost imperceptibly. John Powell was the first to reach her side. The beauty of her, as she lay marble-white in her robe of cloth-of-gold upon silks of red and green, almost frightened him. She seemed a goddess of rare beauty, a queen of mankind. The long lashes of her eyes showed black against her white face; her hair was held back from her broad forehead by a string of many-colored jewels. A rope of pearls hung from her neck and were passed around her hands, which lay crossed on her breast. Her lips, contrasting vividly with her pallor, were opened in a slight, fixed smile. One foot, white and slender, was extended from the coverings. Lighted tapers surrounded it, revealing on the instep the odd, tooth-shaped mark.

All this John Powell saw in a moment. Then Mr. Hubbard was at his side, seizing June's hands, caressing her face with his fingertips. The more practical captain was already issuing orders. "Powell, take my gun and keep those three Chinese in the corner covered. Those on the floor won't bother anyone again for a while. They're badly hurt. I'll get the ship's surgeon and an officer with irons. Watch those birds, and if they move, shoot!"

The ship's doctor examined June while a deck officer and Captain Brand took charge of the Chinese. The examination was brief. It ended when the doctor forced open June's mouth and took from it a white, glutinous substance. "Hashish," he said, "or bhang. Something of that nature which made her happily unconscious. Lucky thing, too. She'll not remember the horror of what she's been through. . . No, she's uninjured as far as I can tell. . . She'll be conscious shortly. We'd better get her into another room, out of this incense cloud, and put her in civilized clothes. . . Mr. Hubbard, I'll send a stewardess. Mr. Powell and I will go up and have a bracer and he can tell me the story. I guess from the attitude of the Chinese that they have found a new goddess! . . . Come, Mr. Powell, we'll go. I've heard many strange things on this steamship, but this———"

John Powell turned to go. Then irresistibly his eyes were drawn to the white figure on the bed. His eyes caressed the girl's beauty; he felt a strong desire to take the slender foot in his hands, raise it to his lips and ​kiss it; to touch devoutly the odd mark on the instep. There came to him a feeling of certainty that his bachelor days were almost over, and his heart leaped with gladness.

"The foot fetish," he murmured to himself. "I can understand its power. Why, I almost worship that mark myself, for it brought me to her side after many strange happenings." He glanced at the last of the Chinese who was being marched away under heavy irons. For a brief moment it seemed that a flash of mutual understanding passed between the blue eyes of the American and the black, mystical eyes of the Oriental fetish-worshiper.