HALF an hour later, Lee Hin undressed and climbed into bed in the little chamber adjoining the basement laboratory.
Just before he snapped off the light, he took a pledget of cotton out of the neck of a wide-mouthed bottle and shook from the latter a score of so of buzzing insects.
“Little friends!” he said gently. “May the spirit of justice which rules all things—which holds the suns in their appointed orbits as they swing through infinite space, and which guides the destinies of the tiniest insect—may the God of all good men, of Moses and Confucius, decide—and strike through you!”
Then he turned out the light and went placidly to bed.
BURKE slept but poorly that first night after his return.
He was just dropping into a doze when some blundering fool knocked at his door by mistake; and after Burke recovered from the rage which this incident occasioned, a mosquito buzzed down out of the ceiling and bit him on the neck. He killed the insect with the first slap; but a few minutes later, just as he was again becoming drowsy, another bit him under the eye.
After that it seemed to him that the room was full of mosquitoes. He made up his mind that his nerves were playing him tricks. There couldn’t be so many of the tormenting insects in one room! He had seen none during the evening. He must be imagining half of ⟨it⟩—but there were the bites!
It was nearly three o’clock before he finally fell asleep. And he slept like a drugged man till late in the morning.
When he got up and looked at himself in the glass, he was furious to find his face disfigured by three great purple bites. There were at least a dozen others on his body, but those he didn’t mind. He was thinking of the effect of these disfigurements on the girl, whom he had resolved to see tonight.
He killed half a dozen blood filled mosquitoes, perched heavily in the window, and tramped downstairs to berate the clerk.
The clerk listened to him with gathering wrath.
“Mosquitoes your grandmother!” he snarled. “We never have no mosquitoes in this house! I shouldn’t wonder if you had the itch. You better find a room somewhere else!”
Burke looked ferociously at him, but the clerk returned the glare with interest. Not for nothing had he run a water-side hotel for ten years. He knew how to meet threat with threat. Burke went out and ate breakfast, for which he discovered he had little appetite.
He put in most of the day walking the streets, thinking of his grievances, and treating his mosquito bites. He bought a bottle of lotion from a druggist. The latter eyed the bites dubiously.
“Those mosquitoes must have been some snapping turtles, friend!” he commented. “They look more like tick bites. You’d better take something for your blood—some of this compound—”
Burke seized the lotion he had paid for and dashed from the store. His head ached. Plainly, everyone was mad—everyone but himself.
For a time, during the middle of the day, the mosquito bites seemed to be getting better; but Burke continued to apply the lotion, and to inspect himself in the glass.
He would be fairly presentable by night, at this rate.
It was about four o’clock when he became aware of a shooting pain radiating from the bite he had first received—the one on his neck. He jumped up and ran to the looking-glass, The thing had puffed up like a walnut, and had turned an angry purplish color.
Feverishly, Burke applied more lotion. He made a compress with a wet towel and wrapped it around his neck. Hardly had he accomplished this when he perceived that another of the bites was swelling and growing painful. Within an hour and a half, he had a dozen of these inflamed places.
Burke realized that he would have to put off his visit to the girl until next day. Probably the druggist was right—his blood was too thick. He must buy a bottle of that stuff—that compound. He had been drinking too much bootleg whisky.
He went to bed early. The thought of food nauseated him. He sank into a heavy slumber, from which he was aroused by a voice in the room.
It was a thick voice, repeating long, meaningless strings of words. Burke tried to sit up to listen, and the voice ceased. He was not able to raise himself, however. Something was wrong inside his head. . . .
It was some time later that Burke discovered that the flat, babbling voice was his own! It rose to a scream, then shifted into a screechy laugh. . . .
Strange faces were bending over him. There was a man with a pointed beard, who looked at him with pursed lips. This man was speaking:
“I never encountered a case of the kind before. I would call it anthrax, but for the number of the primary lesions. The interest is purely academic, of course. He’ll be dead within twelve hours. Has he had any visitors? Any way you can find out if he has any relatives or friends?”
With a strange detachment, as if he were already a spirit, Burke listened. The night clerk was speaking:
“There has been no mail for him, and no visitors—except a Chinaman, who brought him a package of laundry. I guess he’s a stranger—”
Burke’s face became purple, and his body drew itself into a great knot. A Chinaman to see him! Laundry—he had had no laundry!
Suddenly he understood. Perception shone through him like a searchlight.
A Chinaman never forgets! Lee Hin—
He tried to shout the name. He must get his accusation into writing—
In the act of sitting up to demand paper and pen, he was caught up into great darkness, He fell heavily back upon the bed.
“Syncope!” said the man with the pointed beard. “I must write up this case for the National Medical Journal.”
LEE HIN, looking upon the last scene in the drama, meditated deeply.
“No man can escape his destiny,” he mused.
The last shovel of dirt was thrown over the mound, and the man who threw it deftly patted it into place with the rounded back of his spade.
Lee Hin walked gravely away. He passed along a graveled path and approached a distant part of the cemetery. In the shade of a hawthorne he paused and stood gently regarding the figure of a girl, kneeling beside a grave.
“Poor little Irene!” he murmured.
And then he strode silently down the path and out at the cemetery gate.
Police Seize 800 Quarts of “Embalming Fluid”
SUSPICIOUS of its peculiar odor, Chicago police confiscated 800 quarts of “embalming fluid,” found on an undertaker’s truck at the rear of 1400 South Central Park Avenue. Investigating, the police discovered that each of the 800 quart bottles bore the label, “Cedar Brook.” Investigating further, they found that each bottle contained rye whisky. Three men were arrested with the undertaker’s cargo. None could “remember” the name of the man to whom they were told to deliver the “embalming fluid.”
