The White Wasp (ePub)

Vengeance groom many strange steeds that murder may ride, but none are strange as the one loosed in china-town to sear the mark of Bei Tui on the brain of Dorus Noel.



excerpt

"I don't know," Dorus Noel spoke softly into the telephone, addressing his police superior out on Park Avenue, the man who had taken on the titanic task of ridding New York's Chinatown of criminals, "whether the death of Chu Chul ends the reign of terror in Chinatown. I hope so. Knowing China and the Chinese, and that Chu Chul had all the nine lives of a cat, I'm inclined to doubt it, despite the urge of reason. I saw Chu Chul, dead, with my own eyes. But I'm not forgetting that I saw him dead once before, sinking in the Pei Ho near Tientsin."



"There is danger for you in Chinatown, Noel?" asked his superior softly.



Dorus Noel, from the depths of his many years of experience with Chinese evildoers, laughed casually.



"In Chinatown, in Timbuctu, in Kamchatka, there is danger for the man who caused the death of Chu Chul," he said. "Chu Chul headed a vast organization. That organization had multitudinous roots. When the head of such an organization is lopped off, a fresh one grows. To destroy such an organization is to harvest the stars with a carving knife."



"Then what is the use?"



"There's always use. We can, you know, keep lopping off heads."



"I leave it to you, Noel," said the unknown.



"Thanks. Then I'll stay in Chinatown, but remember what I said about Chinese organizations. I could tell you many tales of the Society of the White Lily, or the Red Spears and the Hung Hu Tze. But never mind. I'll let you know what happens."