Creeping Siamese and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

though—they just called it ‘ it. ’
    â€œThey talked among themselves, but of course I couldn’t make out a word of what they were saying, and then three of them went out, leaving one here to guard us. He had a Luger pistol. We could hear the others moving around the house. The search must have lasted an hour. Then the one I took for the leader came in, and said something to our guard. Both of them looked quite elated.
    â€œâ€˜It is not wise if you will leave this room for many minutes,’ the leader said to me, and they left us—both of them—closing the door behind them.
    â€œI knew they were going, but I couldn’t walk on this leg. From what the doctor says, I’ll be lucky if I walk on it inside of a couple of months. I didn’t want my wife to go out, and perhaps run into one of them before they’d got away, but she insisted on going. She found they’d gone, and she phoned the police, and then ran up to the pack room and found Molloy’s package was gone.”
    â€œAnd this Molloy didn’t give you any hint at all as to what was in the package?” O’Gar asked when Richter had finished.
    â€œNot a word, except that it was something the Siamese were after.”
    â€œDid he know the Siamese who stabbed him?” I asked.
    â€œI think so,” Richter said slowly, “though I am not sure he said he did.”
    â€œDo you remember his words?”
    â€œNot exactly, I’m afraid.”
    â€œI think I remember them,” Mrs. Richter said. “My husband, Mr. Richter, asked him, ‘What’s the matter, Molloy? Are you hurt, or sick?’
    â€œMolloy gave a little laugh, putting a hand on his chest, and said, ‘Nothing much. I run into a Siamese who was looking for me on my way here, and got careless and let him scratch me. But I kept my little bundle!’ And he laughed again, and patted the package.”
    â€œDid he say anything else about the Siamese?”
    â€œNot directly,” she replied, “though he did tell us to watch out for any Asiatics we saw around the neighborhood. He said he wouldn’t leave the package if he thought it would make trouble for us, but that there was always a chance that something would go wrong, and we’d better be careful. And he told my husband”—nodding at Richter—“that the Siamese had been dogging him for months, but now that he had a safe place for the package he was going to ‘take them for a walk and forget to bring them back.’ That was the way he put it.”
    â€œHow much do you know about Molloy?”
    â€œNot a great deal, I’m afraid,” Richter took up the answering again. “He liked to talk about the places he had been and the things he had seen, but you couldn’t get a word out of him about his own affairs. We met him first in Mexico, as I have told you, in 1916. After he saved us down there and got us away, we didn’t see him again for nearly four years. He rang the bell one night, and came in for an hour or two. He was on his way to China, he said, and had a lot of business to attend to before he left the next day.
    â€œSome months later I had a letter from him, from the Queen’s Hotel in Kandy, asking me to send him a list of the importers and exporters in San Francisco. He wrote me a letter thanking me for the list, and I didn’t hear from him again until he came to San Francisco for a week, about a year later. That was in 1921, I think.
    â€œHe was here for another week about a year after that, telling us that he had been in Brazil, but, as usual, not saying what he had been doing there. Some months later I had a letter from him, from Chicago, saying he would be here the following week. However, he didn’t come. Instead, some time later, he wrote from Vladivostok, saying he hadn’t been able to make it. Today was the first we’d heard of him since