Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [80]
“Aye, of course it was me. Josh here can’t write anymore, y’see. So I thought I’d just tell you he still loves you.” His dark eyes glowered at her the way they always had and he smiled a small, triumphant smile. He lifted the lamp so it shone on the chair. A blond-haired man was sitting on it. Francie felt faint, she knew it couldn’t be true. She had heard Josh die. She had watched him die. Had he come back from the grave to find her?
Sammy grabbed her arms. He twisted them behind her back and dragged her across to the chair. “Take a look at him, Francie,” he said savagely. “Just look at your lover. See how handsome he is now?” And then he lifted the lantern high so the light fell on the man’s face. Only it wasn’t a face anymore, it was just a lump of puckered bluish-red flesh. Suppurating sores marked the wounds, the mouth was a grotesque grimace, and the blank eyes stared sightlessly upward.
Francie screamed with horror and Sammy twisted her arm even tighter. He pressed her closer to the monster on the chair. “Go on, kiss him, Francie, why don’t you? After all, you did this to him.” She screamed again, a high, thin, keening sound. Terror gave her strength and she twisted from Sammy’s grasp. With an oath he dropped the lantern and the light flickered and went out, leaving them in darkness.
He cursed again as Francie ran for the patch of lighter gray where the door had once been. Then she was out in the alley, running and running. She heard him pounding behind her, he was gaining on her, getting closer and closer. She could see a light where the alley joined the street and she ran even quicker. Then suddenly she tripped. He grabbed her. She smelled his sweat and heard his rasping breath and felt his hands on her throat. As though from a great distance she heard footsteps and someone shouting and then she remembered no more.
Lai Tsin felt for Francie’s pulse; he chafed her icy hands, stroking back her hair, willing her to open her eyes. And he called silently to all the gods to help her; she was his friend, his helpmate, his child, his daughter, his love, and all his good fortune meant nothing without her. And when at last she opened her eyes again he carried her into a cab and brought her home.
Annie almost fainted herself when she saw them. She thanked God that at least Francie had had the sense to leave her the note and Lai Tsin had known where to find her. And when she looked at her, ashen-faced and trembling and barely able to speak with shock, she knew something terrible had happened.
“They’re not dead,” Francie whispered. “I saw both of them, Sammy and Josh. Oh, Annie, it’s too terrible even to think about, his face was so hideous, all his sweetness and beauty gone. Sammy forced me to look … he had a knife—”
Annie clutched a hand to her heart as fear gave way to hope. “You can’t mean Josh is alive!”
“Where did you see them?” Lai Tsin asked quietly.
“In the opium den on Gai Pao alley. The note said to meet him there … if I still loved him, it said.” She uncurled her hand, and Annie took the crumpled note from her, and read out the message.
“That’s not Josh’s writing,” Annie said. “I’ll swear to that. It’ll be Sammy Morris, just like she said.”
Lai Tsin thought about the note and the message that had seemed to come from beyond the grave and knew that Francie was still in danger.
The half-ruined streets of Chinatown were quiet as Lai Tsin returned to the alley later. He knew the place, it was a notorious haunt of the tongs, the old Chinese secret societies that ruled the worlds of prostitution, gambling, opium, and violence. They had divided the town into territories and their wars were bloody, hachet-wielding affairs that left many dead.
He stole silently toward the glimmer of light at the end of the alley, pulled aside the heavy curtain and slid inside. No one noticed him in the noise and the gloom.