The Sign of the Poppy

When Jerry Marston played a sharp business trick on Hop Li, the leader of a Chinese tong, he made the mistake of his life. Jerry never knew what became of one of the Marston twins mysteriously disappearing less than three weeks after the boys were born. So the anxious years passed until his only son Alvin had married and gone abroad on his wedding tour. One evening the butler handed Jerry a package, and at the same time delivered a wireless message telling that Alvin and his bride Edith were arriving on that day's ship from abroad. Marston opened the package. Before him lay a red poppy, a sign of death sent him by Hop Li. When Alvin and his bride reached the house, they found Jerry dying with the red poppy clasped in his hand. Alvin knew enough of Chinese lore to realize that his father had received the tong's death signal and thereafter Alvin lived in the dread of a like warning. On their wedding anniversary, Alvin presented his wife with a string of pearls. That night as Edith lay in bed, she experienced what she thought was a frightful nightmare. Alvin, with leering face, seemed to appear at her bedroom window, enter and try to caress her. The next morning she discovered that her pearls were missing. Alvin assured her that the mystery would soon be cleared up and left for his office. When the man Edith presumed was her husband returned home that evening, his face was dark and leering. When she tried to summon help, he silenced her and then, throwing her pearls at her feet, disappeared. Mystified she summoned Helen and Rex Durant, neighbors. They assured her that Alvin would soon come home safely and as his usual self. When she read in the morning of a crime in Chinatown (the murder of Hop Li, and the burning of his opium den) she connected it with her husband, and his revolting appearance the previous evening. She associated his disappearance with the crime and decided to announce to her friends that her husband had gone to a sanatorium. Several weeks later Rex and Helen Durant came upon Alvin as he was walking aimlessly through the streets. They took him home and told Edith her husband had escaped from the sanatorium. Continuing the deception, she accepted the man as Alvin, but his strange conduct so mystified her that she was mentally tortured. She was convinced that the man was not her husband, but one who strikingly resembled him. One evening the prison siren sounded a screeching alarm. A prisoner had escaped. The sound was so distressing to Mrs. Ma