The first operator had developed for himself at an early stage of his occupancy of theVandalia'swireless house the warm friendship of the chief engineer. A wireless man is far more dependent for his peace of mind upon the engine-room crew than upon the forward crew. The latter has only one interest in him: that he stick to his instruments; while the engine-room crew strictly is the source from which his blessings flow, his blessings taking the invisible, vital form of electric current.
Wireless machines are gourmands of electricity. They are wastrels. Not one-tenth of the energy sucked from the ship's power wires finds its way through the maze of coils and jars to the antennae between the mastheads.
TheVandalia'sengine-room equipment was installed long before wireless telegraphy was a maritime need and a government requirement. Hence, her dynamos protested vigorously against the strain imposed upon them by the radio machine. Any electric engine is unlike any steam engine. Steam engines will do so much work—no more. Dynamos or motors will do so much work—and then more. They can be overloaded, unsparingly. But the strain tells. Stout, dependable parts become hot, wear away, crumble, snap.
In the typical case of theVandalia, the question of whether or not the wireless men should be provided with all of the current they required, was narrowed down to individuals.
If Minion had disliked Peter Moore he could have slowed down the dynamos at the critical times when the operator needed the high voltage; but Peter had had encounters with chief engineers before. He had at first courted Minion's good graces with fair cigars, radio gossip and unflagging courtesy. And on discovering that the chief was a sentimentalist at heart and a poet by nature, he had presented him with an inexpensively bound volume of his favorite author. Daring, but a master-stroke! He had not since wanted for voltage, and plenty of it.
He pondered the advisability of taking Minion entirely into his confidence as he followed the sweated, undershirted shoulders to the engine-room galley, and thence across the oily grill of shining steel bars which comprised one of the numerous and hazardous superfloors which surrounded the cylinders.
Minion was nursing a stubbornly warm bearing in the port shaft alley.
The fat cylinder revolved with a pleasant ringing noise, the blurring knuckles of the frequent joints vanishing down the yellow, vaulted alley to a point of perspective, where the shaft projected through the hull. The floundering of the great propellers seemed alternately to compress and expand the damp atmosphere.
The sad, white face of Minion arose from the dripping flanks of the journal as he caught sight of Peter in the arched entrance. A pale smile flickered at his lips.
The chief did not in any wise reflect his monstrously heaving, oil-dripping surroundings. He was a small, deliberate man, with oceans of repressed energies. His skin had the waxy whiteness of a pond lily. An exquisitely trimmed black moustache adorned his mouth. The deep brown eyes of a visionary rested beneath the gentle, scythe-like curves of thin and pointed eyebrows.
"You look worried," vouchsafed Minion as their hands met. His quiet voice had a clarity which projected it nicely through the bedlam of engine-room noises. "Why you up so early—or so late? Anything wrong?"
Peter took out a cigarette and nervously lighted it at the sputtering flame Minion held for him. "Mr. Minion, something's in the wind," he complained, and hesitated. He was at the verge of telling what he had seen on the promenade deck, of the confusion on the pierhead, of the unaccountable behavior of the woman in the window above Ah Sih King's, of the suspicious attitude of Blanchard, of the recent plea for help. Again something checked him.
"Mr. Minion, what is Len Yang? And where is it?"
The scythe-like brows contracted. Minion's lucid, brown eyes rested on his lips, seeming to await an elaboration of the query. His features suddenly had stiffened. His whole attitude appeared on the moment to have undergone a change, from one of friendly interest to a keen defensiveness.
"Len Yang is a city in China. Why?"
The operator suspected that Minion was sparring for time.
"Where is Len Yang?"
"Do you mean, how does one reach Len Yang?"
"Either."
"Mr. Moore"—the suspicion fell from the chief's expression, leaving it calm and grave—"you are not an amateur. You have discretion. The man who controls Len Yang is theVandalia'sowner."
"Why, I understood the Pacific and Western Atlantic Transport Line owned her!"
"This man—he is a Chinese. Oh, I've never seen him, Mr. Moore. One of the richest of China's unknown aristocrats, the central power of the cinnabar ring. You have never gone up the river with us to load at Soo-chow?"
Peter shook his head. "Cinnabar from his mine is brought down the Yangtze on junks and transferred at Soo-chow?"
Minion seemed not to be listening. His eyes were stagnant with an appalling retrospect. "A terrible place—horrible! Five years ago I visited Len Yang. Hideous people with staring eyes, dripping the blood-red slime of the mines! And girls! Young girls! Beautiful—for a while." He sighed. "They work in that vicious hole!"
"Young girls?" Peter exclaimed.
"Imported. From everywhere. I tried to find why. There is no explanation. They come—they work—they become hideous—they die! It is his habit. No one understands. Poor things!"
Peter was staring at him narrowly. "Quite sure he imports them to work in the mines?"
Minion nodded vehemently. "I made sure of that. I went up the river ashisguest. Trouble with the seepage pumps. Hundreds of them drowned like rats. Len Yang is near the trade route into India. Leprosy—filth—vermin! God! You should have seen the rats! Monsters! They eat them. Poor devils! And live in holes carved out of the ruby mud."
He tore the clump of waste from his left hand and ground it under his heel.
"And in the center of this frightfulness—his palace! Snow-white marble, whiter than the Taj by moonlight. But its base is stained red, a creeping blood-red from the cinnabar. Damn him!"
"No escape?" Peter muttered.
"Escape!" Minion shouted. "Dang hsin! They call him the Gray Dragon. He reaches over every part of Asia. That is no exaggeration. Take my advice, Mr. Moore, if you have stumbled upon one of his schemes—ní chü bà—don't meddle!"
The white face writhed, and for a new reason Peter smothered the impulse to tell the agitated Minion what he had seen. Their conversation drifted to general shipboard matters. When he left he borrowed the chief engineer's master key on the excuse that he had locked himself out of the wireless cabin.
Besides a stiffening head wind the ship was now laboring into piling head seas. Far beyond the refulgence of the scattered lights stars shone palely. Flecks of streaming white were making their appearance at the toppling wave crests.
A hail of stinging spray, flung inboard by a long gust, struck Peter's face sharply as he struggled forward, rattling like small shot against the vizor of his cap and smarting his eyes. The needle-like drops were icy cold. The elastic fabric of theVandaliashivered, her broad nose sinking into a succession of black mountains. Peak gutters roared as the cascading water was sucked back to the untiring surface.
Gaining the cross entrance, he braced his strength against the forces of wind which imprisoned the door, and crept down the passage.
His heart pounded as his groping fingers outlined the cold iron numerals on the panel. Nervously, he inserted the master key into the door lock, and paused to listen.
Rhythmic snoring moaned from an opened transom near by. What other night sounds might have been abroad were engulfed by the imminent throbbing in the engine-room well.
Stateroom forty-four's transom was closed. The lock yielded. The door yawned soundlessly. A round, portentous eye glimmered on the opposite wall. An odor of recently wet paint and of new bed linen met him. The excited pulsing of his heart outsounded the engines.
He shut the door cautiously, not to awake the occupants of the berths, and fancied he could again hear the warning sibilance of the whisper, but in sleep, perhaps drawn through unconscious lips.
Eagerly, his hand slipped over the enameled wall and found the electric switch. Turning, to cover all corners of the stateroom he snapped on the light.
Stateroom forty-four, through whose doorway he could have sworn to have seen a sandaled foot vanish less than three hours previous, was empty!
The blue-flowered side curtains of the white enameled bunks were draped back in ornamental stiffness. Below the pillows the upper sheets were neatly furled like incoming billows on a coral beach. He threw open the closet door. Bare! Not one sign of occupancy could he find, and he looked everywhere.
As he made to leave the room a small oblong of white paper was thrust under the door. He hesitated in surprise, stooped to seize it and flung open the door. A gust of night, wind—the slamming of a door—and the messenger was gone.
Tremblingly, he unfolded the paper. His eyes dilated. Hastily scrawled in the lower right-hand corner of the otherwise blank leaf was a replica of the blurred sign that had caused such consternation on the part of Lo Ong.
The ideograph had twice been brought to his attention. It was apparently a solemn warning. Should he heed it? He felt that he was watched. But the porthole glowed emptily.
Lighting a cigarette, he dropped down to the bunk, cupped his chin in his palms, and frowned at the green carpet.
He was being frustrated, by persons of adroit cunning. It was maddening. This had ceased to be an adventurous lark. It was to become a fight against weapons whose sole object seemed to be to guard the retreat of some evil spirit.
It occurred to him suddenly that he should be grateful upon one score at least: He had not lost the trail, for the symbols were unchanged.
But from that point the trail vanished—vanished as abruptly as if its design had been wiped off the earth! Sharp eyed and eared, alertness night after night availed him nothing. And not until the twinkling lights of Nagasaki were put astern, when theVandaliaturned her nose into the swollen bed of the Yellow Sea, did the traces again show faintly.
That a recrudescence of those involved in the murky affair might be imminent was the thought induced in Peter's mind as the green coast of Japan heaved over the horizon. With each thrust of theVandalia'sscrews the cipher was nearing its solution. Each cylinder throb narrowed the distance to the shore lights of China—the lights of Tsung-min Island. And then—what?
In a corner of the smoking-room he puffed at his cigarette and watched the poker players as he drummed absently upon the square of green cork inlaid in the corner table. The vermilion glow of the skylight dimmed and died. Lights came on. A clanging cymbal in the energetic hands of a deck steward boomed at the doorway, withdrew and gave up its life in a far away, tinny clatter.
The petulant voice of a hardware salesman, who was secretly known to represent American moneyed interests in Mongolia, drifted through the haze of tobacco smoke at the poker table.
"——that's what I'd like to know. Damn nonsense—saving steam, probably—off Wu-Sung before midnight—if—wanted to throw in a little coal—means I miss the river boat to-morrow—not another—Saturday. Dammit!"
Peter drew long at the cigarette and glanced thoughtfully at the oak-paneled ceiling. Chips clicked. The petulant voice continued:
"——rottenest luck ever had." Evidently he was referring to his losses. "Rotten line—rottener service—miss my man—Mukden——" The voice ceased as its owner half turned his head, magnetized by the intentness of the operator's gaze. Peter glanced away. The salesman devoted himself to the dealer.
TheVandaliawas bearing into a thin mist. The night was cool, quiet. Had he been on deck Peter would have seen the last lights of Osezaki engulfed as if at the dropping of a curtain.
During the voyage he had haunted the smoking-room, hoping that by dint of patient listening he might catch an informative word dropped carelessly by one of the players. No such luck. The players were out-of-season tourists, bound for South China or India, or salesmen, patiently immersed in the long and strenuous task of killing time.
"——thirty—thirty-five—forty—forty-five——" The fat man was counting his losings.
Faint, padded footsteps passed the port doorway. Peter became aware of an elusive perfume—scented rice powder——
"——seventy-five—eighty—eighty-five—ninety——"
A pale, malignant face was framed momentarily in one of the starboard windows.
Peter blinked, then bounded after. The salesman impeded his progress and grudgingly gave way.
The deck was empty, slippery with the wet of the mist. He was suddenly aware that one of the ports, in the neighborhood of the stateroom he had entered, was ajar. Nervously he halted, gasping as a long, trembling hand, at the extremity of a spectral wrist, plucked at his sleeve. Blanched as an arm of the adolescent moon, it fumbled weakly at his clutching fingers—and was swiftly withdrawn!
The staring eyes of a white, gibbous face sank back from the hole. Below the nose the face seemed not to exist.
Its horror wrapped an icy cord about his heart. He plunged his arm to the shoulder through the round opening, struck a yielding, warm body; descending claws steeled about his wrist and deliberately forced him back.
The brass-bound glass squeezed on his fingers. He wrenched them free, crushed, throbbing, and warmly wet. The anguish seemed to extend to his elbow. Then, suddenly, the gruff, seasoned voice of Captain Jones descended from space behind him. "Sparks, come to my cabin."
Peter followed the brutish shoulders to the forward companionway, endeavoring to clarify his thoughts. Mild confusion prevailed when Captain Jones closed and locked the door of his spacious stateroom behind them and dropped heavily into one of the cumbersome teak chairs.
He was a hardened, brawny chunk of a man, choleric in aspect and temperament, brutal in method, bluntly decisive in opinion. Iron was his metal. "Starboard Jones" was one of the few living men who had successfully run the Jap blockade into Vladivostok during that bloody tiff between the black bear and the island panther.
Reddened sockets displayed keen, blue eyes in a background of perpetual fire. His large, swollen nose had a vinous tint, acquiring purplishness in cold weather. Tiny red veins, as numerous as the cracks in Satsuma-ware, spread across both cheeks in a carmine filigree.
His cabin was ornamented chiefly by hand-tinted photographs from the yoshiwaras of Nagasaki, of simpering, coy geishas. Souvenirs of their trade, glittering fans, nicked teacups, flimsy sandals, adorned the available shelf room. Cigars as brawny and black as if their maker had striven to emulate the captain's own bulk were scattered among papers on his narrow desk.
He reached clumsily for one of these brown cylinders now, neglecting to remove his glance of gloating austerity from the operator's tense face.
"Haven't seen much of you lately, Sparks," he observed, applying a steady match flame to the oval butt. He spoke in his usual tones, with a gruffness that balanced on a razor edge between rough jocularity and official harshness. "What's new? Have one of my ropes?"
Peter studied the glowing end narrowly. "Had a little trouble first night out. No, thanks. Not smoking to-night." His bruised finger-tips were curved up tenderly in his coat pocket.
"What's 'at?" The steel eyes were motionless beneath half-lowered lids.
"Some one used an electric machine. Jammed my signals."
The choleric face dipped knowingly. What Captain Jones did not comprehend he invariably pretended to comprehend. "Noticed anything else?" His ruddy face was now weighty with significance.
Peter sat up abruptly. "What!"
A thick, red forefinger threatened, "Lis'n to me, Sparks, you're a overgrown, blundering bull in a china-shop. You're——"
"Well?" There was a trace of anger in Peter's suave inquiry. His face became stony white. A spot of color appeared at either cheek.
"I mean: Keep your damn nose out of what don't concern you. Savvy?" The heated words spilled thickly from the captain's red lips. "I mean: Butt out of what concerns Chinese women and—and—other words, mind your own particular damn business! Duty on this ship's to mind the radio. What goes on outside your shanty's none of your damn concern!" Captain Jones' mouth remained open, and the butt of the black cigar slid into it.
Peter raised a restraining hand. His lips trembled. His eyes seemed to snap in a rapid fire between the eyes and mouth of the big man slouched down in the chair in front of him. "Wait a minute," he spat out. "Since you do know that somebody is being kidnapped on this ship——"
"What in hell do you mean?"
"Exactly what I say. A Chinese woman, no matter who she is—is hiding some one, a woman, somewhere on this ship. That woman—that woman who's being held—grabbed my hand not five minutes ago. It's your duty——"
"Keep your hands where they belong. You're talking like a fool. Kidnapped? You're crazy. My duty? You're a fool! You're talking baby talk." Captain Jones sprang from his chair. "You're on this ship to tend the wireless," he bawled. "You're under oath to keep your mouth shut. Any one back there?"
"No!"
"Don't you know it breaks a government rule when that room's empty—at sea?"
The mist-laden wind shrilled through the screen door abruptly thrust back. Captain Jones slammed the stout inner door. Peter turned up his coat collar, bound a clean handkerchief about his aching fingers, climbed agilely over the life-rafts, passed the roaring, black funnels, and entered the wireless house.
The low, intermingling whine of Jap stations was broken by an insistent P. and O. liner, yapping for attention. Shanghai stiffly droned a reply, advising the P. and O. man to sweeten his spark.
Peter tapped his detector and grunted. Shanghai was loud—close! TheVandaliamust be nearing the delta.
"——Nanking Road. Stop. Forty casks of soey——" yelped the P. and O.
Nearing the great river! Out of the mist a faint blur would come—the first lights of China!
"——Thirteen cases of tin——" The P. and O.'s spark remained unsweetened.
Would the lights be Hi-Tai-Sha—Tsung-min?—port or starboard?
Far below decks a bell jangled faintly. The throbbing of the engines was suddenly hushed. The bell sounded distantly, through a portentous silence. Peter glanced at the clock. Half-past twelve.
The silence was shattered by a turbulent, stern lifting rumble as the screws reversed. TheVandaliawallowed heavily, and lay with the yellow tide.
Extinguishing the lights, Peter slipped out on deck, leaned over the edge, and peered into the murk. His heart pumped nervously.
At first all was blank. Then a misty, gray-white glow seemed to swim far to port. Murkily, it took form, vanished, reappeared and—was swallowed up again.
But these were not the lights of Tsung-min. The ship was in the river. He knew those lights well. Even now theVandalia, was slipping down with the current abreast of Woo-Sung! The first lights of China! But what was happening? He dashed to the starboard side.
Out of the mist there arose a tall, gaunt specter. A junk. Perhaps a collision was decreed by the evil spirit of the Whang-poo. But the usual shriekings of doomed river men were absent. The gray bulk floated idly with the steamer. The silence of death permeated both craft.
At a loss to account for this queer coincidence, this mute communion, Peter elbowed over the edge, dangerously high above the water, and slid down a stanchion to the promenade deck.
Simultaneously every light on that side of the ship was extinguished. As his feet struck the metal gutter, several unseen bodies rushed past him, aft.
He was grabbed from behind and hurled to the deck. Springing up, he heard the thick breathing of his unknown assailant. He lunged for the sound, met flying fists, smashed his man against the rail. The blow knocked the wind from his antagonist, or broke his back.
Peter did not pause to make inquiries. As the limp body thudded to the wood, the operator sprinted after the vanished figures.
A lone light on the after spur illumined a dim confusion in the cargo well. The stern of the junk was backed against the rail. Oars flashed faintly as the crew of the junk strove to keep her fast against the steamer's side. But where was the crew of theVandalia? Had Captain Jones consented to and perhaps aided in this mid-river tryst?
Another source of illumination sprang into being. A dong was burning yellowly on the junk's poop deck, casting a plenitude of light upon the scene.
As Peter dropped down the precipitous ladder into the well, he made out two figures struggling against the rail. From the junk, imploringly, a giant Chinese with pigtail flapping held out his long arms. Silent, his face was writhing with the supplication to hurry.
Peter drove in between the two figures, one of which suddenly collapsed and lay inert. The other sprang at his neck, sinking long claws into his throat. Slit eyes glinted close. Before his wind was shut off he caught the oppressive fragrance of a heavy perfume. A woman!
He struck the clawing hands loose, and she stemmed a scream between convulsing lips. The woman above Ah Sih King's!
He hurled her back, and she staggered against the iron flank of the well. A chatter of Chinese broke from her lips. Shaking, she extracted an envelope from her satin blouse and pressed it into his hands. Thoughtlessly he stuffed the envelope into his pocket, not reckoning what it might contain.
The junk swung out, closed in with a smart smack, and the giant on her deck crouched to spring. He squealed, a high-pitched ululation of anger. Another sound was abroad, the jangling of the engine-room bell.
Peter struck down the groping hands of the woman and sprang to the rail, bracing his feet on the smooth iron deck-plate as the Chinese leaped. A knife glinted. Peter seized a horny wrist with both hands, bent, and wrenched it. The knife struck the water with a sibilant splash. Thefokielost his balance. His legs became entangled.
He gibbered with horror as he slipped—slipped——
The Chinese woman sprang at Peter with the frenzy of a pantheress.
A weltering splash—Peter dimly saw the bobbing head before it was driven below the surface as the junk, yawing in, crowded the swimmer down.
A life? Nothing to the turgid river, draining all effluvia from the yellow heart of this festering land.
With a hissing sob, the woman drove Peter backward, raining blow after blow on his chest. The engines pounded briskly. A boom rattled. Despairingly, Peter's antagonist shifted her tactics, surprised him by flinging herself to the rail.
The junk was veering away as theVandalia'sblades took hold.
She poised on the top rail, drew herself together, and leaped!
The junk slid into the mist.
Peter was conscious of a hot stickiness at his throat where the claws had taken hold. Then he concerned himself with the gray shape that lay quite still on the iron deck at his feet. New enemies from other quarters, he realized, might strike at any instant.
Gathering up the limp form, he climbed the ladder to the darkened promenade deck and up another flight through the tarpaulin cover to the boat-deck. Opening the wireless-house door, he deposited his burden gently upon the carpet, and switched on the light. Then he turned the key in the lock, and examined his find. A long, gray bag of some heavy material swathed the small figure from head to foot. There was no sign of life.
Yelping arose from the river. It was still dark. The sampan coolies were out early. Peter listened, becoming thoughtful as a solution seemed to present itself to his problem.
He went out on deck and beckoned to one of them to stand by.
A swaying coolie in the stern of the nearest craft caught sight of him.
"Hie! Hie!" The wagging paddle became mad. The sampan slipped under the towering shadow and brought up with a smack against the moving black hull.
Peter pried up the tarpaulin life-boat cover, dragged out a coil of dirty rope, made one end fast at the foot of the davit, and tossed the other end overside. The coolie caught it and clung.
Re-entering the wireless cabin, Peter opened his pocket-knife and slit the cord at the head.
A mass of curly, brown hair flowed out upon the carpet. There was a silken lisp of underskirts. A faint sigh.
Peter suddenly turned his head. Black, glassy eyes were riveted upon his from the after window. They vanished.
He jumped up, bolted to the deck, and stood still, listening.
The scuffle of a foot sounded on the port side. Some one was running forward. He plunged after. The footsteps stopped sharply coincident with a dull smash, a frantic grunt. The pursued reeled to the deck, groaning.
Peter pounced upon him, grabbed his collar, and dragged him across the deck into the wireless house.
"Mr. Moore, the captain told me——" whimpered Dale.
Peter knocked him into the chair, opened the toolbox, and extracted a length of phosphor-bronze aerial wire. Binding the wiggling arms to the chair, he made the ends fast behind.
Snapping out the lights, he gathered the gray bag into his arms and deposited it on the deck in the narrow space between the life-boat and the edge. He looked down. The coolie was staring up, clinging to the rope, waiting.
The bag slipped down half-way. A warm moist hand clutched at his wrist. A faint moan issued from the unseen lips. He jerked again. The bag came away free, and he tossed it overboard. The yellow current snatched it instantly from sight.
The hand clung desperately at his wrist. "Don't let them——" began a sweet voice in his ear.
He wrapped his legs around the rope and worked his way over the edge. "Arms around my neck!" he commanded hoarsely. "Hold tight!"
Soft arms enfolded him. They dangled at the edge.
The coarse rope slipped swiftly through his fingers, scorching the palms, seeming to rake at the bones in his hand.
A wild shout came from the wireless house. An echo, forward, answered.
They slipped, twisting, scraping, down the rough strand. His hands seemed hot enough to burst. Maddened blood throbbed at his eyes, his ears, and dried his throat. Dimmed lights of the promenade deck soared upward. A glimmering port-hole followed.
For an eternity they dangled, then shot downward.
Something popped in Peter's ears. His feet struck a yielding deck. He staggered backward, sprawled. The rope was whipped from his hand. The warm arms still clung about his neck.
As the world wheeled, a drunken universe, a sullen voice yelped at his ear. The arms loosened.
TheVandaliatwinkled closely and was swept into the mist, a blur, a phantom. His hands blazed with infernal fire.
He sat up and looked behind him. The river was murderously dark. Water gurgled under the flimsy bow. The dull tread of feet and a watery flailing behind him advised Peter that the coolie was struggling against the rushing current.
Slowly he became conscious of a weight upon his breast, a low sobbing. A delicate, feminine odor brought him to earth, unraveled his tangled wits.
He was sitting upon the wet floor of the sampan's low cabin. His captive had crept close to him for protection. Protection! He snorted, wondering if the coolie was licensed.
"Hai! Hai! Woo-Sung way." The voice was villainously stubborn.
"Shanghai-way.Kuai cho—hurry!" roared Peter. A sigh escaped from the girl. She snuggled closer. "Woo-Sung.Pu-shih! Savvy?"
"Hai! Mebbe can do." The sampan reared, braving the direct onslaught of the Whang-poo's swift tide.
A myriad of questions in his brain strove for utterance. But the girl spoke first.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "I am Eileen Lorimer."
"I am—I was the wireless operator of theVandalia."
The coolie paused a moment for breath, then the mad plunging of the paddle sounded again.
"The wireless operator? You heard my call?"
"Been waiting for China's lights—ever since. But how—what?" he demanded.
She was silent a moment. "I know the code. My brother owned a private station. We lived in Pasadena—ages ago. It does seem ages." She stirred feebly. "You don't mind?"
"No, no," he protested.
"I am afraid—such a long time. Weeks? Years?" She shuddered. "I do not know. Oh—I want to go home!"
The coolie broke into a working sing-song as he struggled. The tide should shift before long.
"Were you in the loft above Ah Sih King's?"
"Roped! I broke loose."
"The red note?"
"I scribbled with a nail, and threw it before she knocked me down. That woman was a demon!"
A pale, yellow glow seemed to body forth from the enshrouding mist. Dawn was breaking. Soon the great river would be alight.
"School-teacher," the girl was murmuring. "A wedding present for her—in Ah Sih King's." A small hand fumbled for his, and found it. "In the back room they began gibbering at me. And this demon came. Meaningless words—Ah Sih King leered. Called me the luckiest woman in China."
"But how did you know?"
An empty freighter with propellers flailing half out of water pounded through the yellow mist close to them.
"Hie! Hie!" shrilled the coolie's warning.
Light seeped through the doorway. The outlines of a dark skirt were silhouetted against the scrubbed white floor.
"He said when I saw the lights of China I would go aboard a beautiful ship. She was watching you. Three times our stateroom was changed. Always at night."
"You used a coil?" Peter was professionally interested on this point.
The girl murmured affirmatively. "She had some affliction. A San Francisco doctor said the electric machine would cure it. And I pretended to use it, too. But it broke down that night."
The yellow light grew stronger. Equipment of the cabin emerged: a crock of rice and fish, a corked jug, a bundle of crude chop-sticks bound with frayed twine, a dark mess of boiled sea-weed on a greasy slab.
He looked down. The girl moved her head. Their eyes met.
Timid, gray ones with innocent candor searched him. Shining dark hair rippled down either side of a pale, lovely face. She was younger than he had expected, more beautiful than he had hoped. Her rosebud of a mouth trembled in the overtures of a smile.
His feelings were divided between admiration for her and horror—she had escaped so narrowly. In the realization of that moment Peter shaped his course. His following thought was of finances.
He brought to light a handful of change. Less than one dollar, disregarding four twenty-cent Hu-Peh pieces; hardly enough to pay off the sampan coolie.
His charge sighed helplessly, thereby clinching his resolution. "I haven't a penny," she said.
He explored the side-pocket of his coat, hoping against fact that he had not changed his bill-fold to his grip. His fingers encountered an unfamiliar object.
The struggling pantheress flashed into his mind. And the wrinkled envelope she had drawn from her satin jacket and pressed into his hand. Past dealings with Chinese gave him the inkling that he had been unknowingly bribed.
A scarlet stamp, a monograph, was imposed in the upper right corner of the pale blue oblong.
"Money—Chinese bills. Full of them!" Miss Lorimer gasped. "I saw it. What are they for? And why did that dreadful woman——"
"Jet-t-e-e-ee!" sang the coolie, swinging the oar hard over. The sampan grated against a landing. "Shanghai.Ma-tou!Hān liang bu dung yāng che lāi!"
Peter was counting the pack. "Fifty one-thousand-dollar Bank of China bills!"
Excited yelpings occurred on thema-tou. The rickshaw coolies were dickering for their unseen fare.
Peter tossed the sampan boy all the coins he had, and left him to gibber over them as he lifted the girl to the jetty. She clung to his arm, trembling, as the coolies formed a grinning, shouting circle about them. More raced in from the muddy bund.
"What are we going to do?" she groaned.
"We are going to cable your mother that you are starting for home by the first steamer," Peter cried, swinging her into the cleanest and most comfortable rickshaw of the lot. "TheMongoliasails this afternoon."
"What will become of you?" she demanded.
Peter gave her his ingenuous smile. "I will vanish—for a while. Otherwise I may vanish—permanently."
Miss Lorimer reached out with her small white hand and touched his sleeve. They were jouncing over the Su-Chow bridge, on their way to the American Consulate. "Won't I see you again? Ever?" She looked bewildered and lost, as if this strange old land had proved too much for her powers of readjustment. Her rosebud mouth seemed to quiver. "Are you in danger, Mr. Moore?"
Peter glimpsed a very yellow, supercilious face swinging in his direction from the padding throng.
"A little, perhaps," he conceded.
"Because of me?"
The yellow face reappeared and was swallowed again by the crowd, as a speck of mud is engulfed by the Yangtze.
Miss Lorimer repeated her question. Peter shook his head in an extravagant denial, and helped her down from the rickshaw. They had stopped before the consulate in the American quarter.
"I'm leaving you here," he said.
"But—but I like you!" her small voice faltered. "Aren't you going to explain—anything? Is this—is this all?"
Peter smothered his rising feelings under an air of important haste. "Your way lies there"—he pointed down river. "For the present mine lies here"—and he jerked a thumb in the general direction of Shanghai's narrow muddy alleys.
"Shall I—won't you—gracious!" Miss Lorimer stared into her left hand. Two one-thousand-dollar Bank of China bills were folded upon it. She was confused. When she looked back the young man who had miraculously delivered her from an unguessable fate had been spirited with Oriental magic from her sight.
The bund of Shanghai was striped with the long, purple shadows of coming night, a night which seemed to be creeping out of the heart of the land, ushering with it a feeling of subtle tension, as though the touch of darkness stirred to wakefulness a populace of shadows, which skulked and crouched and whispered, comprising an underworld of sinister folk which the first glow of dawn would send scampering back to a thousand evil-smelling hiding-places.
The rhythmic chant of coolies on the river ended. Mammoth go-downs, where the products of China flowed on their way to distant countries, became gloomily silent and empty. Handsome, tall sikhs, the police of the city, appeared in twos and threes where only one had been stationed before; for in China, as elsewhere, wickedness is borne on the night's wings.
With the descent of the velvety darkness the late wireless operator of the transpacific greyhound, theVandalia, slipped out of an obscure, shadowy doorway on Nanking Road and directed his steps toward the glittering bund, where he was reasonably sure his enemies would have difficulty in recognizing him.
Peter's uniform now reposed on a dark shelf in the rear of a silkshop. He had no desire to be stabbed in the back, which was a probability in case certain up-river men should find him. The Chinese gentleman who conducted the silkshop was an old friend, and trustworthy.
Peter now wore the garb of a Japanese merchant. His feet were sandaled. His straight, lithe figure was robed in an expensive gray silk kimono. Jammed tight to his ears, in good Nipponese fashion, was a black American derby. His eyebrows were penciled in a fairly praiseworthy attempt to reproduce the Celestial slant, and he carried a light bamboo cane.
Yet the ex-operator of theVandaliawas not altogether sure that the disguise was a success. If the scowling yellow face he had detected among the throngs on the bund that morning should have followed him to the silk-shop, of what earthly use was this silly disguise?
He padded along in the lee of a money-changer's, keeping close to the wall. By degrees he became aware that he was followed; and he endeavored to credit the feeling to imagination, to raw nerves. A ghostly rickshaw flitted by. The soft chugging of the coolie's bare feet became faint, ceased. A muttering old woman waddled past.
He looked behind him in time to see a gaunt face, lighted by the dim glow of a shop window, bob out of sight into a doorway. Turning again a moment later, he saw the man dive into another doorway.
Peter ran to the dark aperture, seized a muscular, satin-covered arm, and dragged a whispering Chinese, a big, brawny fellow, into the circular zone of the yellow street-light. Quickly recovering from his surprise, the Chinese reached swiftly toward his belt. Peter, hoping that only one man had been set on his trail, gave a murderous yell, and at the same time drove his fist into a yielding paunch.
With a groan the Chinese staggered back against the shop window, caving in a pane with his elbow. Peter raised his fist to strike again.
Then a monumental figure, with a clean turban coiled about his head, strode austerely into the circle of yellow light.
"Ta dzoh shēn mō szi?"
"Thief," said Moore simply, indicating the broken shop window.
"Lāo shēn lāo shēn!" growled the sikh. He seized the luckless window-breaker by both shoulders, backed him against an iron trolley-post, and strapped him to it.
With a jovial, "Allah be with you!" Peter Moore continued his stroll toward the bund. Now that the trailer was out of his way for the night at least, he could make his way in peace to the Palace bar and find out what might be in the wind for him.
As he crossed Nanking Road where it joined the bund, a frantic shout, mingled with a scream of fear or of warning, impelled him to leap out of the path of a rickshaw which was making for him at a breakneck speed. A white face, with a slender gloved hand clutched close to the lips, swept past.
Peter gasped in surprise quite as staggering as if the girl in the rickshaw had slapped him across the face. He shouted after her. But she went right on, without turning.
"Licksha?" A grinning coolie dropped the shafts of an empty rickshaw at Peter Moore's heels.
He ceased being angry as a softer glow crept into his veins. The rickshaw turned to the right, following the other, which occupied the center of the almost deserted bund, and speeding like the wind.
"Ní chü bà!" shouted Peter Moore. The girl seemed to be headed for the bund bridge. But why? A number of questions stormed futilely in his brain. Why had the girl ignored him? Why had she not gone aboard theManchuria, as she had promised?
The coolie joggled along, his naked legs rising and falling mechanically. The wireless operator drew the folds of the kimono more closely about his throat, for the night air blowing off the Whang-poo was chill and damp.
At the bridge the rickshaw ahead suddenly stopped, waiting. Peter Moore drew alongside, and leaped to the ground.
The near-by street-light afforded him the information that he had made a mistake. Undeniably similar to the girl he had sent away on theManchuriathat morning was the young lady in the rickshaw. She had the same white, wistful face, the same alert, appealing eyes, the same rosebud mouth. Any one might have made such a mistake. It was very embarrassing.
"Why are you following me?" she demanded.
"I thought I knew you. I am sorry. I'll go at once."
"No! Wait." Her volte relented. It was a fresh young voice, not indeed unlike that of Miss Lorimer's. She was smiling. "Why are you dressed as a Jap?"
"I am sorry," Peter faltered, retreating. "Mistake. You're not the girl I—I expected.Sayonara!"
"Pleasedon't run away," said the girl with a soft laugh. "I'm not afraid, or I would have run, instead of waiting, when you followed me. I've just come up from Amoy—alone. And I leave to-morrow for Ching-Fu—alone. You're American!" she murmured. "But why the Jap—disguise? I'm American, too. I used to live in New York, on Riverside Drive. Oh! It must have been ages ago!"
"Why?" asked Peter unguardedly.
"I haven't met one of my countrymen in centuries! And to-morrow I go up the river, 'way beyond Ching-Fu, beyond Szechwan!"
"Bad travelling on the river this time of the year," Peter murmured politely. "She's out of her banks up above Ichang, I have been told."
"Yes," replied the girl sadly. "If I could only have just one evening of fun—a dance or two, maybe—I—I—wouldn't mind half so much. I—I——"
Peter advised himself as follows: I told you so. Aloud he said:
"I believe there's a dance at the Astor Hotel. If we can get a table——"
"Oh, how lovely!" exclaimed the girl. "Do—do you mind very—much?"
"Tickled to death," Peter declared amiably.