4It was the end of the promised three days. Romney was dressing for dinner when there was a tap at the inlaid door, and Dr. Ti Kung entered with grave smile and hand outstretched. For just a second he had looked into Romney's eyes. His manner showed neither relief nor surprise; nor did he offer any comment upon the rallied manhood which he must have observed.Romney had climbed a stiff grade in the three days. They went below for dinner, but it was not until their coffee was served and the catfooted servant was gone, that Dr. Ti Kung appeared to note the patience of his companion."Doubtless, Mr. Romney," he began, "you have been wondering a good deal why I brought you to my home, and toward what end things were trending here. The time has come for me to enlighten you somewhat."The American lit a pipe he favoured and Dr. Ti Kung drew his chair closer. They were alone."I saw you laughing there in the Street of the Lepers—or was it the Street of the Ever-lasting Spring?" continued the Chinese. "To me it symbolised the blending of America with my poor country. We are now without veils between us. I was in a most serious mood that morning, anxious with the weight of many affairs."You sat upon the stone steps with the beggars beside you, laughing. You were in the glow of events—at one with those about you. You used to say back in college, 'To hell with it,' that most ingenious of many wonderful American remarks. I thought of that. I said to myself, 'Huan Ti Kung, you are heavy; you are long-faced. Why should you bear your burdens with such labour? If you fail, very good. If you win, especially good, but having done the best you can—'To hell with it.'"So you see, Mr. Romney, you offered me a fine message that morning, and after all I was very fond of you from the beginning. So, here we are. I promise you days of excitement. You have seen from the little episode in front of the Provincial House last night, that all China does not love me. I counted it a good omen that you saved me from a wound. You may have the pleasure again. But supposing you had not, or supposing you were not quite so quick the next time—'To hell with it!'"Romney leaned forward. He knew that the foregoing was simply the Oriental way of introducing a subject of real moment. He felt new inside, mind and will.Dr. Ti Kung continued:"I look upon you now with great satisfaction. You are free and adventurous, and you are my strong friend. You are a mind—an interpreter of our life. We need all these things from you. You know how poor China is distressed at this hour—"He leaned forward and spoke very softly. The long low room in which they dined was empty, yet the voice was pitched to reach Romney's ears and no farther."... I did not go ashore in the Japanese ports on the way home, but I heard much from those who did. It happened that I became so interested in you that much of the first day here in Shanghai was consumed. The three days since, I have been catching up, studying the events that came to pass during the two weeks' voyage—events, Mr. Romney, that the world is too intensely occupied to notice, but which we Chinese regard with finality and deepest foreboding."As you perhaps know, the Japanese have demanded from us all that we hold dear. They are a fighting people, whetted by recent victories. There are three parties here in China: Old China, which says 'We will temporize,' the Middle Party which says, 'We will fight,' and the party—"Romney knew instinctively that the destiny of Ti Kung was aligned with this third one; and yet he supposed that it was also a fighting destiny."And the third one," the Doctor repeated, "which believes that war as the Japanese know it; that war as it is being waged on French and Polish and Carpathian fields at this moment, is a stupid and ancient activity, having no part with what the best men of all countries know—""But," said Romney, "it's the Japanese way. They may bring the fighting to you—fighting such as they know. You may say that war is archaic rot, but if it is to be met, must it not be met with force?""Of course, but not with force of the same nature," said Dr. Ti Kung."You mean to say that this third party in China is going to stand pat on the expediency of toleration. The Hindus have taken a hundred years—""Not exactly that," said Dr. Ti Kung. "We believe that Japan can be stupefied—even strangled."A servant entered at this moment and spoke to Dr. Ti Kung—a hurried sentence. Voices from the street now reached them, as if an outer door had suddenly blown open.Dr. Ti Kung arose quickly, beckoning Romney to follow. They made their way to the rear of the house and into the garden."Another little engagement. So glad you appreciate these absurd affairs. You have your pistol?""Yes—I have become attached to it."Ti Kung thrust a packet of papers into Romney's hands."These are invaluable and safer with you. In case I am separated from you or hurt, deliver the packet in person to the address in the inner envelope, Tientsin. Now we must get over the masonry."Together they lifted a bench from the poolside to the wall. Romney helped his companion over the jagged glass on the coping. He then removed his coat and laid it upon the top for his own passage over, his hands and arms already bleeding. On the coping, he perceived that Ti Kung was not alone below. Romney landed upon his feet between two struggling figures. A knife burned his back. He kicked with effect in the direction it came.Meanwhile he called for Ti Kung, and a hand came up to him from below. The assailant had vanished. Something in the touch of that hand made him know that his friend was badly hurt."As little noise as you can, Romney," came a whisper. "There will be others upon us. Are you hurt?""No, are you?""I am afraid—a little. Help me up. We must get away from here with all speed. Have you the packet?"Romney left him and sprang to the wall's coping for his coat, pulling it loose from the glass. The papers dropped out as the coat fell."Yes," he answered, "I'm glad you mentioned that. I'll be more careful hereafter.""Do," said Ti Kung, regaining his feet.They were in a passage of almost utter darkness. The Chinese was making poor work of walking. The American lifted him forward and listened for direction from a voice that grew weaker as moments passed. All was silent behind."I need sewing up," the Chinese whispered. "It's very unfortunate.... That light ahead is the Grotto Road. We will be safe there. If consciousness leaves me, put me in a carriage, paying the driver and speaking the words,Sarenji loopni; then make your way as rapidly as possible, taking the papers with you, to a gentleman named Minglapo, in Merchant's Square, Tienstin—full directions inside outer envelope."Romney reached the lights of Grotto Road with the form of the Oriental sagging limp in his arms from loss of blood. It looked like death to the American. The hardest, or possibly next to the hardest thing he ever did, was to obey orders. It was very far from Romney's way to leave a friend in a plight, but this he was called upon to do.Whatever it meant, the driver seemed to understand, but to Romney, there was something altogether too frail in the wordsSarenji loopnito send a friend away with. The driver accepted his coin, closed the door of the vehicle, and whipped away, leaving Romney standing alone under the dim street light. He watched the vehicle out of sight, and began for the first time to feel the effects of the night's activities. Under his torn coat he was wet with blood. He transferred the packet of papers to a safer pocket, lit his pipe thoughtfully, and then it occurred that he must set out for Tientsin that night either by rail or the sea.5Minglapo was a dealer in inlays of wood and pearl and jewels. His shop in Merchant's Square, Tientsin, was a still place of many riches. Minglapo sat in the far shadows, an elderly Chinese of large unwrinkled bulk and a voice like the wonderful water-music in Fingal's cave.The large part of a week was required for Romney to reach this shop, for they do not travel great distances over night as yet in China. When he sat down before Minglapo his faculties at first were deeply occupied with the problem of where he had seen this old master before. It dawned upon him at last that he hadn't, but that Minglapo when he shut his eyes was almost identical in feature and color with a death-mask of Beethoven that had hung on his study-wall back in Palo Alto."I came from a gentleman named Dr. Ti Kung," Romney began.Minglapo bowed."My orders were not very explicit. I believe that there was an order-book that he asked me to deliver to you," the American resumed, perfectly aware that a direct statement of facts would have discountenanced the Oriental. "It was all very hurried at the last. He was stricken with illness in the street, and turning to me, a comparative stranger, asked me to deliver this package to you. With that he was helped into a carriage and driven away.""Yes," said Minglapo, raising his eyebrows just a trifle, "the order-book—you have it?"Romney was startled at the English, quick, concise—the speech of a Chinese who had been among the younger peoples for many years. He drew forth the yellow packet and gave it to the other.Now Minglapo was sitting upon a raised dais, several sumptuous rugs between him and the polished wood. He sat upon his limbs, and smoked continuously.The large envelope was opened and a certain paper drawn forth. This he perused at first with surprise and impatience; then with a beam of humour which opened into laughter wide and deep. Minglapo was a spectacle in this giving forth. His body rippled under the silks; the ashen yellow left his face and neck, giving way to rising ruddiness, the yellowish eyelids dropped, suggesting the mask again, but this was broken by the open mouth. Mastering all was the sound—soft, intoned laughter, full of leisureliness and music; not infectious exactly, since one who witnessed it first was too awed to be drawn in—a surpassing wonder over all. The teeth of this elderly Oriental were like the teeth of a young woman.Minglapo subsided by imperceptible gradations, and lifting his eyelids at length, surveyed Romney as one newly awakened from sleep."This is a most wonderful order-book," he said slowly.Minglapo was rippling again under his gown as he replaced the papers in the envelope. The inscrutability of the fat figure challenged Romney. It occurred to him that if he should start to go, something of finality might come from the impressive figure. He cleared his throat and arose."Dr. Ti Kung, as I have said, gave me no further orders before the door of his carriage closed upon him. I presume, having fulfilled my task, that it would be well for me to return to Shanghai—""Very naturally," said Minglapo."Then I will bid you good-day."The Chinese was holding the yellow packet in his hand. A further sheet had been drawn forth, glanced at, and returned. Minglapo's hands were perfect. The face of the envelope toward Romney was but partly covered by the eight beautiful fingers that held the paper lightly, while the face bowed above. The eyelids narrowed and the corners of the mouth were sunken, the broad, bland forehead, just faintly ruffled. There came to the white man a sense of prodigious power, as if this man's thought could manipulate the destinies of other men; as if behind that brow a conception was now forming so clean-cut in all its processes that instant action must follow its maturity. A suspicion dawned upon him that this man was strong enough to be Ti Kung's master.Minglapo rose almost imperceptibly."Mr. Romney." The voice halted him. "Your friend informed me you were coming some time ago. I have been expecting you. Please sit down."Romney smiled."It would be natural, as I said before, for you to return to Shanghai, except that I have heard from Dr. Ti Kung, who, I perceive, picks well his associates. These are delicate matters; these are times to try men's souls. Our friend is now healing at sea. I am grievously concerned, however, over wounds that could delay such a man for six days. Much depends upon his coming. The character of Dr. Ti Kung's service cannot be duplicated. In saving his life, Friend Romney, you have done one of those significant things upon which the destiny of a great people hangs, and an action that can never be publicly known. It is with utmost pleasure that I ask you to remain under my roof. I hope that we may succeed in making you comfortable in the interval before your friend arrives. There is to be a particular servant for you in this house—one of my favourites—"Minglapo clapped his hands, and a small but almost perfect creature of theboy-class appeared, alert in every sense and apparently without inertia."This is Bamban. He is yours, Friend Romney, and you who know so much of China realize that a bestowal of this kind between man and man means that Bamban is no longer my servant."Fastidious in his ways, swift and delicate in all his doings, Bamban appeared to embrace his new master with the sudden look of eager intelligence which shot out from under his lifted brows. Romney knew enough about China to realise that Bamban held something in the deeps of his being that could not be transferred. At the same time he knew that only some significant treachery on his own part toward the interests of Minglapo could ever call this reservation into action.In the several days following Romney became convinced that he was being studied in ways beyond Western ingenuity to fathom; and though he was schooled to be guileless in intent and at the same time wise as the serpent, the processes of surveillance which he imagined about him were either above or below his own levels. He had nothing to conceal, and no plan apart. He met all fancied subtleties by being himself, just that, which in the case of uncomplicated purpose is the invariable master-stroke. The fact is, Romney had learned much from the Great Drift. He could let himself go. His nerves had left the surface once more, covered themselves in the cushions of health. He did not know the particular passion that drove Ti Kung and Minglapo, but he felt it big and gripping. He even felt at last that he was identified with a movement potent and far-reaching enough to command those powers of his which all his former dealings with men made him repress.Though Minglapo did not appear to be a man of great riches, there were objects of priceless beauty in his establishment, which was a shop only on the street floor. No one appeared to buy while Romney was there. Once while the American was standing in the rear of the shop, the floor raised a little before his feet, and he was aware of a deep oil-lit basement that had every look and indication of being a fully equipped chemical laboratory—vials, flames and crucibles, tables with spawn-trays and culture-boards. An oppressive, earthy breath as from fungoid growths touched Romney's nostrils from the opened trap. Minglapo called him to the dais at that instant and the trap itself was abruptly closed. The Chinese upon whose shoulder the door had been raised did not emerge. There was something aged and wasted about the figure, the eyes spent and hollow.Romney enjoyed the challenging mystery of it all. The two upper floors, high-ceiled and extending far back from the street, formed little less than a palace. Ti Kung's house in Shanghai was austere as a monastery compared. Romney found himself surrounded with luxuries startling even with his considerable acquaintance in the East. Ensconced here in the midst of influences insistently languorous, he was amused to find a tendency of his own character to tighten rather than to let down. The first night in Ti Kung's house had seemed to straighten him out and render distasteful abandonment such as he had known. Abandonment here, he was well aware, would bring about the same results as the wastrel days on the water-fronts. He had entered into that with the fixed purpose of letting life go. It had refused to leave him, and now he was rather distantly glad to be alive.In his own quarters, on the second day, he drew forth the frayed and soiled chiffon waist, washed it carefully and put it back in his breast. It was no more than a handkerchief. It had seen him through strange days and roads. He was the least maudlin of men, but the little fabric meant something striking and imperishable in his nature—something of him no longer, but around him. She was notthe woman, but she had made the picture of what a woman could be. The farther from her, the more he appreciated. She had known in two weeks what it had taken him nearly a year to find out—that they were not for each other. The change had come to him from the months in the Drift—something to break his unparalleled infatuation. All her wonder and daring and splendour remained clear, and yet the terrible draw of her had somehow eased upon his heart. In a word, he saw as quite true another of her sayings—that love can never be on one side alone in a great romance.Late the fifth afternoon of his stay in the house of Minglapo, Romney got the first inkling of the real business at hand. There had been talk at the dais for several moments, when the old master turned at the soft swinging of one of the shop's rear doors, and without finishing the sentence on his tongue, remarked:"And now, Friend Romney, you are ready to meet a countryman of yours, General Nifton Bend—"Very low in the doorway appeared that long, sad, strange face, and again the leap in Romney's breast and the impulse to hurry forward and help the Hunchback to the cushions. At the same time—a hot thrill for an unemotional man—the thought that his association with Ti Kung and Minglapo meant association with Nifton Bend, the genius of Young China.At the moment of the General's entrance from the rear, the servants had sprung to the main door opening on Merchant's Square, closed and barred it as if for the night, though the afternoon was not entirely spent. The servants of the shop were banished and the three sat down together....Romney's mind had rushed back not only to his first meeting in the native professor's house in the Congrou district of Peking, but to Longstruth's where his impressions of that brief former interview became vivid and animate again for the listening of Moira Kelvin. The Hunchback seemed to bring again something of her almost as intimate as her perfume....Daylight did not reach them now. The dead expressionless look had come again to the General's eyes. Romney felt his own face turn bloodless under the second appraisal, as was the other's in the warm gathering dusk. The unhasting and uninflected voice spoke again—the voice of a man with a single purpose, a man so close to the end that he laughs at pain. The words came slow and steadily, like running water:"... We are working for the future of China. We may be wrong. We are doing the thing as we see it. Our deepest convictions are that we are right. We do not mean to meet Japan in this extraordinary crisis in the old fashion of arms and battle-lines. We do not care to fight. We favour theoretically the expediency of toleration, and yet we observe to the east and south, India, and on the north and west, Japan. Old India is magnificent in philosophy and yet so far without the physical impulse to protect herself; Japan, empty-minded, imitative, is furious with the idea of her own raw power of men and guns. If mind is a finer and more potent force than matter, we believe that guns and explosives and battle-lines are to be mastered by a thought. It cannot be written that Chinese age and wisdom shall succumb to the upstart and hot-headed people that has not even a language of its own—"Nifton Bend's face was lit. Romney did not comprehend. This man, an authority on arms and military matters, spoke now against their use in case of war with Japan. He may have been a mystic in so far as his vision of the future went, but he had been enough of the manipulator of matter to make the new Chinese army. Did he plan to use some force of extermination more powerful than gases and explosives?Minglapo now spoke to Romney, though his hand affectionately touched Nifton Bend's shoulder."We have learned to accept a lift of the General's eyelid, Friend Romney. He had not been thirty seconds in this room before you were approved. Already Dr. Ti Kung had approved you—and I. Still you would not have touched this inner circle as now but for your action in saving our Doctor's life. It appears they burned his house that night in Shanghai. You were intrusted with papers that contain certain of our plans. You may be asked to carry them again—even to Japan. There is for you a possibility of being an instrument toward the ending of all war from the world. China need act but once to end all war. It is a superb adventure for you, and incidentally you will be a power in preventing the world-calamity of a Japanese Asia."Nifton Bend now spoke again:"The history of that package which you so safely brought to us would make the raciest of novels. Once I hoped to become a novelist myself. That was in the days before the big dream of being a foster-child to the ancient Yellow Mother. In order that you may not be troubled longer by working in the dark, I am going to tell you something of what the yellow packet contains—"And now there was the snap of a bone—the unmistakable snap of a faulty knee-cap, from the far end of the room. Nifton Bend's utterance was cut short. Romney glanced quickly at the two faces. Minglapo's hands lifted slowly from the cushions. They seemed to waver a moment—then were clapped together. No servant appeared. It had undoubtedly been a servant of the household and had he been innocent he would have responded to the master's signal. Minglapo clapped his hands a second time, louder, and Romney saw in his eye what to him was unmistakably a command to make haste toward the part of the shop from which the snap had come. Rising, he heard a cry from Minglapo and was conscious of Nifton Bend making for the door to the right of the room. From overhead and from the hall-way outside was now heard the stirring and hurried approach of servants.Romney skirted the shadowy edge of the long rear-hall, running silently on tip-toe. All that he saw at the far end was a slight movement, as of a door being softly shoved to. It had moved possibly no more than an inch. The American pushed it open. This rear-room was empty, and there was no sound whatsoever. He crossed quickly to a further door which opened to a dim hall. A crouched figure came to a stop at the far end under Romney's eye—the decrepit figure he had seen for an instant under the lifted trap to the basement. One of the servant's hands was concealed under his blouse.6Certain aspects of the affair which followed were ridiculous, and others profoundly Asiatic. Romney had felt himself far removed from the need of physical encounter with any human being, and yet as he came close to the tense bowed figure of the Chinese, the meaning of the concealed hand darted to his mind, also the sense that he must act quickly in an aggressive way or withdraw again out of the reach of the striking arm. It has been observed that, generally speaking, it was easier for Romney to advance than to withdraw. There was another point in that fraction of a second. He could not use a hand or foot upon an Oriental bowed with years—not even to disarm him. The fact is Romney dove forward, a sort of hip-tackle, the idea being to carry the servant's body to the floor with his arms pinned. After they had bumped the polished wood together as one, he was disagreeably shocked at the extreme emaciation of the figure beneath him. This turned in a moment to astonishment at the extraordinary strength and agility which the Oriental displayed. There was a crush in the thin hard limbs twined about his own, and the hands were not to be held captive, but darted again and again to the girdle where the knife lay. Romney flattened his weight upon the lithe body and struggled for possession of the tearing, cutting fingers which sometimes found his face and again burrowed into the pressure between them. It was Minglapo's voice and foot that stilled the struggle, the latter placed disdainfully upon the neck of his house-servant.Romney strolled back to the dais ashamed of himself somehow. Minglapo and Nifton Bend joined him a moment later, and rather quietly, as if they appreciated the delicacy of the white man. The emaciated one was brought in by two house-servants. He stood now before the master of the shop, trying to repress the heavy breathing of his exhausted body, and to cover as well as he could the trembling of his muscles from the recent strain. Something of warmth and approval crept into Romney's heart for the old man, as the pregnant meanings of the moment cleared in his mind. Minglapo dismissed the servants and regarded the trapped one, as Romney imagined, with something of strange kindness. Shutting his eyes, the vast head of the master moved slowly from right to left, then bowed before the American."Again you are our good genius, Friend Romney.... There appears a need wherever you are—of fast action. I am beginning to believe in what our Doctor says of the thing called American luck."Romney waved his hand deprecatingly, and the General remarked with a smile:"Our young friend feels with very good cause that he has better gifts for us than the force and swiftness of his hands."He turned to Romney, adding:"Do you not see that it was imperative for Young China to find the owner of that badly-hinged knee? Our enemies would have required but little more than a report of our words before that accident. I trust there has been no mistake as to one of these being the lucky knees."He pointed to the house-servant's thin legs, and presently Romney fell once more into the charm of Minglapo's voice, though a tension was increasing in his mind in regard to the fate of the captive, his eyes turning often to the hollow-eyed one, as the voice of Minglapo came to his ears as from the deeps of a bubbling well. From none but a fat man with a great chest could such softness and volume issue.The trembling of the servant's body resulted from exertion, not from fear. His features were sombre and changeless as the east at evening—a face of deep intelligence, but just a wrapping of yellow-pale tissue on the bony block of it, except for the burning quiet of the eyes. The ears were decently cut, the mouth and brow were good. Deference, attention, apprehension—these three were expressed and held in order by a concentration that was no less than mastery.Nifton-Bend had also satisfied himself in study of that face. Minglapo was now questioning his servant in Chinese.... Fifty years old ... served in this house for two years ... came from the South, from Canton ... papers in his possession to prove this...Nifton Bend leaned forward to straighten the fringe of the cushions at Romney's knee and whispered:"They all have papers. He is Japanese—as we shall doubtless prove—"The talk went on. It appeared that Minglapo was interested in the same point that the General had just expressed, for presently he made a gesture to bring the servant down to his level. The lifeless eyes rolled backward for the fraction of a second as the wasted figure obeyed. He bent but one knee in his kneeling, his right leg thrust back loosely, the left bearing the full weight. The three also watched intently. Again the warmth surged up into Romney's throat—a curious fondness for the Oriental's courage and guile.Now Minglapo stretched forth his hand to his servant's head and drew it forward into his lap. Silently and resigned, the other submitted. Still the left knee did double service. Very carefully Minglapo examined the man's crown, tweaking the queue with tense fingers, peering into the braid close to the scalp, letting the tight black length of it pass before his eyes slowly, as if watching the gloss of it under the lamp-light. This braid alone of him seemed fully alive."The queue is right enough. He has probably been in the service for many years, ever since a little boy—probably helped to map Manchuria—like as not helped to whip us in '95. Worked here two years waiting for to-night, and then, just a little dryness of the knee—"Minglapo bade his servant stand once more. Nifton Bend leaned forward, placing his hand upon the loose right knee.The servant explained that it was a bit rheumatic; that the pain was unbearable when he bent it."I'm afraid he will have to bend it," Minglapo said.A look of agony swept across the servant's face, as the master commanded him to bend both knees at the same time. The force of will now called into action was so intense as to be like a frictional heat in the room. He lowered himself slowly, the weight seemingly equally divided in both limbs. He was now sitting on his heels, Oriental fashion. Minglapo waved him up again, and commanded him to repeat the exercise with a quick movement.The tell-tale snap filled the room.There was something exquisite to Romney in the fact that not one of the three faces to whom this was like an ultimatum, changed. Not the trace of a smile, nor light of triumph appeared in the eyes of Minglapo or the General. A hundred times more, they respected this old man as a captive spy, than when he was merely one of the house-force. They respected him perhaps as only one gamester can respect another.... Minglapo went on speaking, but slowly, fragmentarily now. He clapped his hands. A servant came and returned immediately bringing a small lacquered box."Is he not superb?" Nifton Bend whispered.... "They train them from childhood. The Japanese system of espionage is far-reaching—ah, look there."Minglapo had reached forward and lifted the blue loose-hanging blouse of the spy, rolling it well up above the shoulders. The bare brown chest and back showed scarred and blackened from some terrible maiming in the past. There were series of lumpy welts upon the back which Minglapo examined minutely. The disfigurations of the chest were of a different nature, long pale scars over which the skin stretched with a honey-like transparency."One of the most trusted of his kind beyond a doubt," said Nifton Bend. "This is not the first time he has been caught. Those three-barred welts on his back are from the Siberian knout, a devilish contrivance made of knotted whip-cord soaked in brine. The dark rashy appearance in spots is also from the North—frost-bite. We have a hero in our midst, Mr. Romney, one of the real ones whose names are never known."The spy stood perfectly unemotional, looking upward, turning obediently whenever Minglapo took his arm."... He knows it is his last half-hour—"The last was in a sense abrupt to Romney. He had been so absorbed in the whole game of these passionate nationalists, that the life and death end of it for the one caught had been put aside from his mind for the moment.Minglapo arose and drew a goblet of water from the cooler, opened the lacquer box, took forth a small metal case which contained a long needle.The pressure of it all was now a trifle heavy, even for the well-repressed American. The excellence of physical manhood manifested in the whole affair did not take away entirely the fact that the spy was about to be murdered. Romney felt he could not stay. His head turned to Minglapo and back to Nifton Bend. Their faces were expressionless and half averted. They would have accepted a reversal that meant death to them, with the same external calm that characterized the manner of the spy.... Yet the American could not lift. He was no stranger to the various fashions of brutality, but the temptation to pluck the stupor needle from the hand of Minglapo was well nigh overpowering. The unoccupied hand of the master was now held out toward the servant as if to take his arm. Very slowly the spy's hand lifted from his side, the palm toward Minglapo's, moving forward as one would grope in the dark. Over his face was that same eternal quietude like a faint reflection of day in the sky at evening.That tableau seemed immortally fixed in Romney's mind. He leaned forward, his hands gripping his ankles as he sat.... Suddenly the principal was plucked from the centre of things. It was the queerest extraction—a sort of side-lurching as if the spy's body had been hurled past....A quick shot from Nifton Bend at Romney's left—the voice of Minglapo in English—then a crash of glass and frame as the body of the spy hurled itself through the forward casement."Your work, Friend Romney. Get him, or all is ruined!" this from Minglapo.As he darted across the room Romney realised that it did appear to be his work, that the house-servants were not to be trusted, that Minglapo was fat and the General maimed from birth. He dove through the pearl casement, somewhat enlarging the opening the other had made, and the street took him—a stunning impact. Then came a curious realisation of the freshness of evening.The spy was up and away, the American following at a pace not adjusted to distance, a sprint which could not have lasted two hundred yards.7A boy runs, an animal runs, but a white man cannot preserve his esteem chasing a native through a Chinese street. Still the words of Minglapo rang in his ears—"Your work, Romney. Get him or all is ruined."Other thoughts flashed as he ran—thoughts having to do with the changing and colouring of the Oriental maps, the end of a warring world, the strange patience and passion of practical visionaries like Minglapo and Nifton Bend and Dr. Ti Kung.He ran with his elbows tucked in, his head forward. The spy, turning often, would have seen but for the duck a face that did not know how to quit. Yet Romney who knew what physical condition meant was surprised at his own lack of form. The Japanese ran with a limp—ran for his Emperor in whose service he had given youth and all the fine edge of his vitality. It was not until he was spent that he turned fox. Luck was not with him. The white man neared and the streets they passed furnished no hiding place, not even an open door. At his last turn Romney met a creature on the ground with fists upraised. Perhaps at no other time would he have found the spy without a weapon.The fists of an Oriental are always pathetic, but these were piteously so. Romney did not join action with them, but sat down on a door-step, gasping, laughing a little. The ludicrous cringing attitude was a clue to a still greater pathos. The white man in his exhaustion was struck again suddenly with the darkness of the whole drama. Why should he return this heroic little figure to his death? It was true that he was somehow in the service of the Big Three, that he had touched the secrets of their devoted lives, but now, as in the shop of Minglapo, the great zeal and patience, the unswerving fealty of this spy's service to his most human and impossible God, had a merit to it that touched him where he was tenderest. Nifton Bend and the two Chinese leaders meant adventure; reinstatement into the world of real men; more than that they meant initiation into the deepest crafts of men.... Ti Kung had picked him up from the gutter of the world's darkest slum, placed him on his feet, trusted him with a matter of life and death, sent him on a journey to his masters. Minglapo was a figure to tie to; and as for the Hunchback, Romney had uncovered an emotion that startled himself. He knew now what it meant to love a leader—something of the old mystery of what it means to die for another.And yet they had thrust their responsibilities upon him. To take back this old man, all broken with exhaustion, meant to deliver him to his death. The personal side of the subject was big and near. He had run down the spy but didn't know what to do with him.... The little Jap had his life to live, his work to do. He had already done great silent unanswering tasks. He lay face downward on the turf now, panting hard—too old a man, his vitality too far spent, to be used so roughly.The fact that Romney had been too long in Asia to care much for Japan and her ambitions and that he was deeply called to the mysterious activities of such men as the Big Three, didn't change a whit his incapacity just now.He sat down on a doorstep, just at the feet of the spy, and mopped his brow laughingly, though his mental movements were heavy and severe. The way he personally panted and perspired, disgusted a mind in which the old ideal of an athlete still remained.... He saw for the first time the expediency of Pilate's memorable washing of hands.... The sound of hurried footsteps came up the narrow way.Romney gambled with himself. If these were Minglapo's servants—the affair of course was out of his hands. If not—well, he couldn't exactly let the Jap escape with information that would betray the lives and work of his friends.... The hurrying feet had not to do with the house of Minglapo. They were Tientsin policemen—three of them—summoned to duty doubtless by the chase. Perceiving the American now, and his game on the ground before him, they brought lanterns to bear upon the two faces, talked long and with much gravity. Romney blinked into the lantern light again, an extra-long exposure. Then his life-story in full was hypothecated by one of the officers. The two others afterward relieved themselves of prolonged intonations in many high keys, having little to do with the facts of the case. Their manner became sumptuously courteous, even deferential, so that the American felt in justice to them he should rise from the doorstep. They touched his elbows on either side—slight, lifting pressures, bowing repeatedly to him and pointing over their shoulders in a direction contrary to the shop in Merchant's Square. Romney did not care to return just then to Minglapo. In fact, he doubted whether he ever would again. Two of the officers had lifted the spy between them.As they walked, a little ray came down upon the American from the future. Policemen meant calaboose, even in China. Calaboose meant on some occasions an inconvenient chance to think. Minglapo of course would exert himself in behalf of them, but delivery meant a return to the dais and resumption of the murder process. Meanwhile in the little old head walking behind, between the two Chinese policemen, were facts and suspicions enough to break entirely what Romney was willing to grant as the biggest game in Asia at the present moment.... Just now it occurred that a properly trained Japanese spy would be able to talk in English, which would prove utterly unintelligible to the Chinese police."Oh, I say, we'd better fix matters somehow—so we'll pull together—""Good," came the answer."You—why didn't you say something before?""There was nothing to say. I expected death when I fell in the street—""I suppose that was my business.""I do not understand—"Romney was charged with queer elation. He would have known the spy was Japanese by his English—probably a University of Tokyo training. He was familiar with Japanese students. Always they bent forward with the effort of thinking in a foreign language. The Chinese were inclined to sit back and let the other do the heavy work of listening."You mean you don't understand why I didn't kill you?""Yes, that is what I mean.""I'm not a murderer. I haven't got anything against you.""Then you are not with them?""Yes—""I do not understand—"It was the East and West again, a chasm that could not be bridged. Romney dropped the subject."We'd better fix matters—as to what front is best to put up—""Front?""What we'd better tell them, so that our stories will fit—""Stories?""Listen," said Romney, straining for the non-idiomatic. "They will ask questions at the station. We must answer. If we answer differently, it would be better if we had not spoken—""Yes. I am your servant. We had a disagreement. You started to beat me and I ran—""Just a little domestic difference," Romney remarked."Yes.""Where do we live?""I came with you from Shanghai four days ago. We have been in the country since arrival—"Romney was further amused. Minglapo had been studiously avoided in the arrangement. The spy had a fertile mind. These things were a part of his work. He was aware even of Romney's coming from Shanghai."You are not to remember the place we have been since Shanghai and Tongu," the Japanese added. "I have been showing you our country. You are rich. You just play and pay.... You must speak sharp to me now, as if you did not like my talk—"Romney noisily rebuked his servant. The hands of the little policeman tightened on his arm. "Good," said the Japanese in frightened, cringing tones. "Now I will explain to them that I am your servant and that you were displeased with me."There were suspended explanations to the policeman; long, voluble breaths and fresh beginnings, as if the spy were releasing a memorized address; after that a moment of silence, and a low wailing sentence in English:"It does not please them altogether."They were locked presently in the same cell. Voices of the drugged and drunken beat through the corridors, and screams of madness from lower passages. And still Romney had his chance to think. The Big Three wouldn't be pleased to learn that he had permitted the spy to fall into the hands of the law. Even the Japanese didn't understand a white man's mercy. These nationalists were an interesting sort. They didn't ask from others what they were unwilling to give themselves. Failure meant forfeiture of life in their work. But the West didn't breed this sort of thing in a man. Romney found himself not as intrinsically of the East as he imagined. He could conceive a big system doing away with a host of lives, but still he didn't care to be the direct instrument of taking the life of one man.Presently he found himself in the midst of conjecture as to how the Big Three meant to strangle Japan. For many moments this matter wavered back and forth through his mind, and did not take real form until he happened to recall the laboratory in Minglapo's cellar. There might be a connection here. He had heard of a ghastly, almost incommunicable horror having to do with the slaying of multitudes without any formal arrangement of platoon, brigade or corps....He dozed in his chair at last, dreaming of a nation stricken with pestilence—its soldiers all away in the clean and ancient barbarities of war.... He would wait for Ti Kung and then possibly it would be well to clear himself from the Big Three. Perhaps they wouldn't trust him—even to keep his mouth shut.... The little old spy slept at his feet.... In the heart of the night, a prison-guard entered with a lantern, drawing the cell-door shut behind him.Romney opened his eyes, and saw a queer intelligence in the glance of the other—a face he had not seen before. The prison guard was intent for an instant upon the figure at Romney's feet, the lantern-ray pouring over the spy's length from feet to queue—then back to Romney's face."Sit quiet and say nothing," he whispered, "Your friends are working for you. To-morrow you will be free. This—remember—is a madman. He is not responsible.... Say only that he attacked you and me—now—"The voice of the prison-guard came from the dark, behind the lantern-ray. Romney caught up sleepily with the full significance of the words. Suddenly the lantern fell and the stranger raised a terrible outcry, springing upon the spy, who had half-risen. Now they were on the floor together, and a shot was fired.The prison-guard was the one to arise. The lantern was spraying the stone floor with light, above was darkness. Romney's face was caught in the hands of the policeman, and these words were driven in his mind, even as he struggled to be free:"Listen. He leaped upon me and tried to take my pistol. I had to shoot. He is done and cannot deny. They are coming—"The officer now raised his voice for help, and the corridors drummed with hurrying feet.
4
It was the end of the promised three days. Romney was dressing for dinner when there was a tap at the inlaid door, and Dr. Ti Kung entered with grave smile and hand outstretched. For just a second he had looked into Romney's eyes. His manner showed neither relief nor surprise; nor did he offer any comment upon the rallied manhood which he must have observed.
Romney had climbed a stiff grade in the three days. They went below for dinner, but it was not until their coffee was served and the catfooted servant was gone, that Dr. Ti Kung appeared to note the patience of his companion.
"Doubtless, Mr. Romney," he began, "you have been wondering a good deal why I brought you to my home, and toward what end things were trending here. The time has come for me to enlighten you somewhat."
The American lit a pipe he favoured and Dr. Ti Kung drew his chair closer. They were alone.
"I saw you laughing there in the Street of the Lepers—or was it the Street of the Ever-lasting Spring?" continued the Chinese. "To me it symbolised the blending of America with my poor country. We are now without veils between us. I was in a most serious mood that morning, anxious with the weight of many affairs.
"You sat upon the stone steps with the beggars beside you, laughing. You were in the glow of events—at one with those about you. You used to say back in college, 'To hell with it,' that most ingenious of many wonderful American remarks. I thought of that. I said to myself, 'Huan Ti Kung, you are heavy; you are long-faced. Why should you bear your burdens with such labour? If you fail, very good. If you win, especially good, but having done the best you can—'To hell with it.'
"So you see, Mr. Romney, you offered me a fine message that morning, and after all I was very fond of you from the beginning. So, here we are. I promise you days of excitement. You have seen from the little episode in front of the Provincial House last night, that all China does not love me. I counted it a good omen that you saved me from a wound. You may have the pleasure again. But supposing you had not, or supposing you were not quite so quick the next time—'To hell with it!'"
Romney leaned forward. He knew that the foregoing was simply the Oriental way of introducing a subject of real moment. He felt new inside, mind and will.
Dr. Ti Kung continued:
"I look upon you now with great satisfaction. You are free and adventurous, and you are my strong friend. You are a mind—an interpreter of our life. We need all these things from you. You know how poor China is distressed at this hour—"
He leaned forward and spoke very softly. The long low room in which they dined was empty, yet the voice was pitched to reach Romney's ears and no farther.
"... I did not go ashore in the Japanese ports on the way home, but I heard much from those who did. It happened that I became so interested in you that much of the first day here in Shanghai was consumed. The three days since, I have been catching up, studying the events that came to pass during the two weeks' voyage—events, Mr. Romney, that the world is too intensely occupied to notice, but which we Chinese regard with finality and deepest foreboding.
"As you perhaps know, the Japanese have demanded from us all that we hold dear. They are a fighting people, whetted by recent victories. There are three parties here in China: Old China, which says 'We will temporize,' the Middle Party which says, 'We will fight,' and the party—"
Romney knew instinctively that the destiny of Ti Kung was aligned with this third one; and yet he supposed that it was also a fighting destiny.
"And the third one," the Doctor repeated, "which believes that war as the Japanese know it; that war as it is being waged on French and Polish and Carpathian fields at this moment, is a stupid and ancient activity, having no part with what the best men of all countries know—"
"But," said Romney, "it's the Japanese way. They may bring the fighting to you—fighting such as they know. You may say that war is archaic rot, but if it is to be met, must it not be met with force?"
"Of course, but not with force of the same nature," said Dr. Ti Kung.
"You mean to say that this third party in China is going to stand pat on the expediency of toleration. The Hindus have taken a hundred years—"
"Not exactly that," said Dr. Ti Kung. "We believe that Japan can be stupefied—even strangled."
A servant entered at this moment and spoke to Dr. Ti Kung—a hurried sentence. Voices from the street now reached them, as if an outer door had suddenly blown open.
Dr. Ti Kung arose quickly, beckoning Romney to follow. They made their way to the rear of the house and into the garden.
"Another little engagement. So glad you appreciate these absurd affairs. You have your pistol?"
"Yes—I have become attached to it."
Ti Kung thrust a packet of papers into Romney's hands.
"These are invaluable and safer with you. In case I am separated from you or hurt, deliver the packet in person to the address in the inner envelope, Tientsin. Now we must get over the masonry."
Together they lifted a bench from the poolside to the wall. Romney helped his companion over the jagged glass on the coping. He then removed his coat and laid it upon the top for his own passage over, his hands and arms already bleeding. On the coping, he perceived that Ti Kung was not alone below. Romney landed upon his feet between two struggling figures. A knife burned his back. He kicked with effect in the direction it came.
Meanwhile he called for Ti Kung, and a hand came up to him from below. The assailant had vanished. Something in the touch of that hand made him know that his friend was badly hurt.
"As little noise as you can, Romney," came a whisper. "There will be others upon us. Are you hurt?"
"No, are you?"
"I am afraid—a little. Help me up. We must get away from here with all speed. Have you the packet?"
Romney left him and sprang to the wall's coping for his coat, pulling it loose from the glass. The papers dropped out as the coat fell.
"Yes," he answered, "I'm glad you mentioned that. I'll be more careful hereafter."
"Do," said Ti Kung, regaining his feet.
They were in a passage of almost utter darkness. The Chinese was making poor work of walking. The American lifted him forward and listened for direction from a voice that grew weaker as moments passed. All was silent behind.
"I need sewing up," the Chinese whispered. "It's very unfortunate.... That light ahead is the Grotto Road. We will be safe there. If consciousness leaves me, put me in a carriage, paying the driver and speaking the words,Sarenji loopni; then make your way as rapidly as possible, taking the papers with you, to a gentleman named Minglapo, in Merchant's Square, Tienstin—full directions inside outer envelope."
Romney reached the lights of Grotto Road with the form of the Oriental sagging limp in his arms from loss of blood. It looked like death to the American. The hardest, or possibly next to the hardest thing he ever did, was to obey orders. It was very far from Romney's way to leave a friend in a plight, but this he was called upon to do.
Whatever it meant, the driver seemed to understand, but to Romney, there was something altogether too frail in the wordsSarenji loopnito send a friend away with. The driver accepted his coin, closed the door of the vehicle, and whipped away, leaving Romney standing alone under the dim street light. He watched the vehicle out of sight, and began for the first time to feel the effects of the night's activities. Under his torn coat he was wet with blood. He transferred the packet of papers to a safer pocket, lit his pipe thoughtfully, and then it occurred that he must set out for Tientsin that night either by rail or the sea.
5
Minglapo was a dealer in inlays of wood and pearl and jewels. His shop in Merchant's Square, Tientsin, was a still place of many riches. Minglapo sat in the far shadows, an elderly Chinese of large unwrinkled bulk and a voice like the wonderful water-music in Fingal's cave.
The large part of a week was required for Romney to reach this shop, for they do not travel great distances over night as yet in China. When he sat down before Minglapo his faculties at first were deeply occupied with the problem of where he had seen this old master before. It dawned upon him at last that he hadn't, but that Minglapo when he shut his eyes was almost identical in feature and color with a death-mask of Beethoven that had hung on his study-wall back in Palo Alto.
"I came from a gentleman named Dr. Ti Kung," Romney began.
Minglapo bowed.
"My orders were not very explicit. I believe that there was an order-book that he asked me to deliver to you," the American resumed, perfectly aware that a direct statement of facts would have discountenanced the Oriental. "It was all very hurried at the last. He was stricken with illness in the street, and turning to me, a comparative stranger, asked me to deliver this package to you. With that he was helped into a carriage and driven away."
"Yes," said Minglapo, raising his eyebrows just a trifle, "the order-book—you have it?"
Romney was startled at the English, quick, concise—the speech of a Chinese who had been among the younger peoples for many years. He drew forth the yellow packet and gave it to the other.
Now Minglapo was sitting upon a raised dais, several sumptuous rugs between him and the polished wood. He sat upon his limbs, and smoked continuously.
The large envelope was opened and a certain paper drawn forth. This he perused at first with surprise and impatience; then with a beam of humour which opened into laughter wide and deep. Minglapo was a spectacle in this giving forth. His body rippled under the silks; the ashen yellow left his face and neck, giving way to rising ruddiness, the yellowish eyelids dropped, suggesting the mask again, but this was broken by the open mouth. Mastering all was the sound—soft, intoned laughter, full of leisureliness and music; not infectious exactly, since one who witnessed it first was too awed to be drawn in—a surpassing wonder over all. The teeth of this elderly Oriental were like the teeth of a young woman.
Minglapo subsided by imperceptible gradations, and lifting his eyelids at length, surveyed Romney as one newly awakened from sleep.
"This is a most wonderful order-book," he said slowly.
Minglapo was rippling again under his gown as he replaced the papers in the envelope. The inscrutability of the fat figure challenged Romney. It occurred to him that if he should start to go, something of finality might come from the impressive figure. He cleared his throat and arose.
"Dr. Ti Kung, as I have said, gave me no further orders before the door of his carriage closed upon him. I presume, having fulfilled my task, that it would be well for me to return to Shanghai—"
"Very naturally," said Minglapo.
"Then I will bid you good-day."
The Chinese was holding the yellow packet in his hand. A further sheet had been drawn forth, glanced at, and returned. Minglapo's hands were perfect. The face of the envelope toward Romney was but partly covered by the eight beautiful fingers that held the paper lightly, while the face bowed above. The eyelids narrowed and the corners of the mouth were sunken, the broad, bland forehead, just faintly ruffled. There came to the white man a sense of prodigious power, as if this man's thought could manipulate the destinies of other men; as if behind that brow a conception was now forming so clean-cut in all its processes that instant action must follow its maturity. A suspicion dawned upon him that this man was strong enough to be Ti Kung's master.
Minglapo rose almost imperceptibly.
"Mr. Romney." The voice halted him. "Your friend informed me you were coming some time ago. I have been expecting you. Please sit down."
Romney smiled.
"It would be natural, as I said before, for you to return to Shanghai, except that I have heard from Dr. Ti Kung, who, I perceive, picks well his associates. These are delicate matters; these are times to try men's souls. Our friend is now healing at sea. I am grievously concerned, however, over wounds that could delay such a man for six days. Much depends upon his coming. The character of Dr. Ti Kung's service cannot be duplicated. In saving his life, Friend Romney, you have done one of those significant things upon which the destiny of a great people hangs, and an action that can never be publicly known. It is with utmost pleasure that I ask you to remain under my roof. I hope that we may succeed in making you comfortable in the interval before your friend arrives. There is to be a particular servant for you in this house—one of my favourites—"
Minglapo clapped his hands, and a small but almost perfect creature of theboy-class appeared, alert in every sense and apparently without inertia.
"This is Bamban. He is yours, Friend Romney, and you who know so much of China realize that a bestowal of this kind between man and man means that Bamban is no longer my servant."
Fastidious in his ways, swift and delicate in all his doings, Bamban appeared to embrace his new master with the sudden look of eager intelligence which shot out from under his lifted brows. Romney knew enough about China to realise that Bamban held something in the deeps of his being that could not be transferred. At the same time he knew that only some significant treachery on his own part toward the interests of Minglapo could ever call this reservation into action.
In the several days following Romney became convinced that he was being studied in ways beyond Western ingenuity to fathom; and though he was schooled to be guileless in intent and at the same time wise as the serpent, the processes of surveillance which he imagined about him were either above or below his own levels. He had nothing to conceal, and no plan apart. He met all fancied subtleties by being himself, just that, which in the case of uncomplicated purpose is the invariable master-stroke. The fact is, Romney had learned much from the Great Drift. He could let himself go. His nerves had left the surface once more, covered themselves in the cushions of health. He did not know the particular passion that drove Ti Kung and Minglapo, but he felt it big and gripping. He even felt at last that he was identified with a movement potent and far-reaching enough to command those powers of his which all his former dealings with men made him repress.
Though Minglapo did not appear to be a man of great riches, there were objects of priceless beauty in his establishment, which was a shop only on the street floor. No one appeared to buy while Romney was there. Once while the American was standing in the rear of the shop, the floor raised a little before his feet, and he was aware of a deep oil-lit basement that had every look and indication of being a fully equipped chemical laboratory—vials, flames and crucibles, tables with spawn-trays and culture-boards. An oppressive, earthy breath as from fungoid growths touched Romney's nostrils from the opened trap. Minglapo called him to the dais at that instant and the trap itself was abruptly closed. The Chinese upon whose shoulder the door had been raised did not emerge. There was something aged and wasted about the figure, the eyes spent and hollow.
Romney enjoyed the challenging mystery of it all. The two upper floors, high-ceiled and extending far back from the street, formed little less than a palace. Ti Kung's house in Shanghai was austere as a monastery compared. Romney found himself surrounded with luxuries startling even with his considerable acquaintance in the East. Ensconced here in the midst of influences insistently languorous, he was amused to find a tendency of his own character to tighten rather than to let down. The first night in Ti Kung's house had seemed to straighten him out and render distasteful abandonment such as he had known. Abandonment here, he was well aware, would bring about the same results as the wastrel days on the water-fronts. He had entered into that with the fixed purpose of letting life go. It had refused to leave him, and now he was rather distantly glad to be alive.
In his own quarters, on the second day, he drew forth the frayed and soiled chiffon waist, washed it carefully and put it back in his breast. It was no more than a handkerchief. It had seen him through strange days and roads. He was the least maudlin of men, but the little fabric meant something striking and imperishable in his nature—something of him no longer, but around him. She was notthe woman, but she had made the picture of what a woman could be. The farther from her, the more he appreciated. She had known in two weeks what it had taken him nearly a year to find out—that they were not for each other. The change had come to him from the months in the Drift—something to break his unparalleled infatuation. All her wonder and daring and splendour remained clear, and yet the terrible draw of her had somehow eased upon his heart. In a word, he saw as quite true another of her sayings—that love can never be on one side alone in a great romance.
Late the fifth afternoon of his stay in the house of Minglapo, Romney got the first inkling of the real business at hand. There had been talk at the dais for several moments, when the old master turned at the soft swinging of one of the shop's rear doors, and without finishing the sentence on his tongue, remarked:
"And now, Friend Romney, you are ready to meet a countryman of yours, General Nifton Bend—"
Very low in the doorway appeared that long, sad, strange face, and again the leap in Romney's breast and the impulse to hurry forward and help the Hunchback to the cushions. At the same time—a hot thrill for an unemotional man—the thought that his association with Ti Kung and Minglapo meant association with Nifton Bend, the genius of Young China.
At the moment of the General's entrance from the rear, the servants had sprung to the main door opening on Merchant's Square, closed and barred it as if for the night, though the afternoon was not entirely spent. The servants of the shop were banished and the three sat down together....
Romney's mind had rushed back not only to his first meeting in the native professor's house in the Congrou district of Peking, but to Longstruth's where his impressions of that brief former interview became vivid and animate again for the listening of Moira Kelvin. The Hunchback seemed to bring again something of her almost as intimate as her perfume....
Daylight did not reach them now. The dead expressionless look had come again to the General's eyes. Romney felt his own face turn bloodless under the second appraisal, as was the other's in the warm gathering dusk. The unhasting and uninflected voice spoke again—the voice of a man with a single purpose, a man so close to the end that he laughs at pain. The words came slow and steadily, like running water:
"... We are working for the future of China. We may be wrong. We are doing the thing as we see it. Our deepest convictions are that we are right. We do not mean to meet Japan in this extraordinary crisis in the old fashion of arms and battle-lines. We do not care to fight. We favour theoretically the expediency of toleration, and yet we observe to the east and south, India, and on the north and west, Japan. Old India is magnificent in philosophy and yet so far without the physical impulse to protect herself; Japan, empty-minded, imitative, is furious with the idea of her own raw power of men and guns. If mind is a finer and more potent force than matter, we believe that guns and explosives and battle-lines are to be mastered by a thought. It cannot be written that Chinese age and wisdom shall succumb to the upstart and hot-headed people that has not even a language of its own—"
Nifton Bend's face was lit. Romney did not comprehend. This man, an authority on arms and military matters, spoke now against their use in case of war with Japan. He may have been a mystic in so far as his vision of the future went, but he had been enough of the manipulator of matter to make the new Chinese army. Did he plan to use some force of extermination more powerful than gases and explosives?
Minglapo now spoke to Romney, though his hand affectionately touched Nifton Bend's shoulder.
"We have learned to accept a lift of the General's eyelid, Friend Romney. He had not been thirty seconds in this room before you were approved. Already Dr. Ti Kung had approved you—and I. Still you would not have touched this inner circle as now but for your action in saving our Doctor's life. It appears they burned his house that night in Shanghai. You were intrusted with papers that contain certain of our plans. You may be asked to carry them again—even to Japan. There is for you a possibility of being an instrument toward the ending of all war from the world. China need act but once to end all war. It is a superb adventure for you, and incidentally you will be a power in preventing the world-calamity of a Japanese Asia."
Nifton Bend now spoke again:
"The history of that package which you so safely brought to us would make the raciest of novels. Once I hoped to become a novelist myself. That was in the days before the big dream of being a foster-child to the ancient Yellow Mother. In order that you may not be troubled longer by working in the dark, I am going to tell you something of what the yellow packet contains—"
And now there was the snap of a bone—the unmistakable snap of a faulty knee-cap, from the far end of the room. Nifton Bend's utterance was cut short. Romney glanced quickly at the two faces. Minglapo's hands lifted slowly from the cushions. They seemed to waver a moment—then were clapped together. No servant appeared. It had undoubtedly been a servant of the household and had he been innocent he would have responded to the master's signal. Minglapo clapped his hands a second time, louder, and Romney saw in his eye what to him was unmistakably a command to make haste toward the part of the shop from which the snap had come. Rising, he heard a cry from Minglapo and was conscious of Nifton Bend making for the door to the right of the room. From overhead and from the hall-way outside was now heard the stirring and hurried approach of servants.
Romney skirted the shadowy edge of the long rear-hall, running silently on tip-toe. All that he saw at the far end was a slight movement, as of a door being softly shoved to. It had moved possibly no more than an inch. The American pushed it open. This rear-room was empty, and there was no sound whatsoever. He crossed quickly to a further door which opened to a dim hall. A crouched figure came to a stop at the far end under Romney's eye—the decrepit figure he had seen for an instant under the lifted trap to the basement. One of the servant's hands was concealed under his blouse.
6
Certain aspects of the affair which followed were ridiculous, and others profoundly Asiatic. Romney had felt himself far removed from the need of physical encounter with any human being, and yet as he came close to the tense bowed figure of the Chinese, the meaning of the concealed hand darted to his mind, also the sense that he must act quickly in an aggressive way or withdraw again out of the reach of the striking arm. It has been observed that, generally speaking, it was easier for Romney to advance than to withdraw. There was another point in that fraction of a second. He could not use a hand or foot upon an Oriental bowed with years—not even to disarm him. The fact is Romney dove forward, a sort of hip-tackle, the idea being to carry the servant's body to the floor with his arms pinned. After they had bumped the polished wood together as one, he was disagreeably shocked at the extreme emaciation of the figure beneath him. This turned in a moment to astonishment at the extraordinary strength and agility which the Oriental displayed. There was a crush in the thin hard limbs twined about his own, and the hands were not to be held captive, but darted again and again to the girdle where the knife lay. Romney flattened his weight upon the lithe body and struggled for possession of the tearing, cutting fingers which sometimes found his face and again burrowed into the pressure between them. It was Minglapo's voice and foot that stilled the struggle, the latter placed disdainfully upon the neck of his house-servant.
Romney strolled back to the dais ashamed of himself somehow. Minglapo and Nifton Bend joined him a moment later, and rather quietly, as if they appreciated the delicacy of the white man. The emaciated one was brought in by two house-servants. He stood now before the master of the shop, trying to repress the heavy breathing of his exhausted body, and to cover as well as he could the trembling of his muscles from the recent strain. Something of warmth and approval crept into Romney's heart for the old man, as the pregnant meanings of the moment cleared in his mind. Minglapo dismissed the servants and regarded the trapped one, as Romney imagined, with something of strange kindness. Shutting his eyes, the vast head of the master moved slowly from right to left, then bowed before the American.
"Again you are our good genius, Friend Romney.... There appears a need wherever you are—of fast action. I am beginning to believe in what our Doctor says of the thing called American luck."
Romney waved his hand deprecatingly, and the General remarked with a smile:
"Our young friend feels with very good cause that he has better gifts for us than the force and swiftness of his hands."
He turned to Romney, adding:
"Do you not see that it was imperative for Young China to find the owner of that badly-hinged knee? Our enemies would have required but little more than a report of our words before that accident. I trust there has been no mistake as to one of these being the lucky knees."
He pointed to the house-servant's thin legs, and presently Romney fell once more into the charm of Minglapo's voice, though a tension was increasing in his mind in regard to the fate of the captive, his eyes turning often to the hollow-eyed one, as the voice of Minglapo came to his ears as from the deeps of a bubbling well. From none but a fat man with a great chest could such softness and volume issue.
The trembling of the servant's body resulted from exertion, not from fear. His features were sombre and changeless as the east at evening—a face of deep intelligence, but just a wrapping of yellow-pale tissue on the bony block of it, except for the burning quiet of the eyes. The ears were decently cut, the mouth and brow were good. Deference, attention, apprehension—these three were expressed and held in order by a concentration that was no less than mastery.
Nifton-Bend had also satisfied himself in study of that face. Minglapo was now questioning his servant in Chinese.
... Fifty years old ... served in this house for two years ... came from the South, from Canton ... papers in his possession to prove this...
Nifton Bend leaned forward to straighten the fringe of the cushions at Romney's knee and whispered:
"They all have papers. He is Japanese—as we shall doubtless prove—"
The talk went on. It appeared that Minglapo was interested in the same point that the General had just expressed, for presently he made a gesture to bring the servant down to his level. The lifeless eyes rolled backward for the fraction of a second as the wasted figure obeyed. He bent but one knee in his kneeling, his right leg thrust back loosely, the left bearing the full weight. The three also watched intently. Again the warmth surged up into Romney's throat—a curious fondness for the Oriental's courage and guile.
Now Minglapo stretched forth his hand to his servant's head and drew it forward into his lap. Silently and resigned, the other submitted. Still the left knee did double service. Very carefully Minglapo examined the man's crown, tweaking the queue with tense fingers, peering into the braid close to the scalp, letting the tight black length of it pass before his eyes slowly, as if watching the gloss of it under the lamp-light. This braid alone of him seemed fully alive.
"The queue is right enough. He has probably been in the service for many years, ever since a little boy—probably helped to map Manchuria—like as not helped to whip us in '95. Worked here two years waiting for to-night, and then, just a little dryness of the knee—"
Minglapo bade his servant stand once more. Nifton Bend leaned forward, placing his hand upon the loose right knee.
The servant explained that it was a bit rheumatic; that the pain was unbearable when he bent it.
"I'm afraid he will have to bend it," Minglapo said.
A look of agony swept across the servant's face, as the master commanded him to bend both knees at the same time. The force of will now called into action was so intense as to be like a frictional heat in the room. He lowered himself slowly, the weight seemingly equally divided in both limbs. He was now sitting on his heels, Oriental fashion. Minglapo waved him up again, and commanded him to repeat the exercise with a quick movement.
The tell-tale snap filled the room.
There was something exquisite to Romney in the fact that not one of the three faces to whom this was like an ultimatum, changed. Not the trace of a smile, nor light of triumph appeared in the eyes of Minglapo or the General. A hundred times more, they respected this old man as a captive spy, than when he was merely one of the house-force. They respected him perhaps as only one gamester can respect another.... Minglapo went on speaking, but slowly, fragmentarily now. He clapped his hands. A servant came and returned immediately bringing a small lacquered box.
"Is he not superb?" Nifton Bend whispered.... "They train them from childhood. The Japanese system of espionage is far-reaching—ah, look there."
Minglapo had reached forward and lifted the blue loose-hanging blouse of the spy, rolling it well up above the shoulders. The bare brown chest and back showed scarred and blackened from some terrible maiming in the past. There were series of lumpy welts upon the back which Minglapo examined minutely. The disfigurations of the chest were of a different nature, long pale scars over which the skin stretched with a honey-like transparency.
"One of the most trusted of his kind beyond a doubt," said Nifton Bend. "This is not the first time he has been caught. Those three-barred welts on his back are from the Siberian knout, a devilish contrivance made of knotted whip-cord soaked in brine. The dark rashy appearance in spots is also from the North—frost-bite. We have a hero in our midst, Mr. Romney, one of the real ones whose names are never known."
The spy stood perfectly unemotional, looking upward, turning obediently whenever Minglapo took his arm.
"... He knows it is his last half-hour—"
The last was in a sense abrupt to Romney. He had been so absorbed in the whole game of these passionate nationalists, that the life and death end of it for the one caught had been put aside from his mind for the moment.
Minglapo arose and drew a goblet of water from the cooler, opened the lacquer box, took forth a small metal case which contained a long needle.
The pressure of it all was now a trifle heavy, even for the well-repressed American. The excellence of physical manhood manifested in the whole affair did not take away entirely the fact that the spy was about to be murdered. Romney felt he could not stay. His head turned to Minglapo and back to Nifton Bend. Their faces were expressionless and half averted. They would have accepted a reversal that meant death to them, with the same external calm that characterized the manner of the spy.... Yet the American could not lift. He was no stranger to the various fashions of brutality, but the temptation to pluck the stupor needle from the hand of Minglapo was well nigh overpowering. The unoccupied hand of the master was now held out toward the servant as if to take his arm. Very slowly the spy's hand lifted from his side, the palm toward Minglapo's, moving forward as one would grope in the dark. Over his face was that same eternal quietude like a faint reflection of day in the sky at evening.
That tableau seemed immortally fixed in Romney's mind. He leaned forward, his hands gripping his ankles as he sat.... Suddenly the principal was plucked from the centre of things. It was the queerest extraction—a sort of side-lurching as if the spy's body had been hurled past....
A quick shot from Nifton Bend at Romney's left—the voice of Minglapo in English—then a crash of glass and frame as the body of the spy hurled itself through the forward casement.
"Your work, Friend Romney. Get him, or all is ruined!" this from Minglapo.
As he darted across the room Romney realised that it did appear to be his work, that the house-servants were not to be trusted, that Minglapo was fat and the General maimed from birth. He dove through the pearl casement, somewhat enlarging the opening the other had made, and the street took him—a stunning impact. Then came a curious realisation of the freshness of evening.
The spy was up and away, the American following at a pace not adjusted to distance, a sprint which could not have lasted two hundred yards.
7
A boy runs, an animal runs, but a white man cannot preserve his esteem chasing a native through a Chinese street. Still the words of Minglapo rang in his ears—"Your work, Romney. Get him or all is ruined."
Other thoughts flashed as he ran—thoughts having to do with the changing and colouring of the Oriental maps, the end of a warring world, the strange patience and passion of practical visionaries like Minglapo and Nifton Bend and Dr. Ti Kung.
He ran with his elbows tucked in, his head forward. The spy, turning often, would have seen but for the duck a face that did not know how to quit. Yet Romney who knew what physical condition meant was surprised at his own lack of form. The Japanese ran with a limp—ran for his Emperor in whose service he had given youth and all the fine edge of his vitality. It was not until he was spent that he turned fox. Luck was not with him. The white man neared and the streets they passed furnished no hiding place, not even an open door. At his last turn Romney met a creature on the ground with fists upraised. Perhaps at no other time would he have found the spy without a weapon.
The fists of an Oriental are always pathetic, but these were piteously so. Romney did not join action with them, but sat down on a door-step, gasping, laughing a little. The ludicrous cringing attitude was a clue to a still greater pathos. The white man in his exhaustion was struck again suddenly with the darkness of the whole drama. Why should he return this heroic little figure to his death? It was true that he was somehow in the service of the Big Three, that he had touched the secrets of their devoted lives, but now, as in the shop of Minglapo, the great zeal and patience, the unswerving fealty of this spy's service to his most human and impossible God, had a merit to it that touched him where he was tenderest. Nifton Bend and the two Chinese leaders meant adventure; reinstatement into the world of real men; more than that they meant initiation into the deepest crafts of men.... Ti Kung had picked him up from the gutter of the world's darkest slum, placed him on his feet, trusted him with a matter of life and death, sent him on a journey to his masters. Minglapo was a figure to tie to; and as for the Hunchback, Romney had uncovered an emotion that startled himself. He knew now what it meant to love a leader—something of the old mystery of what it means to die for another.
And yet they had thrust their responsibilities upon him. To take back this old man, all broken with exhaustion, meant to deliver him to his death. The personal side of the subject was big and near. He had run down the spy but didn't know what to do with him.... The little Jap had his life to live, his work to do. He had already done great silent unanswering tasks. He lay face downward on the turf now, panting hard—too old a man, his vitality too far spent, to be used so roughly.
The fact that Romney had been too long in Asia to care much for Japan and her ambitions and that he was deeply called to the mysterious activities of such men as the Big Three, didn't change a whit his incapacity just now.
He sat down on a doorstep, just at the feet of the spy, and mopped his brow laughingly, though his mental movements were heavy and severe. The way he personally panted and perspired, disgusted a mind in which the old ideal of an athlete still remained.... He saw for the first time the expediency of Pilate's memorable washing of hands.... The sound of hurried footsteps came up the narrow way.
Romney gambled with himself. If these were Minglapo's servants—the affair of course was out of his hands. If not—well, he couldn't exactly let the Jap escape with information that would betray the lives and work of his friends.... The hurrying feet had not to do with the house of Minglapo. They were Tientsin policemen—three of them—summoned to duty doubtless by the chase. Perceiving the American now, and his game on the ground before him, they brought lanterns to bear upon the two faces, talked long and with much gravity. Romney blinked into the lantern light again, an extra-long exposure. Then his life-story in full was hypothecated by one of the officers. The two others afterward relieved themselves of prolonged intonations in many high keys, having little to do with the facts of the case. Their manner became sumptuously courteous, even deferential, so that the American felt in justice to them he should rise from the doorstep. They touched his elbows on either side—slight, lifting pressures, bowing repeatedly to him and pointing over their shoulders in a direction contrary to the shop in Merchant's Square. Romney did not care to return just then to Minglapo. In fact, he doubted whether he ever would again. Two of the officers had lifted the spy between them.
As they walked, a little ray came down upon the American from the future. Policemen meant calaboose, even in China. Calaboose meant on some occasions an inconvenient chance to think. Minglapo of course would exert himself in behalf of them, but delivery meant a return to the dais and resumption of the murder process. Meanwhile in the little old head walking behind, between the two Chinese policemen, were facts and suspicions enough to break entirely what Romney was willing to grant as the biggest game in Asia at the present moment.... Just now it occurred that a properly trained Japanese spy would be able to talk in English, which would prove utterly unintelligible to the Chinese police.
"Oh, I say, we'd better fix matters somehow—so we'll pull together—"
"Good," came the answer.
"You—why didn't you say something before?"
"There was nothing to say. I expected death when I fell in the street—"
"I suppose that was my business."
"I do not understand—"
Romney was charged with queer elation. He would have known the spy was Japanese by his English—probably a University of Tokyo training. He was familiar with Japanese students. Always they bent forward with the effort of thinking in a foreign language. The Chinese were inclined to sit back and let the other do the heavy work of listening.
"You mean you don't understand why I didn't kill you?"
"Yes, that is what I mean."
"I'm not a murderer. I haven't got anything against you."
"Then you are not with them?"
"Yes—"
"I do not understand—"
It was the East and West again, a chasm that could not be bridged. Romney dropped the subject.
"We'd better fix matters—as to what front is best to put up—"
"Front?"
"What we'd better tell them, so that our stories will fit—"
"Stories?"
"Listen," said Romney, straining for the non-idiomatic. "They will ask questions at the station. We must answer. If we answer differently, it would be better if we had not spoken—"
"Yes. I am your servant. We had a disagreement. You started to beat me and I ran—"
"Just a little domestic difference," Romney remarked.
"Yes."
"Where do we live?"
"I came with you from Shanghai four days ago. We have been in the country since arrival—"
Romney was further amused. Minglapo had been studiously avoided in the arrangement. The spy had a fertile mind. These things were a part of his work. He was aware even of Romney's coming from Shanghai.
"You are not to remember the place we have been since Shanghai and Tongu," the Japanese added. "I have been showing you our country. You are rich. You just play and pay.... You must speak sharp to me now, as if you did not like my talk—"
Romney noisily rebuked his servant. The hands of the little policeman tightened on his arm. "Good," said the Japanese in frightened, cringing tones. "Now I will explain to them that I am your servant and that you were displeased with me."
There were suspended explanations to the policeman; long, voluble breaths and fresh beginnings, as if the spy were releasing a memorized address; after that a moment of silence, and a low wailing sentence in English:
"It does not please them altogether."
They were locked presently in the same cell. Voices of the drugged and drunken beat through the corridors, and screams of madness from lower passages. And still Romney had his chance to think. The Big Three wouldn't be pleased to learn that he had permitted the spy to fall into the hands of the law. Even the Japanese didn't understand a white man's mercy. These nationalists were an interesting sort. They didn't ask from others what they were unwilling to give themselves. Failure meant forfeiture of life in their work. But the West didn't breed this sort of thing in a man. Romney found himself not as intrinsically of the East as he imagined. He could conceive a big system doing away with a host of lives, but still he didn't care to be the direct instrument of taking the life of one man.
Presently he found himself in the midst of conjecture as to how the Big Three meant to strangle Japan. For many moments this matter wavered back and forth through his mind, and did not take real form until he happened to recall the laboratory in Minglapo's cellar. There might be a connection here. He had heard of a ghastly, almost incommunicable horror having to do with the slaying of multitudes without any formal arrangement of platoon, brigade or corps....
He dozed in his chair at last, dreaming of a nation stricken with pestilence—its soldiers all away in the clean and ancient barbarities of war.... He would wait for Ti Kung and then possibly it would be well to clear himself from the Big Three. Perhaps they wouldn't trust him—even to keep his mouth shut.... The little old spy slept at his feet.... In the heart of the night, a prison-guard entered with a lantern, drawing the cell-door shut behind him.
Romney opened his eyes, and saw a queer intelligence in the glance of the other—a face he had not seen before. The prison guard was intent for an instant upon the figure at Romney's feet, the lantern-ray pouring over the spy's length from feet to queue—then back to Romney's face.
"Sit quiet and say nothing," he whispered, "Your friends are working for you. To-morrow you will be free. This—remember—is a madman. He is not responsible.... Say only that he attacked you and me—now—"
The voice of the prison-guard came from the dark, behind the lantern-ray. Romney caught up sleepily with the full significance of the words. Suddenly the lantern fell and the stranger raised a terrible outcry, springing upon the spy, who had half-risen. Now they were on the floor together, and a shot was fired.
The prison-guard was the one to arise. The lantern was spraying the stone floor with light, above was darkness. Romney's face was caught in the hands of the policeman, and these words were driven in his mind, even as he struggled to be free:
"Listen. He leaped upon me and tried to take my pistol. I had to shoot. He is done and cannot deny. They are coming—"
The officer now raised his voice for help, and the corridors drummed with hurrying feet.