BarkWilhelmina Augusta, Spreckels master, cleared for Hamburg with general cargo. Sailed Woosung this A. M.
BarkWilhelmina Augusta, Spreckels master, cleared for Hamburg with general cargo. Sailed Woosung this A. M.
This turned his thoughts to McDougal and he was impatient to find Paddy Blake and begin the search. He was about to toss the newspaper aside when a paragraph seemed to jump from the page and hit him between the eyes. He read it slowly, his lips moving as if he were spelling out the words:
UNKNOWN EUROPEAN MYSTERIOUSLY KILLEDLate last night the body of a middle-aged man was discovered in the Rue Pechili by an officer of the French municipal police. The place was only a few yards from one of the gate-ways of the native city wall in a quarter which is largely populated by Chinese who have overflowed into the French quarter. The man had been dead only a short time. He is supposed to have been an American or Englishman, although his identity was unknown at the hour of going to press. He was clothed in gray tweeds badly worn and had the appearance of one who had suffered from dissipation. He had been stabbed from behind, in addition to which his body was savagely gashed and mutilated. The British police were notified and Inspector Burke immediately took charge of the case.
UNKNOWN EUROPEAN MYSTERIOUSLY KILLED
Late last night the body of a middle-aged man was discovered in the Rue Pechili by an officer of the French municipal police. The place was only a few yards from one of the gate-ways of the native city wall in a quarter which is largely populated by Chinese who have overflowed into the French quarter. The man had been dead only a short time. He is supposed to have been an American or Englishman, although his identity was unknown at the hour of going to press. He was clothed in gray tweeds badly worn and had the appearance of one who had suffered from dissipation. He had been stabbed from behind, in addition to which his body was savagely gashed and mutilated. The British police were notified and Inspector Burke immediately took charge of the case.
Captain O’Shea’s second cup of coffee stood cold and neglected while he continued to gaze abstractedlyat the front page ofThe Shanghai Mercury. He was reading between the printed lines. His sun-browned face had paled a trifle. He was not afraid, but he was conscious of that same feeling of physical abhorrence which had taken hold of him when he first beheld the scarred and branded back of the man dubbed Bill Maguire.
He was absolutely certain that he could identify the “unknown European” found dead near a gate-way of the native city. It was McDougal, and he had been slain because in some manner, as yet unrevealed, he had played a part in the tragic mystery of the red-haired sailor. Intuition welded the circumstances together. With this premise O’Shea framed one swift conclusion after another. McDougal had suddenly veered from his purpose of going to sea with Captain Spreckels. With the morbid impulse of a man whose nerves were shattered by drink, he had been afraid lest the German skipper might find him and carry him off whether or no. Therefore he had fled to cover, making for the native city where he doubtless had Chinese friends. Perhaps he had been watched and followed by hostile agents from the moment he landed in Shanghai.
“I have seen others like him,” said O’Shea to himself. “They will run from their own shadows, and their friends can do nothing with them. And I must be getting a bit flighty meself or I would not sit here and take for granted things that are no more than guesswork. How do I know that thedead man is McDougal? The answer is this: ’Tis one of me strong hunches, and they seldom go wrong.”
He passed out of the dining-room and delayed in the office of the hotel to ask a question of the clerk. The atmosphere of the place was so wholly European that the China, with which O’Shea had come darkly, gropingly in touch, seemed almost as far away as when he had been on the farm in Maine. The clerk went to the porch and gave instructions to a ’rickshaw cooly, and Captain O’Shea rattled off to the headquarters buildings of the English police. A Sikh orderly conducted him into the small room where Inspector Burke sat at a desk scanning a file of reports. He was a tall, dark, soldierly man of about forty. The slim-waisted khaki tunic, the riding-breeches, and the polished brown puttees gave him the air of a dashing trooper of light-horse. Glancing at O’Shea’s card, he nodded pleasantly and said with a singularly winning smile:
“And what can I do for Captain Michael O’Shea, of New York? I am very much at your service.”
“’Tis about the man that was found murdered close by the native city last night,” was the reply.
“Ah, by Jove!” exclaimed the inspector, and his pencil tapped the desk with a quick tattoo. “An odd case, that! Most unusual. I was potterin’ about on it a good part of the night. My men report that he was in Paddy Blake’s place during the evening, but the old rip denies knowing him, of course. He wants to steer clear of the case. I’mrather stumped so far. You are at the Astor House? I fancy I saw you there at dinner last night.”
“Right you are, sir. I am more than a little interested in this dead man,” pursued O’Shea in a straightforward manner. “And I will first describe him to ye,” which he proceeded to do with the detail of an observer whose eye was keen and memory retentive.
“That’s the Johnny, to a dot,” cried Inspector Burke, alertly interested. “And when did you last see him?”
“I talked with him last night, but before we go further I will prove an alibi,” hastily answered O’Shea, suddenly realizing that his position in the matter might look compromising.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” was the easy assurance. “You are jolly well out of it and satisfactorily accounted for. This was a native job, not a bit of doubt of it. Suppose we take a look at the body. It is packed in ice in the go-down just back of this building. Your identification must go on the records, you know. Then we can have a chin-chin, and I hope you’ll be good enough to stay for tiffin with me.”
O’Shea took from an inside pocket of his coat a leather bill-case and drew therefrom a sheet of heavy paper folded several times. Spread out, it covered half the desk. Upon it he had drawn with a brush and stencilling ink a life-size reproduction of the great Chinese character that scarred and discolored the back of the red-haired sailor.
Inspector Burke flung his cigarette aside with a quick gesture and stared first at the desk and then at O’Shea. His pleasant composure was evidently disturbed, and he spoke abruptly.
“My word! You know a lot more about this job than I do. Where the deuce did you get that? The poor beggar that was butchered last night had the mark on him.”
“I know he did, Inspector Burke. I was sure of it when I read about the thing in the newspaper this morning.”
They went into the shed and viewed what was left of the ill-fated McDougal, who had tried, too late, to throw all regrets away and make a new start at the difficult business of existence. O’Shea was keenly distressed. The man had won his sympathy. He would have liked to befriend him. Inspector Burke said kindly:
“Did you know him at all well? He must have amounted to something once. Was he ever a chum of yours?”
“I never laid eyes on him till last evening in Paddy Blake’s,” answered O’Shea. “And now I will sit down with ye and spin the yarn of the sailorman that I called Bill Maguire for convenience.”
The inspector listened gravely, nodding comprehendingly now and then as if his own experience might have crossed the trail of the same story. When O’Shea ceased talking, his comment was as follows:
“Most extraordinary! I fancy we can help eachother a bit. But, mind you, I don’t pretend to know much about this mysterious murder society that goes about choppin’ people up. I have heard of it, of course, but until now its activities have been confined to the Chinese. We don’t pretend to police the native city. The Chinese governor runs his own show. There are native detectives on my staff, but their work is mostly in the foreign municipality. The case of this McDougal is the first of its kind. And I rather think you have supplied the motive. He knew too much.”
“But what did he know?” demanded O’Shea. “There was this sailor by the right name of Jim Eldridge, ye understand. He got his in the same way. They were mixed up together at one time or another.”
Inspector Burke withdrew from a drawer of his desk a large envelope and emptied out several torn sheets and fragments of paper which looked as though they had been trampled underfoot. Some were covered with handwriting in English, while others held columns of Chinese characters. They were so mud-stained and crumpled, however, that only a few lines here and there were at all legible. O’Shea gazed at them eagerly, surmising what they were before the inspector explained:
“My men picked them up in the street where McDougal’s body was found.”
“Yes. He must have had a bundle of books and papers under his arm, for I heard mention of the same,” cried O’Shea. “Like enough, it was rippedapart in the scrimmage and the blood-thirsty heathen made off with whatever they could lay their hands on in a hurry. If they spied any Chinese writing they would grab at it. What do ye say, Inspector Burke?”
“There are bits of some sort of a diary here, Captain O’Shea, and odds and ends that only a native could make head or tail of. I looked them over early this morning, and one of my Chinese did what he could to help. It is impossible to arrange the fragments in any sequence, but the story you tell me dovetails rather curiously with some of the sentences.”
“There was many queer things stowed away in that noddle of his,” said O’Shea, “and he was an educated man, so he would be apt to make notes of them. And does he make any mention at all of this Jim Eldridge, alias Bill Maguire?”
Inspector Burke carefully smoothed a torn sheet of paper and laid a finger on a few lines scrawled in a shaky hand. They held no reference to the sailor, but several phrases were startlingly familiar to Captain O’Shea. The mutilated passage ran thus:
Very horrid dreams last night—brandy failed to drive them away. Was in a steamer on the Stinking River—the Painted Joss came through the cabin port-hole, squeezing itself small as if made of rubber, and then expanding to gigantic size. It strangled me slowly, making hideous faces. This is a warning—When I dream of the Painted Joss, I am on the edge of seeing things while awake. The fear of violent death is....
Very horrid dreams last night—brandy failed to drive them away. Was in a steamer on the Stinking River—the Painted Joss came through the cabin port-hole, squeezing itself small as if made of rubber, and then expanding to gigantic size. It strangled me slowly, making hideous faces. This is a warning—When I dream of the Painted Joss, I am on the edge of seeing things while awake. The fear of violent death is....
Captain O’Shea was vividly reminded of the disjointed monologue of Bill Maguire, who had shown symptoms of a similar antipathy to the “Painted Joss.”
“McDougal wrote down the Stinking River as if it was a real name,” he said to Inspector Burke. “I thought Maguire called it that because it smelled bad. If it is on the map, can ye locate it, and is there by any chance a town with the title of Wang-Li-Fu on the banks of the same?”
Inspector Burke summoned a fat, drowsy-looking interpreter and put several questions to him. After poring over an atlas for some time, this owlish Chinese gentleman vouchsafed the information that a navigable stream known as the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells did indeed flow through a coastwise part of Kiangsu province, emptying into the wide estuary of the old mouth of the Yellow River. There was a city in that region which had been great and flourishing until the Tai-Ping Rebellion laid it in ruins. It was now no more than a wretched hamlet, although in local usage it had retained the name of Wang-Li-Fu, the last syllable of which signified a chief city of a province.
“I say, this is interesting,” exclaimed Inspector Burke. “I am inclined to think that you and I have picked up a warm scent, Captain O’Shea. And here’s another bit of paper we can manage to read.”
They pored over a muddy page of McDougal’s diary and discovered, alas! that it was no more thana fragment of a little Chinese farce called “The Mender of Broken China-ware.” McDougal had picked it up from some troupe of strolling players and jotted down a rough translation of his own, beginning:
“Seeking a livelihood by the work of my hands,Daily do I traverse the streets of the city.Well, here I am, a mender of broken jars,An unfortunate victim of ever-changing plans.To repair fractured jars is my sole occupation.’Tis even so. Disconsolate am I, Niu-Chau.”
“Seeking a livelihood by the work of my hands,Daily do I traverse the streets of the city.Well, here I am, a mender of broken jars,An unfortunate victim of ever-changing plans.To repair fractured jars is my sole occupation.’Tis even so. Disconsolate am I, Niu-Chau.”
“Seeking a livelihood by the work of my hands,Daily do I traverse the streets of the city.Well, here I am, a mender of broken jars,An unfortunate victim of ever-changing plans.To repair fractured jars is my sole occupation.’Tis even so. Disconsolate am I, Niu-Chau.”
“Seeking a livelihood by the work of my hands,
Daily do I traverse the streets of the city.
Well, here I am, a mender of broken jars,
An unfortunate victim of ever-changing plans.
To repair fractured jars is my sole occupation.
’Tis even so. Disconsolate am I, Niu-Chau.”
The two investigators laid this page aside and scanned the remaining scraps of paper. The Chinese writing consisted almost wholly of quotations, lines from the classics, racy proverbs of the common people, and so on. They contained nothing whatever that might throw more light on the mystery of McDougal. In much the same way, what he had written in English concerned itself with his wanderings from port to port and his pitiful failures to hold a position.
“What we want most was lost in the scuffle,” said O’Shea. “The earlier part of this diary may have told the story that you and I are anxious to know.”
“I fancy we know more than any other two white men in China,” drawled Inspector Burke. “If a chap is really keen to find out something about this blackguardly organization, he will make a voyage to the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells and go pokin’ about the ruined town of Wang-Li-Fu.It’s out of my bailiwick. Now, whether I ought to lay this information before the Chinese officials of the provincialgovernment——”
“Excuse me for meddling,” O’Shea broke in with a boyish, eager smile, “but I have come a long way to go rummagin’ about in this mess on me own hook. And do ye think the Chinese government could be trusted to go ahead and accomplish anything at all? This evidence of ours is no more than guesswork.”
“I have thought of that, Captain O’Shea. And the thing would not be done quietly. There would be a lot of chin-chin and clumsy preparation, and a gun-boat and pig-tailed soldiers, and Shanghai getting wind of the expedition. It would be better to do the trick off one’s own bat.”
“My friend, the sailorman with the cracked top, remarked most emphatic about the ‘Head Devil’ when he was spillin’ disconnected language,” thoughtfully observed O’Shea. “’Tis me strong opinion that he tangled himself with the main works of this busy fraternity of man-killers.”
“What are your plans, may I ask? You are welcome to all the information my men may pick up in the native city. What a lark! I wish I might get a leave of absence and go with you.”
“I would ask no better partner,” warmly returned O’Shea. “Well, I will buy charts and study the coast of this Kiangsu province and learn what I can about the inland waters. And then I will find a few good men that will go to hell for wages, and fight for the love of it. And I will charter a steamerthat is fit to navigate rivers and we will be what you might call an expedition.”
Inspector Burke gripped the hard hand of Captain O’Shea and exclaimed with a laugh:
“Here’s luck to you! My word, but you’re the most refreshin’ man I’ve met since I came off frontier service in India! I will help you find your men. Nothing easier. Shanghai can furnish you gentlemanly remittance men from England, stranded American soldiers from Manila, time-expired bluejackets from Hong-Kong, broken shipmasters from God knows where, and assorted scamps who will follow any one that will buy the drinks.”
“’Tis cheerful news, Inspector Burke. I will have a council of war with you to-morrow at this time. I wish that you would see that poor McDougal is buried decent in a Christian church-yard and I will be glad to pay the bills. He was a good man once.”
That same evening Captain O’Shea remained in his room at the hotel until after nine o’clock. For one thing, he wrote a long letter to Johnny Kent, acquainting that doughty farmer with the encouraging progress of the enterprise, which promised “to deal out enough trouble to satisfy any reasonable man.” Then he took his letter of credit from the leather bill-book and made sundry calculations. After leaving Inspector Burke he had rambled alongthe water-front and made random inquiries concerning charter prices. Freights were low and the river trade was dull. His funds could stand the strain. Fighting men of the kind he wanted were cheap and he would ship coolies as stokers and deck-hands. However, O’Shea was ready to see the thing through if it took his last penny. What man with blood in him wouldn’t be glad to pay the price of such a picnic as this?
Having jotted down his estimates of the cost of coal, stores, wages, arms, and so on, he cocked an eye at the total and said to himself:
“’Tis the first time I ever backed an expedition of me own, and was not pulling some one else’s irons out of the fire. I feel like the minister of war of a revolutionary government.”
Gathering up his papers, he was about to restore them to the leather wallet when he caught sight of the folded sheet containing the great Chinese character which he had displayed to Inspector Burke. It was not a thing to be carried about carelessly and perhaps exposed to view in the course of his business dealings with banks or shops or shipping agents. Some association with this sinister symbol had cost poor McDougal his life. And Chinese were to be found everywhere in the European settlement. With an unusually prudent impulse, Captain O’Shea thrust the folded paper between the layers of clothing in his trunk and put the key in his pocket.
The night was young, the air warm and close within doors, and he felt not in the least like turningin. Strolling through the wide corridors, he passed into the street and moved idly in the direction of the Bund, attracted by the music of a band which was playing in the park near by. The place was like a lovely garden with wide areas of lawn and a profusion of foliage. The large number of men and women who walked to and fro or chatted in groups were, for the most part, English, American, and German; exiles of a fashionable and prosperous air who appeared to find life in the Far East quite endurable and success in their commercial enterprises not harassingly difficult.
Captain O’Shea found a seat on a rustic bench and watched the passing show. Presently he smiled as he descried the incongruous figure of a wizened little elderly Irishman in a black frock-coat with a rusty tall hat firmly jammed on the back of his head. In this smart company Paddy Blake was a fish out of water, but he had lost not a bit of his brisk, devil-may-care demeanor which dared any one to tread on the tail of the coat aforesaid. O’Shea hailed him, and he halted to cackle cordially:
“I was lookin’ for ye to drop into me place all day. There was a magnum on ice and a brace of cold roast Chinese pheasants that ’ud make a king lick his chops. I had something important to impart to ye in th’ back room.”
“’Twas about McDougal, no doubt,” said O’Shea. “I found him, and dead as a mackerel he was.”
“I had the same news this mornin’,” exclaimed Paddy Blake. “One of me Chinese bar-boys livesin the native city forninst the French Gate. He was bound home last night whin the body was found, but the likes of him ’ud scuttle away and say nawthin’ to the police.”
“Inspector Burke tells me that you were not too free with information yourself,” dryly observed O’Shea.
Paddy Blake vehemently thumped his knee with his tall hat and returned:
“Me place has a bad enough reputation, God knows, and the damned British police is biassed agin me. Would it do me anny good to be dragged into court as witness in a murder case and th’ inspector makin’ out that the man got drunk on my booze? Which is wrong entirely, for McDougal was sober when he went off in tow of Captain Spreckels, as ye well know. But ’tis no use holdin’ post-mortems. Thim Chinese divils done for McDougal same as he was afraid of. And are ye makin’ anny headway in the matter of the big red-headed man that I informed ye was Jim Eldridge, mate of theTai Yansteamer?”
“I will not find easy weather of it without McDougal,” said O’Shea, who had no intention of showing his hand to Paddy Blake.
An electric lamp illuminated the path in front of them, but a large tree cast a shadow past one end of the bench, which was why they did not sooner perceive a young man who stood scanning the crowd as if he had nothing more to do than listen to the music. Now he stepped into the light and was about tomove on when he caught sight of the tall hat of old Paddy Blake. As though recognizing this ancient landmark, he made a mock pass at it with his lacquered stick and exclaimed in accents easily familiar:
“Hello, old sport! I was betting you the price of a new hat on the arrival of the German mail-boat last week. You won, Paddy, but why do you not wear the new hat?”
O’Shea was surveying the jocular young man with considerable interest. Here was a type new to him—the dapper,blasé, slangy Chinese of Shanghai, wearing European clothes and manners, ardent patron of the club and the race-track, and forsaking his countrymen to live in a foreign-built villa on the Bubbling Well Road. An English tailor and an English haberdasher had adorned this young man regardless of expense, but O’Shea surmised that he was something more than a gilded rounder. He looked quick-witted and efficient and very wise in worldly knowledge. Moreover, there was an odd quality of respect in the manner of the unterrified Paddy Blake as he replied to the greeting.
“An’ what’s the good worrd, Charley? Can I do annything at all for ye? I am waitin’ to buy a hat with your money whin this one wears out. ’Tis a shame to toss it away. I want ye to know Captain O’Shea, a seafarin’ friend of mine from New York. Captain, this is Misther Charley Tong Sin, comprador for Jordan, Margetson & Co., an’ the smartest comprador that ye will find between Tientsin and Singapore, if I do say it to his face.”
O’Shea shook hands with the affable young man, who laughed and retorted:
“Paddy is a great chap for the blarney, a first-chop jollier, you bet. We do some business together when my firm wants sailors for its ships. Sometimes Paddy beats me; not so often I skin him.”
“Listen to him,” chuckled the old man. “If iver I got the best of him just once, it ’ud make me too proud to live with. Well, I must be trottin’ along to me own dump. I wandered to th’ park on the chance of pickin’ up a couple of stray sailors. If ye can be of anny service to Captain O’Shea I will count it as a favor, Charley. He’s a stranger and he’s Irish, and he has made a hit with me.”
Paddy Blake departed in great haste, and Charley Tong Sin offered O’Shea a cigarette from an ornately jewelled case, remarking:
“You are in Shanghai for business or pleasure? It is a bully good town for fun; not as swift as New York, but not so slow either. I went to college in America.”
“Which is more than I did,” confessed O’Shea. “Oh, I am just looking about Shanghai, not to find out how swift the town is, but to invest a bit of money, maybe. Jordan, Margetson? That is a big shipping house?”
“The same. I am in charge of the native business,” chirruped Charley Tong Sin. “Anything in the shipping line you want, you come to see me and I will put you wise. You have done business in these ports before, captain?”
“No; mostly in the Atlantic trade. I was in the office of your firm this afternoon, asking some information about a possible charter.”
“Ah, but you did not see me. Too bad,” and the comprador added with bland self-satisfaction: “It must have been after three o’clock. Then I am in the club drinking gin cocktails every day until I go home to dinner. It is my custom. There is no man in Shanghai that does more business and drinks more gin cocktails, but I do not mix the two things. I am the wise guy, eh? What tonnage do you want to charter, and where to?”
“I am not quite ready to say,” replied O’Shea, who preferred to keep his affairs to himself even when offered the assistance of so capable an adviser as Charley Tong Sin.
“I beg your pardon. Come to my office when you have made up your mind, Captain O’Shea. For the sake of the jolly sprees I had in little old New York, I will see that you are not stung in Shanghai. What do you say to a drive on the Bubbling Well Road before you go back to your hotel? My carriage is waiting a little way from here. I came to the park to meet a friend but he has not arrived.”
The invitation was attractive and the acquaintance of the comprador worth cultivating. O’Shea accepted with thanks, and presently they climbed into a very shiny victoria with two Chinese grooms on the box. The spirited little horses, admirably matched, danced through the paved streets of the settlement and out into the wider spaces of the countryside.The shipmaster found pleasure in new places; with him sight-seeing had never lost its zest, and the Bubbling Well Road was one of the things that no voyager to the Orient ought to miss. To view it by night was rather unsatisfactory, but the air was deliciously sweet and cool, and the handsome embowered residences of merchants and diplomats and Chinese officials appeared quite magnificent when duskily discerned by the glimmer of the stars.
“You have seen the native city? No?” said Charley Tong Sin. “It is very dirty, but picturesque to beat the deuce. What you say? To-morrow morning I go to have an appointment with His Excellency, the governor, at his yamen. It is on business. Perhaps you would like to meet me there and have an audience. It is rather good fun, much red-tape, a big bunch of officials, and plenty of kow-towing. Not many foreigners have admittance to him in this way.”
It occurred to Captain O’Shea that he should very much like to learn what the government of the native city, or the police department thereof, had discovered in connection with the murder of McDougal. And to gain an entrance in company with the influential comprador, himself a Chinese, was to make his inquiries under the most favorable circumstances.
“I will jump at the chance,” he exclaimed. “A man like me that may do business in China in a small way should make himself solid with the powers that be.”
“I am sorry that I cannot meet you at your hoteland take you to the yamen,” explained Charley Tong Sin, “but to-morrow I must be very early at my office to make up the accounts of a ship that will sail for Hankow, and then I will have to hurry into the native city like the very devil. If you tell your ’rickshaw man to carry you to the governor’s yamen I will be there and see you at eight o’clock.”
“I can find my way, and many thanks to you,” cordially returned O’Shea. “The native city is strange water, but no doubt the ’rickshaw pilot will know his course.”
It was drawing near to midnight when the shiny victoria left Captain O’Shea at the Astor House and the obliging Charley Tong Sin bade him adieu. The shipmaster went yawning to his room, agreeably refreshed by the outing and ready for bed. He was a tidy man by habit, having stowed himself and his belongings for much of his life in a space no larger than a respectable closet. Even in a hotel room he left nothing strewn about.
He had no more than pulled off his coat when he observed that things were not arranged exactly as he had left them. His eyes noted one trifle, and this led him to look for others. The Chinese servant had been in to turn down the bed, leave fresh towels, and pick up burnt matches and scraps of paper, but something other than this routine handwork had been busy in the room. His things had been examined hastily, but with careful endeavor to leave them as they were. Opening one bureau drawer after another, he found confirmation of this suspicion.The articles therein had been not so much poked about in disorder as moved from their places by exploring hands.
If a thief had been in the room he found no booty for his pains, for there was neither money nor jewelry to be looted. Captain O’Shea thoughtfully picked up a leather hand-bag which was locked as he had left it. Inserting the key he looked inside. He had been careful to slip a box of revolver cartridges into a leather flap-pocket because the pasteboard covering was broken and they were apt to spill loose in the bottom of the bag. Evidently it had been ransacked, for the box of cartridges was not in the pocket, but lodged in a fold of a rain-coat which half filled the bag. O’Shea whistled softly and moved straightway to his trunk. This also was locked. Flinging back the lid, he instantly searched between the layers of clothing for the folded sheet of heavy paper on which he had drawn with a brush and stencilling ink the ominous Chinese character that was branded into the back of the red-haired sailor-man.
The paper was missing. Something had already told him that he should find it missing. He made no further search, but sat himself down on the edge of the bed and stared very hard at the blank wall. The night was as warm as before, but he felt curiously chilly.
“’Tis like as if some one had jammed an icicle into the small of me back,” he reflected. “I will not cry before I am hurt, but there’s more to this divertin’adventure of mine than Johnny Kent and I ever dreamed of on the farm.”
Certain conclusions were boldly obvious. His real business in China had been discovered by the same agency which had tried to slay the red-haired sailor and which had murdered McDougal. The paper had been stolen because it was a clinching proof of his active interest and interference, and perhaps also to terrify and intimidate him with the realization that intelligences, hostile and secret, were spying on him. It was futile to try to guess how the knowledge of his purpose had been disclosed. McDougal may have been watched and followed, as O’Shea had already surmised, and they had been seen talking together in Paddy Blake’s place. Some listener may have been unseen during the interview at the headquarters of Inspector Burke.
To make complaint, either to the hotel management or to the police, that his room had been entered seemed a silly proceeding. To catch this kind of a thief was as hopeless as chasing a phantom. It was decidedly unpleasant to think of going to sleep in this room, for as Captain Michael O’Shea admitted to himself, with a very serious countenance:
“The lad that did that trick is likely to sift in through the key-hole if he takes the notion and chop the brand into me back after slippin’ the knife into me before I can wake up to find out how dead I am. I would like to sleep in the same bed with Inspector Burke and a battery of the Royal Artillery this night, but if I lose me nerve Johnny Kent will disown me entirely.”
With this he looked over his defences, like a seasoned campaigner, and assembled the chairs, the crockery, and the large tin bath-tub, together with the heavier articles of his own kit. Two chairs he placed against the door, one balanced on top of the other so that if dislodged they would topple over with a good deal of noise. The cord of the mosquito canopy he cut in twain, and so ingeniously suspended tub and crockery just inside the two windows that the wariest intruder must certainly set in motion a clamorous little avalanche. Then, having tucked his revolver under the pillow, he prudently commended his soul to his Maker and composed himself to slumber of a hair-trigger kind.
The night passed without alarm and Captain Michael O’Shea roused himself out soon after daybreak to smoke three strong Manila cigars and organize himself as a strategy board, or one might have said that he was clearing for action. Convinced that the game he played was a genuinely dangerous one, he was in haste to get afloat where he belonged. To dodge the wiles of an ambushed foe was not what he liked. At this kind of warfare the Chinese mind was too nimble for him.
He decided that he would keep the appointment to meet Charley Tong Sin at the yamen of the governor of the native city. No mischance was likely to befall him in broad daylight, and, given the opportunity, he would seek a private interview with that official. This business despatched, he proposed to show the water-front of Shanghai how speedily a river steamer could be manned and taken to sea.
Having eaten breakfast early and with good appetite, Captain O’Shea went out to find a ’rickshaw. Only one of them happened to be standing in front of the hotel and he had little trouble in making the swarthy, sturdy fellow in the shafts understand where he wished to go. The coolie set off at a racing trot, whisking the vehicle along with amazing ease. The passenger had not outgrown the idea that it was rather absurd and unfair for an able-bodied person to be pulled along in this fashion by another man no stronger than himself. Therefore, he nodded approval when the coolie slackened his gait and yelled at another stalwart Chinese squatted on the curbstone who picked himself up and ran behind the ’rickshaw as “push-man,” making a double team of it.
Moved by two-man power, the light vehicle made a speedy passage through the British settlement and turned into the French quarter to reach the nearest gate-way of the native city wall. Soon the order and cleanliness and modernity of European territory and dominion were left behind and the ’rickshaw had spun into the swarming, filthy streets of the immemorial China.
“The River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells can be no worse than this,” said O’Shea to himself, “and for the love of heaven was there ever such a mess of people jumbled together?”
No more than eight or ten feet wide, the alleys were crowded with pedlers and street-merchants selling cakes, fish, pork, vegetables, porcelain, furs, embroideries, pictures, bamboo pipes, their waresdisplayed on little wooden stands or spread upon the rutted flag-stones.
Jostling among them were laden mules, top-heavy wheelbarrows, bawling coolies sweating beneath the burden of the shoulder-yokes, hordes of idlers, screaming children, until it was to wonder why traffic was not wholly blockaded. Into this ruck of humanity, this immense confusion and noise, the two ’rickshaw men hurled their vehicle like a projectile. They shouted incessantly, threatening and reviling, nor tried to pick a way through the press. These who got in their path were knocked head over heels. Pedlers’ barrows were upset helter-skelter. The onward course of Captain O’Shea was as destructive as a typhoon.
He yelled at his headlong chargers to slow down. They were likely to cause a riot. Already a mob was buzzing angrily in their wake and several missiles were hurled at the ’rickshaw. Captain O’Shea had the sensations of a man who was being run away with. This brace of pig-tailed fiends had bolted hell-for-leather. He was of a mind to jump out and let them go their own gait, but this enlarged baby-carriage of a ’rickshaw was awkward to disembark from while under way, and he was reluctant to risk landing upon his head. If he menaced them with a revolver the mob would be apt to join forces with them against the foreigner. Still, this might be the peculiar fashion of conveying a gentleman to the governor’s yamen, and perhaps he had better sit tight and hold hard until the ship struck a rock.
Presently, however, he observed that several big swarthy men in blue cotton blouses were running alongside the coolie in the shafts and holding shouted converse with him. They appeared to be friends of his, and Captain O’Shea did not like their looks. They were hardier, more truculent of visage, than the pasty-faced Shanghai coolie class. The tough has the same ear-marks the world over, and these fellows were ruffians whom one would not care to meet in the dark.
A few minutes after these had joined company the ’rickshaw turned abruptly from one of the crowded streets and moved with undiminished speed into a wider but much less frequented thoroughfare lined with stables, straw-littered court-yards whose buildings were in ruinous decay, and hovels used as slaughter-houses where mangy dogs prowled in search of offal. The ’rickshaw tilted and veered sharply in the direction of one of these disreputable court-yards, and Captain Michael O’Shea, quite certain that he was not headed toward the governor’s yamen, acted decisively and on the spur of the moment.
Things were going all wrong and very probably he would alight from the frying-pan into the fire, but this was nothing less than an abduction. The coolie in the shafts had coiled his queue under his cap, possibly to guard against the very manœuvre that O’Shea executed. But the wind and the rapid motion had loosed the end of the thick black braid and it bobbed between his shoulders and whipped free as he ran.
Bending forward, O’Shea clutched the queue in a tremendous grip and laid back as if he were hauling on a main-sheet. The rascal’s head was fetched up with a dislocating jerk, his feet pawed the air for an instant, and his hands lost their hold of the shafts. Then, as he came down and tried vainly to get a footing, the careering ’rickshaw rammed him from behind and sent him sprawling on his face. Shot out from his seat went Captain O’Shea, his feet in front of him, a revolver in his fist, ready to bound up from the pavement and open the engagement on the instant.
The “push-man” had been violently poked under the chin by the back of the suddenly halted ’rickshaw, and he lay groaning and doubled up several feet away. The ruffianly escort, taken by surprise, ran a little distance before they could wheel and return to the scene. Captain O’Shea had a moment in which to get his bearings and take stock of the situation. Darting for the nearest wall, he braced his back against it and stood waiting. The big swarthy rascals in the blue blouses fiercely jabbered together, gazed up and down the almost deserted street, and with no more delay drew knives from their baggy breeches and charged with heads down.
O’Shea threw up his revolver for a snap-shot at the foremost of them. The hammer clicked. There was no report. He pulled the trigger again with the same result. For the third time the hammer fell with the same futile, sickening click. This was his finish. The thing was absurd, incredible. Raging,he grasped the weapon by the barrel and ran forward to swing the butt against the nearest shaven head. A long knife ripped at him and slashed his sleeve. He cracked the man’s head, but the others were at him like wolves. He dodged and tried to take to his heels, but the two ’rickshaw men blocked his path.
One of the assassins had worked around behind him and was trying to trip and get him down so that they could cut him to ribbons at their leisure. The knives hemmed him in. He slipped and fell upon one knee. The ruffians laughed.
Then, lo and behold! they were scampering frantically away, yelling in fear, scrambling over walls like monkeys, diving into the stables and court-yards, flying for the lower end of the street. In a twinkling Captain O’Shea was alone, magically snatched from death. White and shaking, he stood and gazed at a near-by corner of the crooked thoroughfare. Filing past it came a squad of British bluejackets in white clothes, and the sun winked brightly on the polished metal of their rifles and cutlasses. Beside the lieutenant, in front of them, strode a tall, slim-waisted man in khaki uniform whom O’Shea recognized as Inspector Burke. O’Shea’s assailants had been warned in time to scurry to cover before the British party had more than a flying glimpse of them. At a quick order shouted by the lieutenant, the sailors scattered into the yards and squalid buildings, but the fugitives had escaped by a dozen dark and devious exits to vanish in the labyrinths of the teeming, mysteriousnative city. Inspector Burke was pounding O’Shea on the back and exclaiming vigorously:
“My word, old chap! What sort of a bally row is this? The beggars nearly did for you. Lucky we happened along, wasn’t it?”
“Tis all of that,” earnestly replied the shipmaster. “And who are ye, anyhow? Is this a fairy story or a play right out of the theatre? You came on the stage about one second before the curtain rung down.”
“Leftenant Kempton-Shaw—ah, here he is—allow me to present him, Captain O’Shea—as I was about to say, he came ashore from theWarspitegun-boat this mornin’ with a batch of Chinese pirates, the real thing, don’t you know. He took them out of a junk after a rather nice little shindy last week. He marched them to the Chinese prison just now, it’s in this quarter of the native city, and their heads will be cut off to-morrow. I’m awfully pleased that we were taking this short cut home. In close quarters, weren’t you?”
“I have never found them a closer fit,” said O’Shea. “I was on me way for a chat with the governor, and a gang of bad citizens tried to wipe me out. I will walk along with you if ye don’t mind. There is enough Irish in me to waste no great love on the British flag, but I will say, Lieutenant Kempton-Shaw, that I never laid eyes on a finer, handsomer lot of men than these lads of yours from theWarspite.”
“Thanks, and I fancy you mean it,” smiled the naval officer. “This is extraordinary, by Jove.Foreigners are fairly safe in the native city, as a rule, are they not, Burke? What do you make of it?”
“I shall have to hear Captain O’Shea’s report.”
“I have no long-winded report to offer,” incisively declared the shipmaster. “I have me suspicions, and you can guess what they are, Inspector Burke. ’Tis the same business that we talked about in your office. But I wish nothing to do with any police investigations. You will report this row of mine to the native government, I have no doubt, and I hope ye will try to collect an indemnity for me distressed emotions, but I have no time to dilly-dally about in Shanghai. I will go to sea. Will you help me find the men?”
“From the tone of your voice I infer that your business is not precisely pacific, my dear sir,” put in Lieutenant Kempton-Shaw. “Do you mind letting theWarspitesin on this cruise of yours?”
“Thank you, but I have set out to handle it as an affair of me own. I may have bit off more than I can chew, but I will try to see it through.”
“Meet me at my office at noon and I’ll have some men for you to look over,” said Inspector Burke. “I will pick up a crew for you if I have to make a general jail-delivery.”
As they trudged along Captain O’Shea became silent and abstracted. He was not in a mood for conversation. Conjecture pointed one way. He had been a gullible fool who deserved to have a knife stuck in his ribs. It had been as easy to trap him as though he were a lubber on his first voyage out fromhome. It had been with design that only one ’rickshaw stood in front of the hotel that morning when he was ready to go to the native city. And the pair of coolies were hired cutthroats who had steered him into the disgusting street among the slaughter-houses in order that he might be done away with, leaving never a trace of his fate behind him.
Reasoning back from this link to the next preceding, his room had been entered and ransacked while he was safely out of the way in a carriage on the Bubbling Well Road. Some time had been required to make that careful examination and fit keys to his hand-bag and trunk. Also, he had just now investigated his revolver and discovered that the firing-pin of the hammer had been filed, not enough for the eye to notice it, but sufficiently to cause the impact to fail to explode the primer of the cartridge.
The affable, gilded young gentleman who had invited him to drive on the Bubbling Well Road was the same kind acquaintance who had suggested that he take a ’rickshaw and visit the native city in the morning. The finger of coincidence pointed in the direction of that smartest of compradores, Charley Tong Sin.
“That kind of coincidence is unhealthier than the cholera,” said O’Shea to himself. “Maybe this sport with the college education and the taste for gin cocktails is a good friend of mine, but I will give him no chance to prove it again. I have been on the jump ever since I met him. If he is not crooked he is a hoodoo. And ’tis not impossible, after all,that he is mixed up with this gang of murderers that I am running after. The heart of him is Chinese.”
He would keep these suspicions to himself. They lacked tangible proof, and he held to the view that the business was entirely his own. He had plunged into this befogged maze of circumstances like a boy on a holiday, and it was for him to extricate himself like a man. With the warmest expressions of gratitude he parted from Inspector Burke and the naval lieutenant, and hastened in the direction of the water-front.
Less than an hour later he was inspecting a light-draught steamer called theWhang Hoowned by the China Navigation Company. She was old, sadly in need of repairs, and about as sea-worthy for rough weather as a packing-box. But O’Shea felt confident that she could be nursed along to serve his purpose, and the larger, better vessels available for charter at short notice were not so handy for exploring muddy rivers and strange corners. Having put to sea at one time and another in craft which were held together only by their paint, Captain O’Shea asked no more of theWhang Hothan that her engines should turn over. He dared not examine the machinery too closely lest he might lose confidence in his steamer, but the owners’ agent assured him that she was fit for service and he took his word for it.
“Start her fires going at once,” said O’Shea, “and if enough pressure shows on the gauges to turn her wheel as she lies at her moorings, I will sign thecharter-party and insurance papers and slap down the two thousand dollars for a month’s use of the venerable relic.”
“That is fair enough,” replied the agent. “And it is as good as done. You can go ahead with getting your supplies, Captain O’Shea. I take it that you want to do a bit of exploration work for one of the American syndicates? We have done quite a lot of business with your people and their concessions.”
“It may be something like that,” briefly returned O’Shea. “And now will you be kind enough to tell me where to order a hundred and fifty tons of steam coal to be put in the bunkers this very day?”
“Our company will be pleased to let you have it, and I can guarantee prompt delivery from lighters alongside the steamer. Or I presume that Jordan, Margetson will do the same for you.”
“I think I will not deal with Jordan, Margetson,” and O’Shea’s voice was smooth and pleasant. “The comprador is a very able young man.”
“Charley Tong Sin? Well, rather. A smart chap, that.”
“Yes, very. I wish I could keep my razor as sharp.”
Captain O’Shea next visited a ship-chandler’s and submitted his list of stores, making it a condition of payment that the stuff should be in the steamer before sunset. The elderly German who served him had the tact and discretion bred of long experience with the seafarers of the unexpected Orient. It was his business to sell them whatever they might want,to take his profit and ask no questions. Yes, he could find thirty service rifles and revolvers, also cutlasses of the best steel. They were of patterns discarded by a certain European government, but excellent weapons. He would be glad to sell the captain one, five, or ten thousand of them. The captain was not a man to wag a foolish tongue; one could see it at a glance.
“You and I might do business some day,” quoth O’Shea, “but I am too busy to start a revolution at present.”
He sent a note to Paddy Blake asking him to find a dozen Chinese firemen and sailors and a river pilot, and to muster them ready for signing articles in the afternoon. He believed the old Irishman to be a ripened scoundrel at his own trade, but suspected him of no complicity in the manœuvres of Charley Tong Sin. The comprador had merely used Paddy Blake as a means of making the acquaintance of Captain O’Shea.
Five minutes after noon the shipmaster (he had taken a decided dislike to riding in ’rickshaws) trudged into the headquarters building of Inspector Burke.
“I have a choice collection for you to look over,” said the latter. “They are waiting in another room, and I should call them a worried lot. I sent my men out to pick them up, do you see, and they have not been told the reason why.”
“I cannot afford to be particular, Inspector Burke. Let me at them and I will see whether I am saferashore among the Chinese or at sea with your exhibit of beach-combers.”
“Oh, they are not as bad as that,” the inspector assured him. “I should scarcely call them desperate characters. However, while I wish you the best of luck, old chap, I shall shed never a tear if you lose your shipmates somewhere beyond Shanghai. Let us call them soldiers of misfortune, if you like.”
He led the way into the large drill-room, where a score or more of men stood in uneasy attitudes and appeared not at all comfortable in this environment. O’Shea let his glance rove in swift, appraising scrutiny and smiled to himself as he recognized one familiar type after another. He had recruited such men as these for unostentatious ventures in the waters of the Spanish Main. Here was the red-faced, burly shipmaster ready with a glib speech and fluent curses to explain how he happened to be without his papers; the shambling ne’er-do-well with the slack mouth and the weak chin who had fled from a scrape at home to lose himself in foreign ports; the tanned adventurer, brave and resourceful, who was fit for nothing else than the life of a rover; the battered old seaman, worn out by the hardships of the forecastle, who had been cast adrift from the hospital; the cashiered army officer with the hall-mark of his caste blurred but still visible; the sharp-featured young man with the furtive eye who lived by his wits and found it very hard living indeed; the bleary tropical tramp who would sell his soul for a drink of brandy.
These and the rest of them were seedy in variousways. They conveyed a sense of failure, of having lost their grip. Their clothes did not signify this so much as what life had written in their faces. Several, in fact, were dressed in clean white duck and linen. They were fighting hard to preserve the guise of self-respect. And yet every man of them had marched to police headquarters at a word from Inspector Burke with the sick fear in his heart that his past had overtaken him, or that he was to be deported for the good of the community, or that he was to be locked up as a vagrant.
Inspector Burke felt pity for them. It was heartless to keep the poor devils in this painful suspense. With a curt nod he addressed them in a group, for they had unwittingly drifted together as if finding some small comfort in solidarity.
“This is not police business,” said he. “I sent for you to oblige my friend Captain O’Shea. He will explain what he wants, and I advise you to play square with him and I’m quite sure he will make it worth while.”
At this the company brightened and looked immensely relieved. The hang-dog manner fled. Shoulders were braced, heads held erect. They were like different men. O’Shea had a less pessimistic opinion of them. He had already concluded to show no finicky taste by picking and choosing. He would take them in a lump, good, bad, and indifferent. Those who were really competent would soon disclose it on shipboard and they could help him hammer the others into shape.
“My speech to you will be short and sweet,” said he. “I need men for a voyage coastwise and me steamer will be ready to sail to-night. You will live well and I expect ye to obey orders. ’Tis not sailors’ work or I should not take on your kind. The fewer questions ye ask the more popular ye will be with me. The pay will be at the rate of five dollars a day gold, but I will give no advances. I want ye to come aboard sober. If you handle yourselves like men I will pay ye a bonus at the end of the voyage. Those that want to go will give me their names.”
Not a man hung back or asked a question. They whispered softly among themselves, as if afraid to make a slip that might break the spell. Captain O’Shea had one thing more to say and they listened with the most devout attention.
“I took note of the small Hotel London down by the water-side. ’Tis a clean, decent place and I have had a word with the landlord. I will give every man me card. If you show it to him he will be pleased to entertain ye at dinner at once, and he will hand ye out cigars and three drinks apiece, no more. And I will meet you there for supper at six o’clock to-night.”
“Excellent strategy,” murmured Inspector Burke.
“By the way,” cried O’Shea to his pleased followers, “I overlooked something. I need a chief engineer. Can any one of you qualify?”
It appeared that none of them was sufficiently acquainted with the internal works of a steamer to passas an expert, although a young man of a very Cockney accent thought he might do as an assistant.
Inspector Burke made haste to remark:
“I say, let me give you the very man for the job. Kittridge is his name. It’s rather awkward, for he is in clink at present, the British jail. But his time expires to-morrow—he was given thirty days—and I dare say the magistrate will be willing to sign release papers if I explain the situation.”
“I am not asking me men for references,” observed O’Shea, “but, as a matter of mild curiosity, what did ye put this Kittridge away for?”
“He tried to whip my entire Sikh police force, and he made a jolly good beginning. Then his ship sailed away and left him in quod. He was engineer in a Cardiff tramp. A very good man, I understand.”
“He sounds like it. His references are most satisfactory, especially what he did to your turbanned cops,” O’Shea cordially affirmed. “Send this Kittridge to the Hotel London, if ye please, and give him this card of mine, and tell him to wait for me there.”
Through the afternoon Captain Michael O’Shea, now master of the aged river steamerWhang Ho, was the busiest and most energetic of men. A hundred and one things presented themselves as necessary to be done. When at length he hurried into the Hotel London shortly before the supper-hour his men were waiting, hopeful, expectant, cheerful, smoking his cigars and with the three drinks apiecetucked under their belts. Among them was a lanky, solemn person with a pair of gray side-whiskers and a leathery complexion crisscrossed by a net-work of fine wrinkles. His whole appearance was eminently decorous and respectable and he seemed to have strayed into the wrong company. It was not far-fetched to conjecture that he might be a missionary from some station in the Chinese hinterland who had kindly concerned himself with the souls of this congregation of black sheep.
Captain O’Shea bowed to him with a puzzled, respectful air, at which the pious stranger remarked:
“Inspector Burke told me to report here and be damn quick about it. I am Kittridge, and I hear you are wanting an engineer.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Kittridge. I came near mistakin’ you for a sky-pilot. And so your favorite pastime is beating up Sikh policemen! I have a job for ye at double the wages you got in your tramp steamer, whatever they were. Are you willing?”
“I would sign on with the devil himself to get clear of this blankety-blank pig-hole of a blistering Shanghai,” promptly exclaimed Mr. Kittridge. “Where’s your ship? Shall I go aboard at once?”
“Please take a look at the engine-room and report to me here. She is theWhang Ho, tied up at the China Navigation Company’s wharf. Don’t be too critical, but if there’s work that is absolutely necessary I will send ye machinists to work all night.”
“I know the condemned little hooker by sight,” bitterly quoth Mr. Kittridge with a tug at his starboardwhisker. “Very well, sir. I will take a squint at her and make out my list of engine-room stores. Can you get them to-night?”
“The ship-chandler is waiting to hear from me, and I have sent word to the machine-shop,” briefly answered O’Shea.
Paddy Blake had very promptly raked up the required number of Chinese hands and was ready to deliver them on board whenever required. To the Hotel London he came, towing by the arm a most extraordinarily bent and shrivelled anatomy with a wisp of a white queue, whom he turned over to Captain O’Shea with the explanation:
“Here is a river and coastwise pilot for ye that is as wise as Confucius. And by the same token, I have no doubt that he was once pilot aboard the junk of that grand old philosopher himself. Or maybe he was shipmates with Noah.”
The ancient mariner croaked a phrase or two in a grating, rusty voice, and O’Shea dubiously observed:
“If he talks no English at all how will I tell him where I want to go?”
“I have sent ye a Chinese bos’n that can sling th’ pidgin,” said Paddy Blake. “Dearly would I love to know where ye are bound and what bobbery ye are up to, Captain Mike O’Shea, but a man in my business has learned to ask no more silly questions than he can help.”
“Keep that magnum on ice till I come back to Shanghai and I will spin ye the yarn in the little back room of yours, Paddy.”
“May ye come back right side up,” warmly exclaimed the old man. “By th’ look of the friends ye have mustered to go wid you, I wud say that ye are bound out on what th’ Shanghai diplomats call a policy of binivolint assimilation.”
The report of the aggrieved Mr. Kittridge was to the effect that while the engines of theWhang Howould probably take her to sea without breaking down, a night’s work on the condenser, not to mention a leaky cylinder, would considerably improve her health. Captain O’Shea told him to drive ahead with these repairs; nor was the delay worth fretting about. Things had gone amazingly well thus far and theWhang Howould be ready to sail in the morning. He had no desire to spend another night ashore, and he would take his company on board at once, assign them to quarters, and make a tentative organization for sea duty.
TheWhang Hohad been fitted for passenger service on the Yang-tse, and there were state-rooms on the upper deck to hold twice the number of O’Shea’s recruits. In the Chinese draft sent aboard by Paddy Blake were a cook and a steward trained to their business, and they put things to rights in their quiet, deft way. The mood of Captain O’Shea became normally cheerful and confident. He had a deck under his feet, his word was law, and it was good to hear the lap of salt water and the swirl of the tide against a vessel’s side.
He was awake and about until midnight. The work in the engine-room was progressing rapidly underthe vehement direction of Mr. Kittridge. Feeling the need of sleep, for the preceding night had been a broken one, Captain O’Shea set a watch in charge of the burly shipmaster of his company whom he appointed first mate and went to his bunk in the cabin just abaft the wheel-house. At three o’clock Mr. Kittridge, very hot and grimy, rapped on the door and gruffly announced that the machinists had gone ashore and he proposed to turn in and sleep until sailing-time.
At six o’clock Captain O’Shea went on deck in his pajamas to order the steward to fetch him a cup of coffee. He saw no reason why the steamer should not get under way at once. The Chinese steward came not at his call and he betook himself to the galley. A fire was burning in the range, rice and potatoes were cooking in the pots, bacon sliced on the table ready for frying, but there was no cook. O’Shea looked puzzled and started for the forecastle. On the way he met his first mate whose demeanor was distressed and excited.
“I was about to call you, sir,” he exclaimed, his red face working with emotion. “You will think I’ve made a hash of my first night on duty, but this insane business happened like a shot out of a gun, sir. Not ten minutes ago the Chinamen, every last one of ’em, came boiling on deck and went over the side to the wharf like so many rats. And they never did stop running. They were scared; it was a panic; but they didn’t stop to jabber. They just flew, and most of ’em left their dunnage behind.”
“The divil you say,” muttered O’Shea, and he rubbed his head in slightly bewildered fashion. “That must have been just before I stepped on deck, Mr. Parkinson. And ye have no idea at all what it was about?”
“Not the slightest, sir. I hope you don’t blame me. I’d have sailed into the thick of them with my fists, but it was like chasing so many greased pigs. They vanished before you could more than wink.”
“What about the fires?” snapped the captain. “Have you been below?”
“Yes, sir. The first thing I did was to find Mr. Kittridge. He is in the engine-room, and he told me to send down half a dozen of our white men to keep up steam.”
“Good enough! Now sing out for a volunteer cook, and I will investigate this comical performance. Did anybody get aboard to talk to these Chinamen?”
“Not a soul, sir. I’m sure of it. I had a reliable man at the gangway, and another on the wharf.”
“I believe you. While I look around a bit, get the ship ready to go to sea, Mr. Parkinson. ’Tis not in me mind to be hung up in port very long.”
A sailing junk was attempting to reach with the morning breeze across the wide stretch of river. Hauling close to the wharf at which theWhang Howas moored, the junk attempted to come about, but missed stays in lubberly fashion and hung in the wind as she slowly drifted past the steamer’s stern. The Chinese who clung to the long tiller, and theothers who stood upon the poop or hauled on the cordage, were gazing with signs of excitement at theWhang Ho. Several of them gesticulated, and their fingers were aimed at the rounded, overhanging stern of Captain O’Shea’s vessel. He caught sight of those antics and walked aft.
There was no good reason why the crew of the passing junk should make such a fuss over this commonplace river steamer. Their singular interest in her might be worth trying to fathom. Without delaying to seek the gangway, he threw his leg around a tautened hawser and slid down to the wharf. Running out to the end of it, he commanded a clear view of the stern of theWhang Ho. Upon the white woodwork, just above the counter, was painted in broad strokes of bright vermilion the sprawling Chinese character which had been gashed in the back of the sailor named Jim Eldridge.
Captain O’Shea hastily returned on board and climbed over the after rail, belaying a loose end of heaving-line and resting his foot in the loop so that he was able to let himself down until he could touch the uppermost smear of vermilion paint. It rubbed off on his hand, fresh and wet, and must have been applied during the night. His Chinese crew had discovered it there. Perhaps some one had sung out the information from a passing junk or sampan. At any rate, this was what had made them quit the steamer. A charge of dynamite could have made their exodus no more expeditious. The word had flown from mouth to mouth, and they fled from theship as from the plague. Even the incredibly aged pilot had hobbled away with the rest of them, fear restoring an agility long since departed.
“The hoodoo again!” reflectively exclaimed O’Shea. “I thought I had got clear of it. ’Tis not so much to frighten me this time as to delay the voyage. Somebody is anxious to send word up the coast ahead of me to let some one else know I am coming. That is a guess, and ’tis as good as the next one.”
He would find Paddy Blake at once and discuss the matter with him. Perhaps he could ship another crew and leave port before the news had time to spread among the Chinese seafarers. Telling Mr. Parkinson to see to it that the vermilion paint was instantly removed, he set out on foot along the water-front. At this early hour, there was no stir of business among the foreign shipping-houses. Passing a substantial brick building, Captain O’Shea’s eye was held for an instant by the brass sign on one of the doors, “Jordan, Margetson & Co.” He happened to be thinking quite assiduously just then of the courteous comprador, Charley Tong Sin. He halted and stared hard at the door in front of him which was ajar.
It was too early for any of the clerks to be about. With an impulse which had no definite purpose behind it, Captain O’Shea pushed open the door and quietly stepped into the hallway and thence into the main office with its row of desks. The room was empty, and he moved in the direction of the smaller,detached offices in the rear, still treading softly. Yes, the shrewd and zealous comprador, so faithful to his employers’ interests, was already at work. When the visitor caught sight of him he was bending over a table littered with papers, intent on arranging and filing them. Possibly his ears were as quick as his wits and he had heard Captain O’Shea before seeing him. Unruffled and smiling, with an air of delighted surprise, the comprador exclaimed, advancing with hand outstretched:
“How glad I am to see you again! The top of the morning! Were you looking to find me? Ah, I am the early bird, you bet.”
“I expected to sail by now, but there has been a bit of trouble with me native crew,” replied the shipmaster, wary as a hawk. “I saw your place was open and I dropped in on the chance of bidding ye farewell. You mentioned the other night that you sometimes came down early.”
“That is the deuce of my business, Captain,” easily returned Charley Tong Sin. “Trouble with your crew? Can I help you? Do you need men? I am sorry you didn’t come to me in the first place.”
“I wish I had. ’Twas old Paddy Blake I first turned to as one Irishman to another. And maybe I was wrong in not asking your advice about the steamer.”
If this were a fencing-match, then O’Shea had scored the first point. His bold, ingenuous features expressed not the slightest change of emotion, but in an instant he had discovered that which clinchedand drove home his suspicions of Charley Tong Sin. The comprador put a fresh cigarette to his lips and held a lighted match between his fingers, unaware that the flare conveyed a fleeting translucence. Underneath the beautifully polished nails of his thumb and forefinger there showed a line of vermilion which the most careful scrubbing had failed to eradicate. It was the color of the paint which had been smeared on the stern of theWhang Hoin the form of a sprawling Chinese character.
The luck of Captain Michael O’Shea so ordered it that he should observe this phenomenon before the flare of the match died out. Thereupon he lied swiftly and plausibly, the purpose hot in his heart to find a pretext that should coax the comprador to accompany him on board theWhang Ho. To a sympathetic query Captain O’Shea smoothly made answer:
“I am the kind of a man that will own up to his own mistakes. I thought I could go it alone when I ought to have been glad and thankful for the help of a man like yourself. Between us, I am not anxious to go to sea in this old tub that I have chartered from the China Navigation Company. And now that I am delayed for lack of a crew, maybe you can show me a way to slip out of the bargain. My chief engineer finds the vessel is not at all what she was represented to be. I took her subject to certain conditions and she cannot make good.”
“I told you you would be stung in Shanghai without me,” laughed Charley Tong Sin in thegreatest good-humor. “Better chuck up theWhang Hoand let me find you a steamer.”
“That I will do, and gladly,” affirmed O’Shea. “Have ye time to step aboard with me now and I will show you how I have been buncoed. Then ye can advise me how to break the charter. I have a good case.”
“Of course I will,” cried the comprador. “Pooh, we will bluff the China Navigation Company out of its boots. I will make them look like thirty cents.”
“You are the smartest comprador between Tientsin and Singapore, according to Paddy Blake, and I have no doubt of it,” sweetly murmured Captain O’Shea.
“That’s what everybody says,” affably rejoined Charley Tong Sin as they walked into the street. “What is the trouble with your crew?”
“You can search me. I cannot find out for the life of me. They up and jumped ship without warning.”
“I will get more men for you. Leave it to me. You have come to the right place this time, Captain O’Shea.”