CHAPTER XITHE CHARM OF JADE
It was no false lure to distract pursuit, that hurried sentence of Randall’s which had met the colonel’s angry appeal for information. The woman was not only repeating Mrs. Winter’s message; the message itself described a fact. As she stood at her room telephone, Aunt Rebecca had happened to glance at Randall, supplementing the perfunctory dusting of the hotel maid with her own sanitary, dampened, clean cloth; Randall’s eyes suddenly glazed and bulged in such startling transformation that, instead of questioning her, Mrs. Winter stepped swiftly to the window where she was at work, to seek the cause of her agitation.
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Mrs. Winter!” gasped Randall. “Ain’tthatMaster Archie?”
Mrs. Winter saw for herself; the face at a cab window, the waving of a slim hand—Archie’s face, Archie’s hand. Brief as was the Space of his passing (for the two horses in the cab were trottingsmartly), she was sure of both. “Give me my bonnet,” she commanded, “anybonnet,anygloves! And my bag with some money!”
It was as she flung through the door that she threw her message to the colonel back exactly as Randall had submitted it. Miss Smith was coming along the loggia. “Don’t stop me!” said Mrs. Winter sternly. “I’ve seen Archie; I’m after him.”
“Stop!” cried Miss Smith—but it was to the elevator boy who was whizzing below them in his cage, not to her employer; and she boarded the elevator with the older woman. “I’ll go with you,” she said. There was no vibration in her even tones, although a bright red flickered up in her cheek.
But Rebecca Winter caught savagely at her breath, which was coming fast. “It is not with the running; you needn’t think it, Janet,” she panted sharply, in a second. “It was the sight of his face—so suddenly; I never expectedanyface would make my heart pump like that again. All of which shows”—she was speaking quite naturally and placidly again—“that women may grow too old for men to make fools of them, but never for children. Come; it was a shabby sort of hackhe was in, drawn by two horses with auburn tails. Here’s the office floor.”
Not a word did Janet Smith say; she was not a woman of words in any case. Moreover, the pace which Mrs. Winter struck was too rapid for comments or questions; it swept them both past the palm-shadedpatiointo the side hall, out on the noisy, dazzling, swaying street. Looking before her, Miss Smith could see the dusty body of a hack a block away. Mrs. Winter had stepped up to a huge crimson motor-car, in the front seat of which lounged the chauffeur, his forehead and eyes hunched under his leather visor. The machine was puffing, with the engine working, ready to leap forward at a touch of the lever.
“Twenty dollars an hour if you let me get in now!” said Mrs. Winter, lightly mounting by his side as she spoke.
“Hey, me? what!” gurgled the chauffeur, plucked out of a half-doze. “Oh, say, beg your pardon, lady, but this is hired, it belongs—”
“I don’t care to whom it belongs, I have to have it,” announced Mrs. Winter calmly. “Whoever hired it can get another. I’ll make it all right. You start on and catch that hack with the auburn-tailed horses—”
“I’llmake it right with your fare!” Miss Smith cut in before the chauffeur could answer. “It’s a case of kidnapping. You catch that cab!” She was standing on the curb, and even as she spoke an elderly man and his wife came out of a shop. They stared from her to the automobile, and in their gaze was a proprietary irritation. This was instantly transfused by a more vivid emotion. The woman looked shocked and compassionate. “Oh, pa!” she gasped, “did you hearthat?”
The man was a country banker from Iowa. He had a very quick, keen eye; it flashed. “Case of kidnapping, hey?” snapped he, instantly grasping the character of the speakers and jumping at the situation. “Take the auto, Madam. Get a move on you, Mr. Chauffeur!”
“Oh, I’m moving, all right,” called the chauffeur, as he skilfully dived his lower wheels under the projecting load of a great wagon and obliquely bumped over the edge of a street-car fender, pursued by the motorman’s curses. “I see ’em, lady; I see the red tails; I’ll catch ’em!”
His boast most likely had been made good (since for another block they bore straight on their course) but for an orange-wagon which had been overturned. There was a rush of pursuit ofthe golden balls from the sidewalk; a policeman came to the rescue of traffic and ordered everything to halt until the cart was righted. The boys and girls in the street chased back to the sidewalk. The episode took barely a couple of minutes, but on the edge of the last minute the cab turned a corner. The motor-car turned the same corner, but saw no guiding oriflamme of waving red horsehair. The cross street next was equally bare. They were obliged to explore two adjacent highways before they came upon the hack again. This time it was in distant perspective, foreshortened to a blur of black and a swish of red. And even as they caught sight of it the horses swung round into profile and turned another corner. In the turn a man wearing a black derby hat stuck his arm and head out of the window in order to give some direction to the driver. Then he turned half around. It was almost as if he looked back at his pursuers; yet this, Mrs. Winter argued, hardly could be, since he had not expected pursuit, and anyhow, the chances were he could not know her by sight.
It was a mean street, narrow and noisome, but full of shipping traffic and barred by tramways—a heartbreaking street for a chase. The chauffeurwas a master of his art; he jumped his great craft at every vacant arm’s-length; he steered it through incredibly narrow lanes; he progressed sometimes by luffs, like a boat under sail when the forward passage must be reached in such indirect fashion; but the crowd of ungainly vehicles, loaded dizzily above his head, made the superior speed of the motor of no avail. In spite of him they could see the red tails lessening. Again and yet again, the hack turned; again, but each time with a loss, the motor struck its trail. By now the street was changed; the dingy two-story buildings lining it were brightened by gold-leaf and vermilion; oriental arms and garbs and embroidery spangled the windows and oriental faces looked inscrutably out of doorways. There rose the blended odors of spice, sandalwood and uncleanliness that announce the East, reeking up out of gratings and puffing out of shops.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Winter softly to herself, “Chinese quarter, is it? Well.” Her eyes changed; they softened in a fashion that would have amazed one who only knew the surface of Mrs. Winter, the eccentric society potentate. She looked past the squalid, garish scene, past the shining sand-hills and the redwood trees, beyond into a strangerlandscape glowing under a blinder glare of sun. Half mechanically she lifted a tiny gold chain that had slipped down her throat under the gray gown. Raising the yellow thread and the carven jade ornament depending therefrom, she let it lie outside amid the white lace and chiffon.
“We’re making good now,” called the chauffeur. “Will I run alongside and hail ’em, or what?”
She told him quietly to run alongside. But her lips twitched, and when she put up her hand to press them still, she smiled to discover that the hand was bare. She had forgotten to pull on her glove. She began to pull it on now.
“The road is narrow,” said she. “Run ahead of the hack and block its way. You can do it without hitting the horses, can’t you?”
“Well, I guess,” returned the chauffeur, instantly accomplishing the manœuver in fine style.
But he missed his deserved commendation; indeed, he forgot it himself; because, as he looked back at the horses rearing on the sudden check and tossing their auburn manes, then ran his scrutiny behind them to the hack, he perceived no life in it; and when his own passenger jumped with amazing nimbleness from her seat and flung thecrazy door wide open, she recoiled, exclaiming: “Where are they? Where did you leave them?”
“Leave who?” queried the hackman. “Say, what you stoppin’ me fur? Runnin’ into me with your devil-wagon!Say!”—then his wrath trailed into an inarticulate mutter as he appreciated better the evident quality of the gentlewoman before him.
“You may be mixed up in a penitentiary offense, my man,” said she placidly. “It is a case of kidnapping. Where did you leave that boy who was in the cab? If you give us information that will find him, there’s five dollars; if you fool us—well, I have your number. Where did you leave the boy?”
“Why, there was a cop with ’im—a cop and a gentleman. Ain’t you got hold of the wrong party, lady?”
“A brown-haired boy in a gray suit with a blue cravat—you know he was in your cab. And how do you know it was a real policeman?”
“Or he wasn’t helping on the deviltry if it was?” sneered the chauffeur, who had now become a full-fledged partizan. “Ain’t you lived in this burg long enough to find out how to make a littlemazumaon the side? You’re too good for’Frisco. Heaven is your home, my Christian friend.”
“Cut it out!” retorted the man. “I guess I know how to find my way round as well as the next man—”
“Certainly you do,” soothed Mrs. Winter, who was fingering a crisp new five-dollar bank-note, “and you are no kidnapper, either; you made no bargain with those men—”
“Sure I didn’t,” agreed the hackman, “nor I ain’t standin’ for kidnapping, neither. Why, I got kids of my own, and my woman she’d broom me outer the house if I was to do them games. Say, I’ll tell you all I knows. They got off, them three, at that there corner, and I was to drive fast ’s I could three blocks ahead and then git home any old way. And that’s God’s truth, I—”
“You didn’t see where they went?” Mrs. Winter was quietly insistent.
“No, I didn’t. I guess I was a dumb fool not ter notice, but they paid me well, and I’d a bad thirst, and I was hiking to a place I know for beer; and that’s—”
“Did the boy seem willing?”
“He didn’t do no kicking as I seen.”
A few more questions revealed that the manhad unpacked his full kit of information. He had never seen either of the men before. The gentleman—yes, he was sure he was a gentleman; he wasn’t no swell confidence guy; he was the regular thing—gentleman engaged him to take a party to the Chinese quarter; he’d tell where to stop; didn’t need a guide; only wanted to make a few purchases, he said, and he knew where the things was; yes, ma’am, that was all; only down there on Market Street, or maybe—why, somewhere near by—he stuck his head out and told him to turn the corner, and then he kept telling him to turn corners, until finally he told him to stop and they got out.
Mrs. Winter gave the man the bank-note, counseling him to keep his eyes open for the two men and the boy, and to report to her at the Palace Hotel, giving his number, should he see either man or boy. It would be very well worth his while.
The chauffeur did not interrupt, but he shook his head over the departing hack. “He’d ought to have known it wan’t on the square, but these hack drivers ain’t got good sense even when they’re, so to speak, sober, which ain’t often,” he soliloquized. “Well, lady, if they’ve took to the Chinesequarter, we’d better be looking up a Chink to help us, I guess. I know a fairly decent one—”
“I think I know a better,” interrupted Mrs. Winter, with a faint smile. She had detected a suppressed pity in the man’s regard. “Motor slowly along the street. There is a shop, if I can find it, where there ought to be a man—”
“Man you know? Say, lady, I guess I better go in with you, if you don’t mind—”
“No; stay in your car. You don’t know how safe I am. Not only my gray hair protects me, but I have only to say a few words and any of these men will fight for me if necessary. But this is in confidence—just between us, you understand. You are not to repeat it, ever.”
She looked at him with a frank smile, and involuntarily his hand went up to his cap. “What you say goes, lady. But jest remember I’m right here, spark going all the time, ready to throw her wide open when you step in; and”—his voice sank—“I ain’t absolutely unprepared for a scrap, either.”
“I understand,” said she, looking at him keenly, and a few moments later she stepped briskly into the shop before which he halted with a little lightening of the heart because of this uncouthknight of the lever. The shop itself was like any one of a score on the street, crowded with oriental objects, bizarre carvings of ivory and jade, daggers and strings of cash, swords, gorgeous embroidered robes of silk and gold in a huddle over a counter or swinging and gleaming in the dusky background, squat little green and brown gods with puffy eyelids, smiling inscrutably amid shoes and fans and Chinese lanterns of glass and bronze, glittering with beads—in all these, like the score about it; yet the clean windows and a certain order within gave it a touch out of the common. A man and a boy served the shop, both in the American dress, with their pigtails tucked under visorless caps. Both greeted her in the serene oriental fashion, bowing and smiling, their obsequious courtesy showing no smallest sign of the surprise which the sight of an unattended woman must have given them.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Winter was aware that both, under their lowered eyelids, took cognizance of that soft-carven disk of jade among the laces on her breast. She asked the man if he had seen a lad and an older man, or it might be two older men, one a policeman, come into that or any other neighboring shop. She explained that the lad washer grand-nephew and was lost (she eschewed the harsher word, for she had no desire to set afloat a rumor which might bring the police upon her). She named a sum large enough to kindle a sudden gleam in the boy’s eyes, as the reward awaiting the lucky man who might put her on the right track. But her words struck no responsive spark from the Chinaman’s veiled gaze. In perfect English and a very soft voice he avowed ignorance and sympathy with the same breath.
And all the while she could feel his glance slant down at the jade ornament.
“Send the boy to look in the shop next door,” said she. As she spoke she raised the charm between her thumb and first two fingers, looking at him directly. Her tone was that of command, not request. He frowned very slightly, making an almost imperceptible gesture, to which she returned a single Chinese phrase, spoken so low that had he not expected the words they had been indistinguishable to his ear. Instantly he addressed the boy rapidly in their own language. The boy went out. The master of the shop returned to Mrs. Winter. His manner had utterly changed; the tradesman’s perfunctory deference was displaced by an almost eager humility of bearing. He wouldhave her sit—there were a few cane-seated American arm-chairs, in grotesque contrast to all their accompaniments—he prostrated himself before her; he put himself at her service; still to her trained eye there was a corner of his mind where incredulity wrestled with a stronger emotion.
“Do not fear,” she said gently. “It is really my own, and he gave it to me himself, almost thirty years ago. He was hardly thirty years old himself then. You see, my husband had been so fortunate as to do him a kindness. It was he who had it first. When he died it came to me, and now for the second time in my life I am using it. I knew you belonged. I saw the sign. Will you help me find my boy?”
“Did your ladyship knowheis he’e, in San Flancisco?”
If she had not already dissipated any doubt in his mind, her evident relief blew the last shred away now. “Haven’t you such a thing as a telephone somewhere?” cried Rebecca Winter. “Time is precious. Can’t you speak to him—have him come here?”
It appeared that there was a telephone, and in a moment she was put into communication by the shopkeeper. He stood in an attitude of deep respectwhile she talked. He heard with unsmiling attention her first Chinese words; he listened as she returned to English, speaking very quietly, but with a controlled earnestness, explaining that she was Archibald Winter’s widow, giving dates and places, in nowise alluding to the service which had won the charm about her neck. Yet as he listened, insensibly the Chinaman grew certain that she had spoken the truth. Presently she turned to him. “He wishes to speak to you,” she said, and went back to the shop. She sighed as one sighs from whose heart a great burden rolls. “To find him here, and still grateful!” she was thinking. “What wonderful good fortune!”
She sat down, and her face grew dreamy. She was no longer thinking of Archie. Her vision was on another face, another scene, a time of peril, when almost against her reason her instinctive woman’s recoil of pity for a fellow-creature in danger of unthinkable torture had been so intense that she had more than acquiesced in her husband’s plan of risking both their lives to save him; she had impelled him to it; she had overcome his terror of the risks on her account. “It is only death we have to fear, at worst,” she had argued. “We have the means to escape in a second, bothof us, from anything else; and if we run away and leave this poor wretch, who hasn’t done anything but love his country, just as we love ours, and be too civilized for his trifling, ornery, pusillanimous country-people to understand, to get slashed to pieces by their horrible ling-ling—whatever they call it—Archibald Winter, don’t you reckon we shall have nightmares as long as we live?”
Thirty years ago—yet it seemed like yesterday. Distinctly she could hear her husband’s voice; it had not come back to her with such reality for years; it was more real than the cries of the street outside; and her heart was beating faster for his words: “Becky, there never was a woman like you! You could make a dead man hop up and fight, bless you!”
“Your ladyship”—it was the shopkeeper back again; he had lived in England, and he offered the most respectful western title of his knowledge—“your ladyship may be chee’ful. All will be done of the best. The young gentleman will be back fo’ to-night. If your ladyship will now letu’n to the hotel.”
It took only a moment to transfer a passenger. Page211
Mrs. Winter bowed slightly; she was quite her self-possessed self again. “I will go certainly,”she said, “but I shall hope to see you, also, to-night; and meanwhile, will you accept, as a token from a friend who trusts you,this?” She took a little gem-encrusted watch from her fob and handed it to him. Her manner was that of a queen who rewards her general. And she left him bowing low. She entered the motor-car. It was no longer a lone motor. Another car steamed and snorted near by, in which sat the amiable banker from Iowa, his wife and Janet Smith.
It took only a moment to transfer a passenger, to explain that she hoped to find the boy who had been lost—no, she would not use such a strenuous word as kidnapped—and would they complete their kindness by not mentioning the affair to any one? One hated so to get into the papers. And would they let her see them again to thank them? Then, as she sank back on the cushions, she remarked, as much to the expectant chauffeur as to Janet: “Yes, I think it is all right. I think we shall see Archie to-night.”