Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China

by George F. Worts

  PART II

  THE BITTER FOUNTAIN

  CHAPTER I

  She bends over her work once more: "I will weave a fragment of verse among the flowers of his robe, and perhaps its words will tell him to return." --LI-TAI-PE.

  The newly arrived wireless operator of the Java, China, and Japanliner, _Persian Gulf_, deposited his elbows upon the promenadedeck-rail, and cast a side-long glance at the Chinese coolie who hadtaken up a similar position about a bumboat's length aft. And thecoolie returned his deliberate stare with a look of dreamy interest,then quickly shifted his glance to the city which smoldered andvibrated across Batavia's glinting, steel-blue harbor.

  Without turning his head the wireless man continued to watch sharplythe casual movements of this Chinese, quite as he had been observinghim since they had left Tandjong Priok in the company's launch and comeout to the _Persian Gulf_ together.

  He had suspected the fellow from the very first, and he was prepared,on the defensive; yet he was willing and eager to take the offensiveshould this son of the yellow empire so much as show the haft of hiskris, or whisper a word of counsel in his ear. The latter he fearedquite as much as the former, for it would mean many things.

  As the fellow sidled a little closer, Peter was aware that the man wasmaking queer signals with his slanting eyes for the purpose ofattracting his attention, without arousing the curiosity or interest ofany persons who might be observing the two.

  Whereupon Peter turned on his left heel, walked to the other's side andgave him a stare of deliberate hostility.

  The coolie moved backward a few inches by flexing his body; his feetremained as they were. And as Peter ran his eye from the black crownhat to the faded blue jacket, the black-sateen pants, which wereclipped about the ankles, giving them a mild pantaloon effect, and tothe black slippers with their thick buck-soles, the coolie smiled.

  It was a smile of arrogance, of self-satisfaction. Indeed, it was thesmile of a hunter who has winged his prey, and smiles an instant towatch it squirm before administering the death-shot.

  "You wanchee my?" inquired Peter succinctly.

  "You allatime go Hong Kong way?" replied the coolie, his smile becominga little more civil, while he measured Peter's length, breadth, andseemed to estimate his brawn.

  It was a foolish question, for the _Persian Gulf_, as everybody inBatavia knew quite well, made a no-stop run from the Javanese port toHong Kong. Peter indicated this fact impatiently.

  "No go Hong Kong way?" persisted the coolie, not relaxing that devilishgrin. "_Maskee_ Hong Kong. _Nidzen yang giang_?"

  The wheezy old whistle of the _Persian Gulf_ told the world inunmistakable accents that sailing time was nigh. The _Persian Gulf_was not a new boat or a fast boat, and she sailed in the intermediateservice south of Java. Yet she was stout, and typhoons meant verylittle to her as yet.

  "Why not?" demanded Peter in the tones of an interlocutor.

  The coolie simply lifted the flap of his blue tunic, and Peter wasgiven the singular glimpse of a bone-hafted knife, the blade of whichhe could guess lay flat against the man's paunch.

  Still the Chinese smiled, without avarice. Plainly he was stating thecase as it was known to him, reciting a lesson, as it were, which hadbeen taught him by one skilled in the ways of killing and of espionage.

  The facts of this case were that Peter Moore should immediatelypostpone or give up entirely his trip to Hong Kong for reasons bestknown to the powers arrayed against him. And strangely enough, HongKong was one of the two cities in China where Peter had pressingbusiness.

  It made him furious, this knowledge that the man of Len Yang had pickedup the trail again.

  So Peter glanced up and down the deck to see if there would be anywitness to his act, and there was only one, a passenger. The Chinesewas still smiling, but by degrees that smile was becoming more evil andsour. He was perplexed at the wireless operator's furtive examinationof the promenade deck. Yet he was not kept in the dark regardingPeter's intentions much longer than it would have taken him to utterthe Chinese equivalent of Jack Robinson.

  With an energetic swoop, Peter seized him by the nearest arm and leg,and in the next breath the coolie was shooting through an awful void,tumbling head over heels like a bag of loose rice, straight for theoily bosom of Batavia's harbor!

  So much for Peter's slight knowledge of jiu-jitsu.

  He was angrily at a loss to account for the appearance of this trailer,for he had been watchful every moment since escaping from the greenwalls of that blood-tinted city, and he was positive that he had shakenoff pursuit. Yet somewhere along that trail, which ran from Len Yangto Bhamo, from Rangoon to Penang, and around the horn of Malacca, hisescape had been betrayed.

  The spies of Len Yang's master must have possessed divining rods whichplumbed the very secrets of Peter's soul.

  In Batavia Peter attended to a task long deferred. He despatched acablegram to Eileen Lorimer in Pasadena, California, advising her thathe was still on top, very much alive, and would some day, he hoped, payher a visit.

  He wondered what that gray-eyed little creature would say, what shewould do, upon receipt of the message from far-away Java. It had beenmany long months since their parting on the rain-soaked bund atShanghai. That scene was quite clear in his mind when he turned fromthe Batavia cable office to negotiate his plan with the wireless man ofthe _Persian Gulf_.

  Peter found the man willing, if not positively eager, to negotiate--acircumstance that Peter forecasted in his mind as soon as his eyes haddwelt a fleeting moment upon the pudgy white face with its greedy,small, black eyes. The man was quite willing to lose himself in thehills behind Batavia until the _Persian Gulf_ was hull down on thedeep-blue horizon, upon a consideration of gold.

  Peter could have paid his passage to Hong-Kong, and achieved his endsquite as handily as in his present role of wireless operator. But hisfingers had begun to itch again for the heavy brass transmission-key,and his ears were yearning for the drone of radio voices across theethereal void.

  It was on sailing morning that he was given definite evidence in theperson of the Chinese coolie that his zigzagged trail had been pickedup again by those alert spies of Len Yang's monarch.

  He steamed out to the high black side of the steamer in the company'spassenger-launch, gazing back at the drowsy city, quite sure that thepursuit was off, when he felt the glinting black eyes of the coolieboring into him from the tiny cabin doorway.

  His suspicions kindled slowly, and he admitted them reluctantly. Itwas the privilege of any Chinese coolie to stare at him, quite as itwas the privilege of a cat to stare at a king. But the seed ofmistrust was sown, and it was sown in fertile soil.

  Peter ignored the stare, however, until the launch puffed up alongsidethe sea-ladder, then he gave the coolie a glance pregnant withhostility and understanding.

  Taking the swaying steps three at a time, Peter hastened to hisstateroom, emerging about five minutes later in a white uniform, theuniform of the J. C. & J. service, with a little gold at the collar,bands of gold about the cuffs, and gold emblems of shooting sparks,indicative of his caste, upon either arm.

  He looked for the coolie and found him on the starboard side of thepromenade deck. The subsequent events have already been partlynarrated.