CHAPTER XI
Wearing a slight frown, Peter made his way through piles ofindiscriminate luggage to the port ladder, where his sampan and themaid from Macassar were waiting.
As he descended this contrivance he scanned the other sampans warily,and in one of these he saw a head which protruded from a low cabin.The sampan was a little larger than the others, and it darted in andout on the edge of the waiting ones.
The head vanished the instant Peter detected it, but it made a sharpimage in his memory, a face he would have difficulty in forgetting. Itwas a long, chalk-white face, topped by a black fedora hat--a facegarnished at the thin gray lips by a mustache, black and spikelike,resembling nothing more closely than the coal-black mustache affectedby the old-time melodrama villains.
An hour of life? Did this man have concealed under his black coat theknife which had been directed by the beast in Len Yang to seek out hisheart, to snuff out his existence, the existence of a trifling enemy?
As Peter reached the shelving at the foot of the ladder the thoughtgrew and blossomed, and the picture was not a pleasant one. The man inthe sampan, as Peter could judge by his face, would probably prove tobe a tall and muscular individual.
And then Peter caught sight of another face, but the owner of itremained above-board. This man was stout and gray, with a face moresubtly malignant. It was a red face, cut deep at the eyes, and in theregion of the large purple nose, with lines of weather or dissipation.Blue eyes burned out of the red face, faded blue eyes, that were,despite their lack of lustre, sharp and cunning.
The hand of its owner beckoned imperiously for Peter, and he shoutedhis name; and Peter was assured that in the other hand was concealedthe knife or the pistol of his doom.
With these not altogether pleasant ideas commanding his brain he jumpedinto the sampan in which the maid from Macassar was smilingly waiting.
Peter saw that his coolie was big and broad, with muscles which stoodout like ropes on his thick, sun-burned arms and legs. He gave thecoolie his instructions, as the sampan occupied by the red-faced manwas all the while endeavoring to wiggle closer. Again the man calledPeter by name, peremptorily, but Peter paid no heed.
"To Kowloon. Chop-chop!" shouted Peter. "_Cumshaw_. Savvy?" Hedisplayed in his palm three silver dollars and the coolie bent his backto the sweep, the sampan heeling out from the black ironside like athing alive.
Behind them, as this manoeuvre was executed, Peter saw the two dulyaccredited agents of the Gray Dragon fall in line. But Peter hadselected with wisdom. The coolie verified with the passage of everymoment the power his ropy muscles implied. Inch by inch, and yard byyard, they drew, away from the pursuing sampans.
Then something resembling the scream of an enraged parrot sang overtheir heads, and he instinctively ducked, turning to see from which ofthe sampans this greeting had come.
A faint puff of light-blue smoke sailed down the wind between the two.Which one? It was difficult to say.
They were beginning to leave the pursuit decidedly in the lurch now.Peter's coolie, with his long legs braced far apart on therunning-boards, bent his back, swaying like a mighty metronome fromport to starboard, from starboard to port, whipping the water into anangry, milky foam.
The pursuers crept up and fell back by fits and starts; slowly thedistance widened.
The girl crouched down in the cabin, and Peter, with his automatic inhis hand, waited for another tell-tale puff of blue smoke.
Finally this puff occurred, low on the deck of the larger craft. Thebullet plunked into the water not two feet from the sweep, and thecoolie, inspired by the knowledge that he, too, was inextricablywrapped up in this race of life and death, sweated, and shouted in thesavage "Hi! Ho! Hay! Ho!" of the coolie who dearly loves his work.
Satisfied as to the origin of both bullets, Peter took careful aim atthe yellow sampan and emptied his magazine, slipping another clip ofcartridges into the oblong hole as he watched for the result.
The yellow sampan veered far from her course, and a sweep floated onthe surface some few yards aft. Then the sampan lay as if dead. Butthe other plunged on after.
This exciting race and the blast of Peter's automatic now attracted theearnest attention of a gray little river gunboat, just down fromup-stream, and inured to such incidents as this.
A one-pound shell snarled overhead, struck the water a hundred yardsfurther on, near the Kowloon shore, and sent up a foaming white pillar.
The pier at Kowloon loomed close and more close. It was unlikely thatthe gunboat would follow up the shot with another, and in this guess,Peter, as the French say, "had reason."
The fires under the gunboat's boilers were drawn, and there was no timefor the launching of a cutter.
A great contentment settled down upon Peter's heart when he saw thatthe oncoming sampan could not reach the pier until he and his chargewere out of sight, or out of reach, at least.
He examined his watch. The gods were with him. It lacked threeminutes of train-time.
It was only a hope that he and the girl would be safe on board theCanton train before the red-faced man could catch up.
The sampan rubbed the green timbers of the Kowloon landing stage.Peter tossed up the girl's luggage in one large armful, lifted her bythe armpits to the floor of the pier, and relieved himself hastily offour dollars (Mexican), by which the grunting coolie was gratefully,and for some few hours, richer.
They dashed to the first-class compartment, and Peter dragged the girlin beside him.
"To Canton, too?" she inquired in surprise.
Peter nodded. He slammed the door. A whistle screamed, and thestation of Kowloon, together with the glittering waters of the bluebay, and the white city of Hong Kong, across the bay, all began moving,first slowly, then with acceleration, as the morning express for Cantonslid out on the best-laid pair of rails in southern China.
Had his red-faced pursuer caught up in time? Peter prayed not. He wastingling with the thrill of the chase; and he turned his attention tothe small maiden who sat cuddled close to his side, with hands foldeddemurely before her, imprisoning between them the overlap of hisflaunting blue sarong.
"We are safe, brave one?" she was desirous of knowing.
He patted her hand reassuringly, and she caught at it, lowering hergreen-blue eyes to the dusty floor, and sighing.
Peter might have paused in his rapid meditations long enough to beaware that, here he was, dropped--plump--into the center of anotherring of romance; nothing having separated him from his last love buttwo misdirected revolver shots, the warning boom of a gunboat's bowcannon, and a mad chase across Victoria Bay.
Holding hands breaks no known law; yet Peter was not entirely awarethat he was committing this act, as his eyes, set and hard, stared outof the window at the passing pagodas with their funny turned-up roofs.
His mind was working on other matters. Perhaps for the first timesince the _Persian Gulf_ had dropped anchor to the white sand ofVictoria Harbor's bottom, he began to realize the grim seriousness ofRomola Borria's warning. He was hemmed in. He was helpless.
An hour to live! An hour alive! But he was willing to make the verybest of that hour.
Absently, then by degrees not so absently, he alternately squeezed andloosened the small, cool hands of the maid from Macassar. And shereturned the pressure with a timid confidence that made him stop andconsider for a moment something that had entirely slipped his mindduring the past few days.
Was he playing quite squarely with Eileen Lorimer? Had he beenobserving perhaps the word but not the letter of his self-assumed oath?On the other hand, mightn't it be possible that Eileen Lorimer hadceased to care for him? With time and the miles stretching betweenthem, wasn't it quite possible that she had shaken herself, recognizedher interest in him as one only of passing infatuation, and, perhapsalready, had given her love to some other?
A silly little rhyme of years ago occurred to him:
Love me close! Love me tight! _B
ut_ Love me when I'm out of sight!
And perhaps because Peter had fallen into one of his reasoning moods,he asked himself whether it was fair to carry the flirtation anyfurther with the girl snuggled beside him. He knew that the hearts ofOriental girls open somewhat more widely to the touch of affection thantheir Western sisters. And it was not in the nature of women of theEast to indulge extensively in the Western form of idle flirtation.The lowering of the eyelids, the flickering of a smile, had meaning anddepth in this land.
Was this girl flirting with him, or was hers a deeper interest? Thatwas the question! He took the latter view.
And because he knew, from his own experience, that the hearts of loverssometimes break at parting, he finally relinquished the cool, smallhands and thrust his own deep into his pockets.
There was no good reason, apart from his own selfishness, why he shouldgive a pang of any form to the trustful young heart which fluttered soclose at his side.
"Where does your aged grandmother live, small one?" he asked herbriskly, in the most unsentimental tones imaginable.
"I have the address here, _birahi_," she replied, diving into her satinblouse and producing a slip of rice paper upon which was scrawled anumber of dead-black symbols of the Chinese written language.
"A rickshaw man can find the place, of course," he said. "Now, lookinto my eyes, small one, and listen to what I say."
"I listen closely, _birahi_," said the small one.
"I want you to stop calling me _birahi_. I am not your love, can neverbe your love, nor can you ever be mine."
"But why, _bi_--my brave one?"
"Because--because, I am a wicked one, an _orang gila_, a destroyer ofgood, a man of no heart, or worse, a black one."
"Oh, Allah, what lies!" giggled the maid.
"Yes, and a liar, too," declared Peter venomously, permitting his fairfeatures to darken with the blackest of looks. Was she flirting withhim? "A man who never told the truth in his life. A bad, bad man," hefinished lamely.
"But why are you telling such things to me, my brave one?" came theprovocative answer.
She _was_ flirting with him.
Nevertheless, he merely grunted and relapsed again into the form ofmeditative lethargy which of late had grown habitual if not popularwith him.
A little after noon the train thundered into the narrow, dirty streetsof China's most flourishing city, geographically, the New Orleans ofthe Celestial Empire; namely, Canton, on the Pearl River.
As Peter and his somewhat amused young charge emerged into the streethe cast a furtive glance back toward the station, and was dumfounded toglimpse, not two yards away, the man with the red, deeply marked face.His blue eyes were ablaze, and he advanced upon Peter threateningly.
It was a situation demanding decisive, direct action. Peter, hastilyinstructing the girl to hold two rickshaws, leaped at his pursuer withdoubled fists, even as the man delved significantly into his hip-pocket.
Peter let him have it squarely on the blunt nub of his red jaw, aimingas he sprang.
His antagonist went down in a cursing heap, sprawling back with thelook in his washed-out eyes of a steer which has been hit squarely inthe center of the brow.
He fell back on his hands and lay still, dazed, muttering, andstruggling to regain the use of his members.
Before he could recover Peter was up and away, springing lightly intothe rickshaw. They turned and darted up one narrow, dirty alley into anarrower and dirtier one, the two coolies shouting in blasphemouschorus to clear the way as they advanced.
After a quarter of an hour of twisting and splashing and turning, thecoolies stopped in front of a shop of clay-blue stone.
Paying off the coolies, Peter entered, holding the door for the girl,and sliding the bolt as he closed it after her.
He found himself in the presence of a very old, very yellow, and verywrinkled Chinese woman, who smiled upon the two of them perplexedly,nodding and smirking, as her frizzled white pigtail flopped andfluttered about in the clutter on the shelves behind her.
It was a shop for an antique collector to discover, gorged with objectsof bronze, of carved sandalwood, of teak, grotesque and very old, ofshining red and blue and yellow beads, of old gold and old silver.
On the low, narrow counter she had placed a shallow red tray filledwith pearls; imitations, no doubt, but exquisite, perfect, of allshapes; bulbular, pear, button, and of most enticing colors.
But the small girl was babbling, and a look of the most profoundsurprise came slowly into the old woman's face. A little pearl-liketear sparkled in either of her old eyes, and she gathered thischerished grand-daughter from far away Macassar into her thin arms.
At that sight Peter felt himself out of place, an intruder, aninterloper. The scene was not meant for his eyes. He was an alien ina strange land.
As he hesitated, conjuring up words of parting with his little friend,he gasped. Peering through the thick window-pane in the door was thered-faced man, and his look sent a curdle of fear into Peter's braveheart. Would he shoot through the pane?
The girl, too, saw. She chattered a long moment to her wrinkledgrandmother, and this latter leaped to the door and shot a secondstrong bolt. She pointed excitedly to a rear door, low and green, setdeep in the blue stone.
Peter leaped toward it. Half opening this, he saw a tiny gardensurrounded by low, gray walls. He paused. The maid from Macassar wasbehind him. She followed him out and closed the door.
"_Birahi_," she said in her tinkling voice, and with gravity far inadvance of her summers, "we must part now--forever?"
He nodded, as he searched the wall for a likely place to jump. "It isthe penalty of friendship, _birahi_. You do not mind if I call you_birahi_ in our last moment together?"
"No. No."
"I am curious, so curious, my brave one, about the red-faced man, andthe one with the black coat. But we women are meant for silence._Birahi_, I have played no part--I have been like a dead lily--aburden. Perhaps, if you are in great danger----"
"I am in great danger, small one. The red toad wants my life, and youmust detain him."
"I will talk to him! But the others, the black-coated one--what ofthem? They would like the feel of your blood on their hands, too!"
Peter nodded anxiously. He was thinking of Romola Borria.
"I will do anything," declared the maid from Macassar patiently.
"Has your grandmother a sampan, a trustworthy coolie?"
"Aie, _birahi_! She is rich!"
"Then have that coolie be at the Hong Kong landing stage with hissampan at midnight. Have him wait until morning. If I do not come bydawn he will return immediately to Canton. By dawn, if I am not there,it will mean----"
"Death?" The small voice was tremulous.
Peter nodded.
"If the _fokie_ returns with that message, you will write a shortnote----"
"To one you love?"
"To one I love. In America. The name is Eileen Lorimer; the address,Pasadena, California. You will say simply, 'Peter Moore is dead.'"
"Ah! I must not say that. It will break her heart! But you must gonow, my brave one. I will talk to the red toad!"
The green door closed softly; and Peter was left to work out theproblem of his escape, which he did in an exceedingly short space oftime. Even as he took the fence in a single bound he fancied he couldhear the panting of the red-faced man at his heels.
He found himself in a crooked alleyway, which forked out of sight at anear-by bend. Speeding to this point, he came out upon a somewhatbroader thoroughfare. He looked hastily for a rickshaw but none was insight.
So he ran blindly on, resorting at intervals to his old trick ofdoubling back, to confuse his pursuers. He did this so well thatbefore long he had lost his sense of direction, and the sun having gonefrom the sight of man behind a mass of dark and portentous clouds.
At length he came to the City of the Dead, and sped on past theivy-covered wall, circling, doubl
ing back, and giving what pursuitthere might have been a most tortuous trail to follow.
He was hooted at and jeered at by coolies and shrieking children, buthe ran on, putting the miles behind him, and finally dropped into aslow trot, breathing like a spent race-horse.
At the pottery field he found a rickshaw, estimated that he still hadtime to spare to make the Hong Kong train, and was driven to thestation. Dead or alive, he had promised to deliver himself to RomolaBorria at the Hong Kong Hotel at seven.
Visions of the malignant face of his red-featured enemy were constantlyin his mind.
But he breathed more easily as the train chugged out of the grim, graystation. He sank back in the seat, letting his thoughts wander wherethey would, and beginning to feel, as the miles were unspun, that hewas at least one jump ahead of the red death which had threatened himsince his departure from the friendly shelter of the _Persian Gulf_.
Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China Page 29