Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China

by George F. Worts

  CHAPTER III

  Anthony and the twins called for Peter as soon as they could tearthemselves away from the many fascinating incidents attendant uponcoming to an anchorage in the Whang-poo-Kiang.

  It was late in the afternoon when the first company tug came down-riverfrom Shanghai for passengers. And it was nearly dusk, the golden-brownevening of China, when they were decanted upon the public landing stageat the International Concession.

  Anthony was for going directly to the Hotel Astor for dinner, but atPeter's suggestion he and the twins boarded a street-car for the rideto Bubbling Wells.

  Peter stood for a number of moments in indecision as the Bubbling Wellstram went up the bund with the slow flood of victorias, rickshaws, andwheelbarrows. It was now about seven o'clock, with the sun hiddenunder a horizon of dull bronze. Street lights were coming on,twinkling in a long silver serpent along the broad thoroughfare, risingin a grotesque hump over the Soochow bridge, and becoming lost in theAmerican quarter.

  He would meet Anthony and the twins in the dining-room. Whoever gotthere first would wait. He expected to be there long before his threefriends came back from Bubbling Wells.

  A rickshaw coolie was wheedling him at his elbow but he paid noattention. His eyes were searching the street. It took him severalseconds to reconcile himself to the fleeting apparition. What was thisgirl doing in Shanghai?

  The rickshaw had passed, proceeding at unabated speed in the directionof Native City.

  The rickshaw boy was still making guttural sounds, softly plucking athis sleeve. The shafts of the rickshaw were close to his feet. ButPeter was still undecided.

  "Allee right," said Peter, briskly. "French concession."

  That was the direction in which the other rickshaw was headed.

  He climbed aboard, and they veered out into the north-bound traffic.The girl in the rickshaw was about one block in the lead, and had nointention evidently of accelerating her coolie's pace or of turningback. She had left all decision to him, and his decision was to askher a few questions.

  His coolie trotted heavily, looking neither to the right nor left, withhis pigtail snapping from side to side, as his head bent low.

  "Follow _lan-si_ veil--savvy?"

  "My savvy," returned the coolie, heading toward the narrow alley offilth and sputtering oil _dongs_, breathing the odor of refuse, ofcooking food.

  Peter's heart was beginning to respond to the excitement. Did she havesome message to convey to him that she could not trust to the opennessof the bund at the jetty?

  Suddenly the rickshaw ahead swerved sharply to the right into an alleythat was perfectly dark. Its single illumination was a pale-blue lightwhich burned before a low building set apart from the others at the farend.

  Here the first rickshaw stopped. A ghostly figure seemed to float tothe ground. There was a clink of coins. A door opened, letting out awide shaft of orange light which spattered across the paving,flattening itself against the grim wall of the building across the way.

  Peter caught the bronze glint of wires on the roof under a pale moon.

  He knocked sharply on the door, and stood to one side. It was a habithe had learned from long experience--that trick of stepping to one sidewhen he knocked at a suspicious door. The door moved outward a fewinches. A long, yellow face, with a thick, projecting under lip,peered out. Peter pushed the man aside and entered.

  He found himself in a low corridor of smoked wood, with fat candlesdisposed along the walls at intervals of several yards, on a narrow,lacquered rail. One of three doors was open.

  A match was struck, the head glowing in a semi-circle of sputteringiridescence before the wood itself kindled. The hand holding the matchwas trembling; the weak flame fluttered to such an extent that he wasdenied momentarily a glimpse of the owner of the hand.

  A whisper was conveying an order to him. "Please shut the door, Mr.Moore."

  He reached for the door and closed it firmly in the face of the man whohad let him into this place.

  When he turned, the trembling hand was applying the match flame to thewick of an open lamp, a rather ornate _dong_. As the flame rosehigher, casting its steady, mild luminance, he caught a glitter ofmetal, of polished rubber; one end of the room was almost filled withmachinery.

  "Romola Borria!"

  She seemed to have undergone a great change. The beautiful face thathad lured him once into the jaws of death was dominated now by awistful and tender sadness, as though this girl had gone through anepoch of self-torture since they had last been together.

  Yet she was still beautiful; it was as if her beauty had been refinedin an intense fire. Her mouth was sad, her great brown eyes glowedwith an inexpressible sadness, and her face, once oval and proud,seemed narrower, whiter, and, by many degrees, of a finer mold.

  She was examining him broodingly; there was a reluctant timidity in hereyes; it was such a look as you may see years afterward in the womanyou once have cast aside for some other, perhaps not quite so worthy.

  "Well, you have found me, Peter," she said in a faint and tired voice,coming slowly toward him.

  "Yes," he admitted, lamely: "I saw you passing the jetty. Ifollowed--naturally. I have just come from America."

  "Oh." Her voice expressed no surprise. "You came for me, Peter?"

  "I thought you were dead," he confessed.

  "Well, I am a hard one to kill!" A tiny smile flickered across herfine lips. "You are not married--to Eileen?"

  "No--and never!" he said dully.

  "But you must be in love! You are always in love--with some one."

  "I am in love with no one."

  "Not even----"

  "I am in love with no one."

  "Nor am I," said Romola Borria quietly. It seemed to come from her asa vast and reluctant confession. "I loved only one man, and my lovefor him is quite dead. If I should rake over the embers--oh, but Ihave raked them over, Peter, many, many times--and I have found not onesingle small ember glowing! When love dies, you know, it requires agreat fire to rekindle it. Oh, I have suffered!"

  "He--is dead?"

  She smiled again, rather ironically. "Can a man live with a bullet inhis heart?"

  "I--I saw. I thought--but what does it matter what I thought?" He wastrying to inject some of his old spirit into his voice. It was ratherdifficult, this business of laughing at the funeral of love. "Romola,you are more beautiful!"

  "I have suffered," she said, in the same restrained voice.

  He turned away with a shrug. He, too, had suffered, but in a somewhatdifferent light. He was examining with a professional eye the heap ofapparatus which was arranged in splendid order along the back of thesmall room.

  "I am studying. You see, Peter," she explained, in the same ratherrecriminatory tones, "I was rather fond of you at one time----"

  "Romola, please----"

  "And because it was your profession I became interested in it. I heardthe message you sent last night--to--to the place on Jen Kee Road. Iwas quite worried for a while."

  "That was why you happened along the bund about the time the boat cameup-river?"

  "Perhaps." She smiled vaguely.

  "You wanted to find out if I still cared enough for you to----"

  "Follow me? Yes, Peter; I think that was why."

  "Then you didn't know I was on my way to China?"

  "No, Peter, I knew nothing."

  "Aren't you connected with my good friend, the man with the sea-lionmustaches, in Len Yang?"

  Romola gave a short gasp. "I never was connected with him."

  "But you told me you were--back there on the _Persian Gulf_!"

  She shook her head slowly, with a gentle firmness.

  "No. I did not tell you that. I have seen him; yes. But I was neverin his employ. It was Emiguel Borria, my late and--may I say?--myunlamented husband, who made me do those things. Peter----"

  Her attitude seemed to undergo some sort of subtle change, as if s
hewere bitterly amused. "You say you are not in love. Then what of thelittle golden-haired girl--the two little golden-haired girls--you leftthis afternoon on the bund?"

  "They and the young man are passengers on the _King of Asia_. Ibrought them ashore to give them an insight into China-as-it-really-is."

  "They are in very capable hands, then, Peter. Aren't you running somerisk, though? Isn't there some chance that the men in the Jen Kee Roadplace may take it into their heads----"

  "I am on my word of honor, Romola. I have come back to China, not tostart trouble, but simply because--well, why are you in China?"

  "Because I haven't the will to leave, perhaps. I stay here in the samespirit that a man or a woman lingers before a dreadful oil painting,like the shark picture of Sorolla; it is terrible, but it isfascinating. I cannot leave. If I did, I would come back, as you comeback, time after time. Is that why you've come back?"

  "Exactly."

  "And you imagine you're running no risk with the two golden-hairedmaids in tow?"

  Peter shook his head thoughtfully. "Perhaps I shouldn't have exposedthem to danger. But they were determined, and it's partly to help theyoung man. Anthony is a plain American business man. He's in lovewith the youngest. And she, a hero worshipper. He wants todemonstrate himself."

  She interrupted in a whisper. "Peter, tell me, why is it? What haveyou ever done? What do you say? Why--why is it?"

  Peter the Brazen was looking at her blankly.

  She made a gesture of resignation with her beautiful white hands.

  "Well, never mind. Tell me more about Anthony."

  "Anthony believes that if he can demonstrate his valor to Peggy, shewill come to his arms. He really is a fine, upstanding fellow. I hadintended bringing them to Ching Tong's place out Bubbling Wells way,harmless enough and watched by the police of nine nations. Ching Tong,being a friend who will put himself out for me, will play the part of avery bad villain. Anthony's revolver is loaded with blanks. Mineisn't, but that's just my cowardly nature. You can never tell whatmight turn up, you know."

  "Naturally. Go on."

  "I intend to have Ching Tong stage a very realistic fight down in hiscellar, in which Anthony can overpower eight or ten Chink giants,escape out of the window with the fainting Peggy in his arms,and--and----"

  "Simple enough," admitted Romola, with a mild frown. She drew him to abroad, low bench. "Somehow," she went on, "your idea rather appeals tome, too. I liked Anthony's looks--what I saw of him. And I ratherliked the two little girls--twins, aren't they?"

  Peter nodded. "The heavenly twins!"

  "I think I'd quite agree with that plan, Peter, if you didn't happen tobe in such disrepute in this neighborhood. You must realize that theGray Dragon's men are watching you. Of course, you didn't recognizeyour rickshaw coolie. He is one of the Gray Dragon's men--naturally.Don't you think you are exposing those two nice girls unnecessarily todanger?"

  Peter lighted two cigarettes, and passed one of them to Romola. Sheaccepted it with an air of abstraction and puffed slowly, blowing out athin stream of pale smoke.

  "But circumstances are changed now. You see, I am on thefence--perfectly safe."

  "They are still anxious for you to come with them?"

  "That's it. They sent a representative last trip all the way to SanFrancisco."

  "Of course you refused? Peter----" Her soft, white hand was restingon his; her red lips were very close to his face. "Why don't you jointhem? You and I!"

  "You and I?"

  She nodded earnestly.

  Peter drew back a few inches. "I said 'no' when you asked me thatbefore. No, I'll have nothing to do with that band--never! Going outinto the wilderness, up into the mountains on some of their riskyerrands--with you--might have appealed to me. Not now!"

  "Peter, I am afraid I still love you!"

  "And yet, Romola, I'm not afraid of falling in love with you--again!But let's not speak of joining that man in Len Yang. What you'reoffering is--too tempting. I might give in! You are altogether toofascinating!"

  "Am I?"

  "I've told you that before."

  "Then you will go up-river with me?"

  "No--never! Why, you almost make me suspect that you're still in thatbeast's employ."

  "I never was. I told you that."

  "You've said many things that didn't stand the acid, Romola."

  He stood up, looking down at her with whimsical tenderness. She wasvery beautiful, and when she took on that forlorn air she had theappearance of a helpless, small girl. He wondered if he would everregret his refusal.

  "Ching Tong must have time to make arrangements, and I have a dinnerengagement at the Astor House with Anthony and the heavenly twins.Can't you and I have tea to-morrow afternoon?"

  Romola came to him and put her two hands on his shoulders. "No," shesaid. "We must not be seen together. It may mean danger for you.I've been thinking over your plan to convert Anthony into anadventurer. Why not bring them all here. I have seven servants, allChinese, and they would give their lives for me. Let me see----" Shebit her upper lip thoughtfully.

  "You can tell them that this place is--well, the heart of the Chinesesmuggling trade. It's ridiculous, but it will appeal to them. I willdress up as a Chinese woman--oh, I've done it dozens of times in thepast--and I shall be very mysterious. That will seem much moreromantic to Peggy than a mere opium den. And it will be safer. I knowChing Tong's shop. It might do, if you were an ordinary person, Peter,but such an adventure should be provided with at least five times asmany exits! I have them here."

  Peter looked at her doubtingly, although the idea appealed to him.Outriding his admiration of the idea, however, was a recurrence of hisold impression of Romola Borria. He knew that he never had been amatch for her cunning, her esoteric knowledge of China.

  "I have plenty of make-up pots. I'll paint up these _fokies_ to looklike bandits! I'll have knives in their belts. And I'll plan therehearsal before you come. Everything will be arranged." She seemedto hesitate. "You--you won't bring that dreadful automatic revolver ofyours loaded--will you?"

  Peter smiled faintly.