CHAPTER XV
She flew across the room to him, and pressed her hands to his cheeks.Her eyes were sparkling with tears, and her face was very pale. Onlyher lips, which were everlastingly bright, gave color to thatdistressed young face.
"Peter!" she moaned. "Oh, I was so afraid!" She lowered her voice."What is to become of us?"
He looked down at her and forced a smile to his lips.
"We who are about to die----" he began grimly.
She gave him a twisted smile as his arms tightened about her. He lovedher for that courage.
With his arm at her waist he turned. He had observed that the GrayDragon had spoken truly as regarded the armed coolie at his back.
Their captor bent forward and fixed upon them the most curious ofglances. His merciless, green eyes ran from Eileen's tumbled chestnuthair to her small, tan boots--then he regarded Peter with the sameintensity, and thereupon he seemed to be weighing the doomed lovers asa unit, or as an idea.
A devilish smile cracked his lips.
"So this is love?" he cackled. "This is the young woman to whom youhave thrown your life away--after most splendid resistance--you, Peterthe Brazen! Do you still love her?" He pointed a crooked forefingerat Eileen. "Tell me, would you desert him, in this first flush of yourmaiden love, for a handsomer man--and steal his gold, after he laid theearth at your feet? Would you do that?"
Methodically the talons stroked the sea-weed mustache.
"You are too anxious for death. You are romantic. Youth does havesuch ideas. Even I, _Chuh-seng_, have such notions. Death? Why doesyour little mind single out such simple punishment--you--lovers?Romantically you long for death, because in the next world you wouldcome together again--in the lover's eternity of heaven.
"But I have a far more imaginative scheme. Separation! How does thatappeal to you?" He leaned forward and watched them. "I have anexcellent plan. One of you shall work until the end of his life inthis mine, as beautiful captives in the past quarter century haveslaved and died; the other shall labor until the end of life in myquarries, not more than one hundred miles from Len Yang.
"Then you will not speak of death. You will struggle and you will growold long before your time, as the others have done, hoping that vainhope of again meeting. And I shall grant your wish! Years from now,when youth and the divine passion of youth have flown--when only thebitter dregs of that rapturous love remain--then you shall bereunited." He cackled humorously in his treble.
"O Buddha! How long have I waited for such an opportunity? How long?How long? Is it twenty years--or forty--or a thousand--since thatnight in the bazaar at Mangalore?" His green eyes rolled to the greenceiling. And his mood underwent another vast change, this creature ofmonster moods.
"Are you grateful to me, you two? You should be! It was I who broughtyou together--I, the cruelest man in all Asia! It must have been adivine night, that night on the great river, Peter Moore, when she cameinto your arms. Love blazed in your hearts that night; and thisgray-eyed witch said, with downcast eyes: 'I like you, Peter Moore!'What difference what she said? Any words would have dripped as muchwith love!"
He sprang to his feet, groaning, his evil countenance undergoingconvulsions, as of terrific inner spasms.
"You shall not have that!" he shouted. "You shall not have love! WhatI have done, I shall undo! You shall live apart. Love has beenrefused me; love is refused all who come within my reach! That is mydecision. Nor shall you have death. One of you to the quarry--theother to the mines. I shall be generous. You may make your choice.And _that_ is my decision!"
The lovers stared at him. The vicious plan had gripped Peter'simagination. Gone was all thought of the pistol, which lay even now inthe palm of his hand. One shot would have silenced the beast forever;but he had forgotten such things as bullets and pistols.
He could realize only that, even before their first kiss had beenexchanged, they would be torn apart.
The color had receded from Peter's skin and eyes; he looked very muchnearer forty than thirty. And Eileen was reflecting that despairingattitude. She could think only of him toiling wretchedly in the minesor quarries, striving against a fate as unfriendly, as unyielding, as awall of cold granite.
The Gray Dragon sank back, with his chest heaving. His features wereworking. The spasm had exhausted him; and the green brilliance gavehis gray skin a ghastly pallor. He lifted a small silver hammer andbrought it down upon the belly of a large bronze gong.
There was a stir behind them.
With the same cold hate in his expression as he addressed himself againto the lovers, who clung together like small children, pitiful objectsindeed in this hall of pitiless green.
"The others are coming; their fate will be yours--you lovers!"
He turned to address words in dialect to the Mongolian on his right,and in the space Eileen's breath came warmly upon Peter's ear.
"Are you armed?" she whispered.
His nod was hardly perceptible. He dropped his hand into his pocket,and at that instant his arms were pinioned. The revolver was snatchedfrom his fingers.
The malicious green eyes were staring beyond them.
Peter heard a low sob, instantly stifled. Naradia, with bloodshoteyes, was searching his face in distress. Her black hair had beenarranged in a heavy braid, which ran down her back in a glistening rope.
Kahn Meng's sad eyes lingered on Peter's for a moment, sparkling withguilt, and his face was crestfallen. Plainer than any words could havesaid, his expression cried out: "I have failed! I am sorry."
Then he advanced to the throne, taking his stand at the Gray Dragon'sside, a maneuver which was thoroughly mystifying to Peter.
The Gray Dragon seemed to ignore his presence. To Peter he said: "Yourecognize your companion of last night? The man with a legion of athousand loyal men at his back?"
Peter nodded, muttering.
The Gray Dragon waved Kahn Meng to one side. "He is my son. He is myson by my faithful wife! Do you understand that, Peter Moore?"
"Your son? And he will carry on your work?"
"Precisely that! You have expressed it neatly, Peter Moore. The GrayDragon will carry on the work of the Gray Dragon!"
The mystery of Kahn Meng was cleared aside. Fury directed at histreachery swelled in Peter's breast and burst. It was as though atorch had been applied. The flame of an ancient ancestral fire, whenmen fought for their lives and their loves with clubs, and nails, andteeth, burst into his brain and into his breast. The muscles under histunic-sleeve, which clung to his arm from the moisture of perspiration,rippled and flexed and hardened.
His face--the clean, handsome face of well-lived youth--was quitedreadful to look upon--flushed to a fiery red and distorted. His lipswere skinned back over his white teeth.
The thunder of his roar fairly shook the green quartz pillars, betweenwhich the smug, green Buddha smiled complacently, impervious to therages of foolish mankind.
Peter sprang upon the heels of that roar like a mass of wonderfullycontrolled steel at the crouching figure, a figure whose countenancewas suddenly wet and white.
He tore the carbine from the fingers of the nearest guard before thatone could collect his wits.
The Mongolian sprawled over backward, and in the second instant theheavy butt of the carbine came down with a shuddering crash upon theskull-cap of the man who would no longer rule Len Yang!
With such tremendous vigor was that blow delivered that the walnutstock, as tough as iron, shivered into splinters, which swam in thebursting brains of the victim.
Screaming, Peter swung the stock again, and again, as if he would beathis wretched victim to a pulp. Nothing but the barrel and breechmechanism remained.
His murderous intention seemed to be to remove, to obliterate for alltime, the hideous face, to wipe out by means of his brute strength thegray countenance.
Suddenly he sprang away from him with the elastic stride of a panther.Kahn Meng, the t
raitor, was next.
And as he leaped Kahn Meng slipped from his own pocket a revolver anddodged Peter's blow.
Peter staggered backward, reaching the center of the room, dragging thebloody and bent carbine barrel in a red trail. There he stopped,swaying, toppling.
Darkness was assailing him. He was sinking into a pit. And the heartwas fluttering, laboring treacherously under the poison created in hisblood by fury.
The green lights spun.
He threw the carbine barrel at the complacent Buddha, where it clankedto the marble flags. And he withered like the lotus, sprawling uponhis back with his eyes tightly shut, the color fast disappearing fromhis complexion.
And his head was reclining upon the small, tan boots of Eileen.
Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China Page 51