Suddenly the big Chinaman flung up his right hand, and I saw the dull gleam of the yard-long blade. Then, still running, he threw, and I could not help shouting; though, of course, no one could have heard me in the din that was now going on.
“Missed him!” I yelled; for the big knife had gone slap over Johnson’s shoulder, missing him by no more than an inch or two. Evidently the big Chinaman had understood suddenly the plan by which the runner hoped to escape. A number of the other pursuers must also have discovered it on the instant, for there came an irregular ripple of revolver firing; but gun practise is apt to be off the target, when both parties are running.
Then Johnson was at the quay side.
“Safe!” I yelled again, as I saw him jump. “Good man, Johnson! Good man!
“I guess, Miggett, that’s cheap at a thousand dollars,” I told him.
There was firing from the dense and increasing bunch of men at the waterside; and from all down the street there was a sound of running feet, as hundreds of American citizens ran up to discover the wherefore-ness of so much powder and noise.
A city marshal (a big Irishman by the looks of him) raced by limberly, white-helmeted and superb in summer uniform. I saw him laying about him, cheerfully, on the heads and shoulders (chiefly the heads) of a num-ber of interested and unoffending citizens, who appeared, however, to consider his attentions as the natural order of things.
There was a deal of further gun firing from the quay front; but already I could see the racing launch, away out in the bay, half a mile or more from the quay.
Up the street, there was a crash of horses’ hoofs, as a squad of mounted marshals swept bang around a corner. They roared past the shop — big Irishmen, most of them, joyous and holding their guns with a pleasurable expectancy.
“Great sport, Hual Miggett,” I said, “over one solitary pigtail!”
The crowd on the water front was fading — literally vanishing; for the mounted marshals are so inexpressibly and cheerfully effective. And, after all, a bullet fired with a smile ... almost as one might say, as a jest, is quite as deadly as those dispatched in a more serious spirit.
I glanced at Hual Miggett, and wondered what he was thinking. Possibly quite as much of the yellow god, which had caused all this trouble, as the torpid, cheerless “female” by my side.
“I guess we’d better depart in the confusion,” I added. “Come along, sweet maid.”
We moved out of the shop, pleasingly unobserved, and reached my ship within the space of two uneventful minutes.
November 1.
We sail tonight, and I went across to see Hual Miggett this morning. I thought that I deserved the reward of virtue; for I had a genuine hankering for that goat god. But hear the essential meanness of the Mixed Breed.
I found him very glum; but I wasted no pity on him.
“How much for this?” I asked, slapping the goat god on its capable, bronze shoulder.
“A t’ousand dollars, Cap’n Brother,” he said.
“A thousand cents,” I answered and walked towards the door.
“Eight hundred dollars, Cap’n Brother,” he called out. “I lose many dollars to you, gladly, for your great goodness to me, Cap’n Brother.”
“I don’t want you to lose,” I said. “We’ll drop all talk of what I’ve done, or haven’t done. You’re not able to pay me, anyway, even if I’d let you. I’ll give you your thousand for the thing, simply because I want it, and I won’t have you patting yourself on that weevily mean back of yours, and thinking you’ve done me a favour. This thing is worth not a cent more than five or six hundred. Here are the notes. Give me a receipt, or you’ll be swearing I’ve not paid you, next. Oh, don’t talk. I’m just a bit sick of you!” I told him.
He tried to excuse himself; but I simply held out the notes and waited for the receipt. Then, without bothering to fall on his neck and say good-bye, I walked out of the shop, with the old bronze goat god tucked under my arm.
Anyway, I thought to myself, it will be something to remember this little affair by.
Down in my cabin, however, having locked the door, I worked the secret opening in the base of the god, and then, gently and tenderly, I slid from the hollow interior the amber god (the Kuch) which I had taken from the mummy-case and hidden inside the Goat god, when I sent Hual Miggett for a suit of his son’s clothing.
I keep wondering, rather pleasantly, what the mean-souled Mixture thought when he found the yellow god had vanished. Possibly superstition (being no longer deadened by the drug of greed) has helped him to some impossible explanation. In any case, he could not very well (after his gorgeous yarn of the Presi-dent’s pigtail) enlarge upon his loss to me. His glumness yesterday and today is, perhaps, understandable. The stealing of the amber god cannot have proved a profitable investment of time or labour, not to mention money.
As I look at the wonderful carving of the amber atrocity, I cannot help feeling enormously satisfied with my course of action in this matter. Hual Miggett deserves punishment for a number of undesirable things. Moreover, like Hual Miggett, I also know a collector who will pay a good, hefty price for the little yellow monster.
THE RED HERRING
S.S. Calypso,
August 10.
We docked this morning, and the Customs gave us
the very devil of a turn-out; but they found nothing.
“We shall get you one of these days, Captain Gault,” the head of the searchers told me. “We’ve gone through you pretty carefully; but I’m not satisfied. We’ve had information that I could swear was sound, but where you’ve hidden the stuff, I’ll confess, stumps me out.”
“Don’t be so infernally ready to give the dog the bad name, and then add insult to injury by trying to hang him,” I said. “You know you’ve never yet caught me trying to shove stuff through.”
The head searcher laughed.
“Don’t rub it in, Captain,” he said. “That’s just it! Take that last little flutter of yours, with the pigeons, and the way you made money both ways, both on the hens and on the diamonds; and all the rest of your devil’s tricks. You’ve got the nerve! You ought to be able to retire by now!”
“I’m afraid I’m neither so fortunate nor so clever as you seem to think, Mr. Anderson,” I told him. “You had no right to kill my hens, and I made your man apologise for his abominable suggestion about the pigeons!”
“You did so, Cap’n,” he said. “But we’ll get you yet. And I’ll eat my hat if you get a thing through the gates this time, even if we’ve missed finding it now. We’re bound to get you at last. Good morning, Captain!”
“Good morning, Mr. Anderson!” I said. And he went ashore.
There you have the position. I’ve got £6000 worth of pearls in a remarkable little hiding-place of my own aboard; and somehow word has been passed to the Customs, and it’s going to make the getting of them ashore a deuced difficult thing, that will take some planning. All my old methods, they’re up to. Besides, I never try the same plan twice, if I can help it; for it is altogether too risky.
And a lot of them are not so practicable as they appear at first. That carrier pigeon idea, for instance, was both good and bad; but Mr. Brown and I lost nearly a thousand pounds’ worth of stones through it; for there’s a class of oaf with a gun who would shoot his own mother-in-law if she passed him on wings. Perhaps he’d not be really to blame in such circumstances; but he is certainly to blame when he looses off at a “carrier.” Any shooting man should be able to recognise them from the common or garden variety. But I fancy the aforementioned oaf does the recognising cheerfully, and shoots promptly. Some of these gentlemen must have made a haul! That was why we never loosed the pigeons before reaching port. We never meant to trust all that value in the air, except as a last resort.
Anyway, Mr. Anderson and his lot have got it in for me; and I shall have a job to get the stuff safely into the right hands by the 20th, which is the date we sail.
August 11.
I have hit on what I believe is rather a smart notion, and I began to develop it today.
When I went up to the dock gates this morning, with my bag, I was met by a very courteous and superior person of the Customs Department, who invited me to step into his office. Here, I was again invited into quite a snug little cubicle, and there two searchers made a very thorough examination of me (very thorough indeed!), also of my bag; but, as you may imagine, there was nothing dutiable within a hundred yards of me — that is, nothing of mine.
At the conclusion of the search, after the superior and affable personage had departed, pleasingly apologetic, I was left to acquire clothing and mental equilibrium in almost equal quantities, for I can tell you I was a bit wrathy. And then — perhaps it was just because my mental pot was so a-boil — up simmered the idea; and I began straight away on the aforementioned developing.
By the time that I had completed my dressing, I had learned not only that the names of the two official searchers were Wentlock and Ewiss, but also the numbers of their respective families, and other pleasing details. I dispensed tact and bonhomie with liberality, and eventually suggested an adjournment to the place across the road, for a drink.
But my two new (very new) friends shook their heads at this. The “boss” might see them. It would not do. I nodded a complete comprehension. Would they be off duty tonight? They would, at 6:30 prompt.
“Meet me at the corner at seven o’clock,” I said. “I’ve nothing to do and no one to talk to. We’ll make an evening of it.”
They smiled cheerfully and expansively, and agreed — well, as only such people do agree!
August 18.
The dinner came off, and was in every way a success, both from their point and my point of view. And I think I may say the same of the two dinners that followed on the 15th and the 17th. That was yesterday.
It is now the evening of the 18th, and I’m jotting down what happened, in due order.
It was last night, at our third little dinner together (which for a change I had aboard), that we got really friendly over some of my liqueur whisky. And I saw the chance had come to ask them straight out if they were open to make a fiver each.
The two men looked at each other for a few moments without speaking.
“Well, Sir, it all depends,” said Wentock, the older of the two.
“On what?” I asked.
“We’ve our place to think of,” he said. “It’s no use asking us to risk anything, if that’s what you mean, Sir.”
“There’s no risk at all,” I told him. “At least, I mean the risk is so infinitesimal as hardly to count at all. What I want you to do is simply this. Tonight, if you agree, I’ll hand you over this bag I’ve got here with me. Take it down to the gates tomorrow, and put it somewhere handy in the office. When I come off from the ship, to come ashore through the gates, I shall be carrying another bag, exactly the same as this in every detail. You see, I’ve got two of them, made exactly alike.
“Well, I shall be stopped, as usual, at the gates, and taken into the office, and I and my bag will be pretty well turned inside out again; which I can tell you I’m getting sick of, only your people have got it in for me, pretty savage.”
The two searchers grinned at this.
“I ain’t surprised, Cap’n,” said Wentock, “with a reputation like yours. Why, they say as you could retire this minute, with the brass you’ve made, running in stuff without our smelling out the way you do it.”
“Don’t be so infernally flattering,” I told him. “You mustn’t believe half you hear. And I don’t want you to get imagining I do this kind of thing regularly. It’s just a few trifling little trinkets I want to pass in, as a favor to a friend. Not a habit of mine; but just once in a way.”
Both the men burst into roars of laughter. They evidently considered this a great joke.
“Well,” I said, “let me tell you just what I want you to do.
“When I go into the office, one of you always takes my bag from me. Well, I simply want you to substitute for it the one I shall give you tonight, and which, of course, you can search then as hard as you like, before the boss. Then, when he goes out, hand me back the unsearched one, and I shall just clear off with it, and the trick is done. No risk for you at all. You’ve simply to take this bag I have here, with a few shore clothes in it, up to the office tomorrow. When I appear, and am searched, you substitute this Number 1 bag for Number 2, which I shall bring in; and you search this Number 1 as fiercely as you like before the boss. Then, when I am let out you hand me Number 2, and I go. As for Number 1, I’ll make you a present of it, as a little souvenir. Now say ‘yes,’ and I’ll hand you the fivers now.”
Wentock said “yes” promptly, for the two of them, and I pulled out my pocket-book and handed then each a five-pound note.
“No,” said Wentock quickly. “Gold, if you please, Cap’n. Them things is too easy traced.”
I laughed, and passed him across ten sovereigns, and took back my notes.
“You’re a smart man, Wentock,” I said.
“Have to be, Sir, in our business,” he replied, grinning in his cheerfully unscrupulous fashion.
August 19. a.m.
I sail tomorrow; so if I don’t manage to get the stuff through today, I shall be in a hole; for I promised it faithfully, for not later than the 20th.
Later. p.m.
When I took my bag down to the gates today to go out, it can be easily imagined that I felt a bit of tension. Six thousand pounds is a lot to risk, apart from the possibility of serious trouble if one is nailed.
However, it had to be done; so I went up to the gates, trying to look as cheerful as usual, and made my accustomed protest against searching, to the genial and diplomatic officer who met me, and invited me to my expected séance in the cubicle.
As I was entering the doorway of the outer office, a messenger boy came up to me, and touched his cap.
“Are you Cap’n Gault, Sir?” he asked me.
“I am,” I said.
“I just been down to the ship, Sir,” he explained. “They said you was just off through the gates, and I might catch you if I hurried. I’m to deliver this letter to you, Sir, and to tell you there ain’t no answer. Good morning, Sir.”
“Good morning,” I said, and tipped him a quarter. Then, as I entered the office with my polite official, I opened the letter.
What I found therein could hardly be supposed to decrease my feelings of tension. The note was printed, crudely, so as to disguise the handwriting. It ran exactly thus —
“Captain Gault,
“S.S. Calypso.
“Sir,
“Be advised, and do not attempt to smuggle your stuff through the Customs. You will be sold if you do, and some one who cannot help a friendly feeling for you would regret not to have given you this chance to draw back. Pay the duty, even if you lose money. The authorities know far more than you can think. They know absolutely that you bought the ‘material’ you wish to smuggle through, and they know the price you paid, which was £5997. That is a lot of money to risk losing, apart from fines and imprisonment. So be warned, and pay the duty in the ordinary way. I can do no more for you than this.
“A WellWisher.”
Now, that was what might really be called a nerve-racker to read, and just after I had entered the very place that the warning begged me to avoid, at least, in what I might call a “smuggling capacity.” I could not possibly back out now, for suspicion would be inevitable; also, my plans were all arranged.
I went straight on into the place, looking more comfortable than I felt. I took a quick look round the inner office, and saw the end of a bag, half hidden, under a table. That, at any rate, looked as if Ewiss and Wentock meant to be faithful and carry out the substitution, as arranged. If they had given me away, it might be supposed that the bag I had given them would be now in the hands of their superior officers.
I looked at the problem every way. And all the time, as I puzzled, I kept ask
ing myself not only who wrote the warning, but who, of all the people I knew, had the necessary knowledge of detail that it showed.
Ewiss and Wentock rose from their desks as I entered the private room, and Wentock came forward and took my bag from me, while Ewiss beckoned me towards the cubicle.
The search they made of me was not drastic; but even had it been I should not have minded, in the circumstances. What I was thinking about all the time was the bags, and whether the two searches meant to be faithful to their part of the bargain.
One thing, at first, I placed as an argument in their favor. It was that the unemotional courtesy of the head official was quite unimpaired; and I could not imagine that even he would be able to remain so absolutely and almost statuesquely calm if my two presumed confederates had given me away to him, and told him that a big capture was on the carpet (it was really linoleum, and cold to the feet!).
There was, however, something disturbing in the attitude of Ewiss. The man seemed almost hang-doggish, in the way he avoided meeting my eye. But I could not say this of Wentock; for that cheerful person was completely his own glad and (as I always felt) unscrupulous self.
While I was dressing, my bag was banged down onto the table, and I knew the instant it was thrown open that Wentock and Ewiss had sold me; for they had not carried out the substitution of the Number 1 bag for the Number 2 which I had just brought in; but had frankly and brutally ignored our whole arrangement, and opened Number 2 — the bag that I had bargained with them should not be opened.
As he flung the bag open, Wentock looked up at me and grinned broadly. He considered it evidently a splendid effort of smartness; but it was a faint comfort to my belief in the goodness of human nature that Ewiss looked down at the table and seemed decidedly uncomfortable.
I felt so fierce that I could have given them away, in turn, to their superior for accepting bribes; for it was quite plain now that they had said nothing to him about the plan I had proposed to them to substitute one bag for the other. I could see their way of looking at the whole business. They were not readily bribable; but if people were foolish enough to offer them a bribe it was accepted — as a present; and so much the worse for the person who offered it, and so much the better for the officer presented with this kind of — shall I say “honourarium”? I think anyone must admit I had cause to feel bitter.
Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson Page 169