by Vicki Croke
There had been seven bouts of catastrophic illness and four operations, Smith told her, which began in the spring of 1935, right after Bill had signed on with him and then gone missing. The early manifestation of his disease may well have prompted Bill's odd disappearing acts. When several growths appeared on his neck, he was admitted to the hospital for an operation. Even though his recovery would take some weeks, he, Smith, and Russell were eager to get started. Optimistically, they agreed that Smith would proceed to Chengdu on June 3 with all the gear, and Bill would follow shortly after by plane. Remarkably, it went off as planned.
Once they were out west, however, things spiraled downward. As Ruth Harkness had understood previously, permit problems caused them to return to Shanghai in September. What she didn't know was that they had to go back east anyway because new tumors had begun to surface on Bill's neck.
Bill Harkness and Smith carried on as though this were just another simple delay. On October 13 Smith left for business in Nanking, on the understanding that that night Bill would check in to the hospital, where he was scheduled for another surgery. But when Smith returned he discovered that Bill had cabled the hospital at midnight saying he would postpone his treatment by twenty-four hours. The following day came and went without Bill checking himself in. The doctor now revealed to Smith what he had withheld from Bill: the tumors were malignant, and the young man was suffering from a ravening cancer. Perhaps Bill's behavior indicated that deep inside, he already knew. He spent the next five weeks doing as he pleased—checking in to four hotels, reading innumerable books—and ditching the authorities who had been notified by Smith to search for the missing man. Smith, worried that Bill was “unknowingly committing slow suicide,” combed the city for him. At last he caught Bill in broad daylight, casually strolling out of his bank accompanied by Russell. Smith explained to Bill that the doctor said any procrastination would have serious consequences. So the next day, accompanied by Smith, Bill checked in to the hospital.
Torturous as the operation and recovery must have been, the doctor was pleased with the results and hopeful when Bill was released on Christmas Day 1935. The embattled explorer felt well enough shortly afterward to make plans with Smith to head up the Yangtze by steamer for Sichuan. But no sooner had reservations been booked than Bill began to shed weight alarmingly, ultimately not even having the strength to get out of bed.
By late January, Bill was readmitted to the hospital, diagnosed with a serious colon condition. Clearly, the cancer had spread, but somehow the doctor was upbeat, saying the new problem could be treated with radiation. In the face of the latest affliction, Bill was more desperate than ever to get himself back into the frontier. The doctor reassured him that if the treatment went well, Bill might just make it to Chengdu within a week; there he could finish out the course of therapy. Again, there was a setback. The doctor reneged on the proposal, insisting that Bill stick to Shanghai for the full set of treatments. The ailing American couldn't stand to cancel plans completely, so it was decided that Smith would get up-country by boat on February 14, with Bill grabbing a plane to Chengdu when he was fit enough.
At the end of his river trip, Smith found an airmail letter waiting for him with the news that forty hours after an emergency operation on his stomach, at 4:45 A.M., February 19, 1936, Bill Harkness had died.
The story devastated Ruth. “The poor lad was apparently in dreadful condition,” she wrote home, “full of sarcoma that never could have been cured, jaw infections, and too many horrible things to talk about. He was just skin and bones when he died.” Although Smith told Harkness her husband had been unaware of the gravity of his condition, he did not pretend the end was swift. Apparently it was lonely too, for Bill had refused help from friends in Shanghai. It was crushing for Ruth to hear of Bill's torment and isolation.
But there was more. Smith couldn't or wouldn't stop himself. He began to tell Harkness secrets of Bill's that she said “no man ought to tell his wife.” There was a rumor that Bill kept a White Russian mistress. Fueled by whiskey sodas, Smith unloaded everything on Ruth, telling her things, she said, that she wouldn't even repeat in letters home. And somehow—it may have been the McCombs stoicism—she sat through it.
It maddened her that he couldn't shut up about what she didn't want to know, yet would not come clean about the things she was impatient to discover. The details of the financial arrangement between her husband and Smith he refused to reveal. Ruth Harkness would always believe that Smith still had much of Bill's money—and she wanted it back. Smith not only rebuffed her, protesting that all of Bill's money was already gone, but he also wanted more from her. He maintained that the “joint account” arranged between him and Bill was that Smith's own stake in the partnership consisted of his bush knowledge and the use of his well-established camps and the hunters he already knew. Bill's contribution was all the fresh money to underwrite the expedition itself. But Smith also contended that “my investment in cash alone was a very great deal more than Mr. Harkness was called upon to pay.”
Fed up with what she thought were Smith's evasions, she began to sift through Bill's papers for answers. Although she joked that she couldn't count higher than ten “unaided by pencil and paper,” she was appalled by what she unearthed. There was Smith, all right, on Bill's payroll, but he wasn't the only one. She wrote home to Hazel Perkins. “My God, Perkie, the things I have discovered. Bill at one time carried Larry [Griswold], Sonny [Griswold], Bryon, to say nothing of Ajax and God knows who else. And there is expedition stuff from here to Tibet.”
She believed that Smith was one of many who had been siphoning off Bill's money. Harkness now sized the matter up: Bill had put in plenty of cash, but what had Smith provided? No permits and no time in panda country. She was not impressed. As she scrutinized the partnership's records, she found Smith's organizational skills utterly lacking. Receipts, equipment lists, and the equipment itself were in disarray. Harkness felt that the chaotic condition Smith kept things in confirmed her earliest impressions. “The messed up lists clinched the matter in my mind. I had definitely decided before that I could not take Ajax, merely through working on instinct—now I know that I am right. I do not think that Ajax is capable of organization, executive direction or concentrated effort in one direction,” she wrote.
That was fine by Russell. Apparently, he had no qualms about Harkness's decision to cut Smith out. But years later he would not recollect any of the unpleasantness, only that Smith's permit problems were too much to take on.
JUST AS HARKNESS was feeling so disenchanted with Smith, she met three other men who would spin the plot in a whole new direction.
First, she got a call from the charming and well-known explorer Jack Young in Shanghai. Young was funny, confident, spirited, and shrewd. He was so dashing that he sometimes referred to himself as the Chinese Tyrone Power. Only twenty-five years old, he already had a significant reputation in the exploring game. He had been on the Roosevelt expedition that shot the first giant panda for the West, and by 1934 he had struck out on his own, staying in the news with other expeditions, such as the one in which he scaled the 25,000-foot Minya Konka, today called Gongga Shan, in Sichuan, with Americans Richard Burdsall and Terris Moore. Most recently he had created something of an adventuring dynasty for himself. With his beautiful and vivacious Chinese American wife, Adelaide “Su-Lin” Chen Young, and his brother Quentin, he had ranged over much of western China and Tibet.
Offering his help, Young met with Harkness for a long discussion about her expedition. She liked him immediately and loved the great zest he seemed to have for adventure. Jack Young, she realized, would make a perfect expedition partner. Unfortunately, he was already booked. He was setting out for the Himalayas in India with some Harvard grads to scale the mighty Nanda Devi.
Quentin Young in a Western-style suit. COURTESY JOLLY YOUNG
He did have an alternative, though. Jack Young recommended his brother Quentin, saying he could arrange to bring him by r
ight away. At twenty-two, Quentin was younger and less experienced, having never captained his own team. He had traveled extensively with Jack, however, and was strong, smart, and eager to prove himself.
He had something else going for him, as Ruth Harkness saw that hot summer day when he and his brother walked toward her in the mahogany-paneled lobby of the Palace Hotel. Quentin Young was stunningly handsome. Nearly six feet tall and rail thin, dapper in Westernstyle suits, he had thick jet-black hair that he wore slicked back, though a lock of it often fell rakishly loose across his forehead. Despite his urbane look, he was unaccustomed to dealing with foreigners, and as the three sat together sipping fresh lemonade in the lounge, he seemed awkward and uncomfortable. During the meeting, he allowed his older and bolder brother to do all the talking. Harkness may have been dealing with Jack Young, but it was Quentin, with his shy smile, who made an impression.
Quentin was startled by Harkness's cool confidence. With her hair tucked up under a turban, she sat casually smoking cigarettes while talking expedition. There was nothing demure about her. She was straightforward and relaxed, clearly comfortable speaking with men.
So they talked. Jack Young tallied his brother's field strengths. Quentin was a crack shot and an accomplished hunter and trapper. He spoke English as well as Chinese and was fluent in the Sichuan dialect; there would be no need for an interpreter.
Furthermore, Quentin was willing to accept a small salary with expenses so that he would have the chance to do some hunting for himself. He was hoping to shoot a giant panda for the Nanking Museum. Despite Quentin's reluctance to speak, it was clear to Harkness that he felt a strong rivalry with his brother and was eager to do some catching up.
Neither side really needed to be sold on the other. “If much of young China is like Quentin and his brother Jack, it seems to me [a] very hopeful outlook,” Harkness wrote. By the next day, a deal had been struck with the Young brothers, who returned to the Palace Hotel armed with stiff linen maps, some in Chinese, some in English, all with large blank areas indicating uncharted territory. Harkness's eye, as usual, was drawn to those mysterious open spaces. The notion of finally being free to march into the unknown thrilled her.
That they would travel fifteen hundred miles along the Yangtze was understood. But there were many routes from Chunking (now Chongqing) inland to panda country. As Harkness discussed the options with the Youngs, she was astounded by the exotic details they mentioned casually—a lamasery where they could find accommodations from friendly monks, a lake they had discovered that was not charted by any cartographer. Shortly, a plan was in place: Harkness, Quentin Young, and Russell would leave Shanghai on September 19, headed for a region that Jack Young knew well, the area southwest of Chengdu, close to where the Roosevelts had gotten their panda. At the city of Kiating (modern-day Leshan), Russell would split off to Chengdu to organize equipment, afterward meeting Harkness and Young in the field. In the meantime, Gerry Russell's presence in the planning stages was being nudged to the back burner, as each day was filled in collaboration between Ruth Harkness and Quentin Young.
THERE DIDN'T SEEM to be room in Harkness's life for any more characters at the moment. And yet an American with a personality as grand and brawny as a bison came charging in.
Dan Reib, an executive with the Shanghai branch of Standard Oil Company of New York, or Socony, had heard through mutual friends about Harkness's plans to launch an expedition. Ringing her up, he explained that because he had spent so many years in western China, he thought he might be of some help. He even had a few books on the subject that she might find interesting.
She was delighted. They both had other lunch plans that day—hers with Russell, in fact—but she squeezed Reib in for what was a popular practice in Shanghai: a before-noon drink.
Reib was a taipan, all right, a great captain of commerce, but he was also clearly his own man. He warned Harkness on the phone that he was a “barbarian,” and would be wearing shorts in this hot weather, not giving a damn about the Bund's rigid decorum. No doubt, that alone had appeal for Harkness.
She had a caution of her own. Considering the constant barrage of headlines like MRS. HARKNESS AIDS COLLEGE, which made people very confused about her identity, she informed him that she wasn't of the Standard Oil Harknesses but just “a poor working girl who is on a madcap errand.” He responded that he wouldn't have bothered with her otherwise.
Dan Reib in Shanghai. COURTESY JANE POLLOCK
When Reib showed up at the hotel, Harkness was swept up in the surging momentum of his vitality. He was only about five feet nine, but there was a rare and purely American “bigness” about him in every sense, she said. Stocky, husky, and outspoken, he was a “cyclone” who radiated energy and generosity. He had black curly hair and dark, deepset eyes. His gaze was clear and level. Most of all, she said, he had a big soul, just like that of her dear friend Perkie back in the States. They had their cocktails as he told her all about the Chinese frontier. His stories of adventure were like none she had ever heard. He had spent months on end living in faraway places that no other foreigner had ever penetrated. He had even been captured, tortured, and held for ransom.
His whole life, really, had been one big adventure. Raised a rich prepschool boy off an uncle's inheritance in Texas, he had joined the circus for a time at the age of thirteen. In his midteens, he had split off during a school trip to bum around Europe for two years, quickly learning to speak like the natives wherever he went. Despite his footloose ways, he had passed the rigorous admissions exams to Cornell University, where he received a degree in engineering. His facility with languages came in handy in Shanghai, where his bosses, in an effort to get him up to speed, put him on a boat traveling the Yangtze with no fellow westerners. He returned weeks later a fluent speaker.
Here in Shanghai, he was known as a stand-up guy, fond of wearing a cowboy hat while scaring everyone off the bridle path as he charged down on his big Russian mount. He adored women and was fast with his fists if he felt their honor needed defending.
Harkness and Reib connected immediately, and their quick drink turned into two, and three, until the meeting stretched on without end, both of them standing up their “tiffin,” or lunch, dates. Before they finally parted, Reib had set plans for their next session.
The second time he came to her hotel, he brought “armfuls of maps, books, lists of things to take and many other things.” It was another incredible visit. They would meet again and again, Reib providing her friendship, guidance, and a remarkable amount of logistical support. He would purchase food and medicine for the field. He negotiated her banking and mail delivery. As an executive of Standard Oil, he authorized all kinds of free transportation—by boat and car—for her. It was an enormous gift, since Standard Oil, like tobacco companies and the missionaries, seemed to be everywhere in China. In fact, Fortune magazine referred to the triumvirate as “the Gospel of the three lights: the cigarette, the kerosene lamp, and Christianity.” Reib also gave the American widow important letters of introduction to comrades all along her route. In helping her, no task was too small or too large for him. He had, she said, provided her with “everything from maps to brandy and crab meat” for what he had come to call her “experdition.”
Reib particularly loved telling Harkness stories of a little brotherhood of his, a unique band of fearless westerners spread throughout China who referred to themselves as “the Hard-Boiled Eggs.” Two of them Harkness would meet. One was the frail, elderly, and kind Sir Merrick Hewlett, who was about to retire after a long career. The other, E. A. Cavaliere, lived in Chengdu, where he served as postal commissioner for Sichuan; he would come to play a major role in Harkness's life once she was up-country.
Reib, Harkness wrote home to Perkie, “makes this China trip, just by knowing a man like that, a success if nothing else does.” With all his achievements, Reib could have been arrogant or egocentric. His stories might have been exciting but empty yarns. Instead, he always saw the deeper
shadings in life and spoke poignantly of what he had learned in the East. Reib had been beset by problems but was not bitter, in fact he felt he had benefited from his experiences. He told Harkness, “One gains sometimes only through loss.”
Harkness felt humbled by him, though she was secure enough to know, she said, that “I have given him something too.” Reib liked strong women—his own mother had fought the system all the way up to the Texas Supreme Court for her rights in her divorce. He made clear his desire to see Harkness succeed. Twice he even dreamed of it—his friend returning with a giant panda.
Harkness would later describe this relationship with Reib as “a marvelous companionship while it lasted.” Far from New York, and years after having last been with her husband, she felt a luxurious contentment with this “real man.” Together, she and Dan Reib “had found the rare and beautiful.” Despite the ardent description, Harkness characterized the relationship as platonic. “I suppose this almost sounds as if I were in love with him, which I am not in the least,” she wrote home to her pal Perkie. “I feel much the same [about Reib] as I do you without a lot of sex nonsense mixed up in it.” Of course, the funny thing was that the correspondence between Harkness and Perkins sounded passionate too—full of “darlings” and closings of “much, much love.” The connection between the adventuress and the taipan looked and sounded like a romance to everyone around them, especially Reib's girlfriend. He was a divorced man but involved with a British woman, who, Harkness said, was “at great pains to let me know that Dan is hers and hands off.”
Shanghai thrived on secrets and gossip. “The speed with which rumor spread in Shanghai bordered on telepathy,” author Vicki Baum noted. New Yorker writer Emily Hahn concurred: “Shanghai gossip was fuller, richer, and less truthful than any I had ever before encountered.” In her relationship with Reib, Harkness found out how true this was. “The most intimate pieces of knowledge are common property,” she said. But it didn't matter. “I am becoming reconciled to being thought a little mad,” she reported, “and perhaps not quite nice.” She was determined, she told Perkie, to be “callous to people's curiosity about me.” And, boy, she wrote, were they ever curious.