They drank their coffee and smoked cigarettes in the lazy spring sunlight. There was actually a faint flush of colour in Catherine’s cheeks, a new life in her face and movements. She sighed with regret when Mark called for the bill and rose to his feet.
“We must go?” she asked reluctantly.
He nodded. He, too, was a different man.
“Do you know where we are going?” he asked, as they walked hand in hand across the little palisaded garden.
“Back to the Bureau—yes?”
“Not for the moment,” he answered. “We are going to the Jetée Casino. I want to see our new friend’s performance.”
CHAPTER IV
Table of Contents
In less than an hour’s time Catherine Oronoff and Mark Humberstone were seated at the back of one of the side boxes in the Casino. Mark tapped with his forefinger upon the programme.
“Excellent staff work,” he remarked, smiling at his companion. “Our friend’s turn comes next.”
Almost as he spoke the curtain rose upon what was described as “the greatest scientific riddle of the century.” They both leaned curiously forward. The strangely still, sombrely attired figure of Mr. Jonson was disclosed standing outside a small open tent. He was rather far back upon the stage and about ten yards in front of him was a thickly drawn white line of chalk. He waited until the complimentary round of applause died away and then he addressed the audience in excellent French, without apparently raising his voice, and yet with such clarity of tone that he was heard in the remotest corners just as distinctly as he was heard by his unseen observers.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “I come once more to place before you a scientific problem which I presented in this same building two years ago and which remains to this moment unsolved. I claim to have made a great discovery in one of the byways of an unexplored science and though full acknowledgment of my success has not yet been made, that I know will arrive in due course. My challenge, ladies and gentlemen, is at your disposal once more. You observe the steps leading from the auditorium to the stage? I invite any member of the audience who chooses, to mount them and to endeavour to cross the white line and approach me. I warn him that he will not be able to do so because at that particular point I have interfered with the rotation of the earth. To anyone who succeeds in passing it and reaching me I will present the sum of two thousand francs.”
Already the eager competitors were forming in line. The first to mount the steps was a stout young man of consequential appearance carefully, almost foppishly dressed, his manner full of bravado. He paused on the stage and bowed to the man who stood looking at him gravely from the opening of the tent.
“It is understood, monsieur,” he demanded with a note of challenge in his tone, “that if I pass the chalk line between you and myself you pay me two thousand francs?”
“It is perfectly well understood,” was the calm reply.
The young man walked forward gingerly yet with unabated confidence. All of a sudden, about a yard from the line, he stopped and threw up his hands, his feet began to move faster and yet he made no progress. His hair seemed to become disarranged as though by the action of an unsuspected wind. He threw up his arms to balance himself. Those who were in the front rows saw the colour leave his cheeks, saw fear creep into his eyes. Those who were behind saw nothing but the funny sight of a human being who had lost control over his feet. His paroxysms were like the frantic efforts of a man trying to walk backwards down an automatic stairway. Roars of laughter came from the rear of the auditorium. From the front rows, however, there were gasps of something which sounded more like exclamations of fear. Then the showman’s voice, clear and bell-like, rang through the auditorium.
“Try a little harder, my friend,” he mocked. “Two thousand francs is a good deal of money. You can take the young lady out to-night, yes? You think that the earth is rising to meet you? That is fancy. It is because the earth has ceased to move that you find progress difficult. Come—try once more.”
The man suddenly seemed to lose control. He collapsed upon the floor a yard or two away from the chalked line. An attendant, who apparently had been waiting in the wings for that purpose, rushed forward and raised the adventurous competitor to his feet. The latter seemed a smaller person, shrunken with some fear.
“You wish to try again?” Professor Ventura asked.
The young man shivered. He turned towards the steps. The attendant helped him down. He staggered back to his place amidst a chorus of mingled applause and cries of ridicule.
“If the next person will kindly come forward,” the Professor invited. “It is unfortunate that what we call the stationary vibrations were too much for our friend…What, no one is anxious to come? That is distressing.”
A man in the audience rose to his feet.
“What is it that you have in that tent?” he asked.
Mr. Jonson turned and threw wide open the flaps. The tent contained nothing but an iron table upon which rested a small machine, the flywheel of which was whizzing round in space.
“There is nothing here, as you see,” Mr. Jonson explained, “except the instrument of my own invention with the aid of which I perform the miracle.”
A youth of a different class came resolutely forward. He was shabbily dressed and carried with him an unpleasant impression of life in the unsavoury places. He stood stolidly upon the platform and gazed at the imperturbable Professor.
“I ask you, Professor Ventura,” he demanded in a loud voice, “whether there is any trick in this business?”
“If there is a trick find it out,” was the curt reply. “Tiens—”
Mr. Jonson never finished his sentence. The young man had apparently made up his mind to try rush tactics. He made a spring forward for the chalk line. He had reached it within a foot when he suddenly jumped into the air. For the space of sixty seconds he gave a far more exciting performance than his predecessor—then he too collapsed and was led away. Mr. Jonson advanced to the extreme edge of the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “To show you that there is no trick in my marvellous discovery I will now earn my own two mille.”
He lit a cigarette. Half the audience rose from their places to watch him. He glanced over his shoulder towards the table on which his little instrument stood. With his cigarette in one hand he turned round.
“You will observe, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “the conditions remain exactly the same. Voilà!”
He turned and walked—sauntered perhaps would be the better word—across the space. He stood with both feet upon the chalk line, re- entered his tent a moment or two later, and with a farewell bow disappeared amidst the usual storm of confused applause. A small crowd of supers rushed out from the wings. Some of them busied themselves eliminating the white chalk line, two others removed with great care the instrument and the table, another one folded up the tent and disappeared with it upon his shoulder. There was no sign anywhere of Professor Ventura…
“How does he do it?” Catherine asked curiously.
Mark shrugged his shoulders. There was a slightly puzzled frown on his forehead.
“To tell you the truth,” he confessed, “I don’t quite know, but I am beginning to understand where he got the idea.”
CHAPTER V
Table of Contents
Mr. Cheng glanced up from his place at the opening of the door. He was seated at a beautiful sandalwood desk strewn with papers and charts of every description yet distributed with a singular neatness which eliminated any idea of disorder. A very exquisite bronze Buddha occupied the centre of the table and on his right was a blue Nankin bowl of red roses. The walls of the room were panelled with some light-coloured wood. A few beautiful rugs lay upon the highly polished floor, but the room itself contained very little in the way of decoration or furniture. Somehow or other, though, it seemed a fit setting for the man whose sanctum it was.
“You have not been wanting me, I hope?” Mark a
sked a little anxiously.
Mr. Cheng shook his head.
“Too much to do and think about to miss even one’s dear friends,” he confided. “And now, Mark, behold what has happened! I am summoned to London.”
Mark obeyed his friend’s gesture and seated himself in one of the high-backed chairs. He leaned forward and helped himself to a cigarette from an ivory box upon the table.
“Well,” he observed, “I suppose it had to come sooner or later. To tell you the truth I am surprised that it did not come before.”
“So am I,” the other confessed. “All the same the work here is so enthralling that I do not like to leave.”
He rose to his feet and walked the length of the room and back again with his hands behind his back. He was slightly taller than Mark, with a slim and supple figure, deep-set thoughtful eyes, dark brown hair and a complexion the duskiness of which was scarcely more than an ordinary sunburn. There was little about him to suggest the Oriental. His mouth was strong and firm—curving faintly upwards. His features had all the impassivity of the East, in repose. He spoke with singular distinctness but with no trace of a foreign accent.
“Whom did you hear from?” Mark asked.
“From Wang Kai-Hsiung himself. The dear old fellow in his quiet way is beginning to worry. I do not think, Mark, that he really understands. Why should he?”
“How can anyone understand except you and I and our friends up above?” Mark rejoined. “Thank goodness the time is not very far off when we can raise the curtain.”
Mr. Cheng distinctly chuckled.
“How they will stare across Europe,” he observed, “those chattering politicians who sit and bargain around their council rooms like merchants, bargain for safety, bargain for a few less ships there or a few more somewhere else, shake their heads with horror at the idea of war but take good care to be prepared for it. Mark, I used not to think so,” he went on, “but I am coming to the conclusion that your people and mine are the only people with a real love of peace in their hearts. The others are all ready for a scrap so long as they think that they are going to get the best of it. If it had not been for that amazing parent of yours I fancy there would have been changes upon the map before now.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Mark agreed. “Tell me, when do you leave?”
“To-night,” Mr. Cheng replied. “It is a full moon and we could find the way blindfold. I shall take my coffee with Wang Kai-Hsiung in the morning and present myself in official circles at midday. By the by, you knew something about this man Jonson who has joined the staff?”
“He was one of our vigilance men out at Beaumont Park,” Mark confided. “He came here from Moscow. I have just been watching him perform at the Jetée Casino. Professor Ventura, he calls himself there. I am half inclined to believe that he makes use of one of those devices that the old man used to amuse himself with. Anyhow, I think he’s all right. He wants the job of looking after us. I don’t think he will do any harm.”
“Not if he keeps in the background,” Mr. Cheng assented. “Anything in the nature of a bodyguard, as you know, is loathsome to me.”
Mark nodded thoughtfully. He threw away the stub of his cigarette into the small fire of pine logs which was burning in the open grate and lit another.
“And yet,” he went on, “history has offered us a great many warnings as to the folly of risking the lives of those who are precious to the world. The rats are always there, you know.”
Mr. Cheng swept away the subject with a wave of the hand.
“From what Wang Kai-Hsiung divulges,” he continued, “suspicion is growing fast in influential quarters. It may be difficult to satisfy this inquisitive minister. How do things progress above?”
“Precisely according to plan,” Mark replied. “In a month’s time one could press the button. General Wu Lu Chên has left Manchuria and will be back in Pekin tonight. As I daresay you know, we have twenty-four military experts from my country hidden about the premises at the present moment. They will be leaving for Pekin to-morrow or the next day. When General Fan Sik Tsun leaves here again it will be for the last time.”
“On that day,” Mr. Cheng said quietly, yet with a curious hidden force in his words, “we shall begin to rewrite the history of the world.”
Both men rose quickly to their feet. There was no mistaking the unexpected sound. Someone was tapping softly at the door. Mark crossed the room in a half-dozen strides. His right hand was resting on his hip pocket as he threw open the door with his left. Mr. Jonson stepped blandly but respectfully into the apartment.
“What the devil are you doing here?” his employer demanded.
Mr. Jonson seemed to have become the complete foreigner. He bowed very low to Mr. Cheng. He bowed again to Mark as he answered his question.
“I came for my orders, sir.”
“What orders?”
Jonson seemed a little hurt. He continued, however, with untroubled calm.
“One of my two masters is leaving for a strange country,” he said. “Is it not my office to accompany and protect him?”
Mr. Cheng smiled tolerantly. Mark was still angry.
“You have no office,” he declared, “except to obey orders. How did you get here anyway? Don’t you know that this part of the building is shut off from the Bureau?”
“But not from me,” Jonson pleaded. “I am the guardian of my Chiefs.”
Even Mark felt his anger abating. The little man seemed so sure of himself, so sure that he was doing the right thing. His protests were gently worded. The look of a hurt dog shone out of his brown eyes.
“See here,” Mark pointed out, “you have no right on this side of the building at all and you are only required as a guardian when Mr. Cheng or I order you. Besides,” he went on bluntly, “what good would you be anyway? Is that gun in your hip pocket?”
“No, sir,” Jonson answered gently. “I do not often make use of a gun. It is my last resource.”
“Then supposing when I opened this door I had seized you by the collar and thrown you out of the window, as you very well deserve for daring to come to Mr. Cheng’s private room—What about that, eh? What sort of protection would you have been able to offer?”
“The circumstance did not arise,” Jonson pointed out respectfully.
“But supposing it had, you idiot!”
“I would like very much,” Jonson said, “that you should have the idea of throwing me out of that window, if it is really permitted that I am to demonstrate my ability as a protector.”
“It is permitted all right,” Mark assured him. “Look here.”
He leaned forward and in a second Mr. Jonson was lifted into the air. But in the next second other things had happened. Mark felt himself suddenly whirling around with his feet off the ground, felt himself somehow tucked under the arm of a giant, felt an excruciating pain in his elbow and pain in his throat—and suddenly discovered that he was seated in the chair he had just vacated on the other side of the table from Mr. Cheng. Before him Jonson, unruffled, was regarding him with unabated respect.
“It was your wish that I show you, sir,” he said gently. “You see, it would not have been possible to throw me out of the window. Many other things might have happened, but you would never have been able to lay your hand upon Mr. Cheng.”
The latter, from the other side of the table, regarded the two with sphinx-like calm. If there was any change in his face at all it consisted of a slight deepening of that humorous line.
“Well, what do you think of that?” Mark exclaimed at last. “God bless my soul, what are you, Jonson? A pocket Hercules? Or is that another of your tricks?”
“It was just a trick, sir,” the man acknowledged. “I asked your gracious permission. But you see Mr. Cheng whom I was protecting was always safe. As you revolved I felt your pockets. They were empty. No weapon.”
“A very interesting exhibition,” Mr. Cheng said quietly. “Perhaps you had better understand, though, Jonson, that
notwithstanding my admiration for your skill and muscle it has always been my custom to deal with an aggressor myself. When I need help I shall know where to look for it. In the meantime—” he moved his head towards the door.
Jonson sighed but turned away.
“One moment,” Mark called out after him as he reached the door. “How the mischief did you know that Mr. Cheng was leaving?”
The intruder smiled very slightly.
“I am attached to the establishment,” he said. “It is part of my duty to know everything.”
“And the key?”
“I possessed myself of it,” Jonson explained. “That also was part of my duty. You will find, sir,” he concluded as he took his leave, “that I shall never fail in my duty while I am attached to your Bureau, even when the problems presented to me are more difficult.”
He walked down the corridor swinging his arms. Mark even fancied that he had developed a slight swagger.
“It appears,” Mr. Cheng remarked smoothly, “that you have added a magician to the staff. Where did you pick him up?”
Mark shook his head.
“I didn’t exactly pick him up,” he protested. “There had been some correspondence before, but nothing definite. He just arrived with two bags, some scarlet pants and a black velvet coat. As I told you, he performs at the Jetée Casino here.”
Mr. Cheng rose to his feet with a smile.
“They will be waiting for me in the dispersing room,” he observed. “General Wu Lu Chên will be arriving at Pekin and I must talk to him before I leave.”
“What about this fellow Jonson?” Mark asked.
Mr. Cheng laid his hand upon his friend’s arm as they crossed the floor.
“Let him go his own way. Unless you have serious occasion to do so do not interfere with him.”
Mark was somewhat staggered but he made no protest. “Your fatalistic instinct, I suppose.”
Mr. Cheng shrugged his shoulders.
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