Mr Bray stirred uneasily; something in his attitude arrested his partner’s attention.
“It was you! Oh, you wicked old man!” he breathed, in wonder.
“I certainly gave him ideas,” admitted Joe, who was thoroughly uncomfortable. “I sort of made up yarns to stimmerlate his ambition—that’s the word, ain’t it? I’ve got a wonderful imagination, Cliff. I’d have written novels if I could have only spelt.”
“And I suppose,” said Clifford, “you drew a picture of what China would be like under one head?”
“Something like that.” Joe Bray dared not meet his partner’s eyes. “But it was to stimmerlate his ambition, if you understand, Cliff. Just sort of push him on.”
Clifford was laughing softly, and he very seldom laughed. “Maybe he didn’t want any ‘stimmerlating’,” he said. “Fing-Su is the one in a million that is bound to turn up at odd intervals through the ages. Napoleon was one, Rhodes was one, Lincoln was one—there aren’t such a lot of ‘em.”
“What about George Washington?” asked Mr Bray, only too anxious to switch the conversation into historical channels.
“Whoever is responsible, the mischief is done.” Cliff looked at his watch. “Did you ever go bird’s-nesting, Joe?”
“As a boy,” said Joe complacently, “there was few that could beat me.”
“We’ll go along tonight and inspect a floating nest of the domestic yellowbill,” said Cliff.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mr Narth went up to town by train, his car for the moment being in the grip of one of those mysterious ailments to which cars are addicted. On the station platform he bought a newspaper, though he was not attracted thereto by a contents bill: ‘Joyful Hands’ Behind Chinese Trouble. What the ‘Joyful Hands’ meant Mr Narth did not trouble to think. The name seemed a little incongruous.
He was quite ignorant on the subject of China, except that fabulous sums had been made in that country by one who had conveniently died and passed on his fortune to Mr Narth.
It was his pride and boast that he was a business man, which meant that he was proud of his ignorance on all subjects apart from his business. Outside interests he had none; he played a passable game of golf—it was that accomplishment which had lured him to Sunningdale—he was an indifferent devotee of bridge, and his adventurous period of life was represented by the indiscreet maintenance of a Bloomsbury flat in the late ‘nineties.
Frankly, he was dishonest; he admitted as much to himself. He had a passionate desire for easy money, and when he had inherited his father’s business it had seemed that he was in a fair way to the realization of his ideals. He had then discovered that money only flowed into even the oldest-established businesses if the passages and chutes were kept clear of rubbish. You had either to butter them with advertising, or polish them with that homely commodity which is known as elbow-grease. If you were content to sit in an office chair and wait for money, it had an uncomfortable knack of losing its way and dropping into the coffers of your competitors. He had so far acquainted himself with the incidence of commercial machinery that he had found many short cuts to wealth. The discovery that most of these enticing by-ways led into all sorts of morasses and muddy footholes came later. Greatest of all his misfortunes, as it proved, he was, in spite of his frequent stringencies, on the best of terms with the heads of great financial houses, for his judgment, apart from his own operations, was wellnigh faultless.
From Waterloo Station he drove to the hotel where he usually stayed when he was in town, and the hotel valet took charge of his dress suit in preparation for the ceremony of the following night. Fing-Su had rather amused him by his insistence upon his matter of costume.
“A tail coat and a white tie, the grand habit,” he said. “The initiation will interest you—it combines some of the more modern ceremonies with one as ancient as life.”
He ordered tea to be sent to his room, and it had hardly been served before Major Spedwell appeared. He greeted his new associate with the question:
“What happened last night?”
Stephen Narth shook his head with a show of irritation.
“I don’t know. It was a monstrous scheme of Fing-Su’s. I—I nearly chucked the whole thing.”
“Did you?” The Major sank into the only armchair in the room. “Well, I shouldn’t take that too seriously if I were you. No harm was intended to the girl. Fing-Su was very considerate; she was being taken to a place where she would have had white women to look after her, everything that heart could desire.”
“Then why on earth–-?” began Narth.
Spedwell made a gesture of impatience.
“He has a reason. He wanted to put a lever under Mr Clifford Lynne.”
He got up from his chair, walked to the fireplace and knocked off the ash of his cigar.
“There’s money for you in this, Narth,” he said, “and only one thing required of you—and that’s loyalty. Fing-Su thinks you’re a man who will be very useful to him.” He looked at the other oddly. “You might even take Leggat’s place,” he said.
Stephen Narth looked up quickly.
“Leggat? I thought he was a great friend of yours.”
“He is and he isn’t,” said Spedwell carefully. “Fing-Su thinks—well, there have been leakages. Things had got out, and unfortunately got into the wrong quarters.” And then, abruptly: “Lynne is in town. I suppose you know that?”
“I’m not interested in his movements,” said Mr Narth with some acerbity.
“I thought you might be,” said the other carelessly.
He could have added that he himself was more interested in Clifford Lynne’s plans than that erratic man could be possibly aware. And there was a reason for his interest: Fing-Su had found a new plan—one so ingeniously arranged that only one man could save Joan Bray, and that was the quick-shooting man from Siangtan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Clifford came to his Mayfair dwelling in time for a hasty lunch, and he came alone. He had left strict injunctions with Joe Bray to keep himself hidden, a very necessary precaution, for Joe was essentially an open-air man who chafed at confinement. His first act on arrival was to call a Mayfair number.
“Mr Leggat is not in,” was the reply, and Clifford cursed the affable traitor who had promised to be available from one o’clock onwards.
He had further reason for annoyance when at two o’clock Mr Leggat called openly at the house. Ferdinand Leggat was a lover of good things, but as a rule he reserved his conviviality for the hours which followed dinner. Cliff took one glance at the man as he swaggered into the dining-room and rightly interpreted the red face and the fatuous smile.
“You’re a madman, Leggat,” he said quietly, as he walked to the door and closed it. “Why do you come here in daylight?”
Leggat had reached the point of exhilaration when he alone stood out clearly from a blurred world.
“Because I prefer daylight,” he said a little thickly. “Why should I, a man of my qualities, sneak around in the dark? That for Fing-Su and all his myrmidons!” He snapped his finger contemptuously and broke into a guffaw of laughters but Clifford Lynne was not amused.
“You’re a fool,” he said again. “I asked you to be on hand so that I might telephone you. Don’t underrate Fing-Su, my friend.”
“Bah!” said the other as he walked, uninvited, to the buffet and helped himself liberally from the tantalus. “There was never a giddy Oriental who could scare me! You seem to forget that I’ve lived in China, Lynne. And as to the secret society–-” He threw back his head and laughed again. “My dear old man,” he said as he walked unsteadily back to the table, a large tumblerful of amber liquor in his hand, “if there is a fool here, it’s you! I’ve given you enough information to hang Fing-Su. You’re a rich man, you can afford to hand the thing over to the police, and sit down comfortably and await developments.”
Clifford did not explain that he had already been in touch with the Colonial and Foreign Of
fices, and had been met with a polite sceptism which had at once irritated and silenced him. The Foreign Office knew that the Peckham factory stored field guns. They had been bought in the open market, he was blandly told, and there was no mystery about them at all. They could not be exported without a licence, and there was no reason in the world why a Chinese trading company should not have the same privileges as a white. To all this and more he had listened with growing impatience.
“I’m through with Fing-Su,” said Leggat. “He is not only a Chink but a mean Chink. And after all I’ve done for him! Did you arrange for the Umgeni to be searched, as I suggested?”
Clifford nodded. He had succeeded so far that he had induced the Port of London Authority to take action, and the Umgeni had been searched systematically, her cargo had been hauled from the hold and broached, but nothing had been found save the conventional articles of commerce, cases of spades, reapers, cooking pots and the usual stock of the trader.
“Humph!” Leggat was surprised. “I know they’ve been loading her for weeks–-“
“She sails tonight,” said Clifford, “and not even Fing-Su can unload her cargo and replace it.”
His guest gulped down the contents of the tumbler and exhaled a deep breath.
“I’m through with him,” he repeated. “I thought he was the original duck that laid golden eggs ad infinitum.”
“In other words, you’ve exploited him as far as you can, eh?” asked Clifford, with a faint smile. “And now you’re ready to sell the carcass! What part is Spedwell playing?”
Leggat shrugged his broad shoulders.
“I never liked Spedwell very much,” he said. “These military Johnnies get my goat. He’s Fing-Su’s chief of staff—spends all his time with maps and plans and drill-books. He and Fing-Su have just finished writing a Chinese manual.”
“A rifle manual?” asked Clifford quickly.
“Something like that,” said the other with a shrug.
Clifford raised his hand in warning as there came a gentle knock at the door and his servant entered.
“I forgot to tell you, sir,” he said, “the Post Office workmen came this morning to fix your telephone.”
“Fix—what do you mean, fix?” asked Lynne, a frown gathering on his forehead.
“They said there had been some complaints about the instrument—the exchange couldn’t hear you very distinctly.”
Lynne was silent and thoughtful for a second.
“Were you here whilst the repairs were being done?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, sir,” smiled the man. “They had a Post Office card of authority, but I’m too old a bird to take a risk—I was with them all the time whilst they fixed the amplifier.”
“Oh!” said Clifford blankly. And then: “Where did they put this ‘amplifier’?”
One wall of the dining-room was hidden by a large bookshelf, and it was beneath this that the telephone flex ran. The butler stooped and pointed: in the shallow space beneath the last shelf was a black wooden box about ten inches long and four inches in height. In its face were two round apertures, and attached to these was a thin wire which ran up the end wall and vanished through a newly-drilled hole in the window-sill.
“What is it?” asked Leggat, suddenly sobered.
“A microphone,” replied Clifford curtly. “Somebody’s been listening to every word of our conversation!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Clifford Lynne opened the window and looked out. The wire had been roughly tacked along the wall which divided his from the next courtyard, and vanished over the roof of the garage into the mews.
“All right, Simmons,” he said, and without a word went from the room and out through the mews into the garage. For a time he could not see the fine wire, but after a search he discovered it running along the wall, and he traced its course almost to the end of the mews, where it turned up through the open window of what was obviously a chauffeur’s flat.
One glance at the window told him that the apartment was not in regular occupation. The panes were grimy; one was broken; and he remembered that farther along the street in which he lived was an empty house; the garage was evidently an appendage to this.
There was a gate which led to the car store and a small door obviously giving to the upstairs flat, and this was ajar. Without hesitation he pushed it open and mounted the steep, untidy stairs to the apartments above. There were two rooms, empty save for the debris which the last occupant had left behind him. The back room was used as a sleeping apartment; an old iron bedstead, innocent of bedding, remained. He turned into the front room, and here he found what he had expected: a replica of the small black box beneath the bookshelf, and a telephone, which was, he discovered, in working order when he called exchange.
The room had no occupant, and for a very good reason. The man who had been listening-in through this microphone, and who had been transmitting the conversation he had overheard to Fing-Su, had had ample warning. He had, in fact, left the mews almost at the identical moment that Clifford had come into it.
“A dark, military-looking man with a bad-tempered face.” A chauffeur who had seen him was responsible for a description which identified Major Spedwell.
Clifford Lynne went back to his dining-room and found a greatly troubled Leggat splashing whisky into a glass with an unsteady hand.
“What’s the trouble? What is it all about?” asked the stout man fearfully.
Although it seemed to be a waste of time attempting to make this boaster realize his peril, Lynne told him what he had discovered.
“And you need to be very careful, Leggat!” he said. “If Fing-Su knows you have betrayed him I wouldn’t give a string of native beads for your life. The only chance is that the listener failed to recognize your voice.”
It was not until later that he discovered who was the eavesdropper, and then it was clear that the chance of Major Spedwell being ignorant of Leggat’s identity was a very remote one.
“Fing-Su—bah!”
There was, however, a note of uneasiness in the deep laughter of Ferdinand Leggat. He had been in unpleasant situations and had been threatened before, facing frenzied shareholders who had clamoured for his blood. Yet—the Chinaman was different somehow.
“My dear good fellow, you’re theatrical! Let Fing-Su start something, that’s all!”
“When are you seeing him again?” asked Lynne.
“Tomorrow night,” was the reply. “There is a meeting of the Lodge—damn’ tomfoolery, I call it! But I suppose one ought to turn up, if it is’ only to humour the silly devil!”
Lynne was regarding him with unusual gravity. He, of all men, understood the mentality of the Chinaman, and could see all the potentialities for mischief that vast wealth had given to him.
“If you take my advice, Leggat, you’ll be among the missing tomorrow night,” he said. “Get out of England until I’ve broken up this gang. Take a trip to Canada; there’s a boat leaving tomorrow, and if you hurry you can get your ticket and passport fixed.”
Leggat set down his glass on the table with a bang.
“J’y suis, j’y reste” he said valiantly. “There never was a coolie that could run me out of England, and don’t you forget it, Lynne! I can handle this bird…!”
Clifford Lynne listened without listening, his mind too occupied with the possible consequences which would follow his discovery of the spy-wire to pay much attention to the boastings of his companion. With a final warning he dismissed Leggat, sending him back through the garage by his private taxi. It was then that he went out into the mews, to make a few inquiries, and, discovering that the listener was undoubtedly Major Spedwell, he made an effort to get in touch with Leggat, but without success.
The man’s danger was a very real one; how far would Fing-Su go? A long way, to judge by what had already happened. He drew entirely different conclusions from those which Leggat had drawn from the Joyful Hands. The Lodge meetings might, from the European standpoint, be ridicu
lous, but they had a deadly significance too.
That afternoon Clifford interviewed a high authority at Scotland Yard, and he went to that most austere of public departments with a letter of introduction from the Foreign Secretary. The interview had been a longer one than he had anticipated, but its first result was to relieve him of his greatest worry. He drove straight from the Yard to Sunningdale, and if he had any perturbation at all it was on account of Mr Ferdinand Leggat. The cottage door was locked and he found Joe curled up on the sofa asleep, and Mr Bray awoke in a spirit of revolt. When Joe Bray began to protest in advance against the folly of shutting himself up like a prisoner, Clifford had a shrewd idea that he was justifying in advance a departure from the strict letter of his instructions.
“It’s bad for me health and it gets on me mind,” said Joe loudly, keeping a guilty eye fixed upon the partner of whom he stood in no little awe.
“You’ve been out!” accused Clifford.
There was really not much harm done if he had been. Nobody in Sunningdale knew Joe and, with the exception of Fing-Su, it was doubtful if there was a person in England who would recognize him.
“I went out to pick a few flowers,” explained Joe. “There is something about flowers, Cliff, that brings a lump into my throat. You can sniff! You’re naturally hard. But to see all them bluebells–-“
“It’s too late for bluebells; you probably mean dandelions,” said Cliff coldly, “or more likely turnips!”
“Bluebells,” insisted Mr Bray with a vigorous nodding of his head. “And nestling under, as it were, the trees. And, Cliff”—he coughed—“I met the dandiest young lady you’ve ever seen!”
Clifford looked at him aghast. Mr Joseph Bray was blushing violently. Was this the iron-souled prospector, the man who had won through from poverty to affluence by a grim disregard of most of the laws that govern Chinese lands and customs? He could only wonder and remain speechless.
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