He glanced nervously at the open door. The lightning came in fluttering spasms.
“No, miss, I’m sorry—I don’t like lightning.”
“Come with me,” commanded the girl, and ran out of the house; but she went alone. The butler went as far as the front door, and felt that he was not called upon by the laws which govern butlers to go any farther.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lynne was sitting in the doorway of the cottage, a rifle across his knees, when Joe came back, the rays of his lamp advertising his presence long before he himself was in sight.
“Where the dickens have you been?” asked Clifford in astonishment. “I thought you were asleep!”
“Just went for a stroll,” said Joe airily. “I slipped out at the back door…there’s nobody about.”
“Well, you can slip in at the front door,” said Clifford severely. “In all probability the wood is full of Chinese cutthroats.”
“Ridic’lous!” murmured Joe as he passed.
“It may be ridic’lous,” Clifford called over his shoulder, “but anything more ridiculous than you lying in a Sunningdale wood with your aged throat cut, I can’t imagine.”
“Fifty-one!” exploded Joe from the passage. “Everybody knows that!”
It was not a moment when Clifford Lynne felt he could debate the question of Mr Bray’s age with any great profit. In the course of the evening he had made several excursions into the wood and had found nothing of a suspicious character. The cottage could be approached from the south by way of a new road that had been cut through the estate company’s property, and to guard against surprise from this direction he had suspended, on a blackened string, a number of little bells that he had bought in London that day, though the never-ending grumble and crack of the thunder made it extremely doubtful whether this warning would reach him. The lightning played vividly in the sky as he sat on the doorstep, alert and waiting. Once Joe began to sing, and he silenced him with an angry growl.
Eleven o’clock was striking when he heard a firm step on the gravel, coming from the direction of the road, and stood up,
There was nothing furtive in the stranger’s approach. He walked boldly down the centre of the road, and Clifford heard the tap of a stick. Whoever the newcomer was, he needed no light to show him the way, and after a while the watcher saw his shape distinctly. He turned from the road and came straight to the cottage, and now Lynne challenged him.
“Have no fear. I am alone!”
It was Fing-Su.
“Stand where you are!” said Clifford harshly, “And since when have I been afraid of Chinese traders?”
The newcomer had halted and Clifford heard him laugh. He smelt something, a penetrating aroma, pungent but not unpleasant.
“Pardon me,” said Fing-Su politely. “I put that rather awkwardly, I am afraid. What I meant to convey was that I had called for a friendly talk. I understand that some of my hot-headed young men, quite without my knowledge, paid you a little attention last night. I have chastized them. Nobody knows better than you, Mr Lynne, that they are the veriest children. They thought I had been insulted–-“
“Who is that?” It was Joe Bray’s voice, speaking from the living-room.
Clifford turned savagely and silenced him. Had Fing-Su heard? And if he had, did he recognize the voice? Apparently he did not.
“You have a friend staying with you? I think that is wise,” he said in the same courteous tone. “As I was remarking–-“
“Listen! I’m not going to waste my time with that monkey stuff. Fing-Su, you’re getting to the end of your rope.”
“It is a long rope,” said Fing-Su, “and it covers a wide area. You are a fool, Lynne, not to throw in your lot with me. In five years I shall be the most powerful man in China.”
“You’ll conquer China, will you?” asked the other sardonically. “And Europe, too, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” said Fing-Su. “You have no vision, my friend. Do you not see that with our preponderant man-strength all the wars of the future will be decided by our race? A professional yellow army will decide the fate of Europe. A great mercenary army—think of it, Lynne—to be bargained for and sold to the highest bidder. An army that sits everlastingly on the threshold of Europe!”
“What do you want now?” asked Clifford brusquely.
Fing-Su had a trick of conveying reproach by his very intonation, and now he replied in a hurt tone:
“Is it necessary that we should be enemies, Mr Lynne? I have no feeling against you. All I wish is to buy from you at a reasonable price a founders’ share in the company–”
The coolness of the request momentarily struck Clifford dumb. It aroused in him also a sudden feeling of apprehension. Fing-Su would not dare advance such an iniquitous request unless he had the wherewithal to bargain.
“And what do you propose giving me in exchange?” he asked slowly, and heard the quick intake of the other’s breath.
“A thing very precious to you, Mr Lynne.” He spoke deliberately. “You have a friend in your house and evidently he can hear, and I am not prepared to make a statement before a witness. Will you come a little way up the road with me?”
“Walk ahead,” said Clifford curtly, and, turning, Fing-Su went before him.
Within a few yards of the main road the Chinaman stopped and turned.
“There is a lady–-” he began.
Lynne’s hand shot out and gripped him by his coat. Something hard pressed against the Chinaman’s waistcoat.
“You’ve got Joan Bray, have you?” demanded Cliff through his teeth. “You’ve got her! Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“There is no need for heroics–-” began Fing-Su.
“Tell me where she is.”
“I am sorry you take this view,” said Fing-Su, regret in his voice, “and as you threaten me I have no course to follow but–-“
He took off his hat as though to cool his heated head and looked into its interior.
Suddenly from its crown, with a fierce hiss, came a thick spray of liquid that drenched Clifford’s face.
Pure ammonia, stifling, blinding…!
In his agony his pistol fell with a clatter to the ground, and the Chinaman, with a quick thrust of his head, sent him sprawling. Kneeling by his side, Fing-Su thrust his hand into the inside of Clifford’s waistcoat. He felt a crackle—a paper was sewn there.
And then came a diversion; the sound of footsteps, flying down the road—a woman, he saw, with his keen eyes that could penetrate the blackest gloom of night. Instinct saved Joan Bray. As she turned into the lane she stopped suddenly, conscious of the huddled figure on the ground.
“Who is that?” she asked.
At the sound of her voice Fing-Su leapt to his feet with a squeal of rage.
“Miss Bray!”
She recognized him, and for a moment was petrified with fright, then, as he leapt at her, she raised her hand in the desperation of terror and flung the thing she had been carrying. The black ball dropped short of Fing-Su, but fell on the ground at his feet.
There was a dull explosion, and instantly the road, the wood, the very Slaters’ Cottage, were illuminated by the light of the magnesium bomb. In a panic the Chinaman turned and plunged into the wood and a second later was lost to sight. On and on he ran blindly, until he came to a low hedge which separated him from the road. Near at hand a motor-car was drawn up by the side of the road, its lights dimmed. He stopped only long enough to lift out a stout and swooning girl and bundle her on to the roadside, and then the car sped furiously towards Egham.
A quarter of an hour later a search party went out to look for Mabel Narth, and it was Joe Bray who had the fortune to find her. And to comfort her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Fing-Su sat cross-legged on a divan in his over-furnished and over-scented office. The hour was four, and the roofs and steeples of East London showed black against the dawn.
At such an hour do the great men of China grant their audiences,
and Fing-Su, in his flowered silk robe, his silken trousers and white felt boots, wore upon his head the insignia of a rank to which he had no title.
Between his lips was a long, thick-stemmed pipe with a microscopic bowl, but it was tobacco that he was smoking.
A heavy-eyed little Chinese girl-woman sat on her heels in a corner of the room, watching him and ready to replenish the pipe or tea cup which stood at his elbow. Squatting at his feet was an unhealthy-looking Chinaman in European dress, his big derby hat deposited on the floor by his side.
Fing-Su lifted the handleless tea cup from the low table by his side and drank noisily.
“Of all men in this evil country I have sought out you, Li Fu,” he said, setting down the cup. “I shall pay you well and there will be a great cumskaw in addition. Your name has been spoken to me because of your boldness and because you know this town so much better than I, who have spent all my years at college.”
He used the phrase which literally means ‘Forest of Pencils.’
If Li Fu felt any uneasiness, the inscrutable, pock-marked face did not show it.
“There is a law in this country which is very hard on foreigners,” he said. “By such a law I may be taken and put upon a ship and sent to China. Already I have spent three months in a prison where no man can speak to another. And, Fing-Su, in China I am a dead man, as you know, for Tuchun of Lanchow has sworn to hang my head in a basket over the gate of the city.”
Fing-Su smoked delicately, drawing at the tasteless tobacco and sending forth big blue rings of smoke to the scarlet-raftered ceiling.
“All China is not Lanchow,” he said, “and there will be changes. Who knows that you may not be Tuchun yourself some day? My friends will be well rewarded. There will be ‘squeeze’ for you, not ‘cash’ or copper or mex dollar, but gold. I know a place where there is a statue made of gold…”
He spoke of Urga, that Mongolian Mecca, where shrines are of solid gold and there is a great golden figure of Buddha, and in the cellars of the living Buddha a treasure beyond computation.
Li Fu listened apparently unmoved, his mind vacillating between the ungilded gates of Pentonville Prison and the reward he was offered. He was not a poor man as Chinamen went, but his compatriot had offered him an immediate fortune.
“You have the felicity of owning a white wife,” Fing-Su went on in his thin voice. “It would be a simple matter and none would know.”
Li Fu looked up.
“Why do you come to me? For I am not a member of your tong. And you have hundreds of men who are like slaves to you!”
Fing-Su tapped the ashes from his pipe, declined with a gesture its replenishment, and sat back in the silken cushions behind him.
“The Sage has said, ‘The slave must be ordered and the master will be served,’” he quoted. “I cannot stand behind each man and say ‘Do this.’ If I said, ‘Li Fu has offended me, let him die,’ you would be dead, because it is easy to take life. But in this other man I require wisdom and cunning or nothing will save my face.”
Li Fu considered the matter, twiddling his thumbs, his nimble mind busy. This was something more profitable than the smuggling of cocaine, his staple industry, a quicker way to fortune than the rake-off of coppers from a forbidden game of fantan. His wife, who was not exactly white but white enough, was very competent to play the part which his employer had assigned, had indeed already rented the premises which he had intended should mask a more nefarious trade than millinery.
Fing-Su knew of that projected showroom in Fitzroy Square; he knew of Li Fu’s connection, for the secrets of the little Chinese underworld came to him in the shape of gossip.
“You will pay first,” said Li Fu, and there followed a gentle but conventional wrangle, for no two Chinamen have ever struck a bargain on the first price offered.
At the end Li Fu was dismissed.
The man who entered from the little ante-room was not unused to being kept waiting by his employer, but the interview had lasted longer than he expected, and Major Spedwell was tired and not in the best of tempers.
“Well, have you settled things?” he asked shortly.
Fing-Su surveyed him through half-closed eyes.
“Yes; it was inevitable,” he said.
“You think you will get the girl without fuss? I don’t.” Spedwell sank down into a chair and lit a cigar. “You’re monkeying with a big thing, and I’m not so sure that even now we’re going to get through the next twelve hours without trouble,” he said. “Lynne has pulled in Scotland Yard–-“
“Scotland Yard!” murmured the other with a derisive smile.
“There’s nothing to grin about,” snapped Spedwell. “These birds, when they move at all, move quickly. I’ve been shadowed all day.”
Fing-Su sat up suddenly.
“You?”
Spedwell nodded.
“I thought that would interest you. And I’ll tell you something else. Miss Bray is pretty certain to be shadowed. Leggat has spilt more than we know—what are you going to do about him?” he asked abruptly.
Fing-Su shrugged his silken shoulders.
“Let him slide,” he said indifferently.
Spedwell chewed at the cigar, his eyes upon the whitening windows.
“The Yard are up and doing,” he said significantly. “That fellow Lynne captured—do you think he talked?”
“Possibly.” Impatience and weariness were in Fing-Su’s voice. “At any rate, I have decided to deal with him in the manner you know. This country stifles me!” He rose and began walking up and down the room. “So many things would be simple—in China! Lynne—where would he be? A headless body carried out and left in the Gobi Desert—or, wearing a soldier’s uniform, in some old moat. This woman interests me.”
He stopped and pulled at his thin lip.
“Miss Bray?”
“Yes…She is pretty, I suppose? Yes, pretty.” He nodded. “I should like to see her in the dress of our women. And that would be terrible for Lynne. To know that somewhere in China—in an inaccessible place, with my armies between him and her–-“
Spedwell rose slowly to his, feet, an ugly look on his face.
“You can cut that little dream out of your repertoire, Fing-Su,” he said coldly. “No harm must come to that girl—not that kind of harm.”
Fing-Su was smiling.
“My dear Spedwell, how amusing! What queer values you English-speaking folk place on your women that you would jeopardize an immense fortune—I was joking. She is nothing to me. I would surrender all the women in the world rather than lose your help and friendship.”
But Spedwell’s uneasiness was not so readily dispelled. He knew just when and why his services would be dispensed with, for the hour was near at hand when Fing-Su would make a clean cut of many of those trammelling influences which surrounded and hampered him. And, knowing, he was prepared.
“How are things shaping in China?” he asked.
“The hour is near,” said the Chinaman in a low voice. “The two armies have come to an agreement. Wei-pa-fu will move down from Harbin, Chi-sa-lo has concentrated within striking distance of Peking. It is purely a question of money. The guns have been landed—but I need not have sent them. Shells and equipment is all that Wei-pa-fu requires. If I could get control of the concession reserve it would be easy. But the generals want their ‘squeeze’—four millions would make me Emperor of China.”
Spedwell stroked his little black moustache thoughtfully.
“And how much would keep you Emperor?” he asked, but Fing-Su was unconcerned.
“Once there, I shall be difficult to move,” he said. “The granting of concessions to the Powers will identify them with my reign…”
Spedwell listened and wondered at the calm confidence of this merchant’s son who planned to buy a place on the throne which the Mings and the Manchus had won by their valour. And all the time he was speaking the world grew lighter and the grim outlines of the Conqueror’s Tower, wherein so much am
bition had died, rose into shape with the broadening of the day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Mr Stephen Narth had been detained in town all night, and for once his daughter did an unselfish thing.
“There is no sense in worrying father,” she told her hysterical sister. “And Mr Joseph says that no harm was intended me—these wretched people mistook me for Joan.”
“‘Joseph’—is he Jewish?” asked Letty, curiosity overcoming alarm.
“He doesn’t look it,” was the non-committal reply.
It happened that Clifford did not see the girl either on her rescue or during the following morning. Only too well he knew that Mabel had been mistaken for her distant cousin, and he grew more and more uneasy. His first call on his arrival in town was at Scotland Yard, and here he received the gratifying intelligence that a number of officers had been detailed to watch Sunni Lodge.
“You’ll be wanting somebody to look after you!” said the officer with a smile when Clifford told him of the ammonia attack. “That ammonia spray in the hat is an old trick, by the way.”
Clifford nodded.
“I’m not proud of myself,” he said.
“As far as Miss Bray is concerned,” said the superintendent, “I have already sent a man to Sunningdale with orders to follow her wherever she goes. He has just ‘phoned me to say that the Narths’ car is out of order and he will have no difficulty in keeping her under observation.”
“Thank the Lord for that!” said Cliff fervently, and went back to his house to arrange the details of the search he was making that night.
At five o’clock that afternoon he telephoned through to the Slaters’ Cottage. Joe Bray’s voice answered him.
“I’ve just been having a talk on the ‘phone with Joan,” said Joe. “Mark this, that girl’s got brains! I asked her how old she thought I was, and what do you think she said–-“
“Don’t tell me,” begged Clifford. “I’d hate to think she was insincere. Now listen: you’re to be here at eleven o’clock. You’ll have a visit from two or three men round about nine. They are Scotland Yard detectives and their job is to keep an eye on Sunni Lodge. As soon as they arrive, you skip—you understand?”
The Yellow Snake Page 14