Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

“Oh yes,” the policeman said. “What do you do in Mongolia?”

  “I have explained a good many times,” Gates answered wearily. “I am joining a scientific expedition.”

  “Oh yes,” the policeman said, “a scientific expedition. Where is the scientific expedition in Mongolia?”

  “Inner Mongolia,” Gates repeated patiently. “I am joining what is known as the ‘Gilbreth Expedition.’ The other members left here two weeks ago. I shall be told where I am to find them when I reach Kalgan. You must have seen them when they went through here.”

  “Oh yes,” said the policeman. “Please why did you not go with them?”

  “Because I could not make arrangements to come earlier.”

  “Thank you.” The policeman wrote carefully in his book. “You go to find something in Mongolia? What do you go to find?”

  “Primitive man,” Gates said.

  “Oh,” said the policeman, “primitive man. You go and catch a man?”

  The American blinked his grayish eyes.

  “The man we’re going to catch is dead,” he said.

  “Oh,” said the policeman, “you go to catch a dead man?”

  “Yes,” said Gates, “the man we hope to catch has been dead at least a million years.”

  The policeman wrote carefully in his book.

  “Oh,” he said, “dead one million years. Here are your papers, please. So sorry for you we cannot talk longer. There are two other passengers.”

  The policeman rose and bowed, leaving Calvin Gates to wonder, not for the first time, what it was all about. Everything he said would be in his dossier. Doubtless someone in some office would check over all his ambiguous remarks. His desire to join the Gilbreth Expedition had been explained at meticulous length, but repetition did not seem to matter. Calvin Gates rose, picked up his trench coat and turned to walk out of the little dining saloon. He was moving toward the door when a voice said: “Oh, excuse me.”

  A small man had risen from a corner table and was smiling and bowing. He was carefully dressed in a neatly tailored blue serge suit. His linen was stiffly starched. His jet black hair was brushed stiff like a Prussian officer’s.

  “Excuse me,” the little man said again. He was holding out a visiting card, a simple bit of oblong card on which was printed “I. A. MOTO.” The name meant absolutely nothing, but Calvin Gates was not surprised.

  “Are you the police too?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” the other said and laughed. “But I am friends of Americans. I have been to America. Shall we sit down and have some whisky? It would be so very nice.”

  Calvin Gates was beyond being astonished, for other Japanese had been helpful before through no understandable motive.

  “Thank you,” he began. “It’s getting late—”

  “Oh no,” said Mr. Moto, “please. Never too late for whisky in America. Ha! Ha! I admire America so much. I am so afraid that you are tired of our policemen.”

  Mr. Moto bowed and pulled back a chair and Calvin Gates sat down.”

  “So sorry,” said Mr. Moto. “The policemen work so hard. Please, I have studied at college in America. I could not help but overhear. You are embarking on a scientific expedition for Mongolia? That will be very, very interesting and very, very nice. It is very lovely in Mongolia.”

  “Have you ever been there?” Calvin asked.

  “Oh yes.” Mr. Moto bobbed his head and smiled. “I have been to the region where you are going.” Mr. Moto smiled again and clasped his delicate brown hands. “To Ghuru Nor.”

  Calvin Gates felt something jump inside him, and for the first time in many days he was uneasy. The little man was looking at him unblinkingly, still smiling.

  “How do you know where I’m going?” he asked. “I never told the policeman that.”

  “Please,” said Mr. Moto. “Excuse me, please. I have read of it in the Tokyo newspaper. I am so interested. You see—in your country I studied anthropology. You are Nordic, Mr. Gates, with a trace of Alpine. Nordics are so very nice.”

  Calvin Gates took off his hat. Uneasiness, and a sudden feeling of being hunted and a suspect returned to him, although, after all, there was no reason why he should consider himself a fugitive.

  “Please,” said Mr. Moto. “I am so very interested. Geologically speaking the Central Asian plateau may have been the cradle for the human race so very nicely. Geologically the Himalayas are so new. Before they were thrust up, the animals and flowers of the land about the Malay Archipelago extended over Central Asia, did they not? The woolly rhinoceros was there and also the anthropoids. Then the Himalayas cut off those poor monkeys. Am I not right? To live, these creatures had to come down from the trees. It is interesting to consider that they turned to men; very, very interesting. No doubt the ancestors of the Peiping Man are there. We have heard of bones in the deposits near Ghuru Nor. I am so very, very pleased that you are going, Mr. Gates.”

  “You certainly know all about it,” Calvin Gates said. “Are you connected with some university?”

  “Oh no,” said Mr. Moto, “oh no, please.” He smiled in the determined engaging manner of his race, displaying a row of uneven teeth, highly inlaid with gold. “There is only one thing which is—ha ha—so very funny.”

  Calvin Gates was unable to appreciate Mr. Moto’s sociable merriment, nor could he tell whether its purpose was to put him at ease or not.

  “Something’s funny, is it?” he inquired.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Moto gleefully, “so funny. So sorry that I startle you perhaps.”

  “You don’t startle me,” said Calvin Gates.

  There was an intense beady glint in the eyes of the small man opposite him, but his voice was smooth and genial.

  “So glad I do not,” said Mr. Moto. “Thank you. I have learned so many very lovely jokes in America. It is so funny that the primitive man, who lived so many years ago, should have selected such an interesting place to die. It is so funny that the drift where his bones rest at Ghuru Nor should be one of the most strategic points in the area between Russia and North China. So funny for the primitive man.”

  Mr. Moto laughed again and rubbed his delicate hands together. He was making such an obvious effort to be agreeable that Calvin’s watchfulness relaxed.

  “Are you an army officer?” Calvin asked him.

  The beady look returned to Mr. Moto’s eyes, and for a moment his smile was unnatural and fixed.

  “No,” he said, “not army—please. So nice to see Americans, and it is so very nice that you are going to Mongolia. Perhaps we can have a good talk tomorrow. I should like so very much to be of help. You may be lonely on the train tomorrow going through Korea, although there is your countrywoman going also on the train. She is on the boat now. Perhaps you know her?”

  “A countrywoman?” Calvin Gates repeated.

  “An American young lady,” said Mr. Moto. “Yes. She is traveling with a Russian, who may be a courier, I think. See, the policeman is talking to them now.”

  Calvin Gates glanced across the room. A slight dark girl in a brown tweed traveling suit was sitting with the policeman. He could tell she was an American without knowing why. He knew it even before she spoke in a drawling voice, and it occurred to him disinterestedly that she would have been good-looking if she had paid attention to her clothes. As it was, she did not appear interested in looks. It was as though she considered them as something best concealed.

  “Yes,” she was saying, “Winnetka, Illinois; born in 1910. It’s on the passport, isn’t it? And my color’s white as a rule. And my father’s a manufacturer.”

  “Oh,” said the policeman, “yes, he makes things?”

  “What did you think he did,” the girl asked, “walk a tightrope?”

  Her voice dropped to a monotone again and Mr. Moto sighed.

  “It does no good to get angry,” he said. “The poor policeman works so hard. You do not know the young lady?”

  “No.” Calvin Gates shook his head. “There’s a l
arge population in America. I’ve never met them all.”

  “A tourist, I suppose,” said Mr. Moto. “You are going to Mongolia alone?”

  It might have been imagination, but it seemed that Mr. Moto was watching him with unnecessary attention.

  “As far as I know,” said Calvin Gates.

  “Oh,” said Mr. Moto. “We will have a nice talk in the morning.”

  Calvin Gates rose and bowed. It seemed to him that he was always bowing and smiling until his facial muscles were strained from polite grimaces. The girl’s voice, with its midwestern articulation, had been the only thing in two days that had reminded him of home.

  When he passed along a narrow passage toward his stateroom, a steward, a flat-faced, snub-nosed boy, bowed and hissed and opened his door and switched on the light. Calvin threw his hat and trench coat on the berth, seated himself on a small stool and took a notebook and pencil from his pocket.

  “Second class to Shimonoseki,” he wrote. “Mothers nursing babies. Old men taking off their clothes and scratching. Rice fields. Chatter, chatter. Rice wine. Soldiers. Clap clap of wooden shoes. Police. What does your grandfather do? Little boat. Mr. Moto, who knows anthropology. Fusan tomorrow, but must not take pictures.”

  He realized that his words would be unintelligible to most, but they would never be so to him. They would always bring back a hundred noises and faces and that sense of being an outlander in a train that ran through a country unbelievably like that country’s pictures, with its tall blue hills, and bamboo, and tiny farms, with its concrete dams and its high tension wires and its factories, with its population half in kimonos and half in European clothes. It was a land of smiles and grimness, half toylike, half efficient.

  He rose, took off his coat and glanced at his baggage. As soon as he did so he discovered that his briefcase, which he had left beside his steamer trunk, had disappeared. He opened the door and shouted into the passageway.

  “Boysan!” he shouted. The flat-faced room steward came running.

  “Look here,” Calvin Gates said, “where’s the little bag, the one that was there?”

  The flat brown face stared at him.

  “Bag.” Calvin Gates said to the boy. “Little bag, so big.” The boy drew in his breath.

  He spoke loudly, as one does when dealing with a foreigner, in the absurd hope that shouting might make the meaning clearer. Even while he spoke he knew that he was achieving nothing.

  “Get someone who can speak English,” Calvin Gates shouted. “All my notes—papers are in that bag.”

  At that same moment a door across the passageway opened, and Mr. Moto appeared, holding a small brown brief case in his hand, displaying his gold teeth and bowing.

  “Oh,” said Mr. Moto, “I am so very, very sorry. Can this be your bag? This ship boy was very stupid.”

  “Thanks,” said Calvin Gates. “Thank you very much.”

  “Oh no,” said Mr. Moto. “I am so glad to help. Good night until tomorrow.”

  “Good night,” said Calvin Gates. He closed his door and sat down with his brief case across his knees. He was positive that he had seen the bag deposited in his own stateroom. He was positive that the bag had not been placed in Mr. Moto’s room by mistake. Mr. Moto had been looking through his papers, but the papers were all there in the order he had left them—only a few personal letters, and nothing of any importance. He took out the last letter about Dr. Gilbreth, which had been written him by the Doctor’s business representative in New York.

  Dear Cal:—

  You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got your letter asking how to find Gilbreth. He must have told you about the shooting in Mongolia. The office here will be in touch with him since we handle his accounts, but even a cable will take weeks sometimes to deliver. The best way to find him will be to go to the man in Kalgan who is seeing to his supplies and transportation. He is a part-German, part-Russian, who does trading in Mongolia by the name of Holtz. When you find him in Kalgan, he can probably get you out at a time when he is sending out supplies by motor.

  Gilbreth has an artist going out to join him, a good-looking girl with a temper. You may meet her on the way, as she only left last week. Gilbreth was no end pleased by the check your uncle sent. It made all the difference in his being able to go, and it was like the old gentleman not to want any acknowledgment. Bella made that clear enough when she brought in the check. When you see him, be sure to thank him for us. . . .

  There was nothing which was important, but it was obvious that Mr. Moto had been seeking something. Now that he thought of it, all of Mr. Moto’s conversation had been more adroit than any of the questions of the police. He could almost believe that Mr. Moto’s gentle words had been probing into his past, that there was something odd about him which Mr. Moto had seen but which no one else had noticed. He unfolded his map of China and Japan, and stared at it as he had twenty times before, still only half convinced that he was doing what he set out to do. He could locate himself at the narrow strait which separated Japan from the mainland of Asia, and he could see the curve of the railroad which started at the port of Fusan, and wound up through the promontory of Korea, and thence through Manchuria to Mukden. It would take twenty-four hours to reach Mukden by train provided there was no delay, and that would not be half the journey. He must pass the night at Mukden and take another train westward through Manchuria to Shan-hai-kuan by the Great Wall of China. There he must change and on the following morning he would arrive at Peiping, only to change trains again. Then he must travel north for another day’s journey before he reached Kalgan. He had no way of telling how far he must travel after that—somewhere to the north where there was no railroad—until he could find Dr. Gilbreth to tell him what he wanted.

  Long after he had folded the map again, when he tried to go to sleep he could see the line of railroads and those unknown cities.

  2

  CALVIN GATES lay in his berth staring at the dark, while the steady beat of the engines, almost like the heart pulsations of a living organism, quivered rhythmically through the little ship. As he listened the whole vessel seemed alive, awake and conscious. There were knowing little creakings of the woodwork and strange premonitory shivers from the deck beneath. He knew that he would not sleep well that night, for it had been that way before, when his mind moved to vanished possibilities of what he might have said and what he might have done.

  Finally he turned on the light and dressed. Then he put on his hat and coat and looked at his wrist watch. It was one o’clock in the morning and he knew that the ship would be well out on that body of water which divided Japan from the mainland.

  The key to his cabin door lay on the washstand and he picked it up, drew back the bolt, and turned the heavy brass doorknob. Outside, the narrow passageway which ran between the passengers’ cabins was brightly lighted and empty. He closed his door and locked it, and tried the lock carefully before he put the key in his pocket. The dining-room doors were closed and the flat-faced room steward was sleeping in a folding chair. He walked by, careful not to wake him, up the stairs to the boat deck.

  The ship was moving over a cool, placid sea. Her lights made little yellow pools on the gently undulating waves. As far as his sight carried there were no shore lights and no lights of other ships. He had the small deck entirely to himself, and the loneliness gave him a sense of comfort, and a feeling of motion without his own volition. It was pleasant to know that he was moving.

  He was moving away from it, moving away. He was thinking that Central Park would be misty in the haze of a sultry summer day, when some half-heard sound brought his attention back to the rail where he was leaning and back to the quiet deck, with the rhythmical sounds of the engine and the whirr of the ventilator fans. He was sure that he never consciously heard a sound, yet he knew that he was not alone—he knew before he turned.

  “Good evening,” a voice said. “It is such a very lovely evening.”

  “Oh,” Calvin said, �
�good evening.” A man had moved beside him with soft, almost noiseless steps; it was his acquaintance of the early evening, the fragile Japanese gentleman, Mr. I. A. Moto.

  “Ha ha,” said Mr. Moto with a forced laugh. It seemed to Calvin that the Japanese were always trying to laugh. “I find it hard to sleep on boats and trains. Ha ha, I am always wide awake.”

  “Yes,” Calvin said politely, “I find it hard myself. I was thinking and I could not sleep.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Moto, “you were thinking?”

  “Yes,” said Calvin.

  “Oh,” said Mr. Moto, “you were thinking of New York?”

  Mr. Moto’s face was only a blur in the dark.

  “How did you know I came from New York?” Calvin asked.

  There was a sibilant hiss of politely indrawn breath from the blur of Mr. Moto’s face.

  “Excuse me, please,” said Mr. Moto. “You have the New York voice. The young American lady on board comes from the Middle West. I like to think that I can always tell. New York is such a very lovely city. You like Tokyo? We are trying so hard to be like New York.”

  “I wonder why you do?” Calvin asked.

  “Perhaps,” said Mr. Moto, “we all admire your country so much, how it has reached out from such a little country and become so great.”

  “You’re reaching out too, aren’t you?” Calvin asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Mr. Moto. “We must live. We are such a little people.”

  “You’ve done a lot,” said Calvin.

  “It is so kind of you to say so,” Mr. Moto said. “I hope so much you like Japan. We make so very many interesting things—so many small things which are so easy to carry. Our workmen are so very, very careful. Perhaps you have bought some small articles?”

  The question was a part of that whole aimless conversation, which was so like his other conversations with other Japanese—the exploits of Japan, the antiquity of Japanese culture, and Japan’s peculiar mission in the Orient—but something told Calvin that Mr. Moto was waiting, attentively waiting, for the answer to that trivial question.