Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

  Calvin Gates had heard of the subtleties of the Oriental mind, but he could not understand.

  “You must have some reason,” Calvin said.

  “Yes,” Mr. Moto said. “Yes, a reason. I am such a humble man, but I am so fortunate to have the confidence of some very great—some august individuals. I speak for a very august individual. You heard me address the general? You see those pins upon the map? The staff has given advancing orders for those little pins. The staff wished those little pins to be moving yesterday toward Ghuru Nor. I have used my authority yesterday to countermand that order. Those little pins cannot move until I tell them, I represent such a very august personage.”

  “Who’s that,” asked Calvin Gates, “the Emperor of Japan?”

  Mr. Moto looked startled.

  “Please,” he answered, “I cannot permit you to use the word. I only said a very august personage.”

  “And you’re sending that message in,” said Calvin Gates, “and stopping your army from acting.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Moto. “Please, they cannot act unless I give the order. I want so much for you to understand.”

  “I don’t blame the army for wanting to kill you,” said Calvin Gates.

  “So nice of you to see,” said Mr. Moto. “I am not speaking for nothing. It concerns you so much. We are now in Peiping. In a very few minutes, we shall take a luncheon basket and go to the flying field. A plane will be waiting to take us north. You will observe the city just at the edge of those mountains. That is Kalgan, Mr. Gates. It is where the camel caravans used to start out into Mongolia. It is where Captain Hamby will arrive early this evening. I am so afraid that the army intelligence knows already that Captain Hamby and Miss Dillaway possess that cigarette case. We shall land at Kalgan, Mr. Gates. The field is no good, but we shall land. You follow me so far?”

  “Yes,” said Calvin Gates.

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Moto, “so very much. I was so very pleased that Captain Hamby believes I am using you. That is why you are going with me, because I am using you again. I know where Captain Hamby will go at Kalgan.”

  “And you’re going after him,” Calvin interrupted.

  “Please,” said Mr. Moto, “wait. I am not going after Captain Hamby. You are, Mr. Gates. It is your regard for Miss Dillaway that brings you and also the Captain’s offer of three thousand dollars. I am so sure Captain Hamby will appreciate. You are to tell to Captain Hamby all I have told you, and all about my humble self. He wants to know so very much. There is only one thing not to tell him—not what the cigarette case means, please.”

  “But I don’t see what you’re driving at,” Calvin Gates began.

  Mr. Moto’s ingratiating smile disappeared.

  “I do not ask you to see,” he said. “I ask you to do what I say, please. If you do not, you will be so sorry. You have shot a Japanese subject, Mr. Gates.”

  Calvin Gates grew angry.

  “You needn’t threaten,” he said. “If you want me to tell Hamby what I know about you, I’m glad to do it. But I’d look out for Captain Hamby.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Moto, “so kind of you to tell me. It is time to be starting now I think. Please excuse if I was rude. So sorry.”

  Mr. Moto picked up a small brief case from the desk.

  “You’re sure you want me to tell Hamby everything?” said Calvin Gates.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Moto. “So sorry for you we cannot wait for lunch, but there will be sandwiches in the plane.”

  Calvin Gates was not thinking of food, he was thinking of Captain Hamby, and of Captain Hamby’s endless song about the troubles in the old kit bag. Captain Sam Hamby could look out for himself, and Captain Hamby was not a man to be caught in any trap.

  “So sorry for you, Mr. Moto,” Calvin said.

  15

  MR. MOTO must have said exactly what he wanted, no more, no less, for his loquacity ceased abruptly and he no longer seemed anxious to discourse upon the economic aims of Japan or upon his nation’s manifest destiny.

  Nevertheless in the next half-hour Calvin Gates observed that Japan’s manifest destiny had reached Peiping. The great northern capital of China, nominally under China’s central Government, appeared already to be under Japanese control, and it was obvious even to a stranger that some understanding had been reached between Japanese and Chinese officials which was definite though obscure. The small brown automobile was waiting in the alley outside the house. It started off at high speed the moment he and Mr. Moto were inside and the Chinese policeman directing traffic at the street corners allowed the car to pass without a single interruption.

  Out beyond the city walls the car drove to the center of a flying field without a question being asked, straight up to a small cabin plane with its engine already running. Two Chinese attendants who were standing near it hurried to open the doors. A Japanese pilot was waiting at the controls.

  As soon as they were inside, and even before they were seated, the engine gave a roar and the plane taxied to the end of the field and turned into the wind. The increased acceleration of the engine made conversation difficult, but Calvin Gates shouted to Mr. Moto.

  “You certainly have good service,” he shouted.

  Mr. Moto nodded and smiled, opened a cardboard box, took a sandwich from it, and passed it to Calvin Gates.

  “Too much noise to talk,” Mr. Moto called. “Look out the window, it is very nice.” Then he took out a map from his brief case and handed it to Calvin. Just as the plane lifted from the ground Calvin looked at his wrist watch; it was half-past two in the afternoon. Mr. Moto had folded his hands and closed his eyes.

  When Mr. Moto closed his eyes, he became an ordinary person, a slightly weary Japanese businessman, and nothing more. It was hard to imagine that such an insignificant individual should be engaged in an intrigue, which dealt with war and the rumors of war. He might have been the emissary of an august personage equipped with some portentous sort of authority, but now his mouth was half open, displaying his gold-filled teeth, and his small sharp face was in repose, while Calvin Gates was left, as he had been left before, to make anything he liked of everything which had happened.

  Why was he aboard that plane, at all? He was there because he wished to meet a man named Gilbreth and the meeting would ruin him for good. He was there because a girl, whom he had met two days before, and who had no possible claim upon him, might be in difficulty.

  If a stranger had come to him and had presented such a case, he would have doubted that stranger’s sanity. Yet though he could see himself objectively, logic did nothing to alter the impulses within him which made him face life as though it were a game played by arbitrary and artificial rules. It did no good to realize that he was ruining himself by those rules, even when he could look quite clearly into the future. Before he was finished he would be turned into a shabby sort of adventurer who hung on the outskirts of a disordered world. He was on the road already, watching himself move deliberately along it.

  He had the strange feeling of being a partially disembodied spirit, a feeling of being carried rather slowly through the air away from something which had been himself, away from any possible connection with his past or with tradition.

  He could see the land below him in a new perspective, much as he saw himself. He had heard so much of the riches of China and of the density of its population that he was surprised by the barren ruggedness of the country. The city of Peiping was growing flat, resolving itself into the mystical plan of its early builders, with the yellow roofs of its Forbidden City and its Imperial lakes and gardens set like a jewel in the center of the streets and walls. From the distance, for the plane was climbing higher, the gates and temples and the Drum Tower and Bell Tower all took on the unity of the conception of a single mind. And then they were over a treeless, bare wilderness of mountains, which rose in successive steps away from the plain. He could see the roofs of temples and villages and palaces, a part of some ancient tradition which was as artifi
cial as his own traditions. The country grew more melancholy and rugged, until he was conscious of nothing but a chaotic mass of mountains, which lay beneath them in misty waves almost like a sea, in dusky reds and purples and yellows. It seemed like a barren land hardly worth a struggle, but men had fought over it since the dawn of history.

  Mr. Moto opened his eyes and sat up straight; then he touched Calvin’s arm.

  “Nankow Pass,” Mr. Moto said. He spoke impersonally like a guide from Cook’s. “A part of the Great Wall of China—very, very interesting.”

  The wall stretched beneath them over that hilly country like a snake, in an endless succession of curtains and watch-towers, the last and greatest defense between the capital and the barbarians of the North.

  “The older wall is farther north,” Mr. Moto said, “by Kalgan. Very, very interesting.”

  The bare, mountainous country beyond the wall glowed hotly in the clear, bright air, as they passed over it with the deceptive slowness of a plane at a high altitude and, beyond another range toward the horizon, he could see the beginnings of a country that was a yellowish, sandy green. He nudged Mr. Moto and pointed.

  “Out here?” Mr. Moto said. “Mongolia. We should reach Kalgan in a few minutes now.”

  Mr. Moto was nearly right about the time. They had traversed, in hardly more than an hour, a country which had once taken a camel caravan a week to cover.

  The plane was losing altitude, descending toward a broad, dusty valley with a rampart of purple hills beyond it. There was a drab-colored city in the valley continually growing clearer—a railroad station, narrow streets, gray-tiled roofs, and large areas enclosed by earthen walls.

  “The old compounds,” Mr. Moto said, “for the horses and the camels, when the caravans went to Urga. So very interesting.” But Calvin was growing weary with unfamiliar sights. Mr. Moto touched his arm again, and pointed out of the window.

  “Down there,” he said, “is where Captain Hamby will stop when the train comes in—the compound of a company that does business with Mongolia. It is conducted by a gentleman whose name is Mr. Holtz.”

  Mr. Moto was pointing toward a walled enclosure that looked almost like a fortress. It was toylike from the distance, with figures of men and animals moving behind thick mud walls.

  “The Captain stays there always,” Mr. Moto said. “Yes—they will be waiting for the cigarette case—so very eager.”

  His voice was hardly audible because the change of pressure deafened Calvin Gates as the plane descended. They landed in a dusty field which could have been used only for emergencies, but an automobile was waiting for them on the bare brown ground and a dusty, tired-looking Japanese was waiting with it. He spoke to Mr. Moto excitedly while Calvin stood blinking stupidly in the glare of the afternoon sunlight.

  “So very nice we got here so quickly,” Mr. Moto said. “We shall have an opportunity for a little rest. We are going to the China Hotel, such a nice hotel. Get in the automobile, please.”

  Calvin did not try to see where they were going, for all sights and sounds had become monotonous and endowed with a peculiar similarity. The hotel consisted of a slatternly courtyard with celllike rooms that opened off it. An old Chinese in a dirty black gown led them to two narrow, connecting cubicles, each with a bed, a chair and a basin of water, with flies from the courtyard buzzing through open windows.

  “This is your room, please,” Mr. Moto said. “You will want so much to rest I think. There is nothing to do till sundown, and it will not be nice if you go outside. Make yourself comfortable, please.”

  Mr. Moto and the Japanese who met them moved into the next room and Calvin Gates listened incuriously to their voices. The buzzing of the flies mingled drowsily with their talk, and the sound made Calvin Gates aware of his own weariness. As he lay down on the narrow bed he felt almost contented. At least he was where he had wished to go. He was very nearly on the edge of no man’s land, where civilization as he had known it ended. The city and its walls bore the definite imprint of a Chinese culture but beyond the hills which encircled it he had seen the crumbling mound of China’s ancient wall, and there were no more cities beyond that mound, only the yellowish green rolling country, where the plateau of Central Asia began, a space upon which no civilization either of the East or West had made a very permanent imprint. He was at the edge of that blank which Mr. Moto had shown him on the map, over which Japan and Russia both sought to gain control while they eyed each other like wrestlers waiting to come to grips.

  It was dusk when he was awakened by a hand grasping his shoulder, and when he opened his eyes, he saw Mr. Moto standing over him.

  “So very nice you slept,” Mr. Moto said. “I am having tea and sandwiches sent in. It is time you were awake now, please. The train has come. Captain Hamby and Miss Dillaway have arrived.”

  Calvin Gates stood up, and saw that Mr. Moto’s face looked thin and anxious in the dusk. His voice was as soft as ever, but Calvin could detect a vibration of excitement in it.

  “You are prepared to do what I told you?” Mr. Moto said.

  Calvin Gates looked back at him, but Mr. Moto’s expression told him nothing.

  “I promised you, didn’t I?” he said.

  Mr. Moto clasped his hands and bowed.

  “It is so nice that I can believe you,” he said. “You are like a man in a game of chess. You will just move forward, please.”

  “Go ahead,” said Calvin Gates, “tell me what to do.”

  “First you will have tea and a sandwich,” Mr. Moto said. “You must not be surprised at anything.”

  “Believe me,” said Calvin fervently, “I won’t be surprised at anything.”

  “So glad for you,” Mr. Moto said. “There will be a boy waiting for you who will take you to Captain Hamby, please. Captain Hamby will be staying with this merchant who does business with Mongolia. He is Mr. Holtz, part German, part Russian, very fat. Please to remember the name.”

  “All right,” said Calvin, “I’ll remember.”

  “He lives in a place behind great walls,” Mr. Moto said. “Matters are so unsettled here that businessmen must protect themselves. You are to go to the main gate; the guide will show you there. You are to beat upon the gate and shout for Captain Hamby. It will be very strange inside, but they will take you to Captain Hamby I think, and then you are to be very frank with Captain Hamby, please, just exactly as I told you, please.”

  Calvin Gates shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

  “You’d better tell me exactly what you want,” he said.

  “So very glad to tell you,” Mr. Moto answered steadily. “Captain Hamby must understand that you have been working for me and that you are finished, please. You have escaped from me. You have heard that he is staying with Mr. Holtz. You do not like me anymore, but you have other reasons. You feel there is more money for you by telling him everything that you know about me. You are worried about Miss Dillaway. It will be nice to tell him that, and you must also tell him that white men must stick together. Excuse me, he will understand.”

  “White men must stick together,” Calvin Gates repeated.

  Mr. Moto’s eyes never left his face.

  “You are to tell him particularly that I have full powers over the army, please. It cannot move without me, and be sure to tell him this last. You have just left me at the China Hotel alone. Be sure to tell him that. Are you ready now? You do not look very happy, Mr. Gates.”

  A watchful look in Mr. Moto’s eyes told Calvin Gates that his own expression must have changed, and it was more than an expression; it was a change within himself. He was not the same person who had started on those travels; he was not the same person with whom Mr. Moto had dealt a few hours before. Something had made him see himself entirely differently. Something made his thoughts move erratically, as though he had been awakened from a sleep which had been over him for years. He was very nearly at the end of his journey and yet he was at the parting of some road which lay inside himself. />
  “Why do you not answer please?” Mr. Moto was saying gently.

  But Calvin Gates did not reply. He never knew what sort of person he had been all his life, until he saw himself in that minute’s strange illumination; and he saw himself through the ruthless skill of Mr. Moto’s mind. No other man had moved him as Mr. Moto had, like a chessman on a board. He had been a marionette that danced while someone pulled the strings; he had never been man enough to seize one of those strings with his own hand and snap it. He heard himself speaking in a thick hushed voice.

  “To hell with it,” Calvin said.

  Mr. Moto’s dark eyes grew intent and sharp.

  “What?” Mr. Moto asked. “What have you said please?”

  “To hell with it,” said Calvin Gates. “I am tired of being pushed around.”

  He could see himself clearly for once. He had prided himself on living by a code and instead he had been moved by loyalty and circumstance, and he had never changed a circumstance. He had drifted aimlessly instead, without applying the independence of his mind to anything in life. He saw himself now in that dingy room with the painful clarity of truth, an ineffective romanticist, arid it was Mr. Moto who made him see.

  “You can’t make me run errands for you.” He was speaking, telling the truth to himself at last. “If I wanted to, I could lie and say ‘yes,’ but I won’t lie. I’m not going to be a part of your ideas. I’ve been a part of somebody’s ideas always, and I know where it’s got me. By God, I’ve never given anything a thought. I’ve acted like someone in a copybook, taking everything that came, and I say to hell with minding your orders, Moto. I’m going out of here right, now, and—so sorry for you if you try to stop me.”

  “Mr. Gates,” said Mr. Moto softly, “I am very much surprised.”

  “That doesn’t bother me,” said Calvin Gates. “To hell with you and your Oriental tricks and your majors and your generals, and to hell with Captain Hamby. I told you I would see Hamby, but I won’t take your orders. I’m going to do what I want because it suits me not you. I’m going to do what I want for the first time in my life because I want it, and not because it’s honorable or suitable.”