That movement of the man’s right hand over each bird, before he released it, was not a caress. Instead it was something much more in keeping with his looks—it was a search.
With the thumb and the tips of his fingers he was feeling under the wings of those carrier pigeons. Plainly he was not a seeker after merit with the gods, but after a lost bird that had carried a message.
Carrier pigeons sometimes go astray, and there were men in Peking who lived by liming, snaring and netting birds, so that left little to wonder at, save the evident importance of a message that was sought at such pains and expense and secrecy. But that last factor alone linked the thing, in nature at least, to Koshinga’s vast conspiracy, and I was still watching the man intently when—
A tiny whitish capsule, apparently loosened by the Chinaman’s handling of one of the birds, dropped to the cobblestones and lay there unnoticed by him.
A moment later Hazard drew out his handkerchief, wiped at an imaginary spot on his hand, then dropped the handkerchief and picked it up again. The capsule of course came with it.
Hazard fumbled it between his sensitive fingers, restored his handkerchief, felt of the capsule a moment with an intent look on his rather thin, student’s face, and then touched my elbow and backed away into the passing crowd.
I followed him, more puzzled now at Hazard’s uncharacteristic action in practically stealing what was obviously another man’s find than at anything else in the whole episode.
But fifteen minutes later I had completely forgotten that matter in the overwhelming interest of the message itself. For when we opened the capsule in the private stall of a Chinese tea-house we found inside it a thin slip of paper, from which these words stared up at us in Chinese ideographs:
Read, tremble at Koshinga’s words, and act quickly. Under the gate of imperial passage a door opens to the gold of the Elder Brotherhood. The door may be found by the sign of the triangle; there are three signs, and the triple pressure is the key to the door. The place for the gold is the Gobi hiding-place.
The note was unsigned, but for our understanding there was no need for signature. The tricksy gods had favored us, even those gods of whom Koshinga pretended to be master; we had stumbled, by the sheerest chance, upon what might be the means of saving the young republic, already tottering from lack of funds.
That was what I thought then.
“——, Hazard, what luck!”
“Luck? I don’t know.”
“But surely,” I whispered, for nowhere in Peking were we safe from eavesdroppers, “it’s plain. By now Koshinga expected to be dictator of China. He’d have needed money; he brought it with him. When his plans went to smash and he fled he was forced to abandon it. And it’s there where the message says it is, if we can interpret it—this message from Koshinga to—”
“To the merchant in the brown gabardine, it would seem,” completed Hazard. “Only,” he went on, smiling quizzically, “isn’t it a bit too much of a coincidence that we happened to come up to the merchant, of all men in Peking, at the exact moment when the capsule for which he was searching dropped from under the pigeon’s wing?”
“But why argue against the fact?” I questioned. “We did that very thing.”
“That’s it,” said Hazard quietly; “we did.”
He seemed about to say more but suddenly checked himself, his head slightly on one side, his eyes half-closed, his whole body tense—or so it seemed to me—in the strain of listening for something that escaped my hearing altogether.
“Well,” he went on after a moment in a nearly normal voice, “of course it’s plain—the hiding-place, I mean.”
I squinted down at the message doubtfully, but Hazard went on hurriedly.
“And if it’s as you think there’s no time to lose. There’s no reason to believe that I wasn’t seen to pick up that capsule. So let’s go.”
“But where?” I asked without any particular surprize, for if my year with Hazard had not taught me to imitate his swift deductions and sudden decisions it had at least accustomed me to them.
“Why, it’s fairly simple,” said Hazard; “I wish everything were as simple. Under the gate of imperial passage—can that be any other than the Ch’ien Men gate, the central door of which used to be always closed except for the emperor on his way to the Temple of Heaven? And we both know that the tunnel through which Koshinga planned to attack the Government House runs under that gate. We’ll know when we get directly under it by the sound of the traffic overhead.”
“Ah, yes,” I agreed. “Ch’ien Men gate is the throat of the Tatar city—we should know when we get under it.”
“Then there,” said Hazard, rising from his stool, “in the side of the tunnel should be the door that this message mentions, a door concealed so cleverly that it’s been overlooked. Then let’s see—what’s meant by the ‘three triangles’ and the ‘triple pressure?’ In a wall of earth held in place where necessary by rocks and planks, as is the wall of this tunnel, what ‘triangular signs’ would be aptest to escape notice? Clearly triangular-shaped rocks, probably small ones.
“Then the ‘triple pressure’—pressure on these three rocks, of course, probably simultaneous. That, I take it, should be enough to go on.”
“Quite enough,” I said, and now that I had his idea I could see that the puzzling words could hardly possess any other meaning. “And behind that door we’ll find—”
“We’ll find,” said Hazard slowly, “whatever it is intended that we shall find.”
I did not understand him fully, but then there were many times when I did not understand Hazard. Quite the boldest and cleverest of logicians, and with a power of imagination besides that enabled him sometimes to construct future situations with almost incredible accuracy, he was also one of the most careful of men. That is, he was careful in what he termed a subjective sense; it is there—he was accustomed to say—since mind is the master of matter, that true prudence lies. Thus—it was only one item in a large philosophy—he utterly refused to deal in prophecies of which he was not sure.
The reason for this was simple. His abounding self-confidence, his creed that in himself, regardless of circumstances, lay success, were to him priceless possessions, which he could not afford to stultify by even a mistaken forecast.
I sometimes felt that he carried that rule to awkward lengths, but at least it gave me confidence in whatever forecasts he chose to utter.
Thus in the present instance I was not even mildly surprized when, half an hour later, we had found in the apparently solid wall of that tunnel which had been begun by the Boxers so long ago in their attack against the Legations, and had so recently been carried nearly to completion by the more dangerous but kindred tong, the Ko Lao Hui—when we had found in that tunnel, I say, the corroboration of Hazard’s reasoning.
But from the moment when I had discovered Hazard’s lack of certitude concerning the outcome of the adventure, his implied doubt concerning the seemingly plain meaning of the message, a feeling of anticipatory uneasiness had possessed me. Perhaps the long trip through the dark tunnel—guarded at the mouth it was by a double sentry post—helped to unnerve me a little more. What I dreaded I did not know; nor could one ever know what to dread when dealing with such a man as he whose grotesquely horrible face my imagination was continually picturing in the darkness.
In our conflict with him we had long ago learned that nothing was certain but a never ending uncertainty. Nothing could be certain until Koshinga was finally disposed of.
And by his proper disposition, Hazard and I had lately agreed, must be meant not death merely. If he were merely killed the veil of secrecy with which he habitually hid himself from all but his closest followers would readily conceal the substitution of another who would carry on his work.
It was the centuries-old legend, known by every Chinaman, that had foretold his coming—just how this had been possible we had not yet learned—coupled with his really enormous brain-power, that made him the
danger that he was. But so nearly complete was his dominance of Chinese society that a lesser man might easily take his place and push his work forward to an insane and terrible fruition. That is, he might do this if he could preserve the illusion that he was Koshinga the invulnerable, the omnipotent, the foreordained master of the world.
For those were Koshinga’s claims, and the promise of world dominion was the bait wherewith he captured his credulous followers.
But Koshinga captured and in prison would be another matter, a living proof of the falsity of his claims. I enlarge upon this that it may be understood why Hazard and I so often, as in the present instance, worked against Koshinga alone. There were few men and no Chinese soldiers whom we could trust not to pull their triggers in a sheer panic once they found Koshinga before their guns.
But now, as I have said, we were standing in a damp and tomb-like darkness before a door behind which lay—what? Koshinga’s treasure if the message we had intercepted had been a true one.
But more and more, without any particular process of logic, I doubted its truth. And more and more I became impressed with the grim suggestion, half-indicated and half-veiled, of Hazard’s last words in the tea-house.
“We shall find,” he had said, “whatever it is intended that we shall find.”
What could he have meant by that, save that he suspected the message to be a lure? Hazard was no fatalist.
But to go on. We stood there, playing bright pencils of light against the wall, pencils which spread when they impinged upon the wall into glowing circles, which searched and searched, backward and forward, up and down. They revealed a solid surface of blackish clay, with stones of various sizes imbedded here and there—a surface in which there was no apparent break.
Yet here, breast-high, were the three triangular rocks which Hazard had predicted, themselves set in the form of a triangle. And when, searching for further evidence of a door, I brushed the earth near those rocks with my hand, not a single grain of it was dislodged.
Plainly some sort of cement was mixed into it. It was only fair to conjecture that the cement was intended not only to hold the clay together, but to attach it firmly to some hidden substratum of metal or wood.
“REMEMBER, Partridge—” Hazard’s voice was the veriest whisper—“we know nothing of what is behind this wall—nothing! So be ready—”
For anything! A subtle excitement tingled to my fingertips. If indeed there were a door here, no wonder that it had not been found by the searchers on the day of the raid.
But for what most valuable thing could this hiding-place have been contrived by Koshinga? Surely not for money and gold alone, for if his plan had succeeded his money would naturally have gone to swell the treasury in the Government House.
The belated thought, vague and terrible, came to me of Koshinga himself, who had and had not been trapped, who had and had not escaped. But I remembered the light guard at the mouth of the tunnel and knew that if he still remained within it it was not that guard alone that was keeping him from freedom.
Hazard, leaning forward a little, was pressing with the muzzle of his revolver and the extended fingers of his free hand on two of the triangular rocks. But the message had spoken of a “triple pressure.” I put my hand against the third rock.
I had little more than touched it when there came a slight, elusive, rather musical humming, like the sound of electric coils when heat is passing through them. Then silence. But the wall, or rather the door that was a part of the wall, had given way slightly, swinging inward. The invisible crack that had outlined that door widened slowly into visibility.
So much the lights that paralleled the barrels of our revolvers showed us, but beyond that crack was blackness.
We continued the pressure, using our left hands only, holding our revolvers ready. As the door yielded we flattened ourselves against it.
When it had opened sufficiently Hazard, who was nearest the jamb, whispered “Now!” and together we flung it back swiftly. It swung clear back, and when we heard it strike the wall we knew that no one could be hidden behind it.
By that time we had leaped through it, and the narrow, earth-walled chamber beyond it was flooded with light. It was, I think, a clever idea of Hazard’s to keep two revolvers always fitted with most powerful small electric searchlights, operated by pressure on the butts.
We stood for an instant, tense as coiled springs, scarcely breathing, straining our eyes and ears for a sign of danger. Nothing was there—that is, no show of life. We could see ahead of us into the chamber a distance of perhaps fifteen feet; then the walls curved to the right, cutting off our view.
But in the very middle of the visible portion of the floor stood that which forced a low cry from me—two great chests, made out of some sort of dark wood, very old-looking, side by side, facing us.
“By the Lord, Hazard,” I breathed, “those chests, the gold— The message told the truth after all.”
I had glanced at Hazard as I spoke, and I saw that his face had suddenly turned rigid. His eyes had narrowed like a cat’s, and there was a suggestion of the feline too in the way his agile body had drawn itself together, crouched down, leaning slightly forward, weight on toes, ready for a leap. Yet I had heard nothing, seen nothing.
“The truth indeed,” said Hazard in a voice that matched my own and yet that I knew somehow was meant not for my ears but for others that were invisible. “The Ko Lao Hui gold beyond doubt. Let’s have a look.”
Then he turned his face full toward mine and his lips silently shaped themselves as if he had uttered a word—
“Danger!”
What did he mean? What could he mean but one thing—one thing! That weird and formless horror as of a thing monstrous beyond human experience, which with me was a part of every encounter with our enemy, came to me again.
And yet, the chests! Were they not corroboration of the message? Did they not contain part at least of that vast, extorted hoard of Koshinga’s, so sorely needed by the republic from which it had been fliched? They drew me with a curious fascination.
By now we were almost up to them. The hasps were unlatched, and the ancient locks looked invitingly easy. Perhaps, I thought, they were not locked; perhaps one could instantly throw back the lids. Had I been by myself I should have tried it, nor, I think, would any other man than Hazard have failed to do so.
As it was, we bent over them. Hazard jerked his revolver ever so slightly. It was a signal for which I had been prepared by a look from his eyes. From that deceptive bending position we leaped full tilt forward.
I think that few things in Nature are swifter than the forward leap of men who have trained their muscles in instant reaction to will. We landed, heels digging into earthen floor, just beyond the curve in the wall. Momentum flung our bodies forward; but our hands were our own, and they flashed up, streaming light.
The flashlights which were attached to our revolvers were so strong and diffused their rays so widely that the whole end of the chamber was of a sudden brighter than day.
My look followed the threat of my gun, and I snapped that gun down to an aim while something in my mind reared back with loathing and with fear; for there, incredibly helpless, stood that man of whom an empire lived in jeopardy—Koshinga, grim and terrible!
“I thought so,” said Hazard, and for the first time in my knowledge of him his voice showed the strain of an effort to keep its calm. “The one of you that moves, moves no more.”
And I saw then that his revolver was swaying like a serpent’s head, that he was covering not only Koshinga but two others—two Chinese in dark mandarin gowns who stood at Koshinga’s right and left, looking like frightened dwarfs.
“So! You have come. As I wished!”
I had heard Koshinga’s voice twice before. Now, hearing the dead monotony of it, the hollow, powerful notes full of insolent mockery even while he stared into the black muzzles of our guns, I realized that under no circumstances would that voice ever change. And so I
felt no wonder at his calm assurance, even although I knew that with a twitch of my finger I could drop his body lifeless upon the floor.
His yellowish eyes, only slightly oblique, glared at us with an effect of venomous disdain. His curiously deracialized face—then we had but heard, without being able to prove, the story of the long process planned in advance by which that deracialization had been effected—altered not a line from calmness.
His face was so terrible in its suggestion of force, black and diabolical, and so little like humanity that it was hard for me to keep from shrinking back from him as from a great uncleanness. I still retained my first thought of him, that he was an incredible nightmare come to life, an impossibility housed in flesh, a perfect animal egotism that might be destroyed, but could never be subdued.
The same question that leaped to my mind must have also come to Hazard’s—why in the name of all that was fortunate had Koshinga doomed himself by tricking us here? Also Hazard must have shared my nerve-shattering feeling of facing an evil potency, terrifically powerful, and utterly hostile to all that mankind envisages as good, yet when he spoke again he had managed to compose his voice still further.
“Yes, we have come; but not as you wished. Your scheme to destroy us was clever—too clever, Koshinga. You should learn to use more commonplace means. But it is too late, for this is the end of you.”
Something like a grimace of detestable derision passed like a threat over Koshinga’s huge, misshapen face.
“Flies trying to push aside the planet in its course—do you think yourselves so important? You are here as I planned; you have come alone as I knew you would come and as would no other men.
“True, I had also planned that by now you would be dead; but that will wait. You have fulfilled your mission; you have opened the door of my prison.”
I think it was in the slight interval that followed those amazing words that Hazard suggested that I take care of the two Chinese, shooting if either made a false move, leaving him free to attend to the more dangerous Koshinga. Thus for the first time my attention was drawn fully to Koshinga’s two companions. By their dress they were mandarins of the second order; by their faces men of more than average intelligence; while their connection with Koshinga proved them to be unscrupulous and vaultingly ambitious.
The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 38