A hard face to picture, to describe, as Marie saw it there, suddenly, with a saraband of purple shadows bringing it into stark relief — it would take the hand of a Rodin to clout and shape the meaning of it, the taint of death, the flavor of dread tortures which surrounded it like a miasmic haze. The face of a sensual, plague-spotted, latter-day Roman emperor it seemed to her, blended with the unhuman, meditating, crushing calm of a Chinese sage — heavy-jowled, thin-lipped, terribly broad across the temples, and with an expression in the pin-points of the black eyes like the sins of a slaughtered soul. All Marie could see and feel was the existence of those features in front of her — grotesque, monstrous, unhuman — and she wanted to shriek — she wanted to beat them into raw, bleeding pulp!
Perhaps the whole sensation, the whole flash of emotions lasted only a moment. Perhaps it was contained in the fraction of the second it took her and the sailor to pass from the corridor, properly speaking, into the hall. At all events, suddenly she was herself again, and she could tell by Higginson’s tautening biceps beneath the pressure of her fingers that he, too, was regaining a semblance of composure.
She now jerked her wits into a fair imitation of nerve-control and, side by side with Higginson, took a few steps forward, slowly and deliberately, until she was within a few feet of the face. And then, all at once, it lost its stark immobility. The thin lips trembled and curled. They laughed — yet it was not exactly a laugh — rather a harsh, ghastly, scraping sort of cachinnation.
“Wot ho!” cried the sailor, with hysterical, forced gaiety. “I thought as yer were a bleedin’ mummy, me lad!”
And then the lips opened over toothless gums and pronounced words in good English:
“Ah — Miss Campbell!”
Her answer came stammering, ludicrously inadequate:
“Oh — you — you know — who — I —?”
“Who you are? Of course. Am I not the Chuen to yan of this temple — of all our sacred brotherhood? I know a great many things — some of which I should know — and some of which,” — again he laughed thinly, mockingly — “I should not know. And I am glad, very glad indeed, that you decided to come here to me of your own free will. Your reward will be resplendent. I punish — yes — harshly. But I also reward — generously!” And the thin lips held a tremendous, rather heroic earnestness.
Marie’s mind worked with the instantaneous flash of a camera-shutter. This, then, was the Chuen to yan, she said to herself, the man — whatever the words meant — whom the Manchu woman had accused with her dying breath, of whom Judge Winchester had spoken. He was quite evidently the man in back of all this trooping, coiling maze of mysteries and intrigues. Then she considered that the Chuen to yan had assumed she had come here of her own free will. Here was a card ready to hand, a trump-card if she played it well, and she would play it. She was only afraid of what the sailor might do, might say. And so she spoke very quickly.
“This man,” she said, “came with me. He is my confidential servant.”
She waited, tensely expectant, wondering if the lie would hold good, immensely relieved when the Chinese waved the sailor’s presence aside with his hand.
“Yes,” he said; “some of these coarse-haired barbarians are quite trustworthy.” Marie pressed firmly on the sailor’s arm as she heard a belligerent rumble in his throat. “It is strange.” He pointed to the pillow at his feet. “Sit down here, child,” he continued in a kindly voice.
She obeyed. There was nothing else to do, she thought. She would have to play her cards carefully, one by one as they came. She looked up at the man, and he stared back at her with black, unwinking eyes.
“You have the thing with you?” he asked.
Again she guessed quickly.
“The Tchou-fou-yao vase?”
“What else is there which might matter to me — to us? Give it to me.”
“I have not got it here. You see,” — she hesitated — “I did not trust myself to —”
“Oh, yes! You did wisely. It is better to be careful. D’Acosta is no fool. Nor is Sun Yu-Wen. Where is the vase?”
“Send some reliable servants with me — afterward some soldiers — and I’ll lead them straight to the hiding place.”
“Immediately!”
His left hand reached up, about to strike a gong above his head. But she interrupted him.
“Wait!” she said.
“Why?”
“First — tell me — you spoke of reward — a generous reward —”
He smiled sardonically.
“Greedy, eh? Hayah! Children are greedy — and women — and sparrows —”
Marie laughed frankly. Here was a chance at repartee after her own heart.
“Can you blame them?” she countered. “If women don’t look out for themselves, certainly the male of the species will not.”
He laughed too.
“A lesson you learned in America, eh? Perhaps — by the Buddha — a wise lesson. And so you —”
“Yes,” smiled Marie; “first the reward.”
“What shall it be?” he asked. “Gold or —”
“Power!” said Marie in a whisper, wondering if she had played trumps.
“Power?” The man stared at her. “You are true to your blood. And suppose I give you power, how will I know that I can trust you? Have we of the sacred brotherhood,” — he drew up his shriveled, age-worn body — “the sacred brotherhood which we, still, though the coarse-haired barbarians once called it the Boxers, name by its ancient and honorable title,” — he whispered it with eerie, sincere reverence — “ ‘the Society of Augustly Harmonious Fists’ — have we of the brotherhood, have the dead patriots who belonged to other, similar brotherhoods ever been able to trust you — the people of your blood?”
Marie looked up. “The people of your blood,” the man had said — and what had he meant?
“But —” She stopped, uncertain how to proceed without showing her ignorance.
“You have always been our enemies,” the man continued. “You came as foreigners, conquering barbarians! You never assimilated with us — with the black-haired race. You do not look as we do. You do not dream and aim as we do. As barbarians you came; as bararians you remained — whatever you call yourselves, Manchus, Tatars, Turks or what-not! Once, perhaps, you were Asiatics — but you mixed your blood during the many centuries you lived in Russia, in Germany, in the West — and as foreigners you came among us. Thus,” — the man seemed swept on by a tremendous, bitter sincerity of purpose — “you always stood by the other foreigners when they invaded China, and robbed and killed and enslaved —”
“No!” Marie interrupted him. “You are wrong. They did not come to murder and rob. War — yes — it could not be helped. But they came to China to bring civilization and trade — because they take an interest in the destines of China, of Asia —”
“So?” sneered the Chuen to yan. “I have been told that it is dangerous for the yellow man if the white man takes an interest in his affairs There is Hong Kong; there is French Indo-China; there is — hayah! — they came to trade, to ah — civilize. And they remained to rule, to rob! But you must forgive me. I am rude, tactless. For you yourself are a Westerner — you are white.”
“Am I?” Once more Marie decided to play boldly.
“Decidedly.”
“And yet the Southern republic claims me as a subject.”
“A political trick — nothing else.”
“But a trick founded on fact! For there was my mother —”
“Bah!” cut in the Chuen to yan. “She was a foreigner — if not in citizenship, then in blood. And so was your mother’s father; so was your uncle. Foreigners all! Enemies! What if your uncle, as did your mother’s father and his father before him, did prefer the ancient Mongol title? What if he did like to hear himself addressed as the ‘Ssu Yueh,’ ‘Chief of the Four Mountains’?”
*****
<
br /> MARIE LISTENED, intensely interested, as the mysterious scroll of her mother’s family history was unrolled before her eyes.
“What of all that?” continued the Chinese. “His real name was Mavropoulos. He used it when he traveled in Europe, when he intrigued against us with Russia and Germany and France and the rest of the Western powers, and when he went north to intrigue with the Manchus, the aristocrats — foreigners like himself. And he sided with the foreigners until he died, while we of the south tried — Buddha, how we tried! — to save China, to make her independent. And so —” he made a slicing gesture “— he was killed, and even in death he tried to cheat us. There were only two of those Tchou-fou-yao vases that held the ancient symbol of dominion. One he had; the other belonged to your mother, his only relative, and your father took it away when he left China after your mother’s death. Your uncle destroyed the one that belonged to him just before he died — smashed it into a dozen pieces so that nobody could read the hidden message pictured on the inside.” He laughed. “Your uncle did not know; he never guessed that Destiny was on the side of Canton — that you would come back to China in the hour of China’s need, the ancient symbol in your possession —”
The girl was carried away by the Chuen to yan’s passionate outburst, and it was the sailor’s warning cough which brought her to a realization of her imminent danger. By this time, one of the other guards must have found the Tatar soldier whom Higginson had knocked down, or the man must have regained consciousness. There was very little time to be lost.
“You are wrong,” she said in a clear, steady voice. “At least, where I am concerned. I shall return the vase to you. Send for some of your soldiers, so that they can accompany me and —” pointing at Higginson “— my servant to the hiding-place.”
“Good — by Buddha and by Buddha!” The Chinese struck the gong.
The girl smiled,
“I forgot! I should like to ask one favor.”
“Name it.”
She indicated her thin charmeuse frock, her bare head.
“I came directly from dinner,” she said, “on a sudden impulse. And my servant, too — he is still in his working-clothes —”
“The Buddha once remarked that vanity is woman’s most human illusion,” he replied, with a laugh. “Very well. Over there,” — he pointed to a huge chest in the corner — “you will find what you want.”
*****
AND WHEN, a few minutes later, half a dozen stalwart Chinese soldiers, led by an officer, entered, Marie and Higginson were transformed, at least in externals, into fair imitations of two Chinese, in embroidered robes, mutton-pie caps and neat, black-velvet slippers with padded soles. The Chuen to yan turned to the captain of the guard with a flow of Chinese monosyllables, but Marie interrupted him quickly.
“By the way,” she said, “there’s one thing I would like to tell you —”
“Yes?”
“D’Acosta and Sun Yu-Wen —”
“A Turk and a Manchu! Dogs both!”
“Yes — but clever dogs. They have lots of people in their employ, haven’t they?”
“They employ many spies. Why?”
“Well, it I were you, I would tell those soldiers not to walk alongside of me and my servant, but to follow us at quite a distance. No use drawing attention to us — to show the way to d’Acosta’s and Sun Yu-Wen’s spies —”
The Chinese bowed.
“A cobra and a woman for shrewdness!” he remarked admiringly. “You are right.”
Again he spoke to the captain, who saluted and walked up to Marie, drawing a handkerchief from his tunic, while a soldier stepped up to Higginson.
“You will be blindfolded on your way to the street through the temple,” said the Chuen to yan. “A necessary precaution, you. understand?”
“Yes,” said Marie.
“I don’t care,” whispered the sailor, “as long as I gets out o’ this ’ere Temple of ’Orrors.”
Thus, blindfolded, Marie and Higginson were led through a number of corridors, upstairs and down, out of the temple. Out on the street the captain of the guard removed the blindfolds.
“Lead,” he said. “We follow.”
“Right-o!” replied Marie.
“Right bloomin — o!” echoed the sailor; and they walked on, the soldiers following at a distance of sixty steps beneath the violet vault of the dying night.
Just as they turned the first corner, they heard a shout from the direction of the temple — a loud shout that echoed and reverberated, sharp, ominous. It tore through the gloom of the dying night like the point of a knife, but was swallowed the next moment by a hunched mass of sounds as, here, there and everywhere, the doors of the houses opened and the early-morning working population poured out.
Not yet morning; but already China, never asleep, ceaselessly working to feed its ever hungry, never-satiated maw, was preparing for the morning task.
Blue-bloused coolies moved through the streets in an endless procession, each sure of his aim and object. There were men riding in two-wheeled carriages, surmounted by vaulted silk covers; others, rich merchants, drove in low victorias crowned with embroidered canopies. Came peasants on foot, on mules, on donkeys: fruit-venders, their fiery-colored produce piled high on balanced baskets, and it was finally, just as Marie and Higginson neared the second corner, that they saw their chance. The street here narrowed greatly as a Taoist temple jutted out, with a bizarre massing of pagoda towers and sharp angled walls that were a mass of color, pink, mauve, blue, and yellow, lit by a huge paper lantern to the left of the entrance, which proclaimed in Mandarin ideographs that this was a li-pai, a place of worship.
At that moment, the cortege of a funeral was passing, and as the soldiers stopped temporarily to give way, Higginson and Marie, for the same reason, pressed close against a wall.
At the head of the procession came fantastically dressed servants bearing standards, insignia of rank and artificial flowers, all glittering brightly in the light of many torches; other servants rubbed bronze gongs with scarlet devil-sticks. Then came a priest, who mumbled long-winded verses from the “Ching-Kong-Ching” and then, garbed in white, the chief mourner, directly in front of a crimson-covered catafalque. They all walked slowly, ceremoniously, but without the slightest indication of piety. Why should they? Canton is old. China is old. Many had died; many more will die. And the women in the mourners’ coaches at the tail-end of the procession seemed to know it. For they chattered and laughed, and leaned from the carriages, exchanging highly spiced compliments with the crowd.
At the very end came a number of empty coaches. They doubtless belonged to the deceased’s guild-brothers, Cantonese burgesses, who, having thusly honored the dead, remained in their warm rooms. By the time these vehicles appeared, the torch-bearers had already turned the corner, and the street was again in darkness. The soldiers were screened from the two huddled against the wall by the line of coaches, and Marie, after a quick word in Higginson’s ear, opened the door of one and slipped inside, the sailor following. And so, crouched on the floor of the carriage, they were carried past the soldiers, away from the Temple of Horrors, out into the heart of Canton.
“Out again, in again!” whispered Marie.
“Right-o,” rejoined the sailor. He closed his eyes. “Wyke me up when we gets to Piccadilly!”
*****
THE CORTÈGE ambled on for about ten minutes, and then, thanks to the practical side of the Chinese nature, the two got another chance. For while it is a laudable deed to honor a deceased guild-brother by sending empty carriages in sign of mourning, there is no use of piling up expenses. So, within sight of the cemetery, and since the gatekeeper levies toll on everybody and everything that passes beneath the sacred portals, the empty coaches remained without, and presently the drivers climbed down from their boxes, tied the horses and mules, and sought refreshment in a little tavern a couple of blocks away.
By now, the sun had risen still higher, but — and for this the fugitives were grateful — a thick mist had rolled up from the river. They looked warily about, and left their hiding-place when they found that they were alone.
“I know this ’ere town like a book,” Higginson said proudly. “This is what the chinks call the K’ung-ti, the Deserted Quarter!”
It was an appropriate name. For, surrounded on all sides by a packed, greasy wilderness of populous streets, it was a hopeless mass of ruins. At the farther end of the street was a tall wooden monumental gate.
“At the time of the Boxer trouble,” the sailor went on, “them local Canton ruffians murdered ’ere a whole bloomin’ lot of whites, and then this ’ere block of ’ouses was destroyed, as a sort o’ punishment. A lot them chinks cared! They build new ’ouses.” He looked for a cigarette and a match, found them, lit up, and looked questioningly at Marie Campbell. “And now, lydy, wot?”
“Let’s get a move on,”
“Where to, would yer suggest?”
She thought rapidly. She had no idea where she might find d’Acosta or Sun Yu-Wen. But she recalled that the dying Manchu woman had told her about the “friend” to whom she should go, and he, she had figured out, must be Prince Pavel Kokoshkine; she recalled, too, the American consul having told her where the Russian lived — on the other side of the river, not far from the Nan-Hai prison. She gave Higginson the address.
“Know the place?” she wound up.
The sailor inclined his head ruefully.
“I knows most prisons in this ’ere dump,” he said, “ ’cause o’ them chinks frequently and unjustly mistykin’ me most innercent actions. It ain’t far. Let’s go down to the river.”
“Where is it?”
He pointed at the monumental gate.
“Just through there and down the ’ill. Syfe enough. There ain’t no ’ouses there.”
*****
THEY REACHED the river in safety, just where there was an anchorage for boats and launches. With the sailor leading, they made their way to a spot where, tied to a low thornbush, was a native boat, a sampan. They waited for a few seconds, wondering if the fisherman who owned it was anywhere about. But there was no sound, not the faintest sign of life. Marie stared across the river — it was a symphony of drowsy murmurs and fleeting, veiled shadows.
ADVENTURE TALES #5 Page 17