At the sight of the first few inches of the painting, I saw Prince Tung’s rather corpulent shoulders twitch. His fingers let the rolls go, so that they came together with a sudden swish. He straightened, and turned toward me so abruptly that I knew he was very much disturbed.
“What is wrong?” I asked. But already Prince Tung had partially recovered from his surprise.
“The picture is excellent,” he said, although his voice was tuned to a new and elusive key. “I do not have to tell one who knows as well as you do that this comes from one of the finest periods. I am familiar with this particular picture. I have admired it twice in my life before. It is the work of the Sung Emperor and one of a set of eight, though it has been separated from the other seven for a long time. For three hundred years this single picture has been among the treasures of the monastery of Heavenly Benevolence in the Wu Tai Valley. Have you asked the young woman more about it? There is something which is not quite correct.”
Prince Tung paused and pulled his fan from his neckband and flicked it open. I knew that it was a gesture designed to give him time for thought and also supply a moment in which he might regain his composure; and his next words showed me I was right.
“I am afraid there is something very wrong,” he said. “Something which I do not like. If this picture has appeared on the market here, the transaction is certainly irregular. I know the Abbot very well, my family has been accustomed to give presents to his institution. He valued this picture very highly. Now that it is on the market it can only mean one thing. The Monastery has been looted, the picture is a part of the loot, or else it has been stolen.”
“What is he saying?” asked Eleanor Joyce. “Doesn’t he like the picture?”
I walked across the room and stood near her. If the picture had been looted, I had a very good idea who had taken it and I wondered if she knew.
“I think you had better tell what you know,” I told her. “Where did you hear about this picture?”
“What business is it of yours?” asked Eleanor Joyce, but she moved uneasily in her lacquer chair.
“That’s what I want to find out,” I said. “I think you had better tell me, because if you don’t I’ll inquire of the police. The Nationalist Government is becoming interested in keeping such works of art in China. I can guess what you are doing now. I should have guessed before. Are you a museum buyer, Miss Joyce? Is that why you’ve been staying here for months? If you are you have done it rather well, although I don’t like the profession. Are you going to tell me frankly or shall we have the whole thing public?”
She looked at me and hesitated. She was probably weighing possibilities carefully; but I knew that my guess was right before she answered. All sorts of past events were coming together to make it so, particularly what I knew of Major Best. Eleanor Joyce’s glance did not waver, and when she answered her voice was matter-of-fact.
“The answer is ‘Yes,’” she said. “You are right, Mr. Nelson. I was sent out here to buy a set of eight pictures. Word was sent to America that this set might be obtained. These pictures have often been mentioned by Chinese critics. They are listed in every history of Chinese art in fact, but they have not been seen for a long time. It is not our business how those pictures were to be obtained. I volunteered to come out and get them, pay for them, and bring them back. I suppose you know that there are ways of managing these things. Well, this is one of the pictures. The other seven are to be delivered the day after to-morrow morning, and I say again it’s not my affair where they may come from. I suppose most really great objects in China are acquired rather deviously and the more I see of this country the surer I am of it. Well, I was sent out here to get these pictures and I’m going to get them if I can.”
Now that I understood what she was doing I thought she had done rather well, much as I disliked it.
“If you had told me that in the first place,” I said, “everything would have been much easier. Who wrote to America and offered these pictures? Perhaps I can guess without your telling me—Major Jameson Best?”
“Yes,” said Eleanor Joyce. “Of course he did.”
“And you called at his house last night for the first picture? You did it rather well. Your people chose a good negotiator.”
“Thanks,” said Eleanor Joyce. “You’re rather clever, Mr. Nelson. Yes, I called to get the picture.”
“And you found the Major dead?”
Eleanor Joyce hesitated again, opened her lips, and closed them. Then she was looking at me as she had sometimes before, appealingly.
“I suppose I should have told you last night,” she answered, “but you see I was out here on confidential business. I was warned before I came that it might be shady but then there is always the argument, isn’t there, that great works of art are safer in America? No, Major Best was not dead when I got there. I came, because he was to deliver to me the first picture last night. I was to examine it and pay for it. You may think I’m stupid but I’m rather good at pictures because I’ve studied them for years. Major Best was killed two minutes after I arrived, while we were standing in the doorway of his study. There was a snap, a twanging sound—”
“And then you ran away?” I said.
Eleanor Joyce nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I ran away. You met me on the street, you were kind to me last night. I thought that was the end of it, and then the picture arrived late this morning after you came to call. I was warned to ask no questions, and I bought it. I repeat all this is my affair. I don’t want you in it, I never have.”
“I’m afraid it’s late,” I answered. “I’m afraid I would have been in it anyway.” She did not answer and we looked at each other while the candles shone on the black and gold lacquer chairs. Perhaps we both were thinking how curious it was that we should have been thrown there together. Now that she had told me a part, everything that had happened was growing clear. If she had only told me earlier it might have saved us all this difficulty. At any rate, I could have told her a good deal about Major Best.
“I don’t suppose you realize,” she replied, “that all this means a good deal to me.” I think she was glad that she was speaking to someone now that she had started. “I have always wanted to do something worth while and exciting. Well, I’m doing it and I’m going to see it through. You’ve seen that scroll. A set of such pictures are worth a good deal of sacrifice, aren’t they? If I could see them somewhere safe I should feel that nearly anything was worth while.”
“They should have sent a man out,” I said. “None of these museum curators understand, or wish to appear to understand, how such purchases are made.”
“Never mind,” said Eleanor Joyce. “They probably think more highly of me at home than you do.”
“No,” I answered, “I think a good deal of your skill. What was the price asked for these pictures?”
Eleanor Joyce waited before she answered. “As long as I’ve told you this much,” she said, “I may as well tell you the rest. The figure may raise your respect for me. The museum in America has offered twenty-five thousand dollars apiece for these paintings. The money is ready in the bank.”
“Two hundred thousand dollars?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “Two hundred thousand American dollars. It is not a high price either.” She mentioned the figure casually, but the price was high enough—high enough for bloodshed, high enough for anything, provided the proper people were involved. Certainly it was high enough for Major Best and Wu Lo Feng.
“Where are the other seven pictures coming from?” I asked.
Eleanor Joyce shook her head. “I’ve come across clean, as the police say at home,” she answered. “I don’t know where they’re coming from and I thought it best not to ask. I was promised again to-day that they would be delivered the day after to-morrow morning at the latest. I think it was well enough not to ask, don’t you?”
“There must be something else,” I said, “that isn’t all. Why should anyone want to kill me? It is
n’t my affair.”
“I don’t see why,” said Eleanor Joyce. “That is something that I don’t understand. Unless—” her glance grew suspicious, “unless there is something that you haven’t told me. You’re not buying pictures, by any chance?” The idea surprised me.
It surprised me so much that I grew indignant because of a perverse sort of sentimentality. Her suggestion placed me in that class of people who have preyed on a great country’s weakness and cupidity. No matter what plausible reasons they might give they have never seemed a desirable class.
“No,” I said. “You’re mistaken. I’m not here to take anything away. I’ve asked nothing of this place except to be allowed to stay in it and to lead my life as I have wished. I have been allowed to, and I am grateful—too grateful to deal with picture thieves and grave robbers, or to make money out of misfortune. That sort of thing has never, appealed to me.”
I should have gone further because I was warming to my subject if Prince Tung had not interrupted me:
“It is a source of shame to me,” he said, “that I have not been educated to learn your excellent language. It was considered barbarous and unnecessary when I was young, so that my teachers concentrated their efforts exclusively upon the great books of the classics, as it was intended that I should be a provincial magistrate. Yet I gather that the Young Virgin has been speaking to you freely. Would you be so gracious as to tell me because I am much interested in what she says about the picture?”
“She says it is one of a set of eight,” I answered.
“Yes,” said Prince Tung impatiently. “Yes, I know.”
“And she says,” I continued, though I could not gather how he knew that it was one of eight, “that she is buying all eight for a museum in America.”
“What?” said Prince Tung. “All eight? I do not understand.”
“I am only repeating to you what she has just stated,” I explained. “She says the other seven will be delivered to her to-morrow morning.”
I stopped, astonished at the change in Prince Tung. For once he had lost his self-control, his mouth dropped open, his fan dropped on the floor.
“Impossible!” he said. “It cannot be. No one has told me.”
“How do you mean?” I asked him. “What disturbs you?”
Prince Tung stooped and picked up his fan, but his voice was still unsteady. “A great deal disturbs me,” he answered. “I must collect my wits. I must try to think. The times are very unsettled. They are bad times in which to live.”
“So you told me yesterday,” I reminded him. “You said there was talk of trouble in the city, but what disturbs you now?”
Prince Tung looked around the room hastily, almost furtively. “My friend,” he said, “I will tell you the truth. The matter which disturbs me is this. Those other seven pictures have been a treasure in my family for four centuries. They are in my possession now, in a strong room in this house.”
“And you are going to sell them?” I asked him, because even then I could not understand his excitement.
“There is the trouble,” said Prince Tung. “That is why I say the times are upset. It has not been suggested that I sell them. Nothing has been said about it whatsoever, and that means—” He stopped and fanned himself for a moment. “This is very terrible,” he added. “Very terrible indeed. I had heard talk yesterday and to-day. I did not believe it. I considered it impossible.”
“What?” I asked.
Prince Tung’s forehead had grown moist. His placid eyes had opened wider but his manners were still impeccable. Nevertheless, he appeared to find it difficult to pay the proper attention to my questions. His mind seemed to have turned like a startled hare from actuality and to be running on a zigzag course of its own.
“I should have known—” he was saying vaguely, “I have recognized naturally that the man had certain capabilities even though he was the son of a Honan peasant, and in all probability illegitimate, yet I never conceived that he could be capable of this. I knew he was in the City but that there were any more along with, him seemed to me incredible.”
“Who?” I asked him again. “Who is in the City?” But the Prince did not answer my question.
“There have been instances,” he said. “I recall some such similar event in the somewhat legendary period after the fall of the Chin dynasty. It is true that the army has been moved but of the City, but police have been watching the gates. I should have known that police are the same as soldiers either ignorant or open to corruption. This is terrible. This is very terrible.”
The excitement of Prince Tung was mounting as he spoke until he actually committed a rudeness. He turned his back to me and began pacing up and down the reception room. Once he actually forgot himself so far as to raise his arms in a futile; passionate gesture.
“Besides,” he said, “I was definitely assured that I personally would not be molested. I was told that it would only be a small matter, only a slight disturbance. I should have known he would not stop at that. When a wolf is in the sheep fold—”
By this time I had lost my patience and I seized Prince Tung by the arm, although I knew that he hated to be touched.
“Who are you speaking of?” I asked. “Why don’t you answer my question?”
Prince Tung wheeled around petulantly. “Why should I answer questions,” he demanded in an exasperated voice, “if you have not wit enough to see? All foreigners are stupid. You are stupid. I am referring to Wu Lo Feng, of course, a bandit chief and an army leader. He is now in the city of Peking. He is here with several thousand followers who have entered disguised as peasants. Certain persons have been helping him for political reasons. Our local Governor is not popular with all parties, for instance. With the Army gone there is an opportunity. Wu Lo Feng proposes to create a disturbance and to seize or loot a certain proportion of the City of Peking and now—,” Prince Tung slapped his fan against his palm, “and now he proposes to loot my property with the rest. It must be so, or why have my pictures been promised?”
“You are joking, of course,” I said, but I knew he was not joking; whether the prospect was a possibility or not, it was real enough to Prince Tung.
It was so real that it shook him from his philosophic calm. His agitation was enough to prove that he believed it. Now that I thought of it, now that my mind was moving dazedly, the thing was a possibility. I could recall snatches of my conversation with Major Best and when I did so, I knew that he had believed it. There must have been a rumor of it, running as rumors do in China in strange, backwater channels. Mr. Moto must have heard that rumor. It accounted for his sudden interest in what had been said last night. It accounted, in a way, for what had happened to me this very evening. There was not much time to think because Prince Tung’s voice was rising higher.
“I was a fool,” the Prince was saying. “Why did I not bring my pictures and my porcelains to the bank this morning! Now, I must do something, I must try to think.”
“If you’re serious,” I told him, “there’s always the police.” Prince Tung laughed mockingly.
“I should have thought,” he said, “That you might have learned enough of our institutions to understand that officials are always difficult. One can never tell in these days in what direction an official may be involved and I have not time to consider whom safely to approach. I must act at once, at once.” The idea of the Prince acting was suddenly amusing, in the light of what he had said a few minutes before.
“The Great One is inconsistent,” I said, because even then the idea of anyone seizing Peking seemed too fantastic to be possible. “The Master is not moving with events, he is trying to interfere with them. Surely, you recall how often you have, said these forces cannot be stopped.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Prince Tung sharply. “This is not a time for philosophy. So you don’t believe me? Well, perhaps you will believe me when we are dead to-morrow morning and the streets are running blood. Something must be done at once. We must get to the h
otel in the Legation Quarter, we must get—”
An exclamation from Eleanor Joyce interrupted him.
“Tom!” she called sharply, “there are people outside. The place is full of people.”
The Prince and I must have been very much absorbed in each other. At any rate, I had noticed nothing until Eleanor Joyce spoke. There were two doors to the Prince’s reception pavilion, each nearly opposite to the other. Prince Tung and I were standing between these doors, in the centre of the room. As I looked around when Eleanor Joyce spoke, I saw that there were men in either doorway and that they were not members of the Prince’s meagre staff of servants. They were dressed in that characteristic blue cloth of China. They were large-boned, competent men, not of the city, type. Their faces were dull and heavy in the lantern light. They were crowding in through the doors, cautiously but efficiently. In that instant, before I could think who they were or what to do, I could smell the garlic on their breaths and I could hear their heavy breathing. Prince Tung must have seen them at the same moment and his reaction was admirably in keeping with the training of a Manchu gentleman.
Prince Tung flicked open his fan. “It is too late,” he said “Wu Lo Feng’s people have come. I am very much afraid this is the end.”
I was inclined to agree with him, without knowing the correct reason for it, that he and I were close to the end of our careers. The faces of our unexpected visitors indicated this prospect rather clearly; they were in a circle about us by that time. The air was nauseating from the garlic, to me at any rate, although I suppose that Prince Tung had that obliviousness to unpleasant odors which is one of the virtues of his race. I had seen similar faces before, though never as intimately. I had seen the same stamp on the features of disbanded soldiers and on bandits caught by the authorities and waiting to be shot. Our callers all possessed a cast of countenance peculiar to distracted times anywhere in the world. And yet I liked them, perhaps because I have always found the Chinese in nearly any circumstance the most agreeable people in the world. I could not help but feeling that, given a change of mood, nearly all of these men would be as courteous and agreeable as the crowds I had known before. Their expression on the whole was more bewildered than brutal—the puzzled expression of individuals forced by fortune into a situation for which they were not particularly fitted. They were forced by fortune to be desperadoes, but they still had the courtesy and the patience of their race. I repeat even at that moment I felt kindly disposed toward them. Somehow I could not take them entirely seriously.
Thank You, Mr. Moto Page 11