“The secretary, eh? Good. Sit there,” and Burket pointed to the table. While the secretary was getting out brushes and paper, and moistening his ink, Burket turned for a word with Li. “You’ve appointed a new commander?”
“Not yet. I have no authority.”
“You’ll get it. Meanwhile, call in a couple of orderlies, and order dinner served to us here. Send out word that General Cheng will remain with us.” Puzzled, Colonel Li glanced about the room again, then saluted and departed. The secretary looked up.
“His excellency the general is here?”
“None of your business,” said Burket. He spread out on the table the authority given by Governor Wang. “First, write out a notice that we have appointed Colonel Li to the rank of general, by virtue of this authority; approve it with the seal of General Cheng. Write out a second notice, stating that General Li will administer the government here in Suifu during the absence of Cheng, and seal this paper also.”
The secretary fiddled with his fingers, great agitation evident in his manner.
“Honorable sir,” he said, “this unworthy slave regrets that he is unable to do as you request, without the direct orders of General Cheng. The seal is sacred—”
Colonel Li appeared in the doorway, and Burket swung around.
“General, will you kindly take this secretary out and shoot him? Then summon another.”
“With pleasure,” and the colonel advanced. The secretary sprang to his feet.
“No, no!” he cried, terrified. “I will do it, I will do it! It is evident that your authority is great—”
“Do it and don’t talk,” snapped Burket.
The unfortunate man sank down, seized his brushes, and began to trace rapid characters. The two documents were quickly written. Producing a small seal of jade, he applied vermilion to it, and sealed the papers. Burket leaned forward and brushed his own name and that of O’Neill, then pressed his thumb into the vermilion and applied the mark. He handed both papers to Colonel Li.
The latter read them with obvious amazement. His startled eyes lifted, met the steady, watchful gaze of Burket, and a sudden glint leaped in them.
“Excellency,” he said, “these should be posted at the gate of the yamen in the city.”
Burket nodded. “Go and do it,” he said, and smiled. “Undoubtedly you will have certain arrangements of your own to make, also. Assign two orderlies to wait outside in the corridor, in case I need them. Further, have the guard relieved by officers whom you can trust.”
A significant smile touched the lips of General Li, and with a salute, he strode out. Burket turned to the secretary, and offered him a cigarette.
“You are an efficient man,” he said amiably. “I shall recommend that you retain the office of chief secretary under the new governor.”
“This humble slave thanks you, great ancestor,” murmured the man, a flash of joy in his eyes. “There is to be a new governor, then?”
“There is,” said Burket. “General Cheng has gone away. Where and how, I cannot now inform you. It will appear in due course. Leave your writing materials here, as I may need them.”
The secretary departed. Two servants appeared with trays; and Burket sighed in comfortable relaxation at the prospect of dinner. He keenly disapproved of action on an empty stomach.
III
His meal finished, Burket went to the bed and examined O’Neill. The latter appeared unchanged, as though sunk in coma. To arouse him now would do little good and might endanger him. Burket turned away, frowning, anxious, wildly uneasy, but helpless.
Turning out the lamps, leaving one burning low, he caught up his cigarettes, pocketed the gold-mounted pistol, and left the room.
“They’ll never look under the bed for Cheng, if they do come nosing in!” he reflected, and sighted the two slouching orderlies in the corridor. Telling them to remain on watch, he strode off, conscious of his new general’s uniform.
The palace, if the structure might be so dignified, was well lighted, lamps burning in every hall and in the larger rooms. Burket encountered no one until he came to the entrance, where an officer and half a dozen guards stood talking. They greeted him with a salute, and he walked past unhindered, out to the terrace of the former temple.
Smoking, walking up and down, he looked from the hillside over the city and river where the lights twinkled yellow under the white stars, and the faint breeze lifted the odor of the garbage-strewn water below the city, in a raw, pungent breath. There was a distant pop-popping as though many river-craft were setting forth to run the gorges below, and their crews were setting off bunches of firecrackers, as is the custom, to frighten away the river devils. For Suifu is at the head of the Yangtse gorges, and therein are many devils, especially at night.
Then Burket halted abruptly, listening. No, those were not firecrackers after all! Here came a louder, more sustained crepitation—the stuttering mad voice of a machinegun let loose, burst after burst, drowning out the fainter explosions of rifles. Then everything fell quiet again. But, as he stood looking out over the river, Burket was suddenly conscious of what he had done this night.
Had he been so cursed clever, after all? A trim, capable, alert man was General Li; but he was a son of T’ang, a child of this Szechuan race whence had sprung the ancient dynasties of China. And beneath his slim alertness was the possibility of a cold and savage cruelty. Burket shivered a little, as he remembered the glint in those oblique eyes, and the smiling eagerness with which Li had departed to the city.
“It doesn’t take much to be a kingmaker in this cursed country,” he thought with a tang of uneasiness stirring in him, “One bandit’s as good as another. And for all his hardheaded brutality, Cheng was certainly an upstanding man—”
His thought veered suddenly. From the city came a confusion of noise, a dim brazen clamor, another burst of shots; then a sudden ruddy tongue of flame leaped from one of the far-flung huddles of buildings that stretched outside the walls, up and down the river. Burket flung away his cigarette. He was aware, abruptly, of noise and confusion closer at hand. From the buildings here on the terrace came shrill voices, a growing tumult. An officer came up to him, panting, with a sharp salute.
“Excellency! Colonel Li—I should say, General Li—placed me in command of the guard here. There is some resistance to the orders, and many of Cheng’s men will side against us. We have not enough men to carry them out—”
“What orders?” demanded the American, in the deadly grip of premonition.
“To turn over Cheng’s wives and concubines to the troops, slay his children, and—”
“You will obey me, and I’ll be responsible,” broke in Burket. “Place a guard over the women and children. Shoot any man who touches them or tries to plunder. You understand?”
“At once, Excellency.”
The officer, by his insignia a colonel, darted away, his shrill voice rising. Burket, cursing the suddenly wakened savage he had created a general, went back into the building and sought his own rooms again. The orderlies were still at the door. He entered, inspected O’Neill, and drew a breath of relief.
O’Neill was sleeping soundly, was perspiring freely. By morning, or long before, he would be himself again. Burket refused to waken him now—yet found himself in a frightful quandary.
His chosen tool, probably nursing many an old grudge against General Cheng, had proved to be a bloodthirsty tiger. Down in the city, wither he had gone to assert his authority, were fire and riot and massacre. Burket knew quite clearly that he could not take things over himself; beyond certain limits, the Chinese would never obey him. Besides, he now depended upon Li for his getaway with O’Neill.
He was still thinking of this, furiously but vainly seeking some way out, when a knock came, and his friend the colonel entered.
“Excellency, all is now quiet here; the guards are as you ordered. I have just received a flash signal from the city. Some of the regiments have refused to obey General Li. There is figh
ting, the situation is serious, and no one knows where General Cheng has gone.”
“Very well,” Burket had it now, all of a sudden. “Prepare a sedan chair and an escort to take my sick friend, here, to the barracks near the parade ground, outside the walls. I shall send him off, and perhaps follow him myself, later on.”
The officer withdrew.
Burket, all eagerness, took a pencil-stub from his pocket, seized a sheet of paper, and wrote O’Neill a brief note, ordering him to stay with his escort whatever happened. Folding this, he pinned the paper to O’Neill’s jacket. Presently men appeared with a stretcher, and O’Neill gave no sign of wakening.
Burket found himself alone.
He was gambling now, and knew it. Gambling on a dozen things; chiefly, that O’Neill would be able to handle the Fokker on awakening. Treachery to Li, who trusted him? Perhaps. Burket thrust this accusation away sternly, at thought of those women and children. He had made his plan, and he would stick to it. A gamble, and nothing else!
Burket was well aware that he might have accompanied O’Neill to the parade ground barracks, but mere escape was not his objective. He was savagely determined to fulfill their errand here before departure. Nothing less would satisfy him, would justify all he had done.
A sudden thought struck him. He remembered the type of man with whom he dealt—ignorant, primitive as any hillman, brutally strong of character. Reaching under the bed, he dragged out his prisoner by the ankles, and the eyes of Cheng glared up at him. Burket deliberately removed the gag, then dropped into a chair and took a cigarette. He did not speak the Szechuan dialect well, but could make himself understood. From his pocket he took the blue beetle, and held the shimmering thing in his fingers.
“Cheng, you have given this to others, and killed them,” he said. “They did not know its magical powers, but we knew them. You did not know that it had belonged to the great Chien-lung, but we knew it. And now, this blue beetle has destroyed you. This time, it fell into the right hands. Varashefski is dead. We have arrested you, made Colonel Li a general, and given him Suifu to govern. Think that over. It doesn’t pay to defy Governor Wang, eh?”
Cheng looked up at him, anger dying from his bruised face. With the stolid passivity of the Chinese peasant, he accepted the fate that had come upon him.
Hurrying footsteps, a sharp knock at the door.
Burket sprang to it, and opened to show the colonel in command of the bodyguard.
“Excellency! A messenger just got here—”
“Softly,” said Burket, with a gesture of caution. The other lowered his voice.
“General Li was killed in the fighting. The city is in confusion—”
“Good! Come in.” Burket held open the door, brought the man forward to where he could see Cheng, smiled grimly at his start of surprise. “General Cheng! You see this man? To him you owe the safety of your children and wives; when Li ordered them killed, he saved them.” Then catching the astonished man by the arm, he drew him back to the door again and spoke rapidly.
“Cheng is under arrest for his defiance of Governor Wang. Did Li leave here in his own car?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“General Cheng has a car of his own, no doubt?”
“Yes. It is here—”
“Then get it out, make it ready. You will drive it. No other escort. You will now be in high favor with him, you understand? Send his secretary to this room. Go!”
Slamming the door, he returned to Cheng, cut the cords binding him, and picked up his gold-adorned pistol as his benumbed prisoner lay rubbing wrists and ankles.
“Cheng, you have just one chance,” he said harshly. “I know well that you keep your money close at hand. Your secretary will be here in a moment. When he comes, dictate a notice stating that you are reinstated in command by authority of the governor. Dictate a letter of apology to Governor Wang, and sign it. Then send your secretary for money. You are fined fifty thousand China dollars for your insolence to the governor. You can pay it in cash or banknotes, as you like. When it is brought to this room, I will then accompany you to the city in your car, and you will have the chance to restore order and supersede Li’s orders. Yes or no?”
A flash of savage eagerness came into the broad, powerful features. Cheng came to his feet.
“Yes!” he croaked. “Yes! I will accept, excellency—”
“And don’t forget I’ll put a bullet into you if you change your mind,” said Burket, with a jerk of the pistol. “There’s liquor on the table. Have a drink.”
IV
The documents were written, signed, sealed. The money was brought—two suitcases stuffed with specie, banknotes, currency of all kinds and descriptions. And this had taken time. Burket called in the two orderlies and dispatched the suitcases to the waiting car. Pistol in hand, he took Cheng’s arm; but his precautions were needless. Cheng was thinking only of getting to the city below.
From the terrace they could see the flames mounting from one of the suburbs. With the colonel at the wheel, the car dipped down the rough descent. Burket leaned forward and spoke to the officer.
“Let General Cheng out close to the south gate, then go on to the parade ground.”
“Let me out?” repeated Cheng, puzzled. “Alone? On foot?”
“And lucky to be alive,” said Burket.
* * * *
Twenty minutes later, the propeller of the Fokker swung and the engine roared, O’Neill, weak but perfectly able to control the plane, taxied out for a clear sweep across the parade ground. As the plane swung around, Burket leaned forward and dropped a small, heavy object into O’Neill’s lap. It was the blue beetle.
“For luck!” he shouted.
O’Neill laughed, and next moment they were sweeping forward, bounding, lifting into the star-flecked sky.
RENDEZVOUS
I
Burke was collecting his bets on the fourth race. It was a cleanup, an enormous cleanup. All around swarmed the money-mad throng—Arabs, civilians, soldiers, women. His hands filled with bundles of thousand-franc notes, Burke turned.
He collided sharply with Captain Crepin, who was of course in mufti.
A simultaneous word of apology broke from the two men. Burke’s lean, incisive features broke into a whimsical smile as he met the eyes of the Intelligence officer. Crepin did not return the smile. His thin, mustached, severe countenance was menacing.
“A word with you, M. Burke,” he said.
“Faith, my dear Crepin, I’m at your service!” returned Burke gaily, stuffing the sheaves of notes into his pockets: “You’re always full of the most charming surprises!”
The other grunted sardonically, as they worked a way through the crowd.
The sun hung in the west, glittering on the snowy peaks of the Atlas that rise above Marrakesh. Nearby showed the new French city, lively, naked, spick-and-span. Off to the right, amid its glorious date-palm groves, lifted the savage red walls of old Marrakesh.
“I congratulate you,” said Crepin acidly, “on picking the right horse.”
Burke chuckled. “Congratulate me, rather, on having the right friends, my dear fellow! If you didn’t make such a nuisance of yourself, I might let you in on something good tomorrow.”
Crepin merely sniffed. Presently they were clear of the throng, and Crepin halted. He lit a cigaret and handed Burke one, surveying the trim, hard figure with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor at its lapel. Burke held a match to both cigarets.
“M. Burke, I have a certain respect for you,” said Crepin bluntly. “You’re a rascal. A scoundrel. You’ve run guns to dissident chiefs. I intend to land you in jail or have you expelled from Morocco. None the less, you have a certain sense of honor which I appreciate.”
Denis Burke bowed, and his blue eyes danced gaily.
“I may return the compliment,” he said whimsically. “You’re a bitter hard devil. You are devoted to your duty. You’ve no more human feeling than a snake, apparently. At the same time, y
ou’re a gentleman. Your mere word on any subject would be good with me.”
Crepin inclined his head. “Thank you. In that case, M. Burke, I give you my word that I know your business here in Marrakesh. I know whom you expect to meet, what you expect to do. You’ve run your last gun, and your number is up. I advise you to leave here, leave Morocco, immediately.”
Burke’s brows lifted. “I like Morocco,” he answered. “It likes me. I’ve been here for three years—”
“Raising hell.”
“Making trouble, if you like. Well, expel me if you can! You’ve tried hard enough to get something on me. You’ve failed. You’re too much of a gentleman to frame me.”
“This time,” said Crepin stiffly, “there will be no failure. Au revoir!”
He strode away. Burke directed his steps toward the French town, at first in sober thought. His lips twisted in a grimace.
“A devilish unpleasant fellow, that!” he reflected. “Does he really know, indeed? Has somebody babbled that I’m here to meet El Hanech? In that case—but no, it’s impossible! El Hanech sent me word to meet him at a certain time and place. His brother carried the message, was caught and killed an hour afterward. No one else could have spoken. Yet Crepin seemed damned sure of himself! Well, I’ll chance it.”
He swung along with his lithe, clean stride, nodding to acquaintances, exchanging occasional cheery greetings with cloaked Arab figures. He had cast his lot here in Morocco, and loved the country.
A certain part of Morocco, however, did not love Denis Burke.
Presently he was seated before a table, on the shaded terrace of a cafe. Across the railroad tracks on the far side of the square, was a glorious outspread view of Marrakesh and the palm groves. From this thronged square radiated all life and activity between the huge native city on the one side, and the enormous semi-circle of the French town, aviation camp and forts on the other side.
The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 91
