I can still see that crowd in my imagination gathered about me in a gradually contracting semicircle, staring. Whenever my mind brings back their faces and rags, an impression of China comes with them which has never been erased. Paradoxically, perhaps, in spite of their poverty and evidences of disease and of grinding labor, that impression has always been one of peace. It was a peace born of a knowledge of life and of human relationships. I could understand why China had absorbed her conquerors when I watched that ring of faces. Their bland patience was impervious to any fortune. They stood there staring at me, speaking softly, laughing now and then. . . .
There I was, soaking wet, without other clothes, almost without money, waiting for something or nothing. Now that I come to think of it, I did not have so long to wait, three quarters of an hour perhaps, before there was a stir in the crowd around me and a young man in a long gray Chinese gown, wearing a European felt hat, stepped over the side of the boat.
“You wish to see Wu Lai-fu?” he asked. His face was lean and intelligent; he spoke in very good English, with an enunciation better than my own. He did not seem in the least surprised to see me sitting there, dripping wet out of the river.
“Who told you,” he asked, “to see Wu Lai-fu?”
“A Chinese named Ma,” I said, “on the Japanese boat. They killed him.”
He betrayed no surprise, if he felt any, but my explanation must have satisfied him. He waved a hand toward me, a thin hand that emerged gracefully from the loose gray sleeve of his gown.
“You come with me,” he said, and that was all. We walked from boat to boat until we reached the shore, without any further explanation.
Once we were ashore there were two other Chinese waiting for us, dressed, like my companion, in long gray gowns. One of them moved to one side of me and the other walked behind us.
“It is all right,” the first man said. “Do not be alarmed. We will take you in an automobile. Here it is.”
My next memory was being shown into the interior of a large American limousine, where I was placed between two Chinese and was looking at the backs of two others in the driver’s seat. The swiftness of the whole procedure struck me as disturbing. Although the car was parked in a narrow street of shops with Chinese signs, something in the appearance of my companions gave me an impression of the Chicago underworld—and a suspicion that I was going for a ride. No American chauffeur ever drove faster or more recklessly than that Chinese driver. We were off a second later with our horn blowing steadily, twisting through a labyrinth of streets which might have been in the moon, for anything I could tell. The man beside me spoke again, politely:
“You know Shanghai?”
“No,” I said.
“You know China?”
“No,” I said.
“Shanghai is a very nice city,” he remarked.
As though directly to contradict his statement, something went slap against the window of the limousine with a sound that made me duck my head. The men on either side of me looked interested but not disturbed.
“Do not be afraid,” my companion said. “The glass is bulletproof. Someone, I think, does not like you very much.”
We must have ridden for fifteen minutes, perhaps longer, through very crowded streets, when the car drew up before an unprepossessing gate in a high gray wall. They must have been expecting us because the gate opened at the sound of the motor horn and six or seven large-boned, slant-eyed men stepped out and gazed searchingly up and down.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Is there going to be a war?”
My sallow-faced companion smiled slightly. “There is always something of a war. Come, please. Walk quickly in!” A second later we were in a courtyard with low tile-roofed buildings about it that gave one the idea of an entrance to a prison. The Chinese who were standing there had a semi-official, military manner; all of them were large men, impressively so, after my experiences in Japan.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“You are coming to the home of Wu Lai-fu,” my guide answered. “Will you please to step this way?” We walked across the court into a smaller one and then along a covered gallery into a building on the right.
I was surprised, when we were inside the building, to find that the interior was comfortable according to foreign standards. We were in a bedroom with teakwood chairs and scroll pictures on the wall, where two men in white gowns, evidently servants, were waiting. My guide spoke to them rapidly.
“You are to bathe and change your clothes,” he said. “There is a hot bath running for you and they will bring you eggs and fruit and coffee. We have only Chinese clothes. You do not mind?”
I was too confused to be surprised or to thank him. All these impressions, which had come so suddenly upon me, have made my recollections of the entrance into that place vague, and nothing seemed to me strange by then, not the pillars in the courtyards or curving tiled roofs or marble dragons by the gates. I only recollect that no English valets could have waited on me more conscientiously or correctly than those men. They helped me into a tiled bathroom and into a tub of steaming hot water. Next I was in a silk suit of pajamas, with a robe buttoned over it, eating an excellent breakfast with a knife and fork. I ate in a sort of daze and went through all the motions of dressing without asking any questions, while the servants stood attentively by me. I had just finished my coffee and one of them had offered me a cigarette from a silver box when my guide returned.
“Wu Lai-fu will see you now,” he said.
I have no coherent idea of the establishment of Wu Lai-fu, but only the recollection of walking through buildings and through courtyards until we came to a large room which was part Oriental and part European. A blue carpet with yellow dragons was on the floor. The furniture was black lacquer. There were two paintings on silk of old landscapes on the wall, and a large commercial map of China. At the end of the room there was an office desk with two telephones upon it, and a typewriter stood upon the table beside it. A middle-aged man sat behind the desk, with his hands folded in front of him, a Chinese in a plain black robe. His closely shaved head was partly gray and his face had an ageless, reposed expression, as though all emotion had evaporated. The man might have been forty or sixty—a slim man who looked at me through a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles like a school-teacher or a scholar. He nodded to my guide, who left the room at his nod, closing the door and leaving me standing before the desk. This man was not like Mr. Moto. He showed no anxiety or nervousness, but only a placid calmness.
“I am Wu Lai-fu,” the man behind the desk said. “What is your name, please?”
“My name is K. C. Lee,” I answered.
He did not answer for a moment, but sat with his hands clasped on the desk.
“I suppose,” he said—his English was flawless—“you do not know who I am?”
“No,” I answered.
He smiled, and his whole face broke into arid wrinkles. “Then I will tell you,” he said. “Your countrymen say I am the wickedest man in China. They say I control various guilds in this city, including the thieves and prostitutes. As a matter of fact, I am a merchant, whose business has connections. I hope you will tell me the truth, because if I have the slightest doubt that you do not—and I understand the faces of you foreigners—if I find that you are lying, I can make you tell the truth.”
His manner was contemptuous, as though he were speaking to a barbarian; it was the first time that I had the feeling that I was a savage. I can never explain, but in some way I had the sense that his race was vastly older than mine and older even than Mr. Moto’s. I could believe that the thin ascetic man in his black robe was living in another world of intellect.
“Are you threatening me, Mr. Wu?” I asked.
“Exactly,” the other said. “I am asking you to tell the truth. Tell it quickly, please.”
“You have the advantage of me, Mr. Wu,” I said.
His hands on the desk moved, but his face did not. “Yes,” he answere
d. “So much so that it is my pleasure to be frank. Someday I hope to see you and all of your kind driven into the sea.”
I felt my face growing red. “No one asked me here,” I answered. “I came here as a stranger. I have always heard of your courtesy, but now I know that you have bad manners.”
Mr. Wu shook his head but he did not smile. “It seems to me you’ve been treated with courtesy,” he said. “You were picked out of the river like a half-drowned rat. You were brought to my house. You were bathed and fed. You are standing before me in my clothes. The lowest Chinese coolie would have bowed to me and thanked me. You have not thanked me, Mr. Lee. What do you know of manners?”
“I know enough,” I said, “not to threaten a guest beneath my roof. If I picked you up like a rat, Mr. Wu, I should have treated you better.”
“Ah, but you have not a roof,” he answered. “You have nothing. What is the English phrase? You must sing for your supper, Mr. Lee. Please sing, because I am busy. Why did you jump off a comfortable steamer into our Whangpoo River?”
“Because they were going to murder me,” I said.
“Who were?” he asked.
“A Japanese named Moto,” I answered.
The thin hands on the desk closed together tighter, but Mr. Wu’s composure was not altered. “Why?” he asked.
“They thought I had a message from one of your countrymen,” I said. “His name was Ma, and that’s all I know about it, Mr. Wu.”
Mr. Wu sat for a moment, watching me coolly. “Where is Ma?” he asked.
“Dead,” I answered. “They killed him in my cabin.”
Mr. Wu’s lips moved but everything else about him was motionless. “There are many Chinese lives,” he said. “Where is the message? I wish you to tell me promptly—and truthfully—or I shall call on men who can make you.”
I looked at the dragons on the carpet. The dragons seemed to be writhing toward me slowly, as it came over me that Mr. Wu wanted the message too, as poignantly as Mr. Moto wanted it. I wondered if he would believe me. I hoped he would, because he was not bluffing.
“Mr. Wu,” I answered, “I have not got that message.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Wu; “they found it then?”
“No,” I answered, “they did not find it. They thought I had read it and destroyed it.”
Mr. Wu unclasped his hands and tapped a bell beside the desk, and then the thing that happened has always been hard to believe. I had to tell myself that I was Casey Lee, and yet I might have been in the Middle Ages that next moment. A door opened behind me at the sound of that bell and four men walked through it. Two of them seized my arms, while two others stood beside them, holding ropes and wooden and iron instruments.
“And now,” said Mr. Wu, “you will tell me what the message is—sooner or later.”
I tried to keep my voice steady. “I told you,” I answered, “I have never seen the message.” And then I had another thought. “Before Ma died—the night before—he spoke to me. He told me to deliver that message if he should give it to me, to a commander in our navy. If I had it, he should have it—not you, Mr. Wu. And if I knew that message, which I don’t, you could cut me to pieces before I said a word.”
“I wonder,” said Mr. Wu softly, “I wonder—”
“You needn’t wonder,” I answered. “Go ahead and try!”
“You are brave,” said Mr. Wu softly. “Savages are always brave.” Then he spoke to the men and they dropped my arms. “I think you had better tell me everything, Mr. Lee—everything from the beginning.” He spoke again and one of the men moved up a chair. I dropped into it, because my knees were weak.
“I will if you give me a drink,” I said.
“Drink—” Mr. Wu smiled slightly. “So you have a drunkard’s courage? Very well, you shall have your drink.”
I gripped the arms of the lacquer chair. That taunt of Mr. Wu’s stung more than the remark of any prohibitionist. “Never mind the drink then,” I said. “I don’t need it to talk to you! Furthermore, I’ve been in worse spots than this. I’m not afraid.”
Mr. Wu smiled again. “Oh, yes,” he said; “oh, yes, you are. . . . ” He was speaking the truth and he knew I knew it.
“Perhaps,” I said, “I am, but it doesn’t make any difference, because I haven’t anything to tell you.”
Mr. Wu leaned back in his chair and folded his arms in his sleeves. “Now,” he said, “you’re speaking the truth, and that’s what I want—the truth, and nothing more. And then we will have no trouble, Mr. Lee.”
“As a matter of fact, I should rather like to know the truth myself,” I said. “I don’t understand what’s happened, Mr. Wu.”
Mr. Wu smiled again. “And you probably never will know,” he answered. “Why should you? I am not depending upon your rather turgid intellect. Who paid you to come here?”
“A Japanese,” I answered, “named Moto.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Wu, “so you’ve been hired by them, have you?”
The unbiased accuracy of his words made me more keenly aware of what I had done than I had ever been before. “I’m not proud of it,” I explained. “I rather think that’s over, since Mr. Moto tried to murder me.”
Mr. Wu leaned further forward across the desk. “I think you’d better tell me the circumstances,” he said softly. “How did you meet this countryman of mine named Ma? And what was it that Mr. Moto wanted you to do?”
I could never in my life have believed that anyone like Mr. Wu existed, but he was completely believable then. Although I disliked him, I found myself telling him frankly, with hardly a reservation, what had happened. I told him about the visitor in my stateroom. I quoted our conversation word for word, while Mr. Wu sat there listening to me, never moving a muscle of his face or hands.
“So you were in the American navy,” he remarked, “and an aviator. We are interested in aviation here. It is one hope for a weak, disorganized nation. You are not, by any chance, interested in naval design, Mr. Lee?”
“No,” I said, “not in the least.”
“You have never been a naval architect?” Mr. Wu asked softly. “Or studied fuel combustion?”
“No,” I said.
Although he did not move, I could see that he was taking all my words, weighing them, polishing them in his mind and working them into a pattern. “That is very curious,” he said. “There was a message. Now there is no message. Ma was a very capable man. He had a sense of habit and behavior. I have dealt with Ma.”
I sat in front of the desk, and the room was very still while I looked curiously at the man who sat there thinking.
“You spoke of a Russian,” he said finally. “A woman or a girl? Tell me what she looks like, that is, if you possess sufficient powers of observation.”
I described Sonya to him as carefully as I could and for the first time his placidity left him. His eyes sharpened and he rubbed his hands together.
“So she was there,” he said, “and she found nothing, also. That is interesting, Mr. Lee.” He tapped the bell on his desk again. I am free to confess that the sound sent a shiver down my spine, but only a servant entered at the signal. Mr. Wu spoke to him in his elusive language, evidently a question, and then he smiled at me when he got his answer. His entire manner changed with his smile. There was no cruelty left in him, but instead, the sympathy and anxiety of a host.
“I am asking the man to bring me whisky,” he said. “And I beg of you to take it. The trouble is over now. Sit down, Mr. Lee, and be as comfortable as you can in your strange clothes. Some others have been ordered for you already—the impractical useless garments of the foreigners, if you will excuse my saying so. I am intensely nationalistic, Mr. Lee; intensely racial might be a better expression. I am proud of my own people and I have seen many of them. They are superior to other people. Do not disturb yourself. The trouble is over now—because I have found you have told the truth.”
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked.
Mr. Wu rais
ed his thin hand. “I do not blame you,” he remarked, “for being worried about yourself. Your face tells me that you have thought only of self for many, many years. There is nothing in this world more unfortunate. What am I going to do with you? You must wait and see.” Just as he finished speaking, the servant came back, stepping noiselessly across the heavy carpet. The servant said something and Mr. Wu rubbed his hands again. His expression had become almost benign and kind when the servant had finished speaking.
“Do not speak, please, Mr. Lee,” he said. “You must excuse me. I have important matters on my mind. I congratulate you that you have told the truth. This girl you speak of—I wish that she were here.”
I thanked heaven that Sonya was not there. “She doesn’t know anything,” I said.
“Perhaps I can find out.” Mr. Wu’s voice was calm. He had picked up one of his telephones and was evidently calling for some number. He listened attentively, then he spoke in a singsong cadence, set down the instrument and rang the bell and gave another order to the servant.
Mr. Moto Omnibus Page 9
