Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

  “Why yes,” said Calvin. “I’ve bought some small things, nothing much.”

  “I am so glad,” said Mr. Moto. “Perhaps you have seen our silver work with the inlay of gunmetal cut right through the silver? It is so very nice. Perhaps you have bought a cigarette case of that work?”

  “No,” said Calvin, “I haven’t.”

  “You do not smoke, perhaps,” said Mr. Moto. “Those cases are so nice. There is an inlaid pattern of small birds flying through grasses. I am so very fond of it. Perhaps you have seen the pattern on silver? So very many little birds.”

  There was no doubt any longer that the talk was leading somewhere. Calvin understood that Mr. Moto was waiting patiently, not for an answer as much as for some change of voice. He knew he was not wrong when Mr. Moto spoke again.

  “You have not seen the cases with the inlays of the little birds?”

  “No,” said Calvin.

  “Ha ha,” said Mr. Moto. “Excuse me, please. It is so very interesting that you are going to Mongolia. Ghuru Nor is very beautiful. Have you heard of the prince who lives there?”

  “No,” said Calvin. “Is there a prince?”

  “Oh yes,” said Mr. Moto brightly. “The men who are not priests wear pigtails. Such a very backward country. The prince’s name is Wu Fang. That is his Chinese name, of course.”

  “Does he wear a pigtail too?” Calvin asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Mr. Moto. “He lives in a small palace and keeps camels. He has an army too. The Mongolians are very, very jolly.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Calvin said.

  “Oh yes,” said Mr. Moto. “You will like it all so very, very much, that is if there is no trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Calvin repeated.

  Mr. Moto laughed.

  “Ha ha,” said Mr. Moto. “I hope so very much that you will have no trouble.”

  “Well,” said Calvin, “it’s a complicated world. I think I’ll go back and try to get some sleep.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Moto, “I shall go back too, I think. It has been so very pleasant. Thank you very much. You first, please, Mr. Gates.”

  When Calvin walked down the stairs to the passageway with Mr. Moto just behind him, he felt the bewilderment he had experienced before when he had come in contact with an Oriental mind. He was sure that the conversation had not been aimless, although it led nowhere. Something in Mr. Moto’s interest was disturbing. Even Mr. Moto’s footsteps behind him were disturbing. He took his key from his pocket to open his stateroom door and the key did not turn in the lock.

  “Excuse me,” said Mr. Moto, “is there something wrong?”

  “It’s the key,” Calvin told him; “it doesn’t seem to work.”

  “So sorry,” Mr. Moto said. “The key does not work? How very, very funny.”

  But it did not seem to Calvin that it was very funny.

  “Look here,” he said, turning on Mr. Moto, “what’s all this about?”

  “I do not know,” said Mr. Moto. “We will go and find the boy.”

  The boy was still asleep in his chair near the dining saloon. Mr. Moto spoke sharply and the boy’s eyes opened.

  “The boy will know how,” said Mr. Moto. “Let the boy try the key, please. Thank you very much.”

  The boy turned the key. The lock clicked and he opened the stateroom door.

  “Ha ha,” said Mr. Moto. “It is all right now, I think.”

  “Thank you,” said Calvin. “It’s all right now.”

  “So very glad,” Mr. Moto said. “Good night.”

  Calvin Gates shot the bolt of his stateroom door again and looked grimly at his trunk and bags beneath the berth. When he had first tried the door someone had been inside; and now whoever it was had gone; and Mr. Moto was looking for a cigarette case with a design of little birds upon it, lots of little birds.

  Whatever it was that Mr. Moto wanted, it was no affair of his, and he was able to go to sleep. He was able to dream of pigtails and of places of which he had no knowledge, and through his dreams he could hear Mr. Moto’s voice.

  “So very nice,” Mr. Moto was saying, “so very, very nice.”

  3

  AT THE REAR of the train which left Fusan the next morning there was an observation car where Japanese businessmen and Japanese army officers sat and smoked and talked in sharp loud voices. The road for the most part followed river beds, back from which rose brownish hills and bluish mountains. There were green patches of farms near the river, but for the most part the country was bleak and rugged, and even the highest hills were bare of trees. That bareness gave the impression of a land which had been lived in for millenniums without much change. The Korean houses were like something from the Stone Age, round mud huts with curious mushroom-shaped thatch roofs. White-clad bearded men stood near them smoking pipes. White-robed farmers walked along the paths with their hands clasped behind them, wearing high black varnished hats perched airily above their heads.

  It may have been because of the total unfamiliarity of the scene outside that Calvin experienced an increasing sensation of self-consciousness. He had not realized the extent of this malaise until he saw the girl whom he had seen on the boat the night before. She walked into the observation car, looked about her carelessly and selected one of the wicker chairs, lighted a cigarette and opened a book. Calvin Gates smiled and bowed, but she only nodded to him curtly as though to tell him that she did not need his company, and then he saw the reason. A shabbily dressed, youngish man entered the car a moment later and took the chair beside her.

  The dress, the turn of the head, the smile, the familiarity with everything showed that he was not there for his own pleasure. The tilt of his head indicated his profession, and the way his fountain pen was clipped into his upper coat pocket suggest its constant use in keeping a petty cash account. All those small details gave him that cosmopolitan quality common to all guides and couriers. He might have been a native of half a dozen countries from Norway to the Balkans, but he certainly was not an American. The cut of his clothes and the sharp point of his nose and chin and the motions of his hands indicated some other origin, and his voice also showed it even though it was devoid of any accent, the facile voice of a man of many tongues.

  “Everything is safe in the baggage car, Miss Dillaway,” Calvin heard him say. “They will look over the baggage again at Antung.”

  The girl turned her head with a sort of impatient annoyance, and slapped a firm brown hand down on her open book.

  “For goodness’ sakes, Boris,” she said, “isn’t this all Japanese territory?”

  As soon as he heard the name, Calvin Gates understood the face and voice. The man was a Russian.

  “It’s only a formality, Miss Dillaway,” he explained, looking at her with patient, slightly protruding, bluish eyes. “Antung is on the border of Manchukuo, a separate state you understand.”

  “Rubbish,” said Miss Dillaway. “It’s Japanese, isn’t it?”

  Then a curious thing happened. As Miss Dillaway was speaking, the blond Russian had glanced toward the door of the observation car, and at that same moment Mr. Moto appeared, a somewhat startling sight.

  Mr. Moto was dressed in black-and-white checked sport clothes, and his spindly legs glowed in green and red golf stockings. For a moment Calvin Gates was tempted to laugh, but the inclination left him when he saw the face of Miss Dillaway’s companion.

  The bluish eyes of that blond young man had grown more protruding, and his hands had dropped slowly until they gripped the arms of his wicker chair.

  “What’s the matter with you, Boris?” Miss Dillaway was saying, “Are you sick?”

  Her voice aroused the Russian from his reverie.

  “Oh no,” he said. “It is nothing, nothing.”

  “Well, don’t look as though you’d seen a ghost,” Miss Dillaway said. “You give me the creeps, and the Japanese are trouble enough.”

  “Please,” Boris said hastily in low agitated tones. “They u
nderstand what you are saying.”

  “Well, let ’em understand,” said Miss Dillaway. “I’m not doing any harm.”

  If Mr. Moto heard, he paid no attention. Without even bestowing a glance on them he moved toward Calvin Gates.

  “So nice to see you,” Mr. Moto said, “so very nice.”

  “Good morning,” Calvin answered. “Are you going to play golf, Mr. Moto?”

  “Ha ha,” said Mr. Moto. “I wear these clothes so often traveling, because they do not get out of press. I used to press so many trousers in America.”

  “Did you?” Calvin asked him.

  “Oh yes,” said Mr. Moto, “yes.” He raised his hand before his mouth and drew in his breath. “When I was studying in America. They will examine the baggage at Antung and the policeman must see your papers. I should be so very glad to help you, if you would not mind.”

  “Thank you,” said Calvin. “Hello, look at that!”

  The train had stopped on a siding while they were speaking, and another train was going by them.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Moto, “soldiers. A troop train, I suppose.”

  A long train rolled by them with black heads of small khaki-clad men peering from its windows and then flat cars loaded with artillery, car after car of guns and caissons.

  “It looks like a war,” Calvin said.

  “No, not a war,” said Mr. Moto. “They are just soldiers, new soldiers. I am so very afraid that we will be delayed by troop trains. We will be very many hours late before we reach Mukden—so many hours.”

  Calvin looked out of the window with a new interest.

  “Those guns look like German seventy-sevens,” he said.

  Mr. Moto’s head had turned toward him with a birdlike sort of quickness.

  “Not exactly,” Mr. Moto said. “You understand artillery?”

  “Yes,” Calvin said, “a little.”

  He was aware that Mr. Moto was favoring him with his full attention.

  “You are not,” Mr. Moto said, “an army officer yourself?”

  “No,” Calvin answered, “but I’ve done quite a lot of military reading. Sometimes I’ve thought of being a soldier.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Moto. “You are so fortunate not to be a soldier. The breech mechanism of our field-pieces is different from light German guns. So sorry we will be delayed to let the troops go by.”

  There were soldiers enough in Korea, but when the train rolled the next day through what had been Manchuria iron hats and khaki uniforms and field equipment became part of the landscape, and the landscape itself had changed. The land had assumed a level, peaceful aspect, reminding him somewhat of a prairie state at home. There were small farms and narrow roads as far as he could see, and in some way, though the sight was new, it all appeared familiar. The country had begun to resemble the scenes on the blue-and-white china plates which had been placed before him as a child. There were the same houses with the same sweeping curves to their eaves, the same willow trees drooping above them, the identical bridges across the streams. The same figures, half reassuring and half grotesque, bent over fields or plodded with poles on their shoulders. The oddest sights seemed to fit into a sort of decorous order, impervious to change, and life rose robustly out of the earth in earthen houses and villages surrounded by high walls. Life sank back into the earth again, to a past which was marked by the mounds of ancestral graves that dotted corners of nearly every field.

  The train was moving through this new country when he had his first conversation with Miss Dillaway. She appeared in the observation car about eight o’clock the next morning and took a chair next his and drew a timetable out of her pocketbook.

  “Hello,” Miss Dillaway said. “It’s a funny country, isn’t it? It looks like a plate.”

  “I’m sorry you thought of that,” Calvin Gates said. “I had thought that was an original idea with me.”

  Miss Dillaway glanced out the window and wrinkled her nose.

  “There’s nothing original about any of it,” she said. “It’s been going on for two thousand years. Have you ever been out here before?”

  “No,” said Calvin, “never.”

  “Neither have I,” said Miss Dillaway, “and I’d like to see a gas tank and a factory chimney.”

  “Didn’t you see enough in Japan?” Calvin asked her.

  “Japan!” Miss Dillaway laughed shortly. “It isn’t permanent. It’s almost pathetic to see those poor people trying.” She nodded toward the fields and farms out the window. “All this is going to swallow them up in two or three hundred years. Maybe they realize it even now. They look like little boys playing soldier, don’t they? And don’t tell me not to say it out loud. I’m tired of being told to be quiet.”

  The train had stopped at a station as she spoke, similar to all the other wayside stations they had been passing. It was built of gray brick, evidently designed by some European engineer, and behind it was a cluster of brown mud houses which made two slovenly lines along a muddy street. All around the station building was a wall of white sandbags. A corporal’s guard armed with rifles had filed from the station and stood at attention.

  “Look at them,” said Miss Dillaway. “They’ve gobbled up Manchuria and they still have to hide behind sandbags. It’s pathetic, isn’t it?”

  “They don’t look pathetic to me,” Calvin said. “They look as if they knew their business.”

  “It’s pathetic just the same,” said Miss Dillaway, “because they won’t get anywhere. Are you going as far as Peiping?”

  Calvin Gates nodded. “Farther than that,” he said, and Miss Dillaway seemed pleased.

  “Then we’d better stick together,” she said; “that is, if you don’t mind. Frankly this country and this train are giving me the creeps, and that Russian guide I had, he’s leaving.”

  “Leaving?” Calvin said.

  Miss Dillaway wrinkled her nose again as though some smell in the car offended her.

  “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?” she answered. “The Russian with the fountain pen, who’s been following me around? I’m no good with languages and I’m apt to lose my temper. I asked them at the hotel for a courier and they dug up Boris. I guess I don’t understand foreigners very well. He’s faded out on me. He gave me notice just after we came into this car yesterday morning. Something must have happened.”

  “What happened?” Calvin Gates asked.

  Miss Dillaway made a careless gesture.

  “You know how foreigners are,” she said. “Boris was as nice as pie and suddenly he froze up and said he was leaving me at Mukden. I can’t understand foreigners. It isn’t my business. I just want to get where I’m going.” She looked at him frankly. “I guess you don’t care where you’re going, do you?”

  “What makes you think that?” Calvin asked.

  “I’m sorry,” said Miss Dillaway. “I’ve just been watching you on the train, the way you’ve been watching me, and you just gave me the idea that you didn’t care where you were going. Do you mind telling me where you’re going?”

  Her question did not seem out of place, and he knew that her interest was friendly.

  “Farther than Peiping,” Calvin said. “I’ve been wanting to talk for two days to anyone except the police. I’m going to a place called Ghuru Nor. I’m looking for an expedition that’s being run by a Dr. Gilbreth.” He stopped because Miss Dillaway looked startled.

  “What’s the matter?” Calvin asked.

  “Look here,” said Miss Dillaway. “You don’t look like anybody Gilbreth would take. You don’t mean he’s taking you?”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” Calvin asked. “At any rate I’m going to find him.”

  “No reason,” Miss Dillaway said. “I’m interested because I’m going there myself.”

  Miss Dillaway looked at him again carefully and impersonally.

  “What’s your line, Mr. Gates?”

  Her calm examination embarrassed him.

  “I haven’t got any line,”
he said. “What’s your line?”

  “Artist,” said Miss Dillaway. “Painting scale pictures of pots and pans and skulls and landscapes. I’ve been on a lot of these things, but never into Asia. If you’re going because of curiosity you won’t like it. It’s always hot and the food is always bad and everybody’s always quarreling. It sounds all right when you get home, but it’s terrible when you’re there. I wouldn’t do it if I weren’t paid for it. Why are you doing it?”

  Calvin Gates felt his face grow red. She would be the girl who was mentioned in the letter, the good-looking girl with a temper.

  “For personal reasons,” he said.

  “Sorry,” said Miss Dillaway. “I didn’t mean to step on your toes, Gates. Well, as long as we’ve met, we’d better try to get there. It’s nearly lunchtime, isn’t it? Would you like to buy me a drink before lunch? They have some things in the dining car.”

  “Thanks,” said Calvin.

  Miss Dillaway walked ahead of him, briskly, her head and shoulders very straight. She sat down at one of the tables in the dining car and nodded to the chair opposite.

  “Boy,” she called, “whisky-soda. Is that what you want, Gates? Two whisky-sodas. Well, here’s looking at you, Gates! Good luck!”

  Calvin raised his glass. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he said, “you don’t seem very pleased that I’m going to Ghuru Nor. Of course, I didn’t expect any loud applause.” Calvin paused and smiled at her. “But I have some good points, you know. I might be useful.”

  Miss Dillaway set down her glass.

  “Forget it, Gates,” she said. “This is business for me, and you’re one of these people looking for adventure. You haven’t been on as many of these things as I have. I’ve been in Persia and I’ve been bitten by fleas in the Mesopotamian Desert, and I’ve been in Central America, and the west coast of Africa. I go because I earn my pay, and I’ve seen lads who go for fun. They generally make trouble. They sit around the camp and just make trouble. There’s nothing else for ’em to do. I don’t mean it personally.”

  “I can carry your sketchbooks,” Calvin said.