He retreated a little and for an instant glared at me with a look of consternation. Then he turned and ran away at top speed, head down, in the purposeful way of one who bears a tale.
I should have liked to follow him; but Ch’ien Men is safer for thieves than for the pursuers of thieves. Besides, I felt there remained with me the key to the incident; and if the old man could only talk….
Instantly I had shoved through the rather hostile but stolid swarm that had gathered and was bending over him.
“Old Scholar—” I began in Mandarin, using the title that from its honorary character would be aptest to stir his memory.
His oblique eyelids fluttered open. There was certainly no recognition in the look he gave me; and yet there was an appeal and a heart-broken quality in it that made me think again of that ancient martyr Fuh-sang, who had mutilated himself that learning might live.
And, a queer enough coincidence, both his voice and his words increased that impression—the former beautifully clear in enunciation as is only the voice of the literati, the latter a jumble of phrases and sentences that rushed out pell-mell in a race with death.
“It is the corruption of the old wisdom. It is the pollution of the spring…. Say to my brothers that even Wu Ting, miserable earthworm of knowledge that he is, knows that the books are false. The tale of them is a lie; the Shu King is not completed. This which I have taken is the revealer of false light—”
He was fumbling at the breast of his gown. I wanted to question him, wanted to put whatever it was that I had taken from his probable murderer back into his hand.
But I had time for neither the one nor the other, for of a sudden he shivered slightly, fell back with dropping jaw and died.
That was all, yet when I came to my feet again I felt I was tiptoeing upon the edge of a very dangerous gulf, with a luring flame of the unexplained burning beyond it. For the Shu King was the literati’s name for the Chinese Classics; what the ancient scholar had martyred himself partially to preserve, the modern scholar had died to save from corruption.
From corruption at whose hands, and for what purpose? My present business in Asia suggested the answer to those questions. Also it suggested other questions, to which other answers were required; and it demanded that I find those answers.
My first act was one of mere decency; I went into a tobacconist’s and paid the proprietor to take the body into his shop and to notify the authorities. Then I hurried up the street till I met an idle rickshaw, hailed it and made my way with all speed to the foreign Hôtel des Wagon-Lits, the only place in Peking where even the long arm of a Chinese criminal society would find it hard to reach.
Not until I was safe in my upper room—Sybaritic luxury after the Shensian inns—did I venture a glance at the probable cause of the whole affair.
Then I was astounded. It was quite five minutes before I reconciled the nature of the object with my suspicions—which, I may as well now say, was that I had stumbled upon a new scheme of that Koshinga whom so many regarded with a certain reasonableness as being a major devil housed in death. Of that Koshinga, with whose maleficent purposes as head of the revolutionary tong called the Ko Lao Hui, my present visit to Peking had largely to do.
But to come back to my find. It was merely a square plate of perfectly transparent crystal, about six inches on an edge.
Its only peculiar feature was that its thickness was not uniform, varying from half an inch to an inch, both surfaces being covered with many nodules and depressions, perplexingly irregular in outline. I could not think of any way this object would fit into my half-conceived theory until I placed it over a copy of the Peking Gazette and saw how the various curvatures of the crystal distorted the printed characters into utterly unrecognizable shapes.
Then I reflected that a thing which will obscure may under reverse circumstances be used to clarify. And if Koshinga, to suit his purposes, had resolved to spring upon China a fraudulent purported copy of the missing sections of the Shu King, it would hardly be in any easily read form.
For one thing, he would have to account for the fact that it had escaped the destruction which had erased the rest of the sections—reconstructed later mainly from Fuh-sang’s memory.
IT SHOULD hardly be necessary to go back here to tell how Hazard and I—you must have heard of Hazard—had for a long time served the Chinese Republic as best we could against its incessantly plotting enemies that would have overthrown it from within. The essential thing to know is that Hazard was at present in Tientsin, held there by another affair; and that I had come alone to Peking for consultation with our chief, who may be best described as head of the Chinese secret service.
Also I wanted to receive at first hand the report of a great conference, composed of all the high officials of the Republic, which was to meet on the day following this Ch’ien Men episode, to discuss methods of combating the Ko Lao Hui evil.
By my baggage, clothing, hotel registry, and I hope by my general appearance I was a verdant tourist fresh from the States. Really I was pretty well steeped in China, ancient and modern; and also in the infernally clever methods of that tu fei, mixture of the base and vicious, whose hand I had learned to look for behind every particularly subtle bit of deviltry that I discovered—and whose hand I felt was behind this affair of the crystal.
I might, of course, have gone straight to my chief in the government house with the crystal and the story and my suspicions—but I reflected that as yet they were only suspicions. Also I knew that the mentality that animated the Ko Lao Hui rarely ran on a single track.
If the old scholar’s dying words possessed the meaning I read into them, here was a cunning device for undermining the Chinese government with the people—but Koshinga was accustomed to back cunning with force. Very probably there was more to his plot than I had as yet even imagined.
Well, I would continue to play the part of a verdant and unsuspecting tourist.
I had no illusions that I would not be traced to the hotel, nor that an attempt would not be made to recover the crystal, nor that the enemy would have any more merciful scruples in my case than they had shown in the case of the old man.
And though it is sound doctrine that one who ventures nothing will probably gain in like proportion, it is also true that a decent regard for one’s life promotes discretion. My next step was based on the premise that there is no safeguard equal to that of making one’s continued existence essential to the plans of one’s antagonists.
I stepped to the phone and requested the hotel office to send me a reliable runner. By the time he came I had my mysterious possession well wrapped; and I directed him to take it to a skillful worker in glass of whom I happened to know and to pay double price for an exact duplicate, to be made instantly.
These were my instructions. Whether it would be possible for the man to imitate the crystal precisely I didn’t know; but his commercial instincts would at least insure the attempt. And if his work was only superficially accurate it would serve the purpose I had in mind.
Within a few hours the boy returned with the two plates. I had made a slight nick on the edge of the original; and this I wrapped again and sent to my chief.
I enclosed an unsigned note, telling him he would probably have use for the article in the near future. He was not a man to throw it away after that.
Then I had a talk with the proprietor of the hotel, divulging my identity and making certain arrangements for an eventuality which I hoped to force.
Returning to my room, I passed several hours there rather impatiently. I had recalled another thing that lent added force to my surmise. I had remembered that for the last month Hazard and I had been receiving reports of a mysterious influx to Peking from every corner of China—an influx of the literati, the class to which the old man had belonged, a class which in solidity resembles a clan, and whose opinions have for two thousand years made and unmade governments.
Coupled with what I believed, this influx took on a terrible m
eaning. I grew very much worried lest the Ko Lao Hui should give up its attempt to recover the thing chance had placed in my hands; and it was with distinct relief that I heard the phone ring and the clerk’s voice saying that a Chinese gentleman named Ho Chung Fang wished to see me in my room.
“BUT how,” I questioned, “do I know that the thing which you describe belongs to you?”
My caller looked at me curiously. The clerk had described him incorrectly; he was a large, bulky man, plainly of mixed blood—that nondescript and essentially evil type which combines the worst qualities of the Caucasian and Mongolian races, and which for that reason was apt to rise so rapidly in the councils of the Ko Lao Hui.
A certain latent ferocity seemed to lurk within him, and his features were cunning and brutal; but his eyes were unlighted by any particular intelligence. He spoke perfect English and had just offered me a sum in Chinese taels larger than I care to state, if I would surrender to him then and there that which I had taken from the Cantonese assassin.
My failure to do so evidently puzzled him. Doubtless he unjustly impugned the average tourist in his confident non-expectancy of any further trouble with me once he had mentioned that sum. It had probably been that confidence that in large measure had led him to dare this visit to me—that, and the fact that if I had accused him of complicity in the murder I had witnessed he could likely produce a dozen witnesses to swear to any saving lies he cared to invent. But now he was plainly uneasy at my obstinacy—an uneasiness that I meant presently to relieve.
“I have described it fully,” he answered, lifting his hands deprecatingly.
And as I still looked doubtful:
“I may as well tell you. The crystal is a key to a lock. It is useful to those that possess that lock, and to no others. Surely it will be the part of virtue to restore it, especially when the act will profit you so greatly.”
“The old man, then, who you say stole it and whom I saw die, possessed a similar lock?” I inquired innocently.
“The old man was fungla—crazy,” retorted Ho Chung Fang. “Much learning had gone to his head. He wished to destroy a great usefulness, and with no profit to himself.”
That was closer to the truth as I imagined it than I had expected my visitor to come and I thought the point fair enough from which to begin the yielding which I had all along intended.
“I take it from your words that you possess this lock.”
“Your honorable judgment is correct.”
“Then—it is a great sum you offer me.” I hesitated.
He took this as a sign of surrender and started to reach for the money in an inner pocket; but I held up my hand.
“And there is this way to settle the matter. Show me the lock and you may have the key for the price that you have fixed. Take me to wherever your proof is—isn’t that simple?” and I smiled with a show of conceited satisfaction at the cleverness of the idea.
Ho Chung Fang was only half-Oriental, and he couldn’t quite conceal the delight he felt at my unexpected offer. If I had been the callow tourist that I tried to appear I should probably not have noticed that delight. As it was, I realized that I had solved for him most handily not only the problem of how he was to acquire the mysterious crystal but also the problem of my own easy disposition among the long list of men who tell no tales.
For my experience with the Ko Lao Hui left me with no false idea that my surrender of the crystal would end matters, nor concerning the length of time that it had been planned that I should live.
He agreed readily; and presently we were bowling in two hooded Peking carts down Legation Street—the Chinese call it the Street of the Subject Nations—toward cluttered and helter-skelter Ch’ien Men.
During that ride I saw plenty to keep me reminded of days when this street was not so peaceful as now. There was the great Tatar Wall with shell-torn sides and ramparts; there were the various legations huddled under it, still moated and fortressed in memory of the 1900 affair.
There on the wall of the British Legation, chiseled deeply in letters many feet high, was the grim memorial to the whites who had died there in that year of tribulation—“Lest We Forget.” Under the wheels of my cart were probably some of the many runways and tunnels dug by the Boxers in their attempt to break through the foreign defense—by those Boxers who had been at their strongest but a sprout from the parent Ko Lao Hui tree.
Grave enough in all conscience had been that affair; but if this Ko Lao Hui trouble finally burst, history would write the Boxer Revolt as insignificant in comparison, as a bellow’s blast is insignificant beside a Yellow Sea typhoon.
I knew, for I had traveled and seen much, that the major part of China was merely waiting in mingled dread and expectancy for the day Koshinga would launch his avalanche, waiting with an ear wide to every rumor, with an eye on every shadow. When that avalanche came it would blot out all foreign life in China in a horrible manner—thus ran the whisperings.
From these whisperings Peking was as yet quite free. It being the seat of authority, the Ko Lao Hui had tried to lull the city into a sense of false security, for the ease of revolutionary propaganda elsewhere.
But there is an old saying that is deeply engraved on the Chinese mind—
“At words which come from the Northern Capital let all men tremble and obey.”
So strong is this feeling that he who holds Peking in his hand is very apt to have the empire at his feet. It was impossible to conceive of Koshinga not trying to gain control there; and to a few of us it seemed certain that when he did so his long-planned harvest of wrath would begin.
I wondered if that day had come. Also I thought rather idly of the great conference of Koshinga’s enemies that was to be held on the morrow; and I wondered if the military maxim was true that wherever one’s opponents are gathered en masse one’s opportunities are greatest. If so, Koshinga’s opportunity was at hand.
But we had passed through the Ch’ien Men gate, under the shadow of the old Manchu palaces with vermilion-red pillars and archways, their magnificence forever tarnished with age and the Gobi dust. Nearby stood the newer Government Building. Ahead of us appeared a long line of camels plodding slowly in from the western desert, laden with all manner of merchandise.
We passed the spot which had seen the murderous beginning of this whole affair, and we had gone but a little farther when Ho Chung Fang halted his cart and paid off both his driver and mine.
Then for about fifteen minutes he led me through a maze of twisted streets and blind alleys with unexpected passages opening off. During that walk I chattered rather volubly, pretending to be delighted with the mystery of the affair and to feel no threat of danger—which is often the way with that inexperience I was counterfeiting.
At the end of the walk I was confused as to direction; and when Ho Chung Fang indicated the place we were to enter I swiftly observed our position with regard to the towering Ch’ien Men pagoda, the Government House, and one of the ruined pagodas on the outer wall, so that I should be able to find it again.
From the street it was merely a mud-and-brick-walled compound as like some hundreds of others in Peking as could be imagined. The outer gate was locked, but opened readily enough before Ho Chung Fang’s key; and we passed through three neglected courtyards with grass growing up between the bricks.
But the walk itself was worn deeply and its surface was freshly scoured as if many feet had passed over it recently. Except for that one sign, however, the grounds bore every evidence of desertion, as did also the low, dilapidated building at the rear, which had evidently once been used as a dwelling-place.
But it didn’t surprize me any when Ho Chung Fang stepped behind a dust-covered old Buddhist shrine and seemed to press an invisible button on the stone—which action I merely conjectured, for his broad back was toward me and his hand hidden.
At any rate a section of the wall which had seemed unbroken opened inward—a wooden door covered with a light layer of stone. As soon as it had st
arted to open, Ho Chung Fang stepped back and bowed me ahead of him.
THREE feet beyond this wall was a second one; but between them was a set of stairs leading downward. As I put my foot on the topmost stair the light was shut off by the closing of the door, which from this side appeared to be quite an ordinary one with a Chinese knob and latch.
I descended the stairs with the feeling that Death walked behind me. And yet my reason told me that I was really safeguarded up to a certain point by my continued possession of the very thing that had caused it to be planned that I should be killed.
If he could help it, Ho Chung Fang wouldn’t risk the breaking of the crystal by a struggle or a fall; he wouldn’t strike until he had his hand on it.
There were fifteen steps to the stairs. When I came to the bottom of them I felt before me another wall, of wood.
Also I came as it were within the outer area of a barely perceptible sound—a sound which for all its faintness seemed queerly suggestive and familiar. Undoubtedly it came from beyond that wall; and yet when Ho Chung Fang reached over my shoulder and did something that caused another door to open, the sound was scarcely louder and still seemed a great distance away. It was a confused, intermittent and irregular noise, which sounded very much like the activity of a large number of men.
There was food for speculation in that. What work could men be engaged in under the surface of the earth?
It was only natural that my recent memory of the Boxer diggings should recur to me at that point; but it was also quite natural that I shouldn’t dwell upon it long. For the opening of the second secret door—which on its inner, non-secret side also seemed quite the same as other doors—had revealed quite a large room, lit by candles bracketed about on the stone walls.
And standing about in that room were perhaps a dozen Chinese with low-caste faces but mandarin robes on their backs, smiling, each and every one of them, the thin half-smile with which their race veils intense nervous expectancy.
The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 35
