I suppose they were surprized at sight of me, who entered assuming as best I could a look of ingenuous and unsuspecting pleasure at the strange things I was being permitted to see. Anyway none of them spoke until Ho Chung Fang after closing the door behind him assured them mistakenly:
“You may talk without fear. This man is a fool, who understands nothing but his own barbarian language.”
At that I think about half the men in the room asked, guttural-voiced, the same question simultaneously—
“But the glass of the ancient reading?”
“The ta-maotzu (long-haired devil) has it.”
At that information every man of them must have passed upon me the death sentence, yet their yellow faces didn’t change. Nor was there any further questioning; there was a mute assumption that Ho Chung Fang had his reasons for bringing me here, and a proper plan for my disposition.
They shuffled their slippered feet and relaxed a little; some of them settled down on stools from which the opening of the doors had evidently caused them to rise. While Ho Chung Fang glided around in front of me I stared curiously about the room, seeing what I could.
Nothing I observed was really unexpected. There was a pile of metal plates six feet high, each plate about four feet square, in the farther corner of the room to my left. In the wall opposite me there was another heavy wooden door which the constructors of the place had not cared to conceal.
The peculiar noise I had heard, and which still continued, required this third door to explain it; and as for the metal plates, though my imagining of the details of the crystal’s usefulness was only vague, yet the plates fitted in well with the general theory I had formed. Which is to say that they explained pretty well the murdered man’s words concerning the falsity of the “books” and the non-completion of the Shu King, since any books which even pretended to complete the ancient Shu King must necessarily be inscribed on some substance which is pretty nearly imperishable.
And the four dread characters, “Pao Ch’ien, Mien Yang,” which were emblazoned in red on yellow silk just above the inner door, added whatever corroboration was necessary to my conclusions concerning the nature of this rendezvous. They were the motto of the Boxers, which still remained the motto of the more dangerous Ko Lao Hui, “Destroy the foreigner, exalt the Chinese.”
But Ho Chung Fang had thrust out his hand with a peremptory gesture.
“I will take it now,” he said.
Whereupon I grinned as sillily as I could.
“But the proof!” I said as if the demand had turned into a stubborn jest on my part. “It is still lacking. You spoke of a lock to which this crystal is a key. I have not yet seen it.”
Ho Chung Fang’s eyes glittered with the first show of anger I had seen from him. There is no doubt what would have happened to me if his hand had not still been held by the knowledge that it would be almost impossible to take the crystal from me by force without breaking it. His glance drifted to a great pile of plates in the far corner of the room; and his features lightened slightly as if he had a thought that pleased him.
“It is well to be prudent concerning property, but one’s life is more valuable,” he said with a covert threat. “You have seen that one man has already died because of this crystal. However, because the proof that you ask is easy it will be given you. You will come this way.”
He stepped across the room and I followed him, passing through the group of men, whose threatening fixity of regard made my mask of unsuspicion seem rather idiotic. Nevertheless I must retain it, it being the essence of the plan I had in mind.
And for that matter, I reflected, the more idiotic I appeared the better for the success of my last play. Which was to add to my character-part of inquisitive tourist that of a more than usually mad souvenir hunter.
But Ho Chung Fang had stopped before the pile of metal plates and was speaking again.
“The lock is here, but it is a lock in the door of knowledge which ignorance can not pass, however well supplied with keys. The old Chinese characters—can you read them?”
Considering my rôle, the assumption that I might be able to read them was a joke; and I replied with a laugh in the negative.
“Nor, I suppose, can you recognize them?”
I contrived a hesitatingly affirmative answer to that. If I could get it, I wanted a close look at those plates. Things were working out very well for me—only I wished I knew the meaning of those mysterious sounds which vibrated through the inner door, just to my right front.
Also I realized that a great many things could be done to me in the rage of an instant by those men who were closing in behind me. The completion of my plan to escape with the information I had secured would require that I arouse that rage; but I hoped to act so that bewildered surprize would nullify it, as far as action was concerned.
Ho Chung Fang, however, was now inviting me with a gesture to help him lower to the floor the topmost of the metal plates. I put my hands to one side of it, and together we lifted it and let it down easily.
WHEN we had done so I remained for a moment stooping over it. Either it was dull, worn and tarnished with age, or those appearances of age had been most successfully counterfeited.
And its surface was covered, as I had imagined it would be, with indecipherable and utterly confused and misshapen hieroglyphics—with crazy figurings that bore no resemblance to the Chinese written language of any period.
Indeed the lines were so twisted and jumbled that I found it hard to believe that they were even distortions of characters. I did not believe it until I remembered the distorted characters of the Peking Gazette as they had appeared through the crystal, the glass imitation of which was inside my coat.
Then I knew that instead of being the haphazard work of a madman that it appeared, this was as minutely particular a piece of engraving as was ever accomplished, even by infinitely painstaking Chinese.
For here, so written that none but the possessor of that crystal could interpret them, were presumably the purported missing sections of the Shu King, or Chinese Classics, most sacred of all books to four hundred million people—fraudulent sections, I was sure, most carefully prepared for a purpose I thought I could divine.
By now I had straightened up. I was still facing the inner wall of the place. Ho Chung Fang stood squarely in front of me, with the metal plate between us.
If any one of the men behind me breathed, I couldn’t catch the sound. Ho Chung Fang himself was watching me with feline attentiveness.
“You have said that you would know the ancient Chinese characters,” he reminded me tonelessly. “If that is true and if you will look through the crystal at this tablet you will see how the key fits the lock. You will see how the characters appear.”
Should I do this? I thought Ho Chung Fang shot a suggestive glance over my shoulder at the men to my rear. Bending over the tablet with the coveted crystal—or rather its replica—in my hand, I should be more at the mercy of my enemies than I cared to be, considering the menace of that glance which I had only half caught.
Perhaps, after all, Ho Chung Fang did not intend to wait until I handed him the crystal willingly. Perhaps the sight of it, localizing it, so that it could be seized with surety against breakage, would be the signal for the attack. Perhaps the opportunity he was giving me to examine the metal tablet was really a ruse to place me at a fatal disadvantage.
Well, I would not examine it then, though I wanted to very much. Particularly I wanted to know whether this replica of the crystal that I possessed was accurate enough to do the work of the original.
It had been a mistake, as I realized now, to insist upon an exact duplication of the crystal; for if I was sure that the object I had inside my coat was entirely worthless I could spare it destruction and consequently could spare myself at least a moment of very dire peril. But as matters stood….
As they stood this was the moment when it was most necessary for me to appear like a man with an empty brain-pan, and I
don’t think any of these thoughts found their way to my features. Instead I grinned fatuously, made some inane remark about the interesting character of the experiment and drew the imitation crystal from my inside breast pocket with a hand that trembled a little.
Ho Chung Fang’s eyes gleamed upon it hungrily; and a convulsive movement seemed to pass through the group of men behind me. Now was the moment of crucial action. I took a short step forward and collided my foot hard against the edge of the metal plate.
I had already started to stoop, so it was only natural that I should be momentarily overbalanced. I think it appeared only natural, too, that in gripping at vacancy for support, I should let that smooth-surfaced thing which my enemies coveted so murderously slip through my fingers and fall.
I had figured out the whole thing carefully; and I still believe that if Ho Chung Fang had not at that instant started to execute a certain plan of his own mine would have succeeded.
Which was, of course, to break the imitation crystal; and then to confess to Ho Chung Fang and the Chinese that it had been an imitation, and to bargain with them for a safe return to the Wagon-Lits to procure the original for them. In support of which statements I had the receipted bill of the glassworker, which was descriptive of the imitation he had made, and also a receipt for a package I had deposited in the Wagon-Lits safe—which package really contained a paperweight, but would be delivered according to the terms of the receipt to “owner in person only.”
Surely Ho Chung Fang’s urgent desire to possess the crystal would persuade him to let me go back to the hotel under guard. Then would come into profitable play the arrangement I had made with the Wagon-Lits management instantly to arrest any Chinese who accompanied me back to the hotel.
There were certain risks connected with this plan, which would enable me to get quickly to my chief and to tell him what I had discovered. But I would continue to play the fool, and fools are ordinarily protected from violent deaths.
For instance, before the glass plate hit the metal I would begin to laugh inexplicably as at a crowning joke. It is hard to shoot a man who laughs.
Then I would explain that the joke was on myself, because I should now be compelled to surrender the original crystal, which I had intended to keep as a souvenir, having had the imitation made in anticipation of the demand that would be made upon me for the much wanted crystal. That would be mad enough in all conscience—mad enough to convince even the suspicious Chinese of my harmlessness.
BUT I have been describing only what might have happened. This is what did happen.
Ho Chung Fang seized the moment I had selected to drop and break the imitation crystal as his moment to lay hold on it.
He leaped for me just as the thing left my hand. One of his hands went for the crystal, the other for my throat. But when he saw the crystal falling he forgot about me. He grasped at it with both hands frantically and caught it in mid-air.
Simultaneously there came the snarl of many voices and the sound of a rush from behind. Now I knew the meaning of Ho Chung Fang’s glance across my shoulder.
But I had already sprung forward, my muscles reacting subconsciously to the warning of Ho Chung Fang’s action. It was well that I had done so, for I felt the wind of a great blow fan the back of my head.
Masks were off; pretenses were ended; now nothing could save me but heels and head. And for the moment heels took precedence.
I darted straight forward, ducking low and overturning Ho Chung Fang in my flight. A revolver spat behind me.
I swerved sharply to my right; and, there being no other possible way to flee, I laid hold on the latch of the inner door and with a swift contraction of every muscle in my body I yanked that door open.
I plunged through it just as another bullet flicked skin from my cheek. Whirling, I slammed the door shut and found a bolt and shoved it home.
Then I turned as the door creaked under the weight of human flesh that was flung against it. The darkness was absolute; but I seemed to be at the beginning of a tunnel about four feet wide, with earth walls and floor. I began to walk rapidly down that tunnel, pondering, as I went, three things concerning it.
First, it was apparently fairly well ventilated, probably by air-shafts running up into secret cellars, a detail which would be easily managed by an organization as strong as the Ko Lao Hui. But on the other hand there was at this point absolutely no smell of freshly turned earth, but rather a musty, disagreeable odor which bespoke the old Boxers’ diggings.
And from ahead of me, still rather indistinct but no longer puzzling, came that which must be the sound of many men hard at work, prolonging this tunnel.
Prolonging it, to what purpose and toward what end? I think I got a glimmering of the truth; but just then I was like a trapped rat, and nothing seemed important save that I escape.
Nothing else, in fact, was important; for if I could not escape what good would my knowledge be? So I kept on down the rather crooked tunnel, caroming from time to time into the curving walls of it, with the loud battering, which had by then begun at the door behind me, sounding in my ears like the hammering of fate.
The intervals between the heavy blows—which were probably dealt with several of the metal plates held together, and against which I did not believe the door would long hold—were filled with an odd mixture of falsetto Chinese voices, jabbering in a very frenzy of anger.
It did not seem to me that my escape, which was as yet really no escape at all, could by itself have provoked such wrath. Probably, I thought, they had already discovered the fraud I had imposed upon them, and that the imitation crystal I had left behind me was worthless.
Well, they would be after me soon. I could see no chance of escape, but I had started to run, when I suddenly found myself asprawl on the ground, holding with all my strength the right wrist of a man who lay half under me, and who was trying to stab me.
I shall never know exactly how that happened. Perhaps he had heard me coming and lain in wait for me; perhaps he had been hurrying to investigate the noise at the door, and the encounter was as much a surprize to him as to me.
Anyway the moment he touched my clothing he knew me of course for an enemy, and that it was a life-and-death struggle there in the dark.
As for me, he was a Ko Lao Hui, who gave no quarter and asked for none. The battering at the door still continued while I struggled with an incredibly muscular figure, large for a Chinese, that writhed and twisted and strove to tear his knife-hand loose from my grip.
The door still held then, but it could not hold much longer; and it came to my mind that even if I broke away from my present antagonist I would be driven head-on against others. There was really no escape from this predicament of mine but death.
And hard upon that hopeless thought came hope. One may sometimes die by proxy.
A moment later I got my assailant under me and discovered that we had squirmed about until the back of his head was directly above a large rock which was imbedded in the floor of the tunnel. It took a desperate rally of all my strength, for the fellow was very powerful; but I managed to press his knife-hand down upon his chest, and with my other hand at his throat where it had been from the beginning to prevent outcry—somehow to lift him and fling him back again, crushing down upon him with my whole weight.
He seemed to collapse. A swift examination showed that he was dead.
Instantly I was tearing at his loose coolie’s blouse. When I had him stripped I emptied my pockets of papers, wrapped them in the dead man’s clothing and flung the bundle farther back into the tunnel.
Then I yanked off my own outer clothing, suit, shirt, shoes and hat and dressed the dead man in them completely. Save for the shoes, which were too large, they fitted him not badly; for they were newly purchased, and I was worn lean from hardships in the West. I kept my gun, which the Ko Lao Hui would hardly miss from my outfit since so far I had had no chance to use it.
The thing was done, but none too soon. I had barely reached
the bundle of clothing which I had tossed away from the body when the door which had held my enemies back swung open. I heard the bolt fastenings give way; and the angry Chinese, now settled into a purposeful silence, came through the door in a rush.
Some light must also have come through that door, but the curves in the tunnel cut it off; and when the Chinese reached the body and stumbled over it, with me crouching a little farther back in the tunnel, all of us were in utter darkness.
“IT IS indeed the pale foreigner, though one may only know it by his barbarian clothing. Face and head are blood-covered, but there is no need to examine them.
“Doubtless your honorable bullet killed him Li Huang. It was a shot full of zeal, but it would have been better had it not been fired, and the kwei tzu (foreign devil) had been saved for the torture.”
It was Ho Chung Fang’s voice, speaking over the body which he thought was mine, and which I had heard him kick violently immediately after examining it. Its tones denoted vicious anger, which was easily understood; but the cause for the fear that was in it was not so obvious.
Still, it might be divined. Koshinga was not an easy master, and certainly Ho Chung Fang had twice bungled in this matter of the crystal.
“It is true,” said some one else in the group that stood around him. “His death is an ill thing for us, though it must be that he was no stranger recently ocean-borne, but one of the two great enemies to our cause of whom we have been warned.
“How else could he have known the importance of the reading-crystal, so that he brought here instead a useless glass? Doubtless he has the reading-crystal hidden, but now we shall never find it, and Koshinga must be told.”
“Aye!” muttered several voices uneasily and yet with a certain urgency. “Koshinga must be told!”
“His anger will be the hotter the longer the telling is delayed,” one man continued.
“Moreover,” said another voice, “on the morrow he will demand it of us in any case, for then he takes all things into his hands—even the Throne of the Middle Kingdom, which will be the Central Throne of the world. So, Ho Chung Fang, you who had the responsibility of the crystal and the revealing of the exalted new books of the Shu King to the scholars, you from under whose eyes Wu Ting, the old scholar, stole the crystal, you should tell Koshinga now.”
The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 36
