The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge

by Robert J. Pearsall

  He himself looked every inch a soldier; his face was European in cast and orange in color; and his medium-sized, very erect and sinewy figure was clad all in the royal Tibetan yellow, tunic and trousers and boots. A sword with a jeweled hilt swung in a scabbard by his side.

  His lips were tightly compressed; his eyes, neither oblique nor slanting, looked straight in front of him, and a slight frown was on his face. He led the way down the aisle and he and his bodyguard took seats that had evidently been reserved for them, in the front of the chamber, just before the two images.

  “Ah!” I heard Hazard murmur to Sha Feng. “This should make it easier.”

  I didn’t know what he meant. Unquestionably it made it more dangerous; but also, with the entrance of that man whose hidden hand has been behind so much of Asiatic history, I felt a vague and ill-defined hope. And I thought I understood a little more clearly why Koshinga had hesitated to assemble these forces which even he might not be able to control. But the stronger these forces were the more dreadful would be the result of even a temporary domination by that devil-man.

  There were no more arrivals after the Dalai Lama. I looked for signs of the Ko Lao Hui or Blalock; but none was visible. It was like Koshinga to keep them out of sight; claiming the support of the gods, he could not afford to lean heavily upon human assistance. And the tense and expectant silence which followed the seating of the Dalai Lama lasted until Koshinga appeared.

  He didn’t appear immediately; he knew how to make men wait for him. He knew how men’s nerves grow ragged, their senses susceptible and their minds befuddled from waiting under stress. For about fifteen minutes nothing more happened of that event the importance of which made the stake of my own nearly forfeited life appear so insignificant, when—

  Koshinga stood upon the platform. He hadn’t come upon it; he had assumed form there; and in the dim light the manner of his appearance seemed to be a swift emergence from the side of the larger stone image. For a moment he stood beside that image, motionless and silent. By that pause he challenged comparison, challenged any one to detect a line of difference between the long-buried stone face and his own.

  There was no difference. Both were monstrous in the true sense of the word; there was not even a suggestion of the race to which either might belong; if humanity is human then they were both dehumanized; strength beyond the strength of normal men and untinctured by a grain of sympathy—that was what one read in both those faces. Even the dull-gray gown that Koshinga wore resembled the robe of the image.

  Then Koshinga spoke; but before he spoke I noticed that every man in the assemblage swayed back a little in his seat. It was as if a great, weakening wind of intense and evil power had come from that platform and swept back through the chamber.

  Indeed, I knew from three previous personal experiences with Koshinga that there was no one present but became in that moment a little less his own master, a little fainter of will and resolution, and although I could not see a face I knew that every eye was fixed on Koshinga in something like an open and helpless stare of fascination.

  Only the Dalai Lama, if my eyes were to be trusted at that distance, braced himself in his seat and stiffened his shoulders and seemed to regard Koshinga uncompromisingly.

  “There was a prophecy,” began Koshinga slowly in a voice of immense volume. “I am the fulfilment of that prophecy. There was Lao-Tse who was also Buddha. I am he. I am he who was always, who made the cycles, who gave the old law and who will give the new.

  “I was and I return again. I am he who rules and who must be obeyed. Heaven has sent me to master the earth; and death will be the award of Heaven to those who oppose me, but the kingdoms of earth will be divided between those who follow me.”

  And such was the suggestion of abominable power that he managed to convey in his voice and manner that even to me his claim of omnipotence seemed at that moment in no way absurd. Impossible, of course—so my reason assured me; but emotionally I had to fight hard to keep from falling under his sway.

  I wondered how many of the priests were engaged in the same debate with themselves. They sat under his speech as if entranced, as if they themselves were more than half-deluded—they who had come here seeking but a new means of continuing the delusion of their people.

  Koshinga’s speech wasn’t a long one, and I’ve already given the substance of it. Several times he reiterated his promises and threats; and then he touched lightly upon the promised Holy War that would bring in its train the mastery of the East over world affairs. Under him the combined Taoist and Buddhist hierarchies would be the seat of that world power. Absolute despot as he had been in the past and hoped to be in the future, he must have found it hard to make that promise—another reason why he had hesitated to carry out this last item of the program of the first Koshinga.

  “But this is needless talk,” Koshinga went on. “From the beginning it was written that I should come and that I should rule; and the gods who have sent me give me wisdom and power. The dragon that lies under the earth, and whose breath is death to common men, comes forth to talk to me.

  “He tells me the true feng shui, the secrets of wind and water and earth and the mastery of all the elements. And it has been promised, and you know of the promise, that he should come to me today, bringing me the will of Heaven and declaring it to you. Wherefore let the dragon himself speak, declaring my authority.”

  It’s been the saving habit of a lifetime, during which I’ve seen as many strange things as reason would permit me to see, to discredit all explanations that are not based on natural law. Because man’s knowledge is still incomplete, that habit of mine has sometimes left me bereft of any explanation at all; but I was now duly grateful for it. In truth, that which I now saw was enough to shake one’s reason at the source.

  KOSHINGA had stopped speaking, and was regarding with unshaken calm the monstrous fulfilment of his promise rising, as I live, from out of the earth directly to Koshinga’s right front. It was the head of a dragon, that creature which is a myth, but whose scaly coils have for forty centuries been entwined with Chinese history and Chinese thought, and whose pictured image surrounds every Chinaman from cradle to grave.

  It rose from earth so hard-packed that it broke away in great triangular wedges; and it crawled with a spasmodic motion as of a thing worked by wires, sprawling toward Koshinga with great taloned claws thrust alternately forward and back and digging into the ground—grotesque head uplifted, yellow scales gleaming.

  Of course, it was only a trick, only a part of the wild and immense sorcery by which Koshinga hoped to rule the ignorant. Of course, it wasn’t necessary for Koshinga’s purpose that they who beheld it should regard it as anything else. It was only necessary that they should be able to tell their people that they had seen this thing, and that Koshinga’s claim to power had received the endorsement of the embodied dragon.

  Credulity would do the rest, the credulity which has so many times in China ripened into a harvest of death. Indeed, there have been few changes of power or dynasty in China that have not been accompanied by some such signs and portents, and this was merely the greatest sign of all. A trick, a trick, I repeated to myself, and still—

  And still it is a rule that there are none so susceptible of delusion as they who live by deluding others; and I felt sure that in that trick Koshinga had surpassed himself, had overleaped necessity, had builded perhaps better than he knew.

  For with the appearance of that dragon something like a curtain of horror perceptibly dropped over the temple, and I myself was afflicted with dismay and terror, trembling in the very depths of my being. The personality and speech of Koshinga had been enough; the appearance of the dragon overrode reason; and by my own feelings I knew that whatever message the dragon might bring would be accepted for the time being at least, and by the majority of the priests, as truth straight from on high.

  It was then that I stole a swift glance at Hazard, hoping to receive from that man whose courage I’d
never seen shaken, something that would help me tauten the failing resistance of my spirit. And I did, for he smiled at me. If it hadn’t been impossible, I should have said that it was the smile of satisfaction and pleased expectancy, as if he had known what was to happen, and what would happen next, and was well pleased with it all.

  But how could he have known? The veriest shadow of an idea flashed across my mind. The cellar in which Hazard had busied himself for a few minutes just before our capture by the Ko Lao Hui—wasn’t that cellar directly below the spot where the dragon had appeared? But an unholy fascination drew my eyes back to that dragon, which still advanced toward Koshinga. The sound of its movements, of the gripping of its claws upon the earth and the dragging of its belly, was now the only sound in the place.

  Into that near silence Koshinga’s voice broke with an added effect of horror.

  “Behold the messenger of the gods, bearing in his mouth truth and death. Who shall refuse to hear his words, and who, hearing, shall fail to believe and obey? He has come as has been foretold, and the message that he bears you shall carry through the Empire, for it has been written—”

  For the first time Koshinga seemed to see what I had already seen, that the dragon carried between its gleaming fangs a fold of yellow parchment.

  “—by the high gods,” Koshinga concluded with a rigid hand pointing toward the paper. “Who shall receive the message of the dragon?”

  Of course, no one stirred. Clearly the message was intended for Koshinga. If one believed in the seeming miracle, he would not interfere with its delivery; if one disbelieved, he would remember the death that the dragon’s breath was supposed to bring to common men—a threat that Koshinga might easily make good.

  Indeed, at Koshinga’s invitation my mind steadied itself a moment upon one rather ghastly thought, that Koshinga would not be apt to let so easily contrived evidence of the dragon’s powers go by default. The dragon would be fatally armed, and somehow a victim for the dragon would be provided.

  But Koshinga would receive the message, that message which he himself had undoubtedly written. He would receive it, he would pass it to some one else to read, that all might know it was read aright. And then—he had received it.

  While never a finger in all the assemblage moved, Koshinga stooped and took from the mouth of the dragon the sacred parchment. The dragon kept on without changing its course, as if it would pass behind the two images. The Dalai Lama still stared at the scene with his head held rigidly erect; and to him Koshinga stepped in three swift strides, thrusting the parchment into his hand.

  “Pradjapani, who shall be under Heaven and me ruler of all the world, read thou the words of Heaven, that all may hear.”

  XII

  IT WAS a bold stroke for the support of the one man present whose allegiance was altogether necessary to Koshinga. As the Dalai Lama went, all that assemblage might be expected to go, and all Asiatic zealots. Throughout all the East from time immemorial the successive incarnations of Pradjapani have been the pivots around which moved the vast wheel of religious power.

  Men do not surrender such ascendency lightly; nor would that pretended god-man, the Dalai Lama. But he could not have remained unimpressed by what he had seen, and his presence here proved that he had at least considered hitching the wagon of his ambitions to Koshinga’s rising power.

  Rising, the Dalai Lama took the parchment, unfolded it and studied it for a moment. I thought, Oriental as he was, that his shoulders twitched, and that he bent his head and scrutinized it more intently, as if he were astonished at what he read. The rest of the gathering waited in fascinated silence.

  I looked sidewise at Hazard, upon whose forehead beads of sweat were starting out. Sha Feng’s yellow face was still placid, though he must have known as well as we that the immediate future of the whole world might easily depend upon the events of the next few minutes.

  The Dalai Lama spoke in a clear, fine voice, not loud, but one that carried well—the voice of a man who would be hard to check.

  “You are assured,” he asked Koshinga, who had retreated to his former position, “that these are indeed Heaven’s words to men?”

  “Who can doubt?” questioned Koshinga with a glance at the snarling scaly horror at his feet.

  “And you, Koshinga, bind yourself, as do I who am Pradjapani, to respect and reverence this as Heaven’s message, whatever it may be?”

  “May the earth engulf him who does not,” replied Koshinga.

  “Then will I read,” and the Dalai Lama turned sidewise, half-facing the audience, but with Koshinga still within view. “Hear me, you who have assembled here to receive instruction.

  “ ‘This is the truth,’ ” he read from the parchment, “ ‘that must be told to all who have ears, and who fear the gods. It concerns an evil doing that the gods have suffered long, and will now destroy. That light may be let in upon darkness, the words are here given of him whom men know as the first Koshinga, who basely and in disobedience to Heaven—’ ”

  The instant reaction from hopelessness to something surer than hope was too much for my self-control, and I couldn’t quite choke back the cry of joy that rose from my heart. But it didn’t matter, for at those last astonishing words a sound combined of the swiftly drawn breaths of all present filled the audience chamber; nor was Hazard’s whispered, “Thank God, thank God!” in danger of being overheard. Scarcely daring to trust my sanity, I stared at the Dalai Lama, until a hoarse cry from Koshinga drew my eyes back to him.

  “Stop!” Koshinga, his greenish eyes flaming with rage and his face working convulsively, started toward the Dalai Lama.

  The Dalai Lama gave a sharp command, and the rifles of his bodyguard snapped up in readiness to aim.

  “The messenger of the gods must be respected; the message of the gods must be read.”

  And Koshinga, who must have known that his dream cosmos was tumbling about his head and that all his plans were wrecked, was thus held helpless to interfere, while the Dalai Lama read on:

  “ ‘I, who am Koshinga, ruler of the seas before the coming of the cursed Manchus, do ordain upon my followers and upon their children and children’s children, and upon all who may here after join them for the working out of my purpose, that they do this, my will, until that purpose be achieved. Which purpose is the conquest of the earth; and to that end—’ ”

  Now there was a low stir in the chamber—amazement expressing itself in muscular contractions. It was not amazement at the substance of what was being read. There was probably not one priest there who hadn’t already heard something of the truth concerning the origin of Koshinga and the Ko Lao Hui, though they would have rejected and forgotten it had the dragon proclaimed him a god.

  They knew that Koshinga’s power with the people depended mainly upon suppression of the truth; but because of that its delivery from the mouth of Koshinga’s own oracle was to them an actual miracle. They muttered their wonder to each other, and under cover of their muttering I whispered to Hazard:

  “You knew this was going to happen. In Heaven’s name, how? Did you put—”

  “Never mind. I knew this was going to happen—but what will happen next? Koshinga will never—”

  Hazard stopped abruptly, staring with suddenly increased intentness at the group formed by Koshinga and the slowly crawling dragon and the two images, as if he saw there the beginning of the answer to his question.

  The Dalai Lama’s voice, sunk now to a distinct and compelling monotone, droned on; and so far the story he was reading was exactly the same as the story Blalock had told me yesterday. It was the story with which Blalock had either foolishly or falsely declared he would confound Koshinga; but now it was being told with authority, as out of the mouth of the gods; also, for the conviction of more practical minds, it was being read from a document which I felt quite sure was the actual work of the first Koshinga. But how had that document got here? As I followed Hazard’s glance a certain memory came to me, the memor
y of a carefully guarded packet—and with it a vague doubt concerning my judgment of Blalock.

  That instant my doubt was changed into certainty; for Blalock had come up the stairs behind the images and was running toward the front of the platform. His face was more than ever the face of a madman; for it was distorted with fear and with something more powerful than fear—with hatred for Koshinga, upon whom he glared. But his knowledge of Koshinga, dangerous always as a monstrous adder, held him away from Koshinga’s reach. He stopped well back of Koshinga and began to declaim wildly—

  “Will ye be dupes of this man, who is but flesh and blood, born as other men, but only mighty in his cruelties—”

  Of a sudden the surface of my body grew cold, and a momentary dizziness, born of a great dread, shook my mind. Was this to be a needless sacrifice? Clearly Blalock did not know that the falsity of Koshinga’s claims had been already and forever made clear to all present; clearly he did not know that a Chinese Ko Lao Hui had followed him up the stairs and was at that instant leaping upon him from behind with knife uplifted.

  He would kill Blalock or Koshinga would kill him—Koshinga, or the dragon whose “breath was death,” whose metallically gleaming head was now within four feet of Blalock’s body, and whose movements were without doubt controlled by Koshinga’s will.

  Koshinga had glanced back at Blalock; and that last dread may have been inspired in me by the change that flashed over his features as he faced the front again—a grimace of baleful triumph, as if he had discovered a vent for the fury of defeat which possessed him. His right hand darted behind the image of himself as though impelled by a terrible intention; he pressed something swiftly and the dragon hissed with the whistling note of compressed air suddenly released.

  BUT that same instant Blalock had become aware of the death that was rushing upon him from behind. He leaped aside; and so it was that his Chinese pursuer checked his rush on the spot where Blalock had been standing, the spot where Koshinga still believed he was standing.