ADVENTURE TALES #5

by John Gregory Betancourt

  D’Acosta brushed them away with a gesture of his hand.

  “Nothing is happening, gentle­men — except your own cowardice. Cowardice made the Boxer trouble possible.” And he walked away, sat down, swallowed a cup of black coffee and asked the Chinese head waiter to send for Pailloux.

  “He has not been home all night.”

  “Oh?” D’Acosta was surprised. “All right — I’ll talk to the assistant manager.” The latter confirmed the in­for­mation. He added that Pailloux and De Smelt, the house detective, had left the hotel shortly after dinner the night be­fore, taking Miss Campbell with them.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I helped her into the car­riage.”

  “Where did they go? Any idea?”

  “No — except that they drove into the native town.”

  “Hm.” The Levantine shook his head. “I am going up to my apartment.” He kept a suite at the hotel. “Kindly send or telephone to Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen and ask him to join me immediately.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  *****

  Moses d’Acosta went to his rooms, He must have furnished them in a mo­ment of homesickness for his native Constantinople, his native Levant. For there was nothing here to remind one that this was China, It seemed rather an epitome of the Moslem Near East with its somber black-on-black sha­dows trooping densely on an ancient Ker­manshah rug; a flowery Tabriz; and a camel-brown, wool-piled Turk­o­man carpet, with the sudden, stammering lilts of sunshine dancing in through the high, grilled windows.

  There was peace here, and it en­veloped him almost physically. With a little sigh of satisfaction he sat down cross-legged on a huge pillow and lit a water-pipe blazing with emeralds and hard Jeypore enamel. But when, not long afterward, a servant announced Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen, d’Acosta be­came immediately the perfect Mongol host. For he knew the other well; they were friends in spite of their differing ideals and philosophies, and he knew how the old Manchu appreciated be­ing shown the slightly stilted etiquette of his own race by a foreigner.

  So, in spite of the fact that time and haste just now were important elements, he did not hurry his ceremonious Peking greetings as Sun Yu-Wen entered.

  The mandarin seemed nervous, un­easy; but he, too, adhered strictly to the rules of conduct as written in the Book of Ceremonies and Exterior­ De­monstrations.

  Both men bowed deeply.

  “Please deign to enter,” said d’Acos­ta,

  “How should I, the very little and insignificant one, deign to enter, O bro­ther very wise and very old?” came the correct self-deprecatory reply.

  Three times the invitation was re­peated, to be met three times by the same answer, and finally, profusely apol­ogizing, the mandarin entered, closed the door, and bowed again, sucking in his breath.

  “Walk very slowly,” said the Lev­an­tine.

  “No, no!” countered the manda­rin to show his humbleness and unimportance. “I shall walk very quickly, O brother very wise and very old!”

  The other extended an arm and indicated the pillows.

  “Please deign to choose a place for your honorable body,” he said. “Take the west side — the side of august honor.”

  “Every place is too flattering for me, the very small and insignificant one.”

  “Won’t you deign to drink?” continued the Levantine, after both had sat down.

  “Thank you. I shall drink, if at all, from a plain wooden cup with no or­naments.”

  “No, no!” exclaimed the other, “You shall drink from a precious cup of transparent green jade with three orange tassels.” He clapped his hands; the servant entered, brought tea and sweets and cigarettes, and it was then that the two strangely mated friends spoke of what was on their minds.

  “You have heard about Miss Camp­bell?” asked d’Acosta.

  “Yes,” replied the Manchu, with all the bland peacefulness of the Bud­dha who sees the world crumbling in­to dust but shows no trace of emotion.

  “What do you think will happen, Sun Yu-Wen?”

  “That is on the Buddha’s knees. Ahee!” The Manchu sighed.

  The other made an impatient gesture.

  “Suppose — if you will pardon me saying so — we hustle the Buddha a little and give him a push in the right direction.”

  The mandarin, frankly Mongol, and therefore frankly irreligious, was nowise shocked.

  “Can we?” he smiled.

  “At least we can try.”

  “How, my friend? You don’t know, eh? Nor do I.”

  “But — to give up —”

  “What else is there to do? Listen!” He pointed at the window. “The trumpets are roaring. By this time the Chu­en to yan’s jackals are all over town. And then?” He folded his hands calmly across his obese body. “We be important men, you and I. These many years we have been almost sac­rosanct. But even the fleetest horse can­not escape its own tail. My friend,” he added, “perhaps my spirit, released from his fleshly envelope, will soon jump the Dragon Gate and kowtow deeply before the spirits of my honorable ancestors.”

  “You seem to relish the prospect,” came the heated rejoinder. “I don’t. And, as for Miss Campbell, and, also, the vase —”

  “She hid the vase,” interrupted the mandarin.

  “How do you know?”

  “Simple deduction. Last night she was a prisoner. If she had had the vase on her person, they would have found it.”

  “How do you know they did not find it? That is just what I believe and what I am afraid of. It is the possession of this vase which is making the Chuen to yan’s brotherhood and all this riffraff of Southern radicals so dangerous, which. Is causing all the trouble.”

  “No! If they had found the vase on Miss Campbell, they would not mind her having escaped.”

  “Oh — escaped, has she?” D’Acos­ta was astonished as well as relieved.

  “Yes.”

  “Sure of it. Sun Yu-Wen?”

  “Absolutely. My spies told me. Therefore, I repeat, since she did not have the vase, she has hid it, and that is why all these Southern jackals are nos­ing the ground. And they will find it. They will search everywhere. The little jackals will lick blood, will like the taste of it. It will mean death — for many — in Canton, death — for all — in the Shameen!”

  “Logical enough. There remains one hope — one man — Prince Koko­shkine.”

  “He left the barracks early this morn­ing,” said the Manchu, “on the Chuen to yan’s orders — my spies brought me word,”

  “He — he obeyed the orders?”

  “What else could he have done? He cannot fight all Canton.”

  “Did he take all his cavalry with him?”

  “No. Only his Russians, Tatars and Manchus. I have not yet heard from all my spies. I left instructions at my house to bring me word here. They will doubtless report by and by. We will wait — there is nothing else for us to do.” He sipped his tea, then looked up, very grave, “D’Acosta,” he went on, “we have been friends — we three — you and I and Pavel Kokoshkine. We — all three — have worked for the same aim, the peace of Asia, which means, perhaps, the peace of the world. Our methods have differed. For we belong to three different races, Slav, Jew, and Mongol. You have believed in building with the power of money, of finance, of big business, to make China so independent out of her own resources that she can resist the world economically — and thus command respect. I cling to the philosophy of my ancestors and also, being not al­together a fool, to certain more con­struc­tive maxims. I believe in the pow­er of diplomacy, the wonderful diplo­macy of the old monarchy, the Man­chu régime, which found its pinnacle and its pride in the late dowager empress. Thus it has been my idea always to bring back the monarchy and, with it, peace. And Kokoshkine, the soldier, believes that peace can only come through war or the threat of war. That is why he has taken service under the Cantonese government, to lead them, to become all-powerful, to undermine with their own troops t
he influence of the Chuen to yan’s brotherhood, then to strike when the moment was ripe. We failed — you and I and the Rus­sian. All our three methods —” he smiled very gently “— have proved use­less, barren. Finance, diplomacy, forces — useless — all three, all three!” He sighed. “We differed, when really even to differ was only a waste of time.”

  “And yet,” rejoined the Levantine, “we three agreed on one thing — the power of superstitions and ancient tra­d­itions. The greatest power here in China!”

  “Yes,” admitted the other; “the power contained in that vase. And there, too, we have failed. If the vase be lost, then lost is its power to us. And if it falls into the hands of the Chuen to yan’s brotherhood — My friend, I have already instructed my relatives in Peking to bury my body in a charming spot, on the side of a hill, with an ex­quisite view over the fields, so that my spirit after death may thoroughly enjoy itself. There is no hope, for you, for me, for Pavel Kokoshkine. If the latter turns against his Cantonese master, then the odds are too high — they will crush him. If he does not turn against them, then presently the Chuen to van will kill him as one too powerful, too influential, as soon as he has sucked him dry of military knowledge and tac­tics. It is over. The book has been read. The grape has been pressed.” He drew an opium-pipe from his loose sleeve, rose, and took the smoking par­a­phernalia from a small lacquered table in the corner of the room. “Have I your permission to take a few whiffs of the black smoke — to make the end more sweet?” he asked; and, when the other inclined his head, “Thank you, old friend!”

  Delicately he kneaded the brown poppy cube against the tiny bowl of his pipe, then dropped it into the open furnace of the lamp and watched the flame change it gradually into amber and gold. The opium boiled, sizzled, evaporated. The fragrant smoke rolled in sluggish clouds over the floor, and Sun Yu-Wen, having emptied the pipe at one long-drawn inhalation, leaned back, with both shoulders pressed well down on the pillow, so as better to inflate his chest and keep his lungs filled all the longer with the fumes of the kindly drug. A slow smile overspread his pla­cid, butter-yellow fea­tures. He stared at the roll­ing opium clouds. The noises of the outer world, the tumult and the riot, the crackling of steel and hate, the roaring of the Chinese war-trumpets seemed very far away; and he was already floating on the ­fantastic, gro­tesque wings of poppy-dreams when the Levantine shook him by the shoulder. He sat up, rubbed his eyes.

  “Yes?” he asked dream­ily.

  “Tugluk Khan is here.”

  Immediately the mandarin be­came fully conscious, pushed his opium-pipe away with a regretful gesture, and smiled at Tugluk Khan, his chief spy, a Moslem Tatar from Chinese Turkestan, dressed in the orth­odox blue of a Cantonese coolie, who stood before him with clasped hands.

  “What news?” he demanded.

  “I passed Prince Kokoshkine’s troop of riders below the corner of the Loo Man-Tze Street,” replied the other. “Feofar Khan was with him.”

  “They saw you?”

  “I was in a crowd of coolies, I did not dare speak. But I touched the bri­dle of his horse, asking for alms as if I were a beggar, and as he bent down to curse me, I whistled two shrill notes, as do the long-limbed rice-birds of our own west country. Allah grant that he heard and understood!”

  “He did not speak?”

  “Wait, master! For there is one strange thing of which I must tell you. Feofar Khan has his youngest wife with him.”

  “Youngest wife?” cut in the mandarin. “Ridiculous! I know that Tatar reprobate. He loves soft hands and melt­ing eyes. But he has three wives already, each as old and shriveled as the devil himself, and each henpeck­ing our brave general with the strength of her tongue. They are jealous of each other. But against a forth wife they would make common cause. He would not dare marry again. Besides, I saw him only two days ago. He was not married to a young wife then. And a Tatar wedding takes seven days to celebrate.

  “But I heard, master!”

  “What?”

  “What he said to her. She was in a palanquin slung to the flank of a dro­medary, with Feofar Khan riding on one side, Prince Kokoshkine on the other. And, after I whistled the call of the rice-bird, Feofar Khan rose in his stirrups and spoke to his young wife, through the curtains.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He called her ‘Blood of my Liver’ and ‘Pink-breasted Pearl,’ and —”

  “Never mind those Tartar terms of endearment. What else did he say?”

  “He begged her — the narrow-footed one —”

  “Wait!” interrupted the mandarin. “Tell me — aren’t you Tartars proud of your women’s short, broad feet?”

  “Yes. But Feofar Khan did call her narrow-footed! He begged her pardon for exposing her to the rough tumult of the streets, and added that soon she would be at rest in more fitting surroundings, in the house of his second cousin, Hunyagu Khan.”

  Sun Yu-Wen looked up, startled.

  “At rest — in the house of Hun­yagu Khan — did he say that?” he de­manded.

  “Yes, master.”

  The mandarin laughed, while the Levantine looked on in astonishment.

  “ ‘Trust the snake before the devil, and the devil before the Tartar.’ ” He quoted the ancient proverb. “Good, good, my Tugluk Khan!” He tossed the latter a purse filled with gold coins. “You have done well. Rest yourself. Go downstairs to the kitchen and ask the cook to give you of his best. I shall send for you when I need you.”

  He dismissed his spy and turned to Moses d’Acosta, every bit of lethargy gone from his placid face.

  “My friend,” he said, “it appears that I was wrong, after all, about my spirit jumping the Dragon Gate. For the end is not yet!” He started toward the door. “Come!”

  “Where to?” asked the Levantine.

  “To the house of Hunyagu Khan.”

  “But,” came the objection. “I am not worse than the average coward. Still, for the two of us, marked men both, to go beyond the Shameen — with the Chuen to yan’s jackals roving everywhere —”

  Again the mandarin laughed.

  “You own this hotel. Ever consider its location?”

  “I have. And right now I don’t care for it. It is too near the outer wall which divides the Shameen from the native town, in the direct danger-zone.”

  “For which praises be to the Lord Buddha!” said the Manchu. “You see — of the native town, just on the other side of the outer wall which surrounds the Shameen. His back courtyard runs parallel with yours. You understand?”

  “I do — now!” exclaimed d’Acos­ta. “Seems to me that Feofar Khan sent a message after all.”

  “He did, indeed. He asked us to meet him, or if not him, then his youngest wife — the narrow-footed one — in Hunyagu Khan’s house. Narrow-footed — a white woman, don’t you think?”

  “Miss Campbell?”

  “Right you are.”

  *****

  They left the hotel and stepped in­to the back courtyard, a small enclosed place, above it the back of the hotel ris­ing and presenting a windowless ex­panse of whitewashed bricks. The only opening was a narrow door, behind a screening cluster of bushes, which led into the kitchen. But, from snatches of talk that drifted up from there, they knew the cook and his assistants were just then fully occupied. For, true to his master’s instructions, Tugluk Khan was just then bullying the personnel of the kitchen to his heart’s content.

  D’Acosta looked round warily.

  “All right,” he said. “Here’s for Hun­yagu Khan’s house!”

  The Shameen wall was perhaps ten feet high and crowned with a stone coping, but a couple of feet from the ground there was a narrow ledge from which they could reach the top. The Levantine, thin and lithe, swung himself up first, then lent a helping hand to the Manchu, whose girth was not meant for violent exercises. For a mo­ment they balanced on the wall, then let themselves drop on the other side. They got up, crossed the courtyard, and knocked at the back d
oor of Hun­yagu Khan’s house, who, true to his clannish breed, employed only Tartar ser­vants. They entered, and shortly after­ward Hunyagu Khan came from an inner apartment.

  He kowtowed before his guests and gave them a hearty welcome.

  “Yes,” he said, after they had told him why they had come; “you are doubtless right. Wait here. My ser­vants are close-mouthed and trust­worthy. My house is yours, and so is my feeble strength. No, no; do not thank me! I am but the lowly dust be­neath your charming and exquisite feet.”

  He clapped his hands. A servant entered, received his orders, and re­turned with steaming cups of tea and cigarettes. They sat down. And, while out­side the great yellow city was coil­ing like a snake about to strike, while the war-trumpets roared louder and louder, while Moses d’Acosta looked on, wondering, slightly impatient, the two Mongols talked gently and lengthily of other, unworldly matters, with the dignity of men at whose back three thousand years of unbroken racial history and pride were sitting in a solemn, graven row.

  “Yes, yes,” said Sun Yu-Wen in ans­wer to one of Hunyagu Khan’s re­marks; “it is mentioned already in that delicate tome called ‘Ku-Luang’s Com­mentary’ that —”

  The voice droned on, and Moses d’Acosta was falling into uneasy sleep when he was suddenly wakened by a great tumult outside, a neighing of horse, a jingling of head-stalls, a crack­ling of steel, a thumping of kettle-drums, and curses, shrieks, cries — and, clear above the mad symphony, a rough voice shouting a hectic torrent of words, a crazy mixture of terms of endearment and full-flavored Oriental abuse.

  “Feofar Khan!” said Hunyagu Khan. “I know his voice — and his choice of language.”

  *****

  “Little pink-and-blue sweetmeat! Lit­tle melon seed of much de­light!” shouted Feofar Khan above the din of steel and jingling bridle. “Oh, narrow-footed one!”

  Moses d’Acosta inclined his head.

  “Yes,” he said; “Feofar Khan is con­tinuing the telling of the message,” while outside the latter went on, bewailing the sending of cruel, stony fate which had forced her, his youngest wife, for love of him to leave the “fat and warm security of the harem, to launch herself upon the bitter, bitter waters of adventure and fatigue and extremely bad roads.