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Title: Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China

Author: George F. Worts

Illustrator: Gayle Porter Hoskins

Release date: May 12, 2009 [eBook #28780]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28780

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER THE
BRAZEN: A MYSTERY STORY OF MODERN CHINA ***

PETER, HASTILY INSTRUCTING THE GIRL TO HOLD TWO
RICKSHAWS,
LEAPED AT HIS PURSUER WITH DOUBLED FISTS

PETER THE BRAZEN

A MYSTERY STORY OF MODERN CHINA

BY

GEORGE F. WORTS

"A man whose heart is burning with passion
follows the undulations of a thought."
—Su-Tong-Po.

WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY
GAYLE HOSKINS

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1919

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1919, J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

TO
DR. AND MRS. W. B. A. MOORE
HONG KONG

CONTENTS

PART I

THE CITY OF STOLEN LIVES

PART II

THE BITTER FOUNTAIN

PART III

THE GREEN DEATH

PETER THE BRAZEN

PART I

THE CITY OF STOLEN LIVES

CHAPTER I
"How serene the joy,
when things that are made for each other meet
and are joined;
but ah,—
how rarely they meet and are joined, the things
that are made for each other!"
—SAO-NAN.

When Peter Moore entered the static-room, picked his way swiftly and
unnoticingly across the littered floor, and jerked open the frosted glass door
of the chief operator's office, the assembled operators followed him with
glances of admiration and concern. No one ever entered the Chief's office in
that fashion. One waited until called upon.

But Moore was privileged. Having "pounded brass" for five useful and
adventurous years on the worst and best of the ships which minimize the
length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean, he was favored; he had become a
person of importance. He had performed magical feats with a wireless
machine; he had had experiences.

His first assignment was a fishing schooner, a dirty, unseaworthy little
tub, which ran as far north sometimes as the Aleutians; and he had
immediately gained official recognition by sticking to his instruments for
sixty-eight hours—recorded at fifteen-minute intervals in his log—when the
whaler Goblin encountered a submerged pinnacle rock in the Island Passage
and flashed the old C.Q.D. distress signal.

It was brought out in the investigation that the distance at which Peter
Moore had picked up the signals of the sinking Goblin exceeded the normal

working range of either apparatus. When pressed, the young man confessed
the ownership of a pair of abnormally keen ears. Afterward, it was
demonstrated for the benefit of doubters that Moore could "read" signals in
the receivers when the ordinary operator could detect only a far away
scratching sound.

Beginning his second year in the Marconi uniform, Peter Moore was
recognized as material far too valuable to waste on the fishing boats; and he
was stationed on the Sierra, which was then known in wireless circles as a
supervising ship. Her powerful apparatus could project out a long electric
arm over any part of the eastern Pacific, and the duty of her operator was to
reprimand sluggards who neglected answering calls from ship or shore
stations, and inexperienced men who violated the strict rules governing
radio intercourse.

It was whispered that Peter Moore grew tired of the nagging to which his
position on the supervisor ship gave him privilege, for he shortly made
application for a berth in the China run. Now every operator on the Pacific
cherishes the hope that his fidelity will some day be rewarded by a China
run, and there are applications always on file for those romantic berths. The
Chief granted Peter Moore his whim unhesitatingly; and Moore selected the
Vandalia, perhaps the most desirable of the transpacific fleet, because she
stayed away from San Francisco the longest.

That the supersensitiveness of his ears was not waning was soon proved
by his receipt of a non-relayed message, afterward verified, from the shore
station in Seattle, when the Vandalia lay at anchor in the harbor at Hong-
Kong. That was a new record. Marconi himself is believed to have written
the young magician a complimentary letter. But Peter Moore showed that
letter to no one. That was his nature. He was something of a mystery even
to the members of his own profession. Many of the younger operators knew
him only as a symbol, a genius behind a key, or as a hand. Professionally
speaking, it was his hand that made his personality unique and enviable.
There was a queer vitality in the signals sent into the air from a wireless
machine when his strong white fingers played upon the key; his touch was
as familiar to them as the voice of a friend.

There was a general simmering down of coastwise gossip in the static-
room when the frosted glass door of the Chief's office closed behind him.
Voices trailed off into curious whisperings. Then—

"But great guns, man, I need you!" boomed the cranky voice of the
Chief.

Followed then the low hum of Peter Moore as he explained himself.

"Makes no difference!" the Chief roared. "Can't get along without you.
Short handed. Gotta stay!"

In irritation the Chief always abbreviated his remarks quite as if they
were radiograms to be transmitted at dollar-a-word rates.

The truth then dawned and burst upon those ardent listeners in the static-
room. Peter Moore was resigning! It was incredible.

A more daring head pressed its audacious ear against the snowy glass.
This was a fat, excitable little man, long in the service, but destined forever,
it seemed, to hammer brass in the Panama intermediate run. A skillful
operator, but his arm broke, as wireless men say, whenever faced by
emergency. He distinctly heard Peter Moore state in a voice of emotion:
"Too much China. God, man, I'll be smuggling opium next!"

"Rubbish!" the Chief snorted.

The Panama Line man waved a pale hand behind him for absolute
silence.

"Want a shore station for a while?"

"Intend to rest up and then look around," Moore answered.

"You'll be back. Mark my word. The sea and the wireless house is a
winning combination. The old cities—new faces—freedom——"

"I'm tired."

"Pah! You've only begun. When does the Vandalia clear for China?"

"Thursday night."

"I'll hold your berth open till Thursday noon. Hoping you'd break in a
new operator. Queer chap. Glass eye. 'Member—Thursday noon."

The frosted door went inward abruptly. The intense blue eyes in the pale
face of the man who had resigned closed half way upon encountering the
blushing eavesdropper. The Panama Line operator moved uncertainly
toward a vacant chair. Unaware of the curious stares addressed at him
Moore went to the outer door. A wave of exquisite nervousness rippled
through the silence of the static-room as the door clicked.

When the rumor reached the Vandalia, lying in state at her pier, that
Peter Moore had resigned, Captain Jones, after bluntly airing his
disappointment, advanced the theory to his chief engineer that Sparks had
"taken the East too much to heart. The fangs are in too deep."

"He will be on hand sailing time," added the chief engineer, who had
been trying to retire from active duty in the China run for eleven years.

But Moore did not come back to the Vandalia for that reason at all.

CHAPTER II

Communication between certain individuals in China and their relatives
and friends in Chinatown must, for political and other reasons, be
conducted in a secret way. In Shanghai, Moore had made the acquaintance,
under somewhat mysterious auspices, of Ching Gow Ong, an important
figure in the silk traffic.

Moore, so it was said by those who were in a position to know, had once
performed a favor for Ching Gow Ong, of which no one seemed to know

the particulars. What was of equal importance, perhaps, was that Ching
Gow Ong would have willingly given Moore any gift within his power had
Moore been so inclined.

But it appears that Moore was not a seeker after wealth, thereby giving
some real basis to the common belief that he possessed that rare thing—a
virginal spirit of adventure. He cemented this queer friendship by
conveying messages, indited in Chinese script, which he did not read,
between Ching Gow Ong and his brother, Lo Ong, officially dead, who
conducted a vile-smelling haunt in the bowels of Chinatown.

Peter Moore made his way through the narrowing alleys, proceeded
through a maze of blank walls, down a damp stone stairway, and rapped
upon a black iron door. It opened instantly, and a long clawlike hand
reached forth, accepted the yellow envelope from the operator's hand, and
slowly, silently withdrew, the door closing as quickly and as quietly as it
had opened.

No words were spoken. His errand done, Peter Moore retraced his steps
to the wider and brighter lanes which comprised the Chinatown known to
tourists.

He walked slowly, with his head inclined a little to one side, which was a
habit he had acquired from the eternal listening into the hard rubber
receivers. He had proceeded in this fashion a number of steps up one of the
narrow, sloping sidewalks when he felt, rather than perceived, a pair of eyes
fastened upon him from a second-story window.

They were the eyes of a young Chinese woman, but he sensed
immediately that she was not of the river type. Her fine black hair was
arranged in a gorgeous coiffure. Gold ornaments drooped from her ears, and
her complexion was liberally sanded with rice powder. Her painted lips
wore an expression of malignity.

In the obliquity of the eyes lurked a solemn warning. Then he became
aware that she seemed to be struggling, as if she were impeding the
movements of some one behind her.

It is safe to say that in his tramps through the winding alleys of Canton,
of Peking, of Shanghai, Peter Moore had encountered many Chinese
women of her type. There was a sharp vividness to her features which
meant the inbreeding of high caste. She was unusual—startling! She looked
into the street furtively, held up a heavily jeweled hand—an imperial order
for him to stop—and withdrew. He lounged into the doorway of an ivory
shop and waited.

It was quiet in Chinatown, for the time was noon and the section was
pursuing its midday habit of calm. The padding figures were becoming a
trifle obscure, owing to a cold, pale fog that was drifting up from the bay. In
a moment the woman reappeared, examined the street again with hostile
eyes, held up a square of rice paper, and slowly folded it.

Peter Moore nodded slightly and smiled. It was a habit with him—that
smile. The sensitiveness of his nervous system found a quick outlet, when
he was nervous or excited, by a disingenuous smile. He proceeded to the
shop directly underneath her window, observing it to be Ah Sih King's gold
shop. The window was rich in glittering splendors from the Orient. He
picked up from the sidewalk a crumpled ball of red paper and stowed it
away in his coat pocket.

To an alert observer the indifference with which Moore turned and
pretended to study the gold ornaments in Ah Sih King's window might have
seemed a trifle too obvious, and the smile on his lips, one might go on to
say, was uncalled for.

As he waited, a soft thud sounded at his feet, coincident with a flash of
black and white across his shoulder. He covered the object with one foot, as
the oily, leering face of Ah Sih King appeared in the doorway. The blanched
face surmounted a costly mandarin robe, righteously worn, a gorgeous blue
raiment with traceries of fine gold and exquisite gems. At this moment he
seemed to exhale an air of faint suspicion.

"Gentleman!" accosted the thin, curled lips in a tone that was well-nigh
personal.

"Buy nothing," Peter Moore said curtly.

"You see my—my see you," observed Ah Sih King, reverting, as he
deemed fitting, to pidgin.

The wireless operator turned his back impolitely; Ah Sih King did
likewise. When he turned again, sharply, the oily smile was gone, a look of
concern having crept into his sly, old face, and the slightly bent shoulders of
the much slier young man were several strides distant.

A faint hiss, as of warning, issued from the carmine lips of the Chinese
woman. Then the window closed noiselessly, and Chinatown, having paid
not the slightest heed to the incident, pattered about its multifarious
businesses, none the wiser.

There was an indefinable something in this incident which caused
creases to appear across Moore's brow. Why had two notes been thrown?
The puzzle sifted down to this possibility: Some one behind the Chinese
woman had thrown a ball of red paper, a note, into the street.

Then she had beckoned him to wait, had written a second note, perhaps
to warn him away. He glanced furtively at the second note, saw that it was
written in Chinese, and thereupon decided in return for many favors to call
upon Lo Ong for a translation.

Chinatown now was slowly vanishing from view, swallowed by the gray
blanket of fog which rolled in from the Pacific through the mouth of the
harbor. Retracing his steps through the mist, Moore descended the narrow
stone stairway and tapped on the oblong of iron with his heavy seal ring. A
shutter clinked, uneasy eyes scrutinized him, and he heard the bolt slide
back. He opened the door and entered, restoring the bolt to its place.

The room was low, deep and dark under the flickering light of a single
dong, which hung from the ceiling at the end of a roped-up cluster of fine
brass chains. The rich, stupefying odor of opium tainted the heavy air. The
orange flame, motionless as if it were carved from solid metal, showed the
room to be bare except for a few grass mats scattered about in the irregular
round shadow under it.

To one of these mats Lo Ong, gaunt, curious, even hostile, retreated,
squatting with his delicately thin hands folded over his abdomen. A look of
recognition disturbed only for the instant the placidity of the ochre features.

"No come buy?" he intoned, as if Peter Moore had never passed under
that piercing gaze before.

"My never come buy," said the wireless man curtly. "Wanchee you come
help; savvy?"

"Mebbe can do," asserted Lo Ong, in the voice and manner of one
incessantly pursued by favor-seekers. Lo Ong's draped arm, as if it were
detached from his body and governed by some extraneous mechanism,
indicated a mat. Moore slipped down in the familiar cross-legged attitude,
lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke at the belly on the dong.

"You Wanchee cumshaw?" demanded the Chinese, uneasily.

Peter Moore disdained to reply, extracted the two lumps of paper, slid
one under his knee and unfolded the other, while Lo Ong looked
unfavorably beyond him at the door. Three rows of Chinese markings were
scrawled down it. Lo Ong's body commenced to sway back and forth in
impatient rhythm.

"Lo Ong," stated Moore, "my wanchee you keep mouth shut—allatime
shut—you savvy?"

"Can do," murmured Lo Ong indifferently. He reached for the rice paper,
lifting it tenderly in long, clawing fingers, and held it to the flame. He
seemed not to believe what he read, for he twisted the paper over, looked at
it upside down, then sat down again, his lean fingers convulsing.

"No can do," he muttered, replacing the paper on his visitor's knee.
"Mino savvy."

The white forefinger of the wireless operator pointed unwaveringly at
the flattened nose. "Read that," he ordered.

Lo Ong glanced the other way, as if the subject had ceased to interest
him, and tapped the floor with his knuckles.

"Wanchee money—cumshaw?"

"Lo Ong," declared Moore, losing his patience, "you b'long dead. Now
savvy?"

"Mebbe can do," said Lo Ong faintly.

Moore ran his fingers down the first row of fresh markings.

"O-o-ey," commented Lo Ong, shifting uneasily, "'My see you allatime,
long ago on ship.' Savvy?"

"What's next?"

"'You no see my. My see you allatime.'"

The long, sloping shoulders seemed to jerk. "Keep away. Savvy?"

"It says that?"

"Take look see," invited Lo Ong, poking his claw nervously down the
column. "'Keep away. Keep away.' One—two times. Savvy?"

Peter Moore nodded thoughtfully.

The Chinese, officially dead, replaced the sheet gingerly on his knees, as
if it were an instrument of wickedness. His bony fingers twitched a
moment.

"High lady," he added nervously; "velly high lady. You stay away. Huh?"

"Wait a minute." Peter extracted the other paper ball, unfolding it near
the orange flame. The inner surface was red, the earthly red of porphyry,
and cracked and scarred by the crumpling. Nearly obliterated by the
lacework of wrinkles and scratches was a scrawl, evidently scarred into the
glazed surface by a knife-point. The upper part was unintelligible. On the

lower surface he made out with difficulty the single word, Vandalia. He
carried it to the door, slid back the shutter and let the dim, gray light filter
upon it. The other words were too mutilated to be read.

"Hi!"

He returned to Lo Ong's jacketed side. The bony finger was circling
excitedly about a smear of black in the lower corner of the rice paper.

"What's this?"

"Len Yang. Len Yang! Savvy?"

"O-ho! And who is Len Yang?"

Lo Ong shook his head in agitation. "Len Yang—city. Savvy? Shanghai
—Len Yang—fort' day."

"Fourteen days from Shanghai to Len Yang?"

"No. No! No! Fort'."

"Forty?"

"O-o-ey." The flattened nose bobbed up and down. "Keep away—ai?"

"Maskee," Peter replied, meaning, broadly speaking, none of your
business.

Lo Ong unbolted the door, to hint that the interview was concluded.
"You keep away—ai?" he repeated anxiously. Moore grinned in his
peculiarly disingenuous way, swung open the black door, and a long, gray
arm of the fog groped its way past Lo Ong's countenance.

CHAPTER III

The junior operator toyed with the heavy transmitting key while Peter
Moore, who knew the behavior of his apparatus as he would know the
caprices of an old friend, adjusted helix-plugs, started the motor-generator,
and satisfied the steel-eyed radio inspector that his wave decrement was
exactly what it ought to be.

Then the inspector grunted suspiciously and wanted to know if the
auxiliary batteries were properly charged. With a faint smile, Moore hooked
up the auxiliary apparatus, tapped the key, and a crinkly blue spark snapped
between the brass points above the fat rubber coil.

"I reckon she'll do," observed the inspector. "Aerial don't leak, does it?"

"No," said Peter.

The government man took a final look at the glittering instruments, and
departed. Wherewith the junior operator swung half around in the swivel-
chair and exposed to Peter an expression of mild imploration. Two gray lids
over cavernous sockets lifted and lowered upon shining black eyes, one of
which seemed to lack focus. Peter recalled then that the Chief had said
something about a second operator having only one human eye, the other
being glass.

"This is your first trip?"

The sallow face was inclined, and the pallid lips moved dryly.

"I just came from the school. I'm pretty green. You see——"

"I see. We'd better let me take the first trick. I'll sit in till midnight. After
that there's very little doing. You may have to relay a position report or so.
Be sure and don't work on navy time. The Chief will watch you closely for
long-distance. The farther you work, the better he'll like it. How's the air?
Have you listened in?"

"Do you mean—static? I heard a little. Seemed pretty far away, though."

Peter adjusted the nickeled straps about his head and pressed the rubber
disks tight to his ears. He tilted his head slightly. A distant but harsh
rasping, as of countless needle-points grating on glass, occurred in the head
phones. This was caused by charges of electricity in the air, known to
wireless men as "static." Percolating through the scratching was a clear,
bell-like note. The San Pedro station was having something to say to a
destroyer off the coast.

With delicate fingers Peter raised the tuning-knob a few points. Dale, the
junior operator, hands clutched behind him, stared with the fearful adoration
of an apprentice. He seemed to be making a mental notation of every move
that Peter made, for future reference.

"Ah—do you mind if I ask a few questions? You see, I'm kind of green."

"Go ahead!" Peter said cordially.

"Where do I eat? With the crew? I hear that lots of these ships make you
eat with the crew."

"No. In the main dining-saloon. Mr. Blanchard, the purser, will take care
of you. See him at six thirty."

A deep monstrous shudder, arising to a clamor, half roar, half shriek,
issued from the boilers of the Vandalia.

"It's rather interesting to watch us pull out," said Peter when the noise
had ceased. "But be careful. There's no rail around this deck."

He was on his hands and knees at the motor-generator with a pad of
sandpaper between his fingers when the tremulous voice of the junior
operator sounded in the doorway. "Mr. Moore, there's some excitement on
the dock."

Peter followed the narrow shoulders to the starboard side and looked
down. The Vandalia was warping out from the pierhead with a sobbing tug
at her stern. He noted that the head-lines were still fast. A straggling line of

passengers' friends, wives, husbands, and sweethearts was moving slowly
toward the end of the pier, for a final parting wave.

Something seemed to be wrong at the shore end of the gangplank, for,
despite the fact that the ship was swinging out, the plank was still up. In the
midst of an excited crowd a taxicab purred and smoked. There was a
general parting in the crowd as the door was flung open. Two figures
emerged, were lost from sight, and reappeared at the foot of the plank. An
incoherent something was roared from the bridge.

One of the figures appeared to be struggling, clutching at the rail. For an
instant she seemed to glance in Peter's direction. But her face could hardly
be seen, for it was shrouded by a heavy gray veil. A gray hood covered her
hair, and a long cloak reached to her shoe-tops.

Patiently urging her was a Chinese woman in silk jacket, trousers, and
jeweled slippers. A customs officer tried to break through the mob, but
somehow was held back. The gray-hooded figure suddenly seemed to
become limp, and the Chinese woman half lifted, half pushed her the
remaining distance to the promenade deck.

Peter was then conscious of a staring, lifeless eye fixed upon his.

"What do you make of it, Mr. Moore?" the junior operator wanted to
know.

"Of that?" said Peter. "Nothing—nothing at all. By the way, I forgot to
tell you that the captain has issued strict orders forbidding subofficers to use
the starboard decks. Always, when you're going forward, or aft, walk on the
port side."

CHAPTER IV

Peter turned over the log-book and the wireless-house to Dale, a few
minutes before midnight.

"Everything's cleared up. The static is worse, and KPH may want you to
relay a message or two to Honolulu. If you have trouble, let me know."

"Yes, yes," replied Dale, looking over his shoulder nervously. "I will.
Thanks."

Peter left him to the mercies of the static. As he descended the iron
ladder to the promenade-deck, he imagined he saw some one moving
underneath him. The figure, whoever or whatever it was, slid around the
white wall and vanished as his foot felt the deck. He hastened to follow.

As he stepped into the light a low, sibilant whisper reached him. At the
cross-corridor doorway he was in time to see the flicker of a vanishing gray
garment and a sandaled foot on a naked ankle flash over the vestibule wave-
check. He shook open the door and followed.

A vertical stripe of yellow light cleaved the dark of the corridor as a door
was quietly shut. He heard the faint, distant click of a door-latch. Counting
the entrances to that one, and sure that he had made no mistake, he rapped.
The near-by clank of the engine-room well was the reply. He tried the
handle. It was immovable. He struck a match. It was stateroom forty-four.

Peter went to the purser's office. Light rippled through the wrinkled
green, round window, as he had hoped. He tapped lightly, and a voice bade
him to enter.

Blanchard, the purser, dwarfed, perpetually stoop-shouldered, looked up
from a clump of cargo reports and blinked through convex, thick, steel
spectacles at his interrupter. His eyes were red and dim with a gray-blue,
uncertain definition which always reminded Peter of oysters. Blanchard had
been purser of the Vandalia for thirteen years, and Peter knew that the man
possessed the garrulous habits of the oyster as well.

"Well, well!" observed Blanchard in the crisp, brittle accents of senility;
"so you're back again, eh? Well, well, well." There was no emphasis laid on

the words. They were all struck from the same piece of ancient metal.

"Here I am!" agreed Peter with mild enthusiasm. "The bad penny!"

"Ha, ha! The bad penny returns!" The exclamation died in a futile cough.
"What are you prowlin' around ship this time o' night for, eh? After three
bells, Sparks. Time for respectable people to be fast asleep. Or, are you
leavin' the radio unwatched?"

"I'm looking for information." Peter drew himself by stiffened arms upon
the purser's single bunk.

"Lookin' for information?" The thin voice suffered the quavery attrition
of surprise. "Funny place to be lookin' for that commodity. What's on your
mind? Eh?"

"Chinamen!"

Blanchard tilted the rusted spectacles to his forehead, and the motionless
gray orbs seemed to glint with a half-dead light. "Chinamen? What
Chinamen?" The spectacles slid back into place.

"One, a woman, came aboard as we were pulling out this afternoon. Who
is she? Where is she? Where's she from? Where's she going? Who's with
her? That's what I want to clear up."

"Is that all?" squeaked Blanchard. His wrinkled, dried lips were
struggling as if with indecision. A veiled, a thinly veiled conflict of
emotions apparently was taking place behind that ancient gray mask. "What
—what for?" was the final outcome in a hesitant half-whisper.

"My private information," smiled Peter. "Just curious, that's all. Didn't
mean to pry open any dark secrets." He made as if to go.

"Sparks! Don't be in a hurry. I'm not so busy."

"Well?"

"What's botherin' you? Maybe I could straighten you out."

"Who are the occupants of stateroom forty-four?" Peter replied.

Again the expression shifted like water smitten by an evil wind.

"Forty-four!" The words were mild explosions.

A long cardboard sheet with blue and red lines was produced from a
noiselessly opened drawer.

"The passenger list. We shall see." Blanchard's red, shiny forefinger
clawed down the column of names, halting at the numeral forty-four. The
space was blank. "You see?"

"Empty?"

"Empty." A restrained note of triumph was unquestionably evident in the
purser's cracked voice.

"I'll bother you with just one more question. What is Len Yang?"

A look of doubt, of incredulity bordering upon feeble indignation, settled
upon the serrated countenance. But Blanchard only shook his head as if he
did not comprehend.

Peter slipped down from the bunk. "Guess I'll take a turn on deck, if the
fog's lifted, and roll in. G'night, purser."

Blanchard started to say something, evidently thought better of it, and
retrieved his pen. As he dipped the fine point into the red ink by mistake he
flung another frown over his shoulder. The wireless man lingered on the
threshold, swinging the door tentatively.

"G'night, Sparks."

CHAPTER V

The Vandalia was wallowing majestically through long, dead black
swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the peak
and glanced overside. Broad, phosphorescent swords broke smoothly with a
rending, rushing gurgle over the steep cut-water. His eyes darted here and
there over the void as his mind struggled to straighten out this latest kink.

What facts of significance he might have discovered from Blanchard
were overshadowed by the purser's suspicious attitude. Blanchard knew,
and Blanchard, for some reason, did not choose to divulge. This made
matters more interesting, if slightly more complicated.

He was now reasonably sure of several things, without really having
definite grounds for being sure. The malignant-eyed Chinese woman and
whoever she had successfully concealed behind her in the loft above Ah Sih
King's were now aboard the Vandalia. He was quite positive that he had
recognized her in the woman who had come aboard in company with the
gray-cloaked figure at the last minute before sailing-time.

He recalled the scene on the pierhead, and it occurred to him that the
eyes behind the gray veil, before their owner was whisked up to the deck
and from his sight, had fastened upon him for a long breath.

"Four bells, all well!" bawled the lookout as four clanging strokes rang
out from abaft the wheel-house.

And Blanchard had proved that stateroom forty-four was unoccupied.
Peter decided to borrow a master key in the morning, from the chief
engineer, perhaps, and investigate stateroom forty-four. And with the
feeling that he was on the verge of discovering something which did not
exist, he prepared to turn in.

He was not undressed when the lock grated, the door lurched open, and
the pale visage of Dale teetered at his shoulder. An attempt at grinning
ended in a hissing sob of in-taken breath. The limp frame flung itself in the
bunk beside Peter, and Dale's white, perspiring face was buried in palsied
hands.

"Feel the motion?" Peter pulled down one of the hands, gently
uncovering the expressionless eye.

"I wish I was dead!"

"Want me to finish your trick?"

Dale's face disappeared in the pillow. A moment he was stark. His head
partly revolved, profiling a yellow, pointed nose against the white of the
linen.

"Static's much worse, Mr. Moore. Frisco's sent me the same message
three times now. It's for Honolulu. He says he won't repeat it again." The
pale lips trembled in misery. "And there seems to be a funny sort of static in
the receivers. The dynamos in the engine-room may cause it."

"That's strange," Peter reflected as he slipped on his blue coat. "There's
never been any induction on board as far back as I can remember. Does it
hum—or what?"

"No, it grates, like static. Sounds like static, and yet it doesn't. Kind of a
hoarse rumble, like a broken-down spark-coil."

Two even rows of white teeth drew in the trembling lip and clung to it.
"That awful staticky sound—— And the Rover's been calling us." He
groaned miserably. "I couldn't answer either of them. I was lying on the
carpet!"

"Get some sleep," advised Peter. "When you feel better come up and
relieve me. If I were you I wouldn't smoke cigarettes when you think it's
rough."

"I won't smoke another cigarette as long as I live!"

Peter slipped into his uniform, draped an oil-skin coat about his slender
shoulders, and made his way up to the wireless house. The receivers were
lying on the floor.

The Vandalia was entering a zone of pale, thin mist, which created
circular, misty auras about the deck-lights. The tarpaulined donkey-engine
beneath the after-cargo booms rattled as the Vandalia's stern sank into a
hollow, and the beat of the engines was muffled and deeper. A speck of
white froth glinted on the black surface and vanished astern.

The wireless-house seemed warm and cozy in the glare of its green and
white lights. An odor of cheap cigarette-smoke puffed out as he opened the
door.

Peter slipped the hard-rubber disks over his ears and tapped the slider of
the tuner. Static was bad to-night, trickling, exploding and hissing in the
receivers.

The electric lights became dim under the strain of the heavy motor, as he
slid up the starting handle. The white-hot spark exploded in a train of brisk
dots and dashes. He snapped up the aerial switch and listened.

KPH—the San Francisco station—rang clear and loud through the
spatter of the electric storm. Peter flashed back his O.K., tuned for the
Kahuka Head station at Honolulu, and retransmitted the message.

Sensitizing the detector, he slid up the tuning handle for high waves.
Static, far removed, trickled in. Then a faint, musical wailing like a violin's
E-string pierced this. The violin was the government station at Arlington,
Virginia, transmitting a storm warning to ships in the South Atlantic. For
five minutes the wailing persisted. Sliding the tuning handle downward,
Peter listened for commercial wave-lengths.

A harsh grinding, unmusical as emery upon hollow bronze, rasped
stutteringly in the head phones. Laboriously, falteringly, the grating was
cleaved into clumsy dots and dashes of the Continental Code, under the
quaking fingers of some obviously frightened and inexperienced operator.
Were these the sounds which had unnerved Dale? For a time the raspings
spelled nothing intelligible. The unknown sender evidently was repeating
the same word again and again. It held four letters. Once they formed, H-I-
J-X. Another time, S-E-L-J. And another, L-P-H-E.

The painstaking intent, as the operator's acute ears recognized, was
identical in each instance. Frequently the word was incoherent altogether,
the signals meaning nothing.

Suddenly Peter jerked up his head. Out of the jumble stood the word, as
an unseen ship will often stand out nakedly in a fog rift. Over and over,
badly spaced, the infernal rasp was spelling, H-E-L-P.

He waited for the signature of this frantic operator. But none occurred.
Following a final letter "p" the signals ceased.

For a minute or two, while Peter nervously pondered, the air was silent.
Then another station called him. A loud droning purr filled the receivers.
Peter gave the "k" signal. The brisk voice of the transport Rover droned:

"I can't raise KPH. Will you handle an M-S-G for me?"

"Sure!" roared the Vandalia's spark. "But wait a minute. Have you heard
a broken down auxiliary asking for help? He's been jamming me for fifteen
minutes. Seems to be very close, K."

"Nix," replied the Rover breezily. "Can't be at all close or I would hear
him, too. I can see your lights from my window. You're off our port quarter.
Here's the M-S-G."

Peter accepted the message, retransmitting it to the KPH operator, then
called the wheelhouse on the telephone. Quine, first officer, answered
sleepily.

"Has the lookout reported any ship in the past hour excepting the
Rover?"

"Is that the Rover on our port quarter?" Quine's voice was gruffly
amazed. Like most mariners of the old school, he considered the wireless
machine a nuisance. Yet its intelligence occasionally caught him off guard.

"Only thing in sight, Sparks."

Peter made an entry in the log-book, folded his hands and shut his eyes.
The Leyden jars rattled in their mahogany sockets as the Vandalia climbed
a wave, faltered, and sped into the hollow. Far removed from her pivot of
gravity, the wireless house behaved after the manner of an express elevator.
But the wireless house chair was bolted to the floor.

Wrinkles of perplexity creased his forehead. Had this stuttering static
anything in kind with those other formless events? If not, what terrified
creature was invoking his aid in this blundering fashion?

A simple test would prove if the signals were of local origin—from a
miniature apparatus aboard the ship. He hoped anxiously for the
opportunity. And in less than a half hour the opportunity was given him.

A tarred line scraped the white belly of the life-boat which swelled up
from the deck outside the door, giving forth a dull, crunching sound with
each convulsion of the engines. The square area above it danced with
reeling stars, moiled by a purple-black heaven.

Peter, who had been studying the tarred rope, swung about in the chair
and dropped an agitated finger to the silvered wire which rested against the
glittering detector crystal. A tiny, blue-red flame snapped from his finger to
the crystal chip! The frantic operator was aboard the Vandalia!

The broken stridulations took on the coherence of intelligible dots and
dashes. The former blundering was absent, as if the tremulous hand of the
sender was steadied by the grip of a dominant necessity; the signals
clarified by the pressure of terror.

"Do not try to find me," it stammered and halted.

Some maddened pulse seemed to leap to life in Peter's throat. His
fingers, working at the base of the tiny instrument, were cold and damp.

"You must wait," rasped the unknown sender, faltering. "You must help
me! You are watched."

For a breath there was no sound in the receivers other than the beating of
his heart.

Click! Snap! Sputter! Then: "Wait for the lights of China!"

The receivers rattled to the red blotter, and Peter rushed out on deck.
Slamming the door, he stared at the spurting streams of white in the racing
water. Indescribably feminine was the fumbling touch of that unknown
sender!

A grating—hollow, metallic—occurred in the lee of the wireless cabin. A
footfall sounded, coincident with the heavy collision into his side of an
unwieldy figure whose hands, greasy and hot, groped over his. Both
grunted.

"'Sthat you, Sparks?" They were the German gutturals of Luffberg, one
of the oilers on the twelve-to-six watch. "Been fixin' the ventilator. Chief
wondered if you were up. Wants to know why you ain't been down to say
hello."

Peter decided to lay a portion of his difficulties before Minion.

CHAPTER VI

The first operator had developed for himself at an early stage of his
occupancy of the Vandalia's wireless house the warm friendship of the chief
engineer. A wireless man is far more dependent for his peace of mind upon
the engine-room crew than upon the forward crew. The latter has only one
interest in him: that he stick to his instruments; while the engine-room crew
strictly is the source from which his blessings flow, his blessings taking the
invisible, vital form of electric current.

Wireless machines are gourmands of electricity. They are wastrels. Not
one-tenth of the energy sucked from the ship's power wires finds its way

through the maze of coils and jars to the antennae between the mastheads.

The Vandalia's engine-room equipment was installed long before
wireless telegraphy was a maritime need and a government requirement.
Hence, her dynamos protested vigorously against the strain imposed upon
them by the radio machine. Any electric engine is unlike any steam engine.
Steam engines will do so much work—no more. Dynamos or motors will
do so much work—and then more. They can be overloaded, unsparingly.
But the strain tells. Stout, dependable parts become hot, wear away,
crumble, snap.

In the typical case of the Vandalia, the question of whether or not the
wireless men should be provided with all of the current they required, was
narrowed down to individuals.

If Minion had disliked Peter Moore he could have slowed down the
dynamos at the critical times when the operator needed the high voltage;
but Peter had had encounters with chief engineers before. He had at first
courted Minion's good graces with fair cigars, radio gossip and unflagging
courtesy. And on discovering that the chief was a sentimentalist at heart and
a poet by nature, he had presented him with an inexpensively bound volume
of his favorite author. Daring, but a master-stroke! He had not since wanted
for voltage, and plenty of it.

He pondered the advisability of taking Minion entirely into his
confidence as he followed the sweated, undershirted shoulders to the
engine-room galley, and thence across the oily grill of shining steel bars
which comprised one of the numerous and hazardous superfloors which
surrounded the cylinders.

Minion was nursing a stubbornly warm bearing in the port shaft alley.

The fat cylinder revolved with a pleasant ringing noise, the blurring
knuckles of the frequent joints vanishing down the yellow, vaulted alley to a
point of perspective, where the shaft projected through the hull. The
floundering of the great propellers seemed alternately to compress and
expand the damp atmosphere.

The sad, white face of Minion arose from the dripping flanks of the
journal as he caught sight of Peter in the arched entrance. A pale smile
flickered at his lips.

The chief did not in any wise reflect his monstrously heaving, oil-
dripping surroundings. He was a small, deliberate man, with oceans of
repressed energies. His skin had the waxy whiteness of a pond lily. An
exquisitely trimmed black moustache adorned his mouth. The deep brown
eyes of a visionary rested beneath the gentle, scythe-like curves of thin and
pointed eyebrows.

"You look worried," vouchsafed Minion as their hands met. His quiet
voice had a clarity which projected it nicely through the bedlam of engine-
room noises. "Why you up so early—or so late? Anything wrong?"

Peter took out a cigarette and nervously lighted it at the sputtering flame
Minion held for him. "Mr. Minion, something's in the wind," he
complained, and hesitated. He was at the verge of telling what he had seen
on the promenade deck, of the confusion on the pierhead, of the
unaccountable behavior of the woman in the window above Ah Sih King's,
of the suspicious attitude of Blanchard, of the recent plea for help. Again
something checked him.

"Mr. Minion, what is Len Yang? And where is it?"

The scythe-like brows contracted. Minion's lucid, brown eyes rested on
his lips, seeming to await an elaboration of the query. His features suddenly
had stiffened. His whole attitude appeared on the moment to have
undergone a change, from one of friendly interest to a keen defensiveness.

"Len Yang is a city in China. Why?"

The operator suspected that Minion was sparring for time.

"Where is Len Yang?"

"Do you mean, how does one reach Len Yang?"

"Either."

"Mr. Moore"—the suspicion fell from the chief's expression, leaving it
calm and grave—"you are not an amateur. You have discretion. The man
who controls Len Yang is the Vandalia's owner."

"Why, I understood the Pacific and Western Atlantic Transport Line
owned her!"

"This man—he is a Chinese. Oh, I've never seen him, Mr. Moore. One of
the richest of China's unknown aristocrats, the central power of the cinnabar
ring. You have never gone up the river with us to load at Soo-chow?"

Peter shook his head. "Cinnabar from his mine is brought down the
Yangtze on junks and transferred at Soo-chow?"

Minion seemed not to be listening. His eyes were stagnant with an
appalling retrospect. "A terrible place—horrible! Five years ago I visited
Len Yang. Hideous people with staring eyes, dripping the blood-red slime
of the mines! And girls! Young girls! Beautiful—for a while." He sighed.
"They work in that vicious hole!"

"Young girls?" Peter exclaimed.

"Imported. From everywhere. I tried to find why. There is no
explanation. They come—they work—they become hideous—they die! It is
his habit. No one understands. Poor things!"

Peter was staring at him narrowly. "Quite sure he imports them to work
in the mines?"

Minion nodded vehemently. "I made sure of that. I went up the river as
his guest. Trouble with the seepage pumps. Hundreds of them drowned like
rats. Len Yang is near the trade route into India. Leprosy—filth—vermin!
God! You should have seen the rats! Monsters! They eat them. Poor devils!
And live in holes carved out of the ruby mud."

He tore the clump of waste from his left hand and ground it under his
heel.

"And in the center of this frightfulness—his palace! Snow-white marble,
whiter than the Taj by moonlight. But its base is stained red, a creeping
blood-red from the cinnabar. Damn him!"

"No escape?" Peter muttered.

"Escape!" Minion shouted. "Dang hsin! They call him the Gray Dragon.
He reaches over every part of Asia. That is no exaggeration. Take my
advice, Mr. Moore, if you have stumbled upon one of his schemes—ní chü
bà—don't meddle!"

The white face writhed, and for a new reason Peter smothered the
impulse to tell the agitated Minion what he had seen. Their conversation
drifted to general shipboard matters. When he left he borrowed the chief
engineer's master key on the excuse that he had locked himself out of the
wireless cabin.

Besides a stiffening head wind the ship was now laboring into piling
head seas. Far beyond the refulgence of the scattered lights stars shone
palely. Flecks of streaming white were making their appearance at the
toppling wave crests.

A hail of stinging spray, flung inboard by a long gust, struck Peter's face
sharply as he struggled forward, rattling like small shot against the vizor of
his cap and smarting his eyes. The needle-like drops were icy cold. The
elastic fabric of the Vandalia shivered, her broad nose sinking into a
succession of black mountains. Peak gutters roared as the cascading water
was sucked back to the untiring surface.

Gaining the cross entrance, he braced his strength against the forces of
wind which imprisoned the door, and crept down the passage.

His heart pounded as his groping fingers outlined the cold iron numerals
on the panel. Nervously, he inserted the master key into the door lock, and
paused to listen.

Rhythmic snoring moaned from an opened transom near by. What other
night sounds might have been abroad were engulfed by the imminent
throbbing in the engine-room well.

Stateroom forty-four's transom was closed. The lock yielded. The door
yawned soundlessly. A round, portentous eye glimmered on the opposite
wall. An odor of recently wet paint and of new bed linen met him. The
excited pulsing of his heart outsounded the engines.

He shut the door cautiously, not to awake the occupants of the berths,
and fancied he could again hear the warning sibilance of the whisper, but in
sleep, perhaps drawn through unconscious lips.

Eagerly, his hand slipped over the enameled wall and found the electric
switch. Turning, to cover all corners of the stateroom he snapped on the
light.

Stateroom forty-four, through whose doorway he could have sworn to
have seen a sandaled foot vanish less than three hours previous, was empty!

The blue-flowered side curtains of the white enameled bunks were
draped back in ornamental stiffness. Below the pillows the upper sheets
were neatly furled like incoming billows on a coral beach. He threw open
the closet door. Bare! Not one sign of occupancy could he find, and he
looked everywhere.

As he made to leave the room a small oblong of white paper was thrust
under the door. He hesitated in surprise, stooped to seize it and flung open
the door. A gust of night, wind—the slamming of a door—and the
messenger was gone.

Tremblingly, he unfolded the paper. His eyes dilated. Hastily scrawled in
the lower right-hand corner of the otherwise blank leaf was a replica of the
blurred sign that had caused such consternation on the part of Lo Ong.

The ideograph had twice been brought to his attention. It was apparently
a solemn warning. Should he heed it? He felt that he was watched. But the
porthole glowed emptily.

Lighting a cigarette, he dropped down to the bunk, cupped his chin in his
palms, and frowned at the green carpet.

He was being frustrated, by persons of adroit cunning. It was
maddening. This had ceased to be an adventurous lark. It was to become a
fight against weapons whose sole object seemed to be to guard the retreat of
some evil spirit.

It occurred to him suddenly that he should be grateful upon one score at
least: He had not lost the trail, for the symbols were unchanged.

But from that point the trail vanished—vanished as abruptly as if its
design had been wiped off the earth! Sharp eyed and eared, alertness night
after night availed him nothing. And not until the twinkling lights of
Nagasaki were put astern, when the Vandalia turned her nose into the
swollen bed of the Yellow Sea, did the traces again show faintly.

CHAPTER VII

That a recrudescence of those involved in the murky affair might be
imminent was the thought induced in Peter's mind as the green coast of
Japan heaved over the horizon. With each thrust of the Vandalia's screws
the cipher was nearing its solution. Each cylinder throb narrowed the
distance to the shore lights of China—the lights of Tsung-min Island. And
then—what?

In a corner of the smoking-room he puffed at his cigarette and watched
the poker players as he drummed absently upon the square of green cork
inlaid in the corner table. The vermilion glow of the skylight dimmed and
died. Lights came on. A clanging cymbal in the energetic hands of a deck
steward boomed at the doorway, withdrew and gave up its life in a far away,
tinny clatter.

The petulant voice of a hardware salesman, who was secretly known to
represent American moneyed interests in Mongolia, drifted through the
haze of tobacco smoke at the poker table.

"——that's what I'd like to know. Damn nonsense—saving steam,
probably—off Wu-Sung before midnight—if—wanted to throw in a little
coal—means I miss the river boat to-morrow—not another—Saturday.
Dammit!"

Peter drew long at the cigarette and glanced thoughtfully at the oak-
paneled ceiling. Chips clicked. The petulant voice continued:

"——rottenest luck ever had." Evidently he was referring to his losses.
"Rotten line—rottener service—miss my man—Mukden——" The voice
ceased as its owner half turned his head, magnetized by the intentness of the
operator's gaze. Peter glanced away. The salesman devoted himself to the
dealer.

The Vandalia was bearing into a thin mist. The night was cool, quiet.
Had he been on deck Peter would have seen the last lights of Osezaki
engulfed as if at the dropping of a curtain.

During the voyage he had haunted the smoking-room, hoping that by
dint of patient listening he might catch an informative word dropped
carelessly by one of the players. No such luck. The players were out-of-
season tourists, bound for South China or India, or salesmen, patiently
immersed in the long and strenuous task of killing time.

"——thirty—thirty-five—forty—forty-five——" The fat man was
counting his losings.

Faint, padded footsteps passed the port doorway. Peter became aware of
an elusive perfume—scented rice powder——

"——seventy-five—eighty—eighty-five—ninety——"

A pale, malignant face was framed momentarily in one of the starboard
windows.

Peter blinked, then bounded after. The salesman impeded his progress
and grudgingly gave way.

The deck was empty, slippery with the wet of the mist. He was suddenly
aware that one of the ports, in the neighborhood of the stateroom he had
entered, was ajar. Nervously he halted, gasping as a long, trembling hand, at
the extremity of a spectral wrist, plucked at his sleeve. Blanched as an arm
of the adolescent moon, it fumbled weakly at his clutching fingers—and
was swiftly withdrawn!

The staring eyes of a white, gibbous face sank back from the hole.
Below the nose the face seemed not to exist.

Its horror wrapped an icy cord about his heart. He plunged his arm to the
shoulder through the round opening, struck a yielding, warm body;
descending claws steeled about his wrist and deliberately forced him back.

The brass-bound glass squeezed on his fingers. He wrenched them free,
crushed, throbbing, and warmly wet. The anguish seemed to extend to his
elbow. Then, suddenly, the gruff, seasoned voice of Captain Jones
descended from space behind him. "Sparks, come to my cabin."

Peter followed the brutish shoulders to the forward companionway,
endeavoring to clarify his thoughts. Mild confusion prevailed when Captain
Jones closed and locked the door of his spacious stateroom behind them and
dropped heavily into one of the cumbersome teak chairs.

He was a hardened, brawny chunk of a man, choleric in aspect and
temperament, brutal in method, bluntly decisive in opinion. Iron was his
metal. "Starboard Jones" was one of the few living men who had
successfully run the Jap blockade into Vladivostok during that bloody tiff
between the black bear and the island panther.

Reddened sockets displayed keen, blue eyes in a background of
perpetual fire. His large, swollen nose had a vinous tint, acquiring
purplishness in cold weather. Tiny red veins, as numerous as the cracks in
Satsuma-ware, spread across both cheeks in a carmine filigree.

His cabin was ornamented chiefly by hand-tinted photographs from the
yoshiwaras of Nagasaki, of simpering, coy geishas. Souvenirs of their trade,
glittering fans, nicked teacups, flimsy sandals, adorned the available shelf
room. Cigars as brawny and black as if their maker had striven to emulate
the captain's own bulk were scattered among papers on his narrow desk.

He reached clumsily for one of these brown cylinders now, neglecting to
remove his glance of gloating austerity from the operator's tense face.

"Haven't seen much of you lately, Sparks," he observed, applying a
steady match flame to the oval butt. He spoke in his usual tones, with a
gruffness that balanced on a razor edge between rough jocularity and
official harshness. "What's new? Have one of my ropes?"

Peter studied the glowing end narrowly. "Had a little trouble first night
out. No, thanks. Not smoking to-night." His bruised finger-tips were curved
up tenderly in his coat pocket.

"What's 'at?" The steel eyes were motionless beneath half-lowered lids.

"Some one used an electric machine. Jammed my signals."

The choleric face dipped knowingly. What Captain Jones did not
comprehend he invariably pretended to comprehend. "Noticed anything
else?" His ruddy face was now weighty with significance.

Peter sat up abruptly. "What!"

A thick, red forefinger threatened, "Lis'n to me, Sparks, you're a
overgrown, blundering bull in a china-shop. You're——"

"Well?" There was a trace of anger in Peter's suave inquiry. His face
became stony white. A spot of color appeared at either cheek.

"I mean: Keep your damn nose out of what don't concern you. Savvy?"
The heated words spilled thickly from the captain's red lips. "I mean: Butt
out of what concerns Chinese women and—and—other words, mind your
own particular damn business! Duty on this ship's to mind the radio. What

goes on outside your shanty's none of your damn concern!" Captain Jones'
mouth remained open, and the butt of the black cigar slid into it.

Peter raised a restraining hand. His lips trembled. His eyes seemed to
snap in a rapid fire between the eyes and mouth of the big man slouched
down in the chair in front of him. "Wait a minute," he spat out. "Since you
do know that somebody is being kidnapped on this ship——"

"What in hell do you mean?"

"Exactly what I say. A Chinese woman, no matter who she is—is hiding
some one, a woman, somewhere on this ship. That woman—that woman
who's being held—grabbed my hand not five minutes ago. It's your duty
——"

"Keep your hands where they belong. You're talking like a fool.
Kidnapped? You're crazy. My duty? You're a fool! You're talking baby talk."
Captain Jones sprang from his chair. "You're on this ship to tend the
wireless," he bawled. "You're under oath to keep your mouth shut. Any one
back there?"

"No!"

"Don't you know it breaks a government rule when that room's empty—
at sea?"

The mist-laden wind shrilled through the screen door abruptly thrust
back. Captain Jones slammed the stout inner door. Peter turned up his coat
collar, bound a clean handkerchief about his aching fingers, climbed agilely
over the life-rafts, passed the roaring, black funnels, and entered the
wireless house.

The low, intermingling whine of Jap stations was broken by an insistent
P. and O. liner, yapping for attention. Shanghai stiffly droned a reply,
advising the P. and O. man to sweeten his spark.

Peter tapped his detector and grunted. Shanghai was loud—close! The
Vandalia must be nearing the delta.

"——Nanking Road. Stop. Forty casks of soey——" yelped the P. and
O.

Nearing the great river! Out of the mist a faint blur would come—the
first lights of China!

"——Thirteen cases of tin——" The P. and O.'s spark remained
unsweetened.

Would the lights be Hi-Tai-Sha—Tsung-min?—port or starboard?

Far below decks a bell jangled faintly. The throbbing of the engines was
suddenly hushed. The bell sounded distantly, through a portentous silence.
Peter glanced at the clock. Half-past twelve.

The silence was shattered by a turbulent, stern lifting rumble as the
screws reversed. The Vandalia wallowed heavily, and lay with the yellow
tide.

Extinguishing the lights, Peter slipped out on deck, leaned over the edge,
and peered into the murk. His heart pumped nervously.

At first all was blank. Then a misty, gray-white glow seemed to swim far
to port. Murkily, it took form, vanished, reappeared and—was swallowed
up again.

But these were not the lights of Tsung-min. The ship was in the river. He
knew those lights well. Even now the Vandalia, was slipping down with the
current abreast of Woo-Sung! The first lights of China! But what was
happening? He dashed to the starboard side.

Out of the mist there arose a tall, gaunt specter. A junk. Perhaps a
collision was decreed by the evil spirit of the Whang-poo. But the usual
shriekings of doomed river men were absent. The gray bulk floated idly
with the steamer. The silence of death permeated both craft.

At a loss to account for this queer coincidence, this mute communion,
Peter elbowed over the edge, dangerously high above the water, and slid

down a stanchion to the promenade deck.

Simultaneously every light on that side of the ship was extinguished. As
his feet struck the metal gutter, several unseen bodies rushed past him, aft.

He was grabbed from behind and hurled to the deck. Springing up, he
heard the thick breathing of his unknown assailant. He lunged for the
sound, met flying fists, smashed his man against the rail. The blow knocked
the wind from his antagonist, or broke his back.

Peter did not pause to make inquiries. As the limp body thudded to the
wood, the operator sprinted after the vanished figures.

A lone light on the after spur illumined a dim confusion in the cargo
well. The stern of the junk was backed against the rail. Oars flashed faintly
as the crew of the junk strove to keep her fast against the steamer's side. But
where was the crew of the Vandalia? Had Captain Jones consented to and
perhaps aided in this mid-river tryst?

Another source of illumination sprang into being. A dong was burning
yellowly on the junk's poop deck, casting a plenitude of light upon the
scene.

As Peter dropped down the precipitous ladder into the well, he made out
two figures struggling against the rail. From the junk, imploringly, a giant
Chinese with pigtail flapping held out his long arms. Silent, his face was
writhing with the supplication to hurry.

Peter drove in between the two figures, one of which suddenly collapsed
and lay inert. The other sprang at his neck, sinking long claws into his
throat. Slit eyes glinted close. Before his wind was shut off he caught the
oppressive fragrance of a heavy perfume. A woman!

He struck the clawing hands loose, and she stemmed a scream between
convulsing lips. The woman above Ah Sih King's!

He hurled her back, and she staggered against the iron flank of the well.
A chatter of Chinese broke from her lips. Shaking, she extracted an

envelope from her satin blouse and pressed it into his hands. Thoughtlessly
he stuffed the envelope into his pocket, not reckoning what it might contain.

The junk swung out, closed in with a smart smack, and the giant on her
deck crouched to spring. He squealed, a high-pitched ululation of anger.
Another sound was abroad, the jangling of the engine-room bell.

Peter struck down the groping hands of the woman and sprang to the
rail, bracing his feet on the smooth iron deck-plate as the Chinese leaped. A
knife glinted. Peter seized a horny wrist with both hands, bent, and
wrenched it. The knife struck the water with a sibilant splash. The fokie lost
his balance. His legs became entangled.

He gibbered with horror as he slipped—slipped——

The Chinese woman sprang at Peter with the frenzy of a pantheress.

A weltering splash—Peter dimly saw the bobbing head before it was
driven below the surface as the junk, yawing in, crowded the swimmer
down.

A life? Nothing to the turgid river, draining all effluvia from the yellow
heart of this festering land.

With a hissing sob, the woman drove Peter backward, raining blow after
blow on his chest. The engines pounded briskly. A boom rattled.
Despairingly, Peter's antagonist shifted her tactics, surprised him by flinging
herself to the rail.

The junk was veering away as the Vandalia's blades took hold.

She poised on the top rail, drew herself together, and leaped!

The junk slid into the mist.

CHAPTER VIII

Peter was conscious of a hot stickiness at his throat where the claws had
taken hold. Then he concerned himself with the gray shape that lay quite
still on the iron deck at his feet. New enemies from other quarters, he
realized, might strike at any instant.

Gathering up the limp form, he climbed the ladder to the darkened
promenade deck and up another flight through the tarpaulin cover to the
boat-deck. Opening the wireless-house door, he deposited his burden gently
upon the carpet, and switched on the light. Then he turned the key in the
lock, and examined his find. A long, gray bag of some heavy material
swathed the small figure from head to foot. There was no sign of life.

Yelping arose from the river. It was still dark. The sampan coolies were
out early. Peter listened, becoming thoughtful as a solution seemed to
present itself to his problem.

He went out on deck and beckoned to one of them to stand by.

A swaying coolie in the stern of the nearest craft caught sight of him.

"Hie! Hie!" The wagging paddle became mad. The sampan slipped under
the towering shadow and brought up with a smack against the moving black
hull.

Peter pried up the tarpaulin life-boat cover, dragged out a coil of dirty
rope, made one end fast at the foot of the davit, and tossed the other end
overside. The coolie caught it and clung.

Re-entering the wireless cabin, Peter opened his pocket-knife and slit the
cord at the head.

A mass of curly, brown hair flowed out upon the carpet. There was a
silken lisp of underskirts. A faint sigh.

Peter suddenly turned his head. Black, glassy eyes were riveted upon his
from the after window. They vanished.

He jumped up, bolted to the deck, and stood still, listening.

The scuffle of a foot sounded on the port side. Some one was running
forward. He plunged after. The footsteps stopped sharply coincident with a
dull smash, a frantic grunt. The pursued reeled to the deck, groaning.

Peter pounced upon him, grabbed his collar, and dragged him across the
deck into the wireless house.

"Mr. Moore, the captain told me——" whimpered Dale.

Peter knocked him into the chair, opened the toolbox, and extracted a
length of phosphor-bronze aerial wire. Binding the wiggling arms to the
chair, he made the ends fast behind.

Snapping out the lights, he gathered the gray bag into his arms and
deposited it on the deck in the narrow space between the life-boat and the
edge. He looked down. The coolie was staring up, clinging to the rope,
waiting.

The bag slipped down half-way. A warm moist hand clutched at his
wrist. A faint moan issued from the unseen lips. He jerked again. The bag
came away free, and he tossed it overboard. The yellow current snatched it
instantly from sight.

The hand clung desperately at his wrist. "Don't let them——" began a
sweet voice in his ear.

He wrapped his legs around the rope and worked his way over the edge.
"Arms around my neck!" he commanded hoarsely. "Hold tight!"

Soft arms enfolded him. They dangled at the edge.

The coarse rope slipped swiftly through his fingers, scorching the palms,
seeming to rake at the bones in his hand.

A wild shout came from the wireless house. An echo, forward, answered.

They slipped, twisting, scraping, down the rough strand. His hands
seemed hot enough to burst. Maddened blood throbbed at his eyes, his ears,
and dried his throat. Dimmed lights of the promenade deck soared upward.
A glimmering port-hole followed.

For an eternity they dangled, then shot downward.

Something popped in Peter's ears. His feet struck a yielding deck. He
staggered backward, sprawled. The rope was whipped from his hand. The
warm arms still clung about his neck.

As the world wheeled, a drunken universe, a sullen voice yelped at his
ear. The arms loosened.

The Vandalia twinkled closely and was swept into the mist, a blur, a
phantom. His hands blazed with infernal fire.

He sat up and looked behind him. The river was murderously dark.
Water gurgled under the flimsy bow. The dull tread of feet and a watery
flailing behind him advised Peter that the coolie was struggling against the
rushing current.

Slowly he became conscious of a weight upon his breast, a low sobbing.
A delicate, feminine odor brought him to earth, unraveled his tangled wits.

He was sitting upon the wet floor of the sampan's low cabin. His captive
had crept close to him for protection. Protection! He snorted, wondering if
the coolie was licensed.

"Hai! Hai! Woo-Sung way." The voice was villainously stubborn.

"Shanghai-way. Kuai cho—hurry!" roared Peter. A sigh escaped from the
girl. She snuggled closer. "Woo-Sung. Pu-shih! Savvy?"

"Hai! Mebbe can do." The sampan reared, braving the direct onslaught
of the Whang-poo's swift tide.

A myriad of questions in his brain strove for utterance. But the girl spoke
first.

"Who are you?" she whispered. "I am Eileen Lorimer."

"I am—I was the wireless operator of the Vandalia."

The coolie paused a moment for breath, then the mad plunging of the
paddle sounded again.

"The wireless operator? You heard my call?"

"Been waiting for China's lights—ever since. But how—what?" he
demanded.

She was silent a moment. "I know the code. My brother owned a private
station. We lived in Pasadena—ages ago. It does seem ages." She stirred
feebly. "You don't mind?"

"No, no," he protested.

"I am afraid—such a long time. Weeks? Years?" She shuddered. "I do
not know. Oh—I want to go home!"

The coolie broke into a working sing-song as he struggled. The tide
should shift before long.

"Were you in the loft above Ah Sih King's?"

"Roped! I broke loose."

"The red note?"

"I scribbled with a nail, and threw it before she knocked me down. That
woman was a demon!"

A pale, yellow glow seemed to body forth from the enshrouding mist.
Dawn was breaking. Soon the great river would be alight.

"School-teacher," the girl was murmuring. "A wedding present for her—
in Ah Sih King's." A small hand fumbled for his, and found it. "In the back

room they began gibbering at me. And this demon came. Meaningless
words—Ah Sih King leered. Called me the luckiest woman in China."

"But how did you know?"

An empty freighter with propellers flailing half out of water pounded
through the yellow mist close to them.

"Hie! Hie!" shrilled the coolie's warning.

Light seeped through the doorway. The outlines of a dark skirt were
silhouetted against the scrubbed white floor.

"He said when I saw the lights of China I would go aboard a beautiful
ship. She was watching you. Three times our stateroom was changed.
Always at night."

"You used a coil?" Peter was professionally interested on this point.

The girl murmured affirmatively. "She had some affliction. A San
Francisco doctor said the electric machine would cure it. And I pretended to
use it, too. But it broke down that night."

The yellow light grew stronger. Equipment of the cabin emerged: a crock
of rice and fish, a corked jug, a bundle of crude chop-sticks bound with
frayed twine, a dark mess of boiled sea-weed on a greasy slab.

He looked down. The girl moved her head. Their eyes met.

Timid, gray ones with innocent candor searched him. Shining dark hair
rippled down either side of a pale, lovely face. She was younger than he had
expected, more beautiful than he had hoped. Her rosebud of a mouth
trembled in the overtures of a smile.

His feelings were divided between admiration for her and horror—she
had escaped so narrowly. In the realization of that moment Peter shaped his
course. His following thought was of finances.

He brought to light a handful of change. Less than one dollar,
disregarding four twenty-cent Hu-Peh pieces; hardly enough to pay off the
sampan coolie.

His charge sighed helplessly, thereby clinching his resolution. "I haven't
a penny," she said.

He explored the side-pocket of his coat, hoping against fact that he had
not changed his bill-fold to his grip. His fingers encountered an unfamiliar
object.

The struggling pantheress flashed into his mind. And the wrinkled
envelope she had drawn from her satin jacket and pressed into his hand.
Past dealings with Chinese gave him the inkling that he had been
unknowingly bribed.

A scarlet stamp, a monograph, was imposed in the upper right corner of
the pale blue oblong.

"Money—Chinese bills. Full of them!" Miss Lorimer gasped. "I saw it.
What are they for? And why did that dreadful woman——"

"Jet-t-e-e-ee!" sang the coolie, swinging the oar hard over. The sampan
grated against a landing. "Shanghai. Ma-tou! Hān liang bu dung yāng che
lāi!"

Peter was counting the pack. "Fifty one-thousand-dollar Bank of China
bills!"

Excited yelpings occurred on the ma-tou. The rickshaw coolies were
dickering for their unseen fare.

Peter tossed the sampan boy all the coins he had, and left him to gibber
over them as he lifted the girl to the jetty. She clung to his arm, trembling,
as the coolies formed a grinning, shouting circle about them. More raced in
from the muddy bund.

"What are we going to do?" she groaned.

"We are going to cable your mother that you are starting for home by the
first steamer," Peter cried, swinging her into the cleanest and most
comfortable rickshaw of the lot. "The Mongolia sails this afternoon."

"What will become of you?" she demanded.

Peter gave her his ingenuous smile. "I will vanish—for a while.
Otherwise I may vanish—permanently."

Miss Lorimer reached out with her small white hand and touched his
sleeve. They were jouncing over the Su-Chow bridge, on their way to the
American Consulate. "Won't I see you again? Ever?" She looked
bewildered and lost, as if this strange old land had proved too much for her
powers of readjustment. Her rosebud mouth seemed to quiver. "Are you in
danger, Mr. Moore?"

Peter glimpsed a very yellow, supercilious face swinging in his direction
from the padding throng.

"A little, perhaps," he conceded.

"Because of me?"

The yellow face reappeared and was swallowed again by the crowd, as a
speck of mud is engulfed by the Yangtze.

Miss Lorimer repeated her question. Peter shook his head in an
extravagant denial, and helped her down from the rickshaw. They had
stopped before the consulate in the American quarter.

"I'm leaving you here," he said.

"But—but I like you!" her small voice faltered. "Aren't you going to
explain—anything? Is this—is this all?"

Peter smothered his rising feelings under an air of important haste. "Your
way lies there"—he pointed down river. "For the present mine lies here"—
and he jerked a thumb in the general direction of Shanghai's narrow muddy
alleys.

"Shall I—won't you—gracious!" Miss Lorimer stared into her left hand.
Two one-thousand-dollar Bank of China bills were folded upon it. She was
confused. When she looked back the young man who had miraculously
delivered her from an unguessable fate had been spirited with Oriental
magic from her sight.

CHAPTER IX

The bund of Shanghai was striped with the long, purple shadows of
coming night, a night which seemed to be creeping out of the heart of the
land, ushering with it a feeling of subtle tension, as though the touch of
darkness stirred to wakefulness a populace of shadows, which skulked and
crouched and whispered, comprising an underworld of sinister folk which
the first glow of dawn would send scampering back to a thousand evil-
smelling hiding-places.

The rhythmic chant of coolies on the river ended. Mammoth go-downs,
where the products of China flowed on their way to distant countries,
became gloomily silent and empty. Handsome, tall sikhs, the police of the
city, appeared in twos and threes where only one had been stationed before;
for in China, as elsewhere, wickedness is borne on the night's wings.

With the descent of the velvety darkness the late wireless operator of the
transpacific greyhound, the Vandalia, slipped out of an obscure, shadowy
doorway on Nanking Road and directed his steps toward the glittering
bund, where he was reasonably sure his enemies would have difficulty in
recognizing him.

Peter's uniform now reposed on a dark shelf in the rear of a silkshop. He
had no desire to be stabbed in the back, which was a probability in case
certain up-river men should find him. The Chinese gentleman who
conducted the silkshop was an old friend, and trustworthy.

Peter now wore the garb of a Japanese merchant. His feet were sandaled.
His straight, lithe figure was robed in an expensive gray silk kimono.
Jammed tight to his ears, in good Nipponese fashion, was a black American
derby. His eyebrows were penciled in a fairly praiseworthy attempt to
reproduce the Celestial slant, and he carried a light bamboo cane.

Yet the ex-operator of the Vandalia was not altogether sure that the
disguise was a success. If the scowling yellow face he had detected among
the throngs on the bund that morning should have followed him to the silk-
shop, of what earthly use was this silly disguise?

He padded along in the lee of a money-changer's, keeping close to the
wall. By degrees he became aware that he was followed; and he endeavored
to credit the feeling to imagination, to raw nerves. A ghostly rickshaw
flitted by. The soft chugging of the coolie's bare feet became faint, ceased.
A muttering old woman waddled past.

He looked behind him in time to see a gaunt face, lighted by the dim
glow of a shop window, bob out of sight into a doorway. Turning again a
moment later, he saw the man dive into another doorway.

Peter ran to the dark aperture, seized a muscular, satin-covered arm, and
dragged a whispering Chinese, a big, brawny fellow, into the circular zone
of the yellow street-light. Quickly recovering from his surprise, the Chinese
reached swiftly toward his belt. Peter, hoping that only one man had been
set on his trail, gave a murderous yell, and at the same time drove his fist
into a yielding paunch.

With a groan the Chinese staggered back against the shop window,
caving in a pane with his elbow. Peter raised his fist to strike again.

Then a monumental figure, with a clean turban coiled about his head,
strode austerely into the circle of yellow light.

"Ta dzoh shēn mō szi?"

"Thief," said Moore simply, indicating the broken shop window.

"Lāo shēn lāo shēn!" growled the sikh. He seized the luckless window-
breaker by both shoulders, backed him against an iron trolley-post, and
strapped him to it.

With a jovial, "Allah be with you!" Peter Moore continued his stroll
toward the bund. Now that the trailer was out of his way for the night at
least, he could make his way in peace to the Palace bar and find out what
might be in the wind for him.

As he crossed Nanking Road where it joined the bund, a frantic shout,
mingled with a scream of fear or of warning, impelled him to leap out of the
path of a rickshaw which was making for him at a breakneck speed. A white
face, with a slender gloved hand clutched close to the lips, swept past.

Peter gasped in surprise quite as staggering as if the girl in the rickshaw
had slapped him across the face. He shouted after her. But she went right
on, without turning.

"Licksha?" A grinning coolie dropped the shafts of an empty rickshaw at
Peter Moore's heels.

He ceased being angry as a softer glow crept into his veins. The
rickshaw turned to the right, following the other, which occupied the center
of the almost deserted bund, and speeding like the wind.

"Ní chü bà!" shouted Peter Moore. The girl seemed to be headed for the
bund bridge. But why? A number of questions stormed futilely in his brain.
Why had the girl ignored him? Why had she not gone aboard the
Manchuria, as she had promised?

The coolie joggled along, his naked legs rising and falling mechanically.
The wireless operator drew the folds of the kimono more closely about his
throat, for the night air blowing off the Whang-poo was chill and damp.

At the bridge the rickshaw ahead suddenly stopped, waiting. Peter
Moore drew alongside, and leaped to the ground.

The near-by street-light afforded him the information that he had made a
mistake. Undeniably similar to the girl he had sent away on the Manchuria
that morning was the young lady in the rickshaw. She had the same white,
wistful face, the same alert, appealing eyes, the same rosebud mouth. Any
one might have made such a mistake. It was very embarrassing.

"Why are you following me?" she demanded.

"I thought I knew you. I am sorry. I'll go at once."

"No! Wait." Her volte relented. It was a fresh young voice, not indeed
unlike that of Miss Lorimer's. She was smiling. "Why are you dressed as a
Jap?"

"I am sorry," Peter faltered, retreating. "Mistake. You're not the girl I—I
expected. Sayonara!"

"Please don't run away," said the girl with a soft laugh. "I'm not afraid,
or I would have run, instead of waiting, when you followed me. I've just
come up from Amoy—alone. And I leave to-morrow for Ching-Fu—alone.
You're American!" she murmured. "But why the Jap—disguise? I'm
American, too. I used to live in New York, on Riverside Drive. Oh! It must
have been ages ago!"

"Why?" asked Peter unguardedly.

"I haven't met one of my countrymen in centuries! And to-morrow I go
up the river, 'way beyond Ching-Fu, beyond Szechwan!"

"Bad travelling on the river this time of the year," Peter murmured
politely. "She's out of her banks up above Ichang, I have been told."

"Yes," replied the girl sadly. "If I could only have just one evening of fun
—a dance or two, maybe—I—I—wouldn't mind half so much. I—I——"

Peter advised himself as follows: I told you so. Aloud he said:

"I believe there's a dance at the Astor Hotel. If we can get a table——"

"Oh, how lovely!" exclaimed the girl. "Do—do you mind very—much?"

"Tickled to death," Peter declared amiably.

CHAPTER X

At a small round table in the end of the room over which hung the
orchestra balcony, Peter found himself in the presence of two disarming
gray eyes, which drank in every detail of his good-looking young face,
including the penciled eyebrows.

Miss Vost—Miss Amy Vost—gave him to understand that she was really
grateful for his hospitality, rushed on to assure him that it was not
customary for her to meet strange young men as she had met him, and then
frankly asked him what he was doing in China. Every time she thought of
him her curiosity seemed to trip over the Japanese kimono.

Influenced by his third glass of Japanese champagne, he almost told her
the truth. He modified it by saying that he was a wireless operator; that he
had missed his ship, and that his plans were to linger in China for a while.
He liked China. Liked China very much.

Miss Vost caressed the tip of her nose with a small, pink thumb. She was
not the kind who hesitated.

"You can do me a favor," she said, and halted.

The Philippine orchestra burst into a lilting one-step. Miss Vost arched
her eyebrows. Peter arose, and they glided off. It developed that Miss Vost
was well qualified. There was divineness in her youthful grace; she put her
heart into the dance. It seemed probable to Peter Moore that she put her
heart into everything she did.

"You spoke about my doing a favor," he suggested, glancing sternly at a
dark-eyed Eurasian girl who seemed to be trying to divert his attention.

"There is a man in Shanghai I want you to try to find for me—to-night.
Last time I saw him—this morning—he was drunk. He was the first officer
on the steamer that brought me up from Amoy. Perhaps you know him. He's
only been on the coast a short while. Before that he ran on the Pacific Mail
Line between San Francisco and Panama. His name is MacLaurin, a nice
boy. Scotch. But he drinks."

"MacLaurin? I know a man named MacLaurin—Bobbie MacLaurin."

"No!" gasped Miss Vost. "I suppose I ought to make that old remark
about what a small world it is! Do you know where Bobbie MacLaurin is?"

"No," he murmured. "Why is he drunk?"

"That is a matter," replied Miss Vost, somewhat distantly, "that I prefer
not to discuss. Will you try to find him for me? He threatened to be—be
captain of the river-boat, the Hankow, that I leave on to-morrow for Ching-
Fu. I'd rather like to know if he intends to carry out his threat. Will you find
out, if you can, if he is going to be sober enough to make the trip—and let
me know?" requested Miss Vost, as the music stopped. "I'd rather he
wouldn't, Mr. Moore," she added quickly. "But I do wish you were going to
make the trip. I'd love to have you!"

The ex-operator of the Vandalia experienced a warm suffusion in the
vicinity of his throat. In the next breath he felt genuinely guilty. As he
looked deep into the anxious, appealing gray eyes of Miss Vost, he cursed
himself for being, or having the tendencies to be, a trifler; and in his
estimation a trifler was not far removed from the reptile class. Yet
somehow, damn it, that trip to Ching-Fu on the Hankow appealed to him
now as a most profitable excursion, for Ching-Fu was only a few hundred li
from Len Yang.

Something of the doughtiness of a mongoose marching into a den of
monster cobras characterized Peter Moore's intention to penetrate the
stronghold of the cinnabar king. He knew that his chances for entering Len

Yang were absurdly small. Yet the whole of the Chinese Empire was not
particularly safe for him now. The Gray Dragon had paid him the
compliment of recognizing in him an enemy. He no longer doubted
Minion's warning; the dragon of Len Yang controlled a powerful
organization. No part of China was safe. If he desired to run away from this
very actual danger in which direction could he run?

"When menaced by danger," runs an old Chinese proverb, "go to the
very heart of it; there you will find safety."

It lacked a few minutes of midnight when Peter entered the Palace bar by
the bund side. Only a few lights were burning, and the exceedingly long
teak bar—"the longest bar east of Suez"—was adorned by a few knots of
men only. Tobacco smoke was thick in the place, nearly obscuring the
doorway into the hotel lobby.

He scanned the idlers, looking for the cloth of sailormen. His quest was
ended. Bobbie MacLaurin was here, disposing of all of the imported Scotch
whiskey that came convenient to his long and muscular reach.

In a deep and sonorous voice he was pointing out to a group of
uniformed sailors, burdening his point with a club-like forefinger with
which he pounded on the edge of the teak bar, that while he rarely drank off
duty, he never drank when on. This claim Peter had reason to know was not
untrue.

The wireless operator edged his way to MacLaurin's side, and touched
his arm, making a whispered remark which the Scotchman evidently did not
comprehend. For MacLaurin wheeled on him, and bestowed upon him a
red, glassy, and hotly indignant stare.

Bobbie MacLaurin was, in the language of the sea, a whale of a man. His
head seemed unnecessarily large until you began to compare it with his
body; and his body was the despair of uniform manufacturers, who desire
above all things to make a fair percentage of profit. He was like a living
monument, two and a half hundred weight of fighting flesh and bones,
which, when all of it went into action, could better be compared to a

volcano than to a monument. Otherwise he was an exceedingly amiable
young giant.

The redness and hotness of the stare he imposed upon the friend of more
than one adventurous expedition slowly receded, leaving only the glassiness
in evidence. Bobbie fidgeted uneasily.

"Damn my hide!" he roared. "Your face is familiar! It is! It is! Where
have I seen that face before? Ah! I know now! I had a fight with you once."

"More than once," corrected Peter Moore, grinning. "The last time was
in Panama. Remember? I tripped you up, after you knocked the wind out of
me, and you fell, clothes and all, into the Washington Hotel's swimming
tank."

"Peter Moore!" gasped Bobbie MacLaurin, and Peter Moore was
smothered in log-like arms and the fumes of considerable alcohol.

Extricating himself at length from this monstrous embrace, Peter
permitted himself to be held off at arm's length and be warmly and
loquaciously admired.

"My old side-kick of the damn old San Felipe!" announced Bobbie
MacLaurin to the small group of somewhat embarrassed sailors. "The best
radio man that God ever let live! He can hear a radio signal before it's been
sent. Can't you, Peter? Boys, take a long look at the only livin' man who can
fight his weight in sea serpents; the only livin' man who ever knocked me
cold, and got away with it! Boys, take a long, lastin' look, for the pack o'
you're goin' out o' that door inside of ten counts! God bless 'um! Just look at
that there Jap get-up! Sure as God made big fish to eat the little fellows,
Peter Moore's up to some newfangled deviltry, or I'm a lobster!"

"Sh!" warned Peter Moore, conscious that in China the walls, doors,
floors, ceilings, windows, even the bartenders, have ears.

"Out with the lot of you!" barked MacLaurin. "There's big business afoot
to-night. We must be alone. Eh, Peter?"

And Peter was convinced that business could not be talked over to-night.
Of one thing only did he wish to be certain.

"You're taking the Hankow up-river to-morrow?"

"That I am, Peter!"

"Then we'll take the express for Nanking to-morrow morning."

"Aye—aye! Sir!"

"We'll turn in now. Otherwise you'll look like a wreck when Miss Vost
sees you."

"Miss Vost!" exploded MacLaurin. "When did you see Miss Vost?"

"A little while ago, Bob. Shall we turn in now?"

"Miss Vost is why I'm drunk, Peter," said Bobbie MacLaurin sadly.

"So she admitted. To-morrow we'll talk her over, and other important
matters."

"As you say, Peter. I'm the brawn, but you're the brains of this team—as
always! The bunks are the order."

When Bobbie MacLaurin's not unmusical snore proceeded from the vast
bulk disposed beneath the white bedclothes, Peter Moore again descended
to the lobby, let himself into the street, and hailed a rickshaw.

The mist from the Whang-poo had changed to a slanting rain. The bund
was a ditch of clay-like mud. Each street light was a halo unto itself.

He lighted a cigarette, suffered the coolie to draw up the clammy oilskin
leg-robe to his waist, and dreamily contemplated the quagmire that was
Shanghai.

The rickshaw crossed the Soochow-Creek bridge and drew up, dripping,
under the porte-cochère of the Astor House Hotel, where a majestic Indian

door-tender emerged from the shadows, bearing a large, opened umbrella.

Contrary to her promise Miss Vost was not waiting for his message.
However, she sent back word by the coolie, that she would dress and come
down, if he desired her to. Peter pondered a moment. A glimpse of Miss
Vost at this time of night meant nothing to him. Or was he hungry for that
glimpse? Nonsense!

He dashed off a hasty note, sealed it in an envelope, and gave it to the
room-boy to deliver.

He pictured her sleepy surprise as she opened it, and read:

Bobbie seems much put out. We take morning express to Nanking. Try to make
it. We'll have tea, the three of us, at Soochow.

At Soochow! There he was—at it again! A trifler.

"Damn my withered-up sense of honor, anyway!" observed Peter Moore
to himself, as he climbed into the rain-soaked rickshaw.

CHAPTER XI

With the pristine dawn, Robert MacLaurin arose from his bed like a
large, yellow mountain; for his pajamas—every square yard of them—were
of fine Canton silk, the color of the bulbous moon when it reposes low on
China's horizon.

Satisfying himself at length that the bedroom had another occupant, he
drained the contents of a fat, white water-jug, then tossed the jug upon the
incumbent of the bedroom's other bed.

At such times as this critical one, the smiling destiny which held the fate
of Peter Moore in the hollow of her precious hand was ever watchful, and
the white water-jug caromed from his peaceful figure with no more than an
unimportant thud. The jug bounded to the floor and ended its career against
the hard wall. Peter Moore sat up, rubbing his eyes.

"Dead or alive, Peter?"

"You nearly broke my back."

"Serves you right, old slug-abed! You tucked me in last night with the
warning that we pick up the early express for Nanking."

"Quite so," admitted Peter Moore thickly. In the past two days he had
managed to set aside altogether four hours for sleep; and he felt that way.
He examined his room-mate, but was not surprised at what met his glance.

Bobbie MacLaurin, disregarding the fact that he had not yet shaved,
looked as fresh as a rose. His endurance was like that of a range of
mountains. His sea-blue eyes were cannily clear, his complexion was
transparent and glowing. The ill effects of last night had been absorbed with
about as much apparent effort as a gigantic sponge might display in
absorbing a dewdrop.

"Chinamen's eyes and Chinamen's knives have been running through my
dreams," Peter muttered.

"Cheer up! The pirates are thick above Ichang. We'll both have our
bloody necks slit a dozen times before we make Ching-Fu." Bobbie turned
from the miniature mirror. His sea-blue eyes glared through a white lake of
lather. "Hurry up and shave, you loafer! We'll miss that train."

"I'm not going to shave for six months!"

"Election bet?"

"When your utterly worthless life has been endangered as many times as
——"

"What you need is a drink, my lad!"

"When you have evidence that the greatest criminal-at-large wants to
have you stuck like a pig——"

MacLaurin swung his big frame about and stared. "You're not serious."

"I am referring to—a Gray Dragon. Ever hear of one?"

The razor in the large, red hand of Bobbie MacLaurin flashed. It came
away from his cheek. A broad trickle of crimson spread down the lathered
jaw, But he did not curse.

"We must hurry for that train," rumbled his big voice. "We must talk this
over. We must hurry, Peter," he said again.

Miss Amy Vost was not in evidence when the two rickshaws rattled up to
the platform of the red brick station.

"Perhaps she's waiting for us in the coach, holding seats for us," Peter
suggested.

"Just like her," said MacLaurin. "She's a little peach!"

Peter entered the compartment first and scanned the heads. The only
tresses in evidence were the long, black, shining ones of a bejeweled
Chinese lady. The other passengers were men.

"There will be no tête-à-tête in Soochow," observed Peter Moore to his
conscience.

"I'd go to hell for that girl!" declared Bobbie MacLaurin as he sat down
at Peter's side. "Now, tell me what you were doing in that Jap rigging. Two
years, isn't it, since we were chased out of Panama City by the spigotties?"

"I came over on the Vandalia."

"And didn't go back, I gather."

"She sailed up-river for Soo-chow yesterday. No, I won't go back.
Bobbie, I started something on that ship, and I'm on my way to Ching-Fu—
and 'way beyond Ching-Fu—to finish it."

"It will be beautifully finished, Peter! Or your name's not Moore."

"There was a girl, a beautiful girl——"

"There usually is," MacLaurin sighed.

Peter gazed bitterly at the scenery flitting evenly past the window:
groves of feathery bamboo, flaming mustard fields, exquisite gardens, and
graves—graves beyond count.

"Perhaps she is passing through the Inland Sea by now. Bobbie, I wanted
her to go home. She was—she was that kind of a girl. She wanted to stay.
Bobbie, that girl could have made a man of me! She—she even told me she
—liked me!"

"They have a way of doing that," commented Bobbie sadly.

Several miles rolled by before either of the men spoke.

"Why is Miss Vost making the trip to Ching-Fu?"

"You'll have to find that out, Peter. I was too busy letting her know how
bright my life has become since she entered it!"

The square, red jaw swung savagely toward Peter. Of a sudden the sea-
blue eyes seemed a trifle inflamed. "She's probably going to Ching-Fu on
serious business. She's like that. She's not like you!"

"What do you mean?" said Peter.

"You're going to try to break into Len Yang; that's what I mean! Some
day, on one of these reckless expeditions of yours, Peter, you're going to run
plumb into a long, sharp knife! If I could head you off, I would."

"You can't, Bobbie. My mind is made up."

"Get out of China. Why enter the lion's den? You're too confiding, too
trusting, too young. In duty to my conscience, I oughtn't to let you go. But I
know you'd walk or fly or swim if I tried to head you off."

"I certainly would," agreed Peter.

CHAPTER XII

No member of the earth's great brotherhood of dangerous waterways is
blessed with quite the degree of peril which menaces those hardy ones who
dare the River of the Golden Sands.

Bobbie MacLauren's steamer, the Hankow, was the net result of long
ship-building experience. Dozens of apparently seaworthy boats have gone
up the Yangtze-Kiang, not to return. After years of experiment a somewhat
satisfactory river-boat has been evolved. It combines the sturdiness of a sea-
going tug with the speed of a torpedo-boat destroyer.

The Hankow was ridiculously small, and monstrously strong. Chiefly it
consisted of engines and boilers. Despite their security, despite the
shipwrecks and deaths that have been poured into their present design,
Yangtze river-boats sink, a goodly crop of them, every season.

But the world of commerce is an arrogant master. There is wealth in the
land bordering the upper reaches of the river. This wealth must be brought
down to the sea, and scattered to the lands beyond the sea. In return,
machinery and tools must be carried back to mine and farm the wealth.

Little is heard, less is told, and still less is written of the men who dare
the rapids and the rocks and the sands of the great river. Sometimes the
spirit of adventure sends them up the Yangtze. Frequently, as is the case
with men who depart unexplainedly upon dangerous errands, a woman is
the inspiration, or merely the cause.

Miss Amy Vost, of New York City, but more recently of Amoy, China,
province Fu-Kien, was the generator in the case of Bobbie MacLaurin.

When Miss Vost tripped blithely aboard the Sunyado Maru, anchored off
the breaks of Amoy, and captured, at first blush, the hearts of the entire
forward crew, Bobbie MacLaurin was the most eager prisoner of the lot.

Perhaps she took notice of him out of the corner of her glowing young
eyes long before he became seriously and mortally afflicted. Certainly the
first mate of the Sunyado Maru was no believer in the theory of non-
resistance.

Had Miss Vost been a susceptible young woman, it is safe to assume that
Bobbie MacLaurin would not have accepted command of the Hankow from
tide-water to that remote Chinese city, Ching-Fu.

He wooed her in the pilot-house—where passengers were never allowed;
he courted her in the dining-room; and he paid marked attention to her at all
hours of the day and night, in sundry nooks and corners of the generous
promenade deck.

Miss Vost sparred with him. As well as being lovely and captivating, she
was clever. She seemed to agree with the rule of the philosopher who held
that conversation was given to mankind simply for purposes of evasion. By
the end of the first week Bobbie MacLaurin was earning sour glances from
his staid British captain, and glances not at all encouraging from Miss Vost.

He informed her that all of the beauty and all of the wonder of the stars,
the sea, the moonlight, could not equal the splendor of her wide, gray eyes.
She replied that the moon, the stars, and the sea had gone to his head.

He insisted that her smile could only be compared to the sunrise on a
dewy rose-vine. He threw his big, generous heart at her feet a hundred
times. Being fair and sympathetic, she did not kick it to one side. She
merely side-stepped.

He closed that evening's interview with the threat that he would follow
her to the very ends of the earth. She gave him the opportunity, literally, by

observing dryly that her destination was precisely at the world's end—in the
hills of Szechuen, to be exact.

He took the breath out of her mouth by saying that he would travel on
the same river-boat with her to Ching-Fu, if he had to scrub down decks for
his passage. She told him not to be a silly boy; that he was, underneath his
uncouthness, really a dear, but that he didn't know women.

When the Sunyado Maru dropped anchor off Woo-sung, Miss Vost let
Bobbie hold her hand an instant longer than was necessary, and stubbornly
refused to accompany him in the same sampan—or the same tug—to the
customs jetty. Summarily, she went up the Whang-poo all alone, while
Bobbie, biting his finger-nails, purposely quarreled with the staid British
captain, and was invited to sign off, which he did.

Through devious subterranean channels Bobbie MacLaurin found that
the berth of master on the Hankow was vacant, the latest incumbent having
relinquished his spirit to cholera. Was he willing to assume the tremendous
responsibility? He was tremendously willing! Did he possess good papers?
He most assuredly did!

When the Shanghai express rolled into the Nanking station, Bobbie
MacLaurin climbed into a rattling rickshaw and clattered off in the direction
of the river-front, registering the profound hope that Miss Vost had
somehow managed to reach the Hankow ahead of him. Peter Moore, who
knew China's ancient capital like a book, struck off in a diagonal direction
on foot.

He made his way to a Chinese tailor's, who bought from him the
Japanese costume and sold him a suit of gray tweeds, which another
customer had failed to call for. While not an adornment, the gray tweeds
were comfortably European, a relief from the flapping, clumsy kimono.

He wanted to have a little talk with Miss Vost before she saw Bobbie. He
had so much affection for Bobbie that he wanted to ask Miss Vost to please
not be unnecessarily cruel with him. He did not know that Miss Vost was

never unnecessarily cruel to any living creature; for he made the mistake
there of classifying all women into the good and the cruel, of which Miss
Vost seemed to be among the latter. As a matter of fact, Miss Vost was
simply a young woman very far from home, compelled to believe in and on
occasion to resort to primitive methods of self-defense.

Peter took a rickshaw to the river. He picked out the Hankow among the
clutter of shipping, anchored not far from shore, and out of reach of the
swift current which rushed dangerously down midchannel. Black smoke
issued from her single chubby funnel. Blue-coated coolies sped to and fro
on her single narrow deck. Bobbie MacLaurin leaned far out across the rail
as Peter's sampan slapped smartly alongside. The coolie thrashed the water
into yellowy foam.

"Have you seen Miss Vost?" shouted MacLaurin above the hiss of
escaping steam. "We pull out in an hour, Miss Vost or no Miss Vost. That's
orders."

Peter, reaching the deck, scanned the pagoda-dotted shore-front. "She'll
be here," he said.

Pu-Chang, the Hankow's pilot, a slender, grayed Chinese, grown old
before his time, in the river service, sidled between them, smiling mistily,
and asked his captain if the new tow-line had been delivered. While
MacLaurin went to make inquiries, Peter watched a sampan, bow on,
floating down-stream, with the intention, evidently, of making connections
with the Hankow's ladder. On her abrupt foredeck was a slim figure of blue
and white.

Startled a little by recollection, Peter leaned far out. For a moment he
had imagined the white face to be that of Eileen Lorimer. The demure
attitude of Miss Vost's hands, caught by the finger-tips before her, gave
further grounds to Peter Moore for the comparison. Her youth and
innocence had as much to do with it as anything, for there was undeniably
an air of youth and extreme innocence about Miss Vost.

Something in the shape of a triumphant bellow was roared from the
engine-room companionway. Whereupon the companionway disgorged the

monumental figure of Bobbie MacLaurin, grinning like a schoolboy at his
first party. He seized Miss Vost by both hands, swinging her neatly to the
deck.

She panted and fell back against the rail, holding her hand to her heart,
and welcoming Bobbie MacLaurin by a glance that was not entirely cordial.

"The sampan boy hasn't been paid," she remarked, opening her purse.
"It's twenty cents."

While MacLaurin pulled a silver dollar from his pocket and spun it to the
anxious coolie, Miss Vost turned with the warmest of smiles to Peter. Rarely
had any girl seemed more delighted to see him, for which, under the
circumstances, he found it somewhat difficult to be grateful.

He experienced again that dull feeling of guilt. He felt that she ought to
show more cordiality to Bobbie MacLaurin. Here was Bobbie, trailing after
her like a faithful dog, on the most hazardous trip that any man could
devise, and he had not been rewarded, so far, with even the stingiest of
smiles.

Women were like that. They took the fruits of your work, or they took
your life, or let you toss it to the crows, without a sign of gratitude. At least,
some women were like that. He had hoped Miss Vost was not that kind. He
had hoped——

Miss Vost laid her small, warm hand in his, and she seemed perfectly
willing to let it linger. Her lips were parted in a smile that was all but a
caress. She seemed to have forgotten that the baffled young man who stared
so fixedly at the back of her pretty, white neck existed.

It was quite embarrassing for Peter. The feeling of the little hand, that lay
so intimately within his, sent a warm glow stealing into his guilty heart.

Then, aware of the pain in the face of Bobbie MacLaurin, a face that had
abruptly gone white, and realizing his duty to this true friend of his, he
pushed Miss Vost's hands away from him.

That gesture served to bring them all back to earth.

"Aren't you glad—aren't you a little bit glad—to see me—me?" said the
hurt voice of Bobbie MacLaurin.

Miss Vost pivoted gracefully, giving Peter Moore a view of her splendid,
straight back for a change. "Of course I am, Bobbie!" she exclaimed. "I'm
always glad to see you. Why—oh, look! Did you ever see such a
Chinaman?"

They all joined in her look. A salmon-colored sampan was riding swiftly
to the Hankow's riveted steel side. With long legs spread wide apart atop the
low cabin stood a very tall, very grave Chinese. His long, blanched face
was more than grave, more than austere.

Peter Moore stared and ransacked his memory. He had seen that face,
that grimace, before. His mind went back to the shop front, on Nanking
Road, last evening, when he was skulking toward the bund from the
friendly establishment of his friend, the silk merchant, Ching Gow Ong.

This man was neither Cantonese nor Pekingese. His long, rather
supercilious face, his aquiline nose, the flare of his nostrils, the back-tilted
head, the high, narrow brow, and the shock of blue-black hair identified the
Chinese stranger, even if his abnormal, rangy height were not taken into
consideration, as a hill man, perhaps Tibetan, perhaps Mongolian. Certainly
he was no river-man.

It seemed improbable that the window-breaker could have been released
by the heartless Shanghai police so quickly; yet out of his own adventurous
past Peter could recall more than one occasion when "squeeze" had saved
him embarrassment.

There was no constraint in the pose of the man on the sampan's flat roof.
With indifference his narrow gaze flitted from the face of Bobbie
MacLaurin to that of Miss Vost, and wandered on to the stern, sharp-eyed
visage of Peter Moore.

Here the casual gaze rested. If he recognized Peter Moore, he gave no
indication of it. He studied Peter's countenance with the look of one whose
interest may be distracted on the slightest provocation.

An intelligent and wary student of human nature, Peter dropped his eyes
to the man's long, claw-like fingers. These were twitching ever so slightly,
plucking slowly—it may have been meditatively—at the hem of his black
silk coat. At the intentness of Peter's stare, this twitching abruptly ceased.

The sampan whacked alongside. The big man tossed a small, orange-silk
bag to the deck. He climbed the ladder as if he had been used to climbing
all his life.

"I don't care for his looks," remarked Miss Vost, looking up into Peter's
face with a curious smile.

"Nor I," said Bobbie MacLaurin.

The richly dressed stranger vaulted nimbly over the teak-rail, recovered
the orange bag, and approached MacLaurin. His head drooped forward
momentarily, in recognition of the authority of the blue uniform.

He said in excellent English: "I desire to engage passage to Ching-Fu."

"This way," replied the Hankow's captain.

"You seemed to recognize him," said Miss Vost to Peter, when they had
the deck to themselves.

"Perhaps I was mistaken," replied Peter evasively. He suddenly was
aware of Miss Vost's wide-eyed look of concern.

Impulsively she laid her hand on his arm. She had come up very close to
him. Her head moved back, so that her chin was almost on a level with his.

"Mr. Moore," she said in a low, soft voice, "I won't ask you any
questions. In China, there are many, many things that a woman must not try
to understand. But I—I want to tell you that—that I think you are—

splendid. It seems so fine, so good of you. I—I can't begin to thank you. My
—my feelings prevent it."

"But—why—what—what——" stammered Peter.

"Oh, Mr. Moore, I know—I know!" Miss Vost proceeded earnestly.
"Like all fine, brave men, you are—you are modest! It—it almost makes me
want to cry, to think—to think——"

"But, Miss Vost," interrupted Peter, gently and gravely, "you are shooting
over my head!"

In the rakish bows of the Hankow arose the clank and clatter of wet
anchor-chains. A bell tinkled in the engine-room. The stout fabric of the
little steamer shuddered. The yellow water began to slip by them. On the
shore two pagodas moved slowly into alignment. The Hankow was moving.

Miss Vost strengthened her gentle hold upon Peter's reluctant arm. Her
bright eyes were a trifle blurred. "Last night, when we met on the bund,"
she went on in a small voice, "I knew immediately—immediately—what
you were. A chivalrous gentleman! A man who would shelter and protect
any helpless woman he met!"

"That was nice of you," murmured Peter.

Like Saul of Tarsus, he was beginning to see a bright light.

"And it was true!" Miss Vost plunged on. "Now—now, you are risking
your life—for poor, unworthy little me! Please don't deny it, Mr. Moore! I
only wanted to let you know that I—I understand, and that I am—g-
grateful!" Her eyelids fluttered over an unstifled moistness.

"Bobbie loves you," blurted Peter. "He'd do anything in the world for
you. He told me so. He told me——"

Miss Vost opened her eyes on a look that was hurt and humiliated.
"What?"

"He'd go to hell for you!"

"He's an overgrown boy. He doesn't know what he says. That's
nonsense," declared Miss Vost, looking away from Peter. "I know his type,
Mr. Moore. He falls in love with every pretty face; and he falls out again,
quite as easily."

"You don't know Bobbie, the way I do," said Peter stubbornly.

"I don't have to. I know his kind—a girl in every port."

"No, no. Not Bobbie!"

For a moment it seemed that they had come to an impasse. Miss Vost
was blinking her eyes rapidly, appearing to be somewhat interested in a
junk which was poling down-stream.

She looked up with a wan smile. Tears were again in her eyes. "Mr.
Moore," she said in a broken voice, "what you've told me about Mr.
MacLaurin, Captain MacLaurin, moves me—deeply!"

"Do try to be nice to Bobbie," begged Peter. "He is the finest fellow I
know. He is true blue. He would give his life for your little finger. Really he
would, Miss Vost!"

The bright eyes gave him a languishing look.

"I'll try," she said simply.

That night the banks of the great river were gray and mysterious under
the effulgence of a top-heavy yellow moon. The search-light on the peak
pierced out the fact that a low, swirling mist was creeping up from the
river's dulled surface.

The air was damp with the breath of the land. Occasionally the gentle
puffs of the wind bore along the water the flavor of queer, indistinguishable
odors.

Elbow to elbow, glancing down at the hissing water, Miss Vost and Peter
stood for a number of sweet, meditative moments in silence. At length Miss
Vost slipped her arm through his.

"Sometimes," she murmured, inclining her head until it almost rested
against his shoulder, "I feel lonely—terrible! Especially on such a night as
this. The moon is so impersonal, isn't it? Here it is, a great, gorgeous ball of
cold fire, shining across China at you and me. In Amoy it seemed to frown
at me. Now—it seems to smile. The same moon!"

"The same moon!" whispered Peter as her warm hand slipped down and
snuggled in his.

"Don't you ever feel lonely—like this?" demanded Miss Vost suddenly.

Peter sighed. "Oh, often. Often! The world seems so big, and so filled
with things that are hard to learn. Especially at night!" He wondered what
she thought he meant.

"I—I feel that way," Miss Vost's absorbed voice replied. "I try—and try
—to reason these things out. But they are so baffling! So elusive! So
evasive! Here is China, with its millions of poor wretched ones, struggling
in darkness and disease. There are so many! And they are so hard to help.
And out beyond there, not so many miles beyond that ridge, lies Tibet, with
her millions, and her ignorance, and her disease. And to the left—away to
the left, I think, is India.

"If a person would be happy, he must not come to China or India. Their
problems are too overwhelming. You cannot think of solutions fast enough,
and even while you think, you are overcome by the weariness, the
hopelessness, of it all. I wish I had never come to China.

"I happened to be in Foo-Chow not long ago. There is in Foo-Chow a
thing that illustrates what I mean. It is called the baby tower. Girls, you
know, aren't thought much of in China. At the bottom of the tower is a deep
well. Women to whom are born baby girls go to the baby tower——" Miss
Vost shuddered. "The babies are thrown into the well. I have seen them.
Poor—poor, little creatures—dying like that!"

Miss Vost sniffled for a moment. Brightly she said:

"I like to talk to you, Mr. Moore. You're so—so sympathetic!"

A great, dark shadow bulked up against the rail alongside Peter.

"Good evening, folks!" declared the pleasant bass voice of Bobbie
MacLaurin.

"We were just talking about you, Bobbie," said Peter affably. "As I was
telling Miss Vost, you're the most sympathetic man I ever knew! Good
night, Miss Vost. Night, Bobs!"

CHAPTER XIII

When Peter descended the stairway into the narrow vestibule which
served as reception-hall, dining-saloon, and, incidentally, as the corridor
from which the Hankow's four small staterooms were entered, he had the
chilly feeling that the darkness had eyes.

Yet he saw nothing. The cabin was dark. Three round ports glimmered
greenly beyond the staircase on the cabin's forward side. The glimmer was
occasioned by the refracted rays of the Hankow's dazzling searchlight. But
these were not the ones he felt.

Gradually his own eyes became accustomed to the pulp-like darkness.
He steadied his body against the gentle swaying of the steamer, and
endeavored to listen above, or through, the imminent thrashing and
clattering of the huge engine.

He examined the four stateroom doors anxiously. As the darkness began
to dissolve slightly, Peter, still conscious that eyes were fastened upon him,
made the discovery that the stateroom adjoining his was slightly ajar. The
moon favored him—Miss Vost's impersonal moon. It outlined against the
slit what appeared to be a large, irregular block.

Peter decided that the irregular block was nothing more nor less than the
head of a man. To prove that his surmise was correct, Peter quickly shifted
the revolver from his right hand to his left, brought it even with his eyes and
—struck a match.

In the startling flare of the phosphorus the evil glint of Celestial eyes was
instantly revealed in the partly opened door.

With incredible softness the door was closed. Where there had been half-
lidded eyes, a positive snarl, and a shock of blue-black hair was now a
white-enameled panel.

Peter continued to smile along the barrel, which glistened in the dying
flame of the match. He unlocked his door, closed it, and shot the bolt.
Switching on the electric light, he cautiously drew back the sheet.
Apparently satisfied, he sniffed the air. It was nothing more than stuffy, as a
stateroom that has been closed for a week or so is apt to be.

Unscrewing the fat wingbolts which clamped down the brass-bound
port-glass, he let in a breath of misty river air. Simultaneously voices came
into the room.

Miss Vost and Bobbie MacLaurin were conversing in clear, tense
syllables. Peter could not help eavesdropping. They were standing on the
deck, directly over his stateroom, only a few scant feet from his porthole,
which was situated much nearer the deck than the surging water.

"But I do—I do love you!" Bobbie was complaining in his rumbling
voice. "Ever since you set foot on the old Sunyado Maru I've been your
shadow—your slave! What more can any man say?" he added bitterly.

"Not a great deal," rejoined Miss Vost lightheartedly. She became
abruptly serious. "Bobbie, I do like you. I admire you—ever so much. But it
happens that you are not the man for me. You don't understand me. You can
never understand me. Don't you realize it? You're too sudden—too brutal—
too——"

"Brutal! I've treated you like a flower. I want to shield you——"

"But I don't need shielding, Bobbie. I'm prudent, fearless, and—twenty-
two. I don't need a watch-dog!"

"Good God, who said anything about being a watchdog?" exclaimed
Bobbie. "I—I just want——"

"You just want me," completed Miss Vost. "Well, you can't have me."

"You love somebody else, then. That young pup!"

Peter stared sourly at the bilious moon.

"Don't you dare call him a young pup, Robert MacLaurin," retorted Miss
Vost resentfully. "He is a fine young man. I admire him and I respect him
very, very much."

"He can't fool around any girl of mine!"

Peter heard Bobbie sucking the breath in between his teeth, as if he
might have pricked himself with a pin. Bobbie had done worse than that.

"A girl of yours!" snapped Miss Vost.

Followed low, anxious and imploratory whispers. These were terminated
by a long, light, and delicious laugh.

"Bobbie, you're so funny!" Miss Vost gurgled.

"I wish I was dead!" declared Bobbie despondently.

"You should go to Liauchow," Miss Vost chirped.

"Why should I go to Liauchow?" grumbled the bass voice.

"To be happy, you must be born in Soochow, live in Canton and die in
Liauchow. So runs the proverb."

"Why should I go to Liauchow?" persisted Bobbie.

"Because Soochow has the handsomest people, Canton the most luxury,
and Liauchow the best coffins!"

CHAPTER XIV

Peter Moore's curiosity regarding the motives which were sending Miss
Amy Vost into Szechwan, most deplorable, most poverty-stricken of

provinces, was satisfied before the Hankow had put astern the great
turbulent city after which it had been named.

At Hankow the Hankow picked up the raft which it would tow all the
way up to Ching-Fu. Upon this raft was a long, squat cabin, in and out of
which poured incessantly members of China's large and growing family.

There were thin, dirty little men, and skinny, soiled little women, and
quantities of hungry, dirty little boys and girls. A great noise went up from
the raft as the Hankow nosed in alongside, and the new towline was passed
and made fast over the bitts.

As the big propeller thumped under them and churned the muddy water
into unhealthy-looking foam, Peter Moore and Miss Vost leaned upon the
rail, where it curved around the fantail, and discoursed at length,
speculating upon the probable destination of that raftful of dirty humanity,
and offering problematic answers to the puzzling question as to why were
all these people deserting relatively prosperous Hankow for the over-
populated, overdeveloped province of Szechwan.

Peter had an inkling that Miss Vost was distressed by the scene.

"Let's take a stroll forward," he suggested.

An urchin, directly below them, stood rubbing his eyes with two grimy
fists. His whines were audible above the churning of the engines.

"No, no. I'm quite accustomed to this. Look—just look at that miserable
little fellow!"

"He is blind," stated Peter quietly.

"Half of them are blind," Miss Vost replied. Her features were transfixed
by a look of sadness. "Wait for me. I'll return in a second."

Peter watched the graceful swing of her shoulders as she strode down the
deck to the forward companionway, admiring the slim strength of her silk-
clad ankles. She was every inch an American girl. He was proud of her. She

returned, carrying a small oblong of cardboard, upon which a photograph
was pasted.

Peter found himself looking into the sad, be-wrinkled eyes of a gray-
bearded man, a patriarchal gentleman, who stood on the hard clay at the
foot of a low stone stairway. His nose, his eyes, his intellectual forehead
were distinctly those of Miss Vost. A child in a freshly starched frock, with
eyes opened wide in surprise and interest, was firmly clutching one of his
trouser-legs.

"My father," explained Miss Vost. "He was stationed at Wenchow then,
in charge of the mission. I have not seen him since."

Peter remarked to himself that somehow Miss Vost did not seem to be
the daughter of a missionary, nor was the costly way she dressed in key
with her remark. Perhaps she divined his thoughts.

"He has money—lots of it. He has a keen, broad mind. But he chose this.
When he was first married be brought mother to China. He saw, and
realized, China's vast problems. And he stayed. He wanted to help."

Peter gazed into her gray eyes, which seemed to take on a clear violet
tinge when she was deeply moved.

"He told me to come to see him because he was growing old. I stopped
off in Amoy," said Miss Vost with a ghost of a smile. "A young missionary
he wanted me to meet lives there. I met him. But I could not admire that
young missionary. He was a—a poseur. He was pretending. One reason I
like you, Mr. Moore, is because you're so sincere. He was so transparent.
And his 'converts' saw through him, too. They were bread-and-butter
converts. They listened to him; they devoured his food—then they went to
the fortune-tellers! Father could not have known Doctor Sanborn longer
than a few minutes—or else he's not the father that he used to be! I inherit
his love for sincerity. I—I'm sure he will like you!"

"But—but——" stammered Peter—"I don't expect to go to Wenchow.
Better say he'd like—Bobbie!"

"Oh, he'd like anybody that I liked," Miss Vost said lightly. "It—it's
really interesting, you know, from Ching-Fu to Wenchow. We take bullock
carts—if we can find them. Otherwise we walk. Doesn't it—appeal to you
—just a little—to be all alone with me for nearly a hundred miles?"

"Very much indeed," replied Peter earnestly. "But our roads part—at
Ching-Fu. I go directly south."

"In search of more adventure and romance? Perhaps—perhaps a girl who
is not so silly as I have been? Or—is it India—or Afghanistan?"

"Neither. An old friend!"

"Is that why you are growing a beard—to surprise—him?"

"Perhaps," said Peter, absently fingering the bristles. "Don't tell me it's
unbecoming or I'll have to shave it off!"

"As if what I thought made a particle of difference!" retorted Miss Vost
defiantly.

Peter gave her a thoughtful, a puzzled stare. "I overheard you last night.
You broke your promise. You promised to be nice to him."

"I was. Do you mean what I said about Liauchow?"

"You don't realize what you mean to Bobbie. My dear, dear girl——"

"I am not your dear, dear girl!"

Peter groaned.

"Does your heart ache, too, Peter?"

"Of course it does! I—I'd like——"

"Then why don't you?"

"It wouldn't be fair, that's why!"

"To—Bobbie?"

"Bobbie, too."

"Then there is another girl," Miss Vost cried bitterly. She bit her lip.
"You should have told me before."

"I thought it wouldn't be necessary."

Miss Vost dropped her eyes to Peter's hand which was resting on the rail.
Her own hand moved over and nestled against it.

"Do—do you l-love her as much as th-this?" Her eyes returned to his
face.

"I did think I did!"

"But you're not sure—now?"

"Oh, I thought I was sure! I am sure'"

"There's little more to say, then, is there?" Her lids were blinking rapidly
as she looked down at the mob of filthy little Arabs on the flat. Her fingers
plucked, trembling, at the embroidered hem of a white, wadded
handkerchief.

"Bobbie does care for you so," observed Peter with unintentional cruelty.

"Oh—oh—him!" sobbed Miss Vost, leaving him to stare after her
drooping figure as she retreated down the deck.

She seemed on a sudden to be avoiding the entrance to the forward
companionway. He wondered why.

The girl stopped, with her hands clenched into white fists at her sides.

From the doorway, smiling suavely and wiping one hand upon the other
in a gesture of solicitous meekness, emerged the tall and commanding
figure of the Mongolian—or was he a Tibetan? He was attired now in the

finest, the shiniest of Canton silks. His satin pants, of a gorgeous white, a
courting white, were strapped about ankles which terminated in curved
sandals sparkling with gold and jewels in the mid-day sun. His jacket, long
and perfectly fitting, was of a robin's egg blue. His blue-black queue,
freshly oiled, gleamed like the coils of an active hill snake.

He was a picture of refined Chinese saturninity.

Miss Vost, beholding him, was properly impressed. She stepped back,
not a little appalled, and swept him from queue to sandal with a look that
was not the heartiest of receptions. The Mongolian was speaking in oiled,
pleasing accents.

Peter strode toward them.

"He insulted me!" panted Miss Vost. "Like many fine, Chinese
gentlemen, he thought, perhaps, that I might be—what do they call 'em—a
'nice li'l 'Melican girl!' Impress him with the fact that I am not, Mr. Moore
—please do that!"

She hastened around the forward cabin, out of sight.

The Mongolian was regarding Peter with a cool, complacent smile. His
expression was smug, uninjured.

"Looka here, Chink-a-link," Peter advised him, "my no savvy you; you
no savvy my. My see you allatime. Allatime. You savvy, Chink-a-link?"

"I comprehend you, my friend," replied the Mongolian in polished
accents. "In my case, 'pidgin' is not, let me hasten to say, necessary."

"Very good, Chink; the next time you so much as glance in Miss Vost's
direction, you're going to walk away with a pair of the dam'dest black eyes
in China! Get that—you yellow weasel?"

"Unfortunately," replied the Mongolian, lifting his fine, black eyebrows
only a trifle, "your suggestion—your admonitions—are again, most

inappropriate. Miss Vost—do I pronounce it correctly? Miss Vost and
yourself are the victims of a misunderstanding."

"Take off your coat, and prove I'm wrong!" shouted Peter. "I'm a better
man than you are! Swallow it or—fight!"

Peter's gray tweed coat flopped in a heap upon the ironwood deck.

The Mongolian retired a few feet, with indications of anxiety.

"I—I did not intend to offend her," he retracted. His ropy throat muscles
seemed to convulse. His long face flamed hotly red. He burst out, as though
unable to control himself: "My savvy allatime you no savvy! Ní bùh yào tī
nà gò hwà! Djan gò chü, ràng ó dzóu!"

"Lao-shu," laughed Peter. "Dang hsin!"

CHAPTER XV

They came to Ichang next noon. Peter was on deck watching the
somewhat hazardous procedure of transferring large grass-bound cases of
tools from a tidewater steamer to the stern of the flat when he saw the
Mongolian emerge from the companionway and walk to the rail, forward.
Peter gave him a full stare, but the man did not glance in his direction. He
was looking down at the muddy river, and beckoning.

Peter observed a sampan coolie give an answering wave, and the sampan
sidled alongside the flat.

The Mongolian returned a few minutes before the Hankow hauled in her
anchor. He retired to his stateroom and stayed there until late afternoon.

The river above Ichang was swifter, more dangerous, than in its lower
course. Except for the junks and an occasional sampan, the Hankow had the

stream to herself. The yellow waters were tinged with red, dancing and
sparkling to a fresh breeze under a fair blue sky. Great blue hills confined
the swollen current. This was not the Yangtze of yesterday. It was a
maddened millrace, gorged by the mountain rains. Even the gurgle under
the sharp-cut waters seemed to convey a menace.

Dikes were broken down. The brown waters had flowed out to right and
left, forming quiet lakes where there had been fields of paddy and wheat.
The junks from up-river were having a strenuous time of it. Swarms of
gibbering coolies manned the long sweeps, striving above all to keep their
clumsy craft in safe mid-current.

They were passing a long row of pyramids, green, brown and red. But
Miss Vost was staring along the deck.

"The Mongolian!" she muttered. "How he is grinning at you!"

The Mongolian had come upon them, apparently unintentionally. He
hesitated and paused when Peter looked up. Peter saw no grin upon his lips.
They were set in a firm, straight line. His long arms were folded behind his
back, and his eyes were empty of mirth—or malice. They simply expressed
nothing. He looked at Peter shortly, and favored Miss Vost with a long stare.

Her eyes faltered. Peter stepped forward.

But the Mongolian bowed, passed them at a slow, meditative walk, and
was lost from their sight behind the cabin's port side.

The idea took hold of Peter that the stalker had become the killer. There
was a telegraph station at Ichang through which ran the frail copper wires
connecting the seventy millions of Szechwan Province with civilization.
Had it been possible for the Mongolian to signal his master in Len Yang and
receive an answer while the Hankow lay at Ichang?

After dinner, curious and nervous, Peter went below. The light was
burning over the table of weapons in the main cabin.

The Mongolian's door was slightly ajar, and as Peter descended the
stairs, the door closed.

He waited. His heart thumped, louder than the thump of the laboring
engine. He walked to his stateroom, opened the door, kicked the threshold,
and—slammed the door! He hastened to the table, and hid behind it.
Between the table legs he had a splendid view of both doors.

Holding a kris, point down, in front of him, the Mongolian slipped out,
tried the adjacent door-knob and entered Peter's room. When he came out,
he looked perplexed and angry. He slid the dagger into his silk blouse and
looked up the stairway, listening.

His expression of rage passed away; now his look was inscrutable.
Stealing across the vestibule, he approached Miss Vost's door, and rapped.

Peter ran his fingers along the edge of the table until they encountered
the hilt of a cutlass. He waited.

The Mongolian rapped a little louder. There was no answer. Again he
knocked, imperatively. Peter heard Miss Vost's sleepy voice pitched in
inquiry. Her door opened an inch or two.

The Mongolian forced his way inside!

Miss Vost uttered a short, sharp scream, which was instantly smothered.

As Peter burst into the room, the Mongolian turned with a snarl,
reaching for his silk blouse. Peter clapped his free hand to the muscled
shoulder, and dragged him into the corridor.

Miss Vost, in a long, white nightgown, was framed in the doorway,
staring sleepily. Her hand was clutched to her lips. Her hair tumbled about
her bare shoulders in dark, silky clusters.

Bright steel flashed in the Mongolian's hand. "Ha-li!" he muttered.

Peter braced himself, and thrust straight upward, striking with fury. He
drove the sword through the Mongolian's right eye.

Miss Vost, a slender pillar of white, stared down at the floundering heap.
She seemed to be going mad, with the green light of the electric glittering in
her distended eyes.

Bobbie MacLaurin bounded down the steps.

"He tried to come into my room," said Miss-Vost. "He tried to come into
my room!"

"I know. I know. But it's all right," soothed Peter, panting. "You must go
back to bed. You must try to sleep." He talked as though she were a child.
"He was a bad man. He had to—to be treated—this way!"

"You—you look like an Arab. The dark. And that beard. Where is
Bobbie?"

"Right here. Right here beside you!"

"You're not hurt—either of you? You're both all right?"

"Yes. Yes. Please go to bed!" begged Peter.

"Please!" implored Bobbie.

To them there was something unreligious, something terrible, in the
notion of Miss Vost standing in the presence of the grim black heap in the
shadow. Nor were her youth and her innocence intended to be bared before
the eyes of men in this fashion.

As if a chill river wind had struck her, she shivered—closed the door.

The men carried the limp body, which was unaccountably heavy, to the
deck. After a minute there—was a splash. The Hankow had not been
checked. On the Yangtze formal burial ceremonies are seldom performed.

Peter went to bed at once. He tried to sleep. He counted the revolutions
of the propeller. He added up a stupendous number of sheep going through
a hole in a stone wall. Every so often the sheep faded away, to be replaced

by the fearful countenance of the Mongolian, who was now perhaps ten
miles or more downstream.

After a while the engines were checked, turning at half speed for a
number of revolutions, then ceasing as a bell rang. The only sound was the
soughing gurgle of the water as it lapped along the steel plates, and the
distant drone of the rapids.

He heard the splash of an anchor, accompanied by the rumble and clank
of chains, forward; and a repetition of the sounds aft. Directly under him, it
seemed a loud, prolonged scraping noise took place. The fires were being
drawn.

The sounds could only mean that the Hankow had reached the journey's
end. The trip was over; the Hankow was abreast Ching-Fu. She would lie in
the current for a few days, before facing about and making for tidewater.

To-day would see the last of Miss Vost, a termination of that serio-
humorous love affair of theirs, which, on the whole, had been one of his
most delightful experiences. He wondered whether or not she would ask
him to kiss her good-bye. He rather hoped she would.

On the other hand, he hoped she would do nothing of the kind. Distance
was lending enchantment to Eileen Lorimer. He was sure this was not
infatuation. She was not the first; he had had affairs; oh, numbers of them!
But they were mere fragments of his adventurous life. They were
milestones, shadowy and vague and very far away now. Dear little
milestones, each of them!

Sometime he would go to Eileen, and get down on his knees before her
in humility, and ask her if she could overlook his systematic and hardened
faults! When would he do this? Frankly, he did not know.

He dozed off, and it seemed only an instant later when he was awakened
by a harsh cry.

The port-hole was still dark. Morning was a long way off.

The cry was repeated, was joined by others, excited and fearful.

Peter sat up in bed, and was instantly thrown back by a sudden lurch.
Next came a dull booming and banging. The stateroom was filled with the
hot, sweet smell of smoking wood, the smell that is caused by the friction of
wood against wood, or wood against steel.

Another pounding and booming. Some one hammered at the door. Peter
tried to turn on the electric light. There was no current. He opened the door.

Bobbie, shoeless and collarless, dressed only in pants and shirt, towered
over the light of a candle which he held in a hand that shook.

"A collision! Junk rammed us! Get up quick! Don't know damage. Call
Miss Vost! Get on deck! Take care of her! My hands filled with this dam'
boat."

Peter snatched his clothes, and before he was out of his pajamas the
Hankow began to keel over. It slid down, until the port-hole dipped into the
muddy current. Water slopped in and drenched his knees and feet.

He yanked open the door, not stopping to lace his shoes, and called Miss
Vost. She had heard the excitement, and was dressing. The floor lurched
again, and he was thrown violently against a sharp-edged post.

Miss Vost's door was flung open, and she stumbled down the sloping
floor, bracing her hands against his chest to catch herself.

"We're sinking," she said without fear.

To Peter it was evident that Miss Vost had never been through the
capsizing of a ship before. He fancied he caught a thrill of eager, almost
exultant, excitement in her voice. In that vestibule, he knew they were rats
in a water-trap, or soon would be.

He still felt weak and limp from his fall against the post, and he was
trying hard to regain his strength before they began their perilous ascent to
the deck.

Miss Vost misunderstood his hesitancy.

"I am not afraid, not a bit!" she declared, holding with both hands the
folds of his unbuttoned shirt. "I am never afraid with you! When I am in
danger, you—you are always near. It—it seems that you were put here to—
to look after me. But there is no danger—is there?" She shook him almost
playfully.

"Cut out your babbling," he snapped. "Get to that stairway!"

He heard the breath hiss in between her teeth. But she clung to his arm
obediently. They sprawled and slipped in the darkness to the stairs. Clinging
to the railing, they reached the deck, which was inclined so steeply that they
clung to the cabin-rail for support.

In the dark on all sides of them coolies shouted in high-pitched voices.
Heavy rain was falling, drumming on the deck. The odor of wood rubbing
against steel persisted. They could see nothing. The world was dark, and
filled with contusion.

A sharp explosion took place in the bows. Chains screamed through the
air and clanged on metal and wood. One of the forward anchor-chains had
parted.

The deck was tilted again. Bobbie MacLaurin was not in evidence. Peter
shouted for him until he was hoarse. Then he left Miss Vost and groped his
way to the starboard davits. The starboard life-boat was gone!

Suddenly the rain ceased. A dull red glow smouldered on the eastern
heaven.

Miss Vost was praying, praying for courage, for help. She clung to him,
and sobbed. By and by her nerves seemed to steady themselves.

There was nothing to do but wait for daylight—and pray that the
gurgling waters might not rise any higher.

The glow in the east increased, and permitted them to see the vague
outlines of a looming shape which seemed to grow out of the bows. As
dawn came, Peter made out the form of a huge junk, which had pinioned
and crushed the foredeck rail under her brawny poop.

Then the remaining anchor-cable snapped like a rotten thread. Dimly
they saw the end of the chain whip upward and crash down. A coolie,
paralyzed, stood in its way. The broken end struck him in the face. He
screamed and rolled down the deck until he lodged against the rail.

Bobbie shouted their names, and scrambled and slipped down.

"We're trying to get up steam. Our only chance. Both forward anchors
gone. We'll swing around with the current and lose this damn junk. If the
after anchor holds till steam's up—we're safe!" He sped aft.

The steamer shuddered, and they felt her swinging as the scattered shore
lights moved from left to right. The junk was acting as a drag. The shore
lights became stationary. A gang of coolies with grate bars were trying to
pry up the junk's coamings.

Peter was aware then that Miss Vost's arms were clinging about his neck,
and that she was whimpering softly in his ear.

Up-river boomed another explosion. The deck seemed to fall from under
his feet. Water splashed up over his toes. In the gold-speckled dawn he
could see the waters foaming and swirling, and rising higher.

He knew it was suicide to swim the Yangtze rapids, knew the whirlpools
which sucked a man down and held him down until his body was torn to
shreds. There was no alternative. And the water was now half-way to his
knees. He dragged the unresisting girl to the rail.

"Can you swim—at all?"

"A—a little," she chattered.

"Hold to my collar and swim with one hand. Only try to keep afloat."

They slipped into the racing current, were seized, and spun around and
around. Above the drone of the waters he heard the roar of a whirlpool,
coming rapidly nearer. The firm clutch of Miss Vost's hand on his collar was
not loosened. Occasionally he heard her gasp and sputter as a wave washed
over her face.

They were swept down. On they went, spinning, snatched from one eddy
to another. The roar of the whirlpool receded, became a low growl and
mutter.

Now they could see the churning surface covered with torn bits of
wreckage. A body, bloated and discolored, spun by, and was caught and
dragged under, leaving only an indescribable stench.

After a while the northern shore, a low, brown bank, crept out toward
them, like a long, merciful arm. In another minute Peter's bare feet came in
contact with slimy, yielding mud. They were in shoal water!

He picked up Miss Vost in his arms, and carried her ashore; and she
clung to him, shivering and moaning. He did not realize until afterward that
she was kissing him over and over again on his wet lips and cheeks.

Coolies found them, and carried them to a village, and deposited them in
a little red clay compound behind a building of straw. A bonfire was
kindled. The sun came up, a disk that might have been cut out of red tissue-
paper.

Some time later a tall man came into the clearing with a little group of
coolies who were pointing out the way. A white patriarchal beard extended
nearly to his waist.

He saw Miss Vost and shouted. She leaped up, was enfolded in his arms.

Peter stared at them a moment with a look that was somewhat dazed. He
picked himself up, and skulked out of the compound, in the direction of the
foaming river.

His mind was not in a normal state just then, or he would not have
wanted to cross to Ching-Fu in a sampan. But he did want to cross. In the
back of his brain foolish words were urging him: "You must get to Ching-
Fu. You must go on to Len Yang. Hurry! Hurry!"

He had no money. A box filled with perforated Szechwan coins now lay
at the bottom of the river in what was left of the Hankow. Nevertheless, he
hailed a sampan as though his pockets were weighted down with lumps of
purest silver.

The boat leaked in dozens of places. The paddle, scarred and battered,
clung to the stern by means of a rotting leather thong. As Peter looked and
hesitated, a long, imperative cry issued from behind him. Possibly Miss
Vost wanted him to return.

The coolie stipulated his price, and Peter stepped aboard without a
murmur, without looking around, either. The crossing was precarious. They
skirted the edge of more than one whirl; they were caught and tossed about
in waves as large as houses. Peter kept his eye on the rotting thong, and
marveled because it actually held.

Deposited on the edge of Ching-Fu's bund, he confessed his poverty, and
offered his shirt in payment. The shirt was of fine golden silk, woven in the
Chinan-Fu mills. For more than a year it had worn like iron, and it had more
than an even chance of continuing to do so.

Peter stripped off the shirt before a mob of squealing children, and the
coolie scrutinized it. He accepted it, and blessed Peter, and Peter's virtuous
mother, and called upon his green-eyed gods to make the days of Peter long
and filled with the rice of the land.

CHAPTER XVI

With the coming of noon Peter sat down under a stunted cembra pine
tree and contemplated the distant rocky blue ridge with a wistful and
discouraged air. He removed from his trouser-pocket two yellow loquats
and devoured them.

He was dreadfully hungry. His stomach fathered a dull, persistent ache,
which forced upon his attention the pains in his muscles and bones. It was
their way of complaining against the abuse he had heaped upon them during
the past twenty-four hours.

He was beginning to feel weak and dispirited. His was a constitution that
arose to emergencies in quick, battling trim; but when the emergency was
past, his vitality seemed to be drained.

He looked down the muddy brown road as he finished the second loquat
(which he had stolen from a roadside farm in passing) and estimated that
Ching-Fu was all of ten miles behind him. Walking through the pasty blue
mud in his bare feet, with the rain streaming through his hair and down his
beard and shoulders, had been tedious, trying. Several times he had stopped,
with his feet sinking in the clay, and cursed the Yangtze with bitterness.

What had become of Bobbie MacLaurin? Had that noble soul been
snatched down by the River of Golden Sands?

He cursed the river anew, for Bobbie was a man after God's own heart.
Never had there lived such a generous, such a fine and brave comrade.
More than once the mule-kick which lurked behind those big, kind, red fists
had saved Peter from worse than black eyes.

He would never forget that night on the pier at Salina Cruz, when the
greaser had flashed out a knife, bent on carving a hole in Peter's heart—and
Bobbie had come up from behind and knocked the raving Mexican a dozen
feet off the pier into the limpid Pacific!

Those days were ended now. The adventures, the excitement, the
sorrows, and the fiery gladness were all well beyond recall.

Peter leaned back against the thorny trunk of the cembra pine, and
sniffed the odors of drenched earth, listened to the drip and patter of the
cold, gray rain, and gazed pessimistically at the blue crest of rock which
lifted its granite shoulders high into the mist miles away.

He stretched himself, groaned, and staggered on through the mire.

The valley was filled with the blue shades of dusk when he espied some
distance beyond him what was evidently a camp, a caravan at rest. The
setting sun managed at last to burrow its way through a rift of purple before
sinking down behind the granite range, to leave China to the mercies of its
long night.

These departing rays, striking through the purple crevice, and setting its
edges smolderingly aflame with red and gold, became a narrow, dwindling
spotlight, which brought out in black relief the figures of men and mules, of
drooping tents and curling wisps of cookfire smoke. The sun was
swallowed up, and the camp vanished.

Peter plunged on, with one leg dragging more reluctantly than the other.
But he had sensed the odor of cooking food in the quiet air.

A sentry whose head was adorned by a dark-red turban presented the
point of his rifle as Peter approached. He shouted, was joined by others,
both Chinese and Bengalis, and Peter, not adverse even to being in the
hands of enemies as long as food was imminent, was inducted into the
presence of a kingly personage, who sat upon a carved teak stool.

This creature, by all appearances a mandarin, of middle age, was garbed
in a stiff, dark satin gown, heavy with gold and jewels which flashed
brightly in the light of a camp-fire. His severe, dark face was long, and
stamped with intelligence of a high order. He wore a mustache which
drooped down to form a hair wisp on either side of his small, firm mouth.

As Peter was whisked into his presence he placed his elbow with a slow,
deliberate motion upon his knee, and rested his rounded chin in his palm,
bestowing upon the mud-spattered newcomer a look that searched into
Peter's soul.

A single enormous diamond blazed upon the knuckle of his forefinger.

He put a question in a tongue that Peter did not understand. It was a
deep, resonant voice, with the mellow, rounded tones of certain temple-
bells, such a sound as is diffused long after the harsh stroke of the wooden
boom has subsided. Vibrant with authority, it was such a voice as men obey,
however much they may hate its owner. He repeated the question in
Mandarin, and again Peter indicated that that was not his speech.

A different voice, yet quite as impelling as the other, caused Peter to look
up sharply. The mandarin smiled wisely, but not unkindly.

"The darkness deceived me," he said in English of a strange cast. "I
mistook you for a beggar. You are far from the river, my friend. The bones
of your steamer lie fathoms deep by now. Why are you so far from Ching-
Fu? You were stunned, perhaps?"

"I am only hungry," said Peter boldly. "My way lies into India. There I
have friends."

The mandarin studied him dubiously, and clapped his hands, the great
diamond cutting an oval of many colors. Coolies were given up by the
night, and ran to obey his guttural, musical commands. They returned with
steaming bowls of rice and meat, and a narrow lacquer table.

"Come and sit beside me. Your feet must be sore—bleeding. You may
call me Chang. So I am known to my British friends on the frontier. I have
been ill, a mountain fever, perhaps. In Ching-Fu. I had expected medicine
on the river steamer."

He snapped his fingers, and whispered to a coolie whose face was gaunt
and stolid in the flickering red glow of the fire.

So while Peter consumed the rice and stew, his bruised feet were bathed
in warm water, rubbed with a soothing ointment, and wrapped in a downy
bandage.

A blue liquor served in cups of shell silver completed the meal. The
aromatic syrup, which exhaled a perfume that was indescribably oriental,
sent an exhilarating fire through his veins. It seemed to clarify his thoughts
and vision, to oil his aching joints, and remove their pain.

From the corner of his eye he detected the silken folds of the mandarin's
lofty tent, in the murky interior of which a fat, yellow candle sputtered and
dripped. When his eyes came back to the table, the bowls and cups had been
removed, and in their place was a chess-board inlaid with ivory and pearl.

Inspired by the cordial, and the queerness of this setting, Peter felt that
he was the central figure of a dream. The pungent odor of remote incense,
the distant tinkling of a bell, the stamping and pawing of the mules and the
brooding figure in silk and gold at his side, took him back across the ages to
the days and nights of Scheherezade.

And the mandarin appeared to be hungry for Peter's companionship.
Over the chess-board, between plays, they discoursed lengthily upon the
greatness of the vast empire, once she should awake; upon the menace of
the wily Japanese; upon the lands across the mountains and beyond the
seas, and their peoples, of which Chang had read much but had never
visited.

Wood was heaped upon the fire, which flared up and leaped after the
crowding shadows.

It was the life that Peter dearly loved.

The mandarin's eyes glowed, and rested upon him for longer spaces. His
words and sentences came fewer and more reluctant.

In one of these pauses he seized Peter's hand. And Peter was forthwith
given the meagre details of a story, neither the beginning nor the end of
which he would ever know. It was the cross-section of a tale of intrigue, of
cold-blooded killings that chased the thrills up and down his spine; a tale of
loot, of gems that had vanished, of ingots and kernels of gold that had
leaked from iron-bound chests.

The mandarin uttered his woe in a quivering voice, shifting from a
Bengal patois to Mandarin, and again to reckless English.

Peter was given to understand that in Chang's camp was a traitor, a man
who eluded him, whose identity was shielded, a snake that could not be
stamped out unless the lives of every one of his attendants were taken!

In a composed voice Chang, the mandarin, was saying:

"You have walked far. You are weary. Another couch is in my tent. You
shall sleep there."

The candle was guttering low in its bronze socket when Peter awoke. A
cool breeze stirred the tent flaps. A queer feeling oozed in his veins.

He lay still, breathing regularly, searching the corners with eyes that
were brighter than a rat's. The low sleep-mutterings of the mandarin
continued from the couch across from him.

Slowly the tent flaps were being drawn back. Peter strained his eyes until
they ached. He was impelled to shout, to awaken his companion. Yet the
visitor might be bent on legitimate business. He would wait. In the final
analysis it was Peter's profound acquaintance with the ways of the East
which sealed his lips. In the heart of China one does not strike at shadows,
or shriek at sight of them. Not always.

At his side between the covers lay a strong, naked dagger. Why the
mandarin had provided him with the weapon he did not know.

A gray shadow entered the tent and backed noiselessly against the front
pole. Indeed, not a sound was created by his entrance, not even the rustling
whisper of bare feet on dry grass. It seemed very ominous, mysterious, and
ghostly.

The gray shadow floated into the candle-light, which waved and
quivered a little as the still air was disturbed. Peter was conscious that he
was being acutely examined. Not a muscle of his face twitched. He

continued to breathe regularly, with the heaviness of a man steeped in sleep.
Tentatively he permitted his lids to raise.

The intruder's back was toward him. He was bending with slow stealth
over the mandarin's face. What was the fellow doing?

Peter caught the glint of metal, or glass. At the same time a powerful,
sickening odor spread through the tent.

Peter groped for the naked dagger, bounded up from the couch with a
nervous cry, and burled the steel up to its costly jeweled hilt in the foremost
shoulder.

Without a sound the man in gray turned part way round, and a shudder
ran through him, causing the folds of his garment to flap slightly. He sank
down with a sigh like wind stealing through a cavern, and his fingers
clawed feebly in the leaping shadow.

Peter detected a tiny glass vial spilling out its dark, volatile fluid upon
the dust. He picked it up, but it was snatched from his hand. The dull pig-
eyes of Chang stared very close to his, with the stupefaction of sleep still
extending the irises into round dark pools. The vial was in his hand, and he
was sampling its odor, waving it slowly back and forth under his wide
nostrils. He shouted, and turbaned men filed into the tent, and carried the
gray figure away.

The hand of Chang rested upon Peter's shoulder, and in a voice that
throbbed with the sonorousness of a Buddha temple-gong he said:

"You have rendered me a service for which I can never sufficiently repay
you—for I value my life highly! In the morning your mind will have
forgotten what has taken place. Try to sleep now. You will obey—
promptly!"

The candle sputtered and jumped, as if it were striving mightily to
lengthen its golden life if only for another minute; and went out.

From Chow Yang to Lun-Ling-Ting all the land could not provide
costlier raiment than Peter found at his bedside when the long, high-keyed
cries of the mule men opened his eyes upon another morning.

When camp was broken up, long before the sun became hot, he was
given a small but able mule; and he rode down the valley toward India at
Chang's side. They moved at the head of a long, slow train, for here bandits
were not feared, despite the loneliness of the land through which they were
traveling. Farms became more scattered, more widely separated by patches
of broken, barren rock; and, finally, all traces of the microscopic cultivation
which gave Szechwan Province its lean fruitfulness were left behind them.

The mandarin rode for many miles in silence, occasionally changing
reins, looking steadily and gloomily ahead of him, with his attention
riveted, it seemed, upon the sharp and ceaseless clatter of his mule's hoofs
and the twisting rock road.

Peter's mind was fixed upon the problem which crept hourly nearer. His
head was cast between his shoulders as if the weight of a sorrowful world
rested upon that narrow, well-proportioned skull, with its covering of
shining light hair.

He loved his task as a man might love a selfish and thoughtless woman,
who demanded and craftily accepted all that he could give, to the last ounce
of his gold and the final drop of his blood. It was a thankless task, yet it had
grace.

It was well past mid-morning before Chang spoke the first word.

"A grateful dream came into my sleep last night. For years I have fought
in the darkness with a man who has the heart of Satan himself. He has
robbed me. Time after time he has sent into my camp his spies. Some were
more adroit than others. But none so adroit as the coolie from Len Yang."

Peter repressed his surprise, and merely winked his eyes thoughtfully a
number of times. Chang went on:

"In this dream last night a young man was given into my keeping whose
spirit and manliness have not yet been soiled. His gratitude was immediate.
In return for the acts which grew out of that gratitude, I am prepared to give
him anything that is mine, or in my power, whether he desires wealth, or
position, or my friendship."

"The young man," said Peter gravely, "desires neither wealth nor
position. If he has been of service to the man who befriended him, that is
enough."

"Should he desire a favor of any kind——"

"Then help him to reach his enemy, who is your enemy, who is the Gray
Dragon of Len Yang!"

"In jest——"

"In all seriousness!" said Peter.

"It is death to enter Len Yang!"

"My mind is made up, mandarin!"

They had entered a narrow ravine, and on both sides of the slender trail
rose up sharp elbows of hard rock. Peter's head was inclined a little to the
right in an attitude he unconsciously assumed when listening for important
words of man or wireless machine.

"It is the folly of adventurous youth," rang out the melodious and sincere
voice of the mandarin. "It is a quest for a grail which will end in a pool of
your own blood! Come into India with me!"

"But I decided—long ago—mandarin!"

"Your life is your life," said the mandarin sadly. "The City of Stolen
Lives is beyond the mountain. Ch'ing!"

CHAPTER XVII

A road as white and straight as a silver bar led directly between the
black, jutting shoulders of the hills to the gates of Len Yang.

Peter, with his heart beating a wild symphony of anticipation and fear,
drew rein.

The small mule panted from the long desperate climb, his plump sides
filling and caving as he drank in the sharp evening air.

Close behind the city's faded green walls towered the mountain ranges of
Tibet, cold, gloomy, and vague in the purple mystery of their uncertain
distances. They were like chained giants, brooding over the wrongs
committed in the City of Stolen Lives, sullen in their mighty helplessness.

In the rays of the swollen sun the close-packed hovels enclosed within
the moss-covered walls seemed to rest upon a blurring background of
vermilion earth.

As Peter clicked his tongue and urged the tired little animal down the
slope, he recalled the fragment of the description that had been given him of
this place. Hideous people, with staring eyes, dripping the blood-red slime
of the cinnabar-mines—leprosy, filth, vermin—

His palace! It stood out above the carmine ruck like a cube of purest
ivory in a bleeding wound. Its marble outrivaled the whiteness of the Taj
Mahal. It was a thing of snow-white beauty, like a dove poising for flight
above a gory battlefield. And it was crowned by a dome of lapis lazuli,
bluer than the South Pacific under a melting sun! But its base, Peter knew,
was stained red, a blood-red which had seeped up and up from the carmine
clay.

The gate to the city was down, and by the grace of his blue-satin robe
Peter was permitted to enter.

And instantly he was obsessed with the flaming color of that man's
unappeased passion. Red—red! The hovels were spattered with the red clay.
The man, the skinny, wretched creature who begged for a moment of his
gracious mercy at the gate, dripped in ruby filth. The mule sank and
wallowed in vermilion mire.

Scrawny, undernourished children, naked, or in rags that afforded little
more protection than nakedness, thrust their starved, red-smeared faces up
at him, and gibed and howled.

And above all this arose the white majesty of his palace—the throne of
the Gray Dragon!

Peter urged the mule up the scarlet alley to a clearing in which he found
coolies by the thousands, trudging moodily from a central orifice that
continued to disgorge more and more of them. The dreadful, reeking
creatures blinked and gaped as if stupefied by the rosy light of the dying
day.

Some carried lanterns of modern pattern; others bore picks and shovels
and iron buckets, and they seemed to pass on interminably, to be engulfed
in the lanes which ran in all directions from the clearing.

It was as though the earth were vomiting up the vilest of its creatures.
And in the same light it was consuming others of equal vileness. Down into
the red maws of the shaft an endless chain of men and women and children
were descending.

Quite suddenly the light gave way, and Peter was aware that the night of
the mountains was creeping out over the city, blotting out its
disfigurements, replacing the hideous redness with a velvety black.

At the shaft's entrance a sharp spot of dazzling light sprang into being. It
was an electric arc light! Somehow this apparition struck through the horror
that saturated him, and he sighed as if his mind had relinquished a clinging
nightmare.

Professionally now he gave this section of Len Yang another scrutiny.
Thick cables sagged between stumpy poles like clusters of black snakes, all
converging at the mine's entrance. His acute ears were registering a dull
hum, indicating the imminence of high-geared machinery or of dynamos.

At the further side of the red shaft, now crusted with the night's shades,
and garishly illuminated by the diamond whiteness of the frosty arc, he
made out a deep, wide ditch, where flowed slowly a ruddy current, supplied
from a short fat pipe.

Peter believed that electric pumps sucked out the red seepage waters
from the mine and lifted them to the bloody ditch.

On impulse he lifted his eyes to the darkening heavens, and he knew
now that the threads of this, his greatest adventure, were being drawn to a
meeting point; for he detected in the sun's last refracted rays the bronze
glint of aerial wires! What lay at the base of the antenna he could guess
accurately. He hastened to the base of the nearest aerial mast—a pole
reaching like a dark needle into the sky—and found there a low, dark
building of varnished pine with a small door of eroded, green brass.

The rain-washed pine, the complete absence of windows, and the
austerity of the massive brass door contributed to a personality of dignified
and pessimistic aloofness. The building occupied a place to itself, as if its
reserve were not to be tampered with, as if its dark and sullen mystery were
not meant for the prying eyes of passing strangers.

Peter knocked brazenly upon the door, and it clanked shallowly, giving
forth no inward echo. He waited expectantly.

It yawned open to the accompaniment of grumbled curses in a distinctly
tenor whine.

A man with a white, shocked face stared at him from the threshold. The
countenance was long, tapering, and it ended nowhere. Dull, mocking eyes
with a burned-out look in them stared unblinkingly into Peter's face.

Peter could have shouted in recognition of the weak face, but he
compressed his lips and bowed respectfully instead.

"What the hell do you want?" growled the man on the threshold.

"May Buddha bring the thousandth blessing to the soul of your virtuous
mother," said Peter in solemn, benedictive tones. "It is my pleasure to desire
entrance."

"Speak English, eh?" shrilled the man. "Dammit! Then come in!" And to
this invitation he added blasphemy in Peter's own tongue that made his
heart turn sour. It was the useless, raving blasphemy of a weakling. It was
the man as Peter had known him of old. But a little worse. He still wore
what remained of his Marconi uniform, tattered, grease-stained coat and
trousers, with the ragged white and blue emblems of the steamship line by
which he had been employed before he had disappeared. His bony hands
trembled incessantly, and his face had the chalky pastiness native to the
opium eater.

Peter, reflecting upon the honor which that uniform had always meant
for him, felt like knocking this chattering, wild-eyed creature down and
trampling upon him. But he bowed respectfully. The door clanged behind
him, and his eye absorbed in an instant the details of the ponderously high-
powered electrical apparatus.

"Speak God's language, eh?" whined the man. "Sit down and don't stare
so. Sit down. Sit down."

"A mandarin never seats himself, O high one, until thrice invited."

"Thrice, four, five times, I tell you to sit down!" he babbled. "Men, even
rat-eaters like you, who speak my language, are too rare to let go by.
Mandarin?"

He stepped back and eyed his guest with stupid humor.

"I say, men who speak my language are rare. Nights I listen to fools on
this machine, and tell them what I please. What is the news from outside?

What is the news from home?"

"From where?"

"From America!" He stumbled over the words, and took in his breath
with a long, trembling hiss between his yellow teeth.

"It is many years since I visited that strange land, O great one! It is
many, many years, indeed, since I studied for the craft which you now
perform so honorably."

"You—what was that?"

"I, too, studied to your honorable craft, my son. But it was denied me.
Buddha decreed that I should preach his doctrines. It is my life to bring a
little hope, a little gladness into the hearts——"

"You stand there and tell me that you know the code?" cried the white-
faced man shrilly.

"Such was my good fortune," Peter replied gravely.

"Well, I believe you're a dam' liar, you Chink!" scoffed the other, who
was swinging in nervousness or irritation from side to side.

Peter shrugged his shoulders, and permitted his gaze to fondle the
monstrous transmission coil.

"I'll show you!" railed the man. "I'll give you a free chance, I will! Now,
listen to me. Tell me what I say." He pursed his lips and whistled a series of
staccato dots and dashes.

"What you have said," replied Peter in a deep voice, "is true, O high
one!"

"What did I say?"

"You said: 'China, it is the hell-hole of the world!' Do I speak the truth?"

Peter thought that this crazy man—whose name had formerly been
Harrison—was preparing to leap at him. But Harrison only sprang to his
side and seized his hands in a clammy, excited grip. Tears of an exultant
origin glittered in the man's eyes, now luminous.

"You stay with me, do you hear?" he babbled. "You stay here. I'll make it
worth your while! I'll see you have money. I'll see——"

"But I have no need of money, O high one!" interrupted Peter in a
somewhat resentful tone, striving to mask his eagerness.

"You stay!" cried Harrison.

"Lotus eater!" Peter said, knowing his ground perfectly.

"What if I am?" demanded Harrison defiantly. "So are you! So are we
all! So is everybody who lives in this rotten country!"

"To the sick, all are sick," Peter quoted sorrowfully.

"Rot! As long as I must have opium, there's nothing more to be said.
Now, I pry my eyes open with matches to stay awake. With you here——"

His thin voice trailed off. He had confessed what Peter already knew. It
was the blurted confession, and the blurted plea, of a mind that was half
consumed by drugs. A diseased mind which spoke the naked truth, which
caught at no deception, which was tormented by its own gnawings and
cravings to such an extent that it had lost the function of suspecting.
Suspicion of a low, distorted sort might come later; but at its present ebb
this mind was far too greedy to gain its own small ends to grope beyond.

The lids of Harrison's smoldering eyes drew down, and they were blue, a
sickly, pallid blue. With their descent his face became a death-mask. But
Peter knew from many an observation that such signs were deceptive; knew
that opium was a powerful and sustaining drug; knew that Harrison, while
weak and stupid and raving, was very much alive!

"There is little work to be done," went on the thin voice. "Only at night.
Say you will stay with me!" he pleaded.

Peter permitted himself to frown, as if he had reached a negative
decision. Harrison, torn by desire, flung himself down on his ragged knees,
and sobbed on Peter's hand. Peter pushed him away loathfully.

"What is my task?"

Harrison sank back on his heels, oblivious of the wet streak which ran
down from his eyes on either side of his thin, sharp nose, and delved
nervously into his pocket. He withdrew a lump of black gum, about the size
of a black walnut, broke off a fragment with his finger-nails, and masticated
it slowly. He smirked sagely.

"He won't care. Why should he care?"

"Who, my son?"

"That man—that man who owns Len Yang, and me, and these rat-eaters.
All he wants is results."

"Ah, yes. He owns other mines?"

"What does he care about the mines? Of course he directs the other
mines by wireless. He owns a sixth of the world. He does. He is rich. Rich!
You and I are poor fools. He gives me opium"—Harrison glared and gulped
—"and he does not ask questions."

"Wise men learn without asking questions, my son," said Peter gravely.

"Certainly they do! He knows everything, and he never asks a question.
Not a one! He answers them, he does!"

"You have asked him questions?"

"I? Humph! What an innocent fool you are, in spite of that gold on your
collar! Have I seen him to ask questions?"

"That is what I meant."

"Not I. He is no fool. You may be the Gray Dragon for all of me. No one
in Len Yang sees him. No one dares! It is death to see that man! Didn't I
try? But only once!"

"You did try?"

"That was enough. I got as far as the first step of the ivory palace. Some
one clubbed me! I was sick. I thought I was going to die! There is a scar on
my neck. It never seems to heal!"

The senile whine trailed off into a thin, abusive whimper. His bony jaws
moved slowly and meditatively. He went on:

"He is crazy, too. Women! Beautiful women for the mines! Men—men
—men everywhere know the price he will pay. In pure silver!"

"He pays well, my son?"

"A thousand taels, if he is satisfied. That is where this hole got its name.
You know the name—the City of Stolen Lives? It should be the City of Lost
Hope. For none ever leave. The mines swallow them up. What becomes of
them?"

"Ah! What does become of the stolen lives?"

The sunken eyes stared playfully at him. "What is a thousand taels to
him? He is rich, I tell you! They say his cellar is filled with gold—pure
gold; that his rooms and halls run and drip with gold, just as his rat-eaters
run and drip with the cinnabar poison. And the wireless—he has stations,
and this is the best. Mine is the best. I see to that, let me tell you!"

"To be sure!"

"These hunters, these men who know his price for beautiful women—he
will have none other—and who are paid a thousand taels——"

"Where did you say these stations are?"

"In all parts. There is a station in Afghanistan, between Kabul and
Jalalabad, and one in Bengal, in the Khasi Hills, and another in northern
Szechwan Province, and one in Siam, on the Bang Pakong River——"

"A station on the Bang Pakong?"

"Yes, I tell you. All over. These hunters find a woman, a lovely girl; and
they must describe their prize in a few words. He is sly! The fewer the
better. If the words appeal to him, he has me tell them to come. Lucky
devils! A thousand taels to the lucky devils! Some day I myself may
become a hunter."

"It is tempting," agreed Peter. "But why does he want beautiful young
girls for his mine, my son?"

Harrison ignored the question.

"To-night I will listen. You can watch me. Then you can see how simple
it is. It is time."

Peter was aware that the door had opened and closed behind his back,
and now he heard the faint scraping of a sandaled foot, heavy with the red
slime. A Chinese, in the severe black of an attendant, stood looking down at
him distrustfully. His eyebrows were shaved, and a mustache drooped down
to his sharp, flat chin like sea-weed.

He asked Harrison a sharp question in a dialect that smacked of the
guttural Tibetan.

"He wants to know where you came from," translated Harrison irritably.

"From Wenchow. A mandarin. He should know."

The man in severe black bowed respectfully, and Peter looked at him
frigidly.

Harrison slipped the Murdock receivers over his ears, and his voice went
on in a weak, garrulous and meaningless whimper.

"Static—static—static. It is horrible to-night. I cannot hear these fellows.
Ah! Afghanistan has nothing, nor Bengal. Hey, you fool, I cannot hear this
fellow in Szechwan. He has a message. Yes, you, I cannot hear him. Not a
word! He is faint, like a bad whisper. They will beat me again if I cannot
hear!"

He tried again, forcing the rubber knobs against his ears until they
seemed to sink into his head.

"Have you good hearing?"

"I will try," said Peter.

"Then sit here. You must hear him, or we will both be beaten. This
fellow goes straight to him."

Peter slipped into the vacated chair and strapped down the receivers. A
long, faint whisper, as indistinguishable as the lisp of leaves on a distant
hill, trickled into his ears. Ordinarily he would have given up such a station
in disgust, and waited for the air to clear. Now he wanted to establish his
ability, to demonstrate the acuteness of hearing for which he was famous.

Behind him the black-garbed attendant muttered, and Peter scowled at
him to be silent.

With deftness that might have surprised that wretch, Harrison, had his
wits been more alert, he raised and closed switches for transmission, and
rapped out in a quick, professional "O.K."

He cocked his head to one side, as he always did when listening to far-
away signals, and a pad and pencil were slid under his hand.

The world and its noises and the tense, eager figures behind him,
retreated and became nothing. In all eternity there was but one thing—the
message from the whispering Szechwan station.

His pencil trailed lightly, without a sound, across the smooth paper.

A message for L. Y. An American girl. Brown hair. Eyes with the moon's
mystery. Lips like a new-born rose. Enchantingly young.

The blood boiled into Peter's brain, and the pencil slipped from fingers
that were like ice. There was only one girl in the world who answered to
that description. Eileen Lorimer! She had been captured again, and brought
back to China!

He grabbed for the paper. It was gone. Gone, too, was the black-garbed
attendant, hastening to his master.

Harrison was pawing his shoulder with a skinny, white hand, and making
noises in his throat.

"You lucky fool! He'll give you cumshaw. God, you have sharp ears!
Only one man I ever knew had such sharp ears. He always gives cumshaw.
Na-mien-pu-liao-pa! You must divide with me. That is only fair. But—what
difference? Here you can enter, but you can never leave. You have no use
for silver. I have."

The face of Eileen Lorimer swam out of Peter's crazed mind. Miss Vost,
that lovely innocent-eyed creature, fitted the same description!

Peter stared stupidly at the massive transmission key, and disdained a
reply. Miss Vost—and the red mines! He shuddered.

Harrison was whining again at his ear. "He says yes. Yes! Tell that fellow
yes, and be quick. The Gray Dragon will give him an extra thousand taels
for haste. Oh, the lucky fool! Two thousand taels! Tell him, or shall I?"

How could Peter say no? The ghastly white face was staring at him
suspiciously now.

While he hesitated Harrison pushed him aside, and his fingers flew up
and down on the black rubber knob. "Yes—yes—yes. Send her in a hurry. A
thousand taels bonus. The lucky devil!"

Out of Peter's anguish came but one solution, and that vague and
indecisive. He must wait and watch for Miss Vost, and take what drastic
measures he could devise to recapture her when the time came.

The pallid lips trembled again at his ear. "Here! You must divide with
me. A bag of silver. Yin! A bag of it! Listen to the chink of it!"

Peter seized the yellow pouch and thrust it under his silken blouse. He
was beginning to realize that he had been exceptionally lucky in catching
the signals of the Szechwan station. He was vastly more important now than
this wretch who plucked at his arm.

"Give me my half!" whined Harrison.

Peter doubled his fist.

"Give me my half!" Harrison clung to his arm and shook him irritably.

Peter hit him squarely in the mouth.

CHAPTER XVIII

As night melted into day and day was swallowed up by night, the
problem which confronted Peter took on more serious and baffling
proportions. His hope of entering the ivory palace was dismissed. It was
imperative for him to give up the idea of entering, of piercing the lines of
armed guards and reaching the room where the master of the City of Stolen
Lives held forth until some later time.

That had been his earlier ambition, but the necessity of discarding the
original plan became hourly more important with the drawing near of the
girl captive.

If he could deliver Miss Vost from this dreadful city, that would be more
than an ample reward for his long, adventurous quest.

He could not sleep. Perched on an ancient leather stool upon the roof of
the wireless building, he kept a nightly and a daily watch with his eyes
fixed upon the drawbridge. A week went by. Food was carried up to him,
and he scarcely touched it. The rims of his eyes became scarlet from
sleeplessness, and he muttered constantly, like a man on the verge of
insanity, as his eyes wandered back and forth over the red filth, from the
shadowy bridge to the shining white of the palace.

Drearily, like souls lost and wandering in a half world, the prisoners of
Len Yang trudged to the scarlet maws of the mine and were engulfed for
long, pitiless hours, and were disgorged, staggering and blinking, in Tibet's
angry evening sun.

The woeful sight would madden any man. And yet each day new souls
were born to the grim red light of Len Yang's day, and clinging remorsefully
to the hell which was their lot, other bleeding souls departed, and their
shrunken bodies fed to the scarlet trough, where they were washed into
oblivion in some sightless cavern below.

It was a bitterly cold night, with the wind blowing hard from the ice and
snow on the Tibetan peaks, when Peter's long vigilance was rewarded. A
booming at the gate, followed by querulous shouts, aroused him from his
lethargy. He looked out over the crenelated wall, but the cold moonlight
revealed a vacant street.

The booming and shouting persisted, and Peter was sure that Miss Vost
had come, for in cities of China only an extraordinary event causes
drawbridges to be lowered.

He slipped down the creaking ladder into the wireless-room. Harrison
was in a torpor, muttering inanely and pleadingly as his long, white fingers
opened and closed, perhaps upon imagined gold.

Peter opened the heavy brass door, and let himself into the deserted
street. The jeweled sandals with which Chang had provided him sank deep
into the red mire, and remained there.

He sped on, until he reached the black shadow of the great green wall.
Suddenly the bridge gave way with many creakings and groanings and
Peter saw the moonlight upon the silvery white road beyond.

A group of figures, mounted on mules, with many pack-mules in
attendance, made a grotesque blot of shadow. Then a shrill scream.

Hoofs trampled hollowly upon the loose, rattling boards, and the
cavalcade marched in.

A slim figure in a long, gray cloak rode on the foremost mule. Peter,
aided by the black shadow, crept to her side.

"Miss Vost! Miss Vost!" he called softly. "It is Peter, Peter Moore!"

He heard her gasp in surprise, and her moan went into his heart like a
ragged knife.

Peter tried to keep abreast, but the red clay dragged him back. Behind
him some one shouted. They would emerge into the sharp moonlight in
another second.

"Help me! Oh, help me!" she sobbed. "He's following! He is too late!"

She was carried out into the moonlight. At the same time, countless
figures seemed to rise from the ground—from nowhere—and in every
direction Peter was blocked. The stench of Len Yang's miserable inhabitants
crept from these figures upon the chill night air.

Naked, unclean shoulders brushed him; moist, slimy hands pressed him
back. But he was not harmed; he was simply pushed backward and
backward until his bare foot encountered the first board of the bridge which
was still lowered.

Behind him an order was hissed. He placed his back to the surging
shadows. Coils of heavy rope were unfolding. The drawbridge was being
raised.

Down the white road, veering drunkenly from one side to the other,
came a leaping black dot.

The drawbridge creaked, the ropes became taut, and the far end lifted an
inch at a time.

Peter shouted, but no one heeded him. His breath pumped in and out of
his lungs in short, anguished gulps. He leaped out upon the bridge, and
shouted again. The creaking ceased; the span became stationary.

The drunken dot leaped into the form of a giant upon a galloping mule
which swept upon them in a confusion of dust. Hoofs pounded on the
bridge; the giant on the mule drew rein, and to Peter it was given to look
upon the face of the man he thought dead. The raging eyes of Bobbie
MacLaurin swept from his face to his muddy feet.

"Moore! Where have they taken her?" ripped out the giant on the mule.

"Dismount and follow me. To the white palace! Are you armed?"

"And ready to shoot every dam' yellow snake in all of China!"

He jumped heavily to the boards, and Peter caught the gleam of steel-
tipped bullets in the narrow strap which was slung from shoulder to waist.

The foreman of the rope-pullers dared to raise his head, and Bobbie
kicked him with his heavy-shod foot in the stomach, and the coolie bounded
up and backward, and lay draped limply over the side.

As they ran under the broad, dark arch into the street, he gave Peter in
one hand the thick butt of an army automatic, and in the other a half-dozen
loaded clips.

And they began blazing their way to the palace steps. Weird figures
sprang up from the muck, and were shot back to earth.

They reached the hill top, and the green moon of Tibet scored the roof of
the white palace.

A handful of guards, with rifles and swords, rushed down the broad, low
flight.

The two men flung themselves upon the clay, while high-powered
bullets plunked on either side of them or soughed overhead. The two
automatics blazed in shattering chorus. The guards parted, backed up, some
ran away, others fell, and Peter felt the sudden burn of screaming lead
across his shoulder. He slipped another clip of cartridges into the steel butt;
they leaped up and raced to the white steps. A rifle spurted and roared in the
black shadow. Bobbie groaned, staggered, and climbed on. Now they were
guided by a woman's sharp cries issuing from an areaway. And they stopped
in amazement before a majestic white-marble portal.

With two coolies struggling to pinion her arms, the girl was kicking,
scratching, biting with the fire of a wildcat, dragging them toward the
broad, white veranda.

Bobbie shot the foremost of them through the brain, and the other,
gibbering terribly, vanished into the shadow.

Peter caught Miss Vost by one hand and raced down the steps. Bobbie,
holding his head in a grotesque gesture, ran and staggered behind them.

Bobbie waved his free arm savagely. "Don't wait for me! Get her out of
this place! Don't take your eyes from her till you reach Wenchow!"

He wheeled and shot three times at a figure which had stolen up behind
him. The figure spun about and seemed to melt into a hole in the earth.

Peter wrapped his arm about Bobbie's waist and dragged him down the
hill. Miss Vost, as he realized after that demonstration in the areaway, could
handle herself.

The bridge was up. Lights glowed from hovel ways like evil red eyes.
Peter released the rope and the bridge sprang down to the road with a boom

that shook the solid walls. Bobbie's mule nosed toward them, and Peter all
but shot the friendly little animal!

Between Peter and Miss Vost, who was chattering and weeping as if her
heart was breaking, their wounded companion was lifted into the saddle.
They crossed the bridge, and the bridge was whipped up behind them.

Not until they attained the brow of the hill did they look back upon the
gloomy walls, now black and peaceful under the high clear moon. And it
was not until then that Peter marveled upon their easy escape, upon the
snatching up of the bridge as they left. Why had no shots been fired at them
as they climbed the silver road?

They trusted to no providence other than flight. All night long they
hastened toward the highway which led to Ching-Fu—and India. And they
had no breath to spare for mere words. At any moment the long arm of the
Gray Dragon might reach out and pluck them back.

Only once they paused, while Peter ripped out the satin lining of his robe
and bound up the wound in Bobbie's dazed head.

Miss Vost sat down upon a moss-covered rock and wept. She made no
effort to help him, but stared and wiped her eyes with her hands.

A misty, rosy dawn found them above the valley in which ran the
connecting road between Ching-Fu and the Irriwaddi.

Miss Vost was the first to see the camp-fires of a caravan. She laughed,
then cried, and she tottered toward Peter, who stood there, a lean weird
figure in his tattered blue robe and his tangled beard.

She extended her arms slightly as she approached, and her gray eyes
were luminous with a soft and gentle fire.

Bobbie staggered away from the mule's heaving sides, with one hand
fumbling weakly at the satin bandage, and in his eyes, too, was the look that
rarely comes into the eyes of men.

In a single glance Peter could see to the very depths of that man's
unselfish soul. It was like glancing into the light of a golden autumn
morning.

Miss Vost lifted both of Peter's hands, and one was still blue from the
back-fire of the automatic. She lifted them to her lips and kissed them
solemnly. With a little fluttering sigh she looked up at Bobbie, standing
beside her and towering above her like a strong hill.

They looked long at one another, and Peter felt for a moment curiously
negligible. He had cause to feel that his presence was absolutely unessential
when, with a happy, soft little laugh, Miss Vost sprang up and was crushed
in the cradle of Bobbie's great arms.

Peter looked down into the green valley with tears standing in his grave,
blue eyes. The caravan was slowly winding out upon the trail. In five weeks
it would leave Kalikan, the last soil of China, on the frontier of India.

Peter felt exceedingly happy as he hastened down the hillside to catch
the caravan.

PART II

THE BITTER FOUNTAIN

CHAPTER I
She bends over her work once more:
"I will weave a fragment of verse among the flowers of his robe,
and perhaps its words will tell him to return."
—LI-TAI-PE.

The newly arrived wireless operator of the Java, China, and Japan liner,
Persian Gulf, deposited his elbows upon the promenade deck-rail, and cast
a side-long glance at the Chinese coolie who had taken up a similar position
about a bumboat's length aft. And the coolie returned his deliberate stare
with a look of dreamy interest, then quickly shifted his glance to the city
which smoldered and vibrated across Batavia's glinting, steel-blue harbor.

Without turning his head the wireless man continued to watch sharply
the casual movements of this Chinese, quite as he had been observing him
since they had left Tandjong Priok in the company's launch and come out to
the Persian Gulf together.

He had suspected the fellow from the very first, and he was prepared, on
the defensive; yet he was willing and eager to take the offensive should this
son of the yellow empire so much as show the haft of his kris, or whisper a
word of counsel in his ear. The latter he feared quite as much as the former,
for it would mean many things.

As the fellow sidled a little closer, Peter was aware that the man was
making queer signals with his slanting eyes for the purpose of attracting his
attention, without arousing the curiosity or interest of any persons who
might be observing the two.

Whereupon Peter turned on his left heel, walked to the other's side and
gave him a stare of deliberate hostility.

The coolie moved backward a few inches by flexing his body; his feet
remained as they were. And as Peter ran his eye from the black crown hat to
the faded blue jacket, the black-sateen pants, which were clipped about the
ankles, giving them a mild pantaloon effect, and to the black slippers with
their thick buck-soles, the coolie smiled.

It was a smile of arrogance, of self-satisfaction. Indeed, it was the smile
of a hunter who has winged his prey, and smiles an instant to watch it
squirm before administering the death-shot.

"You wanchee my?" inquired Peter succinctly.

"You allatime go Hong Kong way?" replied the coolie, his smile
becoming a little more civil, while he measured Peter's length, breadth, and
seemed to estimate his brawn.

It was a foolish question, for the Persian Gulf, as everybody in Batavia
knew quite well, made a no-stop run from the Javanese port to Hong Kong.
Peter indicated this fact impatiently.

"No go Hong Kong way?" persisted the coolie, not relaxing that devilish
grin. "Maskee Hong Kong. Nidzen yang gïang?"

The wheezy old whistle of the Persian Gulf told the world in
unmistakable accents that sailing time was nigh. The Persian Gulf was not a
new boat or a fast boat, and she sailed in the intermediate service south of
Java. Yet she was stout, and typhoons meant very little to her as yet.

"Why not?" demanded Peter in the tones of an interlocutor.

The coolie simply lifted the flap of his blue tunic, and Peter was given
the singular glimpse of a bone-hafted knife, the blade of which he could
guess lay flat against the man's paunch.

Still the Chinese smiled, without avarice. Plainly he was stating the case
as it was known to him, reciting a lesson, as it were, which had been taught
him by one skilled in the ways of killing and of espionage.

The facts of this case were that Peter Moore should immediately
postpone or give up entirely his trip to Hong Kong for reasons best known
to the powers arrayed against him. And strangely enough, Hong Kong was
one of the two cities in China where Peter had pressing business.

It made him furious, this knowledge that the man of Len Yang had
picked up the trail again.

So Peter glanced up and down the deck to see if there would be any
witness to his act, and there was only one, a passenger. The Chinese was
still smiling, but by degrees that smile was becoming more evil and sour.
He was perplexed at the wireless operator's furtive examination of the
promenade deck. Yet he was not kept in the dark regarding Peter's
intentions much longer than it would have taken him to utter the Chinese
equivalent of Jack Robinson.

With an energetic swoop, Peter seized him by the nearest arm and leg,
and in the next breath the coolie was shooting through an awful void,
tumbling head over heels like a bag of loose rice, straight for the oily bosom
of Batavia's harbor!

So much for Peter's slight knowledge of jiu-jitsu.

He was angrily at a loss to account for the appearance of this trailer, for
he had been watchful every moment since escaping from the green walls of
that blood-tinted city, and he was positive that he had shaken off pursuit.
Yet somewhere along that trail, which ran from Len Yang to Bhamo, from
Rangoon to Penang, and around the horn of Malacca, his escape had been
betrayed.

The spies of Len Yang's master must have possessed divining rods which
plumbed the very secrets of Peter's soul.

In Batavia Peter attended to a task long deferred. He despatched a
cablegram to Eileen Lorimer in Pasadena, California, advising her that he
was still on top, very much alive, and would some day, he hoped, pay her a
visit.

He wondered what that gray-eyed little creature would say, what she
would do, upon receipt of the message from far-away Java. It had been
many long months since their parting on the rain-soaked bund at Shanghai.
That scene was quite clear in his mind when he turned from the Batavia
cable office to negotiate his plan with the wireless man of the Persian Gulf.

Peter found the man willing, if not positively eager, to negotiate—a
circumstance that Peter forecasted in his mind as soon as his eyes had dwelt
a fleeting moment upon the pudgy white face with its greedy, small, black
eyes. The man was quite willing to lose himself in the hills behind Batavia
until the Persian Gulf was hull down on the deep-blue horizon, upon a
consideration of gold.

Peter could have paid his passage to Hong-Kong, and achieved his ends
quite as handily as in his present role of wireless operator. But his fingers
had begun to itch again for the heavy brass transmission-key, and his ears
were yearning for the drone of radio voices across the ethereal void.

It was on sailing morning that he was given definite evidence in the
person of the Chinese coolie that his zigzagged trail had been picked up
again by those alert spies of Len Yang's monarch.

He steamed out to the high black side of the steamer in the company's
passenger-launch, gazing back at the drowsy city, quite sure that the pursuit
was off, when he felt the glinting black eyes of the coolie boring into him
from the tiny cabin doorway.

His suspicions kindled slowly, and he admitted them reluctantly. It was
the privilege of any Chinese coolie to stare at him, quite as it was the
privilege of a cat to stare at a king. But the seed of mistrust was sown, and it
was sown in fertile soil.

Peter ignored the stare, however, until the launch puffed up alongside the
sea-ladder, then he gave the coolie a glance pregnant with hostility and
understanding.

Taking the swaying steps three at a time, Peter hastened to his stateroom,
emerging about five minutes later in a white uniform, the uniform of the J.
C. & J. service, with a little gold at the collar, bands of gold about the cuffs,
and gold emblems of shooting sparks, indicative of his caste, upon either
arm.

He looked for the coolie and found him on the starboard side of the
promenade deck. The subsequent events have already been partly narrated.

CHAPTER II

The coolie plunged into the water with a weltering splash which sent a
small spiral of spray almost to the deck. For a moment the man in the water
pedaled and flailed, vastly frightened, and gasping, above the clang of the
engine-room telegraph, for a rope. The black side of the Persian Gulf
started to slide away from him.

"You better make for shore!" shouted Peter between megaphonic hands.

Several boatmen were poling in the coolie's direction, but all of them
refrained from slipping within reach of the thrashing hands. A Javanese
boatman can find more amusing and enjoyable scenes than an angry
Chinese coolie flailing about in the water; but he must travel many miles to
find them.

"Swim to the ma-fou," Peter encouraged him. He knew there were sharks
in that emerald pond.

His attention then was diverted by a flutter of white at his elbow. He
turned his head. The lonely passenger, a girl, was smiling mischievously

into his face. But in her very dark eyes there was a blunt question.

"Why did you do that?" she asked in a voice that rang with a low
musical quality. Her voice and her beauty were of the tropics, as were the
features which, molded together, gave form to that beauty; because her hair
and eyes were of a color, dark like walnut, and her olive skin was like silk
under silk, with the rosy color of her youth and fire showing underneath.

She was rather startling, especially her deep, dark and restless eyes. It
was by sense rather than by anything his eyes could base conclusions upon
that Peter realized her spirited personality, knew instinctively that radiant
and destructive fires burned behind the sombre, questioning eyes. The full,
red lips might have told him this much.

And now these lips were forming a smile in which was a little humor
and a great deal of tenderness.

Why there should be any element of tenderness in the stranger's smile
was a point that Peter was not prepared to analyze. He had been subjected
to the tender smiles of women, alas! on more than one occasion; and it was
part of Peter's nature to take these gifts unquestioningly. He was not one to
look a gift smile in the mouth! Yet, if Peter had looked back upon his
experience, he would have admitted that such a smile was slightly
premature, that it smacked of sweet mystery.

And it is whispered that richly clad young women do not ordinarily
smile with tenderness upon young ruffians who throw apparently peaceful
citizens from the decks of steamers into waters guarded by sharks.

To carry this argument a step farther, it has always seemed an unfair
dispensation of nature that women should fall in love so desperately, so
suddenly, so unapologetically and in such numbers with Peter the Brazen.

The phenomenon cannot be explained in a breath, or in a paragraph, if at
all. While he was good to look upon, neither was Peter a god. While he was
at all times chivalrous, yet he was not painstakingly thoughtful in the small
matters which are supposed to advance the cause of love at a high pace. Nor

was he guided by a set of fixed rules such as men are wont to employ at
roulette and upon women.

Peter did not understand women, yet he had a perfectly good working
basis, for he took all of them seriously, with gravity, and he gave their
opinions a willing ear and considerable deference.

The rest is a mystery. Peter was neither particularly glib nor witty.
Instinctively he knew the values of the full moon, the stars, and he had the
look of a young man who has drunk at the fountain of life on more than one
occasion, finding the waters thereof bitter, with a trace of sweetness and a
decided tinge of novelty.

Life was simply a great big adventure to Peter the Brazen; and he had
been shot, stabbed, and beaten into insensibility on many occasions, and he
was not unwilling for more. He dearly loved a dark mystery, and he had a
certain reluctant fondness for a woman's bright, deceptive eyes.

As from a great distance he heard the jeers of the Javanese boatmen and
the flounderings of the coolie as he looked now into the dark, deep eyes of
this pretty, smiling stranger.

"Why did you do that?" she repeated softly.

"Because I wanted to," returned Peter with his winning smile.

"But there are sharks in there." This in a voice of gentle reproof.

"I hope they eat him alive," said Peter, unabashed.

"You threw him overboard just because you wanted to. And if you want
to, I'll go next, I suppose."

"You might," laughed Peter. "When I have these spells I simply grab the
nearest person and over he goes. It is a terrible habit, isn't it?"

"Perhaps he insulted you."

"Or threatened me."

"Ah!" Her sigh expressed that she understood everything. "May I ask:
Who are you?"

"I? Peter Moore."

"I mean, your uniform. You are one of the ship's officers, are you not?"

"The wireless operator. Shall we consider ourselves properly
introduced?"

"My name is Romola Borria. I presume you are an American—or
British."

"American," informed Peter. "And you? Spanish señorita?"

"I have no nationality," she replied easily. "I am what we call in China, a
'B. I. C.'"

"Born in China!"

"Born in Canton, China. Father: Portuguese; mother: Australian.
Answer: What am I?" She laughed deliciously, and Peter was moved.

They lingered long enough to see the coolie drag himself up on the shore
unassisted, and then separated, the girl to make ready for lunch and to
request the steward to assign them to adjoining seats at the same table, and
Peter to take a look at the register, the crew, and what passengers might be
on deck.

The passengers, lounging in steamer-chairs awaiting the call to tiffin,
and the deck crew, strapping down the forward cargo booms and battening
the forward hatch, Peter gave a careful inspection, retaining their images in
an eye that was rapidly being trained along photographic lines.

It was a comparatively simple matter, Peter found, to remember peoples'
faces; the important point being to select some striking feature of the
countenance, and then persistently drive this feature home in his memory.
He knew that the human memory is a perverse organ, much preferring to
forget and lose than to retain.

So he looked over the crew and found them to be quite Dutch and quite
self-satisfied, with no more than a slight but polite interest in him and his
presence. Wireless operators, as a rule, are self-effacing individuals who
inhabit dark cabins and have very little to say.

He called at the purser's office and helped himself to the register, finding
the name of Romola Borria in full, impulsive handwriting, giving her
address as Hong Kong, Victoria; and a long list of Dutch names,
representing quite likely nothing more harmful than sugar and coffee men,
with perhaps a sprinkling of copra and pearl buyers.

Peter then investigated the wireless cabin, which was situated aft on the
turn of the promenade deck, and commanding a not entirely inspiring view
of the cargo well and the steerage.

Assuring himself that the wireless machine was in good working order,
Peter hooked back the door, turned on the electric fan to air the place out,
and with his elbows on the rail gave the steerage passengers a looking over.

He did not look far before his gaze stopped its traveling.

Directly below him, sitting cross-legged on a hatch-cover, was a Chinese
or Eurasian girl whose face was colorless, whose lips were red, and whose
eyes, half-lidded, because of the dazzling sunlight, were of an unusual blue-
green shade.

Had Peter wished to make inquiries regarding this maiden, he would
have found that she was from the Chinese settlement in Macassar, and on
her way to Canton, to pay a visit to a grandmother she had never seen. But
it was Peter's nature to spin little dreams of his own whenever he
contemplated exotic young women, to place them in settings of his own
manufacture.

Her blue-black hair was parted in a white line that might have been
centered by the tip of her tiny nose and an unseen point on the nape of her
pretty neck.

Peter could not know, as he studied her, how this innocent maid from
Macassar was destined to play an important and significant part in his life,
entering and leaving it like a gentle and caressing afternoon monsoon. His
guess, as he looked away, was that she was a woman of no caste, from her
garb; probably a river girl; more than likely, worse. Yet there was an
undeniable air of innocence and youth in her narrow shoulders as she
slowly rocked. Peter could see the tips of bright-red sandals peeping from
under each knee, and he guessed her to be about eighteen.

She caught sight of Peter, who had folded his arms and was resting their
elbows idly upon the teak rail, and their eyes met and lingered. A light,
indescribably sad and appealing, shone in the blue-green eyes, which
seemed to open larger and larger, until they became round pools of darting,
mysterious reflection. It was a moment in which Peter was suspended in
space.

"I am afraid that wireless operators are not always discreet," purred a
low, sweet voice at his side.

Peter smiled his grave smile, and vouchsafed nothing. The girl in the
steerage had returned to her sewing and was apparently quite oblivious of
his presence. And still that look of demure, wistful appeal stood out in his
memory.

Romola Borria was murmuring something, the context of which was not
quite clear to him.

"Eh? I beg pardon?"

"It is quite dreadful, this traveling all alone," she remarked.

"Yes," he admitted. "Sometimes I bore myself into a state of agony."

"And it breeds such strange, such unexplainable desires and caprices,"
the girl went on in her cultivated, honeyed tones. "Strangers sometimes are
so—so cold. For instance, yourself."

"I?" exclaimed Peter, supporting himself on the stanchion. "Why, I'm the
friendliest man in the world!"

Romola Borria pursed her lips and studied him analytically.

"I wonder——" she began, and stopped, fretting her lip. "I should like to
ask you a very blunt and a very bold question." Her expression was darkly
puzzled.

"Go right ahead," urged Peter amiably, "don't mind me."

"Why I speak in this way," she explained, "is that since I ran away from
Hong Kong——"

"Oh, you ran away from Hong Kong!"

"Of course!" She said it in a way that indicated a certain lack of
understanding on his part. "Since I ran away from Hong Kong I have been
looking, looking for such—for such a man as you appear to be, to—to
confide in."

"Don't you suppose a woman would do almost as well?" spoke Peter,
who, through experience, had grown to dislike the father-confessor role.

"If you don't care to listen——" she began, as though he had hurt her.

"I am all ears," stated Peter, with his most convincing smile.

"And I have changed my mind," said Romola Borria with a disdainful
toss of her pretty head. "Besides, I think the Herr Captain would have a
word with you."

The fat and happy captain of the Persian Gulf occupied the breadth if not
the height of the doorway, wearing his boyish grin, and Peter hastened to
his side with a murmured apology to the girl as he left her.

He merely desired to have transmitted an unimportant clearance message
to the Batavia office, to state that all was well and that the thrust-bearing,
repaired, was now performing "smoot'ly."

Dropping the hard rubber head-phones over his ears, Peter listened to the
air, and in a moment the silver crash of the white spark came from the
doorway.

Romola Borria stared long and venomously at the little Chinese maiden,
who was sewing away industriously as she rocked to and fro on the hatch.
Immersed in her own thoughts the girl, removing her quick eyes from the
flying needle, glanced up at the deep-blue sky, and, smiling, shivered in a
sort of ecstasy.

CHAPTER III

At dinner Peter met the notables. It seemed the fat and handsome captain
had taken a fancy to him. And it was as Peter had deduced earlier. These
passengers were stodgy Dutchmen, each with a little world of his own, and
forming the sole orbit of that little world. For the most part they were
plantation owners escaping the seasonal heat for the cool breezes of a
vacation in Japan, boastful of their possessions, smug in their Dutch self-
complacency, and somewhat gluttonous in their manner of eating.

The fat captain beamed. The fat plantation owners gorged themselves
and jabbered. The three-piece orchestra played light opera that the world
had forgotten. The company became light-hearted as more frosty bottles of
that exotic drink, arracka, were disgorged by the Persian Gulf's excellent
ice-box. And all the while, speaking in light, soothing tones, Romola Borria
gazed alluringly into the watchful eyes of Peter Moore.

At length the chairs were pushed back, and Peter, with this fairy-like
creature in a dinner-gown of most fetching pink gossamer clinging to his
arm, took to the deck for an after-dinner Abdullah.

They chatted in low, confiding tones of the people in the dining-room.
They whispered in awe of the Southern Cross, which sparkled like frost on
the low horizon. She confessed that at night the moon was her god, and

Peter, feeling exalted under the influence of her exquisite charm, the touch
of the light fingers upon his arm which tingled and burned under the subtle
pressure, became bold and recited that verse of "Mandalay" wherein "I
kissed her where she stood."

It was quite thrilling, quite delicious, and altogether quite too fine to last.

After a while, when they were passing the door of the wireless cabin,
Romola squeezed his arm lightly and expressed a desire to have him send a
message, a message she had quite forgotten. When Peter replied that such a
message would be costly, involving an expensive retransmission by cable
from Manila to Hong Kong, she only laughed.

Peter snapped on the green-shaded light and handed her pad and pencil.
Dropping lightly to the couch which ran the length of the opposite wall, she
nibbled at the pencil's rubber, and her smooth brow was darkened by a
frown of perplexity.

Peter, lowering the aerial switch, sent out an inquiring call for the Manila
station. The air was still as death. A dreary hush filled the black receivers,
and then, through this gloomy silence trickled a far-away silver voice, the
brisk, clear signals of Manila.

He swiveled half around, and the girl nervously extended the pad of
radio blanks.

The message was directed to Emiguel Borria, the Peak, Hong Kong, and
it contained the information that she would reach the Hong Kong anchorage
on the following Tuesday morning. The last sentence; "Do not meet me."

Peter inclined his eyebrows slightly, but not impertinently, counted the
words and flashed them to the operator at Manila.

This one shot back the following greeting:

"Who are you? Only one man on the whole Pacific has a fist like that."

Peter changed the manner of his sending, resorting to a long and painful
"drawl."

"I am a little Chinese waif," Peter spelled out slowly, and smiled, adding:
"Good hunting to you, Smith!" He signed off.

The silvery spark of Smith was quick in reply.

"If you are Peter Moore, the Marconi people are scouring the earth trying
to find you. Are you Peter Moore?"

"In China," replied Peter breezily, changing back to the inimitably crisp
sending for which he was famous, "we bite off people's noses who are
inquisitive. Good night, old-timer!"

The voice of Manila screamed back in faint reprisal, but Peter dropped
the nickeled band to the ledge, and pivoted quickly, to face the girl.

It was startling, the look she was giving him. Perhaps he had completed
the transmission before she was aware. At all events, when Peter turned
with a smile, her eyes bored straight into his with a distorted look, a look
that seemed cruel, as if it might have sprung from a well of hate; and hard
and glinting and black as polished jade.

All of this vanished when she caught Peter's eyes, and it was as the
passage of a vision, unreal. In its place was an expression of demureness, of
gentle, almost fondling meekness. Had she been staring, not at him, but
beyond him, over the miles to a detestable scene, a view of horror? It
seemed more than likely.

Then he observed that the door of the wireless room was closed. He
made as if to open it, but she interrupted him midway with a commanding
gesture of her white, small hand.

"Lock it, and sit down here beside me."

Somewhat dazed and greatly flabbergasted, Peter obeyed.

He locked the door, then sat down beside her. She moved closer, took his
hand, wrapped both of hers tightly around it, and leaned toward him until
the breath from her parted lips was upon his throat, moist and warm, and
her eyes were great shining balls of limpid mystery and dancing excitement,
so close to his that he momentarily expected their eyelashes to mingle.

She caught her breath, and then, for such dramatic circumstances, made
a most ridiculous remark. She realized that herself, for she whipped out:

"It is a foolish question. But, Mr. Moore, do you believe in love at first
sight?"

Peter's tense look dissolved into a smile of giddy relief. He was
expecting something quite frightful, and the clear wit of him found a ready
answer.

"Foolish?" he chuckled. "Why, I'm the most devout worshiper at the
shrine! The shrine brags about me! It says to unbelievers: Now, if you don't
believe in love at first sight, just cast your orbs upon Peter Moore, our most
shining example. Allah, by Allah! The old philanderer is assuredly of the
faith!"

"I am quite serious, Mr. Moore."

"As I was afraid, Miss Borria. Seriously, if you must know it, then here
goes: As soon as I saw you I was mad about you! Call it infatuation, call it a
rush of blood to my foolish young head, call it anything you like——"

"Why don't you stop all this?" she broke him off.

"All what?" he inquired innocently.

"This—this life you are leading. This indolence. This constant toying
with danger. This empty life. This sham of adventure-love that you affect. It
will get you nothing. I know! I, too, thought it was a great lark at first, and I
played with fire; and you know just what happens to the children who play
with fire.

"At first you skirt the surface, and then you go a little deeper, and finally
you can do nothing but struggle. It is a terrible feeling, to find that your
wonderful toy is killing you. Certain people in China, Mr. Moore, are
conducting practises that you of the western world frown upon. And
blundering upon these practices, as perhaps you have, you believe you are
very bold and daring, and you are thrilled as you rub elbows with death, in
tracing the dragons to their dens."

"Dragons!" The syllables cracked from Peter's lips, and his wits, which
were wandering in channels of their own while this lecture progressed,
suddenly were bundled together, and he was alert and keenly attentive.

"Or call them what you will," went on the girl in a low-pitched
monotone. "I call them dragons, because the dragon is a filthy, wretched
symbol."

"You have some knowledge of my encounters with—dragons?" put in
Peter as casually as he was able.

"I profess to know nothing of your encounters with anybody," replied the
girl quietly and patiently. "I base my conclusions only on what I have seen.
This morning I saw you throw a Chinese coolie into the harbor at Batavia. It
happens that I have seen that coolie before, and it also happens that I know
a little—do not ask me what I know, for I will never tell you—a little about
the company that coolie keeps."

"I guess you are getting a little beyond my depth," stated Peter
uncomfortably. "Would you mind sort of summing up what you've just
said?"

"I mean, I want to try to persuade you that the life you have been living
is wrong. At the same time, I want you to help me, as only you can help me,
in putting a life of wretchedness behind me. It is asking a great deal, a very
great deal, but in return I will give you more than you will ever realize,
more than you can realize, for you cannot realize the danger that surrounds
your every movement, and will continue to surround you until they—they—
are assured that you have decided to forget them."

Peter shook his head, forgetting to wonder what an officer might think
upon finding the door locked. Would the jovial little captain be quite so
jovial viewing these incriminating circumstances? Not likely. But Peter had
dismissed the fat captain from his mind, together with all other alien
thoughts, as he concentrated upon the amazing words of this exceedingly
amazing and beautiful girl. She was looking down at the chevron of gold
sparks on his sleeve.

"I can tell you but one more thing of consequence," she continued. "It is
this: Together we can stand; divided we will fall, just as surely as the sun
follows its track in the heavens. I have a plan that will offend you—perhaps
offend you terribly—but there is no other way. When they know that we
have decided to forget them, we can breathe easily. Our secrets, grown
stale, are not harmful to them."

"I am always open to any reasonable inducement," Peter said dryly.

The eyes meeting his were quite wild.

"How would you like to go to some lovely little place to have money, to
live comfortably, even luxuriously, with a woman of whom you could be
justly proud, and who would bend every power with the sole view of
making you happy?"—she was blushing hotly—"and all this woman would
demand in return would be your loyalty, your respect—and later your love,
if that were possible."

"But this—this is—astounding!" Peter exclaimed.

"I expected you to say that. But let me assure you, I have thought this
over. I have given it every possible consideration, and now I know there is
no other way. I want to leave China. I want to go away forever and ever. I
must leave."

Her shoulders jerked nervously.

"My life has been miserable—so miserable. And I am not brave enough
to go through with it alone. I am afraid, terribly afraid. And afraid of
myself, and of my weakness. I must be encouraged, must have some one to

make me strong and brave, and afterward to take the good in me and bring
it out, and kill the bad."

She relinquished Peter's hand and thumped her chest with small fists.

"There is good in me; but it has never been given a chance! I want a man
who will bring that good out, a man who will make me fine and true and
honorable. For such a man I would give everything—my life!" She lowered
her voice. "I would give my best—my love. When I saw you lift the coolie,
after he showed you his knife, I thought you were such a man; and when I
looked into your face I believed I had found such a man. The rest—remains
—for you to say."

"Where do you want me to t-take you?" demanded Peter.

"Ah! That is of so little importance! To Nara—Nagoya—to Australia—
America."

She shrugged, as if to say, "and little I care."

"Now I am offering you only two rewards for that sacrifice—your safety
against them—and money. You can name your price. I feel that you will
come to love me; but that can come, if it cares, any time. When you want
me—I will be waiting. I want you to consider this now. Now! Will you?
Tell me that you will!"

"I—I don't know what to say!" stammered Peter in a husky voice. "Are
—you are not joking, are you, Miss Borria? You can't be! But this is so
serious! Shocking! Why, you never saw me before! Why should you pick
me for such a thing when you never saw me? You don't know me. You don't
know what a brute I might be. Why, I might be married for all you know
——"

"I am reasonably sure," said the girl with some of her former serenity.

"But this—this is unbelievable!" cried Peter. "You never saw me before
to-day. Why, you're a nice girl. You're not the kind of girl who runs away

with a man at first sight. You're not in love with me at all. Not at all. Miss
Borria——"

A flame of hot suspicion shot athwart Peter's mind. He seized her hands,
glared into her eyes, dragged her to her feet.

"See here!" he clamored. "Tell me what you really want. What's your
game, eh? You're a wise little bird, you are. I may look stupid, I may not see
all the way through this talk you've been giving me. You're holding back.
What is it? Come on! Out with it!"

She was not disturbed in the least at his harshness, nor did she seemingly
disapprove of the rough way he handled her.

"I am married," she said simply.

CHAPTER IV

To Peter this revelation was like the addition of a single grain to a bucket
brimming with sand.

"Well, what of it?" he barked.

"To a man who is fat and untidy, a man old enough to be my father, who
treats me as if I were a thief, or a dog. I loathe him. And he detests me. You
see"—she smiled ironically—"we are not very happy. I ran away from him
a month ago, from Hong Kong. I ran as far as Singaraja, and now I have to
go back because I have not the courage to stay away. A stronger will would
make me give him up. Would make me go away, and stay. And I grabbed at
you."

"As a drowning man would grab at a straw."

"Not at all! Perhaps, let us say, I had pictured such a man as you. And
then you came. He will beat me when I return."

"No!"

"Yes!" She pressed down the gauzy stuff which came up almost to her
throat in the form of a high "V." And across the rounded white curve of her
chest were four angry red stripes, the marks of a whip.

He shuddered. "This is terrible."

"Will you help me—now?"

"What can I do? What can I do?" He was striving to adjust himself to
this exceedingly difficult situation. "But I don't understand how you can
place all this confidence in me."

"Because when I saw you I knew you were a man who stopped at
nothing."

"But why—why does he beat you? It—it's incomprehensible!"

He stared at the beautiful face, the long, white appealing face, and the
deep, dark eyes with their fringe of long lashes. If ever a girl was meant to
be loved and protected it was this one.

"I know I am asking a great deal, far more than I have any right, and not
taking you into consideration at all. But you will help me. You must. Have I
talked to you in vain? Do—do you think I would make you unhappy?"

"That's not the question, not the question at all. But you don't know me.
We are perfect strangers!"

That is what Peter had been trying to get out of his system all of this
time. Had he been thinking connectedly at this trying moment, not for the
life of him would he have uttered those words. He had convinced himself
that he was above and beyond all shallow conventions. And in an
unguarded moment this thought, which had been in and out of his mind,
popped out like a ghost from a closet. We are perfect strangers!

"So is every man a stranger to his wife. What difference does time
make? Very little, I think. A day—a week—a month—a year—twenty!—
you and I would still be strangers, for that matter. Who can see into any
man's heart?"

She stopped talking, and kneaded her hands as if in anguish.

"And think! Do think of me!"

"I am thinking of you," said Peter constrainedly.

"We can go to Nara, if you like, to the little inn near the deer-park, and
be so happy—you and I. Think of Nara—in cherry-blossom time!"

"I can't see the picture at all," said Peter dryly. "But since you've elected
me to be your—your Sir Galahad, I'll tell you what I will do."

Nervously the girl was fumbling at her throat, where, suspended by a
fine gold chain, hung a cameo, a delicately carved rose, as red as her lips,
and as life-like. She nodded, quite as though her life hung by that gold
thread and depended at the high end upon his decision.

"Your husband's nationality?" he asked abruptly.

"He is a Portuguese gentleman, my father's cousin."

"It would be possible for me, perhaps, to aid a lady in distress by
punishing the cause of it."

"You mean——"

"I will gladly undertake to thrash the gentleman, if it would do any
good."

"No, no! That would not do."

"Then there's no choice for me. Either I must accept or decline your
invitation."

"I pray you will! I have told you frankly and quickly, because time is
valuable. We have none to lose. A steamer leaves for Formosa and Moji the
morning after we arrive—at daybreak. We would scarcely have time to
complete our plans, and embark."

Peter raised his eyebrows. "Complete our plans?" he intoned.

"Yes. We must raise money. You see, there is money, thousands of
dollars, always in that house. It would be necessary to—to take whatever of
it we needed. That is why I will need you, too."

"I think," declared Peter with decision, "that we had better call this a
misdeal, and play another game for a while. In the first place, I will not run
away with you, because it is against my principles to run away with a
strange young woman. In the second place, stealing for pleasure is one of
the seven deadly sins that I conscientiously avoid.

"Now that I have aired my views, now that I have proved to you I'm not
as fine and brave as you hoped me to be, let's shake hands and part the best
of friends—or the worst of enemies."

The girl rose from the chair into which she had dropped when Peter
began his say. Alternately she was biting her upper and lower lips in
nervousness or irritation. She put her back to the door and braced her hands
against the white enameled panels. Her breast was heaving. She was
desperately pale, and little dots of perspiration shone on her white forehead.
And she was limp, as though his last remark had drained the final drop of
vitality from her.

"I—I won't give you up," she said in a small, husky voice. "Besides, you
are wrong, wrong in saying and believing that stealing his money would not
be for a good cause. He is a brute, a monster, and worse than a thief. I
cannot tell you how he gets his money. I would not dare to whisper it. You
will be doing a fine and splendid thing in taking his money. You will be
freeing me! Does that sound like heroics? I don't care if it does! But with
that money you can buy my soul out of bondage. You can make me happy.
Won't you? Won't you do—that—for me?"

Peter stood there like a block of ice—melting rapidly! But he said
nothing. His thoughts were beyond the expression of clumsy words.

Her dumb hand found the key, turned it. The door opened, and a sweet
breath of the cool sea air crept into the small room.

For a moment her white, distraught face hung down on her breast like
that of a child who has been scolded without understanding why. Then she
darted out of the room.

CHAPTER V

When Peter snapped off the switch he found that he was trembling,
trembling from his knees to his neck. With a feeling akin to guilt he wiped
the sweat from his face and walked unsteadily to the rail which overhung
the cargo-well.

He lighted an Abdullah, and watched the little smoke pool, which the
wind snatched and tossed up into the booms and darkness.

It must have been a nightmare, this scene just past. What an incredible, a
preposterous request for a woman to make! And the more thought he fed to
the enigma the more incredible and unreal it became.

It was too big and complex a thought to hold all together in his tired
brain now. In the morning he would tackle it with some zest, with an inner
eye washed clean by a long sleep. Just now he felt the need of relaxation,
and as he smoked, his thoughts flitted afar, to come back now and then,
irresistibly drawn by the vivid picture painted in his mind by Romola
Borria.

His eyes, commanders of his thoughts, traveled out over the stern, which
rose and sank with a ponderous, wallowing sound in the heaving ground

swells, and he made out the weaving and coiling, the lustrous but dim
windings of the phosphorescent wake.

As he became more accustomed to the shadowy, pointed darkness of the
steerage cabins, he became aware of a small figure crouching on the hatch-
cover near the starboard rail. He studied this intently, and at length he made
out the long, black queue of the Chinese girl who had stared at him in such
bewitching fashion a little earlier in the day.

And his mind was carried back at the thought of this small maiden to the
grim and red Tibetan city, whose memories now were scarcely more than a
confused and hideous dream. He pictured again the splendors of the blue-
domed white palace which reposed like a beast of prey atop the red filth
disgorged by the cinnabar mine.

Peter's heart thumped in youthful resentment as the thought of that evil
spirit came to him now. When would he meet the Gray Dragon face to face?
When would he again penetrate the stronghold of that unhappy red city?
Who could say? Probably never.

The small Chinese girl on the hatch-cover had found him staring at her,
and with a little shiver of surprise Peter made the discovery that she was
smiling archly at him; and she inclined her head. She was beckoning? It
seemed so, indeed.

Because Peter was a youth of deep and subtle understandings, he did no
more than nod slightly, and forthwith descended the companion-ladder to
the well, and crossed the well to her side.

Her eyes were given a queer little twinkle by the near-by electric which
burned dimly over the door of the engine-room galley, and she motioned
him to be seated. He squatted, Chinese fashion, and she took a deep, sighing
breath, holding out her hands with a quick gesture.

Across her wrists and drooping to her knees and beyond them into the
shadow was a strip of heavy, deep-blue silk. All down its length were
stitched small, round dots of dark red. Peter knew this for a sarong, an

ornamental waist-sash, affected by most Javanese gentlemen and many
Australians and New Zealanders.

While he hesitated, she laid this in his lap with a shy impulsiveness.

"It is yours, sar," she informed Peter in English of a very strange mold.
She spoke in a rather high-pitched, bell-like voice, pure and soft, and
tinkling with queer little cadences. "It is yours, sar. I made it for you."

Indubitably the girl was Eurasian. Asiatic features predominated, with
the exception of her eyes, which were more round than oblique, from which
circumstance Peter could surmise that her Aryan blood, provided she was a
half-caste, came from her mother's side; the predominance of the
Mongolian in her features being due to an Asiatic father, a Chinese.

The colorless face, relieved by the bright color of her lips, the slightly
oblique eyes, told him that; yet her accents were those of a Javanese, a
Malay from the south.

"You made this—for me?" replied Peter, surprised.

"Oh, yes, sar," said the tinkling little voice.

"Well, that is fine. It is beautiful," he said, feeling his way with
prudence. "And how much do I owe you, small one?"

She shook her head indignantly.

"It is a geeft," she informed him. "I am no longer poor, my lord. I can
now give geefts. I like you. I give this to you."

Peter was moved momentarily beyond speech.

"You are very fine, busar satu," went on the tiny, musical voice. "So is
this sarong. You will wear it, great one, around thy middle?"

"Around my middle, to be sure, small one," laughed Peter; "until my
middle is clay, or until the sarong is no more than a thread."

"Well said, busar satu!" The girl giggled, bobbing her small head in
happy approval. "It is twice blessed: with my love and with my foolish
blood, for I pricked my finger on the wicked needle. But I covered that spot
with a red mata-ari (sun). You can never, never tell."

"Assuredly not!" cried Peter gaily.

"Let the sarong be wound about thy middle," commanded the Chinese
maiden. "Arise, sar, and wind it about thy middle."

And Peter did rise, winding the sarong about his lean waist twice,
allowing one end to dangle down on his left side in a debonair and striking
fashion. If set off his slim figure in a rather bizarre way.

"It's bully!" he exclaimed, pirouetting with one hand on his head after
the style of the matador.

"It is bully!" she echoed, in such quaint reflection of his exclamation that
Peter laughed outright. "Now, sit down again, sar," she invited. And when
Peter had again disposed himself at the side of this light-hearted young
person, she went on:

"I am coming a long, long way to visit my aged grandmother (may the
green-eyed gods grant her the twelve desires!) who lives Canton-way. My
dear father sells opium. He has grown rich in that trade, even though the
stupid eyes of the Dutch babis are on him all the while. When I have seen
my ancient grandmother, and given her geefts, I will go home, to the south,
Macassar-way."

"Now, where, oh where, do I fit in this scheme?" was what Peter
thought. "What have I that this maiden desires?"

"Ah, busar satu!" the maiden was saying, deftly and unaffectedly patting
the sarong. "It is bully! And now——"

"And now——" intoned Peter calmly, for even as a life pays for a life,
and an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, so does a gift pay for a gift.

"And now," went on the maid from Macassar, whose father had grown
rich in the opium-trade under the very eyes of the Dutch, "tell me but one
thing, my lord—is Hong Kong safe for such as I?"

"When one is young and virtuous," spake Peter in the drone of an ancient
fortune-teller, "one keeps her eyes pinned on the front. One hears nothing;
and one becomes as discreet of tongue as the little blue sphinx at Chow-
Fen-Chu."

"Those are the words of Confucius, the wise one," retorted the little bell-
like voice with a tinkling laugh. "I need no guide, then? I have heard that
China is unsafe. That is why I asked."

"Small one," replied Peter, with a smile of gravity and with much candor
in his blue eyes, "in China, such a one as you are as safe as a Javanese
starling in a nest of hungry yellow snakes. You will travel by daylight, or
not at all. You will go from Kowloon to your venerable grandmother by
train. You will carry a knife, and you will use it without hesitation. Have
you such a knife?"

The small head bowed vehemently.

"In Hong-Kong you will go aboard a sampan and be rowed Kowloon-
way, from whence the train runs by the great river to Canton."

"That will be safe, that sampan?"

"I will make it safe, small one. For I will go with you as far as Kowloon,
if that is what you wish."

"And does the brave one admire my sarong?" the small voice wavered.

"It shames my ugly body," said Peter. "Now run along to bed—kalak!"
And he clapped his hands as the small figure bobbed out of sight, with her
long, black pigtail flopping this way and that.

CHAPTER VI

It came to Peter as he climbed up the iron-fretted steps to the lonely
promenade-deck that life had begun to take on its old golden glow, the
luster of the uncertain, the charm of women who found in him something
not undesirable.

At this he smiled a little bit. He had never known, as far back as the span
of his adventures extended, a woman who deemed his companionship as
quite so valuable a thing as the mysterious and alluring Romola Borria, the
husband-beaten, incredible, and altogether dangerous young woman who
passionately besought him to accompany her on a pilgrimage of
forgetfulness into the flowery heart of dear old Japan.

Ascending the ladder to the unoccupied deck, he was conscious of the
sweet drone of the monsoon, which blew off the shores of Annam over the
restless bosom of the China Sea, setting up a tuneful chant in the Persian
Gulf's sober rigging, and kissing his cheeks with the ardor of a despairing
maiden.

Peter the Brazen decided to take a turn or two round deck before going
to his bunk, to drink in a potion of this intoxicating, winelike night. The
wheel of fortune might whirl many times before he was again sailing this
most seductive of oceans.

And he was a little intoxicated, too, with the wine of his youth. His lips,
immersed in the fountain, found very little bitterness there. Life was earnest
and grave, as the wiseacres said; but life was, on the whole, sublime and
poignantly sweet. A little bitterness, a little dreary sadness, a pang at the
heart now and again, served only to interrupt the smooth regularity, the
monotony, to add zest to the nectar.

When he had finished the cigarette, he flung the butt over the rail into
the gushing water, which swam south in its phosphorescent welter,

descended between decks to the stateroom that had been assigned to him,
and fitted the key to the lock.

He felt decidedly young and foolishly exalted as he closed the door after
him and heard the lock click, for to few men is it given to have two lovely
young women in distress seek aid, all in the span of a few hours. Perhaps
these rosy events had served merely to feed oil to the fires of his conceit;
but Peter's was not a conceit that rankled anybody. And there were always
volunteers, hardened by the buffets of this life, to cast water upon that same
fire.

So, humming a gay little tune, Peter snapped on the light, bathing the
milk-white room in a liquid mellowness, opened the port-hole, wound his
watch, hung it on the curtain-bar which ran lengthwise with his berth,
pushed the flowered curtains at either end as far back as they would go, in
order to have all the fresh air possible, and——

Peter gasped. He declared it was absolutely impossible. Such things did
not happen, even in this world of strange happenings and of stranger
stirrings below the surface of actual happenings. His self-complacencies
came shattering down about his ears like mountains of senseless glitter, and
he stooped to recover the object which was lying upon, almost ready to
tumble from, the rounded, neat edge of the white berth.

A rose of cameo! The hot breath from his lips, which drooped in
astonishment and chagrin, seemed to stir the delicate petals of the
exquisitely carved red rose which reposed in its mountain of soft gold in the
palm of his trembling hand. The fine gold chain, like a rope of gold sand,
trickled between his fingers and dangled, swinging from side to side.

The impossible thought pounded at the door of his brain and demanded
recognition. Romola Borria had been a visitor to his room. But why? He
had no secrets to conceal from the prying ears of any one, not now, at all
events, for he had destroyed all evidences depending upon the excursion he
had made from Shanghai to Len Yang, and from Len Yang to Mandalay, to
Rangoon, to Penang, Singapore, and Batavia.

Naturally, his first impulsive thought was that Romola Borria was
somehow entangled with those who ruled the destinies of the hideous
mountain city, which crouched amidst the frosty emerald peaks on the
fringe of Tibet. He had felt the weight of that ominous hand on other
occasions, and its movements were ever the same. Night stealth, warnings
chalked on doors, the deliberate and cunning penetration of his secrets; all
of these were typical machinations of the Gray Dragon, and of those who
reported back to the Gray Dragon.

No one would break into his stateroom who was not the tool of Len
Yang's unknown king. Thus the finger of accusation was brought to bear
tentatively upon Romola Borria.

Yes, it was incredible that this girl, with those scarlet stripes across her
breast, could in any way be complicated with the wanton designs of the
beast in Len Yang. Yet here was evidence, damning her, if not as a wilful
tool of the cinnabar king, then at least as a room-breaker. Why had she
come into his room? And how?

He searched the room, then dragged his suit-case from under the bunk to
the middle of the blue carpet, and spilled its contents angrily upon the floor.
It took him less than ten seconds to discover what was missing; not his
money, nor the few jewels he had collected in his peregrinations, for they
were untouched in the small leather bag.

Peter looked again, carefully shaking each garment, hoping, and refusing
to hope, that the revolver would make its appearance. It was an American
revolver, an automatic, a gift from Bobbie MacLaurin. And now this
excellent weapon was missing.

He felt that eyes were upon him, that ears were listening slyly to his
breathing, that lips were rustling in bated whispered comments upon the
fury with which he took this important loss.

Snapping off the light, he plunged down the murky corridor, with the
guilty rose cameo clutched in his sweating hand, and came at length to the
purser's office. This dignitary was absent, at midnight lunch probably; so
Peter rifled the upper drawer in the desk, and brought out the passenger-

register, finding the name and room number he sought after an instant of
search.

Carefully he replaced the ledger in its original position, closed the
drawer, and darted back up the corridor.

In front of a room not far from his own he paused and rapped. His
knock, sharp and insistent, was one of practice, a summons which would
not be mistaken by the occupants of adjoining staterooms, nor was it likely
to disturb them.

After a moment, light showed at the opened transom. Some one rustled
about within, and in another instant the door opened far enough to admit a
head from which dark masses of hair floated, framing a face that was white
and inquisitive.

At sight of her midnight visitor Romola Borria opened her door wide
and smiled a little sleepily. She had paused long enough in arising to slip
into a negligee, a kimono of blackest satin, revealing at the baglike sleeves
and the fold which fell back from her throat a lining of blood-red silk.

One hand was caught up to her throat in a gesture of surprise, and the
other was concealed behind her, catching, as Peter surmised, nothing if not
his own automatic revolver, which had been loaded, ready for instant use,
immediately the safety-catch was released.

She stared at him softly, with eyes still mirroring the depths of the sleep
from which he had so rudely aroused her, her delicate red lips forming a
curious smile. And she continued to smile more gently, more tenderly, as
she became quite conscious of his presence.

"You have come to tell me that you will go to Japan with me," she stated.

Peter shook his head slowly, and with equal deliberateness lifted up the
small object in his hand until the light from the ceiling-lamp fell directly
upon it.

"My cameo!" she exclaimed with a start of surprise. "Where did you find
it?" She reached impulsively for the ornament, but Peter closed his fingers
upon it firmly.

"You have something to give me in return, I think," he said sternly.

She was staring at the closed hand with something of despair and fright,
as if reluctant to believe this truth, while her fingers groped at her throat to
verify a loss apparently not before detected.

She stepped back into the room and said:

"Close the door. Come inside."

He thought: If she had wanted to shoot me, she had plenty of chance
before. A shot in this room, a murder would fasten evidence upon her, and
besides, it would instantly arouse the occupants of the adjoining staterooms,
if not one of the deck crew on watch.

So he entered and closed the door, presenting a full view of his broad,
white-uniformed back, and the gaudy-blue sarong about his waist. He took
more time than was necessary in closing the door and sliding the bolt, to
give her every opportunity to arrange this scene she desired.

But the girl was only drawing the curtains over the port-hole, to keep out
prying eyes, when he turned about.

She sat down on the edge of her berth, with her small white feet almost
touching the floor, and the huge blue automatic resting upon her knees. It
was unlikely that she did not appreciate fully the seductive charm of the red
and black gown which adapted itself in whatever pose to the youthful
curves of her body; and she permitted Peter to sit down on the narrow
couch opposite and to examine her and perhaps to speculate for a number of
seconds before she seemed to find her speech.

Meekly her dark eyes encountered his.

"I was afraid," she explained in a voice, low but free in her remarkable
self-possession. "I knew you would not care, and I hoped that you would
have a revolver in your room. So I went there. How did I get in? I borrowed
a pass-key from the purser on the plea that I had left mine in my room. I
hoped you would not miss it until we reached Hong Kong, and I intended to
return it then and explain to you.

"My life," she added deprecatingly, "is in some slight danger, and, like
the small fool that I am—even though I am fully aware that no one in the
whole world cares whether I am living or dead—well, Mr. Moore, for some
reason I still persist in clinging to the small hope."

She smiled wanly and earnestly, so Peter thought. A dozen impulses
militated against his believing a word of this glib explanation; his common
sense told him that he should seek further, that the explanation was only
half made; and yet it cannot be denied that she had gone unerringly to his
greatest weakness, perhaps his worst fault, his belief in the sincerity of a
woman in trouble.

"Why didn't you ask me?" he demanded in his most apologetic voice, as
though he had wronged her beyond repair. "Why didn't you tell me you
were in danger? I'd have loaned you the revolver willingly—willingly!"

"I did try to find you," she replied; "but the wireless room was dark. You
were nowhere on deck."

Peter was aware that for some reason Romola Borria did not prefer to
share the secret of her real or fancied danger with him. He felt a little
dissatisfied, cheated, as though the straightforward answer for which he had
come had been turned into the counterfeit of evasion.

The situation as it now had shaped itself demanded some sort of
decision. Without the whole truth he was reluctant to leave, and it was
imprudent to remain any longer.

Romola, in this constrained pause in their conversation, feeling perhaps
the reason for his silence, lowered her dark lashes and drew up her feet until

they were concealed by the red folds of the kimono, and she drew the satin
more closely about her soft, white throat.

"You have decided nothing, then?" she parried.

"What decision I might have formed," he said, a trifle coolly, "has been
put off by—this. You see, I must admit it, this—this rather complicates
things for me. I'm in the dark altogether now, you see. I wanted to help you,
however I could. And then—then I find this cameo."

She nodded absently, fingering the groove in the automatic's handle.

"I'm afraid I took too much for granted," she said in a low voice. "Don't
you suppose my curiosity was aroused when you threw the coolie
overboard? I said nothing; rather, I asked you no questions; and I thought
that a man who was self-poised enough to meet his enemies in that way
would be—what shall I say?—charitable enough to overlook such a——"
She paused. "When I confessed that you and I are facing a common enemy,
that the same hands are eager to do away with both of us, I thought that
bond was sufficient, was strong enough, to justify what might shock an
ordinary man. I mean——"

"I think I understand," Peter took her up in contrite tones. "I'll ask
nothing more. In the morning we will talk the other matter over. I must have
a little time. For the present, I want you to keep the revolver, and—here is
the cameo. Forgive me for being so unreasonable, so—so selfish."

He leaned over. She seemed uncertain a moment, then caught the gold
chain lightly from his hand.

"And—your revolver," she said. "Those are the terms of the agreement, I
believe."

"No, no," he protested. "I have no use for it; none whatever. You keep
it."

But quite as resolutely Romola Borria shook her head and extended the
automatic, butt foremost, to him. "I insist," she said.

"But you say you're in danger," he argued.

"No. Not now. I have something else that will do quite as well. If it is
written that I am to die, why give Death cause to be angry? I am a fatalist,
you see. And I want you to take back your revolver, with my apologies, and
quite without any more explanation than I have given you, please."

"But——" began Peter.

"Look," she said.

In the small space of the stateroom he could not avoid bending so low as
to sense the warmth of her skin, in order to study the object toward which
she was directing his gaze. A sense of hot confusion permeated him as her
fingers lightly caressed his hand; her physical nearness obsessed him.

She had drawn back the fluffy pillow, and on the white sheet he
glimpsed a long, bright, and exceedingly dangerous-looking dagger, with a
jewel-incrusted hilt.

The singular thing about this knife was the shape of the blade, which
was thin and with three sides, like a machinist's file. It would be a good
dagger to throw away after a killing because of the triangular hole it would
leave as a wound, a bit of evidence decidedly incriminating.

Peter straightened up, round-eyed, accepted the automatic, and slipped it
into his pocket, smoothing his coat and the sarong over the lump, and
approached the door.

For a moment his heart beat in a wild desire, a desire to take her in his
arms as she stood so close and so quiet beside him, smiling wistfully and a
little sadly; and unaccountably she seemed to droop and become small and
limp and pitifully helpless in the face of him and of all mankind.

"Good night, Mr. Moore, and thank you so—much," she murmured.
"And I do hope you will forgive me for being a—a thief."

He thought that she was on the point of kissing him, and his eyes swam
and became of a slightly deeper and more silky blue than a moment before.
But she faltered back, while the faintest suggestion of a sigh came from her
lips.

In the next instant, as the door closed quietly behind him, Peter was
mighty glad that neither he nor she had yielded to impulse. He was not, in
the light of the literal version, the owner of a wholly untarnished record, for
he had given in to weakness, as most men do give into weakness.

But he was above temptation now, not because temptation was put
behind him, but because he had had the strength to resist; and it was his full,
deep desire to hold himself until that girl, far across the Pacific, who
inspired the finest and best in him, should bear the name he bore.

It was a splendid thing, that feeling. It gave him courage and confidence,
and took him quite light-heartedly, with head erect and shoulders back, out
of the dreariest of his moments.

So, quick in a new and buoyant mood, Peter joggled the key in the lock
of his stateroom door, slipped in, and was before long dreaming of a cottage
built for two, of springtime in California, albeit snoring almost loud enough
to drown out the throb of the Persian Gulf's old but still useful engines.

CHAPTER VII

Because of the fatigue which possessed his every muscle, fatigue
springing from the arduous, the trying hours now past, Peter the Brazen was
sleeping the slumber of the worthy, when, at a somewhat later hour in the
night, some time before dawn crept out of the China Sea, a figure, lean and
gray, flitted past his stateroom on the narrow orlop deck, peered in the
darkened port-hole, and passed on.

Awakened by an instinct developed to a remarkable degree by his
training of the past few months, Peter established himself upon one elbow
and looked and listened, wondering what sounds might be abroad other than
the peaceful churn of the engine.

Quite as intuitively he slipped his hand under the pillow and encountered
the reassuring chill of the blued steel. Half withdrawing this excellent
weapon, he shifted his eyes, alternately from the door to the port-hole,
conscious of an imminent danger, a little stupefied by his recent plunge into
the depths of sleep, but growing more widely awake, more alert and
watchful, with the passage of each instant.

The port-hole loomed gray and empty, one edge of it licked by the
yellow light of some not far distant deck-lamp. With his eye fastened upon
this scimitar of golden light, Peter was soon to witness an unusual eclipse, a
phenomenon which sent a shiver, an icy shiver, of genuine consternation up
and down his backbone.

As he watched, a square of the yellow reflected light was blotted out, as
though a bar of some nature had cast its shadow athwart that metallic
gleam. This shadow then proceeded to slide first up and then down the brass
setting of the port-hole, and the shadow dwindled.

As Peter sat up on the edge of his cot, gripping the square butt of the
automatic in his hand and tentatively fingering the trigger, the origin of the
shadow moved slowly, ever so slowly, into the range of his perplexed and
anxious vision.

What appeared at first glance to be a cat-o'-nine-tails on a rather thick
stem, Peter made out to be, as he built some hasty comparisons, the Maxim
silencer attached either at the end of a revolver or of a rifle; for the black
cylinder on the muzzle was circumscribed at regular intervals with small,
sharp depressions, the clinch-marks of the silencing chambers.

As this specter crept up and over the edge of the port, Peter, with a
deliberate and cold smile, raised the automatic revolver, slipped out of the
berth with the stealth and litheness of a cat, crept into the corner where the

stateroom door was hinged, and leveled the weapon until his eye ran along
the dark obstruction of the barrel.

Slowly and more slowly the silencer moved inward until the blunt end of
it was registered precisely upon a point where Peter's head would lie if he
were sleeping in a normal attitude.

This amused him and perplexed him. All Peter wanted to see was the
head or even the eye of this early morning assassin, whereupon he would
take immediate steps to receive him with a warm cordiality that might
forestall future visitations of a kindred sort.

In the space between heart-beats Peter stopped to inquire of himself who
his visitor might be. And even as he stopped to inquire, a bright, angry, red
flame spurted straight out from the mouth of the silencer, and Peter would
have willingly gambled his bottom dollar that the bullet found its way into
his pillow, a wager, as he later verified, upon which he would have
collected all of the money he was eager to stake.

The lance of yellow-red flame had occasioned no disturbance other than
a slight smack, comparable with the sharp clapping of a man's hands.

In the second leaping flame Peter was far more interested. Having
delivered himself of one shot, the assassin could be depended upon to make
casual inquiries, and to drop at least one more bullet into the darkness
between the upper and lower berths, to make a clean job of it.

And it was on the appearance of the inquiring head that Peter relied to
repay the intruder in his own metal, that metal taking the form of a wingless
messenger of nickel-sheathed lead.

But the visitor was cautious, waiting, no doubt, for sounds of the death
struggle, provided the shot had not gone directly home, its home being, as
Peter shuddered to think, his own exceedingly useful brain.

He waited a little longer before his guest apparently decided that the
time was come for his investigation; and thereupon a small, square head

with the black-tasseled hat of a Chinese coolie set upon it at a rakish angle
was framed by the port-hole.

Smirking nervously, Peter released the safety catch and brought pressure
to bear slowly and firmly upon the trigger.

Click! That was all. But it told a terrible story. The weapon was out of
commission, either unloaded or tampered with. And Peter's panic-stricken
thoughts leaped, even as the square head leaped away from the window, to
the Borria woman, to the cause of his desperate helplessness.

Romola Borria, then, had tampered with this revolver. Romola Borria
had plotted, that was sure, with the coolie outside the port-hole for his
assassination. That explained the visit to his room. That explained her
perturbation over his discovery of her visit, of her sly and cool evasions and
dissimulations.

It was with these thoughts hammering in his brain that Peter dropped out
of range of the deadly porthole and squirmed, inching his way into the
doubtful shelter provided by the closet. At any instant he expected another
red tongue to burn the now still darkness above his head, to experience the
hot plunge of a bullet in some part of his slightly clad anatomy. And then—
death? An end of the glorious adventures whose trail he had followed now
for well upon ten years?

And still the death bullet was withheld. Groping about in the darkness
with one hand as he loosened the magazine clip on the butt, and finding that
the clip of cartridges had been removed, he finally discovered the
whereabouts of the suit-case, and dragged it slowly toward him, with his
eyes pinned upon the vacant port.

Fumbling among the numerous objects contained in the suit-case, his
fingers encountered at length a cartridge clip. He slipped this into the
magazine, and indulged in a silent grunt of relief as the clip moved up into
place. He drew back the rejecting mechanism, and heard the soft, reassuring
snick of the cartridge as it slid from the magazine into the chamber.

Then sounds without demanded his attention, the sounds of a tussle, of
oaths spoken in a high, feminine tongue, in a language not his own.

Peter would have shouted, but he had long ago learned the inadvisability
of shouting when such grim business as to-night's was being negotiated.

Slipping on his bath-robe, he opened the door and tentatively peered out
into the half-light of the orlop deck from the cross corridor vestibule-way,
for indications of a shambles.

They were gone. The deck was deserted. But he caught his breath
sharply as he made out a long, dark shape which lay, with the inertness of
death, under his port-hole, blending with the shadows. He rolled the man
over upon his back, and dragged him by the heels under the deck-light, and,
dragging him, a dark trail spread out upon the boards, and even as Peter
examined the cold face, the spot broadened and a trickle broke from it and
crept down toward the gutter.

Stabbed? More than likely. Pausing only long enough to reassure himself
that this one was the assassin whose square head had been framed by the
port, Peter looked for a wound, and shortly he found the wound, and Peter
was not greatly astounded at the proportions thereof.

It was a small wound, running entirely through the neck from a point
below the left ear to one slightly below and to the right of the locked jaw.
Upon close scrutiny the death wound proved to be small and thorough and
of a triangular pattern.

Just why he had expected to find that triangular wound Peter was unable
to explain even to himself, but he was quite as sure that Romola Borria's
hand was in this latest development as he had been sure a moment before
that her steady, small hand had deliberately removed the clip of cartridges
from the butt of the automatic, to render him helpless in the face of his
enemies.

Silently contemplating the stiffening victim of Romola Borria's
triangular dagger, Peter heard the rustle of silk garments, and looked up in
time to observe the slender person of Romola Borria herself, attired exactly

as he had left her a few hours previous, detach itself from the corridor
vestibule-way which led to his stateroom. She approached him.

A thousand questions and accusations swam to his lips, but she was
speaking in low, impassioned tones.

"I knocked at your door. God! I thought he had killed you! I was afraid.
For a moment I thought you were dead."

"You stabbed him," said Peter in an expressionless voice.

She nodded, and drew a long, sobbing breath.

"Yes. He tried to shoot you. I saw him pass my window. I was waiting. I
watched. I knew he would try. Oh, I'm so glad——"

"You knew? You knew that?"

"Yes, yes. He was the—the mate of the coolie you threw overboard in
Batavia. You know, they always travel in pairs. You didn't know that?"

"No; I did not know. But I could have defended myself easily enough if
it had not been for——"

"Your clip of cartridges? Can you forgive me? Can you ever forgive me
for taking them out? I took them out. Oh, Mr. Moore, believe me, I am
concealing nothing! I did remove the clip, and in my carelessness I forgot to
give them back to you when you left my room."

"I see. Have you them?"

"Yes."

"Please give them to me. You have not by any chance, in another of
those careless moods of yours, happened to tamper with the bullets, have
you?"

"Mr. Moore——" she gasped, clutching her white hands to her breast in
indignation.

"You are clever," said Peter sarcastically. "You're altogether too damn
clever. What your game is, I'm not going to take the trouble to ask. You—
you——"

"Oh, Mr. Moore!" She caught his arm.

He cast it away.

"Didn't tamper with the bullets, eh?" he went on in a deep, sullen voice.
"Well, Miss Borria, here is what I think of your word. Here is how much I
trust you."

And with a single motion Peter whipped all seven cartridges from the
clip and tossed them into the sea. He snarled again:

"You are clever, damn clever. Poor, poor little thing! Still want to go to
Japan with me, my dear?"

"I do," stated the girl, whose eyes were dry and burning.

"Sure! That's the stuff," railed Peter bitingly; "whatever you do, stick to
your story."

He grabbed her wrist, and her glance should have softened granite.

"For example," he sniffed; "that neat little cock-and-bull story you made
up about your cruel, brutal husband. Expect me to believe that, too, eh?"

"Not if you don't care to," said the girl faintly.

Peter knocked away her hand, the hand which seemed always to fumble
at her throat in moments of strain. He pulled down the black kimono and
dragged her under the light, forcing her back against the white cabin. He
looked.

The white, soft curve of her chest was devoid of all marks. It was as
white as that portion of a woman's body is said to be, by the singing poets,
as white as alabaster, and devoid of angry stripes.

Peter seized both limp wrists in one of his hands.

"By God, you are clever!" he scoffed. "Now, Miss Enigma, you spurt out
your story, and the true story, or, by Heaven, I'll call the skipper! I'll have
you put in irons—for murder!"

She hung her head, then flung it back and eyed him with the sullen fire
of a cornered animal.

"You forget I saved your life," she said.

As if they were red hot, Peter dropped her hands, and they fell at her
sides like limp rags.

"I—I——" he stammered, and backed away a step. "Good God!" he
exploded. "Then explain this; explain why you took the clip from my
automatic. Explain why you put up that story of a brutal husband, and
showed me scars on your breast to prove it—then washed them off. And
why—why you killed this man who would have murdered me."

"I will explain what I am able to," she said in a small, tired voice. "I took
the clips from the revolver because—because I didn't want you to shoot me.
I know their methods far better than you seem to; and I knew I could handle
this coolie myself far better than you could; and I wanted to run no risk of
being shot myself in attending to him.

"As for the 'brutal-husband story,' every word of that is the truth. If you
must know, I used rouge for the scars. Since you are so outspoken, I will
pay you back in the same cloth. There are scars on my body, on my back
and my legs."

Her face was as red as a poppy.

"And I killed this man because—well," she snapped, "perhaps because I
hate you."

Had she cut him with a whip, Peter could not have felt more hurt, more
humiliated, more ashamed, for gratitude was far from being a stranger to

him.

He half extended his arms in mute apology, and, surprised, he found her
lips caressing his, her warm arms about his neck. He kissed her—once—
and put her away from him; and that guiding star of his in California could
be thankful that Romola Borria's embrace was rather more forgiving than
insinuating.

"We must get rid of this coolie," she said, brushing the clusters of dark
hair from her face. "I will help you, if you like. But over he goes!"

"But the blood."

"Call a deck-boy. Tell him as little as you need. You are one of the ship's
officers. He will not question you."

He hesitated.

"Can you forgive me for this—way I have acted, my—my ingratitude?"

"Forgiveness seems to be a woman's principal role in life," she said with
a tired smile. "Yes. I am sorry, too, that we misunderstood. Good-night, my
dear."

And Peter was all alone, although his aloneness was modified to a
certain extent by the corpse at his feet. The dead weight he lifted with some
difficulty to the railing, pushed hard, and heard the muffled splash. Quickly
he got into his uniform, slipped his naked feet into looped sandals, and
sought the forecastle.

The occupants of this odorous place were sawing wood in an
unsynchronous chorus. No one seemed to be about, so he seized a pail half
filled with sujee, a block of holystone, and a stiff broom.

With these implements he occupied himself for fully a half-hour, until
the spots on the deck had faded to a satisfactory whiteness. The revolver
with Maxim silencer attached he discovered, after a long search, some
distance away in the deck-gutter.

He meditated at length upon the advisability of consigning this grim
trophy to the China Sea. Yet it is a sad commentary upon his native
shrewdness that Peter had not yet recovered from his boyish enthusiasm for
collecting souvenirs.

At last he decided to retain it, and he dropped it through the port-hole
upon the couch, thereupon forgetting all about it until the weapon was
called to his attention on the ensuing morning.

With all evidences of the crime removed, he replaced the pail, the stone,
and the broom in the forecastle locker, and sneaked back to his stateroom.
He locked the door, barricaded the port-hole with the pink-flowered curtains
—those symbols which had reminded him earlier of springtime in
California—and examined his pillow.

It had been an exceedingly neat shot. The bullet had bored clean through,
had struck the metal L-beam of the bunk, and rebounded into a pile of
bedclothes. Dented and scorched, Peter examined this little pellet of lead,
balancing it in the palm of his hand.

"Every bullet has its billet," he quoted, and he was glad indeed that the
billet in this case had not been his vulnerable cerebrum.

Snapping off the light, he drew the sheet up to his neck and lay there
pondering, listening to the whine of the ventilator-fan.

The haggard, distressed face of Romola Borria swam upon the screen of
his imagination. This woman commanded his admiration and respect.
Despite all dissemblings, all evasions, all actual and evident signs of the
double-cross, he confided to his other self that he was glad he had kissed
her. What can be so deliciously harmless as a kiss? he asked himself.

And wiser men than Peter have answered: What can be so harmful?

CHAPTER VIII

Night brings counsel, say the French. Only in sleep does one mine the
gold of truth, said Confucius.

When Peter was aroused by the golden dawn streaming through the
swinging port-glass upon his eyes the cobwebs were gone from his brain,
his eyes were clear and of a bright sea-blue, and he was bubbling with
enthusiasm for the new-born day.

His ablutions were simple: a brisk scrubbing of his gleaming, white
teeth, a dousing of his hands and face in bracing, cold water, with a
subsequent soaping and rinsing of same; followed by a hoeing process at
the mercy of a not-too-keen Japanese imitation of an American safety-razor.

Assured that the deck below his port-hole was spotless, he ventured to
the dining-room, half filled and buzzing with excitement.

He was given to understand by a dozen gesticulating passengers that
some time in the course of the night a deck-passenger, a Chinese coolie,
from Buitenzorg to Hong Kong, or Macao, had fallen overboard, leaving no
trace.

It was whispered that the helpless one had been done away with by foul
means. And Peter became conscious during the meal that his fat and jovial
little captain was looking at him and through him with a glance that could
not be denied or for long avoided.

Wondering what his Herr Captain might know of the particulars of last
night's doings, Peter sucked a mangosteen slowly, arranging his thoughts,
card-indexing his alibis, and making cool preparations for an official cross-
questioning. Clever lying out of his difficulty was the order, or the
alternative for Peter was the irons.

When the fat fingers of Mynheer the Captain at length dabbled in the
lacquered finger-bowl, after rounding out his fourth pomelo, Peter got up
slowly and walked thoughtfully to the foot of the staircase. Here the captain
caught up with him, touched his elbow lightly, and together they proceeded

to the promenade-deck, which was shining redly in places where the
wetness of the washing down had not yet been evaporated by the warm,
fresh wind.

Mynheer the Captain fell into place at Peter's side, gripped his fat
Javanese cigar between his teeth, and caught his fat wrists together stolidly
behind his back, and his low, wide brow slowly beetled.

"Mynheer," he began in a somewhat constrained voice, low and richly
guttural, "it iss known to you vat took place on der ship some dam during
der nacht? Ja?"

"I overheard the passengers talking about a coolie falling overboard last
night, sir," replied Peter guardedly. As long as no direct accusation came, he
felt safer. He was reasonably sure, basing his opinion of skippers on many
past encounters, that this one would go typically to his subject. In his
growing cock-sureness, Peter expected no rapier-play. It would be a case, he
felt sure, of all the cards on the table at once; a slam-bang, as it were.

"You know nodding of dot business, young man?"

"Nothing at all, Myn Captain."

"Dot iss strange. Dot iss strange," muttered the captain as they rounded
the forward cabin and made their way in slow, measured strides down the
port side. "I haf seen you come aboard yesterday, mynheer; und I haf seen
you t'row over der side a coolie, a coolie who wass wit' der coolie who
dis'ppeared last nacht. Why did you t'row him over der side, eh?"

"He threatened me with his knife," replied Peter without an instant's
hesitation. "Mynheer, he was a bad Chink, a killer."

"Ja. Tot ver vlomme! All of 'em are bad Chinks."

"Why should he stab me?" intoned Peter. "I never saw him before. I am a
peaceful citizen. The only interest I have on this ship, Mynheer Captain, is
the wireless apparatus."

"Ja? Dot iss gude to hear, young man. I haf liked you—how does one
say it?—immensely. Der oder man wass no gude. He is gude rittance. You
intend to stay wit' us. Ja?"

"I hope so," said Peter heartily and with vast relief.

"You like dis ship, eh?"

"Very much, indeed."

"And I vant you to stay, young man. I vant you to stay joost as long as
you feel like staying. But I vant to ask you one t'ing, joost one t'ing."

"I'll do anything you say, sir."

The fat, jovial skipper of the Persian Gulf eyed Peter with beady,
cunning eyes, and Peter was suddenly conscious of a sinking sensation.

"Joost one t'ing. Better, first I should say, ven you t'row overboard der
coolies you dislike, it vould be best not to keep—vat are dey called—der
soufenirs. Sooch t'ings as peestols."

"But, mynheer——"

The fat hand waved him to silence.

"Bot' of dem vas bad Chinks. I know. I know bot' of dose coolies a long,
long time. T'ieves and blood men. Tot ver vlomme! It iss gude rittance, as
you say. Young man, I haf nodding but one more t'ing to tell you. I say, I
like you—immensely. I vant you very much to stay. But der next time
coolies are to be t'rown over der side, I will be pleased to haf you ask my
permission."

Peter stared hard at the fat little man, with a quick glaze of gratitude over
his eyes. The skipper left him, doubling back in the direction of the wheel-
house. And something in the unsteadiness of the broad, plump shoulders
gave to Peter in his perplexity the not inaccurate notion that the fat little
man had enjoyed his joke and was giggling to such an extent that it almost
interfered with his dignified strut.

Before buckling down to the day's business he made sure of one thing.
Gone from his stateroom was the revolver with its Maxim silencer.

Because the wireless room at sea is a sort of lounging-room for those
passengers who are bored from reading, or poker, or promenading, or
simply are incompetent to amuse themselves without external assistance,
Peter ignored the dozen pair of curious and interested eyes which were
focussed on his white uniform as he passed, with those telltale chevrons of
golden sparks at the sleeves, strode into the wireless cabin, hastily closed
the door, locked it, and thereupon gave his attention to the void.

He was not surprised to hear the shrill yap of the Manila station dinning
in the receivers, and having no desire to allow his fair name to be
besmirched by what might be professional inattention to duty, he gave
Manila a crackling response, and told him to shoot and shoot fast, as he had
a stack of business on hand, which was the truth.

Steamship and commercial messages were awaiting his nimble fingers, a
half-dozen of them, in a neat little pile where the purser had left them to
attract his attention as soon as he came on duty.

Manila's first message, with a Hong Kong dateline, and via the
Philippine cable, was a service message, directed to Peter Moore, "probably
aboard the steamer Persian Gulf, at sea." The context of this greeting was
that Peter should report directly upon arrival in Hong Kong to J. B. Whalen,
representative of the Marconi Company of America, residence, Peak Hotel.

Following this transmission the Manila operator was anxious to know
whether or not this was Peter Moore at the key; that he had been given
instructions by the night man, who claimed to be a bosom companion of
Peter Moore's, to make inquiries regarding Peter Moore's whereabouts
during the past few months.

He further expressed a profane desire to know, provided the man at the
key was Peter Moore, how in Hades he was, where in Tophet he had been
keeping himself, and why in Gehenna he had so mysteriously vanished from
the face of this glorious earth.

"But why all the hubbub about Peter Moore?" flashed back Peter to the
inquisitive Manila operator, who was only about two hundred miles distant
by now and rather faint with the coming up of the sun.

"Are—you—Peter—Moore?" came the faint scream.

"No, no, no!" shrieked the voluptuous white spark of the Persian Gulf.

"Is—he—on—board?"

"No, no, no!" rapped Peter making no effort to disguise that inimitable
sending of his.

"You—are—a—double-barreled liar!" said the Manila spark with
vehement emphasis. "No operator on the Pacific has that fist. You might as
well try to disguise the color of your eyes!"

Manila tapped his key, making a long series of thoughtful little double
dots, the operator's way of letting his listener know he is still on the job, and
thinking. Then:

"Why did you leave the Vandalia at Shanghai?"

"I never left the Vandalia anywhere," retorted Peter. "I've just come up
from Singapore and Singaraja way. I am taking the Persian Gulf to Hong
Kong, and back to Batavia."

"No—you're—not," stated Manila's high-toned spark. "You're going to
be pinched as soon as you land in Hong Kong for deserting your ship at
Shanghai. That's a secret, for old friendship's sake."

It was now Peter's turn to tap off a singularly long row of little double
dots.

"It may be a secret, but only a thousand stations are listening in," he said
at length. "But, thanks, old-timer, just the same. If they pinch Peter Moore
in Hong Kong, they will have to extradite him from Kowloon. In other
words, they will have to go some. Besides, what Peter does in Shanghai
cannot be laid against him in Hong Kong. The law's the law."

A savage tenor whine here broke in upon Manila's laughing answer, the
Hi! Hi! Hi! of the amused radio man; and Peter listened in some annoyance
to the peremptory summons of a United States gunboat, probably nosing
around somewhere south of Mindanao.

"Stand by, Manila," shrilled this one. "Message for the Persian Gulf." He
broke off with a nimble signature.

"Good morning, little stranger," roared Peter's stridulent machine.
"You're pretty far from home. Won't you get your feet wet? The ocean's
pretty dewy this morning. Well, what do you want? Shoot it, and shoot fast.
Peter Moore's at the key, and the faster you shoot them the better Peter likes
them."

The gunboat stuttered angrily.

"A message for Peter Moore, operator in charge, steamer Persian Gulf,
at sea. Report immediately upon arrival in Hong Kong to American consul
for orders. (Signed) B. P. Eckles, commanding officer, U. S. S. Buffalo."

To which Peter composed the following pertinent reply:

"To Commander Eckles, U. S. S. Buffalo, somewhere south of
Mindanao. What for? (Signed) Peter Moore."

The promptness of the reply to this indicated that the recrudescence of
Peter Moore, dead or alive, was of sufficient interest to command the
presence of the gunboat's commander in the wireless house. In effect, Peter
now realized that his confession had got him into considerable hot water.

Back came the Buffalo's nervous answer: "To Peter Moore, operator in
charge, steamer Persian Gulf, at sea. Orders. Obey them. (Signed) B. P.
Eckles."

Peter cut out the formalities. "Please ask the commander what's the
trouble."

And out of the void cracked the retort: "He says, ask the American
consul at Hong Kong."

There seemed nothing much to do aside from attending to the
accumulated business on hand. In Hong Kong he could only decide which
of the two he would honor first, the Marconi supervisor or the American
consul; for in strange lands one falls into the custom of complying with the
requests of his countrymen.

But Peter was beginning to feel a little of the old-time thrill. It was fine
to have the fellows recognize that lightning fist of his; fine to have their
homage. For the stumbling signals of both Manila and the Buffalo were
homage of the most straightforward sort.

For Peter Moore as wireless operator was swift of the swiftest; he
despatched with a lightning lilt, and the keenness of his ears, for which he
was famous on more than one ocean, made it possible for him to receive
signals with rarely the necessity for a repeat.

Manila, obeying orders, was standing by, and Peter, tightening a screw to
bring the silver contacts of the massive transmission-key in better
alignment, despatched his string at the highest speed of which he was
capable. As long as his listeners knew he was Peter Moore, he might as well
give them, he decided, a sample of the celebrated Peter Moore sending.

For five minutes the little wireless cabin roared with the undiminishing
rat-tat-tat of his spark explosions, and Manila, a navy man of the old
school, rattled back a series of proud O.K.'s.

Proud? Because Peter Moore, of the old Vandalia, of the Sierra, and a
dozen other ships, was at the key. And an operator who said "O.K." at the
termination of one of Peter's inspired lightning transmissions had every
right to be proud, as any wireless operator who has ever copied thirty-three
words a minute will bear me witness.

CHAPTER IX

When Peter emerged from the wireless room, having completed his
business for the morning, he found Romola Borria with elbows on the rail
gazing thoughtfully at a small Chinese girl who sat cross-legged on the
hatch cover immersed in her sewing.

And Peter marveled at the freshness of Romola Borria's appearance, at
the clarity of her sparkling brown eyes, the sweet pinkness of her
complexion, and the ease and radiance of her tender smile.

"You look troubled," she said, as her smile was replaced by a look of
tender concern. "What is it?" She lowered her voice to a confidential
undertone. "Last night's affair, desu-ka?"

Peter shook his head with a grave smile.

"I am discovered, Miss Borria. That is to say, I have just given myself
away to the Manila navy station, not to speak of the commander of a
gunboat, not far from us, off the coast of Mindanao. It seems"—he made a
wry face—"Peter Moore is not popular with the authorities for deserting a
certain ship in Shanghai."

"The Vandalia!" said the girl, and suddenly bit her lip, as though she
would have liked to retract the statement.

Peter sank down on his elbows beside her, until his face was very close
to hers, and his expression was shrewd and cunning.

"Miss Borria," he remarked stiffly, "I told you last night you're clever;
and now you've given me just one more reason to stick to my guns; one
more reason to believe that you know more than you're supposed to know.
Now, let's be perfectly frank—for once. Let's not erase any more rouge
stripes, so to speak. Won't you please tell me just what you do know about
my activities in this neighborhood?"

His outflung gesture indicated the whole of Asia.

The girl pursed her lips and a hard twinkle, like that of a frosty arc-light
upon diamonds, came into her eyes. "Yes, Mr. Moore," she said vigorously,
"I will. But you must promise—promise faithfully—to ask no questions.
Will you do that?"

Peter nodded with a willingness that was far from assumed.

Romola Borria placed the tips of her slender, white fingers together and
looked down at them pensively. "Well," she said, looking up and raising her
voice slightly, "you escaped from the liner Vandalia in the middle of the
Whang-poo River, at night, in a deep fog, in a sampan, with a young
woman named Eileen Lorimer in your arms. This occurred after you had
delivered her from the hands of certain men, whom I prefer to call, perhaps
mysteriously, by the plain word them.

"You sent this young lady home on the Manchuria, or the Mongolia, I
forget just which. That night on the bund near the French legation, you met,
quite by accident, another young lady who found your companionship quite
desirable. Her name was Miss Amy Vost, a bright little thing."

"You don't happen to know," put in Peter ironically, "what Miss Lorimer
had for breakfast this morning, by any chance?"

"At last accounts she was studying for a doctor's degree in the university
at San Friole, Mr. Moore."

"Indeed!" It was on the tip of Peter's tongue to tell this astounding
Romola Borria that she was nothing short of a mind-reader. Instead, he
nodded his head for her to continue.

"As I was saying, you met Miss Vost, quite by accident, and danced with
her at a fancy dress ball at the Astor House. You wore the costume of a
Japanese merchant, I believe, thinking, a little fatuously, if you will permit
me, that those garments were a disguise. A little later in the bar at the Palace
Hotel, after you left Miss Vost, you met a sea captain, ex-first mate of the
Toyo Kisen Kaisha steamer, the Sunyado Maru. He was an old friend.

"With Captain MacLaurin and Miss Vost you made a trip on the Yangtze-
Kiang in a little river steamer, the Hankow, which foundered in the rapids
just below Ching-Fu. This occurred after you had stabbed and killed one of
their most trusted spies.

"When the Hankow sank, you followed what now appears to be your
professional habit of a trustworthy gallant, by taking a lady in distress into
your arms, and swam the whirlpools to the little village across the river
from Ching-Fu. Then Miss Vost was met by her father, an incurable
missionary from Wenchow, and by devious routes, well known to them, you
joined a caravan, owned by a garrulous old thief who calls himself a
mandarin, the Mandarin Chang, who told you many lies, to amuse himself
—

"Of course they were lies, Mr. Moore. Chang is one of his most trusted
henchmen. He even permitted you to kill one of his coolies. The coolie
would have died anyway; he was beginning to learn too much. But it tickled
Chang, and him, to let you have this chance, to see how far you would go.
And Chang had orders to help you reach Len Yang. It gave you confidence
in yourself, did it not?"

"I don't believe a word," declared Peter in a daze. He refused to believe
that Chang, kindly old Chang, was in league with that man, too.

"Then you entered Len Yang, the City of Stolen Lives, and he watched
you, and when you heard a difficult wireless message on the instruments at
the mine, he gave you a present of money—five hundred taels, wasn't it?—
hoping, perhaps, that you would 'give up your foolishness,' as he expressed
it, and settle down to take the place of the opium-befuddled wireless man
you fooled so cleverly. He valued you, Mr. Moore, you see, and he was not
in the least afraid of you!

"A dozen times, yes, a hundred times, he could have killed you. But he
preferred to sit back and stroke those long, yellow, mandarin mustaches of
his, and watch you, as a cat watches a foolish mouse. I can see him
laughing now. Yes! I have seen him, and I have heard him laugh. It is a
hideous, cackling laugh. Quite unearthly! How he did laugh at you when

you rescued Miss Vost, dear little clinging Miss Vost, from the jaws of his
white palace!

"But he let you go; and he and his thousand sharpshooters who lined the
great, green walls, when you and Captain MacLaurin and Miss Vost
galloped bravely out, with one poor little mule! A thousand rifles, I say,
were leveled upon you in that bright moonlight, Mr. Moore. But he said—
no!"

Peter looked up at the stolid rigging of the Persian Gulf, at the sunlight
dancing brightly on the blue waves, which foamed at their crests like fresh,
boiling milk; at the passengers sleeping or reading in their deck chairs; and
he refused to believe that this was not a dream. But the level voice of
Romola Borria purred on:

"Then you joined a caravan for India, and, for a little while, they thought
your trail was lost. But you reappeared in Mandalay, attired as a street fakir;
and you limped all the way to Rangoon. Why did you limp, Mr. Moore?"

"A mule stamped on my foot, coming through the Merchants' Pass into
Bengal."

"It healed rapidly, no doubt, for you were very active from that time on.
You took passage to Penang, to Singapore, doubling back to Penang, and
again to Singapore, and caught a blue-funnel steamer for Batavia."

"But, Miss Borria," writhed Peter, "why, with all this knowledge, hasn't
he done away with me? You know. He knows. You've had your chance. You
could have killed me in your stateroom last night. Please——" And Peter
cast the golden robe of the adventurer temporarily from him, becoming for
the moment nothing more than a terribly earnest, terribly concerned young
man.

"I gave you an inkling last night," replied Romola Borria composedly.
"Until you left Batavia he believed that you had given up your nonsense.
The coolie you threw overboard in Batavia was there, not to stab you, but to
warn you away from China. Those warnings, of which you have had many,

are now things of the past. You have thrown down the glove to him once too
often. He is through toying.

"It was great fun for him, and he enjoyed it. He treats his enemies that
way—for a while. You have now entered upon the second stage of enmity
with him. Last night was a sample of what you may expect from now on.
Only the sheerest luck saved you from the coolie's bullet—and my almost-
too-tardy intervention."

Peter gave her a hard, thoughtful and a thoroughly respectful stare.

"I take it," he said, "that you are a special emissary, a sort of minister
plenipotentiary, from the Gray Dragon. As a matter of fact, you are here
simply to persuade me to correct my erring ways; to persuade me to give
you my promise for him that I will put China and Len Yang forever out of
my plans."

"Express it any way you please, Mr. Moore. I have told you about all
that I am able. I know this game, if you will permit me, a little, just a little
better than you do, Mr. Moore. I know when fun stops and downright
danger begins. The moment you put your foot in China, you are putting
your foot in a trap from which you can never, never so long as you are
permitted to live, extricate yourself. And, believe me, seriously, that will not
be for long. A day? Perhaps. An hour? Very likely not any longer than that.

"Call me a special emissary if you choose. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I am
only a friend, who desires above everything else to help you avoid a most
certain and a most unpleasant death. I have given you your opportunity.
From my heart I gave you, and I still do give you, the chance to leave—
with me. Yes; I mean that. Your promise, backed by your word of honor, is
a passport to safety for both of us. Your refusal, I might as well confess,
means to me—death! Won't you stop and consider? Won't you say—yes?"

Peter's head had snapped back during this epilogue; his white-clad
shoulders were squared, and his blue eyes were lighted by a fire that might
have made a Crusader envious.

"You may report to him," said he, "that I have listened to his proposal;
that I have considered it calmly; and that, as long as the gauntlet is down—
it is—down! I want but one thing: a man's chance at that beast. You can tell
him just that from me, Miss Borria. I am sorry."

She seemed on the point of uttering a final word, a word that might have
been of the greatest importance to Peter the Brazen; but the word never got
beyond her lips.

Into her eyes crept a look of despair, of mute horror. She half raised her
hand; withdrew it. Her shoulders sagged. She staggered to a deck chair, and
sank into it, with her head back, her eyes closed, her long, dark lashes lying
upon cheeks that had become marble.

Standing there with his eyes glued to the blue of the sea, Peter the
Brazen felt the confidence oozing from him as water oozes out of a leaky
pail. He felt himself in the presence of a relentless power which was slowly
settling down upon him, crushing him, and overpowering him.

It occurred to him as his thoughts raced willy-nilly, to flash a call of help
to the gunboat which prowled south of Luzon, a call which would have met
with a response swift and energetic.

Yet that impulse smacked of the blunderer. It would put an end forever to
his high plan, now boiling more strongly than ever before, in the back of his
racked brain: to meet and some day put down the beast in Len Yang.

A bright, waving hand distracted his attention from the sea. The maid
from Macassar was endeavoring to attract him. He looked down with a
pale, haggard smile.

"You have not forgotten—Kowloon, busar satu?" said her tinkling little
voice.

"Not I, small one!" Peter called back in accents that entirely lacked their
accustomed gaiety.

CHAPTER X

During the remainder of the voyage Romola Borria did not once, so far
as Peter was aware, leave her stateroom. Her meals were sent there, and
there she remained, sending out word in response to his inquiries that she
was ill, could see no one—not that Peter, after that latest astounding
interview, cared particularly to renew the friendship. He was simply
thoughtful.

Yet he felt a little angry at his demonstration of frank selfishness, and not
a little uneasy at the uncanny precision of her recital of his recent history, an
uneasiness which grew, until he found himself waiting with growing
concern for the rock-bound shore-line of Hong Kong to thrust its black-and-
green shoulders above the horizon.

The Persian Gulf anchored outside at night, and in the morning steamed
slowly in amidst the maze of masts, of sampans and junks, which latter lay
with their sterns pointing grotesquely upward, resembling nothing so
closely as great brown hawks which had flown down from a
Brobdingnagian heaven, to select with greater convenience and
fastidiousness what prey might fall within reach of their talons.

Peter was aware that many of these junks were pirate ships, audacious
enough to pole into Victoria Harbor under the very guns of the forts, under
the noses of battleships of every nation.

When the launch from quarantine swung alongside, Peter went below
and changed from the uniform to a light, fresh suit of Shantung silk, a soft
collar, a soft Bangkok hat, and comfortable, low walking shoes, not
neglecting to knot about his waist the blue sarong.

The steerage passengers were lined up when he came above a little later,
sticking out their tongues for the eagle-eyed doctors, and giggling at a
proceeding serious enough, had they known it, to send every mother's son

and daughter of them back to the land whence they came, if they displayed
so much as a slight blemish, for Hong Kong was then in the throes of her
latest cholera scare.

Satisfied at length that the eyes and tongues of the steerage and deck
passengers gave satisfactorily robust testimony, the doctors came up to the
first-class passengers, who stood in line on the promenade deck; and Peter
saw the change that had come over Romola Borria.

Her face bore the pallor of the grave. Her large, lustrous eyes were
sunken, and lines seemed to have been engraved in a face that had
previously been as smooth and fair as a rose in bloom.

He felt panic-stricken as she recognized him with an almost
imperceptible nod, and he stared at her a trifle longer than was necessary,
with his lips slightly ajar, his nails biting into his palms, and he sensed
rather than saw, that her beauty had been transformed into one of gray
melancholy.

At that juncture, a tinkling voice shrilled up at him from the after cargo-
well, and Peter turned to see his small charge, the maid from Macassar,
smiling as she waited for him beside a small pile of silken bundles of the
rainbow's own colors. He had not forgotten the Eurasian girl, but he desired
to have a parting word with Romola Borria.

He called over the rail, and instructed her of the black pigtail to wait for
him in a sampan, and he yelled down to one of the dozens of struggling and
babbling coolies, whose sampans swarmed like a horde of cockroaches at
the ladder's lower extremity.

Romola Borria, alone, was awaiting him, adjusting her gloves, at the
doorway of the wireless cabin when he made his way back to that quarter of
the ship. She greeted him with a slow, grave smile; and by that smile Peter
was given to know how she had suffered.

Her face again became a mask, a mask of death, indeed, as her lids
fluttered down and then raised; and her eyes were tired.

He extended his hand, trying to inject some of his accustomed
cheerfulness into the gesture and into the smile which somehow would not
form naturally on his lips.

"This—is adieu—or au revoir?" he said solemnly.

"I hope—au revoir," she replied dully. "So, after all, you refuse to take
my counsel, my advice, seriously?"

Peter shrugged. "I'm rather afraid I can't," he said. "You see, I'm young.
And you can say to yourself, or out loud without fear of hurting my
feelings, that I am—foolish. I guess it is one of the hardships of being
young—this having to be foolish. Wasn't it to-day that I was to become
immortal, with a knife through my floating ribs, or a bullet in my heart?

"As I grow older I will become more serious, with balance. Perish the
thought! But in the end—shucks! Confucius, wasn't it—that dear old
philosopher who could never find a king to try out his theories on—who
said:
"The great mountain must crumble.
The strong beam must break.
The wise man must wither away like a plant."

She nodded.

"I am afraid you will never become serious, Mr. Moore. And perhaps
that is one of the reasons why I've grown so—so fond of you in this short
while. If I could take life—and death—as stoically, as happily, as you—oh,
God!"

She shut her eyes. Tears were in their rims when she opened them again.

"Mr. Moore, I'll make a foolish confession, too, now. It is—I love you.
And in return——"

"I think you're the bravest girl in the world," said Peter, taking her hands
with a movement of quick penitence. "You—you're a brick."

"I guess I am," she sighed, looking moodily away. "A brick of clay!
Perhaps it is best to walk into the arms of your enemies the way you do,
with your head back and eyes shining and a smile of contempt on your lips.
If I only could!"

"Why speak of death on a day like this?" said Peter lightly. "Life is so
beautiful. See those red-and-yellow blossoms on the hill, near the
governor's place, and the poor little brats on that sampan, thinking they're
the happiest kids in the world. What hurts them, hurts them; what pleases
them, pleases them. They're happy because they don't bother to anticipate.
And think of life, beautiful old life, brimming over with excitement and the
mystery of the very next moment!"

"If I could only see that next moment!"

"Ugh! What a dreary monotony life would become!"

"But we could be sure. We could prepare for—for—well——" She
threw up her head defiantly. "For death, I'll say."

"But please don't let's talk of death. Let's talk of the fine time you and I
are going to have when we see each other again."

"Will there be another time, Peter?"

"Why, of course! You name that time; any time, any place. We'll eat and
drink and chatter like a couple of parrots. And you will forget all this—this
that is behind us."

Her teeth clicked.

"To-night," she said quickly. "I'll meet you. Let me see. On the
Desvoeux Road side of the Hong Kong Hotel balcony, the restaurant,
upstairs, you know."

"Right!" agreed Peter with enthusiasm. "Will we let husband go along?"

Her face suddenly darkened. She shook her head.

"I will be alone. So will you, at seven o'clock. You'll be there, without
fail?"

A coolie guarded her luggage near by impatiently. They could hear the
sobbing of the J. C. J. passenger launch as it rounded the starboard counter.

"I forget," said Peter, with his flashing smile. "I'll be dead in an hour.
The steel trap of China, you know."

"Please don't jest."

"I'll tell you what I will do. I'll put a tag on my lapel, saying, deliver this
corpse to the Desvoeux Road balcony of the Hong Kong Hotel restaurant at
seven sharp to-night! Without fail! C. O. D.!"

These last words were addressed to the empty wireless cabin doorway.
The white skirt of Romola Borria flashed like a taunting signal as she
hastened out of his sight with the boy who carried her grips.

CHAPTER XI

Wearing a slight frown, Peter made his way through piles of
indiscriminate luggage to the port ladder, where his sampan and the maid
from Macassar were waiting.

As he descended this contrivance he scanned the other sampans warily,
and in one of these he saw a head which protruded from a low cabin. The
sampan was a little larger than the others, and it darted in and out on the
edge of the waiting ones.

The head vanished the instant Peter detected it, but it made a sharp
image in his memory, a face he would have difficulty in forgetting. It was a
long, chalk-white face, topped by a black fedora hat—a face garnished at
the thin gray lips by a mustache, black and spikelike, resembling nothing

more closely than the coal-black mustache affected by the old-time
melodrama villains.

An hour of life? Did this man have concealed under his black coat the
knife which had been directed by the beast in Len Yang to seek out his
heart, to snuff out his existence, the existence of a trifling enemy?

As Peter reached the shelving at the foot of the ladder the thought grew
and blossomed, and the picture was not a pleasant one. The man in the
sampan, as Peter could judge by his face, would probably prove to be a tall
and muscular individual.

And then Peter caught sight of another face, but the owner of it remained
above-board. This man was stout and gray, with a face more subtly
malignant. It was a red face, cut deep at the eyes, and in the region of the
large purple nose, with lines of weather or dissipation. Blue eyes burned out
of the red face, faded blue eyes, that were, despite their lack of lustre, sharp
and cunning.

The hand of its owner beckoned imperiously for Peter, and he shouted
his name; and Peter was assured that in the other hand was concealed the
knife or the pistol of his doom.

With these not altogether pleasant ideas commanding his brain he
jumped into the sampan in which the maid from Macassar was smilingly
waiting.

Peter saw that his coolie was big and broad, with muscles which stood
out like ropes on his thick, sun-burned arms and legs. He gave the coolie his
instructions, as the sampan occupied by the red-faced man was all the while
endeavoring to wiggle closer. Again the man called Peter by name,
peremptorily, but Peter paid no heed.

"To Kowloon. Chop-chop!" shouted Peter. "Cumshaw. Savvy?" He
displayed in his palm three silver dollars and the coolie bent his back to the
sweep, the sampan heeling out from the black ironside like a thing alive.

Behind them, as this manoeuvre was executed, Peter saw the two duly
accredited agents of the Gray Dragon fall in line. But Peter had selected
with wisdom. The coolie verified with the passage of every moment the
power his ropy muscles implied. Inch by inch, and yard by yard, they drew,
away from the pursuing sampans.

Then something resembling the scream of an enraged parrot sang over
their heads, and he instinctively ducked, turning to see from which of the
sampans this greeting had come.

A faint puff of light-blue smoke sailed down the wind between the two.
Which one? It was difficult to say.

They were beginning to leave the pursuit decidedly in the lurch now.
Peter's coolie, with his long legs braced far apart on the running-boards,
bent his back, swaying like a mighty metronome from port to starboard,
from starboard to port, whipping the water into an angry, milky foam.

The pursuers crept up and fell back by fits and starts; slowly the distance
widened.

The girl crouched down in the cabin, and Peter, with his automatic in his
hand, waited for another tell-tale puff of blue smoke.

Finally this puff occurred, low on the deck of the larger craft. The bullet
plunked into the water not two feet from the sweep, and the coolie, inspired
by the knowledge that he, too, was inextricably wrapped up in this race of
life and death, sweated, and shouted in the savage "Hi! Ho! Hay! Ho!" of
the coolie who dearly loves his work.

Satisfied as to the origin of both bullets, Peter took careful aim at the
yellow sampan and emptied his magazine, slipping another clip of
cartridges into the oblong hole as he watched for the result.

The yellow sampan veered far from her course, and a sweep floated on
the surface some few yards aft. Then the sampan lay as if dead. But the
other plunged on after.

This exciting race and the blast of Peter's automatic now attracted the
earnest attention of a gray little river gunboat, just down from up-stream,
and inured to such incidents as this.

A one-pound shell snarled overhead, struck the water a hundred yards
further on, near the Kowloon shore, and sent up a foaming white pillar.

The pier at Kowloon loomed close and more close. It was unlikely that
the gunboat would follow up the shot with another, and in this guess, Peter,
as the French say, "had reason."

The fires under the gunboat's boilers were drawn, and there was no time
for the launching of a cutter.

A great contentment settled down upon Peter's heart when he saw that
the oncoming sampan could not reach the pier until he and his charge were
out of sight, or out of reach, at least.

He examined his watch. The gods were with him. It lacked three minutes
of train-time.

It was only a hope that he and the girl would be safe on board the Canton
train before the red-faced man could catch up.

The sampan rubbed the green timbers of the Kowloon landing stage.
Peter tossed up the girl's luggage in one large armful, lifted her by the
armpits to the floor of the pier, and relieved himself hastily of four dollars
(Mexican), by which the grunting coolie was gratefully, and for some few
hours, richer.

They dashed to the first-class compartment, and Peter dragged the girl in
beside him.

"To Canton, too?" she inquired in surprise.

Peter nodded. He slammed the door. A whistle screamed, and the station
of Kowloon, together with the glittering waters of the blue bay, and the
white city of Hong Kong, across the bay, all began moving, first slowly,

then with acceleration, as the morning express for Canton slid out on the
best-laid pair of rails in southern China.

Had his red-faced pursuer caught up in time? Peter prayed not. He was
tingling with the thrill of the chase; and he turned his attention to the small
maiden who sat cuddled close to his side, with hands folded demurely
before her, imprisoning between them the overlap of his flaunting blue
sarong.

"We are safe, brave one?" she was desirous of knowing.

He patted her hand reassuringly, and she caught at it, lowering her green-
blue eyes to the dusty floor, and sighing.

Peter might have paused in his rapid meditations long enough to be
aware that, here he was, dropped—plump—into the center of another ring
of romance; nothing having separated him from his last love but two
misdirected revolver shots, the warning boom of a gunboat's bow cannon,
and a mad chase across Victoria Bay.

Holding hands breaks no known law; yet Peter was not entirely aware
that he was committing this act, as his eyes, set and hard, stared out of the
window at the passing pagodas with their funny turned-up roofs.

His mind was working on other matters. Perhaps for the first time since
the Persian Gulf had dropped anchor to the white sand of Victoria Harbor's
bottom, he began to realize the grim seriousness of Romola Borria's
warning. He was hemmed in. He was helpless.

An hour to live! An hour alive! But he was willing to make the very best
of that hour.

Absently, then by degrees not so absently, he alternately squeezed and
loosened the small, cool hands of the maid from Macassar. And she
returned the pressure with a timid confidence that made him stop and
consider for a moment something that had entirely slipped his mind during
the past few days.

Was he playing quite squarely with Eileen Lorimer? Had he been
observing perhaps the word but not the letter of his self-assumed oath? On
the other hand, mightn't it be possible that Eileen Lorimer had ceased to
care for him? With time and the miles stretching between them, wasn't it
quite possible that she had shaken herself, recognized her interest in him as
one only of passing infatuation, and, perhaps already, had given her love to
some other?

A silly little rhyme of years ago occurred to him:
Love me close! Love me tight! _But_
Love me when I'm out of sight!

And perhaps because Peter had fallen into one of his reasoning moods,
he asked himself whether it was fair to carry the flirtation any further with
the girl snuggled beside him. He knew that the hearts of Oriental girls open
somewhat more widely to the touch of affection than their Western sisters.
And it was not in the nature of women of the East to indulge extensively in
the Western form of idle flirtation. The lowering of the eyelids, the
flickering of a smile, had meaning and depth in this land.

Was this girl flirting with him, or was hers a deeper interest? That was
the question! He took the latter view.

And because he knew, from his own experience, that the hearts of lovers
sometimes break at parting, he finally relinquished the cool, small hands
and thrust his own deep into his pockets.

There was no good reason, apart from his own selfishness, why he
should give a pang of any form to the trustful young heart which fluttered
so close at his side.

"Where does your aged grandmother live, small one?" he asked her
briskly, in the most unsentimental tones imaginable.

"I have the address here, birahi," she replied, diving into her satin blouse
and producing a slip of rice paper upon which was scrawled a number of

dead-black symbols of the Chinese written language.

"A rickshaw man can find the place, of course," he said. "Now, look into
my eyes, small one, and listen to what I say."

"I listen closely, birahi," said the small one.

"I want you to stop calling me birahi. I am not your love, can never be
your love, nor can you ever be mine."

"But why, bi—my brave one?"

"Because—because, I am a wicked one, an orang gila, a destroyer of
good, a man of no heart, or worse, a black one."

"Oh, Allah, what lies!" giggled the maid.

"Yes, and a liar, too," declared Peter venomously, permitting his fair
features to darken with the blackest of looks. Was she flirting with him? "A
man who never told the truth in his life. A bad, bad man," he finished
lamely.

"But why are you telling such things to me, my brave one?" came the
provocative answer.

She was flirting with him.

Nevertheless, he merely grunted and relapsed again into the form of
meditative lethargy which of late had grown habitual if not popular with
him.

A little after noon the train thundered into the narrow, dirty streets of
China's most flourishing city, geographically, the New Orleans of the
Celestial Empire; namely, Canton, on the Pearl River.

As Peter and his somewhat amused young charge emerged into the street
he cast a furtive glance back toward the station, and was dumfounded to
glimpse, not two yards away, the man with the red, deeply marked face. His
blue eyes were ablaze, and he advanced upon Peter threateningly.

It was a situation demanding decisive, direct action. Peter, hastily
instructing the girl to hold two rickshaws, leaped at his pursuer with
doubled fists, even as the man delved significantly into his hip-pocket.

Peter let him have it squarely on the blunt nub of his red jaw, aiming as
he sprang.

His antagonist went down in a cursing heap, sprawling back with the
look in his washed-out eyes of a steer which has been hit squarely in the
center of the brow.

He fell back on his hands and lay still, dazed, muttering, and struggling
to regain the use of his members.

Before he could recover Peter was up and away, springing lightly into
the rickshaw. They turned and darted up one narrow, dirty alley into a
narrower and dirtier one, the two coolies shouting in blasphemous chorus to
clear the way as they advanced.

After a quarter of an hour of twisting and splashing and turning, the
coolies stopped in front of a shop of clay-blue stone.

Paying off the coolies, Peter entered, holding the door for the girl, and
sliding the bolt as he closed it after her.

He found himself in the presence of a very old, very yellow, and very
wrinkled Chinese woman, who smiled upon the two of them perplexedly,
nodding and smirking, as her frizzled white pigtail flopped and fluttered
about in the clutter on the shelves behind her.

It was a shop for an antique collector to discover, gorged with objects of
bronze, of carved sandalwood, of teak, grotesque and very old, of shining
red and blue and yellow beads, of old gold and old silver.

On the low, narrow counter she had placed a shallow red tray filled with
pearls; imitations, no doubt, but exquisite, perfect, of all shapes; bulbular,
pear, button, and of most enticing colors.

But the small girl was babbling, and a look of the most profound surprise
came slowly into the old woman's face. A little pearl-like tear sparkled in
either of her old eyes, and she gathered this cherished grand-daughter from
far away Macassar into her thin arms.

At that sight Peter felt himself out of place, an intruder, an interloper.
The scene was not meant for his eyes. He was an alien in a strange land.

As he hesitated, conjuring up words of parting with his little friend, he
gasped. Peering through the thick window-pane in the door was the red-
faced man, and his look sent a curdle of fear into Peter's brave heart. Would
he shoot through the pane?

The girl, too, saw. She chattered a long moment to her wrinkled
grandmother, and this latter leaped to the door and shot a second strong
bolt. She pointed excitedly to a rear door, low and green, set deep in the
blue stone.

Peter leaped toward it. Half opening this, he saw a tiny garden
surrounded by low, gray walls. He paused. The maid from Macassar was
behind him. She followed him out and closed the door.

"Birahi," she said in her tinkling voice, and with gravity far in advance
of her summers, "we must part now—forever?"

He nodded, as he searched the wall for a likely place to jump. "It is the
penalty of friendship, birahi. You do not mind if I call you birahi in our last
moment together?"

"No. No."

"I am curious, so curious, my brave one, about the red-faced man, and
the one with the black coat. But we women are meant for silence. Birahi, I
have played no part—I have been like a dead lily—a burden. Perhaps, if
you are in great danger——"

"I am in great danger, small one. The red toad wants my life, and you
must detain him."

"I will talk to him! But the others, the black-coated one—what of them?
They would like the feel of your blood on their hands, too!"

Peter nodded anxiously. He was thinking of Romola Borria.

"I will do anything," declared the maid from Macassar patiently.

"Has your grandmother a sampan, a trustworthy coolie?"

"Aie, birahi! She is rich!"

"Then have that coolie be at the Hong Kong landing stage with his
sampan at midnight. Have him wait until morning. If I do not come by
dawn he will return immediately to Canton. By dawn, if I am not there, it
will mean——"

"Death?" The small voice was tremulous.

Peter nodded.

"If the fokie returns with that message, you will write a short note——"

"To one you love?"

"To one I love. In America. The name is Eileen Lorimer; the address,
Pasadena, California. You will say simply, 'Peter Moore is dead.'"

"Ah! I must not say that. It will break her heart! But you must go now,
my brave one. I will talk to the red toad!"

The green door closed softly; and Peter was left to work out the problem
of his escape, which he did in an exceedingly short space of time. Even as
he took the fence in a single bound he fancied he could hear the panting of
the red-faced man at his heels.

He found himself in a crooked alleyway, which forked out of sight at a
near-by bend. Speeding to this point, he came out upon a somewhat broader
thoroughfare. He looked hastily for a rickshaw but none was in sight.

So he ran blindly on, resorting at intervals to his old trick of doubling
back, to confuse his pursuers. He did this so well that before long he had
lost his sense of direction, and the sun having gone from the sight of man
behind a mass of dark and portentous clouds.

At length he came to the City of the Dead, and sped on past the ivy-
covered wall, circling, doubling back, and giving what pursuit there might
have been a most tortuous trail to follow.

He was hooted at and jeered at by coolies and shrieking children, but he
ran on, putting the miles behind him, and finally dropped into a slow trot,
breathing like a spent race-horse.

At the pottery field he found a rickshaw, estimated that he still had time
to spare to make the Hong Kong train, and was driven to the station. Dead
or alive, he had promised to deliver himself to Romola Borria at the Hong
Kong Hotel at seven.

Visions of the malignant face of his red-featured enemy were constantly
in his mind.

But he breathed more easily as the train chugged out of the grim, gray
station. He sank back in the seat, letting his thoughts wander where they
would, and beginning to feel, as the miles were unspun, that he was at least
one jump ahead of the red death which had threatened him since his
departure from the friendly shelter of the Persian Gulf.

CHAPTER XII

The shadows were lengthening, the sky was of a deeper and vaster blue,
when the train came to a creaking stop in the Kowloon Station.

Peter emerged, scanning the passengers warily, but catching not a
glimpse of his red-faced enemy. What did that one have in store for him

now? This chase was becoming a game of hide-and-seek. But in Hong
Kong he would feel safer. Hong Kong was a haunt of civilized men and of
able Sikh policemen, who detested the yellow men of China.

He took the ferry-boat across the bay to the city, which rose tier upon tier
of white from the purple water; and he made his way afoot to the American
consulate.

With auspicious celerity the sad-eyed clerk bowed him into the presence
of an elderly gentleman with white side whiskers and an inveterate habit of
stroking a long and angular nose.

This personage permitted his shrewd, grave eyes to take in Peter from
his blond hair to his tan walking shoes, and with a respectful mien Peter
prepared his wits for a sharp and digging cross-examination.

"I have been advised," began the American consul, giving to Peter's blue
eyes a look of curiosity in which was mingled not a little unconcealed
admiration, as he might have looked upon the person of Pancho Villa, had
that other miscreant stepped into his gloomy office—"I have been advised,"
he repeated importantly, "by the commander of the auxiliary cruiser Buffalo
that you contemplated a visit to Hong Kong."

He sank back and stared, and it took Peter several moments to become
aware that the content of the remark was not nearly so important as its
pronunciation. The remark was somewhat obvious. The American consul
desired Peter to make the opening.

Peter inclined his head as he slowly digested the statement.

"I was told by Commander Eckles to report to you," he replied
respectfully, "for orders."

The American consul laid his hands firmly upon the edge of the
mahogany desk.

"My orders, Mr. Moore, are that you leave China immediately. I trust
——"

"Why?" said Peter in a dry voice.

"That is a matter which, unfortunately, I cannot discuss with you. The
order comes, I am permitted to inform you, from the highest of diplomatic
quarters. To be exact, from Peking, and from the American ambassador, to
be more specific."

It was crystal clear to Peter that the American consul was not cognizant
of what might be behind those orders from the American ambassador; yet
his face, for all of its diplomatic masking, told Peter plainly that the
American consul was not entirely averse to learning.

"Have I been interfering with the lawful pursuits of the Chinese
Empire?" he inquired ironically.

The American consul stroked his long nose pensively.

"Well—perhaps," he said. "On the whole, that is something you can best
explain yourself, Mr. Moore. If you should care to give me your side of the
question, ah——"

"I haven't a thing to say," rejoined Peter. "If the United States
Government chooses to believe that my presence is inimical to its interests
in China——"

"Pressure might have been brought to bear from another quarter."

"Quite so," admitted Peter.

"Now, if you should desire to make me acquainted with your pursuits
during the past—ah—few months, let us say, it is within the bounds of
possibility that I might somehow rescind this drastic—ah—order. Suffice it
to say, that I shall be glad to put my every power at your aid. As you are an
American, it is my duty and my pleasure, sir, if you will permit me, to do all
within my power, my somewhat restricted power, if I may qualify that
statement, to reinstate you in the good graces of those—ah—good
gentlemen in Peking."

It was all too evident that, back and beyond the friendly intentions of this
official, was a hungry desire for information regarding this young man
whose dark activities had been recognized by the high powers to an extent
sufficient to set in motion the complicated and bulky wheels of diplomacy.

Peter shook his head respectfully, and the consul permitted his
reluctantly admiring and inquisitive gaze to travel up and down the
romantic and now international figure.

"I am able to say nothing," he expressed himself quietly. "If the
American ambassador has decreed that I ought to go home—home I go! I'll
confess right now that I did not intend to go home when I stepped into this
office, but I do respect, and I will respect, the authority of that order."

"If the President, for example, should request you to continue—ah—
what you have been doing, for the good, let us say, of humanity, you would
continue without hesitation, Mr. Moore?"

Peter gave the long, pale face a sharp scrutiny. Did this innocent-faced
man know more than he intimated, or was he merely applying the soft,
velvet screws of diplomacy, endeavoring to squeeze out a little information?

"I certainly would."

The consul rose, with a bland smile, and extended his hand.

"It has been gratifying to know one who has become such a singular,
and, permit me to add, such a trying figure, in diplomatic circles, during the
past week. Good-day, sir!"

Peter walked down Desvoeux road in a state of mental detachment. A
week! Only a week had passed since he had sailed from Batavia, a week
since he had thrown overboard the emissary of the Gray Dragon. He
concluded that in more than one way could his presence be dismissed from
the land of darkness and distrust.

How had the Gray Dragon brought pressure upon the American
ambassador, a man of the highest repute, of sterling and patriotic qualities?

The answer seemed to be, that the coils of the Gray Dragon extended
everywhere, like an inky fluid which had leaked into every crevice and
crack of all Asia.

He was still under orders to pay a visit to J. B. Whalen, the Marconi
supervisor. That cross-examination he was glad to postpone.

He called at the office of the Pacific Mail, and found that the King of
Asia was due to leave for the United States the following morning at dawn.
He made a deposit on a reservation.

CHAPTER XIII

The hour lacked a few minutes of seven when Peter ascended in the lift
to the second floor of the Hong-Kong Hotel and made his way between the
closely packed tables to the Desvoeux Road balcony.

Romola Borria was not yet in evidence.

He selected a table which commanded a view of the entrance, toyed with
the menu card, absent-mindedly ordered a Scotch highball, and slowly
scrutinized the occupants of the tables in his neighborhood. He felt vaguely
annoyed, slightly uneasy, without being able to sift out the cause.

For a moment he regretted his audacity in encountering the curious eyes
of Hong Kong society, a society in which there would inevitably be present
a number of his enemies. It cannot be denied that a number of eyes studied
him leisurely and at some pains, over teacups, wine-glasses, and fans.

But these were for the larger part women, and Peter was more or less
immune to the curious, bright-eyed glances of this sex.

His attire was somewhat rakish for the occasion; and it appeared that
sarongs were not being sported by the more refined class of male diners,

who affected as a mass the sombre black of dinner jackets. At all Hong
Kong hotels the custom is evening dress for dinner, and Peter felt shabby
and shoddy in his silk suit, his low shoes, his soft collar.

An orchestra of noble proportions struggled effectively in the moist,
warm atmosphere somewhere in its concealment behind a distant palm
arbor with "Un Peu d'Amour," and also out of Peter's sight, an impassioned
and metallic tenor was sobbing:
"Jaw-s-s-st a lee-e-e-edle lof-f-ff—
A le-e-e-edle ke-e-e-e-e-e-s—"

And Peter in his perturbation wished that both blatant orchestra and
impassioned tenor were concealed behind a sound-proof stone wall.

He was tossing off the dregs of the highball when there occurred a low-
voiced murmur at his side, and he arose to confront the pale, worn face of
Romola. She gave him her hand limply, and settled down across from him,
her eyes darting from table to table, and occasionally nodding rather stiffly
and impersonally as she recognized some one.

"You see"—he smiled at her, as she settled back and fostered upon him a
look of brooding tenderness—"you see, my dear, I am here, untagged.
Nearly twelve hours have passed since you sounded that note of ominous
warning. I have yet to feel the thrill, just before I die, of that dagger sliding
between my ribs."

She accepted this with a nod almost indifferent.

"Simply because I have persuaded them to extend your parole to one
o'clock. If you linger in China, you have—and need I say that the same
applies to me—six more hours in which to jest, to laugh, to love—to live!"

"For which I am, as always in the face of favors, duly grateful," said
Peter in high humor. "None the less I have this day, since we parted this
morning, indulged in one pistol duel between sampans, with one of your
admirable confrères——"

"Yes, I heard of that. But it stopped there. You winged his sampan
coolie."

"And at the Canton station, if I may be pardoned for contradicting, I
encountered the red-faced one. To tell you what you may already know, I
punched him in the jaw, dog-gone him!"

She seemed to be distressed.

"You must be mistaken."

Peter shook his head forcibly. "A choleric gentleman born with the habit
of reaching for his hip-pocket," he amplified.

She studied him with wide, speculative eyes. "He must be from the
north. Some of them I do not know. But all of them have been informed."

"To permit me to live and love until one to-morrow morning?"

She nodded.

The aspiring and perspiring orchestra and the impassioned tenor had
again reached the chorus of "Un Peu d'Amour."
"I could ge-e-e-eve you al-l-l my life for the-e-e-e-s—"

"Badly sung, but appropriate," commented Romola Borria.

Peter's countenance became a question mark.

"It may mean that I am giving you all my life for—this," she explained.

"For these few minutes, when we were to chatter, and make love, and be
happy?" Peter demanded indignantly. "My dear——" He reached out for
her hand, and she let him fondle it, not reluctantly. "I'd give all my life, too,
for these few minutes with you. Do you know—you're perfectly adorable
to-night! There's something—something irresistible about you—to me!"

"To you?"

"Yes," he said in a deep voice, and sincerely. "I'd come all the way
'round the world, and lay my life at your feet—thus." And he placed his
knuckles on the white cloth, as if they were knees.

"Ah! But you don't mean that!"

"When I'm in love, I mean everything!"

"I know. You are fickle. Miss Lorimer—Miss—Vost—Romola—they
come, they love, they are gone, quite as fatefully and systematically as life
follows death, and death follows life."

"I do wish you wouldn't talk about death in that flippant manner," he
gibed, wondering how under the sun he might get her out of this gloomy
mood.

"But death is in my mind always—Peter. When you have gone through
——"

"Romola, I refuse to be lectured."

"Very well; I refuse to talk of anything but love and death."

"Excellent, my own love! Tell me now how it feels when you are in the
heavenly condition."

"Most hopeless, Peter; because death, you see, is so close upon the heels
of my love."

"Meaning—me?"

"No—my heart. The death of love and the death—of life follow my love.
Now I want to pick up the threads of a moment ago. Peter, don't hold my
hand. That woman is—staring. You said—you said, you would come away
around the world to see me, to help me, possibly, if I were in trouble. You
weren't serious."

"Cross my heart!"

"On the Persian Gulf that day—that day I told you something of your
recent adventures and your apparently miraculous escapes, I intended to ask
you——"

"Seeress, I am all ears——"

"I intended asking you a favor, a most important one, an alternative
——"

"The trip to Nara?"

"Yes; an alternative to that. Tell me truly how much at heart you hate the
man at Len Yang. Wait. Don't answer me yet. At heart, do you really hate
him, as you pretend, or are you simply bowing down to your vanity, to the
pride you seem to take in these quixotic deeds? For one thing, there is very
little money in what you are doing. If you should approach these adventures
a little differently, perhaps, you might put yourself in a position to be
rewarded for the troubles you take, the dangers you risk. I mean that."

"I admit I'm not a money hater," frowned Peter, striving without much
success to feel her trend.

"It would be so easy for you to make all the money you need in only a
few years by—how shall I say it?—by 'being nice.' Wait! I have not
finished. You said I was a special emissary from him. You hit the mark
more squarely than you thought. Oh, I admit it! I was sent to Batavia to
meet you, to intercept you, and, to be quite frank, to ask you your terms."

"From him?"

"Yes. He has observed you. He can use you, and oh!—how badly he
wants you and your boldness and that unconquerable fire of yours! He
needs you! He wants you, more than any man he has known! And he will
pay you! Name your price! A half million gold a year? Bah! It is a drop to
him!"

"Don't," begged Peter in a whisper. "Please—don't—go on."

His face had become almost as white as the tablecloth, and his lips were
trembling, ashen.

"God! I put my confidence in you, time after time, and each time you
show me treachery, deeper, more hideous, than before. Please don't
continue. I'm trying, as hard as I know how, to appreciate your position in
this wretched mess—and trying to find some excuse for it. For you! And it's
hard. Damned, brutally hard. Let's part! Let's forget! Let's be just memories
to each other—Romola!"

Her face, too, had lost its color, like life fading from a rose when the
stem is snapped. Her hand sought her throat and groped there, as it always
did in her moments of nervousness, and she drummed on the cloth with a
silver knife. She stared curiously at him, with the other light dying hard.

"Then I can only hope—a slender hope—to bring you back to the favor I
asked you originally, and I place that before you now, my request for that
favor—my final hope. You cannot refuse that. You cannot! You profess to
be chivalrous. Now, let me—test you!"

CHAPTER XIV

"Romola, I said no to Nara long ago."

She threw up her head.

"A woman should need to be informed but once that her love is not
wanted. This is not what I meant."

"Ah! Another scheme! Your little brain is nothing short of an idea
machine. Remarkable! Go on."

"No," she said, rather sullenly, at this flow of bitterness, "a variation of
my plan. If you will not accompany me to Nara, then I must go alone. I
must have money. Do you understand? I am penniless. The King of Asia
leaves for Japan to-morrow, at dawn. I will never return to China. Will you
—help me?"

"What do you mean by that? Will I break into the house and help you
rob?"

"There is no other way. The money is in a desk, locked. I am not strong
enough to break the lock. You can. Then, too, there are some papers of mine
——"

"Romola, will this give you the contentment you desire?" he said sternly.

"I—I think so. I hope so."

"Then I will help you."

"Oh, Peter, how can I——"

He lifted his hand. "You see, my dear, you can't frighten me—easily. You
can't bribe me, Romola. But you can appeal to my weakness——"

"A woman in distress—your weakness!" But there was no mockery in
either her voice or her eyes. It was more like a whisper of regret.

"Romola, will you answer a question?"

"I'll try!"

"Why are beautiful women—girls—from all parts of the world stolen—
to work in that mine?"

Romola looked at him queerly. "I do not know, Peter."

They attacked the dinner, and by deft stages Peter led the conversation to
a lighter vein. It was nearly ten when they left, the dining-room was all but

deserted and they departed in high spirits, her arm within his, her smile
happy and apparently genuine.

"We must wait until midnight," she informed him. "He will be asleep;
the servants will have retired."

Peter suggested a rickshaw ride through the Chinese city to while away
the hours in between, but the girl demurred, and amended the suggestion to
a street-car ride to Causeway Bay. He consented, and they caught a car in
front of the hotel, and climbed to seats on the roof.

He felt gay, excited by the thrill of their impending danger. She was
moody. In the bright moonlight on the crystal beach at Causeway Bay he
tried to make her dance with him. But she pushed his arms away, and Peter,
suddenly feeling the weight of some dark influence, he knew not what, fell
silent, and they rode back to the base of the peak road having very little to
say.

At a few minutes past midnight they alighted from sedan chairs in the
hairpin trail beside the incline railway station at the peak, and as they faced
each other, the moon, white and gaunt, slipped from sight behind a
billowing black cloud, and the heavens were black and the night was dark
around them.

She took his arm, leading him past the murky walls of the old fort, and
on up and up the sloping, rocky road, dimly revealed at intervals by points
of mysterious light.

They came at length to a high, black hedge, and, groping cautiously
along this for a number of yards, found a ragged cleft. He held the branches
aside while she climbed through with a faint rustle of silken underskirts. He
followed after.

By the dim, ghostly glow of the clouds behind which the moon was
floating he made out ominous shapes, scrawny trees and low, stunted
bushes.

Hand in hand, with his heart beating very loudly and his breath burning
dry in his throat, they approached the desolate, gloomy house—her home!

A low veranda, perhaps a sun-parlor, extended along the wing, and
toward this slight elevation the girl stealthily led him, without so much as
the cracking of a dry twig underfoot, peering from left to right for
indications that their visit was betrayed.

But the house was still, and large and gloomy, and as silent as the halls
of death.

They climbed upon the low veranda. The girl ran her fingers along the
French window which gave upon the hedged enclosure, and drew back
upon greased hinges the window, slowly, inch by inch, until it yawned, wide
open.

He followed her into a room, dark as black velvet, weighted with the
indescribable, musty odors of an Oriental abode, and possessed of an almost
sensuous gloom, a mystic dreariness, a largeness which knew no
dimensions.

As Peter cautiously advanced he was impressed, almost startled, by the
sense of vastness, and he was aware of great, looming proportions.

Close at hand a clock ticked, slowly, drearily, as if the release of each
metallic click of the ancient cogs were to be the last, beating like the rattling
heart of a man in the arms of death. This noise, like a great clatter, seemed
to fill all space.

And he was alone.

Suddenly a yellow light glowed in the dark recesses of the high ceiling,
and Peter sprang back with his hand on the instant inside his coat, where
depended in its leather shoulder-sling the automatic.

Across the great room the girl raised a steady hand, indicating a desk of
gigantic size, of ironwood or lignum-vitae.

He found himself occupying the center of an enormous mandarin rug,
with letterings and grotesque designs in rich blood-reds, and blues and
yellows and browns. He gave the room a moment's survey before falling to
the task.

The walls of this cavern were of satin, priceless rugs, which hung
without a quiver in the breathless gloom. Massive furniture, chairs, tables,
settees, of teak, of ebony and dark mahogany, with deep carvings, glaring
gargoyles and hideous masks, were arranged with an apparent lack of plan.

And against the far wall, with a face like the gibbous moon, stood a
massive clock of carved rosewood, clacking ponderously, almost painfully,
as if each tick were to be its last.

Peter crouched before the desk, examining the heavy lock on the drawer,
and accepted from the girl's hand a tool, a thick, short, blunt chisel. He
inserted the blunt edge of this instrument in the narrow crack, and——

A muffled sob, a moan, a stifled cry!

He sprang to his feet, with his hand diving into his coat, and the fingers
he wrapped about the butt of the automatic were as cold as ice.

Romola Borria was cringing, shrinking as if to efface herself from a
terrible scene, against the French window, and staring at him with a look of
wild imploration, of horror, of—death!

From three unwavering spots along the wall to his left glittered the blue
muzzles of revolvers!

Peter dropped to his knees, leaped backward, pointed by instinct, and
fired at the lone yellow light in the ceiling.

Darkness. An unseen body moved. Metal rattled distantly upon wood.
And metal clanked upon metal. Darkness, black as the grave, and as
ominous.

A white, round spot remained fixed upon his retina, slowly fading. The
face of the clock. The hands, like black daggers, had pointed to ten minutes
of one. Ten minutes of life! Ten minutes to live! Or—less?

Silence, broken only by the reluctant click-clack, click-clack of the
rosewood clock.

If he could reach the window! Then a low, convulsed sobbing occurred
close to his ear. The girl groped for his arm. She was shaking, shaking so
that his arm trembled under it.

"Your final card!" he whispered. "The final trick! God! Now, damn you,
get me out of this!"

"I can't. I—I—— Oh, God! Kill me! I gave you every chance. They
forced me—forced me to bring you here. They would have strangled me,
just as they strangled the other!" She seemed to steady herself while he
listened in growing horror.

"Safe!" he groaned. "Safety for you. Death—for me! You—you led me
into their hands, and I—I trusted you. I trusted you!"

She laid a cold, moist hand over his lips, this devil-woman.

"Hush! If they, if he, so much as guessed that I cared for you, that I loved
you, it would mean my death. I was forced—forced to bring you here. Don't
you understand? And if he even guessed. But you had your chance. You had
your chance!"

Almost hysterically she was endeavoring to extenuate her crime, her
treason.

"Stand up and face them. Meet your death! Escape is—impossible!
Impossible! They are watching you like a rat. In a moment they know you
can stand this strain no longer! Face them, I say! Show them that——"

Peter pushed her away from him in loathing, and she lay still, only
whimpering.

Yet the devils of darkness—where were they? And slowly, yet more
slowly, the rosewood clock ticked off its seconds. It should be nearly one.
At one——

A fighting chance?

CHAPTER XV

On his hands and knees he crouched, and began crawling, an inch at a
time, toward the French window, dragging the automatic over the thick
satin carpet. He reached the window. It was still ajar. Far, far below
twinkled the lights of Hong Kong, of ships anchored in the bay, and the
glitter of Kowloon across the bay. Out there was life!

A board creaked near him, toward the heart of that darkened vault. He
spun about, aimed blindly, fired!

The floor shook as an unseen shape collapsed and writhed within reach
of his hand. In his grasp, was the oily, thick queue of a coolie.

And suddenly, as he groped, the wall spat out angry tongues of corrosive
red flame.

A white-hot iron seemed to shoot through the flesh of his left arm. The
pain reached his shoulder. His left arm was useless—the bone cracked!

Groaning, he pushed himself back. His knees struck the sill, slid over,
and he felt the coarse, peeled paint of the veranda. He reached the ledge—
dropped to the ground, and in dropping, the revolver spilled from his hand
as it caught on a projecting ledge of the floor, bounded off into the
darkness.

He groveled to retrieve it, muttering as his hands probed through the
tufted grass.

Light glimmered in the room above. There occurred sounds of a
struggle, of feet scraping, a muffled oath, a short scream.

Peter leaped back, looking up, prepared to dash for the road.

A yellow light within the room silhouetted the slender figure of Romola
Borria against the French window. Her arms went out in frantic appeal to
the darkness, to him.

"Wait!" she cried in an awful voice. "I love you! Wait!"

At that confession, a hand seemingly suspended in space was elevated
slowly behind her. The hand paused high above her head. A face appeared
in the luminous space above her head, an evil face, carved with a hideous
brutality, wearing an ominous snarl; and above the writhing lips of this one
was a black growth, a mustache, pointed, like twin black daggers.

Emiguel Borria, ardent tool of the Gray Dragon? Emiguel Borria,
husband of the girl Romola?

Emiguel Borria, in whose lifting hand Peter now caught the glint of a
revolver, attempted to crowd the girl to one side. But she held her ground,
and then this woman who had on a half-dozen successive occasions tricked
and deceived Peter, who had deliberately and on her own confession lured
him into this trap, upset, womanlike, the elaborate plan of her master.

In a frenzy she spun upon Emiguel Borria, seized the white barrel of the
revolver in her two hands and forced it against his side. Tiny red flames
spurted out on either side of the cylinder and smeared in a smoky circle
where the muzzle was momentarily buried in the tangled black coat. And
Emiguel Borria seemed to sink into the great room and entirely out of
Peter's sight.

Romola leaned far into the darkness.

"Run! Run! For your life!"

And as Peter started to run, out of the compound for the dubious safety
of the cloistered road, other men of the Gray Dragon, posted for such a
contingency, let loose a shower of bullets from adjoining windows.

But the gods were for the time being on the side of Peter. These shots all
went wild.

Shuddering, with teeth chattering and eyes popping, Peter dove through
the matted hedge, dashed into the street, and down the street, lighted at
intervals with its pin-points of mysterious light.

He came to the incline station, and his footsteps seemed weighted,
dragging. And the clock in the station, as he dashed past, showed one
o'clock.

He plunged down the first sharp twist of the hair-pin trail, fell, picked
himself up dusty and dizzy, with his left arm swinging grotesquely as he
ran.

And behind him, riding like the dawn wind, he seemed to feel the
presence of a companion, of a silent rickshaw which rattled with a grisly
occupant; and a voice, the voice of Romola Borria, shrill and terrible in his
ear, cried: "Wait! Oh, wait!"

But the spectre was more real than Peter could imagine.

It was quite awful, quite absurd, the way Peter stumbled and plunged
and fell and stumbled on down the hill; past the reservoirs which glittered
greenly under their guardian lights.

How he managed to reach Queen's Road in that dreadful state I cannot
describe. He dashed down the center of the deserted road, with rudely
awakened Sikhs calling excitedly upon Allah, to stop, to stop!

But on he sped, straight down the center of the mud roadway, past the
Hong Kong Hotel, now darkened for the night, and past the bund.

Would the sampan be waiting? Otherwise he was now bolting headlong
upon the waiting knives of the Gray Dragon's men. No sampan in the whole
of Victoria Harbor was safe to-night, but one. Would the one be waiting?
Upon that single hope he was staking his safety, his dash for life.

He sped out upon the jetty.

Where could he seek refuge? The Persian Gulf? The King of Asia? The
transpacific liner lay far out in a pool of great black, glittering under sharp,
white arc-lights forward and aft as cargo was lifted from obscure lighters
and stowed into her capacious hold.

Yet he must go quickly, for in all China there was no safety for him this
night.

A shadow leaped out upon the jetty close upon his heels. But Peter did
not see this ghost.

The sampan coolie, asleep upon the small foredeck of his home, shivered
and muttered in his strange dreams. By his garb and by the richness of the
large sampan's upholsterings Peter guessed this to be the craft sent to him
by the small Chinese girl.

Peter leaped aboard, awakening the fokie with a cry.

Dark knobs arose from the low cabin hatchway, and by the yellow lamps
of the jetty Peter made these out to be the heads of the maid from Macassar
and her old grandmother.

A dong was burning in the cabin, and Peter followed the girl into the
small cabin of scrubbed and polished teak, while the old woman gibbered in
sharp command to the fokie.

Crouching like a beast at last cornered, Peter, by the shooting rays of the
dong, glared dazedly into an angry red face, a face that was limned and
pounded by the elements, from which stared two blue, bloodshot eyes.

The girl said nothing as she nestled at his side, and Peter permitted his
head to sink between his hands.

Yet, strange to say, the red-faced man did not fire, made no motion of
stabbing him.

Peter looked up, snarling defiance.

"You've got me cornered," he whispered harshly. "It's after one o'clock.
The parole is up. Why prolong the agony? Damn you, I'm unarmed!" He
shut his eyes again.

Again there was no premonitory click, no seep of steel upon scabbard.

The red-faced man seized his shoulder, shook him.

"Say, you young prize-fighter," he sputtered, "you drunk? Crazy? Or just
temporarily off your nut? Who in thunder said anything about prolonging
the agony? What agony are you talking about? Why the devil 've you been
dodging me all over South China to-day? You dog-gone young wildcat,
you! I've got an assignment for you. The King of Asia's wireless man is laid
up in the Peak Hospital with typhoid. I want you to take her back to Frisco!
Blast your young hide, anyhow!"

The wizen face of the girl's grandmother appeared in the hatchway. She
seemed annoyed, angry. She said something in the Cantonese dialect, which
Peter did not understand.

"A sampan is following," translated the girl in her tiny voice, "but we are
nearly there. In a moment you will be safe."

"Where?" demanded Peter, staring over the red-faced man's shoulder for
a glimpse of the other sampan.

"The King of Asia," she told him. "In a moment, birahi, in a moment."

Her tones were those of a little mother.

But Peter was staring anxiously into the red face, trying to decipher an
explanation.

"I told the red-faced one to be here, too, at midnight," the girl was
whispering in his ear. "He came. He is a friend. Your fears were wrong,
birahi."

The sampan lurched, scraping and tapping along a surface rough and
metallic.

The yellow face of the old woman again appeared in the hatchway. A bar
of keen, white light thrust its way into the cabin. It came from somewhere
above. No longer could Peter hear the groan and swish of the sweep, and
the cabin no longer keeled from side to side. He guessed that the sampan
was alongside.

The old woman motioned for him to come out.

"I am not coming aboard; I am going back to my hotel," said the red-
faced man. "You will not leave this ship? You will promise me that?"

"I will promise," said Peter gravely. "You, I presume, are Mr. J. B.
Whalen, the Marconi supervisor?"

The red-faced man nodded. As if by some prearranged plan, Whalen,
after slight hesitation, climbed out of the cabin, leaving Peter alone with
this very small, very gentle benefactor of his. He wanted to thank her, and
he tried. But she put her fingers over his lips.

"You are going to the one you love, birahi," she said in her tinkling little
voice. "Before we part, I want you—I want you to——" and she hesitated.
"Come now, my brave one," she added with an attempt at briskness. "You
must go. Hurry!"

Peter found the side ladder of the King of Asia dangling from the upper
glow of the liner's high deck. He put his foot on the lower rung and paused.
A vast number of apologies, of thanks and good-byes demanded utterance,

but he felt confused. The slight relaxation of the past few minutes had left
him exhausted, and his brain was encased in fog.

He remembered that the little maid from Macassar had wanted him to do
something, possibly some favor. The glow high above him seemed to swim.
His injured arm was beginning to throb with a low and persistent pain. And
the climb to the deck seemed a tremendous undertaking.

"You were saying," he began huskily, as she reached out to steady the
ladder. "You wanted me——"

"Just this, my brave one." And she reached up on tiptoes and kissed him
ever so lightly upon his lips. "When you think of me, birahi, close your
eyes and dream. For I—I might have loved you!"

Half-way up the black precipice, Peter stopped and looked down. For a
moment his befuddled senses refused to register what now occupied the
space at the ladder's end.

The sampan was no longer there; another had taken its place, a sampan
long and as black as the night which encompassed it.

Wide, dark eyes stared up across the space into his, and these were set in
a chalky-white face, grim, fearful—startling!

It was Romola Borria. Her white arms were upheld in a gesture of
entreaty. Her lips were moving.

Peter descended a step, and stopped, swaying slightly.

"What—what——" he began.

"He is dead!" came the whisper from the small deck. "I killed him! I
killed him! Do you hear me? I am free! Free! Why do you stare at me so? I
am ready to go. But you must ask me! I will not follow you. I will not!"

And Peter, clutching with a sick and sinking feeling at the hard rope,
found that his lips and tongue were working, but that no sound other than a

dull muttering issued from his mouth. Momentarily he was dumb—
paralyzed.

"I am not a tool of the Gray Dragon," went on the vehement whisper. "I
am not!"

And to Peter came full realization that Romola Borria was lying, or
endeavoring to trick him, for the last time.

"Go back—there," he managed to stammer at last. "Go back! I won't
have you! I'm through with this damned place."

Painfully he climbed up a few rungs.

Then the voice of Romola, no longer a whisper, but loud, broken,
despairing, came to him for the last time:

"You are leaving me—leaving me—for her—for Eileen!"

Peter made no reply. He continued his laborious climb; first one foot,
then a groping few inches upward along the hard rope with his right hand,
and then the other foot. Nor did he once again look down.

He finally gained the deck. It was blazing with incandescent and arc-
lights. Under-officers and deckhands were pacing about, giving attention to
the loading. Donkey engines hissed, coughed, and rattled, as the yellow
booms creaked out, up and in with their snares of bales and crates which
vanished like swooping birds of prey into the noisy hatchways.

Peter took in the bustling scene with a long sigh of relief. He still heard
that lonely, anguished voice; the black sampan still rested on his eyes,
heaving on the flood tide upon which the great ship strained, as if eager to
be gone. And out there—out there—beyond the black heart of mystery and
the night, was the clean dawn—the rain-washed spaces of the shimmering
sea.

But he could not look down again. He would not. For a while—or
forever—he had had his fill of China. Before him now lay the freedom of

the open sea, the sunshine of life—and his homeland!

Peter the Brazen had drunk all too indulgently at the bitter fountain.

CHAPTER XVI

In the months which had passed since their romantic parting on the bund
at Shanghai, Peter the Brazen had founded all of his roseate notions of
Eileen Lorimer upon the one-sided data furnished by those spirited few
hours.

He had thought of her as a lonely little creature, sole inhabitant of a
world apart, to which he would some time go and claim her.

He had not taken into his calculations at any time such prosaic objects as
parents, brothers, sisters, and, more vital than all, other young men who
might have found the same qualities in Eileen to adore as had attracted and
bound him.

When, from a long-distance telephone-booth in the Hotel St. Francis, he
finally was connected with the Lorimer residence in Pasadena, it was to
hear the gruff, masculine accents of a person who claimed to be her father,
and who was brusque and impulsive in his inquiries regarding Peter's
identity.

Peter did not know, or realize, that Mr. Lorimer would have willingly cut
off his right hand for the young man who had restored his daughter to him
nearly a year before. He was simply struck more or less dumb, with a
schoolboy sort of feeling, when he was aware that, five hundred miles
overland, a gruff father wanted righteously to know his business.

By adroit parrying, without giving out his identity, Peter at length
secured the information he wanted. Romola Borria had been truthful; Eileen
was attending the university at San Friole.