“Girls not up, eh?” He had a quick, staccato method of talking on such occasions as these, and usually he rounded off a bad night with an exhibition of bad temper; but although she quite expected a display of irritation, he was singularly inoffensive.

“We shall have to get you married, Joan,” he said, as he sat down with a grimace before an unappealing breakfast. “That man Clifford is probably a good fellow. It’s rather awkward, finding that he’s the senior partner, and I’m glad I didn’t say the things I was tempted to say when we met–-“

“I am getting married on Friday,” said Joan quietly, and he gaped up at her with a frightened expression.

“On Friday?” he squeaked. “Impossible—impossible! It’s—it’s indelicate! Why, you don’t know the man!”

He sprang up from his chair in a weak rage.

“I will not have it! The thing must be done as I wish! Does Mabel know?”

It was surprising that Mabel had not told him, thought Joan. She learnt afterwards that Mr Narth’s elder daughter was reserving this tit-bit for the privacy of a family council.

“Decency, decency!” quavered Mr Narth, so unlike his sual self that the girl could only look at him. “There’s a lot to happen before—before you’re married. You owe me something, Joan. You haven’t forgotten your brother–-“

“You have not given me much chance of forgetting, Mr Narth,” she said, with rising anger. “It was because of all you did for my brother that I agreed to marry Mr Lynne at all. Clifford Lynne wishes the marriage to take place on Friday—and I have agreed.”

“Have I nothing to do with this?” he stormed. “Am I not to be consulted?”

“Consult him by all means,” said the girl coldly.

“Wait, wait!” he called after her as she was leaving the room. “Don’t let us lose our tempers, Joan. I have an especial eason for asking you to postpone this marriage till a later date–-What is it?” he snapped irritably at the newly-returned butler who appeared in the doorway, still in his street attire.

“Will you see Mr Lynne?” asked the man.

“Does he want to see me?” Stephen demanded. “You’re sure he doesn’t mean Miss Joan?”

“He particularly asked for you, sir.”

Narth’s trembling hand went up to his mouth.

“Put him in the library,” he said ungraciously, and steeled himself to an interview which instinct told him would be unpleasant; and in this case instinct did not lie, for Clifford had come to ask a few very uncomfortable questions.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

He was pacing the library floor when Mr Narth went in (“as though it were his own,” complained Stephen bitterly to his daughter) and turned abruptly to face the senior partner of Narth brothers.

“Shut that door, will you?”

It was a command rather than a request, and it was strange how instantly Stephen obeyed.

“You came back here at four o’clock this morning,” he began. “You had supper at Giro’s, which closed at one. What did you and your daughters do between one and four?”

Narth could not believe his ears.

“May I ask–-” he began.

“Ask nothing. If you were going to ask me what authority I have for putting these questions to you, you can save yourself the trouble,” said Clifford briefly. “I want to know what you were doing between one and four.”

“And I absolutely refuse to satisfy your curiosity,” said the other angrily. “Things have come to a pretty pass when–-“

“At three o’clock this morning,” the man from China broke in brusquely, “an attempt was made to carry off Joan Bray from this house. That is news to you?”

The man nodded dumbly.

“You think the attempt has not been made, but you expected it. I was in the bushes listening to you when you were talking to the chauffeur. You asked him to come into the house after he had put the car away; you told him you were nervous, that there had been burglaries in the neighbourhood recently. You were astonished to find that Joan Bray was in her room and unharmed.”

White to the lips, Stephen Narth was incapable of replying.

“You had to fill in the hours between one and four; how did you do it?” The keen eyes were searching his very soul. “You wouldn’t have gone to Fing-Su’s place, and rightly, because you would not wish your daughters to be brought into contact with this man. Shall I tell you what you did?”

Narth made no answer.

“You sneaked out whilst the dance was on and locked the gears of your car. You made that an excuse to take your girls to one of those queer all-night clubs in Fitzroy Square. And then, providentially, at the right moment you discovered the key in your pocket.”

Now Mr Narth found his voice.

“You’re a bit of a detective, Lynne,” he answered. “And, strangely enough, you’re right, except that I did not lock the gears. My chauffeur did that and lost the key. I happened to discover a duplicate in my pocket.”

“You didn’t want to get back until the dirty wor^ was finished, eh?” Clifford’s eyes were glowing like live fires. “You swine!” He spoke the word in a voice that was little above a whisper. “I’m going to tell you something, Narth. If any harm comes to that girl whilst she is in your house and under your care, you’ll never live to enjoy the competence which Joe Bray is supposed to have left you. I’m going to kill your friend—he knows that, doesn’t he? If he doesn’t, just tell him so from me! There’s an old saying that one may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a goat. I don’t know which of the two you are. Listen carefully, Narth—it isn’t an angry man talking to you—threats of killing come pretty glibly to people who couldn’t see a rooster’s neck wrung without fainting. But I’ve killed men, yellow and white, and I’m not going to shiver when I send you down to hell. Get that into your mind and let it walk around! Joan won’t be with you very long, but during that time she’s got to be safe.”

And now Stephen Narth found his voice.

“It’s a lie, a lie!” he screamed. “Why didn’t Joan tell me? I knew nothing about it! Do you think I would allow Fing-Su to take her away–-“

“I didn’t say it was Singili,” said the other quickly. “How did you know?”

“Well, Chinamen–-“

“I didn’t even say Chinamen. You’ve convicted yourself, Mr Stephen Narth! I’ve warned you before, and I’m warning you again. Fing-Su has bought you for fifty thousand pounds, but you could twist out of that, because you’re naturally a twister. But he’s going to hold you in a tighter bond than monetary obligation. He nearly did it last night. He’ll do it before the week’s out—how or where or when, I do not know.” He paused. “That’s all I have to say to you,” he said, and strode past the paralysed man into the hall.

He was walking down the drive when he heard Stephen’s voice calling him, and, turning, he saw the white-faced man gesticulating wildly, in a mad abandonment of rage. He was pouring forth a torrent of wild, incoherent abuse:

“…you won’t marry Joan…do you hear that? I don’t care a damn if all Joe Bray’s fortune goes to you! I’ll see her dead first…”

Clifford let him rave on, and when from sheer exhaustion he stopped:

“Then you did see Fing-Su last night? What offer did he make to you?”

Stephen glowered at him, and then, as though he feared that his secret thoughts could be read by those piercing eyes, he turned and ran back to the house like a man possessed.


*


“There’s going to be trouble, Joe, and as you’ve caused most of it I hope you’ll get your share.”

Joe Bray, dozing before an unnecessary fire, for the day was warm, his hands clasped before his stomach, woke with a start.

“Eh?…I wish you wouldn’t pop in and out like a—a—what d’you call ‘em, Cliff. What did you say?”

“‘Trouble’ was the word,” said the other laconically. “Your spoon-fed Chink plus your disreputable relation have a Plan.”

Joe grunted, selected a cigar from the box on the table and gnawed off the end savagely.

“Wish I’d never come to this bloomin’ country,” he said plaintively. “Wish I’d never left Siangtan. You’re a good fellow, Cliff, but too vi’lent—much too vi’lent. I wish Fing-Su had been a sensible boy. Well educated and everything, Cliff…it does seem a pity, don’t it? Here’s me, with just enough education to read and write, rich as Creasers in a manner of speaking–-“

Cliff’s nose wrinkled.

“Croesus would have spent your income on cigarettes,” he said contemptuously.

“In a manner of speaking—did I say that or didn’t I?” demanded Joe reproachfully. “Here’s me as rich as Creasers and white, and there’s him, a poor suffering Chink, who can speak Latin and Algebra and French and all them foreign languages as easily as I speak Mandarin!”

He sighed and shook his head.

“Life’s comic,” he said vaguely.

Clifford was changing his shoes and growled:

“If you were the only man I’d ever met in the world I should say life was comic. As it is, it’s darned serious, and a lot of people whose only job in life is to keep living are going to find it pretty hard to hold down their sinecure. Have you seen the papers?”

Joe nodded and reached out lazily for a heap of newspapers that lay on a table at his elbow.

“Yes, I was reading about the murder of those missionaries up in Honan. But there’s always trouble in Honan. Too many soldiers loafin’ around hungry. If there wasn’t soldiers there wouldn’t be any brigands.”

“That’s the ninth missionary murder in a month,” said Clifford tersely; “and the soldiers in Honan are the best disciplined in China—which isn’t saying much, I admit. But the soldiers were in this and had banners inscribed ‘We welcome the Son of Heaven,’ which means that there is a new pretender to the throne.”

Joe shook his head.

“I never did hold with Chinamen being trusted with rifles,” he said. “It demoralizes ‘em, Cliff. You don’t think we shall have any trouble on the Concession, do you?” he asked anxiously. “Because, if you do, I ought to be getting back.”

“You’ll stay here,” said Cliff ominously. “I don’t think we shall have trouble in that part of China—we are paying the Governor too much for him to risk. But there are seventeen separate points in open rebellion in China.” He opened a drawer, took out a map and unfolded it, and Joe saw that the chart was covered with little red crosses. “They call it ‘unrest’ in the newspapers,” said Clifford quietly. “They give as the reason the failure of the rice crops and an earthquake hundreds of miles from any centre of trouble!”

Old Joe struggled up to an erect position.

“What’s the idea?” he asked, looking at the other through narrowed lids. “First time I knew you took any interest in Chinese wars. You talk as if you knew all the risin’s. What’s the big idea? They can’t effect us?”

Lynne folded the map.

“A big change of government would affect everything,” he said. “Honan doesn’t worry me, because it is a brigands’ province; but there has been trouble in Yun Nan, and when Yun Nan starts hooting the trouble is far advanced. Somebody is working hard for a new dynasty—and all the flags are decorated with the symbol of the Joyful Hands.”

Old Joe’s jaw dropped.

“But that is a little affair,” he said jerkily; “just a little fool society–-“

“Eight provinces are strong for the Hands,” interrupted Clifford. “And Fing-Su has a headquarters in each. He has double-crossed us from the start—using the money he has taken from the concessions to finance a trading company in opposition to us.”

“He never has!” Joe’s voice was hollow with amazement.

“Go up to the Tower and take a peek at Peking House—the London office of the trading company, and the Emperor Fing-Su’s general headquarters!”

Old Joe Bray could only shake his head.

“Emperor…um! Same as Napoleon…gosh!”

Lynne allowed that idea to soak.

“In three months’ time he will be wanting money—big money. At present he is financing divers generals, but he cannot go on indefinitely. His scheme is to form a national army under Spedwell, who knows China, and when he has done that and established himself on the throne, it will be easy to deal with the three big generals who are in his pay at the moment. How this Emperor bug got into his brain, heaven knows!”

Mr Bray stirred uneasily; something in his attitude arrested his partner’s attention.

“It was you! Oh, you wicked old man!” he breathed, in wonder.

“I certainly gave him ideas,” admitted Joe, who was thoroughly uncomfortable. “I sort of made up yarns to stimmerlate his ambition—that’s the word, ain’t it? I’ve got a wonderful imagination, Cliff. I’d have written novels if I could have only spelt.”

“And I suppose,” said Clifford, “you drew a picture of what China would be like under one head?”

“Something like that.” Joe Bray dared not meet his partner’s eyes. “But it was to stimmerlate his ambition, if you understand, Cliff. Just sort of push him on.”

Clifford was laughing softly, and he very seldom laughed. “Maybe he didn’t want any ‘stimmerlating’,” he said. “Fing-Su is the one in a million that is bound to turn up at odd intervals through the ages. Napoleon was one, Rhodes was one, Lincoln was one—there aren’t such a lot of ‘em.”

“What about George Washington?” asked Mr Bray, only too anxious to switch the conversation into historical channels.

“Whoever is responsible, the mischief is done.” Cliff looked at his watch. “Did you ever go bird’s-nesting, Joe?”

“As a boy,” said Joe complacently, “there was few that could beat me.”

“We’ll go along tonight and inspect a floating nest of the domestic yellowbill,” said Cliff.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Mr Narth went up to town by train, his car for the moment being in the grip of one of those mysterious ailments to which cars are addicted. On the station platform he bought a newspaper, though he was not attracted thereto by a contents bill: ‘Joyful Hands’ Behind Chinese Trouble. What the ‘Joyful Hands’ meant Mr Narth did not trouble to think. The name seemed a little incongruous.

He was quite ignorant on the subject of China, except that fabulous sums had been made in that country by one who had conveniently died and passed on his fortune to Mr Narth.

It was his pride and boast that he was a business man, which meant that he was proud of his ignorance on all subjects apart from his business. Outside interests he had none; he played a passable game of golf—it was that accomplishment which had lured him to Sunningdale—he was an indifferent devotee of bridge, and his adventurous period of life was represented by the indiscreet maintenance of a Bloomsbury flat in the late ‘nineties.

Frankly, he was dishonest; he admitted as much to himself. He had a passionate desire for easy money, and when he had inherited his father’s business it had seemed that he was in a fair way to the realization of his ideals. He had then discovered that money only flowed into even the oldest-established businesses if the passages and chutes were kept clear of rubbish. You had either to butter them with advertising, or polish them with that homely commodity which is known as elbow-grease. If you were content to sit in an office chair and wait for money, it had an uncomfortable knack of losing its way and dropping into the coffers of your competitors. He had so far acquainted himself with the incidence of commercial machinery that he had found many short cuts to wealth. The discovery that most of these enticing by-ways led into all sorts of morasses and muddy footholes came later. Greatest of all his misfortunes, as it proved, he was, in spite of his frequent stringencies, on the best of terms with the heads of great financial houses, for his judgment, apart from his own operations, was wellnigh faultless.

From Waterloo Station he drove to the hotel where he usually stayed when he was in town, and the hotel valet took charge of his dress suit in preparation for the ceremony of the following night. Fing-Su had rather amused him by his insistence upon his matter of costume.

“A tail coat and a white tie, the grand habit,” he said. “The initiation will interest you—it combines some of the more modern ceremonies with one as ancient as life.”

He ordered tea to be sent to his room, and it had hardly been served before Major Spedwell appeared. He greeted his new associate with the question:

“What happened last night?”

Stephen Narth shook his head with a show of irritation.

“I don’t know. It was a monstrous scheme of Fing-Su’s. I—I nearly chucked the whole thing.”

“Did you?” The Major sank into the only armchair in the room. “Well, I shouldn’t take that too seriously if I were you. No harm was intended to the girl. Fing-Su was very considerate; she was being taken to a place where she would have had white women to look after her, everything that heart could desire.”

“Then why on earth–-?” began Narth.

Spedwell made a gesture of impatience.

“He has a reason. He wanted to put a lever under Mr Clifford Lynne.”

He got up from his chair, walked to the fireplace and knocked off the ash of his cigar.

“There’s money for you in this, Narth,” he said, “and only one thing required of you—and that’s loyalty. Fing-Su thinks you’re a man who will be very useful to him.” He looked at the other oddly. “You might even take Leggat’s place,” he said.

Stephen Narth looked up quickly.

“Leggat? I thought he was a great friend of yours.”

“He is and he isn’t,” said Spedwell carefully. “Fing-Su thinks—well, there have been leakages. Things had got out, and unfortunately got into the wrong quarters.” And then, abruptly: “Lynne is in town. I suppose you know that?”

“I’m not interested in his movements,” said Mr Narth with some acerbity.

“I thought you might be,” said the other carelessly.

He could have added that he himself was more interested in Clifford Lynne’s plans than that erratic man could be possibly aware. And there was a reason for his interest: Fing-Su had found a new plan—one so ingeniously arranged that only one man could save Joan Bray, and that was the quick-shooting man from Siangtan.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Clifford came to his Mayfair dwelling in time for a hasty lunch, and he came alone. He had left strict injunctions with Joe Bray to keep himself hidden, a very necessary precaution, for Joe was essentially an open-air man who chafed at confinement. His first act on arrival was to call a Mayfair number.

“Mr Leggat is not in,” was the reply, and Clifford cursed the affable traitor who had promised to be available from one o’clock onwards.

He had further reason for annoyance when at two o’clock Mr Leggat called openly at the house. Ferdinand Leggat was a lover of good things, but as a rule he reserved his conviviality for the hours which followed dinner. Cliff took one glance at the man as he swaggered into the dining-room and rightly interpreted the red face and the fatuous smile.

“You’re a madman, Leggat,” he said quietly, as he walked to the door and closed it. “Why do you come here in daylight?”

Leggat had reached the point of exhilaration when he alone stood out clearly from a blurred world.

“Because I prefer daylight,” he said a little thickly. “Why should I, a man of my qualities, sneak around in the dark? That for Fing-Su and all his myrmidons!” He snapped his finger contemptuously and broke into a guffaw of laughters but Clifford Lynne was not amused.

“You’re a fool,” he said again. “I asked you to be on hand so that I might telephone you. Don’t underrate Fing-Su, my friend.”

“Bah!” said the other as he walked, uninvited, to the buffet and helped himself liberally from the tantalus. “There was never a giddy Oriental who could scare me! You seem to forget that I’ve lived in China, Lynne. And as to the secret society–-” He threw back his head and laughed again. “My dear old man,” he said as he walked unsteadily back to the table, a large tumblerful of amber liquor in his hand, “if there is a fool here, it’s you! I’ve given you enough information to hang Fing-Su. You’re a rich man, you can afford to hand the thing over to the police, and sit down comfortably and await developments.”

Clifford did not explain that he had already been in touch with the Colonial and Foreign Offices, and had been met with a polite sceptism which had at once irritated and silenced him. The Foreign Office knew that the Peckham factory stored field guns. They had been bought in the open market, he was blandly told, and there was no mystery about them at all. They could not be exported without a licence, and there was no reason in the world why a Chinese trading company should not have the same privileges as a white. To all this and more he had listened with growing impatience.

“I’m through with Fing-Su,” said Leggat. “He is not only a Chink but a mean Chink. And after all I’ve done for him! Did you arrange for the Umgeni to be searched, as I suggested?”

Clifford nodded. He had succeeded so far that he had induced the Port of London Authority to take action, and the Umgeni had been searched systematically, her cargo had been hauled from the hold and broached, but nothing had been found save the conventional articles of commerce, cases of spades, reapers, cooking pots and the usual stock of the trader.

“Humph!” Leggat was surprised. “I know they’ve been loading her for weeks–-“

“She sails tonight,” said Clifford, “and not even Fing-Su can unload her cargo and replace it.”

His guest gulped down the contents of the tumbler and exhaled a deep breath.

“I’m through with him,” he repeated. “I thought he was the original duck that laid golden eggs ad infinitum.”

“In other words, you’ve exploited him as far as you can, eh?” asked Clifford, with a faint smile. “And now you’re ready to sell the carcass! What part is Spedwell playing?”

Leggat shrugged his broad shoulders.

“I never liked Spedwell very much,” he said. “These military Johnnies get my goat. He’s Fing-Su’s chief of staff—spends all his time with maps and plans and drill-books. He and Fing-Su have just finished writing a Chinese manual.”

“A rifle manual?” asked Clifford quickly.

“Something like that,” said the other with a shrug.

Clifford raised his hand in warning as there came a gentle knock at the door and his servant entered.

“I forgot to tell you, sir,” he said, “the Post Office workmen came this morning to fix your telephone.”

“Fix—what do you mean, fix?” asked Lynne, a frown gathering on his forehead.

“They said there had been some complaints about the instrument—the exchange couldn’t hear you very distinctly.”

Lynne was silent and thoughtful for a second.

“Were you here whilst the repairs were being done?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, sir,” smiled the man. “They had a Post Office card of authority, but I’m too old a bird to take a risk—I was with them all the time whilst they fixed the amplifier.”

“Oh!” said Clifford blankly. And then: “Where did they put this ‘amplifier’?”

One wall of the dining-room was hidden by a large bookshelf, and it was beneath this that the telephone flex ran. The butler stooped and pointed: in the shallow space beneath the last shelf was a black wooden box about ten inches long and four inches in height. In its face were two round apertures, and attached to these was a thin wire which ran up the end wall and vanished through a newly-drilled hole in the window-sill.

“What is it?” asked Leggat, suddenly sobered.

“A microphone,” replied Clifford curtly. “Somebody’s been listening to every word of our conversation!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Clifford Lynne opened the window and looked out. The wire had been roughly tacked along the wall which divided his from the next courtyard, and vanished over the roof of the garage into the mews.

“All right, Simmons,” he said, and without a word went from the room and out through the mews into the garage. For a time he could not see the fine wire, but after a search he discovered it running along the wall, and he traced its course almost to the end of the mews, where it turned up through the open window of what was obviously a chauffeur’s flat.

One glance at the window told him that the apartment was not in regular occupation. The panes were grimy; one was broken; and he remembered that farther along the street in which he lived was an empty house; the garage was evidently an appendage to this.

There was a gate which led to the car store and a small door obviously giving to the upstairs flat, and this was ajar. Without hesitation he pushed it open and mounted the steep, untidy stairs to the apartments above. There were two rooms, empty save for the debris which the last occupant had left behind him. The back room was used as a sleeping apartment; an old iron bedstead, innocent of bedding, remained. He turned into the front room, and here he found what he had expected: a replica of the small black box beneath the bookshelf, and a telephone, which was, he discovered, in working order when he called exchange.

The room had no occupant, and for a very good reason. The man who had been listening-in through this microphone, and who had been transmitting the conversation he had overheard to Fing-Su, had had ample warning. He had, in fact, left the mews almost at the identical moment that Clifford had come into it.

“A dark, military-looking man with a bad-tempered face.” A chauffeur who had seen him was responsible for a description which identified Major Spedwell.

Clifford Lynne went back to his dining-room and found a greatly troubled Leggat splashing whisky into a glass with an unsteady hand.

“What’s the trouble? What is it all about?” asked the stout man fearfully.

Although it seemed to be a waste of time attempting to make this boaster realize his peril, Lynne told him what he had discovered.

“And you need to be very careful, Leggat!” he said. “If Fing-Su knows you have betrayed him I wouldn’t give a string of native beads for your life. The only chance is that the listener failed to recognize your voice.”

It was not until later that he discovered who was the eavesdropper, and then it was clear that the chance of Major Spedwell being ignorant of Leggat’s identity was a very remote one.

“Fing-Su—bah!”

There was, however, a note of uneasiness in the deep laughter of Ferdinand Leggat. He had been in unpleasant situations and had been threatened before, facing frenzied shareholders who had clamoured for his blood. Yet—the Chinaman was different somehow.

“My dear good fellow, you’re theatrical! Let Fing-Su start something, that’s all!”

“When are you seeing him again?” asked Lynne.

“Tomorrow night,” was the reply. “There is a meeting of the Lodge—damn’ tomfoolery, I call it! But I suppose one ought to turn up, if it is’ only to humour the silly devil!”

Lynne was regarding him with unusual gravity. He, of all men, understood the mentality of the Chinaman, and could see all the potentialities for mischief that vast wealth had given to him.

“If you take my advice, Leggat, you’ll be among the missing tomorrow night,” he said. “Get out of England until I’ve broken up this gang. Take a trip to Canada; there’s a boat leaving tomorrow, and if you hurry you can get your ticket and passport fixed.”

Leggat set down his glass on the table with a bang.

J’y suis, j’y reste” he said valiantly. “There never was a coolie that could run me out of England, and don’t you forget it, Lynne! I can handle this bird…!”

Clifford Lynne listened without listening, his mind too occupied with the possible consequences which would follow his discovery of the spy-wire to pay much attention to the boastings of his companion. With a final warning he dismissed Leggat, sending him back through the garage by his private taxi. It was then that he went out into the mews, to make a few inquiries, and, discovering that the listener was undoubtedly Major Spedwell, he made an effort to get in touch with Leggat, but without success.

The man’s danger was a very real one; how far would Fing-Su go? A long way, to judge by what had already happened. He drew entirely different conclusions from those which Leggat had drawn from the Joyful Hands. The Lodge meetings might, from the European standpoint, be ridiculous, but they had a deadly significance too.

That afternoon Clifford interviewed a high authority at Scotland Yard, and he went to that most austere of public departments with a letter of introduction from the Foreign Secretary. The interview had been a longer one than he had anticipated, but its first result was to relieve him of his greatest worry. He drove straight from the Yard to Sunningdale, and if he had any perturbation at all it was on account of Mr Ferdinand Leggat. The cottage door was locked and he found Joe curled up on the sofa asleep, and Mr Bray awoke in a spirit of revolt. When Joe Bray began to protest in advance against the folly of shutting himself up like a prisoner, Clifford had a shrewd idea that he was justifying in advance a departure from the strict letter of his instructions.

“It’s bad for me health and it gets on me mind,” said Joe loudly, keeping a guilty eye fixed upon the partner of whom he stood in no little awe.

“You’ve been out!” accused Clifford.

There was really not much harm done if he had been. Nobody in Sunningdale knew Joe and, with the exception of Fing-Su, it was doubtful if there was a person in England who would recognize him.

“I went out to pick a few flowers,” explained Joe. “There is something about flowers, Cliff, that brings a lump into my throat. You can sniff! You’re naturally hard. But to see all them bluebells–-“

“It’s too late for bluebells; you probably mean dandelions,” said Cliff coldly, “or more likely turnips!”

“Bluebells,” insisted Mr Bray with a vigorous nodding of his head. “And nestling under, as it were, the trees. And, Cliff”—he coughed—“I met the dandiest young lady you’ve ever seen!”

Clifford looked at him aghast. Mr Joseph Bray was blushing violently. Was this the iron-souled prospector, the man who had won through from poverty to affluence by a grim disregard of most of the laws that govern Chinese lands and customs? He could only wonder and remain speechless.

“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t have met her,” said Joe defiantly. “I’m not old—not much more than fifty.” He flung the challenge at Cliff’s head, but it was not taken up. “There’s a lot of people that don’t believe I am fifty.”

“You’re a hundred in sin and ten in wisdom,” said Clifford, smiling good-humouredly. “Who was she, Joe?”

“I don’t know. A well-made, nice-looking girl. A bit redheaded, but that shows spirit. What a girl!” He waggled his head ecstatically.

“Well-made—do you mean fat?” asked Clifford brutally.

“Well-made,” evaded the other, “and young. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five. And a wonderful complexion, Cliff. Roses!”

“Rather red?” asked his unromantic companion, and chuckled. “Did you ask her her name?”

“No, I didn’t!” Joe Bray was on his mettle. “It is not good manners askin’ people their name–-“

“If you had, she would have answered ‘Mabel Narth.’”

The older man’s jaw dropped.

“Mabel Narth?” he asked in a hollow whisper. “What, my own niece!”

“She is no more your niece than I am your uncle,” said Clifford. “The tables of consanguinity do not apply. She’s your twenty-third cousin nineteen times removed. She is such a distant cousin that you’ll find it difficult to see her relationship through an ordinary telescope. But, Joe, at your time of life!”

“Fifty,” murmured Joe. “Men of my age are more steady than you young ones.”

“I presume you did not tell her who you were?”

“No; I merely hinted that I’d got a bit of stuff put by!”

“That you were rich, in fact? Did her eyes light up?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Joe, on the defensive.

“You’re a queer devil,” said Clifford. “How is that coolie boy?”

“Almost well. He has been praying all day to be let out, but I didn’t want to let him go before you came.”

“He can skip tonight—he makes me feel homesick for a bamboo rod and the floor of the Yamen! I suppose you know his job was to stifle us? This morning I found the bag of sulphur he was trying to put down the chimney.”

Clifford strolled out to the locked scullery to interview the crestfallen warrior. He did not look very warlike as he sat there with an old blanket round his shoulders. Lynne examined his wound and in a few words dismissed him, and to his surprise the man showed every evidence of relief.

“Let me go before the sun goes down,” he begged, “for I am a stranger in this country, and it is hard for such a man as I to find my way to the great town.”

Something in his manner aroused Clifford’s suspicion, and he remembered Joe’s words.

“Man, you are anxious to leave my house,” he said. “Tell me why.”

The man dropped his eyes sullenly.

“You are afraid.”

Still the native did not look up.

“You are afraid of death—tonight!”

This time his shaft got home, and the Chinaman jerked up his head, blinking at his interrogator with frightened eyes.

“They say of you that you are a devil and read the hearts of men. Now what you say”—there was a certain desperation in his tone—“is very true, for I fear death if I stay in this house tonight.”

Clifford whistled softly.

“At what hour would you die, man?”

“At the second hour after moonrise,” replied the coolie without hesitation, and Clifford nodded.

“I think you can go,” he said, and gave him directions as to how he could travel to London.

Returning to Joe, he repeated the gist of the conversation.

“The grand attack comes tonight. Now what are we to do? ‘Phone into Aldershot for half a battalion, cover ourselves with ignominy, notify the local police and be responsible for the death of these respectable, middle-aged men; or shall we stand the racket ourselves and have a nice, quiet fight?”

The humour of it overcame him, and he sat down laughing silently, his face red, tears in his eyes, and when Clifford Lynne laughed that way there was trouble coming for somebody.

The Slaters’ Cottage and Sunni Lodge were a mile out of Sunningdale and remarkably isolated, though they were a few hundred yards from the Portsmouth Road, which was never wholly deserted. Mr Narth’s nearest neighbour was the Earl of Knowesly, who, however, was only in residence for a little over a month in the year, for he was a northerner who loved Lancashire and was happiest amongst his own people.

Beyond the Slaters’ Cottage in the other direction was the undeveloped property of a land company which was exploiting a new golf course and a residential estate.

“I have an idea they’re going to take a leaf out of my book. Joe. It will be a fight with silencers if Spedwell is in command, and I know now that he is the chief of military staff.”

The evening had turned close and oppressive, and the sun set behind towering masses of cloud. Clifford Lynne employed the last hours of light in paying a visit to Sunni Lodge. He did not go to the house; in the circumstances he thought that Stephen Narth would not be particularly anxious to see him. Instead, he made an unauthorized circuit of the pleasure ground, having caught a glimpse of the girl walking at the far end of the tennis lawn.

Briefly he told her the arrangements he had made for her protection.

“The crisis will be over in a week, I think. I have mildly interested the Foreign Office, and thank heaven I have got Scotland Yard thoroughly worked up!”

She shook her head helplessly.

“I only understand dimly what is the cause of all this trouble,” she said. “It is about the share which Fing-Su wants, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Why is that so very important? Mr Narth tried to explain but I am as dense as ever.”

They were pacing through a thin belt of pines that fringed the western boundary of Mr Narth’s little demesne, and were free from the possibility of observation from the house. In a few words he told her of the forty-nine shares.

“I had always realized the possibility of Joe’s doing something eccentric with his money, and the founders’ shares, as we call them—though in reality it would be better to call them the management shares—were issued to keep the control of the business, whatever happened. The original plan was that I was to have twenty-five and Joe was to take twenty-four, and an agreement was drawn up by which it was mutually agreed that the survivor should inherit the shares of the other partner. I had to go to Peking on business; whilst I was there I got a wire from Joe asking if I minded the old man Fing-Su having a few shares. Unfortunately, before I left Siantan I had given Joe a general power of attorney, and I returned to discover that this wicked old man had not only given the chief nine, but he had divided the other forty equally.”

She nodded, at last understanding.

“But sorely, Mr—Clifford, that trouble is over? You have the majority of the shares and you need not sell or give away the one which makes all the difference?”

Clifford smiled wryly.

“Joe, with the greatest ingenuity, maintained the clause which provided that if either of us died his shares should go to the survivor,” he said significantly. “Fing-Su has a double chance. He may induce me, by methods which I have anticipated, to part with the share which gives him control of the company; or he may–-” He did not conclude the sentence.

“He may bring about your death,” she said simply, and he nodded.

“He has reached the point now,” he went on, “where he cannot succeed, because, if I were to be killed this night, Fing-Su would be automatically arrested tomorrow. But, clever as he is, he is a Chinaman and reasons like a Chinaman. That is why he will fall down. He has great visions toned with a sense of infallibility—he cannot imagine failure.”

They paced in silence for fully a minute, and then she asked:

“If he managed to get me…in his power—that sounds awfully melodramatic, doesn’t it?—what difference would that make—really?”

“I should pay,” he said quietly, “and he knows I should pay.”

She felt the blood come into her cheeks and tried to appear unconcerned.

“You are under no obligation to me, Mr Lynne,” she said, in a low voice. “I had already decided to tell you…now that Mr Bray is alive… that I do not wish to marry you. I promised Mr Narth because—well, it was necessary for him that I should be married.”

It required a great effort for her to say this, a greater effort than she had ever dreamt. The discovery struck her with a sense of dismay. To rehearse such a speech in the privacy of her room was an easy matter, but now as she spoke, it was as if every word cut away from her the newly built foundations of life. She looked up at him; he was searching her face.

“And there is no need—for you to marry, either.”

She shook her head in anticipation of his answer.

“‘To carry on the line’—no,” he said, and her heart sank. “To satisfy the curious mind of Joseph Bray, Esquire—no! Not one of the arguments remains which brought me on this mad trip to England and turned me from a decent member of society into a bearded hobo! You’re right there. But there is yet a very excellent reason why I should marry you.”

He put his arm round her gently, and drew her towards him, and yet he did not kiss her. His grave eyes were looking into hers, and she read the words he did not say, the thought he did not utter, and found she was trembling from head to foot. A deep rumble of thunder came from the distance and that broke the spell. With a sigh he stepped back, dropped his hands on her shoulders and held her at arms’ length.

“There will be a marriage in this family on Friday,” he said briefly, and only then did he stoop and kiss her.

The first ghostly gleam of lightning paled the pine tops as he came whistling down the drive to the Slaters’ Cottage.

“A night of storm, Joseph?” he said cheerfully, as he came into the sitting-room. “Have you turned loose the hired assassin?”

Joe hastily concealed the paper he had been writing.

“Making a new will?”

Mr Bray coughed, and a horrible suspicion came to his partner; a suspicion that amounted to a certainty.

Once, many years before, Joe, with great humming and hawing, had confessed a gentle weakness and had even offered for his criticism an exercise-book stained with his fancy.

“You’re not writing poetry, are you, Joe?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“No, I’m not,” said Joe loudly. “Gosh! That was a good one!”

The crash of thunder overhead set the little cottage shivering, and even as he spoke the blue flicker of lightning hit the woods.

“The very heavens are aflame,” said Joe poetically.

“It is your turn to fry the sausages,” retorted his more practical friend, and they adjourned to the little kitchen together to prepare the evening meal.

The storm lasted an hour, but it was evident that what they had experienced was merely the forerunner. By nine o’clock it was black as a winter night, and every horizon was lit with distant lightning. Clifford had fastened the shutters, and four sporting rifles were at hand on the sofa.

“Reminds me of one of them storms you get up there on the lake,” said Joe, “and the worst I was ever in was up in Harbin in ‘86—before any of you birds had poked your nose outside the reservations.”

He looked at the writing table where he had been engaged in his literary labours and sighed heavily.

“As far as I can make out, she is a third cousin,” said Joe. “Her father’s sister married my aunt’s son.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” asked Clifford in astonishment.

“Her,” said Mr Bray briefly.

It was evident that Mabel had made a very deep impression upon this susceptible heart.

“I hope this storm won’t frighten her—girls get scared with storms…”

“For my part, I would rather have it tonight than tomorrow,” said Clifford as he made for the kitchen. “If we are to be drowned, I would rather be drowned by moonlight!”

Joe Bray came after him to the kitchen.

“What’s this stuff about getting drowned?” he asked nervously. “Where are we going?”

“Down to the sea in a ship,” said Clifford as he speared a sausage from the pantry slab.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Miss Mabel Narth was not the kind of girl to be frightened by a thunderstorm. Whilst her more sensitive sister cowered in the coal-cellar, Mabel knitted furiously in the drawing-room, confiding to her companion the curious adventure of the morning.

“Some people would say he was old, but I would call him a fine figure of a man, and he is enormously rich, my dear.”

Mabel professed to be twenty-five. She was plump, and not especially popular with the bright young men who danced with her, played tennis with her, sometimes dined with her, but studiously refrained from asking her the all-important question. In her life she had had two proposals: one from an impossible young gentleman to whom she had been introduced at a dance, and who subsequently proved to be an actor who played very small parts in very important West End musical comedies, and the other from a business associate of her father’s who was still in mourning for his second wife when he made a timid bid for a third.

“I like men who have sown their wild oats, Joan,” said Mabel firmly, blinking rapidly as a vivid flash of lightning momentarily blinded her. “Will you pull the curtains, my dear?”

Joan had never known her so affable, and was curious to discover the identity of the stranger who had made so deep an impression.

“Young men you can never trust; they’re so thoughtless. But a mature man …and fearfully rich! He told me he tried to buy up Lord Knowesley’s estate. He is negotiating for a house in Park Lane, and he has three Rolls cars, my dear—just think of it, three!”

“But who is he Mabel?”

Here Mabel was at a loss, for in her maidenly modesty she had not pried too closely into the identity of her pleasant acquaintance.

“He is living somewhere in the neighbourhood. I think he must have rented a house at Sunningdale.”

“How old is he?”

Mabel considered.

“About fifty,” she said, unconsciously giving support to Mr Bray’s miscalculation. “Bless this storm!” She did not mean ‘bless’! “Do, please, run down into the cellar, Joan, and see if that foolish child is all right.”

Joan found the ‘foolish child’ sitting in a basket chair with a newspaper over her head, and Letty refused either to be sensible or to change her habitation.

When she got back to the drawing-room Mabel greeted her with a staggering question.

“Has that awful boy of yours got a visitor?”

For a second Joan did not understand her. She had never thought of Clifford Lynne in these terms.

“‘Boy’? You mean Mr Lynne?”

And then she gasped. Mabel had been talking about Joe Bray! She was too startled to laugh, and could only look open-mouthed at the plump girl. Happily, the eldest daughter of Stephen Narth, intent on her knitting, did not observe the sensation she had caused.

“I wondered, because he walked off in the direction of the Slaters’ Cottage. It struck me afterwards that it was quite possible he was staying with this Lynne man, who is rich, I suppose, and must have a lot of rich friends.”

Joan did not venture an answer. She could not tell the girl who was her newly-discovered interest without betraying Clifford, but she wondered what would be Mabel’s attitude if she knew the truth.

It was nearly ten o’clock and Mr Narth had not yet returned from town, when they heard a gentle tap at the door. The storm had subsided, though the thunder was still growling, and Joan went out, to find a rain-spotted envelope in the wire letterbox. It was addressed to ‘Miss Mabel,’ and she carried her find back to the girl. Mabel seized the letter, tore open the envelope and extracted a large and considerably blotted sheet of paper. She read and her eyes sparkled.

“Poetry, Joan!” she said breathlessly.

“How strange is life! We come and go, And the nicest people we do not know, Until they dorn like the beautiful sun, An experience which comes to everyone. Even to a man of fifty-one.”

There was no signature. Mabel’s eyes were gleaming.

“How perfectly terribly romantic!” she exclaimed. “He must have dropped it in the letterbox with his own hand.”

She sprang up from her chair, went into the hall and opened the door. It was very dark, but she thought she saw a figure moving down the drive. The rain had ceased. Should she run after him? Would it be a ladylike action, she wondered? Would it not indeed come within the category of ‘chasing,’ literally and figuratively? The excuse was ready made for an excursion down the drive, for at this hour Joan usually went out with the letters—there was a postal box just outside the gate.

Hesitating no more, she walked quickly down the path, her heart beating pleasurably. Turning the elbow of the little road, she stopped. Nobody was in sight; she must have been mistaken.

And then there came to her an eerie sensation of fear that made her flesh go cold. She turned to run, and had taken two steps when a fusty blanket was suddenly thrown over her head, a big hand stifled her screams, and she fainted…

Joan waited in the drawing-room until the slamming of the door brought her into the hall. The wind had blown the door close, and she opened it wide and peered out into the storm.

Two successive flashes of lightning showed her that the drive was empty.

“Mabel!”

She called the girl at the top of her voice, but no answer came.

Joan’s heart sank.

She ran back to the drawing-room and rang the bell for the butler; he was a slow-moving man, and as she waited patiently for his coming she remembered the black ‘plum’ that Clifford had given to her. It was a weapon of some kind, and she flew up the stairs and was back by the time the servant had arrived.

“Miss Mabel gone out? She’ll come back, miss.”

He glanced nervously at the open door. The lightning came in fluttering spasms.

“No, miss, I’m sorry—I don’t like lightning.”

“Come with me,” commanded the girl, and ran out of the house; but she went alone. The butler went as far as the front door, and felt that he was not called upon by the laws which govern butlers to go any farther.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Lynne was sitting in the doorway of the cottage, a rifle across his knees, when Joe came back, the rays of his lamp advertising his presence long before he himself was in sight.

“Where the dickens have you been?” asked Clifford in astonishment. “I thought you were asleep!”

“Just went for a stroll,” said Joe airily. “I slipped out at the back door…there’s nobody about.”

“Well, you can slip in at the front door,” said Clifford severely. “In all probability the wood is full of Chinese cutthroats.”

“Ridic’lous!” murmured Joe as he passed.

“It may be ridic’lous,” Clifford called over his shoulder, “but anything more ridiculous than you lying in a Sunningdale wood with your aged throat cut, I can’t imagine.”

“Fifty-one!” exploded Joe from the passage. “Everybody knows that!”

It was not a moment when Clifford Lynne felt he could debate the question of Mr Bray’s age with any great profit. In the course of the evening he had made several excursions into the wood and had found nothing of a suspicious character. The cottage could be approached from the south by way of a new road that had been cut through the estate company’s property, and to guard against surprise from this direction he had suspended, on a blackened string, a number of little bells that he had bought in London that day, though the never-ending grumble and crack of the thunder made it extremely doubtful whether this warning would reach him. The lightning played vividly in the sky as he sat on the doorstep, alert and waiting. Once Joe began to sing, and he silenced him with an angry growl.

Eleven o’clock was striking when he heard a firm step on the gravel, coming from the direction of the road, and stood up,

There was nothing furtive in the stranger’s approach. He walked boldly down the centre of the road, and Clifford heard the tap of a stick. Whoever the newcomer was, he needed no light to show him the way, and after a while the watcher saw his shape distinctly. He turned from the road and came straight to the cottage, and now Lynne challenged him.

“Have no fear. I am alone!”

It was Fing-Su.

“Stand where you are!” said Clifford harshly, “And since when have I been afraid of Chinese traders?”

The newcomer had halted and Clifford heard him laugh. He smelt something, a penetrating aroma, pungent but not unpleasant.

“Pardon me,” said Fing-Su politely. “I put that rather awkwardly, I am afraid. What I meant to convey was that I had called for a friendly talk. I understand that some of my hot-headed young men, quite without my knowledge, paid you a little attention last night. I have chastized them. Nobody knows better than you, Mr Lynne, that they are the veriest children. They thought I had been insulted–-“

“Who is that?” It was Joe Bray’s voice, speaking from the living-room.

Clifford turned savagely and silenced him. Had Fing-Su heard? And if he had, did he recognize the voice? Apparently he did not.

“You have a friend staying with you? I think that is wise,” he said in the same courteous tone. “As I was remarking–-“

“Listen! I’m not going to waste my time with that monkey stuff. Fing-Su, you’re getting to the end of your rope.”

“It is a long rope,” said Fing-Su, “and it covers a wide area. You are a fool, Lynne, not to throw in your lot with me. In five years I shall be the most powerful man in China.”

“You’ll conquer China, will you?” asked the other sardonically. “And Europe, too, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” said Fing-Su. “You have no vision, my friend. Do you not see that with our preponderant man-strength all the wars of the future will be decided by our race? A professional yellow army will decide the fate of Europe. A great mercenary army—think of it, Lynne—to be bargained for and sold to the highest bidder. An army that sits everlastingly on the threshold of Europe!”

“What do you want now?” asked Clifford brusquely.

Fing-Su had a trick of conveying reproach by his very intonation, and now he replied in a hurt tone:

“Is it necessary that we should be enemies, Mr Lynne? I have no feeling against you. All I wish is to buy from you at a reasonable price a founders’ share in the company–”

The coolness of the request momentarily struck Clifford dumb. It aroused in him also a sudden feeling of apprehension. Fing-Su would not dare advance such an iniquitous request unless he had the wherewithal to bargain.

“And what do you propose giving me in exchange?” he asked slowly, and heard the quick intake of the other’s breath.

“A thing very precious to you, Mr Lynne.” He spoke deliberately. “You have a friend in your house and evidently he can hear, and I am not prepared to make a statement before a witness. Will you come a little way up the road with me?”

“Walk ahead,” said Clifford curtly, and, turning, Fing-Su went before him.

Within a few yards of the main road the Chinaman stopped and turned.

“There is a lady–-” he began.

Lynne’s hand shot out and gripped him by his coat. Something hard pressed against the Chinaman’s waistcoat.

“You’ve got Joan Bray, have you?” demanded Cliff through his teeth. “You’ve got her! Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“There is no need for heroics–-” began Fing-Su.

“Tell me where she is.”

“I am sorry you take this view,” said Fing-Su, regret in his voice, “and as you threaten me I have no course to follow but–-“

He took off his hat as though to cool his heated head and looked into its interior.

Suddenly from its crown, with a fierce hiss, came a thick spray of liquid that drenched Clifford’s face.

Pure ammonia, stifling, blinding…!

In his agony his pistol fell with a clatter to the ground, and the Chinaman, with a quick thrust of his head, sent him sprawling. Kneeling by his side, Fing-Su thrust his hand into the inside of Clifford’s waistcoat. He felt a crackle—a paper was sewn there.

And then came a diversion; the sound of footsteps, flying down the road—a woman, he saw, with his keen eyes that could penetrate the blackest gloom of night. Instinct saved Joan Bray. As she turned into the lane she stopped suddenly, conscious of the huddled figure on the ground.

“Who is that?” she asked.

At the sound of her voice Fing-Su leapt to his feet with a squeal of rage.

“Miss Bray!”

She recognized him, and for a moment was petrified with fright, then, as he leapt at her, she raised her hand in the desperation of terror and flung the thing she had been carrying. The black ball dropped short of Fing-Su, but fell on the ground at his feet.

There was a dull explosion, and instantly the road, the wood, the very Slaters’ Cottage, were illuminated by the light of the magnesium bomb. In a panic the Chinaman turned and plunged into the wood and a second later was lost to sight. On and on he ran blindly, until he came to a low hedge which separated him from the road. Near at hand a motor-car was drawn up by the side of the road, its lights dimmed. He stopped only long enough to lift out a stout and swooning girl and bundle her on to the roadside, and then the car sped furiously towards Egham.

A quarter of an hour later a search party went out to look for Mabel Narth, and it was Joe Bray who had the fortune to find her. And to comfort her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Fing-Su sat cross-legged on a divan in his over-furnished and over-scented office. The hour was four, and the roofs and steeples of East London showed black against the dawn.

At such an hour do the great men of China grant their audiences, and Fing-Su, in his flowered silk robe, his silken trousers and white felt boots, wore upon his head the insignia of a rank to which he had no title.

Between his lips was a long, thick-stemmed pipe with a microscopic bowl, but it was tobacco that he was smoking.

A heavy-eyed little Chinese girl-woman sat on her heels in a corner of the room, watching him and ready to replenish the pipe or tea cup which stood at his elbow. Squatting at his feet was an unhealthy-looking Chinaman in European dress, his big derby hat deposited on the floor by his side.

Fing-Su lifted the handleless tea cup from the low table by his side and drank noisily.

“Of all men in this evil country I have sought out you, Li Fu,” he said, setting down the cup. “I shall pay you well and there will be a great cumskaw in addition. Your name has been spoken to me because of your boldness and because you know this town so much better than I, who have spent all my years at college.”

He used the phrase which literally means ‘Forest of Pencils.’

If Li Fu felt any uneasiness, the inscrutable, pock-marked face did not show it.

“There is a law in this country which is very hard on foreigners,” he said. “By such a law I may be taken and put upon a ship and sent to China. Already I have spent three months in a prison where no man can speak to another. And, Fing-Su, in China I am a dead man, as you know, for Tuchun of Lanchow has sworn to hang my head in a basket over the gate of the city.”

Fing-Su smoked delicately, drawing at the tasteless tobacco and sending forth big blue rings of smoke to the scarlet-raftered ceiling.

“All China is not Lanchow,” he said, “and there will be changes. Who knows that you may not be Tuchun yourself some day? My friends will be well rewarded. There will be ‘squeeze’ for you, not ‘cash’ or copper or mex dollar, but gold. I know a place where there is a statue made of gold…”

He spoke of Urga, that Mongolian Mecca, where shrines are of solid gold and there is a great golden figure of Buddha, and in the cellars of the living Buddha a treasure beyond computation.

Li Fu listened apparently unmoved, his mind vacillating between the ungilded gates of Pentonville Prison and the reward he was offered. He was not a poor man as Chinamen went, but his compatriot had offered him an immediate fortune.

“You have the felicity of owning a white wife,” Fing-Su went on in his thin voice. “It would be a simple matter and none would know.”

Li Fu looked up.

“Why do you come to me? For I am not a member of your tong. And you have hundreds of men who are like slaves to you!”

Fing-Su tapped the ashes from his pipe, declined with a gesture its replenishment, and sat back in the silken cushions behind him.

“The Sage has said, ‘The slave must be ordered and the master will be served,’” he quoted. “I cannot stand behind each man and say ‘Do this.’ If I said, ‘Li Fu has offended me, let him die,’ you would be dead, because it is easy to take life. But in this other man I require wisdom and cunning or nothing will save my face.”

Li Fu considered the matter, twiddling his thumbs, his nimble mind busy. This was something more profitable than the smuggling of cocaine, his staple industry, a quicker way to fortune than the rake-off of coppers from a forbidden game of fantan. His wife, who was not exactly white but white enough, was very competent to play the part which his employer had assigned, had indeed already rented the premises which he had intended should mask a more nefarious trade than millinery.

Fing-Su knew of that projected showroom in Fitzroy Square; he knew of Li Fu’s connection, for the secrets of the little Chinese underworld came to him in the shape of gossip.

“You will pay first,” said Li Fu, and there followed a gentle but conventional wrangle, for no two Chinamen have ever struck a bargain on the first price offered.

At the end Li Fu was dismissed.

The man who entered from the little ante-room was not unused to being kept waiting by his employer, but the interview had lasted longer than he expected, and Major Spedwell was tired and not in the best of tempers.

“Well, have you settled things?” he asked shortly.

Fing-Su surveyed him through half-closed eyes.

“Yes; it was inevitable,” he said.

“You think you will get the girl without fuss? I don’t.” Spedwell sank down into a chair and lit a cigar. “You’re monkeying with a big thing, and I’m not so sure that even now we’re going to get through the next twelve hours without trouble,” he said. “Lynne has pulled in Scotland Yard–-“

“Scotland Yard!” murmured the other with a derisive smile.

“There’s nothing to grin about,” snapped Spedwell. “These birds, when they move at all, move quickly. I’ve been shadowed all day.”

Fing-Su sat up suddenly.

“You?”

Spedwell nodded.

“I thought that would interest you. And I’ll tell you something else. Miss Bray is pretty certain to be shadowed. Leggat has spilt more than we know—what are you going to do about him?” he asked abruptly.

Fing-Su shrugged his silken shoulders.

“Let him slide,” he said indifferently.

Spedwell chewed at the cigar, his eyes upon the whitening windows.

“The Yard are up and doing,” he said significantly. “That fellow Lynne captured—do you think he talked?”

“Possibly.” Impatience and weariness were in Fing-Su’s voice. “At any rate, I have decided to deal with him in the manner you know. This country stifles me!” He rose and began walking up and down the room. “So many things would be simple—in China! Lynne—where would he be? A headless body carried out and left in the Gobi Desert—or, wearing a soldier’s uniform, in some old moat. This woman interests me.”

He stopped and pulled at his thin lip.

“Miss Bray?”

“Yes…She is pretty, I suppose? Yes, pretty.” He nodded. “I should like to see her in the dress of our women. And that would be terrible for Lynne. To know that somewhere in China—in an inaccessible place, with my armies between him and her–-“

Spedwell rose slowly to his, feet, an ugly look on his face.

“You can cut that little dream out of your repertoire, Fing-Su,” he said coldly. “No harm must come to that girl—not that kind of harm.”

Fing-Su was smiling.

“My dear Spedwell, how amusing! What queer values you English-speaking folk place on your women that you would jeopardize an immense fortune—I was joking. She is nothing to me. I would surrender all the women in the world rather than lose your help and friendship.”

But Spedwell’s uneasiness was not so readily dispelled. He knew just when and why his services would be dispensed with, for the hour was near at hand when Fing-Su would make a clean cut of many of those trammelling influences which surrounded and hampered him. And, knowing, he was prepared.

“How are things shaping in China?” he asked.

“The hour is near,” said the Chinaman in a low voice. “The two armies have come to an agreement. Wei-pa-fu will move down from Harbin, Chi-sa-lo has concentrated within striking distance of Peking. It is purely a question of money. The guns have been landed—but I need not have sent them. Shells and equipment is all that Wei-pa-fu requires. If I could get control of the concession reserve it would be easy. But the generals want their ‘squeeze’—four millions would make me Emperor of China.”

Spedwell stroked his little black moustache thoughtfully.

“And how much would keep you Emperor?” he asked, but Fing-Su was unconcerned.

“Once there, I shall be difficult to move,” he said. “The granting of concessions to the Powers will identify them with my reign…”

Spedwell listened and wondered at the calm confidence of this merchant’s son who planned to buy a place on the throne which the Mings and the Manchus had won by their valour. And all the time he was speaking the world grew lighter and the grim outlines of the Conqueror’s Tower, wherein so much ambition had died, rose into shape with the broadening of the day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Mr Stephen Narth had been detained in town all night, and for once his daughter did an unselfish thing.

“There is no sense in worrying father,” she told her hysterical sister. “And Mr Joseph says that no harm was intended me—these wretched people mistook me for Joan.”

“‘Joseph’—is he Jewish?” asked Letty, curiosity overcoming alarm.

“He doesn’t look it,” was the non-committal reply.

It happened that Clifford did not see the girl either on her rescue or during the following morning. Only too well he knew that Mabel had been mistaken for her distant cousin, and he grew more and more uneasy. His first call on his arrival in town was at Scotland Yard, and here he received the gratifying intelligence that a number of officers had been detailed to watch Sunni Lodge.

“You’ll be wanting somebody to look after you!” said the officer with a smile when Clifford told him of the ammonia attack. “That ammonia spray in the hat is an old trick, by the way.”

Clifford nodded.

“I’m not proud of myself,” he said.

“As far as Miss Bray is concerned,” said the superintendent, “I have already sent a man to Sunningdale with orders to follow her wherever she goes. He has just ‘phoned me to say that the Narths’ car is out of order and he will have no difficulty in keeping her under observation.”

“Thank the Lord for that!” said Cliff fervently, and went back to his house to arrange the details of the search he was making that night.

At five o’clock that afternoon he telephoned through to the Slaters’ Cottage. Joe Bray’s voice answered him.

“I’ve just been having a talk on the ‘phone with Joan,” said Joe. “Mark this, that girl’s got brains! I asked her how old she thought I was, and what do you think she said–-“

“Don’t tell me,” begged Clifford. “I’d hate to think she was insincere. Now listen: you’re to be here at eleven o’clock. You’ll have a visit from two or three men round about nine. They are Scotland Yard detectives and their job is to keep an eye on Sunni Lodge. As soon as they arrive, you skip—you understand?”

“She said to me,” continued Joe, a tremor of sentiment in his voice, “‘Mabel seems to like you’—those were her very words—‘she seems to like you.’”

“She’ll have no rival,” said Clifford unpleasantly. “Did you hear what I said, you crazy old hen?”

“I heard you,” said Joe quite unruffled. “Listen, Cliff: she said—Joan, I mean—‘I’ve never known Mabel to be so interested in anybody–-’”

“At eleven o’clock,” persisted Clifford.

“At all times—that’s what Joan said–-“

“And don’t call up Joan Bray any more. One of the servants, or Narth, or, worse still, one of the daughters may discover who you are,” said Clifford, “and then it will be a case of ‘Goodbye, Mabel.’”

“I’m not likely to call her up: she’s gone to town. And listen, Cliff, she said–-“

“Gone to town?”

The news startled the younger man, but before he could question his partner, Bray went on:

“She’s gone up to buy some dresses. That Narth ain’t so bad, Cliff. Told her she could spend up to the limit. He’s not a bad scout, old Stephen.”

Clifford hung up the receiver thoughtfully. Generosity and Stephen Narth were such complete strangers that his suspicions were aroused.

When Joan Bray was ushered into her relative’s private office she also was a little doubtful as to what condition might be attached to Stephen’s largess. It was natural in her that she should wish to go to this strange husband that had been chosen for her with some material equipment. Even the beggar maid would not come empty-handed to Cophetua, but would spend her days gathering a poor and decent wardrobe to replace her rags. And Joan was singularly deficient in the matter of clothing. Mr Narth was not an extravagant man, and she had subsisted for three years on two evening frocks. A fine character should be superior to the mundane considerations of clothing, but when a fine mind has as its host a shapely body, it may be excused the lapse of a desire for suitable covering.

Mr Stephen Narth was sitting at his desk with his head in his long hands, and he looked up with a start and stared at her as she entered the room. In a week an extraordinary change had come over him, she thought. He had grown haggard, nervous, ready to start at the slightest sound. He was a man who at the best of times was easily irritated, but now, as the click of the door announced her presence, she thought he had some difficulty in suppressing an exclamation of fear.

“Oh! You! It is you, is it, Joan?” he said breathlessly. “Sit down, won’t you?”

He unlocked a drawer of his desk after two attempts—his hand shook so that he could not fit the key—and took out a black cash-box.


“We’ve got to do this thing in style, Joan.” His voice was shrill; the man was on edge, she saw. “Must get you married in the way old Joe would like, eh? You didn’t tell the girls what I wanted you for?”

She shook her head.

“That’s right. They would have wanted to come up and buy things as well, and I can’t afford it.”

From the box he took a pad of notes and, without counting, laid them before her.

“Get everything you want, my dear—nothing but the best. There’s only one favour I would like to ask you.” He stared out of the window, not meeting her eyes. “You know, Joan, I have interests in—queer sorts of ventures. I finance this and that and the other in a little way, and I have more fingers in more pies than people imagine.” He passed his hand nervously across his chin, his eyes still on the window, and she wondered what was coming next. “I’ve put a whole lot of money into a dressmaking business—Madame Ferroni, 704, Fitzroy Square.” His voice had grown suddenly husky. “It’s not a very pretentious place; in fact, it’s a suite on the third floor; but I’d like you to buy some of your gowns from Madame.”

“Why, surely, Mr Narth,” she said, a little amused.

“Go there first,” said Stephen, still looking past her. “If she hasn’t got what you want you needn’t buy it. I’ve half promised I’d send you there, and it will be good for me too, though the business is a flourishing one.”

He wrote the address on a card and pushed it across the table to her.

“Don’t think because it’s a poor-looking place that she hasn’t got the dresses you want,” he continued. “And Joan, I’m rather fussy about little things. Don’t keep cabs waiting, my dear; they eat up money, and dressmakers keep you a long time. Always pay off the cabman when you go into a dressmaker’s, Joan; you can generally get another without any trouble. No, no, don’t count the money, it doesn’t matter. If you want more you must ask and I will let you have it. Goodbye.”

His face was as white as death, his eyes held an apprehension which almost terrified her. She took the cold, clammy hand and shook it, but he stopped her thanks brusquely.

“Go to Madame Ferroni’s first, won’t you? I promised her you would.”

The door closed on her and he gave her time to get out of the building, and then he walked to the door and locked it. As he did so, the second door which led to the boardroom opened slowly and Fing-Su came in. Stephen Narth turned, a glare of hate in his eyes.

“Well, I’ve done it,” he jerked. “If any harm comes to that girl, Fing-Su–-“

Fing-Su smiled broadly and flicked a speck of invisible dust from his well-fitting morning coat.

“No harm will come to her, my dear man,” he said in his soft, suave way. “It is merely a move in the great game. A tactical point gained, that the strategical plan may be brought to complete success.”

Narth was fingering the telephone.

“I’ve a good mind to stop her,” he said huskily. “I could call Lynne and he would get there first.”

Fing-Su smiled again, and his eye did not leave the telephone and the nervous hand that played with the receiver.

“That would be a catastrophe for you, Mr Narth,” he said. “You owe us fifty thousand pounds which you can never repay.”

“Never repay?” snarled the other. “You seem to forget that I’m the heir of Joe Bray.”

The Chinaman showed his white teeth in a humorous grin.

“An heirship is not of very much value until the testator dies,” he said.

“But Joe Bray is dead!” gasped the other.

“Joe Bray,” said Fing-Su coolly, as he tapped a cigarette upon a golden box he had taken from his waistcoat pocket, “is very much alive. In fact, I heard him with my own ears last night!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

With no other thought save one of perplexity at Stephen Narth’s changed appearance, Joan went forth on a mission which would have been dear to any woman but was especially pleasing to her in the circumstances. She counted the money as she sat in the taxi: there was Ł320—an enormous sum to one who had never owned more than ten pounds in her life.

Madame Ferroni’s address she had given to the driver, and for the next ten minutes she was interested in the skill with which he threaded his way through the traffic, worked round the blocks at every busy street crossing, till he reached the comparative freedom of the Euston Road.

Fitzroy Square has a peculiar character of its own; its proximity to the West End trading centres has saved it from the indignity which has befallen so many of the obscure squares of London and has converted fine old Queen Anne houses into tenements. It boasted a restaurant of some reputation, a dancing club or two, and numerous business offices.

The doorpost of No. 704 was almost entirely covered with brass plates announcing the variegated professions and trades which were carried on behind its open doorway. Painted at the top were the words: “Madame Ferroni, Modiste, 3rd floor back.” The paint, she noticed, was still wet.

She had dismissed the cabman to satisfy the frugal views of her relation, and mounting the stairs she came at last, a little out of breath but elated with the exhilarating character of her visit, to a door on which, also newly painted, was the dressmaker’s name. She knocked, and was immediately admitted. The woman who opened the door to her was dark-faced and forbidding. She was dressed in black, and this emphasized her sallow complexion. Hers was a complexion distinct from the normal darkness of European races; there were faint, livid shadows under her eyes; her lips were thick, her nose a little squat. She was unquestionably a half caste. The slant eyes, the yellow tinge to her skin, marked her unmistakably to a student of ethnology—but Joan was not such a student.

This would not have alarmed the girl but for the fact that the room into which she was ushered was almost empty and the door that closed upon her was immediately locked. There was an inner door of baize, and this also the woman fastened.

Joan looked round a room bare except for a big wardrobe, a settee and a tea table which had been laid, and the kettle on which was steaming. Of dresses there was none, unless they were in the wardrobe, which, she saw, was a fixture.

“Please do not be alarmed, Miss Bray,” said the sallow woman, with an effort at amiability which made her plain face even more unprepossessing. “I do not keep my dresses here; this is where I interview my clients.”

“Why did you fasten the door?” asked the girl, and although she summoned her reserves of courage to her aid, she felt the colour leaving her face.

Madame Ferroni cringed double in her anxiety to preserve the confidence of her visitor.

“I do not wish to be interrupted while I have a very important client, Miss Bray,” she said. “You see, miss, your uncle, Mr Narth, put all his money into this business and I wish to please him. It is natural! I have the dresses at my shop in Savoy Street, and we will go there at once and you shall choose what you wish. But first I wanted to have a little talk with you—to obtain ideas of your requirements.”

She spoke with a certain precision, almost as though she were reciting passages which she had committed to memory.

“You must join me in a cup of tea,” she went on. “This tea habit is one which I have acquired since I came to this country.”

Joan was not especially interested in habits, except the habit of locked doors that remained fastened.

“Madame Ferroni—I am afraid I cannot stay now. I will come back later.”

Joan pulled open the green baize, but the key had been taken from the lock of the outer door.

“Certainly, if you wish,” Madame Ferroni had a trick of shrugging one shoulder. “But you realize that if I do not please you I may lose my job?”

She had the awkwardness of a foreigner making tea, and now poured forth the strong dark-brown liquid, treated it over-generously with milk, and handed the cup to the girl. She had need of stimulant, but would have welcomed a glass of water, for her mouth had gone dry with fear, and she found an increasing difficulty in speaking.

One thought was at the back of her mind—she must not let the woman know she was afraid, or that she suspected there was anything unusual in this method of receiving a possible client. She stirred the tea and drank eagerly, as Madame took the key from the table and, walking slowly to the door, slipped it in the lock and turned it. She turned it twice, once to open and once to close it again, but of this fact Joan was unaware.

“Now I will put on my hat and we will go,” said Madame Ferroni, accompanying her words by lifting down a huge black hat from a peg on the wall. “I do not like Fitzroy Square; it is so dull. And as I told Mr Narth, clients will not climb three flights of stairs to try on pretty dresses…”

The cup dropped from Joan’s fingers and smashed to splinters. With the litheness of a tiger, Madame leapt suddenly across the room and, catching the dazed girl as she swayed, lowered her gently to the floor.

As she did so there came a thunderous knock at the outer door, and Madame Ferroni’s face went green.

“Anybody here?”

There was authority in the tone, and the woman stood trembling, her hand on the key.

Again came the summons.

“Open the door; I can see the key on the inside,” said the voice.

Turning swiftly, Madame opened the wall-wardrobe and lifted out the loose bottom. There were eight inches of space between the floor of the room and the baseboard of the cupboard, and, lifting the limp figure of Joan, she laid her in the dusty cavity. Replacing the loose bottom, she closed and locked the wardrobe, took the girl’s tea cup and saucer, and, pushing open the window, flung them out into the little backyard. A swift glance round, and, walking to the door, she turned the key and flung it open.

A man was standing on the landing. Madame’s knowledge of the police was more than academical, and that this was a Scotland Yard man she knew. She had a tawny husband who had been snatched from her by such a man as this. She half recognized the caller but did not remember his name.

“Hallo!” he asked. “Where is Miss Bray?”

“Miss–-?” The woman frowned as though she had not heard the name aright.

“Miss Bray. She came in here five minutes ago.”

Madame Ferroni smiled and shook her head.

“You are mistaken,” she said. “Nobody has been here but me.”

The detective walked into the room and looked around. He saw the table and the solitary cup.

“What is in that cupboard?”

“Nothing—would you like to see it?” asked Madame sarcastically, and added: “May I ask who you are?”

“I am Detective-Sergeant Long of Scotland Yard,” said the other. “You know who I am—I raided your house two years ago and pinched your Chinese husband for peddling dope. Open that cupboard.”

With her one-shouldered shrug ‘Madame Ferroni’ threw open the doors. The floorboard was in place; not for an instant did it occur to the detective to wonder what occupied the space between that and the floor.

“Has she been and gone?” he asked. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I don’t know of whom you speak.”

From his pocket he took a small card, bearing the address written in Stephen Narth’s hand—he had followed the taxi to Fitzroy Square, had intercepted the driver and taken the card from him.

“You call yourself Madame Ferroni now, don’t you?”

She nodded. And then came an inspiration.

“There is another Madame Ferroni, on the top floor,” she said. “It is very awkward having two names similar in the same building. That is why I am not staying.”

The detective looked at her sharply and hesitated.

“I’ll try the next floor,” he said. “You wait here. If I find nothing upstairs, you’ll go a little walk with me.”

She closed the door behind him. There was a small house telephone in a corner of the room. She lifted this, pushed the button and began speaking in a low, earnest tone. In the meantime the detective had reached the head of the stairs. He saw only one room, that immediately facing him, and he rapped at the door.

A man’s shrill voice said “Come in,” and, unsuspecting, he pushed open the door and walked into the apartment.

The thick derby hat he was wearing saved his life, for the heavy club that came down on his head would have killed him. He staggered under the blow; somebody hit him sideways with a bottle, and he went down to the floor like a log.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Joan Bray came to consciousness with a sensation that something was hammering at regular and too frequent intervals on the crown of her head, and with every blow she winced. It was a long time before she realized that she was alone, and that the hammering came from within…

There was a sort of earthenware sink in a corner of the room. No windows, but a skylight in the roof, through which she saw the dull light of a rainy day. Mostly she concentrated her mind upon the sink and the tarnished brass tap, from which ran a steady trickle of water.

Dragging herself to her feet, she swayed and could hardly have maintained her balance but for the support of the wall; and now, with great labour and with her head throbbing at every step she took, she reached the tap, turned it and, first cupping her hands to catch the stream, she slaked her appalling thirst. Then she did what most women would have hesitated to do—she put her head under the cold stream, thankful that, in a moment of modernism, she had allowed herself to be shingled. Wringing the water from her hair, she stood upright. The pains in her head had diminished, and her immediate and prosaic requirement was a towel. She found one hanging on a roller, clean and new, and had a dim idea that it must have been put there specially for her use. By the time she had roughly dried herself, her mind was nearer normality. This room had been got ready specially for her. Near the old camp-bed on which she had been lying was a stool, on which was balanced a covered tray, a coffee-pot and a roll.

What time was it? She looked at the watch on her wrist; the hands pointed to half-past four. It had been three o’clock when she went into Madame Ferroni’s fateful room. In an hour and a half she had moved to—where?

She sat down on the bed and tried to create, from her confused thoughts, some clear conspectus of her situation. There was a piece of soiled green sacking beneath the bed. From where she sat she could see three letters—‘Maj…’ She pulled out the sacking. Major Spedwell, S & M Poona, was the faded inscription. Who was Major Spedwell? she wondered. She had met him somewhere…Of course, he was the third man present at the projected luncheon which Clifford Lynne had so rudely interrupted. Was she still in Fitzroy Square? And if she was not, how had they got her…wherever she was? The skylight was of frosted glass, but she could see the rain running down in little streams and could hear the sough of the wind outside.

She had no illusions whatever as to into whose charge she had fallen, for she could associate the dark face of Madame Ferroni with the coloured man whose startled face she had seen in the light of the magnesium flare. She was somewhere under the vigilant eye of Fing-Su! She winced at the thought. And Stephen Narth had sent her to this dreadful place…That recollection hurt her; for although she did not like Stephen, she had never in her most uncharitable moments conceived him capable of such infamy.

She got up quickly as the door opened, and instantly recognized the man who came in and closed the door behind him.

“You are Major Spedwell?” she said, and it was surprising how hoarse her voice was.

He was taken aback for the moment.

“I am Major Spedwell, yes,” he said. “You have a good memory, young lady.”

“Where am I?” she asked.

“In a safe place. And you needn’t be scared; no harm is coming to you. I have been guilty of a good many things”—he hesitated—“from manslaughter to forgery, but I haven’t got so far down in the mud that I’d allow Fing-Su to hurt you. You’re here as a hostage.”

“To what?” she demanded.

“To fortune.” His quick smile held no humour in it. “You know all about it, young lady—Fing-Su wants a certain share from Clifford Lynne. I think he has already discussed the matter with you. You see, that share certificate is rather an important matter to us.”

“And you think that Mr Lynne will give it to you in exchange for—me?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Spedwell, with a curious glance at the girl’s wet hair. “We’re doing a little banditti work: you’re held for ransom.”

Her lips curled.

“Your friend has evidently a very high opinion of Mr Lynne’s chivalry,” she said.

“Or his love,” was Spedwell’s quiet reply. “Fing-Su thinks that Clifford Lynne is crazy about you, and will part without a squeal.”

“Then I’m happy to think that Fing-Su will have a shock,” she said. “Mr Lynne and I do not love each other; and as to marriage, there is no longer any need for–-“

On the point of betraying the return of Joe Bray, she stopped herself.

“No need for the marriage now that old Joe’s alive, eh? Oh, yes, I know,” he said. He had a smile that came and went with incredible rapidity. “In fact, we all know. But Clifford Lynne is fond of you; I agree with Fing-Su.”

It was useless to pursue this topic. She asked where she was.

“In Peckham. I don’t see why you shouldn’t know. If you managed to away from here any policeman would tell you. This is one of the change rooms that the girl explosive workers used in the war. It isn’t very cosy, but it is the best we could do,” he said. “Believe me, Miss Bray, there is nothing to fear. I’m the only person with a key to this building, and you are as safe as though you were in your own room at Sunni Lodge.”

“You’re not going to leave me here, Major?” She purposely used the title, but he was not made uncomfortable by this s reminder of a more honourable past. Rather, he divined her intention.

“I hope you’re going to be sensible, young lady,” he said.. “If you are going to appeal to my manhood and all that sort of stuff, and the fact that I’ve held the King’s commission, you can save yourself the effort. My skin is pretty thick—I was kicked out of the Army for forgery, and I’ve got to the point where I can’t be ashamed of myself.”

“That is a long way, Major,” she said quietly.

“Rather a long way,” he admitted. “The only thing I can promise you is that no harm will come to you—while I am alive,” he added, and somehow she believed him.

He closed the door, locked it, and went out at the back of the building to where his car was waiting. Fing-Su was in his office on Tower Hill when Spedwell arrived, an impatient, worried man, for so far he had not heard that the girl had been safely conveyed to the factory, a somewhat difficult undertaking in broad daylight.

“Yes, she’s there all right,” said Spedwell moodily, and took a cigar from an open box on the table, bit off the end and lit it. “How long do you expect to keep her?”

Fing-Su spread out his long, thin palms.

“How long will Mr Clifford Lynne keep me waiting?” he asked. And then: “How is the detective?”

“Nearly dead,” was the laconic reply. “But I think he’ll recover. There was nearly a hanging for you and me in that alone, Fing-Su.”

The Chinaman’s face had gone grey.

“Dead?” he said huskily. “I told them to–-“

“You told them to knock him out. They pretty well knocked him out of life,” said the other in his brief, direct way. “A detective-sergeant isn’t a very important person, but killing him would be one of those little errors which upset big enterprises. There will be hell to pay as soon as this man is reported missing, because they will naturally turn to you and to me for information.”

“What was he doing?” demanded the other.

“Shadowing Miss Bray—as I warned you. The only thing we could do is to put him on the ship. Unfortunately we dare not move him. Perhaps we could take him later—you could hold him in one of your towns until the affair blew over.”

He picked up a paperweight from the table and his attention seemed to be concentrated upon the many-sided crystal.

“You’ll have no other passengers, will you?”

“I may go,” said the other carelessly. “And of course you will go also.”

“Aren’t you waiting for Clifford Lynne’s share?”

Fing-Su shrugged his shoulders.

“That will be in the hands of my agent tomorrow,” he said confidently. “Naturally I shall not appear in the transaction. If am on the high seas they cannot connect me.”

Major Spedwell laughed harshly.

“Won’t Miss Bray connect you? Won’t Stephen Narth?”

Fing-Su shook his head.

“Not after tonight,” he said in a low voice, and the dark-faced man bit his lip thoughtfully.

“After tonight?” What would be his own status—after tonight? He knew the man he was dealing with. Fing-Su was a good paymaster, but that was where his virtues ended. And he had had several unintentional hints that he had ceased to find favour in the eyes of his employer—certain intonations of voice, a look he had intercepted between Fing-Su and his yellow assistants. Major Spedwell was a shrewd, discerning man, keenly sensitive to atmosphere.

“And Leggat?” he asked.

“Leggat can go to the devil; I am finished with him. I always knew the man was untrustworthy. We have taken a lot of trouble to prove the obvious.”

“Are you asking him to attend Lodge tonight?” demanded Spedwell.

“No,” was the short reply.

Then, as if he realized that his brusqueness might arouse the other’s suspicion:

“Leggat is no longer useful; he is a drunkard, and therefore dangerous. You, my dear Major, are indispensable. I do not know what I should do without you. Have you finished your little land mine?”

He was trying to be pleasant, and the Major was not deceived.

“Ah! what a conception!” said Fing-Su, rolling his dark eyes in a transport of admiration. “You are a genius! I could not dispense with such a lieutenant.”

Spedwell knew well enough that there was nothing especially ingenious about his land mine—which was a time-bomb on a large scale and detonated when one acid ate through a leaden partition and mingled with another. It was an instrument of warfare familiar enough to military engineers. But Fing-Su’s flattery set his mind working.

Major Spedwell had a little flat in Bloomsbury. He was by education an engineer, by choice an artillerist. But none of his attainments approached his natural gift of instinct. His mind was waving red flags; he knew that a tremendous change in his fortunes was imminent, and he was satisfied that that change was for the worse.

In the few hours he had at his disposal before he must dress and meet Stephen Narth he took a pencil and paper and systematically and thoroughly set down all the possibilities, and sought for a remedy. And there was gradually evolved in his kinky mind something which, if not a remedy, was an escape for one person at least; possibly—here he naturally included himself—for two.

He burnt the paper in the grate, went into the little room that he used as a workshop, and for an hour laboured at top speed. At half past six he carried out to the street an oblong box and a heavy kitbag, put them tenderly in the car well and drove to Ratcliffe Highway. Threading the narrow lanes that lead to the river, he came to the water’s edge and was fortunate to find a boatman, who, for a consideration, rowed him out to one of two black steamers lying at anchor in the Pool. A Chinaman with an inscrutable face hailed him from the gangway, and would have carried the bag on board for him, only the Major declined.

The ship carried a black captain and purser, the latter a good-humoured man whose life Spedwell had once saved. It was a lucky day for many people when the Major had stood between Fing-Su’s wrath and this Negro officer, for the Kroo folk have a peculiar loyalty of their own. He sent for the purser as soon as he reached the deck.

“You needn’t tell Fing-Su I’ve been aboard,” he said. “I’ve got something I want to take out with me to the coast.”

“Are you coming too, Major?” asked the purser.

“I may come; I don’t know. The point is, I don’t want anybody to know I’ve got these things on board.”

The purser took him to a large cabin on the well deck.

“How long have you been using this for passenger accommodation?” asked the Major with a frown.

“Never used it before,” said the man, “but Fing-Su has given orders that it has to be got ready for a passenger.”

“Not for him—he has the captain’s cabin. Who is going this trip?”

But here the purser could not help him. He could, however, indicate a place of storage for the thing which Spedwell carried. It was a small black chest with two hasps and padlocks, and very carefully the visitor deposited his treasure on the deck.

“I’ll go along and get the padlocks for you, Major,” said the officer, and disappeared.

This absence was very necessary to Major Spedwell, for he had certain delicate adjustments to make before the purser returned with the locks and keys. The little box had to be packed about with square brown cakes, which he took from his bag. He found some difficulty in fitting them in the space, but he had finished his work and had closed down the lid before the black officer returned with the locks in his hand.

Spedwell straightened himself up and dusted his knees.

“Now listen, Haki—who works your wireless?”

“Either me or one of my Chink boys. I’ve got the instrument in my cabin. Why?”

Spedwell handed him the key of the chest.

“Put that in your pocket and never let it leave you. If you get a radio from me which says ‘All well,’ take the stuff out of the box and chuck it overboard. You’ll probably get the message before you leave the Channel. You’ll remember?”

Haki nodded, his eyes round with wonder.

“I don’t get the idea,” he said, “but I’ll do what you tell me, Major. Are you smuggling something?”

But Spedwell had no further information to give. He did not tell the man that in certain eventualities another radio would reach him; there was time enough when the crisis arose.

“But suppose you make this trip with us?” persisted the Negro.

“In that case,” said Spedwell, with a twisted smile, “I’ll be able to whisper the message in your ear—if I’m travelling alive!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Joe Bray arrived in Clarges Street shortly after ten, for rainclouds had hastened the hour of darkness and had made possible an earlier move from Sunningdale. He was charged with suppressed excitement, for the night promised an adventure, and adventure was the breath of old Joe Bray’s nostrils.

“Great idea of yours, Cliff, coming in the back way through the garage so that nobody could see me,” he said.

“I could have saved you the trouble,” said Clifford. “Fing-Su knows you’re alive.”

Joe Bray’s face fell. The news robbed him of half his mystery.

“I have a man in Narth’s office, a fellow named Perkins,” explained Clifford. “It took me more time than money to suborn him, because he’s one of the loyal kind. Did the detectives arrive?”

Joe nodded.

“A bit disappointing they was, Cliff,” he complained; “just ordinary people like you and me. You’d never think they was detectives.”

“That seems an asset,” said Clifford, and after a moment’s thought: “Did you get into touch with Joan?”

Old Joe shook his head.

“You told me not to,” he said virtuously.

“You don’t even know whether she’s come back?” He sighed. “I’m not very much worried about her, because Scotland Yard has put a man to shadow her. He’ll probably report later.”

“How did you get Scotland Yard into this, Cliff?” asked the big man curiously. “And if they’re in, why don’t they pinch Fing-Su?”

“Because they haven’t sufficient evidence to pinch anybody,” said Clifford shortly.

He was beginning to feel the strain of this battle with the invisible forces of the Chinaman.

“You’ll be able to satisfy your curiosity about Scotland Yard. It’s quite an unromantic place. Superintendent Willing is calling tonight and is going with us down-river. Can you swim, Joe?”

“Anything that’s manly I can do,” said Joe emphatically. “Get out of your head, Cliff, that I’m a back number. There’s I nothing that ever walked in trousers that could get me hollering for mother. A man of fifty is in the prime of life, as I’ve often said.”

Superintendent Willing arrived soon after—a thin, cadaverous man with a mordant sense of humour and a low opinion of humanity. In some respects he was nearer to the typical idea of Joe Bray’s imagination than the three men he had met earlier in the evening, for the superintendent spoke little and conveyed an impression of infallibility.

“You know we searched the Umgeni this morning? She’s due out tonight.”

Clifford nodded.

“There was nothing in the shape of contraband. Perhaps they’re going to send it by the Umveli—that’s the sister ship. They’re lying side by side in the Pool. But she’s not due to sail for a month, and she goes to Newcastle first. Have you seen anything of my man, Long—the fellow I put to trail Miss Bray?” And when Clifford shook his head: “I thought he might have reported to you. He’s probably gone back to Sunningdale with her. Now, Mr Lynne, what is the business end of this Chink’s operations?”

“Fing-Su? So far as I can gather, his idea is to create a new dynasty in China! Before he can bring that into being he would in the ordinary course of events have to fight the various mercenary generals who have sliced up the country between them, but I rather imagine he has found the easier way. Every general in China has his price—always remember that the Chinese have no patriotism; are unconscious of any sentiment for the soil that produced them. Their politics are immediate and local. Most of them aren’t aware that Mongolia has become a Russian province. The generals are bandits on the grand scale, and battles are decided by the timely desertions of armies. Strategy in China means getting the best price for treachery and keeping your plans dark until the last minute.”

“And Narth—he’s rather a puzzle to me,” said Willing. “I can’t see what value he can be to Fing-Su and his crowd. The man is no genius, and certainly no fighter.”

“Narth is very useful; make no mistake about that. Although he is practically bankrupt, he knows the City intimately—by which I mean that when it comes to a question of negotiating dollars against lives, there won’t be a better man in the City of London than Stephen Narth. He is personally acquainted with the great financial groups; he has the very knowledge which Fing-Su lacks. If Fing-Su succeeds there will be some valuable concessions to be had—Narth is to be the broker! At present he is a doubtful proposition, and Fing knows it. The money he has borrowed from our Chinese friend doesn’t give Fing-Su the grip on him that he imagines. Stephen has got to be clamped to the Joyful Hands with bonds of steel. Perhaps the mumbory-jumbory of the initiation service might hold him—but I doubt it.”

He looked at his watch.

“It’s time we made a move,” he said. “I have arranged for an electric launch to meet us at Wapping. Have you a gun?”

“Don’t want it,” rsaid the superintendent cheerfully. “I’ve a walking-cane that’s got a kick in it and makes no noise. But I think the evening is going to be wasted. I’ve searched the Umgeni–-“

“I’m not going to look at the Umgeni,” interrupted Cliff grimly. “Her sister ship’s lying alongside–-“

“But she doesn’t sail for a month.”

“On the contrary,” said Cliff, “she sails tonight.”

The superintendent laughed.

“You know very little about ships,” he said. “She’ll be held up at the mouth of the river and her papers searched, and unless they are in order she’ll not leave the Thames River.”

“They will be in order,” said Clifford cryptically.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

To the artist the Pool of London has a peculiar beauty of its own. Here lie the great ocean-going steamers, and along this watery highway passes the traffic of half a world. It is a place of soft tones, on a fine evening; a nocturne of greys and blues and russet reds. It is a veritable pool of romance even in the drab days of winter, when the stained hulls and the grime-coated funnels come slowly out of sunny seas to rest on these mud-coloured waters.

On a dark and rainy summer evening, with an unaccountable northerner to chill the bones of those adventurers who set forth upon the surface of the river, the Pool has little attraction. Clifford found his big electric launch waiting at the greasy flight of stairs, and slipping under the stern of a Norwegian timber ship, he steered to the middle of the river. A police skiff came out of the darkness, challenged them and was satisfied, and followed in their wake. The tide was running in and was favourable to their enterprise, for they could afford to go half-speed.

Clifford’s scheme was to find a hiding-place on board the ship, and if they were undetected to go down-river with the ship to Gravesend, where the ship would be held up to take on a pilot and for the examination of papers, before being allowed to proceed on her voyage. If they were discovered, Willing had the necessary authority to account for their presence and to conduct an eleventh-hour search for forbidden exports.

There were ships to left and right of them, some silent and dark, save for their riding lamps, others ablaze with lights and noisy with the rattle and whine of donkey engines as they unloaded into lighters with the aid of great branch lamps swung over the side. A belated pleasure craft passed them, a glittering palace of a thing, from which came the strains of a wheezy band.

The four men who occupied the launch wore oilskins and sou’westers, and the need for this protection was emphasized before they had reached the middle of the river, for the drizzle became a downpour.

“Give me China, where the sun is always shining!” murmured Joe Bray, squatting on the floorboards, but nobody answered him.

After a quarter of an hour Superintendent Willing said in a low voice:

“There are the boats, right ahead on the Surrey side.”

The Umgeni and the Umveli were, as he had said, sister ships, and were more twin-like than most sister ships are. Their black hulls and funnels were familiar objects to the riverside loafer; they had the same curiously advanced navigation bridge, the same long superstructure running forward. Both had a single mast, and both sported a gilt and unnecessary figurehead of Neptune.

There was no need to ask which was the Umgeni. Her decks were brilliantly illuminated, and as they came in sight of her a fussy little tug was drawing away three empty lighters from her side. A little more than a ship’s length from her the Umveli swung at her moorings, a dark and lifeless shape.

“You didn’t search the Umveli?

“No, it hardly seemed necessary. She’s only been in the river a little more than a week, and she’s been unloading all that time.”

“By night,” was Clifford’s significant comment. “The ship which apears to be unloading by night might very easily be loading by night.”

The brilliance of the Umgeni illuminated the starboard side of her sister ship, and Lynne set the nose of the launch towards the shore, setting a course that would bring him in the shadow of the vessel.

“Rather low down in the water for an empty ship, isn’t she?” he asked, and the superintendent agreed.

“She’s going round to Newcastle in ballast to undergo repairs,” he said. “At least, that is my information.”

There was little chance of confusing the two vessels. The word Umgeni in letters a yard long sprawled over the hull of that busy craft in great raised characters. As they came upon the dark side of the Umveli, Lynne looked up. They were passing under the stern, and he saw something which interested him.

“Look at that,” he whispered, pointing.

The letters ‘vel’ had been removed from the stern of the ship.

“What’s the idea?”

“They are changing names, that’s all,” said Clifford laconically. “In two hours the Umveli will go down the Thames with the Umgeni‘s papers, and in the morning the Umgeni, newly christened, will steam out to sea ostensibly on its way to Newcastle.” They were moving silently, and the dark-covered launch would not be visible to ordinary eyes; nevertheless, when they came abreast of the companion ladder a screeching voice hailed them.

“What boat that?”

“Passing,” shouted Lynne gruffly.

He focused a pair of night-glasses on the ship and presently he saw another look-out standing on the forecastle; and, more important, three shadowy shapes were on the bridge and smoke was coming up from the funnel.

“They keep a pretty good watch for an empty ship,” he said, expecting to be hailed again by the man on the forecastle, but evidently this watcher was not so vigilant as his fellow. Clifford saw him turn and walk slowly towards the ladder that led to the well of the deck, and instantly sent the launch about so that it came under the clipper bow..

Reaching up, he caught hold of the chains with a rubber-covered boathook and steadied the launch, and in another instant had drawn himself up hand over hand till his arm encircled the bowsprit. As he peeped cautiously along the forecastle he heard somebody in a far-away voice call a name, and the forecastle watcher descended out of sight. In an instant he conveyed the intelligence, and first Willing and then Joe Bray, who displayed remarkable agility, followed him through the deserted ship. After seeing them safely on board, the launch drew off in accordance with instructions.

“We’ll get down into the well,” whispered Lynne, and, hurrying ahead, he ran down the ladder, expecting every moment to be challenged.

But the well was deserted. From an open doorway in the forecastle he heard the sound of a mouth-organ being played, whilst from ahead of him came the clop-clop of a hammer against wedges where the hatch was being finally closed. A narrow alleyway led from the well beneath the main deck, and if the party could reach this without attracting the attention of the men on the bridge, there was a possibility of finding a hiding-place.

Keeping in the shadow of the bulwarks, Cliff Lynne crept along, Joe in his wake, and they reached the alleyway without incident. Here a hiding-place was revealed. Immediately under the bridge (and exactly two decks lower) was a large cabin which, to judge from the scratches and discolorations on the bulkhead, had been used for carrying cargo. Two dimly burning bulkhead lights showed that the place had been converted to carry passengers. There was a table, two or three chairs, a package bearing the label of a well-known bookseller, and on the floor, a brand-new carpet, its creases rising in rectangular ridges.

Though the room ran the width of the ship it was not more than six feet in depth. In the after steel wall were two narrow bulkhead doors; one was padlocked and bolted, but the other stood ajar, and, pushing it open, Clifford stepped in, turning on his pocket-lamp.

It was a tiny cupboard of a place, without windows, air being admitted through a deck ventilator, he guessed, for the atmosphere was pure and there was a gentle current of air. In a corner was a small brass bedstead, which had been clamped to the deck; in the farther corner was a recessed wash-place with a newly-fixed shower-bath and an earthenware basin. This and an incongruously ornate wardrobe, much too big for so small an apartment, completed the furniture.

Hearing the sound of feet on the deck outside, Clifford beckoned his two companions into the small room. Through a crack in the door he saw a Chinese sailor enter and look round. Presently he went back to the door and shouted something, and another sailor joined him and they talked together in a dialect with which neither Joe Bray nor Clifford was acquainted. They were obviously Southern Chinese, and whatever was the subject of their discourse amused them for they punctuated their speech with raucous squeaks of laughter.

And then, to Clifford’s horror, before he could realize what was happening, one of the men put out his hand, gripped the door of the cubby house and slammed it tight. Clifford heard the grind of the bolt slipping into its place, and the slam of the outer door. They were trapped!

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

It had been for Mr Stephen Narth a day of unrelieved misery. What remained of a conscience largely atrophied by self-interest was surprisingly sensitive to the knowledge of the evil he had done to an innocent girl. Again and again he had repeated Fing-Su’s assurance that no harm would come to her, and again and again his reason rejected this futile act of self-deception. And then, on top of the other causes for misery, the news had come like a thunderbolt that Joe Bray was alive and that the treasure his fingers were reaching to touch was phantom gold!

Joe Bray was alive!

He had perpetrated an elaborate jest upon his heir. The easy way out was no longer a way at all, easy or difficult. His one surviving hope was vested in the integrity of Fing-Su.

Stephen Narth was too intelligent a man to believe that the native would keep any promise he had ever made. And yet Ł50,000 was at stake. Would even the most fantastic of Chinamen lose his hold upon that enormous sum, as undoubtedly he would if Stephen Narth decided to break loose from his association. Bankruptcy? What was bankruptcy but an unpleasant incident which might come to any man, and had come to many better and more highly placed than Stephen Narth? And with bankruptcy the ambitious Chinaman might whistle for his money.

This was the only comforting thought that the afternoon brought to him. The prospect of his initiation only filled him with a mild nausea that he should lower himself to the level of this ‘mountebank Chink.’

He was a member of two societies which might be described as ‘secret’, and his general knowledge of such matters was broad enough to acquaint him with most of the formula: of initiation. He looked forward to the evening as a tiresome and uncomfortable waste of time. A journey to South London would have been a wretched experience at any hour or season, but the prospect of making his visit in the middle of the night, and of spending two hours, as he supposed, in the company of Chinese coolies, revolted him.

Spedwell dined with him at his hotel, and did his best to gloss over the coming ordeal. This thin-faced man with his shifty dark eyes was glib enough, but he could not wholly assuage the sensation of disgust which the thought of the ceremony aroused in Stephen Narth’s mind. His was not a delicate gorge by any means, but he had behind him an ancestry with high traditions; and the more he thought of his position, when he allowed himself to think at all, the more he hated the thought of the work of that day and the night which was to follow.

“There’s nothing to be squeamish about,” said Spedwell at last, as he lit a long black cheroot. “If anybody has a kick, it’s me. You seem to forget, Narth, that I have commanded native infantry, and Indian infantry at that. Men of caste and refinement, men with European standards. You don’t imagine that I like associating with the refuse of Asia, do you?”

“You’re different,” snapped Stephen. “You’re a soldier of fortune and you can adapt yourself to circumstances. What have they done with Joan?” he asked fretfully.

“She’s all right; she’s being well taken care of. You needn’t worry about her,” said Spedwell easily. “I wouldn’t allow anything to happen to the girl, you can be sure.”

They were dining in Stephen’s private suite, and the hour that followed passed all too quickly for the troubled man. It was near midnight when they went out into Piccadilly together. Spedwell’s car was waiting and reluctantly Stephen entered. All the way to South London he was plying the other with questions. What was Fing-Su’s plan? Why were they anxious to enlist him? What would he be expected to do?…

Spedwell answered him with great patience, but was obviously relieved when the car turned into a side thoroughfare near the canal bridge in the Old Kent Road.

“Here we are,” he said, and they got down.

They had to walk for five minutes before they came to the narrow opening of a lane which ran by the side of a high brick wall. The only light they had came from a street lamp planted squarely in the entrance of the lane. The lamp served the double purpose of preventing the ingress of wheeled traffic and forming an inadequate illumination for the long and muddy thoroughfare. The rain was pelting down, and Stephen Narth pulled up the collar of his coat with a grunt.

“What is this place?” he asked querulously.

“Our factory—at least, our warehouse,” replied Spedwell.

He stopped before a door and, stooping, inserted a key and opened it.

Narth was full of trivial complaints.

“Was it necessary I should come in evening dress?” he asked.

“Very necessary,” said the other. “Let me take your arm.”

So far as the initiate could see by the light which came from his conductor’s lamp, he was being taken to a small shed built against the wall. It proved to be a bare apartment equipped with two old Windsor chairs.

“It’s dry, at any rate,” said Spedwell as he switched on the light. “I shall have to leave you here; I must go along and tell Fing-Su you’ve come.”

Left alone, Narth occupied himself by pacing up and down the tiny chamber. He wondered if Leggat would be there, and whether the initiation would prove too grotesque for him to go through with. Presently he heard the key in the lock and Spedwell came in.

“You can leave your coat here,” he said. “There’s only a little distance to walk.”

Mr Narth had arrayed himself, according to instructions, in a long-tailed evening coat and white tie, and now, at Spedwell’s request, he took from his pocket a pair of white kid gloves and pulled them on.

“Now!” said Spedwell, put out the light and led the way from the hut.

They were on a gravelled path which ended with a flight of stairs which seemed to lead down into the ground. At the top of these stood two statuesque figures, and as they came near one challenged in a tongue which was unfamiliar to the novitiate.

Spedwell lowered his voice and hissed something. With the other’s hand on his arm, Narth descended the stairs and came to a second door, and again was challenged in the same language. Again Spedwell answered, and somebody rapped on a door. It was opened cautiously, there was a whispered interrogation, and then Spedwell’s hand gripped the other’s arm and he was led into a long, fantastically decorated hall. Was it imagination on his part, or did Spedwell’s hand tremble?

He stood looking down a long vista, and for a second he was inclined to laugh hysterically. Squatting on either side of this oblong apartment were line after line of Chinamen, and each man was in a shabby, ill-fitting evening dress. The white shirts were the veriest shams; he saw the end of one shirt-front sticking out, and round its edge he saw the curve of a brown body. On each shirt-front were two blazing stones. He had no need to be associated with the theatrical profession to realize that they were ‘property’ diamonds. Solemnly, awfully, they stared at him, these quaint apparitions in their shoddy social livery.

He gazed open-mouthed from one side to the other. They all wore white bows, comically tied. Each man had white cotton gloves which rested on his knees. He had seen something like it before…that was the first impression Stephen Narth received. And then he recalled…a coloured minstrel troupe sitting solemnly in exactly that attitude…white gloves on knees. Only these men were yellow.

In four great blue vases joss-sticks were burning. The room was blue with their fumes.

And now he let his eyes stray along the centre aisle to the white altar, and, behind it, enthroned, Fing-Su himself. Over his evening dress—and no doubt his diamonds were real—he wore a robe of red silk. On his head was an immense gold crown which sparkled with precious stones. One white-gloved hand held a golden rod, the other a glittering orb that flashed in the light of the shaded candelabra. Suddenly his voice broke the silence:

“Who is this who comes to speak with the Joyful Hands?”

Narth became conscious of the golden hands suspended above Fing-Su’s head, but before he could take them in, Spedwell replied:

“O Son of Heaven, live for ever! This is one, thy meanest slave, who comes to worship at thy throne!”

Instantly at these words, as though they were watching some invisible choirmaster who led their chorus, the yellow men chanted something in chorus.

They stopped as abruptly as they had begun.

“Let him come near,” said Fing-Su.

Spedwell had disappeared; probably he was behind him. Narth did not dare turn his head to look. Two of these slovenly fellows in evening dress conducted him slowly along the hall. In a dim way he realized that the man on his right was wearing a pair of trousers that were three inches too short for him. But there was nothing comical in this. He was too oppressed with a sense of terror, a premonition of a horror yet unimagined, to find food for laughter in any of the incongruities which met his eyes on either side.

And then he saw the altar with its glittering edge, and the shrouded figure of a man lying upon it, covered by a white sheet. He looked at it numbly; saw a great red heart pinned to the sheet…He was trying hard to think sanely, his wide-staring eyes fixed upon the shape and the red heart…On the hem of the shroud was a sprawling Chinese character in scarlet.

“It’s symbolical…only a wax figure,” hissed a voice in his ear.

So Spedwell was there. He received an accession of courage from this knowledge.

“Say after me”—Fing-Su’s deep, solemn voice filled the room with sounds—“I will be faithful to the Joyful Hands…”

Like a man in a dream, Narth repeated the words.

“I will strike to the heart all its enemies.”

He repeated the words. Where was Leggat? He expected to find Leggat here. His eyes roved round the visible arc, but there was no sign of that stout, jovial man.

“By this sign”—Fing-Su was speaking—“do I give proof of my loyalty, my faith and my brotherhood…”

Somebody slipped a thing into his hand. It was a long, straight knife, razor-keen.

“Hold it above the figure,” said a voice in his ear, and mechanically Stephen Narth obeyed as he repeated, without realizing what the words meant, the oath that the man on the dais prescribed.

“So let all the enemies of the Emperor die!” said Fing-Su.

“Strike at the heart!” whispered Spedwell’s voice, and with all his strength Stephen Narth struck down.

Something yielded under the knife; he felt a quiver. And then the white sheet went suddenly red. With a scream he clawed at the cloth where the head was and drew it back…

“Oh, my God!” he shrieked.

He was looking into the dead face of Ferdinand Leggat!

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

He had killed Leggat! With his hands he, who would not have slain a rabbit, had struck this man to his death! The red on the cloth was widening; his hands were dabbled with the horrible fluid, and he turned with an insane yell to grapple with the devil who had whispered the words in his ear.

Spedwell, his face distorted with horror, put out his hand to save himself, but the bloody hands gripped his throat and flung him down. And then something struck Narth and he tumbled over, first to his knees and then upon the tessellated pavement, a demented, screaming madman…


*


The serried ranks of yellow men sat watching without movement, their shoddy diamonds glittering in their shirt-fronts, their white hands on their knees.

An hour later Major Spedwell came into the apartment which was reserved for Fing-Su on his infrequent visits to the factory, and the Chinaman looked up over his book and flicked the ash of his cigarette into a silver tray.

“Well?” he asked. “How is our squeamish friend?”

Spedwell shook his head. He himself looked ten years older. His linen still bore the impress of a red hand.

“Mad,” he said laconically. “I think he’s lost his reason.”

Fing-Su leaned back in his padded chair with a tut-tut of impatience.

“That I did not bargain for,” he said, in tones of gentle annoyance. “Who would have imagined that a full-grown man could have made such an exhibition of himself? Why, the fellow is a rank coward and outsider!”

Spedwell did not reply. Perhaps he was wondering whether there would come a day when, for motives of expediency, he might himself lie drugged upon the marble altar whilst some initiate thrust down the fatal knife.

“The idea was ingenious and should have had a better ending,” said Fing-Su. “Leggat was a coward and a traitor, and deserved his death. Possibly our friend Narth will take a different view when he recovers, and realizes that he has so committed himself.”

Spedwell was eyeing him steadily.

“You told me that the sacrifice was to be a Yun Nan man—the fellow who fell into the hands of Lynne. I hated the idea, but like a brute I agreed. God! When I saw Leggat’s face!”

He wiped his streaming brow; his breath came more quickly.

Fing-Su said nothing, but waited.

“How did you get Leggat?” asked Spedwell at last.

“He just came. We gave him a drink—he knew nothing,” said Fing-Su casually. “He had betrayed us—you know that. He’s dead and there’s an end of him. As to Narth, his life is in our hands.”.

Spedwell, who had dropped into a chair, looked up.

“He will have to be really mad to believe that,” he said. “As I told you before, Fing-Su, our lives are in his hands, not his in ours.”

Fing-Su carefully scooped out the end of his cigarette, inserted another in the ebony holder and lit it before he answered.

“Where have you put him?”

“In the stone hut. He won’t shout any more; I’ve given him a shot of morphia. There’s only one thing to do, Fing-Su, and that is to get this man out of the country as quickly as you can. The Umveli leaves tonight; put him on board–-“

“With the girl?”

Spedwell’s eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean, ‘with the girl’?” he asked. “You’re keeping her in London until Cliff Lynne gives you the share you want.”

The Chinaman puffed thoughtfully, his low forehead creased in thought.

“That was the original idea,” he admitted. “But so many things have happened in the past few hours…I am inclined to change my plans. We could get her to the Chinese coast and up one of the rivers without attracting any attention.” He sent a cloud of smoke to the ceiling and watched it dissolve. “She’s rather delicious,” he said.

Major Spedwell rose, walked deliberately to the table and stood, his palms resting on its surface.

“She’ll stay in England, Fing-Su,” he said, slowly and emphatically, and for a second their eyes met, and then the Chinaman smiled.

“My dear Major Spedwell,” he said, “there can only be one master in any such organization as this, and that master, I beg to emphasize, is myself. If it is my wish that she should stay in England, she stays; if I desire that she should go to the coast, she goes, Is that understood?”

So quickly did Spedwell’s hand move, that Fing-Su saw nothing but a blur of moving pink. In that fraction of a second something had appeared in Spedwell’s hand. It lay flat on the table, its black muzzle pointing to Fing-Su’s white waistcoat.

“She stays,” said Spedwell tensely.

The Chinaman’s face was creased and puckered for a moment with a fear which the white man had never seen before. Presently he recovered himself and forced a smile.

“As you wish, she may stay. There is nothing to be gained by quarrelling,” he said. “Where is she now? In the factory? Go and get her.”

Spedwell stared at this unexpected request.

“I though you didn’t want her to know you had a hand in this,” he said.

“It is a matter of indifference to me,” said the other. “Go bring her, please.”

Spedwell had reached the door when he heard the soft swish of a drawer opening, and turned in a flash. A bullet seared his face and splintered the panel of the door. As his gun jerked up, he saw Fing-Su drop to the floor. For a second he hesitated, then, turning, fled into the big room from which the private office of ‘the Emperor’ led.

It was a storehouse, piled high with bales of goods, with three narrow alleyways leading to the big doors at the end. He had only one chance. At the far end of the warehouse was the fuse-board which protected the lights in this wing of the factory. As, in response to the sound of shooting, the end door burst open, and a crowd of coolies flocked into the warehouse, he raised his automatic and fired twice. There was a splinter of marble and glass, and all the lights in the place went out.

Leaping up, he pulled himself to the top of a bale and ran lightly along, springing from bale to packing-case, until he came within a few feet of the open door, around which a few undecided coolies were grouped. With one leap he was amongst them, his pistol blazing. They had not recovered from their astonishment when he had dived through them, sped across the dark yard and reached the top of the wall by way of the shed that Clifford Lynne had seen the night he made his unauthorized visit. Before his pursuers could reach him, he had dropped over the wall into the muddy alley and was flying for his life along the canal bank.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“There’s another door here,” said Willing suddenly.

He was examining the wall of the inner cabin with the aid of his lamp. He pointed to an oblong aperture which apparently was fastened on the other side.

“It is pretty useless to us,” said Clifford Lynne after a brief inspection. “We shall have to wait until somebody comes in to make the bed. If what I believe is correct, the Umveli will be dropping down the river in an hour or two. I noticed just now that all the lights are out on the other ship. Just about now they will be ringing the changes.”

“What are they waiting for?” grumbled Joe. “Always thought they wanted a high tide to float out, and she’s running high now. And with this rain, it is dark enough to hide a Dreadnought!”

In the door behind which they were imprisoned were a number of small air-holes, and this gave Lynne an opportunity of observing the bigger room. The men had left the bulkhead lights burning, and dimly through the small porthole which faced him he could get a view of a blurred light moving and disappearing on the well deck. From beneath their feet there came the hum and whirr of the dynamo, and whilst they were listening they heard a dull roar from over the ship’s side.

“She’s got a full head of steam,” said Willing. “This looks as if your theory may be right, Lynne, and we are going to see something!”

There were other evidences of activity. Above their heads they heard an insistent patter of feet, and a wailing chorus while a boat was hauled up and swung inboard.

It was a quarter to three when they heard the clank of the anchor capstan, and almost immediately a well-known voice came to Lynne. The door of the outer cabin was flung open, and Fing-Su, in a long, fur-lined overcoat, stalked majestically into the apartment.

“Here is your room, my young lady, and here you will stay. If you make a noise or give me any trouble or scream, I will find you a better furnished cabin!”

It required all Clifford Lynne’s presence of mind to check the cry that came to his lips, for there had followed Fing-Su into the cabin, a pale-faced girl. She was hatless, drenched with the rain, yet her little chin was held up and there was no fear in her eyes. He groaned in his soul as he recognized Joan Bray.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

She had been awakened from an uneasy sleep by the smashing in of her door, and had submitted, with a resolution, and a calm which were inexplicable to the watching Fing-Su, to be carried to the waiting car. The night was favourable to such a move; the streets were deserted, and nobody saw, in the two closed cars that moved swiftly towards Rotherhithe, anything of an unusual nature. It was not till she alighted on a deserted wharf, before she walked down the rickety stairs to the waiting boat, that she observed she had a companion in misfortune—somebody whose head was enveloped in a blanket, through which moans and whimperings were audible. She could never recall that journey from the shore to the ship. She had a vague recollection that somebody had carried her up a steep ladder and had deposited her on a wet and slippery deck, from which she rose with an effort. And then, through the rain, she had seen Fing-Su’s peering face, and found herself pushed through the door of a poorly furnished cabin.

The Chinaman went to the door and called a name which she thought sounded like ‘Mammy!’ and presently a fat Chinese woman came waddling in, wiping her hands upon a soiled apron.

“This is your bedroom, young miss,” said Fing-Su.

He spun over the handle and the door moved slightly.

“Attend, Amah!” He addressed the woman in the Honan dialect. “You will stay by this girl, and you will not let her out of your sight. If she screams you are to stop her, and if you don’t–—” He raised the walking-stick he carried threateningly, and the old woman shrank back.

The ship was moving now; the roar of its siren broke into the night. The girl standing by the table, heard the tinkle of the telegraph and the sudden throb throb of a slowly revolving propeller. It was a nightmare; it could not be real. Yet it was true; she was on a ship moving down Thames River towards the sea and–- She shivered.

What lay at the end of this voyage?

And then she recalled the Major’s words, and knew that he had kept faith. The fact that they had had to break down the door proved that he had no hand in this outrage. Where was he? she wondered, and then it flashed upon her that this whimpering thing, with its head hidden in a blanket, might be he. Only for a second did the thought remain; somehow she could not imagine that hard-faced man whimpering or snivelling for mercy.

“You stay here, missie”—it was the fat Amah, still quaking with the terror which Fing-Su had inspired, and she spoke in lisping English—“I go make your bed.”

She opened the door wider and stepped inside, and Joan thought she heard a strange shuffling of feet, but took no notice of it until:

“Can you put out the light?”

She nearly swooned. It was Clifford Lynne’s voice!

It took her a minute before she could locate the switch which controlled the light but after a while she found it near the edge of the door, and for a long time she could not control her trembling fingers sufficiently to turn the little knob. The moment the lights were extinguished somebody came swiftly to her side, a strong arm went round her shoulders, and she found herself sobbing hysterically on his breast. There was a long deep silence, broken only by her weeping, and then, anxiously:

“I’m her only relation, Cliff,” said Joe Bray’s voice. “It’s natural an’ proper for a young gel–-“

“Shut up!” hissed Lynne, and the humour of this exchange between one who was anxious to take Clifford’s place as comforter was almost too much for the girl.

There came the sound of tapping on the portlight.

“Why have you put the light out?” demanded Fing-Su’s voice.

“The young woman is undressing,” said Cliff, speaking in the dialect and giving a fair imitation of the stout woman from Honan.

He heard the man’s grumbling voice:

“Why didn’t she undress in the bedroom?” But evidently Fing-Su was satisfied, and he moved off.

Through the window Clifford could see that the ship was in the middle of the river heading downstream and going at half speed. He was puzzled as to why Fing-Su had left the girl here, in so exposed a part of the vessel, which was certain to be boarded at Gravesend not only by representatives of the Port of London, but by the pilot who was to take her out to sea. Moreover, it would be growing light in an hour, and that would make the danger of discovery all the more pressing. He heard men working outside, and after a while one of the portlights was obscured, and he guessed that they were piling deck cargo round the door.

Their position was a precarious one, as the superintendent pointed out.

“We should have held up Fing-Su when he opened the door,” he said, but Clifford shook his head.

“That sounds simple, but somehow I don’t think that he will come into the cabin until the ship is well out to sea,” he said seriously. “We’re going to have trouble. Is there any chance of forcing the door?”

Willing tried the door and shook his head.

“It would be easy to smash the portlights,” he suggested.

Clifford smiled in spite of himself.

“But even you couldn’t get through the portlights, superintendent!” he said dryly.

“We could draw attention–-“

“Two unarmed officials would be of very little use to us. Before they could bring help, even supposing Fing-Su let them off, we should be dead. No, the only thing to do is to wait. Sooner or later they must open the door, and the moment we get Fing-Su in this cabin there will be no more trouble—except for Fing-Su!”

Dawn was breaking, but they saw little of the blessed light of day, for bale after bale had been piled up before the deckhouse until its portholes were completely darkened. It so interfered with the ventilation that the air grew foul and breathing was difficult, a possibility which Fing-Su had probably overlooked, and they were compelled to retreat to the inner room, where the air was fresh, and here they sat as hour followed hour, listening. They heard the ship’s engines stop, and the Umveli remained stationary for the greater part of an hour; then, with a sinking of heart, they heard again the throb throb of engines, and presently the ship began to roll slightly as it came to sea.

Evidently the bales had been placed before the portholes and door for the purpose which Clifford had guessed, for hardly had they struck the open sea when daylight appeared, and through the ventilators placed on a level with the floor came a current of sweet air.

Food must be brought in soon, and they waited for the door to open. The old Amah had given up weeping and bemoaning her fate, and squatted now, a sullen, fatalistic figure, in one corner of the tiny cabin. The passage of time did not reconcile her to captivity. Her teeth continued to chatter, and it was she who brought about the undoing of their plan. Clifford Lynne learnt afterwards that the cook whose duty it was to bring the breakfast was her son, and it was fear for his life that made her utter a piercing scream when the key came into the lock. Before they could restrain her she had rushed out of the cabin, uttering yell after yell. Old Joe Bray darted after her, caught her round her ample waist, and covered her face with his hands. But it was too late: someone was glaring round the porthole. It was Fing-Su, and Cliff saw that he in turn had been recognized. He pulled his gun and fired twice. The glass of the porthole was shattered to splinters.

“That’s done it!” said the detective with a growl.

They heard a shrill whistle blow, and, glancing sideways through one of the portholes, Clifford saw armed coolies swarming out of the forecastle, buckling their revolver belts as they came. As he looked, he leapt back in time. A shot went through the second of the portholes, and a splinter of glass cut his cheek. The third port went the same way, and almost immediately three rifle barrels were thrust through. They dropped to cover under the protecting steel wall of the deckhouse, and as the guns exploded Cliff gripped the barrel nearest to him and jerked it inside. With his free hand he grabbed the girl and drew her to him.

“Lie very quiet,” he said. “You’ll be perfectly safe–-“

At this moment the door was flung wide, and with a scream the old Amah fled through, to everybody’s relief. A second later a black object appeared at the edge of the doorway, and even as Clifford Lynne pulled the trigger he realized that it was only a mophead.

“Steady your arm, Cliff,” warned Joe Bray. He had a gun in each hand, but as yet he had not wasted a shot. “They’re drawing our fire. We’ve got no other ammunition than what’s in the gun, have we?”

Clifford shook his head. Outside they could hear Fing-Su jabbering orders, and a lower but more authoritative voice which, Clifford guessed, was that of the captain of the ship—another Negro, Clifford was to learn, and the only other member of the ship’s company beside the purser who was not Chinese.

The rifles were suddenly withdrawn from the broken portholes and they heard something being dragged along the deck, and the alleyway door was slammed tight.

“Get in the inner room,” shouted Willing, and pushing the girl before him, Clifford reached sanctuary as the brass nozzle of a great hose was thrust through one of the broken portholes.

Instantly the room hissed with the furious rush of water, and Clifford made a hasty reconnaissance. There was no outlet to the water; the ventilators would hardly drain off a gallon a minute. A second nozzle had appeared and the water was already ankle-deep. Soon it swelled over the ledge of the inner door; and by this time two more hoses were at work.

Clifford made a rough calculation and grinned. Long before the water reached the level of the portholes something would happen. He remembered enough of his school mathematics to know that the factor of metacentric height would come into operation.

Higher and higher the water came. Some little escaped through the ventilators and the crevices between door and doorway, but the inrush was so heavy and continuous that it was only a question of time now before Fing-Su had the fright of his life.

“Lynne!” It was Fing-Su who was shouting. “Throw out your arms and you’ll be treated fairly. I’ll put you all ashore.”

Clifford Lynne did not answer. He wanted one glimpse of that face, only for the fraction of a second. Suddenly, caught in the trough of a sea, the Umveli gave a great lurch to starboard and the water splashed and gurgled up to the neck of Joe Bray, who was standing by the starboard bulkhead. For a long time the vessel lay over on her side and only very slowly righted herself. The moving weight of sixty tons of water was making itself felt.

They heard excited voices outside, and one by one the hoses were pulled back and the flow of water ceased. There came a hammering at the door; under the weight of the water it burst open with a report like a gun, and the water poured out in a solid stream.

“Too much weight on deck has made her unwieldy,” said Lynne under his breath. “The skipper’s scared of it—I thought this would happen!”

Presumably his view was accurate, for the hoses did not come back. Again Fing-Su’s voice:

“Let Mr Bray come out; I’ll talk with him,” he said. “But he must come without arms.”

There was a brief consultation, and Joe surrendered his pistols to his partner and stepped out upon that wet deck.

Fing-Su was standing in the cover of a big bale of Manchester goods, a revolver in his hand.

“Put your gun down, you five-cash Chink!” snarled Joe. “And stop theatre playin’ for once in your life, you poor heathen!”

Fing-Su slipped the pistol into the holster at his side.

“Mr Bray,” he began, “there is no need for recriminations–-“

“Cut out all that college talk, you dam’ coolie thief!” said the old man. “Put this ship about and save your skinny neck from the rope!”

Fing-Su smiled.

“Unfortunately, that is impossible,” he said. “We have dropped the pilot, figuratively and literally–-“

“Quit talking like a Rhodes scholar!” roared Joe, and suddenly broke into voluble Chinese, which is a language peculiarly designed for one who desires to be offensive. Fing-Su listened unmoved to the torrent of abuse, and, when Joe had talked himself out of breath:

“We are wasting time, Mr Bray. Persuade your friends to give up their weapons, and no harm shall come to them. Otherwise, I can starve you out. I have no desire to hurt Joan–-“

“Miss Bray,” snapped Joe, his face crimson with fury. Chinese came naturally to Joe, who had lived most of his life in the country, and the coolies grouped around Fing-Su who understood the language shuddered as they listened. But he might have been passing the most delicate compliments for all the notice the Chinaman took.

He was wearing semi-nautical attire: white duck trousers, a blue reefer coat with innumerable gold rings about the cuffs, and a large officer’s cap around which ran a broad band of gold braid.

“You are a very foolish and vulgar man,” he said calmly. “But it is not for me to reproach you with your lack of breeding. Go back to your friends and deliver my messages.”

For a second it looked as though Joe Bray had a personal message of his own to deliver with his great shoulder-of-mutton fist, but Fing-Su’s revolver covered him, and with a final flow of vituperation he made his way back to his companions in distress.

“He’s got a dozen armed men with him,” he reported, “and he’s going to starve us out. Cliff, when I think of how easy I could have smothered that kid when he was a baby, I almost give up talkin’ to myself!”

“Is Fing-Su in charge of the ship?”

“There’s a captain,” said Joe. “A coon—he’s got up like the Darktown Band, with gold lace an’ everything. But he’s nobody. The big noise is Fing-Su.”

“Mr Bray, who was the man that was brought to the ship at the same time as I?” asked Joan, and they learnt for the first time that there was yet another prisoner on the Umveli.

Clifford agreed that it was hardly likely to be Spedwell. He had his own suspicions, but as it happened they were wrong, for Ferdinand Leggat lay in a deep pit that had been dug under the factory wall by lantern light.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Whilst they held a council of war, Fing-Su went up to his cabin, and on his instructions they brought the pitiable wreck of a man from the dark hold where he had been stowed. Stephen Narth, in the ruined finery of the night before, collarless, grimy of face, unshaven, might well have passed unrecognized by his nearest friend. A shuddering night had had its effect upon him. But he was sane enough, though, as the Chinaman saw, on the verge of a breakdown.

“Why did you bring me on this ship?” he asked hollowly. “That’s not playing the game, Fing-Su. Where is that swine Spedwell?”

Fing-Su would have given a lot to have been able to answer.

Spedwell had escaped, but self-interest would keep him silent. He had always hated Spedwell, with his air of mastership and his superior smile; hated him worse than the drunken Leggat. Spedwell had been a useful teacher; from him the Chinaman had imbibed certain vital knowledge. He was a very receptive man, gifted by nature with a rapid acquisition of learning; though in his collegiate days he had not touched military studies, he had learnt much from Spedwell in the year of their acquaintance.

“I haven’t the slightest idea where he is,” he said, “and I shall never forgive him for the death of poor Leggat.”

Narth stared at him.

“Then it was his idea?”

“Entirely,” said Fing-Su gravely. He was a glib and plausible liar, and Narth was in a state of mind when he was prepared to accept any version of the horror that exculpated himself.

In a few sentences Fing-Su gave an account of the initiation which brought a moderate comfort to the conscience-stricken man. And then the Chinaman broke his important news.

“Here? On board? Joan?” gasped Narth. “But how did she come here? And what is Lynne doing on board this ship?”

“That is what I want to know,” said Fing-Su rapidly. “Go down and talk to them. Point out the folly of resistance; promise them on my word that no harm shall come to them, and that I will give them the best accommodation on the ship and land them at Bordeaux, if they will agree to give me no further trouble.”

He elaborated this message at length, and five minutes later Clifford Lynne, from his observation post, saw a dilapidated figure stagger into the cabin and recognized him. So this was the moaning stranger! What had happened to Leggat? he wondered.

He listened in silence to Stephen’s proposal, then shook his head.

“I’d sooner take my chance with a life-sized shark,” he said. “Go back to Fing-Su and tell him that he’ll neither drown us out nor starve us out, and that the day we touch land, and I am free, he will be a prisoner waiting his trial for murder.”

“What’s the use of quarrelling with him?” wailed Narth.

His nerve had gone. Never a strong man, he was a pitiable snadow of the man Clifford had known.

“Is Leggat on board?” asked Clifford, as he remembered.

Narth shook his hanging head and began to whisper something that only the South African’s keen ears caught.

“Dead?” he said incredulously. “Did Fing-Su kill him?”

But before he had ended the question, Stephen Narth had run out of the room like a man demented.

Their position was a perilous one. Already the land was slipping out of view, and unless a miracle interposed there was no alternative between starvation and surrender—and what surrender would mean to Joan Bray, Clifford could guess.

Immediately after Stephen Narth’s departure the door to the alleyway had been closed and locked and, at Willing’s suggestion, the heavy deadlights which covered the portholes were dropped and screwed into their places. This deprived them of a view of the forepart of the ship and curtailed the air supply, but the cabin was bearable, especially now they had got rid of the yellow Amah.

At this moment of supreme danger Clifford could only wonder at the calm and serenity of the girl. She was, it seemed, the most cheerful of the party, and although the pangs of hunger were beginning to make themselves felt, she neither complained nor, by so much as a look or gesture, added to the unhappiness of the party.

The prospect of any prolonged stay in this confined space was an appalling one. Then he thought of the girl. Happily they would not be short of fresh water, for that in the little shower which had been fixed in the washing-place was fresh, if a little brackish. Clifford tried the inner bulkhead door, but it was unyielding.

“It probably leads to the officers’ quarters,” said Willing.

Joe Bray looked at the door thoughtfully.

“We can’t get out, but they can get in,” he said. “We’d better put up a barricade, or they’ll be taking us in the rear, Cliff. When I think of that poor girl–-” he said, and choked.

“Which poor girl?” asked Clifford.

For the moment he had forgotten the existence of Mabel.

They left Joan to the occupation of her little bedroom, and gathered about the table in the larger cabin. The search they had made for food had produced not so much as a ship’s biscuit, though Willing had thought that a large black box in the girl’s sleeping-room might contain emergency rations. Their efforts to open or move the chest, however, were unavailing.

Then Joe had discovered in his coat pocket a cake of chocolate, and half of this had gone to the girl.

“Usually,” said Joe plaintively, “I’ve half a dozen cakes, because naturally I’ve a sweet tooth. What I’d like now is a boiled fowl with dumplings–-“

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, shut up!” growled Willing.

They tried to play games to pass the time, but this effort at cheerfulness was a dismal failure.

Six o’clock—seven o’clock came and went. The girl had been sleeping when Clifford looked in. He had closed the door so that their voices should not disturb her. Suddenly it was pulled open and Joan appeared in the doorway with a startled expression on her white face.

“What is it?” asked Clifford, springing towards her.

She lowered her voice.

“Somebody is tapping on that door,” she said. She pointed to the bulkhead door, and Lynne kept close and listened.

Tap, tap, tap!

It was repeated again. Then he heard the soft grind of a bolt being drawn, and waited, pistol in hand.

“It’s all right,” whispered a voice. “Don’t shout or they’ll hear you.”

The door opened another inch, and then wide enough to show a black face surmounted by the soiled cap of one of the ship’s officers.

“I’m Haki, the purser,” he whispered, and his hand came round holding a small canvas bag. “If Fing-Su knows this I’m finished,” he added urgently, and immediately closed the door and pushed home the bolt.

In that brief moment of time Clifford saw that the detective’s theory had been an accurate one. He looked down a dirty alleyway from which doors opened, and he had a glimpse of an untidy cabin that opened from the passage. Carrying the bag to the outer cabin, he shook out its contents: a dozen rolls, nearly new, a large chunk of cheese, and a piece of salted beef fell on the table. Clifford broke a roll suspiciously and examined it under the light.

“We’ve got to take the risk,” he said. “I’ll eat some first, and in half an hour, if nothing happens to me, we’ll have a dinner that will beat the Ritz.”

He cut a slice of the meat, tasted the cheese and the bread, and felt a brute as he saw the famished eyes of his companions fixed on him. The half hour passed, and then he brought the girl from the cabin and with their penknives they carved a meal for her.

“We’ve one friend on board, anyway,” grunted Willing. “What nationality was that chap?”

Clifford had spent two years of his youth on the African coast.

“Kroo. They’re not bad fellows, though they’re constitutional thieves,” he said.

They put aside a portion of the meal for the morning, and at his earnest solicitation Joan lay down again and fell into a troubled sleep. She did not hear the stealthy tap at the bulkhead, but Clifford, seated near the half-closed door of her cabin, detected the signal and crept in without waking her. Again the door opened.

“Everybody on the ship’s drunk,” said the black-faced officer, in a matter-of-fact tone, as though he were describing a very ordinary part of the ship’s routine. “The skipper’s scared of them finding this door. They may try to rush you later; you’ve got to be prepared for that. If they don’t, I’ll be here at six bells, and you be ready to skip, mister.”

“What’s the idea?” asked Clifford.

The man looked back down the alleyway before he answered.

“Gun-running’s nothing, but murder’s big trouble,” he said. “The skipper thinks so too.”

“Who has been murdered?”

The man did not reply at once, but closed the door hurriedly, and it was nearly half an hour before he returned.

“I heard the officer of the watch coming down,” he said, in the same conversational tone. “These Chinks often do that—leave the bridge in the middle of the Channel, eh? He’s the limit! It seems to me about time we quit this business. It was that mad fellow that was killed. He came aboard with the young lady last night.”

“Narth?” whispered Clifford in horror.

The man nodded.

“Sure. He got fresh with Fing-Su, and the Chink handed him one with a bottle. They chucked him overboard just after I brought you your eats.”

He looked round again and then gave them a piece of vital information.

“The skipper and two of the hands are getting the lifeboat down round about six bells,” he whispered. “You’ll have to slide down a rope for it. Can the young lady make it?”

“She’ll make it all right,” said Clifford and the door closed.

What was happening, he could guess. Ever since that mad dream of empire had come to Fing-Su he had had the advantage of expert advice. Leggat in his way was clever; Spedwell in his own particular line was brilliant; both were cautious men, for whose judgment the Chinese millionaire had respect. But now Fing-Su had no master but his own whims; his judgment was governed only by his muddled philosophy.

The hours of waiting seemed interminable. They sat around in the little cabin, not daring to speak for fear they should miss the signal, or be caught by the ‘rush’ which the purser had predicted. So slowly did the hands of his watch move that Clifford once or twice thought it had stopped.

Three o’clock passed; the clang of the timing bell came faintly through the protected portholes, and then there was a tap at the door and it was swung open on its hinge. The purser, in heavy sea-boots, a revolver belt about his waist, was waiting, and he beckoned them. Clifford followed, holding the girl’s hand in his, Joe Bray bringing up the rear, a gun in each hand and a partiality for violence in his heart.

They had to pass a lighted galley, and their guide put his finger on his lips to enjoin quietness. Joan had a glimpse of the broad back of the Chinese cook stooping over a steaming pot, and came safely and unobserved to the after well deck.

Two steel doors in the ship’s side had been opened. Over the edge of the deck was a taut rope, and looking down, Clifford saw that the rope was attached to a large whale-boat in which three muffled men were sitting. He turned to the girl, his lips to her ear.

“Will you dare go down that rope hand over hand?”

As the purser passed a slender line about the girl’s waist and knotted it, he said in a low voice:

“Don’t waste time…I had a radio in the night.” He did not explain what this had to do with the escape, but addressed the girl. “You’ll have to go down hand-over-hand miss,” he whispered, and she nodded, and whilst they held the safety line she slid slowly down the rough rope that cut and scorched her fingers.

The whale-boat held to the ship’s side seemed to be racing along at an incredible speed, though it was going no faster than the steamer. Somebody reached up and caught her unceremoniously by the waist and dragged her into the boat. Joe Bray followed, and justified his claim to youth by the agility with which he went down hand-over-hand in the dark. The purser was the last to leave the ship, and scrambled over the bow of the whale-boat with incredible ease.

“Stand by!” said a thick voice.

The purser groped in the bottom of the boat, found an axe, and with one blow severed the rope. In an instant they were in the maelstrom of the ship’s wake, rocking and tossing from side to side, and only by the narrowest margin did they avoid capsizing, for the iron side of the Umveli grazed the rudder-post. And then, as the whale-boat rocked free, they heard a yell, a light flashed from the bridge; clear above the gurgle of the water and the thud of the retreating screw they heard a whistle blow, and the Umveli swung round in a circle.

“They’ve seen us,” said Clifford between his teeth.

The purser, grinning with fear, glared back at the circling vessel and grunted. Turning, he ran to the middle of the boat and assisted one of the black sailors to step the mast. The Negro captain, a grotesque figure in his gold-bound cap and gaudy badges of rank, was pulling desperately at the sail. A fresh north-easter was blowing, and in another second the whale-boat lay over and was running into the wind. But what hope had they of escaping from a fifteen-knots steamer?

A thunderous blast from the ship’s siren directed their attention to their monstrous pursuer. From the bridge came the flicker of a signal lamp, and the captain spelt it out.

“Yeller nigger!” was his only comment; he, for his part, was the blackest man that Clifford had ever met.

The whale-boat tacked about. Obviously he was more hopeful than one of the watchers. Clifford sank down on his knees by the side of the girl, who lay covered with a tarpaulin in the bottom of the boat.

“Not scared, are you, honey?” he asked.

She looked up with a smile, and that was all the answer he needed.

The captain’s English was the English of the coast, but it was both expressive and illuminating.

“Elephant no catchum flea,” he said. “Big ship she no catchum little boat! S’pose they lower dem cutter onetimes dem cutter she no catchum sail-boat.”

“There is danger enough, captain.”

The broad-faced man shook his head in assent.

“Presently they done bring them ha-ha guns,” he said, “but by and by we see anudder ship.”

That was their hope. They were still in the English Channel, which is the main street of Northern Europe. Here the traffic is usually thick. But for the moment there was no sign of smoke or sail.

Clifford turned to the purser.

“Whether we escape or not, I owe you something, my friend,” he said, and Haki smiled broadly.

“We ought to have got away before,” he said, “but the captain was scared. But the radio made him skip!”

“The radio?”

The purser put his hand in his pocket and took out a soiled scrap of paper.

“I got this last night,” he said, and Clifford read the scribbled words with difficulty:


Get away from ship before seven o’clock. Take with you anybody who value lives. If Miss Bray aboard take her with you. Admiralty sending destroyer Sunbright to overhaul you. Soldier.


“That’s the Major—we called him ‘Soldier,’” explained the purser. “But the Sunbright mightn’t catch us—and if they did, Fing-Su wouldn’t leave anybody alive who could tell on him.”

Clifford had been puzzled as to what the captain meant by ‘ha-ha gun,’ but very soon came an unpleasant explanation.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

They had brought a maxim-gun into action. The bullets threw up a cloud of spray a little ahead of them, and the skipper pushed over the helm and went about on another tack. They were less than five hundred yards from the ship’s side, Cliff realized, which meant that it would be a comparatively simple matter, once the light grew stronger—and it was improving every second—to riddle the boat with shots. Fing-Su would leave no trace of the men in whose hands was his very life.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

This time the aim was high; the bullets smacked through the canvas of the sail. One sent a splinter of wood flying from the mast.

“Keep down!” yelled the purser, waving frantically.

For the third time since they escaped he looked at his big silver watch.

The Umveli had increased speed and was now running abreast and bearing in upon them. Again the Negro captain tacked and came round in a circle, running back on his own course. Individual marksmen were now firing, and the bullets were coming uncomfortably close. And above the ‘click-clock’ of rifles came the boom of a heavier weapon.

“Seven-pounder,” said Joe Bray laconically, and even as he spoke something smacked against the mast.

There was a crackling and tearing sound, and mast and sail went limply over the side.

“Now we’re finished, I think,” said the purser, and with great sang-froid took his revolver from the holster at his waist and turned the cylinder.

They were lowering boats now from the Umveli. Three, one after the other, struck the water. She had reduced speed and was going astern. But the captain was by no means beaten. With the aid of one of his sailors he had flung mast and sail overboard, and in another instant the oars rattled into rowlocks.

“All mans pull!” he roared, and Clifford obeyed the injunction.

But the whale-boat was big and cumbersome compared with the light cutters that were pursuing them.

“We want a miracle,” said Cliff, and as he spoke the miracle happened.

Two boats were already pushing off from the ship; the third was filling with sailors, when from the lower deck came a brilliant flame and the deafening crash of an explosion; it was followed almost instantly by a second and louder explosion.

For a second there was silence, and then a pandemonium of whistles sounded. The two boats which had already pulled off turned and headed for the ship. Smoke poured along the decks so dense that it obscured a view of her funnel in the early morning light.

“She blow up what for?” asked the black skipper huskily, and then: “Pull, you mans!”

And the oars rose and fell. Then, of a sudden:

“She’s sinking,” gasped Joe Bray, and he spoke the truth.

Half a hundredweight of the most powerful explosive, which the ingenious Major Spedwell had timed to explode twenty-four hours after the ship had sailed, had not only blown a hole through the deck, but had ignited the munitions stored in the hold. The Umveli lay over on her side like something grown suddenly weary. Dense masses of smoke poured out of the exposed hatches; they saw the gleam of flames, and then a wild scramble for the boats. In their amazement they rested on their oars, watching the strange sight, until the purser’s voice uttered a warning.

“We’d better get as far away from the ship as we can,” he cried.

A few seconds after he spoke there was a third explosion, and the Umveli broke in half and went jaggedly out of sight in a wild confusion of foaming waters.

There were four boats afloat, and they were heading in their direction.

“Row!” yelled the skipper, and again they gripped the oars.

But their effort was not to be sustained. Turning his head, Clifford Lynne saw a black billow of smoke on the right side of the horizon, and could just distinguish in the dawn light a long grey shape…

They reached His Britannic Majesty’s destroyer Sunbright twenty-five minutes before the remnant of a fear-maddened crew came to the destroyer’s side, throwing their rifles in the water, offering everything for safety.

Fing-Su was not amongst the party, and when Clifford interviewed one of the shivering officers he learnt of the Emperor’s fate in a few pungent words.

“Fing-Su…I saw his head…and his body…a little piece here, a little piece there.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Eight months later, Mr Joe Bray brought a bride to his quaint house on the hills above Siangtan. In the marriage register he had been described as ‘Joseph Henry Bray, bachelor,

“And I might tell you,” said Clifford ominously, “that men have got penal servitude in this country for making false statements on their marriage certificates.”

To his orphaned bride Joe suggested a cause for Clifford Lynne’s implacable hostility.

“Me being so young makes him look old,” he suggested; and Mabel was in complete agreement, for she had spent that particular morning in the Rue de la Paix and had gathered to herself many wonderful possessions that only a millionaire can bestow upon his wife.

“The difference,” said Joe complacently, as he drew through a straw the luscious drink with which a waiter (privately instructed) had provided him—“the difference between our marriage and his is this, Mabel: ours is a love match, and his is, so to speak—well–-“

“He would never have married Joan but you told him to,” said Mabel scornfully. “I hope Joan will be happy. I have my doubts, but I hope she will be.”

Mabel went to Siangtan, and had a reception from the European inhabitants of that noble town that was due to one who bore a family relationship with the Concession. And, curiously enough, she liked Siangtan, for it is better to be a great person in a small place than a nobody in Sunningdale.

One day there came to them a letter from Joan which suggested that the unhappiness of marriage was an experience to be indefinitely postponed. Mabel read the letter and sniffed, not uncharitably.

“‘Carrying on the line’? What does she mean by that?” she asked, having her suspicions.

Joe coughed and explained.

“That was my idea too,” he said modestly.


THE END


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