The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 16

  “Blessed if I know; but they had some purpose in letting her come with you. Of course I could march some soldiers out to your temple, but we’d gain nothing by using force just now. There are scores of temples scattered over the hills and plain, and if we know just which one is the focus of intrigue, we can handle things. I’d like to get Mary Fisher out of there, though. Who’s this Baron Rosey?”

  “Rosoff,” he corrected. “A Russian nobleman and scientist who is coming down from Peking.”

  “Hm! I don’t know the name, but there are a lot of Russians running loose in these parts. Well, Groot, do you want to take my advice or go under arrest?”

  “My dear boy, are you really in earnest? Why—why, your advice will be excellent, no doubt!” Poor Groot was rather agitated. “I’ll take it, by all means.”

  I reflected. There was no use my going to the Heart-resting-place with Groot as a tourist friend, for I was no doubt a marked man. If I went at all, I must go in uniform. By this time, I had no doubt, every spy within the city walls knew that I had fallen in with Groot.

  “You’re my prisoner,” I said at last, “and I’ll accept your parole on condition that you don’t breathe to a soul what I’ve been telling you. Agreed?”

  “Certainly, Breck, certainly! But about Mary—and my manuscripts—”

  “Coming to that. This copy of the Yuan Shi,” and I kicked the sack, “can go to my quarters. The chap who sold it to you was a disguised Korean, by the way. There are many of them in Jap pay, for they can pass as Chinese better than the brown brothers can. Now, you and I will hire a couple of sedan chairs and go out to your temple. Introduce me as an aviator.”

  “But, my dear fellow, won’t that be dangerous?”

  “Not particularly,” I returned. “I have a hunch, however, that your Russian friend is going to be a blamed sight more dangerous. Alan, old boy, you’d better come out of the alfalfa and get down to brass tacks! There are rocks ahead.”

  I wrote a note, reporting what I had discovered and where I was going. This I dispatched to the yamen by our coolie, who also took the sack of chronicles to leave at my quarters. This done, we left the tea-house and hired two four-man chairs. It was nearly five in the afternoon, and we ought to reach the Heart-resting-place before dark easily.

  My whole purpose in going with Groot was to obviate carefully the fact that I had any suspicions. To this end, I had Groot engage a runner to speed out to the temple ahead of us and announce our coming. If Baron Rosoff and his friends got the idea that I was there on a friendly visit, they would avoid any desperate work. If you jump out on a wild animal unexpectedly, he is sure to show fight; but if you approach openly, he’ll avoid you.

  As for Mary Fisher, I set her down as an earnest young female of the early Victorian type, bound on the uplift of the heathen.

  We passed the city gate, where a squad of our Nanking boys were keeping an eye on traffic, and headed for the open country. Our chairmen swung along at a fair clip. On all sides of us was the vastly rich plain, crossed by the marvelous system of canals, which had been constructed twenty-two hundred years ago—a canal system which had created the richest plain in China out of a desert.

  The temple to which we were bound was an old and honored shrine, but I knew that it had a bad name. Many of these outlying temples are shelters for vicious and outlawed priests, and the Heart-resting-place had figured in one or two local reports in connection with piracy and salt-smuggling. It lay on the Min River, and I had no doubt would prove a place of exquisite beauty.

  My chair took the lead, and I trusted that Alan Groot would take the opportunity to commune with silence and get back to earth. He had a good brain somewhere, once he could get it off the subject of Han dynasties and such things. I could not shirk the fact that we were up against a bad crowd, capable of swift and nasty action. Further, I had certain instructions vividly in mind.

  “Use every caution,” they ran. “Remember that if the politicians can provoke any acts of open war between north and south China, their game is won. If none occur, we may succeed in getting unity between the two parliaments—a united China! Use every caution. Avert any hostilities at all every costs.”

  Particularly important here in Cheng-tu, where, if Japan had any excuse for intervention, she could plant her troops in the very entrails of China. This, naturally, complicated the situation for me. If I could get Mary Fisher inside the walls of Cheng-tu, I would be satisfied.

  Suddenly, as we rounded an abrupt curve in the road, my chair halted. I looked out, then was into the road at a leap. Coming toward us at a walk, staggering across the road like a drunken thing, was a shaggy little Mongolian pony, streaming blood; and in the saddle, a man lolled forward with death in his face.

  I recognized the man instantly, despite the paint and stain that disguised him as a coolie. It was John Li, one of our best men—a Johns Hopkins graduate—who had gone to Peking with our representatives there.

  “Wait here!” Flinging this order at the chairmen, I ran forward.

  The pony gave a little whinny and dropped in his tracks; he had been shot twice through the body, but had run on. There were no pursuers. The road was empty, I caught John Li as the pony came down, and his hand clutched weakly at me.

  “Breck!” He gasped out the word. “Tried to make the city—failed—they got me.”

  “Who?” I demanded. His head jerked up again.

  “Came from Peking with Rosoff—renegade Russian—Germanophile. In pay of Nippon, I discovered—he was taking charge—operations this province—must have suspected me—found myself poisoned and ran for it. Oh God! it burns—”

  He moaned a little, then jerked again and caught my hand.

  “Breck—white woman at the temple—I—I—”

  He went limp—dead.

  As I set down the body and rose, Alan Groot came running up. I could not answer his questions, for tears and fury choked my throat. This poor lump of clay before me had died for his country—not for party or politics or the damnable partisan curse of a land grown away from patriotism. Murdered by a dirty dog of a renegade!

  Yet Rosoff and his friends must not suspect that I had received any warning.

  “Who is he?” demanded Groot for the tenth time. “Did bandits attack him?”

  I nodded, content to leave it that way. But Groot suspected something, I think.

  Behind us, on the road, were plodding along some countrymen. They soon caught up, and I hired one of them to put John Li’s body on his mule and take it to the city. It was all I could do for him who had been an honorable gentleman and my friend.

  All? No. Baron Rosoff still lived!

  We went on again. A quick search had shown me that John Li carried no papers. The only thing I retrieved from his body was a thin, oval plate of copper an inch in length, carried by a string about his neck. Upon it were inscribed the two ideographs: t’ou shi. Shi meant stone. What this t’ou stone was, remained an enigma.

  What this disk meant, I had no idea; but obviously John Li had carried it for some highly important reason, after abandoning everything else. I put it into my pocket, and for the moment forgot the object.

  Our road ran on, between canals and rivers, and gradually the hot anger lessened under the cooling touch of reason within me. The importance of John Li’s message made itself felt more clearly. It would not do to lose my head and go after Baron Rosoff in pure brute fury for revenge. No! If that man were in charge of operations here, his information would be of untold value to our party. We must steal his brains—and kill him afterward. Then, John Li would not have died in vain!

  And above all, no open hostilities. It was a game in the dark, silent and deadly, with no quarter to the vanquished.

  Rice fields fled past, and bridges, and men going home for the night. Sunset was at hand, and the red disk perching on the western mountain rim of the plain flooded everything with crimson radiance, like some slavering tongue licking at the world. A jabber from my bearers came t
o me, and I leaned forward with interest. Hsi-hsin-ho they said, was just ahead.

  Now I saw the place of Heart-resting, as it had been named in olden days. It rose before me in the gold-red glow of sunset—a sweet enough place on a little eminence beside the river, with boats and garden pavilions below it. Like most temples hereabouts it was walled, a circle of stone around the base of the hill. Above this wall rose gardens, and the temple buildings, their tiled roofs heavy with grass and brush.

  Groot’s chair came alongside mine.

  “It is early Sung architecture,” he declared. “A beautiful specimen, Breck!”

  My eyes fled upward. Incongruous thing amid this ancient beauty and quiet repose, a bare pole stuck out against the blood-red sky—a bare black pole that might have been a flagstaff but was not.

  If I had known of this, I would have brought a few soldiers along at the risk of a row. For we did not relish any unlicensed wireless stations.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Groot’s voice. “Here’s Mary down to meet us!”

  Our chairs halted before the massive tiled gateway in the wall, and I forgot about the wireless and everything else, for I found myself shaking hands with Mary Fisher.

  Behind her, to meet us, came a man who could be no other than Baron Rosoff.

  CHAPTER III

  Mary Speaks Up

  The sun was gone suddenly behind the mountains. In the gray twilight, while light mists swirled about the tree-shaded river, we walked up through the gardens to the buildings that crowned the hillock.

  I must have seemed something of a fool; to tell the truth, the sight of Mary Fisher had struck me dumb. To think that she could be the niece of Alan Groot! It was not her beauty; it was what counts a million times more than beauty—personality. I had an impression of vivid brown eyes against a white skin, a face which, in repose, seemed to have no character. But a word, a smile, and you were gripped!

  There is no accounting for the subtle but tremendous power which the strong personality of a woman can exert over men. It is stronger in some than others; nor is it any mere sex-influence, as newfangled cults would have us think. The old Chinese knew better. The ancient sages, away back in the thousands of years, called it yin—the female principle of the universe. I think they had the right idea.

  Rosoff, to my astonishment, was a fearfully nice chap; an accomplished, aristocratic fellow, and remarkably handsome. He was clean-shaven, and had a face of keen decision. Character was strong in him, too—the male principle, which the sages called yang. He was the type of man who could be chucked naked into a wilderness and come out owning the place. In the face of his personal magnetism, I actually had to force myself to remember John Li and all the dread truth about this man.

  Darkness was falling when we reached the temple, and priests were lighting lanterns, I found that the four of us were to occupy a small building—a separate shrine, long disused, which had been turned over to Groot, who had his own ménage. Mary Fisher informed us that dinner was all ready, and that the chief priest—it was a Taoist crowd and not a lamasery—was dining with us. Groot took me to his own room to wash up and change clothes.

  “My boy,” he said impressively, when we were alone, “I’m afraid that you were very sadly mistaken in your suspicions. Baron Rosoff is a gentleman of much culture. He occupies a distinct position as a savant—”

  “That’s equally true of you, Alan,” I told him. “What’s more, there’s a wireless outfit on the roof of this place in daily communication with Peking—and Shantung. At dinner, you tell ’em about that fellow who was killed by bandits; but don’t, under any circumstances, mention that I sent his body into the city! Understand?”

  He said no more. He was nervous, suspicious, and bewildered. Nor did I blame him greatly, for Rosoff was the last man on earth to be suspected of his present business. That, no doubt, was why he was engaged in it.

  Groot provided me with a clean uniform-collar, and we went in to dinner. The conditions were fairly primitive, you understand, but there were good servants, good food, and a good deal of comfort in little ways. The dining table, for instance, was laid with a linen cloth, and we used fine Chingtecher porcelain from the temple stock.

  The head priest, Wan Shih by name, was chatting with Rosoff and Mary Fisher in broken English, for the girl knew no Mandarin. He shook hands with me in occidental fashion, and I saw that he was dangerous. A tall, thin man, he had the sunken, brilliant eyes of the fanatic; he was an ascetic, and his dinner consisted of bread and water. Just the type to hold this place under an iron rule, and to be honestly deceived by some wild dream of the idealistic Peking government. I thought at the moment that some of his priests would be Koreans or Japs, and as events proved I was right.

  We were no more than sitting down to table when Alan Groot shot out his excited account of meeting the bandit victim. Rosoff turned to me with a smile, but his eyes held no mirth.

  “What’s this, Captain Breck?” he asked genially. “I thought your people were putting down all banditry?”

  “Can’t do everything, baron,” I rejoined. “Besides, it was only conjecture that the coolie had met bandits. He was able to say nothing. Died a moment after we met him.”

  “Oh!” said Rosoff, looking inwardly pleased. “I suppose he would not have been very intelligible, in any case?”

  I shook my head. “Not to me, although Groot might have understood him. I know a bit of Mandarin and some Cantonese; but these inland dialects are beyond me.”

  At this, Rosoff gave Wan Shih a glance, and I knew that I had won the first round. The more harmless they thought me, the better for me.

  “By the way,” and Rosoff turned to Groot, “I have discovered something you will be glad to learn. There is an old Tibetan transcription of the Chinese mu-su, written in the form bug-sug. This, I fancy, would trace back directly to your lost Iranian term—”

  “Excellent, excellent!” cried Groot, his eyes kindling. He was off at once on the word-hunt, and the two of them plunged into a discussion that sparkled with languages I had never heard of. They were two thousand years away from here, in no time at all!

  Meantime, I was talking with Mary Fisher and Wan Shih. The priest spoke in his slow and labored English, and evinced great interest in the work that we of Shanghai were doing in the province. I let him pump me all he wished, and by degrees—Mary innocently helping it along by her frank curiosity—it came to personal matters.

  I made no secret of my own history, for I was convinced Wan Shih knew it already, at least in part. Mary looked a bit disappointed at hearing that I was a mercenary, hired out to help put the new air service on its feet; but I plunged boldly into an arraignment of the Peking crowd, and a glowing eulogy of my own friends. I could see that Rosoff was listening with one ear, and before I got through, both he and Wan Shih were satisfied that I entertained no suspicions whatever of the temple and had come as a visitor with my friend Groot.

  “And how do you occupy your time here, Miss Fisher?” I asked, switching the subject.

  “How do you think?” she parried brightly.

  “Well,” and I grinned, “when Alan told me about you, I set you down as an earnest lady who was trying to convert all the Taoist priests in these parts, and providing diapers for all the yellow babies! I did know a good soul in Kwangtung who had that ambition—”

  There was a general laugh, and Wan Shih regarded me with a chuckle.

  “This young lady,” he said, “she highly int’lested in great teachings of divine maste’! She study teachings.”

  “Yes,” and Mary laughed, “Wan Shih says I would make a fine Taoist, Captain Breck! Do you think I’m in any danger—of being converted?”

  Just a pause—an almost imperceptible pause. Something flashed to my brain as I met her eyes. Some indefinite feeling; intuition, perhaps. Most people lay these things to the imagination, and fail to heed them. But in my business, one cannot afford to neglect the imagination.

  “Well,” I rejoined ligh
tly, “if I were in your place, I’d be mighty careful! Wan Shih is a gentleman of real religion—he’s no hedge-priest. And when you find Taoism in its pure state, it’s a faith that has considerable power.”

  Mary Fisher looked thoughtfully at me, but Wan Shih was delighted by my compliment, which was no more than true. We plunged into religious subjects, and he unmercifully scored the wandering Taoist priests who are only fake magicians and are half Buddhist at that. With each word he spoke, I could see that my first estimate of him had been right. He was a cultured, bigoted idealist with a single-track mind—the most dangerous kind of man on earth.

  Aided by my old friendship with Alan Groot, it was no time before Mary and I were getting along on fairly intimate terms. Rosoff noticed it, and his interest in the Han dynasties began to wane rapidly. Presently he deserted Groot shamelessly and entered our talk.

  “By the way, Uncle,” exclaimed Mary suddenly, “did you get the wonderful old books you went after?”

  Groot looked startled and gave a nervous laugh. Then, to my astonishment, he met the crisis like a man.

  “Oh yes, yes!” he responded. “My niece explained, baron, why I was not here to meet you? I had the chance to procure a copy of the original edition of the Yuan Shi in Cheng-tu. I got it, and I also left the note your sub-priest sent in to his cousin, Wan Shih. I am so absent-minded that I nearly forgot it. About the Yuan Shi—a marvelous thing, Rosoff! You must inspect it by all means.”

  “Is it in your pocket?” queried the girl innocently. We all chuckled at that.

  “My dear, it’s a huge sack of manuscript volumes!” explained Groot. “When I met Breck, I was so excited that I took them to his quarters for inspection, and then I insisted on bringing him out here, and upon my word I forgot all about the Yuan Shi until we were outside town!”

  “Yes,” I said, laughing, “and he would have gone back for them if I’d let him! Nonsense, Alan; they’re safe enough. Can’t you take a vacation occasionally?”

  That devil of a priest was blinded, and so was Rosoff. What was better, I perceived that Alan Groot was doing some up-to-date thinking behind his thick spectacles.