Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
remained as they were. And as Peter ran his eye from the black crown
hat to the faded blue jacket, the black-sateen pants, which were
clipped about the ankles, giving them a mild pantaloon effect, and to
the black slippers with their thick buck-soles, the coolie smiled.
It was a smile of arrogance, of self-satisfaction. Indeed, it was the
smile of a hunter who has winged his prey, and smiles an instant to
watch it squirm before administering the death-shot.
"You wanchee my?" inquired Peter succinctly.
"You allatime go Hong Kong way?" replied the coolie, his smile becoming
a little more civil, while he measured Peter's length, breadth, and
seemed to estimate his brawn.
It was a foolish question, for the _Persian Gulf_, as everybody in
Batavia knew quite well, made a no-stop run from the Javanese port to
Hong Kong. Peter indicated this fact impatiently.
"No go Hong Kong way?" persisted the coolie, not relaxing that devilish
grin. "_Maskee_ Hong Kong. _Nidzen yang giang_?"
The wheezy old whistle of the _Persian Gulf_ told the world in
unmistakable accents that sailing time was nigh. The _Persian Gulf_
was not a new boat or a fast boat, and she sailed in the intermediate
service south of Java. Yet she was stout, and typhoons meant very
little to her as yet.
"Why not?" demanded Peter in the tones of an interlocutor.
The coolie simply lifted the flap of his blue tunic, and Peter was
given the singular glimpse of a bone-hafted knife, the blade of which
he could guess lay flat against the man's paunch.
Still the Chinese smiled, without avarice. Plainly he was stating the
case as it was known to him, reciting a lesson, as it were, which had
been taught him by one skilled in the ways of killing and of espionage.
The facts of this case were that Peter Moore should immediately
postpone or give up entirely his trip to Hong Kong for reasons best
known to the powers arrayed against him. And strangely enough, Hong
Kong was one of the two cities in China where Peter had pressing
business.
It made him furious, this knowledge that the man of Len Yang had picked
up the trail again.
So Peter glanced up and down the deck to see if there would be any
witness to his act, and there was only one, a passenger. The Chinese
was still smiling, but by degrees that smile was becoming more evil and
sour. He was perplexed at the wireless operator's furtive examination
of the promenade deck. Yet he was not kept in the dark regarding
Peter's intentions much longer than it would have taken him to utter
the Chinese equivalent of Jack Robinson.
With an energetic swoop, Peter seized him by the nearest arm and leg,
and in the next breath the coolie was shooting through an awful void,
tumbling head over heels like a bag of loose rice, straight for the
oily bosom of Batavia's harbor!
So much for Peter's slight knowledge of jiu-jitsu.
He was angrily at a loss to account for the appearance of this trailer,
for he had been watchful every moment since escaping from the green
walls of that blood-tinted city, and he was positive that he had shaken
off pursuit. Yet somewhere along that trail, which ran from Len Yang
to Bhamo, from Rangoon to Penang, and around the horn of Malacca, his
escape had been betrayed.
The spies of Len Yang's master must have possessed divining rods which
plumbed the very secrets of Peter's soul.
In Batavia Peter attended to a task long deferred. He despatched a
cablegram to Eileen Lorimer in Pasadena, California, advising her that
he was still on top, very much alive, and would some day, he hoped, pay
her a visit.
He wondered what that gray-eyed little creature would say, what she
would do, upon receipt of the message from far-away Java. It had been
many long months since their parting on the rain-soaked bund at
Shanghai. That scene was quite clear in his mind when he turned from
the Batavia cable office to negotiate his plan with the wireless man of
the _Persian Gulf_.
Peter found the man willing, if not positively eager, to negotiate--a
circumstance that Peter forecasted in his mind as soon as his eyes had
dwelt a fleeting moment upon the pudgy white face with its greedy,
small, black eyes. The man was quite willing to lose himself in the
hills behind Batavia until the _Persian Gulf_ was hull down on the
deep-blue horizon, upon a consideration of gold.
Peter could have paid his passage to Hong-Kong, and achieved his ends
quite as handily as in his present role of wireless operator. But his
fingers had begun to itch again for the heavy brass transmission-key,
and his ears were yearning for the drone of radio voices across the
ethereal void.
It was on sailing morning that he was given definite evidence in the
person of the Chinese coolie that his zigzagged trail had been picked
up again by those alert spies of Len Yang's monarch.
He steamed out to the high black side of the steamer in the company's
passenger-launch, gazing back at the drowsy city, quite sure that the
pursuit was off, when he felt the glinting black eyes of the coolie
boring into him from the tiny cabin doorway.
His suspicions kindled slowly, and he admitted them reluctantly. It
was the privilege of any Chinese coolie to stare at him, quite as it
was the privilege of a cat to stare at a king. But the seed of
mistrust was sown, and it was sown in fertile soil.
Peter ignored the stare, however, until the launch puffed up alongside
the sea-ladder, then he gave the coolie a glance pregnant with
hostility and understanding.
Taking the swaying steps three at a time, Peter hastened to his
stateroom, emerging about five minutes later in a white uniform, the
uniform of the J. C. & J. service, with a little gold at the collar,
bands of gold about the cuffs, and gold emblems of shooting sparks,
indicative of his caste, upon either arm.
He looked for the coolie and found him on the starboard side of the
promenade deck. The subsequent events have already been partly
narrated.
CHAPTER II
The coolie plunged into the water with a weltering splash which sent a
small spiral of spray almost to the deck. For a moment the man in the
water pedaled and flailed, vastly frightened, and gasping, above the
clang of the engine-room telegraph, for a rope. The black side of the
_Persian Gulf_ started to slide away from him.
"You better make for shore!" shouted Peter between megaphonic hands.
Several boatmen were poling in the coolie's direction, but all of them
refrained from slipping within reach of the thrashing hands. A
Javanese boatman can find more amusing and enjoyable scenes than an
angry Chinese coolie flailing about in the water; but he must travel
many miles to find them.
"Swim to the _ma-fou_," Peter encouraged him. He knew there were
sharks in that emerald pond.
His attention then was diverted by a flutter of white at his elbow. He
turned his head. The lonely passenger, a girl, was smiling
mischievously into his face. But in her very dark eyes there was a
blunt question.
"Why did you do that?" she asked in a voice that rang with a low
musical quality. Her voice and her beauty were of the tropics, as were
the features which, molded together, gave form to that beauty; because
her hair and eyes were of a color, dark like walnut, and her olive skin
was like silk under silk, with the rosy color of her youth and fire
showing underneath.
She was rather startling, especially her deep, dark and restless eyes.
It was by sense rather than by anything his eyes could base conclusions
upon that Peter realized her spirited personality, knew instinctively
that radiant and destructive fires burned behind the sombre,
questioning eyes. The full, red lips might have told him this much.
And now these lips were forming a smile in which was a little humor and
a great deal of tenderness.
Why there should be any element of tenderness in the stranger's smile
was a point that Peter was not prepared to analyze. He had been
subjected to the tender smiles of women, alas! on more than one
occasion; and it was part of Peter's nature to take these gifts
unquestioningly. He was not one to look a gift smile in the mouth!
Yet, if Peter had looked back upon his experience, he would have
admitted that such a smile was slightly premature, that it smacked of
sweet mystery.
And it is whispered that richly clad young women do not ordinarily
smile with tenderness upon young ruffians who throw apparently peaceful
citizens from the decks of steamers into waters guarded by sharks.
To carry this argument a step farther, it has always seemed an unfair
dispensation of nature that women should fall in love so desperately,
so suddenly, so unapologetically and in such numbers with Peter the
Brazen.
The phenomenon cannot be explained in a breath, or in a paragraph, if
at all. While he was good to look upon, neither was Peter a god.
While he was at all times chivalrous, yet he was not painstakingly
thoughtful in the small matters which are supposed to advance the cause
of love at a high pace. Nor was he guided by a set of fixed rules such
as men are wont to employ at roulette and upon women.
Peter did not understand women, yet he had a perfectly good working
basis, for he took all of them seriously, with gravity, and he gave
their opinions a willing ear and considerable deference.
The rest is a mystery. Peter was neither particularly glib nor witty.
Instinctively he knew the values of the full moon, the stars, and he
had the look of a young man who has drunk at the fountain of life on
more than one occasion, finding the waters thereof bitter, with a trace
of sweetness and a decided tinge of novelty.
Life was simply a great big adventure to Peter the Brazen; and he had
been shot, stabbed, and beaten into insensibility on many occasions,
and he was not unwilling for more. He dearly loved a dark mystery, and
he had a certain reluctant fondness for a woman's bright, deceptive
eyes.
As from a great distance he heard the jeers of the Javanese boatmen and
the flounderings of the coolie as he looked now into the dark, deep
eyes of this pretty, smiling stranger.
"Why did you do that?" she repeated softly.
"Because I wanted to," returned Peter with his winning smile.
"But there are sharks in there." This in a voice of gentle reproof.
"I hope they eat him alive," said Peter, unabashed.
"You threw him overboard just because you wanted to. And if you want
to, I'll go next, I suppose."
"You might," laughed Peter. "When I have these spells I simply grab
the nearest person and over he goes. It is a terrible habit, isn't it?"
"Perhaps he insulted you."
"Or threatened me."
"Ah!" Her sigh expressed that she understood everything. "May I ask:
Who are you?"
"I? Peter Moore."
"I mean, your uniform. You are one of the ship's officers, are you
not?"
"The wireless operator. Shall we consider ourselves properly
introduced?"
"My name is Romola Borria. I presume you are an American--or British."
"American," informed Peter. "And you? Spanish _senorita_?"
"I have no nationality," she replied easily. "I am what we call in
China, a 'B. I. C.'"
"Born in China!"
"Born in Canton, China. Father: Portuguese; mother: Australian.
Answer: What am I?" She laughed deliciously, and Peter was moved.
They lingered long enough to see the coolie drag himself up on the
shore unassisted, and then separated, the girl to make ready for lunch
and to request the steward to assign them to adjoining seats at the
same table, and Peter to take a look at the register, the crew, and
what passengers might be on deck.
The passengers, lounging in steamer-chairs awaiting the call to tiffin,
and the deck crew, strapping down the forward cargo booms and battening