Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
the forward hatch, Peter gave a careful inspection, retaining their
images in an eye that was rapidly being trained along photographic
lines.
It was a comparatively simple matter, Peter found, to remember peoples'
faces; the important point being to select some striking feature of the
countenance, and then persistently drive this feature home in his
memory. He knew that the human memory is a perverse organ, much
preferring to forget and lose than to retain.
So he looked over the crew and found them to be quite Dutch and quite
self-satisfied, with no more than a slight but polite interest in him
and his presence. Wireless operators, as a rule, are self-effacing
individuals who inhabit dark cabins and have very little to say.
He called at the purser's office and helped himself to the register,
finding the name of Romola Borria in full, impulsive handwriting,
giving her address as Hong Kong, Victoria; and a long list of Dutch
names, representing quite likely nothing more harmful than sugar and
coffee men, with perhaps a sprinkling of copra and pearl buyers.
Peter then investigated the wireless cabin, which was situated aft on
the turn of the promenade deck, and commanding a not entirely inspiring
view of the cargo well and the steerage.
Assuring himself that the wireless machine was in good working order,
Peter hooked back the door, turned on the electric fan to air the place
out, and with his elbows on the rail gave the steerage passengers a
looking over.
He did not look far before his gaze stopped its traveling.
Directly below him, sitting cross-legged on a hatch-cover, was a
Chinese or Eurasian girl whose face was colorless, whose lips were red,
and whose eyes, half-lidded, because of the dazzling sunlight, were of
an unusual blue-green shade.
Had Peter wished to make inquiries regarding this maiden, he would have
found that she was from the Chinese settlement in Macassar, and on her
way to Canton, to pay a visit to a grandmother she had never seen. But
it was Peter's nature to spin little dreams of his own whenever he
contemplated exotic young women, to place them in settings of his own
manufacture.
Her blue-black hair was parted in a white line that might have been
centered by the tip of her tiny nose and an unseen point on the nape of
her pretty neck.
Peter could not know, as he studied her, how this innocent maid from
Macassar was destined to play an important and significant part in his
life, entering and leaving it like a gentle and caressing afternoon
monsoon. His guess, as he looked away, was that she was a woman of no
caste, from her garb; probably a river girl; more than likely, worse.
Yet there was an undeniable air of innocence and youth in her narrow
shoulders as she slowly rocked. Peter could see the tips of bright-red
sandals peeping from under each knee, and he guessed her to be about
eighteen.
She caught sight of Peter, who had folded his arms and was resting
their elbows idly upon the teak rail, and their eyes met and lingered.
A light, indescribably sad and appealing, shone in the blue-green eyes,
which seemed to open larger and larger, until they became round pools
of darting, mysterious reflection. It was a moment in which Peter was
suspended in space.
"I am afraid that wireless operators are not always discreet," purred a
low, sweet voice at his side.
Peter smiled his grave smile, and vouchsafed nothing. The girl in the
steerage had returned to her sewing and was apparently quite oblivious
of his presence. And still that look of demure, wistful appeal stood
out in his memory.
Romola Borria was murmuring something, the context of which was not
quite clear to him.
"Eh? I beg pardon?"
"It is quite dreadful, this traveling all alone," she remarked.
"Yes," he admitted. "Sometimes I bore myself into a state of agony."
"And it breeds such strange, such unexplainable desires and caprices,"
the girl went on in her cultivated, honeyed tones. "Strangers
sometimes are so--so cold. For instance, yourself."
"I?" exclaimed Peter, supporting himself on the stanchion. "Why, I'm
the friendliest man in the world!"
Romola Borria pursed her lips and studied him analytically.
"I wonder----" she began, and stopped, fretting her lip. "I should
like to ask you a very blunt and a very bold question." Her expression
was darkly puzzled.
"Go right ahead," urged Peter amiably, "don't mind me."
"Why I speak in this way," she explained, "is that since I ran away
from Hong Kong----"
"Oh, you ran away from Hong Kong!"
"Of course!" She said it in a way that indicated a certain lack of
understanding on his part. "Since I ran away from Hong Kong I have
been looking, looking for such--for such a man as you appear to be,
to--to confide in."
"Don't you suppose a woman would do almost as well?" spoke Peter, who,
through experience, had grown to dislike the father-confessor role.
"If you don't _care_ to listen----" she began, as though he had hurt
her.
"I am all ears," stated Peter, with his most convincing smile.
"And I have changed my mind," said Romola Borria with a disdainful toss
of her pretty head. "Besides, I think the Herr Captain would have a
word with you."
The fat and happy captain of the _Persian Gulf_ occupied the breadth if
not the height of the doorway, wearing his boyish grin, and Peter
hastened to his side with a murmured apology to the girl as he left her.
He merely desired to have transmitted an unimportant clearance message
to the Batavia office, to state that all was well and that the
thrust-bearing, repaired, was now performing "smoot'ly."
Dropping the hard rubber head-phones over his ears, Peter listened to
the air, and in a moment the silver crash of the white spark came from
the doorway.
Romola Borria stared long and venomously at the little Chinese maiden,
who was sewing away industriously as she rocked to and fro on the
hatch. Immersed in her own thoughts the girl, removing her quick eyes
from the flying needle, glanced up at the deep-blue sky, and, smiling,
shivered in a sort of ecstasy.
CHAPTER III
At dinner Peter met the notables. It seemed the fat and handsome
captain had taken a fancy to him. And it was as Peter had deduced
earlier. These passengers were stodgy Dutchmen, each with a little
world of his own, and forming the sole orbit of that little world. For
the most part they were plantation owners escaping the seasonal heat
for the cool breezes of a vacation in Japan, boastful of their
possessions, smug in their Dutch self-complacency, and somewhat
gluttonous in their manner of eating.
The fat captain beamed. The fat plantation owners gorged themselves
and jabbered. The three-piece orchestra played light opera that the
world had forgotten. The company became light-hearted as more frosty
bottles of that exotic drink, _arracka_, were disgorged by the _Persian
Gulf's_ excellent ice-box. And all the while, speaking in light,
soothing tones, Romola Borria gazed alluringly into the watchful eyes
of Peter Moore.
At length the chairs were pushed back, and Peter, with this fairy-like
creature in a dinner-gown of most fetching pink gossamer clinging to
his arm, took to the deck for an after-dinner Abdullah.
They chatted in low, confiding tones of the people in the dining-room.
They whispered in awe of the Southern Cross, which sparkled like frost
on the low horizon. She confessed that at night the moon was her god,
and Peter, feeling exalted under the influence of her exquisite charm,
the touch of the light fingers upon his arm which tingled and burned
under the subtle pressure, became bold and recited that verse of
"Mandalay" wherein "I kissed her where she stood."
It was quite thrilling, quite delicious, and altogether quite too fine
to last.
After a while, when they were passing the door of the wireless cabin,
Romola squeezed his arm lightly and expressed a desire to have him send
a message, a message she had quite forgotten. When Peter replied that
such a message would be costly, involving an expensive retransmission
by cable from Manila to Hong Kong, she only laughed.
Peter snapped on the green-shaded light and handed her pad and pencil.
Dropping lightly to the couch which ran the length of the opposite
wall, she nibbled at the pencil's rubber, and her smooth brow was
darkened by a frown of perplexity.
Peter, lowering the aerial switch, sent out an inquiring call for the
Manila station. The air was still as death. A dreary hush filled the
black receivers, and then, through this gloomy silence trickled a
far-away silver voice, the brisk, clear signals of Manila.
He swiveled half around, and the girl nervously extended the pad of
radio blanks.
The message was directed to Emiguel Borria, the Peak, Hong Kong, and it
contained the information that she would reach the Hong Kong anchorage
on the following Tuesday morning. The last sentence; "Do not meet me."
Peter inclined his eyebrows slightly, but not impertinently, counted
the words and flashed them to the operator at Manila.
This one shot back the following greeting:
"Who are you? Only one man on the whole Pacific has a fist like that."
Peter changed the manner of his sending, resorting to a long and
painful "drawl."
"I am a little Chinese waif," Peter spelled out slowly, and smiled,
adding: "Good hunting to you, Smith!" He signed off.
The silvery spark of Smith was quick in reply.
"If you are Peter Moore, the Marconi people are scouring the earth
trying to find you. Are you Peter Moore?"
"In China," replied Peter breezily, changing back to the inimitably
crisp sending for which he was famous, "we bite off people's noses who
are inquisitive. Good night, old-timer!"
The voice of Manila screamed back in faint reprisal, but Peter dropped
the nickeled band to the ledge, and pivoted quickly, to face the girl.
It was startling, the look she was giving him. Perhaps he had
completed the transmission before she was aware. At all events, when
Peter turned with a smile, her eyes bored straight into his with a
distorted look, a look that seemed cruel, as if it might have sprung
from a well of hate; and hard and glinting and black as polished jade.
All of this vanished when she caught Peter's eyes, and it was as the
passage of a vision, unreal. In its place was an expression of
demureness, of gentle, almost fondling meekness. Had she been staring,
not at him, but beyond him, over the miles to a detestable scene, a
view of horror? It seemed more than likely.
Then he observed that the door of the wireless room was closed. He
made as if to open it, but she interrupted him midway with a commanding
gesture of her white, small hand.
"Lock it, and sit down here beside me."
Somewhat dazed and greatly flabbergasted, Peter obeyed.
He locked the door, then sat down beside her. She moved closer, took
his hand, wrapped both of hers tightly around it, and leaned toward him
until the breath from her parted lips was upon his throat, moist and
warm, and her eyes were great shining balls of limpid mystery and
dancing excitement, so close to his that he momentarily expected their
eyelashes to mingle.
She caught her breath, and then, for such dramatic circumstances, made
a most ridiculous remark. She realized that herself, for she whipped
out:
"It is a foolish question. But, Mr. Moore, do you believe in love at
first sight?"
Peter's tense look dissolved into a smile of giddy relief. He was
expecting something quite frightful, and the clear wit of him found a
ready answer.
"Foolish?" he chuckled. "Why, I'm the most devout worshiper at the
shrine! The shrine brags about me! It says to unbelievers: Now, if
you don't believe in love at first sight, just cast your orbs upon