Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
or a bullet in my heart?
"As I grow older I will become more serious, with balance. Perish the
thought! But in the end--shucks! Confucius, wasn't it--that dear old
philosopher who could never find a king to try out his theories on--who
said:
"The great mountain must crumble.
The strong beam must break.
The wise man must wither away like a plant."
She nodded.
"I am afraid you will never become serious, Mr. Moore. And perhaps
that is one of the reasons why I've grown so--so fond of you in this
short while. If I could take life--and death--as stoically, as
happily, as you--oh, God!"
She shut her eyes. Tears were in their rims when she opened them again.
"Mr. Moore, I'll make a foolish confession, too, now. It is--I love
you. And in return----"
"I think you're the bravest girl in the world," said Peter, taking her
hands with a movement of quick penitence. "You--you're a brick."
"I guess I am," she sighed, looking moodily away. "A brick of clay!
Perhaps it is best to walk into the arms of your enemies the way you
do, with your head back and eyes shining and a smile of contempt on
your lips. If I only could!"
"Why speak of death on a day like this?" said Peter lightly. "Life is
so beautiful. See those red-and-yellow blossoms on the hill, near the
governor's place, and the poor little brats on that sampan, thinking
they're the happiest kids in the world. What hurts them, hurts them;
what pleases them, pleases them. They're happy because they don't
bother to anticipate. And think of life, beautiful old life, brimming
over with excitement and the mystery of the very next moment!"
"If I could only see that next moment!"
"Ugh! What a dreary monotony life would become!"
"But we could be sure. We could prepare for--for--well----" She threw
up her head defiantly. "For death, I'll say."
"But please don't let's talk of death. Let's talk of the fine time you
and I are going to have when we see each other again."
"Will there be another time, Peter?"
"Why, of course! You name that time; any time, any place. We'll eat
and drink and chatter like a couple of parrots. And you will forget
all this--this that is behind us."
Her teeth clicked.
"To-night," she said quickly. "I'll meet you. Let me see. On the
Desvoeux Road side of the Hong Kong Hotel balcony, the restaurant,
upstairs, you know."
"Right!" agreed Peter with enthusiasm. "Will we let husband go along?"
Her face suddenly darkened. She shook her head.
"I will be alone. So will you, at seven o'clock. You'll be there,
without fail?"
A coolie guarded her luggage near by impatiently. They could hear the
sobbing of the J. C. J. passenger launch as it rounded the starboard
counter.
"I forget," said Peter, with his flashing smile. "I'll be dead in an
hour. The steel trap of China, you know."
"Please don't jest."
"I'll tell you what I will do. I'll put a tag on my lapel, saying,
deliver this corpse to the Desvoeux Road balcony of the Hong Kong Hotel
restaurant at seven sharp to-night! Without fail! C. O. D.!"
These last words were addressed to the empty wireless cabin doorway.
The white skirt of Romola Borria flashed like a taunting signal as she
hastened out of his sight with the boy who carried her grips.
CHAPTER XI
Wearing a slight frown, Peter made his way through piles of
indiscriminate luggage to the port ladder, where his sampan and the
maid from Macassar were waiting.
As he descended this contrivance he scanned the other sampans warily,
and in one of these he saw a head which protruded from a low cabin.
The sampan was a little larger than the others, and it darted in and
out on the edge of the waiting ones.
The head vanished the instant Peter detected it, but it made a sharp
image in his memory, a face he would have difficulty in forgetting. It
was a long, chalk-white face, topped by a black fedora hat--a face
garnished at the thin gray lips by a mustache, black and spikelike,
resembling nothing more closely than the coal-black mustache affected
by the old-time melodrama villains.
An hour of life? Did this man have concealed under his black coat the
knife which had been directed by the beast in Len Yang to seek out his
heart, to snuff out his existence, the existence of a trifling enemy?
As Peter reached the shelving at the foot of the ladder the thought
grew and blossomed, and the picture was not a pleasant one. The man in
the sampan, as Peter could judge by his face, would probably prove to
be a tall and muscular individual.
And then Peter caught sight of another face, but the owner of it
remained above-board. This man was stout and gray, with a face more
subtly malignant. It was a red face, cut deep at the eyes, and in the
region of the large purple nose, with lines of weather or dissipation.
Blue eyes burned out of the red face, faded blue eyes, that were,
despite their lack of lustre, sharp and cunning.
The hand of its owner beckoned imperiously for Peter, and he shouted
his name; and Peter was assured that in the other hand was concealed
the knife or the pistol of his doom.
With these not altogether pleasant ideas commanding his brain he jumped
into the sampan in which the maid from Macassar was smilingly waiting.
Peter saw that his coolie was big and broad, with muscles which stood
out like ropes on his thick, sun-burned arms and legs. He gave the
coolie his instructions, as the sampan occupied by the red-faced man
was all the while endeavoring to wiggle closer. Again the man called
Peter by name, peremptorily, but Peter paid no heed.
"To Kowloon. Chop-chop!" shouted Peter. "_Cumshaw_. Savvy?" He
displayed in his palm three silver dollars and the coolie bent his back
to the sweep, the sampan heeling out from the black ironside like a
thing alive.
Behind them, as this manoeuvre was executed, Peter saw the two duly
accredited agents of the Gray Dragon fall in line. But Peter had
selected with wisdom. The coolie verified with the passage of every
moment the power his ropy muscles implied. Inch by inch, and yard by
yard, they drew, away from the pursuing sampans.
Then something resembling the scream of an enraged parrot sang over
their heads, and he instinctively ducked, turning to see from which of
the sampans this greeting had come.
A faint puff of light-blue smoke sailed down the wind between the two.
Which one? It was difficult to say.
They were beginning to leave the pursuit decidedly in the lurch now.
Peter's coolie, with his long legs braced far apart on the
running-boards, bent his back, swaying like a mighty metronome from
port to starboard, from starboard to port, whipping the water into an
angry, milky foam.
The pursuers crept up and fell back by fits and starts; slowly the
distance widened.
The girl crouched down in the cabin, and Peter, with his automatic in
his hand, waited for another tell-tale puff of blue smoke.
Finally this puff occurred, low on the deck of the larger craft. The
bullet plunked into the water not two feet from the sweep, and the
coolie, inspired by the knowledge that he, too, was inextricably
wrapped up in this race of life and death, sweated, and shouted in the
savage "Hi! Ho! Hay! Ho!" of the coolie who dearly loves his work.
Satisfied as to the origin of both bullets, Peter took careful aim at
the yellow sampan and emptied his magazine, slipping another clip of
cartridges into the oblong hole as he watched for the result.
The yellow sampan veered far from her course, and a sweep floated on
the surface some few yards aft. Then the sampan lay as if dead. But
the other plunged on after.
This exciting race and the blast of Peter's automatic now attracted the
earnest attention of a gray little river gunboat, just down from
up-stream, and inured to such incidents as this.
A one-pound shell snarled overhead, struck the water a hundred yards
further on, near the Kowloon shore, and sent up a foaming white pillar.
The pier at Kowloon loomed close and more close. It was unlikely that
the gunboat would follow up the shot with another, and in this guess,
Peter, as the French say, "had reason."
The fires under the gunboat's boilers were drawn, and there was no time
for the launching of a cutter.
A great contentment settled down upon Peter's heart when he saw that
the oncoming sampan could not reach the pier until he and his charge
were out of sight, or out of reach, at least.
He examined his watch. The gods were with him. It lacked three
minutes of train-time.
It was only a hope that he and the girl would be safe on board the
Canton train before the red-faced man could catch up.
The sampan rubbed the green timbers of the Kowloon landing stage.
Peter tossed up the girl's luggage in one large armful, lifted her by
the armpits to the floor of the pier, and relieved himself hastily of
four dollars (Mexican), by which the grunting coolie was gratefully,
and for some few hours, richer.
They dashed to the first-class compartment, and Peter dragged the girl
in beside him.
"To Canton, too?" she inquired in surprise.
Peter nodded. He slammed the door. A whistle screamed, and the
station of Kowloon, together with the glittering waters of the blue
bay, and the white city of Hong Kong, across the bay, all began moving,
first slowly, then with acceleration, as the morning express for Canton
slid out on the best-laid pair of rails in southern China.
Had his red-faced pursuer caught up in time? Peter prayed not. He was
tingling with the thrill of the chase; and he turned his attention to
the small maiden who sat cuddled close to his side, with hands folded
demurely before her, imprisoning between them the overlap of his
flaunting blue sarong.
"We are safe, brave one?" she was desirous of knowing.
He patted her hand reassuringly, and she caught at it, lowering her
green-blue eyes to the dusty floor, and sighing.
Peter might have paused in his rapid meditations long enough to be
aware that, here he was, dropped--plump--into the center of another
ring of romance; nothing having separated him from his last love but
two misdirected revolver shots, the warning boom of a gunboat's bow
cannon, and a mad chase across Victoria Bay.
Holding hands breaks no known law; yet Peter was not entirely aware
that he was committing this act, as his eyes, set and hard, stared out
of the window at the passing pagodas with their funny turned-up roofs.
His mind was working on other matters. Perhaps for the first time
since the _Persian Gulf_ had dropped anchor to the white sand of
Victoria Harbor's bottom, he began to realize the grim seriousness of
Romola Borria's warning. He was hemmed in. He was helpless.
An hour to live! An hour alive! But he was willing to make the very
best of that hour.
Absently, then by degrees not so absently, he alternately squeezed and
loosened the small, cool hands of the maid from Macassar. And she
returned the pressure with a timid confidence that made him stop and
consider for a moment something that had entirely slipped his mind
during the past few days.
Was he playing quite squarely with Eileen Lorimer? Had he been
observing perhaps the word but not the letter of his self-assumed oath?
On the other hand, mightn't it be possible that Eileen Lorimer had
ceased to care for him? With time and the miles stretching between
them, wasn't it quite possible that she had shaken herself, recognized
her interest in him as one only of passing infatuation, and, perhaps
already, had given her love to some other?
A silly little rhyme of years ago occurred to him:
Love me close! Love me tight! _But_
Love me when I'm out of sight!
And perhaps because Peter had fallen into one of his reasoning moods,