Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
As he stepped into the light a low, sibilant whisper reached him. At
the cross-corridor doorway he was in time to see the flicker of a
vanishing gray garment and a sandaled foot on a naked ankle flash over
the vestibule wave-check. He shook open the door and followed.
A vertical stripe of yellow light cleaved the dark of the corridor as a
door was quietly shut. He heard the faint, distant click of a
door-latch. Counting the entrances to that one, and sure that he had
made no mistake, he rapped. The near-by clank of the engine-room well
was the reply. He tried the handle. It was immovable. He struck a
match. It was stateroom forty-four.
Peter went to the purser's office. Light rippled through the wrinkled
green, round window, as he had hoped. He tapped lightly, and a voice
bade him to enter.
Blanchard, the purser, dwarfed, perpetually stoop-shouldered, looked up
from a clump of cargo reports and blinked through convex, thick, steel
spectacles at his interrupter. His eyes were red and dim with a
gray-blue, uncertain definition which always reminded Peter of oysters.
Blanchard had been purser of the _Vandalia_ for thirteen years, and
Peter knew that the man possessed the garrulous habits of the oyster as
well.
"Well, well!" observed Blanchard in the crisp, brittle accents of
senility; "so you're back again, eh? Well, well, well." There was no
emphasis laid on the words. They were all struck from the same piece
of ancient metal.
"Here I am!" agreed Peter with mild enthusiasm. "The bad penny!"
"Ha, ha! The bad penny returns!" The exclamation died in a futile
cough. "What are you prowlin' around ship this time o' night for, eh?
After three bells, Sparks. Time for respectable people to be fast
asleep. Or, are you leavin' the radio unwatched?"
"I'm looking for information." Peter drew himself by stiffened arms
upon the purser's single bunk.
"Lookin' for information?" The thin voice suffered the quavery
attrition of surprise. "Funny place to be lookin' for that commodity.
What's on your mind? Eh?"
"Chinamen!"
Blanchard tilted the rusted spectacles to his forehead, and the
motionless gray orbs seemed to glint with a half-dead light.
"Chinamen? What Chinamen?" The spectacles slid back into place.
"One, a woman, came aboard as we were pulling out this afternoon. Who
is she? Where is she? Where's she from? Where's she going? Who's
with her? That's what I want to clear up."
"Is that all?" squeaked Blanchard. His wrinkled, dried lips were
struggling as if with indecision. A veiled, a thinly veiled conflict
of emotions apparently was taking place behind that ancient gray mask.
"What--what for?" was the final outcome in a hesitant half-whisper.
"My private information," smiled Peter. "Just curious, that's all.
Didn't mean to pry open any dark secrets." He made as if to go.
"Sparks! Don't be in a hurry. I'm not so busy."
"Well?"
"What's botherin' you? Maybe I could straighten you out."
"Who are the occupants of stateroom forty-four?" Peter replied.
Again the expression shifted like water smitten by an evil wind.
"Forty-four!" The words were mild explosions.
A long cardboard sheet with blue and red lines was produced from a
noiselessly opened drawer.
"The passenger list. We shall see." Blanchard's red, shiny forefinger
clawed down the column of names, halting at the numeral forty-four.
The space was blank. "You see?"
"Empty?"
"Empty." A restrained note of triumph was unquestionably evident in
the purser's cracked voice.
"I'll bother you with just one more question. What is Len Yang?"
A look of doubt, of incredulity bordering upon feeble indignation,
settled upon the serrated countenance. But Blanchard only shook his
head as if he did not comprehend.
Peter slipped down from the bunk. "Guess I'll take a turn on deck, if
the fog's lifted, and roll in. G'night, purser."
Blanchard started to say something, evidently thought better of it, and
retrieved his pen. As he dipped the fine point into the red ink by
mistake he flung another frown over his shoulder. The wireless man
lingered on the threshold, swinging the door tentatively.
"G'night, Sparks."
CHAPTER V
The _Vandalia_ was wallowing majestically through long, dead black
swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the
peak and glanced overside. Broad, phosphorescent swords broke smoothly
with a rending, rushing gurgle over the steep cut-water. His eyes
darted here and there over the void as his mind struggled to straighten
out this latest kink.
What facts of significance he might have discovered from Blanchard were
overshadowed by the purser's suspicious attitude. Blanchard knew, and
Blanchard, for some reason, did not choose to divulge. This made
matters more interesting, if slightly more complicated.
He was now reasonably sure of several things, without really having
definite grounds for being sure. The malignant-eyed Chinese woman and
whoever she had successfully concealed behind her in the loft above Ah
Sih King's were now aboard the _Vandalia_. He was quite positive that
he had recognized her in the woman who had come aboard in company with
the gray-cloaked figure at the last minute before sailing-time.
He recalled the scene on the pierhead, and it occurred to him that the
eyes behind the gray veil, before their owner was whisked up to the
deck and from his sight, had fastened upon him for a long breath.
"Four bells, all well!" bawled the lookout as four clanging strokes
rang out from abaft the wheel-house.
And Blanchard had proved that stateroom forty-four was unoccupied.
Peter decided to borrow a master key in the morning, from the chief
engineer, perhaps, and investigate stateroom forty-four. And with the
feeling that he was on the verge of discovering something which did not
exist, he prepared to turn in.
He was not undressed when the lock grated, the door lurched open, and
the pale visage of Dale teetered at his shoulder. An attempt at
grinning ended in a hissing sob of in-taken breath. The limp frame
flung itself in the bunk beside Peter, and Dale's white, perspiring
face was buried in palsied hands.
"Feel the motion?" Peter pulled down one of the hands, gently
uncovering the expressionless eye.
"I wish I was dead!"
"Want me to finish your trick?"
Dale's face disappeared in the pillow. A moment he was stark. His
head partly revolved, profiling a yellow, pointed nose against the
white of the linen.
"Static's much worse, Mr. Moore. Frisco's sent me the same message
three times now. It's for Honolulu. He says he won't repeat it
again." The pale lips trembled in misery. "And there seems to be a
funny sort of static in the receivers. The dynamos in the engine-room
may cause it."
"That's strange," Peter reflected as he slipped on his blue coat.
"There's never been any induction on board as far back as I can
remember. Does it hum--or what?"
"No, it grates, like static. Sounds like static, and yet it doesn't.
Kind of a hoarse rumble, like a broken-down spark-coil."
Two even rows of white teeth drew in the trembling lip and clung to it.
"That awful staticky sound---- And the _Rover's_ been calling us." He
groaned miserably. "I couldn't answer either of them. I was lying on
the carpet!"
"Get some sleep," advised Peter. "When you feel better come up and
relieve me. If I were you I wouldn't smoke cigarettes when you think
it's rough."
"I won't smoke another cigarette as long as I live!"
Peter slipped into his uniform, draped an oil-skin coat about his
slender shoulders, and made his way up to the wireless house. The
receivers were lying on the floor.
The _Vandalia_ was entering a zone of pale, thin mist, which created
circular, misty auras about the deck-lights. The tarpaulined
donkey-engine beneath the after-cargo booms rattled as the _Vandalia's_
stern sank into a hollow, and the beat of the engines was muffled and
deeper. A speck of white froth glinted on the black surface and
vanished astern.
The wireless-house seemed warm and cozy in the glare of its green and
white lights. An odor of cheap cigarette-smoke puffed out as he opened
the door.
Peter slipped the hard-rubber disks over his ears and tapped the slider
of the tuner. Static was bad to-night, trickling, exploding and
hissing in the receivers.
The electric lights became dim under the strain of the heavy motor, as
he slid up the starting handle. The white-hot spark exploded in a
train of brisk dots and dashes. He snapped up the aerial switch and
listened.
KPH--the San Francisco station--rang clear and loud through the spatter
of the electric storm. Peter flashed back his O.K., tuned for the
Kahuka Head station at Honolulu, and retransmitted the message.
Sensitizing the detector, he slid up the tuning handle for high waves.
Static, far removed, trickled in. Then a faint, musical wailing like a
violin's E-string pierced this. The violin was the government station
at Arlington, Virginia, transmitting a storm warning to ships in the
South Atlantic. For five minutes the wailing persisted. Sliding the
tuning handle downward, Peter listened for commercial wave-lengths.
A harsh grinding, unmusical as emery upon hollow bronze, rasped
stutteringly in the head phones. Laboriously, falteringly, the grating
was cleaved into clumsy dots and dashes of the Continental Code, under
the quaking fingers of some obviously frightened and inexperienced
operator. Were these the sounds which had unnerved Dale? For a time
the raspings spelled nothing intelligible. The unknown sender
evidently was repeating the same word again and again. It held four
letters. Once they formed, H-I-J-X. Another time, S-E-L-J. And
another, L-P-H-E.
The painstaking intent, as the operator's acute ears recognized, was
identical in each instance. Frequently the word was incoherent
altogether, the signals meaning nothing.
Suddenly Peter jerked up his head. Out of the jumble stood the word,
as an unseen ship will often stand out nakedly in a fog rift. Over and
over, badly spaced, the infernal rasp was spelling, _H-E-L-P_.
He waited for the signature of this frantic operator. But none
occurred. Following a final letter "p" the signals ceased.
For a minute or two, while Peter nervously pondered, the air was
silent. Then another station called him. A loud droning purr filled
the receivers. Peter gave the "k" signal. The brisk voice of the
transport _Rover_ droned:
"I can't raise KPH. Will you handle an M-S-G for me?"
"Sure!" roared the _Vandalia's_ spark. "But wait a minute. Have you
heard a broken down auxiliary asking for help? He's been jamming me
for fifteen minutes. Seems to be very close, K."
"Nix," replied the _Rover_ breezily. "Can't be at all close or I would
hear him, too. I can see your lights from my window. You're off our
port quarter. Here's the M-S-G."
Peter accepted the message, retransmitting it to the KPH operator, then
called the wheelhouse on the telephone. Quine, first officer, answered
sleepily.
"Has the lookout reported any ship in the past hour excepting the
_Rover_?"
"Is that the _Rover_ on our port quarter?" Quine's voice was gruffly
amazed. Like most mariners of the old school, he considered the
wireless machine a nuisance. Yet its intelligence occasionally caught
him off guard.
"Only thing in sight, Sparks."
Peter made an entry in the log-book, folded his hands and shut his
eyes. The Leyden jars rattled in their mahogany sockets as the
_Vandalia_ climbed a wave, faltered, and sped into the hollow. Far
removed from her pivot of gravity, the wireless house behaved after the