Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
opened, coded and transmitted to the second coil of the vast, hidden
government, wherever he might be--from Singapore to Singapore.
The import of that note was simply that he, Peter Moore, was returning
to China, and promised to interfere in no way with the band's
activities. If he should change his mind, he added, he would file
notice of such decision with the duly accredited agents of Len Yang's
monarch at the Jen Kee Road place, in Shanghai.
The purple shoulders of the Golden Gate were sinking into the
silver-tipped waves when Peter, having despatched his clearance
message, left the tireless cabin for a look at the glorious red sunset
and a breath of the fresh Pacific air.
A room steward, who had just ascended the iron ladder, approached,
touching his cap with a deferential forefinger. "A letter addressed to
you, sir. Found it in the corridor outside your stateroom. Must have
fallen from your pocket."
The wedding invitation with a San Friole date-mark!
With nerveless fingers Peter drew out, not an envelope, but a stiff
card. And he stared at the card in the red twilight, and groaned in
pain and astonishment.
Have I said that this was St. Valentine's Day? In the color of the
dying sun, and painted carefully by hand, was a tiny heart, bleeding.
And that was the only message.
PART III
THE GREEN DEATH
CHAPTER I
"Oh! Chiang Nan's a hundred li, yet in a moment's space
I've flown away to Chiang Nan and touched a dreaming face."
--TS'EN-TS'AN.
A young man can get himself into trouble in China.
He may refuse to eat the food that is pushed into his
mouth at a Chinese banquet by the perfectly
well-intentioned man sitting beside him. In that case he will
hardly do more than arouse the contempt of his
beneficiary and his host. He simply shows that he lacks
good Chinese table manners, for at a Chinese banquet
it is proper to stuff food into your companion's mouth,
no matter how full his stomach may be.
Another way to offend the Chinese is to refuse a gift.
But these are minor things. The surest method to
arouse the suspicion, dislike and animosity of China is
deliberately to keep your affairs shrouded in mystery.
Discuss your important business secrets in loud shouts;
no one will pay the slightest attention. But whisper
mysteriously in your friend's ear, and spies will attend
you! Leave a note-book filled with precious data
plainly in view upon your dressing-table, and your
room-boy won't for the life of him peek into it. Lock
that same note-book away in a dressing-table drawer,
and your room-boy will move heaven and earth to find
out what it's all about!
The time of the day was mid-forenoon; the time of
the year was spring. The low, mournful voice of a
temple gong floated across the race of brown water.
River _fokies_, on sampans and junks, were singing their
old work song, the Yo-ho--hi-ho! of the ancient river, as
their naked, broad backs bent to the sweeps. A
pleasant breath of perspiring new earth was drifting down
the great stretch of yellow water on a light, warm wind.
Peter had taken his favorite stand on the upper-boat
deck, where the wireless shack was situated, with
one hand wrapped loosely about a davit guy, the other
thoughtfully rattling a cluster of keys in his pocket.
Spring is for youth, and Peter was young; yet he
did not reflect in any way the mood of the new season.
He felt gloomy and depressed. Life seemed an empty,
a dreary thing to Peter, because he could see himself
getting nowhere.
In spite of the sweet candor of the young spring
day, one of the first sounds that came to his ears as he
stood there, in the shadow of the life-boat, was the
brazen clamor of a death cymbal. One of China's four
hundred millions had died in the night; now his spirit
was being escorted to the seventh heaven of his blessed
forefathers, by the death cymbal, clashing with a sober
din to drive the devils away from his late abode.
The shadow of the life-boat was rather unaccountably
attenuated; Peter turned around and looked into the
bland, unsmiling face of Jen, a Chinese deck-boy.
Pig-tails were coming back in style again. About six inches
of wispy, purple-black braid extended downward from
Jen's white cap. His face was quite yellow, and his
eyes were green. An understandable light came and
flickered across their satiny surface as Peter looked
inquiringly into them.
"Wanchee my?" he asked.
The deck-boy took a cautious and all inclusive look
of the broad, gray deck, bending head to look past the
giant funnels, the first of which stood about twenty
feet forward of them.
"Stay allatime on _King Asia_?" inquired the
Chinese, moiling his hands together and bowing slightly.
Peter gave him a blue-eyed, indolent stare.
"Maybe. Maybe not," he said. "What's on your mind, Jen?"
"You tell me what going do," replied the yellow
one meaningly. "Can do?"
"Mebbe can do," replied Peter, folding his hands.
"You run up to the place on Jen Kee Road as soon as
you catchee sampan. Tell man-man if I decide to do
anything I will drop in and tell him. You don't know,
Jen, but he knows that my word is good. If I decide to
go up-river I'll tell man-man. If I decide to do
nothing, I'll say nothing to man-man."
"Allee light, allee light," said Jen, backing away a
few steps. "You tell man-man, eh?"
As Peter watched the retreating skinny shoulders
bob up and down as they went away from him toward
the after ladder, he felt just a little more undecided than
he had five minutes earlier. He went into the wireless-room,
to straighten up the apparatus before locking the
door for the visit in Shanghai.
As he was locking the tool-box--the Chinese river
thieves would steal anything they could lay hands
on--he heard his name called in a silvery voice accompanied
by a man's pleasant laugh, and he went out on deck to
find that Mr. Andover, with the twins in tow, was all
dressed up for a trip ashore.
The twins and Anthony Andover were passengers,
bound on a sight-seeing trip through the East, and as
Peter Moore was a very impressionable young man, it
is only natural that the twins be discussed first, in
virtue of their loveliness.
Peter had first contemplated Peggy and Helen
Whipple in the _King of Asia's_ dining-room. It would
have been a rather impossible thing not to see Peggy and
Helen Whipple, if you were young, and with fair eyesight.
At the first dinner after leaving the Golden Gate
Peter had gone into the dining-room rather early, as
he skipped tiffin (by reason of an empty pocket) and
was ravenously hungry.
He had looked up over his first spoonful of
mulligatawny a la Capron to meet the clear, undistilled,
brown-eyed gaze of Peggy Whipple, who had seated
herself at the captain's table. In that liquid,
brown-eyed gaze had lurked a sparkle of mischief, a slightly
arrogant look of inquisitive scrutiny, and perhaps a
playful invitation.
As Peggy Whipple gave him that mischievous, liquid-brown
glance when he was in the act of lifting a level
soupspoonful to his lips, he did not, as a man might
do under the circumstances, spill the soup upon the
tablecloth, or back into the dish; nor did he pause in
the work of lifting the liquid to his mouth.
He did not have to look at the spoon to guide its
passage to his mouth. Without spilling a drop, he
captained the spoon to its destination, maintaining his
clear, deep-blue eyes upon the beautiful brown ones of
the young passenger. And, without lowering his eyes
once, he lifted the loaded spoon up twice in succession.
This skillful management brought a smile to the
pretty face of the girl. Perhaps she had expected him
to spill the soup under her glance; it was to be
expected; more than probably the thing had happened in
past episodes of Peggy, for she was distractingly fair
to look upon, and her turned-up nose should have
disarmed any man.
Her hair was golden and sleek and drawn back
straight from her low, white forehead and knotted
together in the back, calling attention to a neck that was
slim and beautifully proportioned. Pink and white and
gold described her. She seemed to bristle with a sort
of fidgety energy, as if she had so much youth and
loveliness stored up in her that she had a tremendous time
keeping it all within bounds.
After Peter had slowly, but not at all insolently or
impudently, taken all of this in, in the time required to
stow away three heaping spoonfuls of mulligatawny a
la Capron, by dead reckoning, she looked away from
him with a little pout.
Peter followed her glance. He had not noticed the
other girl before. It was evident that they were of the
same blood, but the other girl seemed older. She, too,
had sprung from a brown-eyed ancestry, and she, too,
was blond and pink and lovely, with the prettiest
fingers and finger-nails Peter had seen for some time.
Her glance, arising to meet his, was brown and very
calm; unlike her sister, she appeared to be grave, more
of the deliberate, thoughtful type.
It was in the shop of a Japanese silk merchant on
Motomatchi Chome that he had met them for the first
time. Several times on the trip across he had passed
them on the deck, always escorted by proud young men.
They were the most popular girls on shipboard.
Beauty rarely travels in pairs; these were unusual
twins.
Once, as Peter was swinging down the ladder from
topside, he came upon Peggy alone, looking rather blue.
It may have been that she was simply in repose; and
the contrast gave him that impression. Her eyes
dreamingly encountered his, and the mischievous light
flickered in them and instantly went out.
She ran her eyes down the white uniform with the
gold emblems of his profession at the lapels, dropped
her eyelids demurely, and seemed to wait. He hesitated,
and she stood still; but he passed on, leaving her
staring after him with a little pout. Obviously the
twins had traveled much!
CHAPTER II
It was on the night that the _King of Asia_ cleared Nagasaki for the
short run across the Yellow Sea into the flow of the Yangtze-Kiang that
Peter was sought out by that pleasant young man, Anthony Andover.
Ordinarily passengers were not allowed in the sacred quarters of the
wireless house. However, those who possessed daring spirits came up
anyway. Peggy Whipple came up there soon after that meeting on deck,
with permission from nobody, and Peter gave her about fifteen minutes
of his extremely important time on the average of nine times a day,
permitting her to adorn the extra chair in the wireless shack, where
she unconsciously revealed in her sudden and unexpected shiftings of
posture, several inches of adorable silken ankle. I think Peggy was
sadly in need of an elderly chaperone, and I am somehow under the
impression that Peggy very badly wanted Peter to make love to her. How
he resisted her speaks volumes for his quaint, mid-Victorian views
regarding woman.
And at the end of the fifteen minutes, after regaling her with tales of
the lands she was about to visit, he dismissed her, kindly but with
great firmness, and she was as obedient as a lamb.
Anthony Andover, who knew more about plows perhaps than the Egyptians,
gave him something else to think about. He looked up from his
instruments that evening to see a young man of medium height, slim of
build, and rather pale and sharp of mien.
"My name is Anthony Andover," he said in a brisk and business-like
voice. "I wonder if I could have a talk with you."
Peter told him to sit down, and he removed the heavy nickeled
head-pieces from his ears. He expected an important radio from the
Shanghai Station; but that could wait. He wondered what Anthony
Andover might have on his mind.