Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
"Mr. Moore, I'm in something of a devil of a fix, and I think you're
the man who can get me out of it."
"Shoot," said Peter, lighting a yellow cigarette and passing the box.
"Chinks?" Trouble to Peter always meant Chinks; they were his symbol
of danger.
"No, no! You see, all of my life I've been--well, a city man. The
biggest adventure I ever had was a fist fight with my foreman. Now----"
"Did you lick him?" asked Peter with concern.
Anthony nodded reminiscently. "Blacked his eyes and busted his nose!"
"Good for you! Go ahead with your story."
"I've met a girl on the steamer, and according to her way of looking at
things, I lack about five thousand different parts of being a hero.
You know the girl. That's why I'm bothering you like this."
"Not bothering me a bit. Who's the girl?"
"Peggy." Anthony caressed the word as if it were honey. "Peggy
Whipple. Of course, the first thing I want to make sure of is, am I
stepping on anybody's toes? If I am, I'll just go ahead, and play my
own game my own way. If it's to be a case of a fight----"
"Hold on a moment," interrupted Peter. "I don't quite follow you.
Whose toes do you think you're stepping on?"
"Well, Peggy comes up here to the wireless shack so much, that I--I----"
"Oh, not a bit of it, old man. Peggy's a nice girl. I like her.
That's all."
"I--I'm mighty glad," said Anthony earnestly. "You know, she's pretty
mad about you, but as long as you're not interested the way I am,
well----" He bit his lip nervously, and went on: "I think you'd agree
with me that it would be rather foolish of her, and very disappointing
and disillusioning later on for her to marry the kind of a man she
thinks she wants to marry. She has a notion that the man she marries
must be a cross between Adonis, and--and Diamond Dick! She wants a man
who carries six-shooters in all his pockets, and who fears neither God,
man, nor the devil!"
"A regular hell buster!"
"That's it! Down in her heart I think she cares for me a little bit.
But I'm nothing but a plain, ordinary business man. I never did
anything devilish in my life. There's nothing romantic about me. Look
at this necktie! Did you ever see a hero wearing a plain black
four-in-hand? Never! Did you ever see a hero wearing nice tan oxfords
without a spot of mud on them? If I can somehow manage to make her
think for a few minutes that I've got heroic stuff in me, she may
listen to a little sense. She tells me--rather she threw it in my
face--that you are going to take Helen and her on a sight-seeing trip
into some of the darkest holes in Shanghai. You know the ropes, and
there's no danger, of course."
"None at all," said Peter.
"Well, I want to know if you'll let me go along. I'll stand every
expense; I've got money to burn! Let me in on it, and----"
"But there isn't going to be a chance for anybody to be a hero. I'm
going to take those girls to the safest place in Shanghai. A New
England church would be a cavern of iniquity alongside of it!"
Anthony laid his fingers along his knees.
"Well, couldn't you stir up something? That's my idea. I'll leave it
to you to crack up some danger, not real danger, of course--we can't
let those girls get near any real danger. But we can start a fake
fight--or something--and give me a chance to play the hero, to rescue
Peggy in my arms; that sort of stuff, you know." He looked at Peter
foolishly.
Peter stroked his nose. "It might be done," he said. "I'll see what I
can do."
Anthony arose, extended his hand, and said: "Of course, I'll need a
revolver."
"Load it with blanks," advised Peter. "You know, some people think
it's bad luck to kill a Chink."
Anthony was eyeing him curiously. "Do you?" he asked.
Peter nodded his head slowly. "Sometimes," he said.
CHAPTER III
Anthony and the twins called for Peter as soon as they could tear
themselves away from the many fascinating incidents attendant upon
coming to an anchorage in the Whang-poo-Kiang.
It was late in the afternoon when the first company tug came down-river
from Shanghai for passengers. And it was nearly dusk, the golden-brown
evening of China, when they were decanted upon the public landing stage
at the International Concession.
Anthony was for going directly to the Hotel Astor for dinner, but at
Peter's suggestion he and the twins boarded a street-car for the ride
to Bubbling Wells.
Peter stood for a number of moments in indecision as the Bubbling Wells
tram went up the bund with the slow flood of victorias, rickshaws, and
wheelbarrows. It was now about seven o'clock, with the sun hidden
under a horizon of dull bronze. Street lights were coming on,
twinkling in a long silver serpent along the broad thoroughfare, rising
in a grotesque hump over the Soochow bridge, and becoming lost in the
American quarter.
He would meet Anthony and the twins in the dining-room. Whoever got
there first would wait. He expected to be there long before his three
friends came back from Bubbling Wells.
A rickshaw coolie was wheedling him at his elbow but he paid no
attention. His eyes were searching the street. It took him several
seconds to reconcile himself to the fleeting apparition. What was this
girl doing in Shanghai?
The rickshaw had passed, proceeding at unabated speed in the direction
of Native City.
The rickshaw boy was still making guttural sounds, softly plucking at
his sleeve. The shafts of the rickshaw were close to his feet. But
Peter was still undecided.
"Allee right," said Peter, briskly. "French concession."
That was the direction in which the other rickshaw was headed.
He climbed aboard, and they veered out into the north-bound traffic.
The girl in the rickshaw was about one block in the lead, and had no
intention evidently of accelerating her coolie's pace or of turning
back. She had left all decision to him, and his decision was to ask
her a few questions.
His coolie trotted heavily, looking neither to the right nor left, with
his pigtail snapping from side to side, as his head bent low.
"Follow _lan-si_ veil--savvy?"
"My savvy," returned the coolie, heading toward the narrow alley of
filth and sputtering oil _dongs_, breathing the odor of refuse, of
cooking food.
Peter's heart was beginning to respond to the excitement. Did she have
some message to convey to him that she could not trust to the openness
of the bund at the jetty?
Suddenly the rickshaw ahead swerved sharply to the right into an alley
that was perfectly dark. Its single illumination was a pale-blue light
which burned before a low building set apart from the others at the far
end.
Here the first rickshaw stopped. A ghostly figure seemed to float to
the ground. There was a clink of coins. A door opened, letting out a
wide shaft of orange light which spattered across the paving,
flattening itself against the grim wall of the building across the way.
Peter caught the bronze glint of wires on the roof under a pale moon.
He knocked sharply on the door, and stood to one side. It was a habit
he had learned from long experience--that trick of stepping to one side
when he knocked at a suspicious door. The door moved outward a few
inches. A long, yellow face, with a thick, projecting under lip,
peered out. Peter pushed the man aside and entered.
He found himself in a low corridor of smoked wood, with fat candles
disposed along the walls at intervals of several yards, on a narrow,
lacquered rail. One of three doors was open.
A match was struck, the head glowing in a semi-circle of sputtering
iridescence before the wood itself kindled. The hand holding the match
was trembling; the weak flame fluttered to such an extent that he was
denied momentarily a glimpse of the owner of the hand.
A whisper was conveying an order to him. "Please shut the door, Mr.
Moore."
He reached for the door and closed it firmly in the face of the man who
had let him into this place.
When he turned, the trembling hand was applying the match flame to the
wick of an open lamp, a rather ornate _dong_. As the flame rose
higher, casting its steady, mild luminance, he caught a glitter of
metal, of polished rubber; one end of the room was almost filled with
machinery.
"Romola Borria!"
She seemed to have undergone a great change. The beautiful face that
had lured him once into the jaws of death was dominated now by a
wistful and tender sadness, as though this girl had gone through an
epoch of self-torture since they had last been together.
Yet she was still beautiful; it was as if her beauty had been refined
in an intense fire. Her mouth was sad, her great brown eyes glowed
with an inexpressible sadness, and her face, once oval and proud,
seemed narrower, whiter, and, by many degrees, of a finer mold.
She was examining him broodingly; there was a reluctant timidity in her
eyes; it was such a look as you may see years afterward in the woman
you once have cast aside for some other, perhaps not quite so worthy.
"Well, you have found me, Peter," she said in a faint and tired voice,
coming slowly toward him.
"Yes," he admitted, lamely: "I saw you passing the jetty. I
followed--naturally. I have just come from America."
"Oh." Her voice expressed no surprise. "You came for me, Peter?"
"I thought you were dead," he confessed.
"Well, I am a hard one to kill!" A tiny smile flickered across her
fine lips. "You are not married--to Eileen?"
"No--and never!" he said dully.
"But you must be in love! You are always in love--with some one."
"I am in love with no one."
"Not even----"
"I am in love with no one."
"Nor am I," said Romola Borria quietly. It seemed to come from her as
a vast and reluctant confession. "I loved only one man, and my love
for him is quite dead. If I should rake over the embers--oh, but I
have raked them over, Peter, many, many times--and I have found not one
single small ember glowing! When love dies, you know, it requires a
great fire to rekindle it. Oh, I have suffered!"
"He--is dead?"
She smiled again, rather ironically. "Can a man live with a bullet in
his heart?"
"I--I saw. I thought--but what does it matter what I thought?" He was
trying to inject some of his old spirit into his voice. It was rather
difficult, this business of laughing at the funeral of love. "Romola,
you are more beautiful!"
"I have suffered," she said, in the same restrained voice.
He turned away with a shrug. He, too, had suffered, but in a somewhat
different light. He was examining with a professional eye the heap of
apparatus which was arranged in splendid order along the back of the
small room.
"I am studying. You see, Peter," she explained, in the same rather
recriminatory tones, "I was rather fond of you at one time----"
"Romola, please----"
"And because it was your profession I became interested in it. I heard
the message you sent last night--to--to the place on Jen Kee Road. I
was quite worried for a while."
"That was why you happened along the bund about the time the boat came
up-river?"
"Perhaps." She smiled vaguely.
"You wanted to find out if I still cared enough for you to----"
"Follow me? Yes, Peter; I think that was why."
"Then you didn't know I was on my way to China?"
"No, Peter, I knew nothing."
"Aren't you connected with my good friend, the man with the sea-lion
mustaches, in Len Yang?"
Romola gave a short gasp. "I never was connected with him."
"But you told me you were--back there on the _Persian Gulf_!"
She shook her head slowly, with a gentle firmness.
"No. I did not tell you that. I have seen him; yes. But I was never
in his employ. It was Emiguel Borria, my late and--may I say?--my