Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
manner of an express elevator. But the wireless house chair was bolted
to the floor.
Wrinkles of perplexity creased his forehead. Had this stuttering
static anything in kind with those other formless events? If not, what
terrified creature was invoking his aid in this blundering fashion?
A simple test would prove if the signals were of local origin--from a
miniature apparatus aboard the ship. He hoped anxiously for the
opportunity. And in less than a half hour the opportunity was given
him.
A tarred line scraped the white belly of the life-boat which swelled up
from the deck outside the door, giving forth a dull, crunching sound
with each convulsion of the engines. The square area above it danced
with reeling stars, moiled by a purple-black heaven.
Peter, who had been studying the tarred rope, swung about in the chair
and dropped an agitated finger to the silvered wire which rested
against the glittering detector crystal. A tiny, blue-red flame
snapped from his finger to the crystal chip! The frantic operator was
aboard the _Vandalia_!
The broken stridulations took on the coherence of intelligible dots and
dashes. The former blundering was absent, as if the tremulous hand of
the sender was steadied by the grip of a dominant necessity; the
signals clarified by the pressure of terror.
"_Do not try to find me_," it stammered and halted.
Some maddened pulse seemed to leap to life in Peter's throat. His
fingers, working at the base of the tiny instrument, were cold and damp.
"_You must wait_," rasped the unknown sender, faltering. "_You must
help me_! _You are watched._"
For a breath there was no sound in the receivers other than the beating
of his heart.
_Click_! _Snap_! _Sputter_! Then: "_Wait for the lights of China_!"
The receivers rattled to the red blotter, and Peter rushed out on deck.
Slamming the door, he stared at the spurting streams of white in the
racing water. Indescribably feminine was the fumbling touch of that
unknown sender!
A grating--hollow, metallic--occurred in the lee of the wireless cabin.
A footfall sounded, coincident with the heavy collision into his side
of an unwieldy figure whose hands, greasy and hot, groped over his.
Both grunted.
"'Sthat you, Sparks?" They were the German gutturals of Luffberg, one
of the oilers on the twelve-to-six watch. "Been fixin' the ventilator.
Chief wondered if you were up. Wants to know why you ain't been down
to say hello."
Peter decided to lay a portion of his difficulties before Minion.
CHAPTER VI
The first operator had developed for himself at an early stage of his
occupancy of the _Vandalia's_ wireless house the warm friendship of the
chief engineer. A wireless man is far more dependent for his peace of
mind upon the engine-room crew than upon the forward crew. The latter
has only one interest in him: that he stick to his instruments; while
the engine-room crew strictly is the source from which his blessings
flow, his blessings taking the invisible, vital form of electric
current.
Wireless machines are gourmands of electricity. They are wastrels.
Not one-tenth of the energy sucked from the ship's power wires finds
its way through the maze of coils and jars to the antennae between the
mastheads.
The _Vandalia's_ engine-room equipment was installed long before
wireless telegraphy was a maritime need and a government requirement.
Hence, her dynamos protested vigorously against the strain imposed upon
them by the radio machine. Any electric engine is unlike any steam
engine. Steam engines will do so much work--no more. Dynamos or
motors will do so much work--and then more. They can be overloaded,
unsparingly. But the strain tells. Stout, dependable parts become
hot, wear away, crumble, snap.
In the typical case of the _Vandalia_, the question of whether or not
the wireless men should be provided with all of the current they
required, was narrowed down to individuals.
If Minion had disliked Peter Moore he could have slowed down the
dynamos at the critical times when the operator needed the high
voltage; but Peter had had encounters with chief engineers before. He
had at first courted Minion's good graces with fair cigars, radio
gossip and unflagging courtesy. And on discovering that the chief was
a sentimentalist at heart and a poet by nature, he had presented him
with an inexpensively bound volume of his favorite author. Daring, but
a master-stroke! He had not since wanted for voltage, and plenty of it.
He pondered the advisability of taking Minion entirely into his
confidence as he followed the sweated, undershirted shoulders to the
engine-room galley, and thence across the oily grill of shining steel
bars which comprised one of the numerous and hazardous superfloors
which surrounded the cylinders.
Minion was nursing a stubbornly warm bearing in the port shaft alley.
The fat cylinder revolved with a pleasant ringing noise, the blurring
knuckles of the frequent joints vanishing down the yellow, vaulted
alley to a point of perspective, where the shaft projected through the
hull. The floundering of the great propellers seemed alternately to
compress and expand the damp atmosphere.
The sad, white face of Minion arose from the dripping flanks of the
journal as he caught sight of Peter in the arched entrance. A pale
smile flickered at his lips.
The chief did not in any wise reflect his monstrously heaving,
oil-dripping surroundings. He was a small, deliberate man, with oceans
of repressed energies. His skin had the waxy whiteness of a pond lily.
An exquisitely trimmed black moustache adorned his mouth. The deep
brown eyes of a visionary rested beneath the gentle, scythe-like curves
of thin and pointed eyebrows.
"You look worried," vouchsafed Minion as their hands met. His quiet
voice had a clarity which projected it nicely through the bedlam of
engine-room noises. "Why you up so early--or so late? Anything wrong?"
Peter took out a cigarette and nervously lighted it at the sputtering
flame Minion held for him. "Mr. Minion, something's in the wind," he
complained, and hesitated. He was at the verge of telling what he had
seen on the promenade deck, of the confusion on the pierhead, of the
unaccountable behavior of the woman in the window above Ah Sih King's,
of the suspicious attitude of Blanchard, of the recent plea for help.
Again something checked him.
"Mr. Minion, what is Len Yang? And where is it?"
The scythe-like brows contracted. Minion's lucid, brown eyes rested on
his lips, seeming to await an elaboration of the query. His features
suddenly had stiffened. His whole attitude appeared on the moment to
have undergone a change, from one of friendly interest to a keen
defensiveness.
"Len Yang is a city in China. Why?"
The operator suspected that Minion was sparring for time.
"Where is Len Yang?"
"Do you mean, how does one reach Len Yang?"
"Either."
"Mr. Moore"--the suspicion fell from the chief's expression, leaving it
calm and grave--"you are not an amateur. You have discretion. The man
who controls Len Yang is the _Vandalia's_ owner."
"Why, I understood the Pacific and Western Atlantic Transport Line
owned her!"
"This man--he is a Chinese. Oh, I've never seen him, Mr. Moore. One
of the richest of China's unknown aristocrats, the central power of the
cinnabar ring. You have never gone up the river with us to load at
Soo-chow?"
Peter shook his head. "Cinnabar from his mine is brought down the
Yangtze on junks and transferred at Soo-chow?"
Minion seemed not to be listening. His eyes were stagnant with an
appalling retrospect. "A terrible place--horrible! Five years ago I
visited Len Yang. Hideous people with staring eyes, dripping the
blood-red slime of the mines! And girls! Young girls! Beautiful--for
a while." He sighed. "They work in that vicious hole!"
"Young girls?" Peter exclaimed.
"Imported. From everywhere. I tried to find why. There is no
explanation. They come--they work--they become hideous--they die! It
is his habit. No one understands. Poor things!"
Peter was staring at him narrowly. "Quite sure he imports them to work
in the mines?"
Minion nodded vehemently. "I made sure of that. I went up the river
as _his_ guest. Trouble with the seepage pumps. Hundreds of them
drowned like rats. Len Yang is near the trade route into India.
Leprosy--filth--vermin! God! You should have seen the rats!
Monsters! They eat them. Poor devils! And live in holes carved out
of the ruby mud."
He tore the clump of waste from his left hand and ground it under his
heel.
"And in the center of this frightfulness--his palace! Snow-white
marble, whiter than the Taj by moonlight. But its base is stained red,
a creeping blood-red from the cinnabar. Damn him!"
"No escape?" Peter muttered.
"Escape!" Minion shouted. "_Dang hsin_! They call him the Gray
Dragon. He reaches over every part of Asia. That is no exaggeration.
Take my advice, Mr. Moore, if you have stumbled upon one of his
schemes--_ni chue ba_--don't meddle!"
The white face writhed, and for a new reason Peter smothered the
impulse to tell the agitated Minion what he had seen. Their
conversation drifted to general shipboard matters. When he left he
borrowed the chief engineer's master key on the excuse that he had
locked himself out of the wireless cabin.
Besides a stiffening head wind the ship was now laboring into piling
head seas. Far beyond the refulgence of the scattered lights stars
shone palely. Flecks of streaming white were making their appearance
at the toppling wave crests.
A hail of stinging spray, flung inboard by a long gust, struck Peter's
face sharply as he struggled forward, rattling like small shot against
the vizor of his cap and smarting his eyes. The needle-like drops were
icy cold. The elastic fabric of the _Vandalia_ shivered, her broad
nose sinking into a succession of black mountains. Peak gutters roared
as the cascading water was sucked back to the untiring surface.
Gaining the cross entrance, he braced his strength against the forces
of wind which imprisoned the door, and crept down the passage.
His heart pounded as his groping fingers outlined the cold iron
numerals on the panel. Nervously, he inserted the master key into the
door lock, and paused to listen.
Rhythmic snoring moaned from an opened transom near by. What other
night sounds might have been abroad were engulfed by the imminent
throbbing in the engine-room well.
Stateroom forty-four's transom was closed. The lock yielded. The door
yawned soundlessly. A round, portentous eye glimmered on the opposite
wall. An odor of recently wet paint and of new bed linen met him. The
excited pulsing of his heart outsounded the engines.
He shut the door cautiously, not to awake the occupants of the berths,
and fancied he could again hear the warning sibilance of the whisper,
but in sleep, perhaps drawn through unconscious lips.
Eagerly, his hand slipped over the enameled wall and found the electric
switch. Turning, to cover all corners of the stateroom he snapped on
the light.
Stateroom forty-four, through whose doorway he could have sworn to have
seen a sandaled foot vanish less than three hours previous, was empty!
The blue-flowered side curtains of the white enameled bunks were draped
back in ornamental stiffness. Below the pillows the upper sheets were
neatly furled like incoming billows on a coral beach. He threw open
the closet door. Bare! Not one sign of occupancy could he find, and
he looked everywhere.
As he made to leave the room a small oblong of white paper was thrust
under the door. He hesitated in surprise, stooped to seize it and