Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
match. In the flare he found that Kahn Meng was studying him shrewdly,
dispassionately.
"In the first place," began Kahn Meng, "let us settle the important
matter of price. I will promise you whatever you desire. I want you."
He spat into the darkness. "Why are you in Ching-Fu? I believed you
to be in America, but I could not find you. What brings you here?
Surely you were not planning to enter Len Yang again alone?"
Peter shook his head. "I came on another errand, which has nothing to
do with Len Yang. But"--he threw away the half consumed
cigarette--"you have made a mistake, Kahn Meng. The first matter to
settle is the more important one of identity."
"Take me just as I am," pleaded Kahn Meng earnestly. "We have one
desire, I know, in common--to clean up that horrible city! You have
visited Len Yang. You know the wretched condition of the
miners--slaves, poor devils. Perhaps you have seen them at nightfall
coming from the shaft, dripping with the blood-red of the cinnabar,
starving--blind!"
"I have seen all that," agreed Peter, grimly.
"Ah! But are you acquainted with that man's methods? Do you know that
his corrupt influence has extended into every nation of Asia? His
organization is more perfect than any eastern government. His system
of espionage puts those of Japan and Germany to shame! You must know!
You have encountered his underlings. Oh, I have heard of the Romola
Borria affair. Your escape was masterly! I believe you astounded him."
Kahn Meng paused and puffed long at his cigarette.
"Think, Kahn Meng, what might be accomplished," said Peter fervently,
"if the power he wields, that tremendous human machine--hundreds and
thousands of men--were devoted to the proper ends! Think what could be
done for China!"
Kahn Meng turned quickly. His eyes seemed to shine above the ruby glow
of his cigarette.
"I wanted you to say that!" he exclaimed, enthusiastically. "The thing
has been in my mind for years--ever since I was a child! We can do it!
We can!"
"Yet one thousand men cannot enter Len Yang. It is a fortress."
"There is another way into Len Yang--by the mines. It cuts off three
days of the journey. I remember it as a child. Tremendous black
ravines lead to the entrance from the merchants' trail, and the opening
is so small that you could pass it a thousand times without suspecting.
Will you accompany us, Peter Moore--Naradia and I and our followers?
We leave at dawn." He waited anxiously.
Peter shook his head regretfully. The song of adventure was musical to
his ears, but he could not leave with Kahn Meng in the morning. There
was Miss Lorimer--in Kialang.
"I cannot leave Ching-Fu until to-morrow night."
"That will be as well, perhaps," assented Kahn Meng after a moment's
thought. "We will rest for the night in the Lenchuen Pass. It is to
the right of the black road. My sentries will be watching for you."
CHAPTER XI
Peter shot the bolt and listened to the sad grumble of the river as he
endeavored to adjust this strange incident to the stranger events of
the very full evening.
Not until the mysterious Kahn Meng had said his good-night did Peter
realize how exhausted he was.
He looked at his watch, a thin gold affair, which had ticked faithfully
during all of his adventures, and was exceedingly astonished that the
night had already flown to the hour of four-thirty.
Dawn would come very soon, and with the first peep of the sun he was to
start for Kialang and Eileen.
The lamp smoked sleepily overhead; far away the great river sang its
bass song.
He must be up at dawn. What a question-mark was Kahn Meng! A Harvard
graduate--and a native of the red city! And what an adorable creature
was the girl Naradia! Her eyes were like jade, her lips like poppy
petals....
A crash of sound, a blaze of golden light, aroused him. He sat up,
dodging a sunbeam which had flicked his eyelids. Shrill voices came
from a distance. The odor of manure exhaled by the caravan sheds
floated into the room, and Peter jumped up front the couch with an
angry grunt. His heart was heavy with the guilt of the man who has
overslept.
The watch ticked, and the neat, black hands had covered an amazing
amount of ground; it was nearly tiffin-time.
The shrill, distant voices continued. Curiously, Peter looked out.
It was a beautiful sunlit morning, as clear as spring water. Miles
away the sun shone on the yellow haunches of the range, altering them
to a range of heavy gold; and gleamed tenderly on the paddy fields,
black and ripely green.
Peter lowered his eyes to the square formed by the intersection of a
number of alleys some distance beyond the caravansary. A sizable mob
was collected in this enclosure; he estimated that there were at least
a thousand pagan-Chinese assembled, in ring formation--a giant ring,
dozens deep, and centered upon a small focussing spot of white.
The spot of white occupied the precise center of the square, and Peter
studied it for some moments out of idle curiosity. Crowning the white
object was a smaller spot of chestnut-brown. He dashed out of his room
and down the stairs without even pausing for his hat.
Peter gained the edge of the crowd, and he bored into it, scattering
protesting old ladies and chattering old men as ruthlessly as if they
had been unfruitful stalks of rice.
It was a desperate fight to the center of that mob, for others were as
curious as Peter. Then, over the swaying shoulders he caught a second
glimpse of the chestnut-brown. It was a woman's hair, and it was
familiar in arrangement.
He broke into an arena not more than nine feet in diameter in which
were three objects: a wooden cask, upturned, a leather hand-bag, and a
small and exceedingly pretty young woman. Her cheeks were flushed, her
eyes were gray and sweet, and her mouth was like an opening rosebud.
"Eileen----" he cried.
"Why, Peter Moore!" she gasped.
He rushed to take her, but she held up her palms, retreating.
He laughed. "What under the seven suns are you doing in Ching-Fu--and
Kialang--and China? What's the meaning?"
He observed that a snow-white apron extended from her dimpled chin to
her small ankles.
"This is my office hour," she said severely.
"But what does this mean--this?" he exploded, gesturing wildly toward
the circle of attentive onlookers.
"My clinic!" She smiled.
"You're not practising medicine out here--in this street!" he
ejaculated.
"Indeed I am," she replied. "Some of these people have been waiting
their turns since daylight. I returned from Kialang an hour ago. And
I'll work until I collapse. I must. I wish I could multiply myself by
a thousand. There's not another doctor within miles. You can watch,
if you'd like," she added, then called shrilly.
An old woman appeared, and went scurrying, returning immediately with a
clean, wooden bucket filled with hot water.
Eileen removed from the hand-bag what appeared to be a wallet.
Stripping a rubber band from this she revealed a row of shining
surgical knives. Then she produced from the black bag several bottles
and a roll of absorbent cotton.
"Eyes," she told him as her hand was swallowed again by the black bag.
A child, a river boy, was pushed forward by a squinting mother.
Quaking fearfully, he sat down on the cask at the girl's feet.
She turned to Peter. "This child has been without sight for a month.
Without this operation he would remain blind forever. To-morrow he
will see again."
"You're wonderful!" Peter exclaimed.
At the gentle touch the child's loud whining ceased. She lifted one of
the swollen lids. The boy did not flinch.
"Filth caused this," she explained. "The Chinese are the dirtiest race
on earth, anyway," she added, dipping a clump of cotton into an
antiseptic wash and rinsing the patient's eyes. "Where there is too
much dirt, there is blindness. One-fourth of the population in this
section of China are blind. They go to 'fortune tellers,' and they
remain blind. In nine cases out of ten the simplest of operations
followed by care will cure this type of blindness."
"Good enough; but will they be careful afterward?" Peter was curious to
know.
"Once their sight is given back to them, they follow directions to a T.
I'm leaving behind me a trail of the cleanest Chinamen you ever laid
eyes on!"
She became silent, and so did Peter, who watched, hardly daring to
breathe, the swift, sure dartings of the tiny knife in her white
fingers. It was done in a jiffy; and there seemed to be on pain.
"Shouldn't you have an operating-room?" inquired Peter, as she bound up
the child's eyes in gauze.
She gave him a bright, professional smile. "Peter, I've learned to
operate with a thousand hooting infidels crowding closer than this. In
Nanking I was nearly mobbed."
Peter looked concerned. "Did they harm you?"
"Oh, no! They wanted their children, their wives, and their virtuous
mothers to see the light of day again."
"Eileen, you're an angel!"
"Be careful, Peter, or I'll kiss you in front of all these people."
She blushed and smiled. "I think I was very bold to come up here all
alone. Don't you?"
Peter grumbled something which escaped her.
She sat down wearily on the cask and looked up at him forlornly. "I
thought it would be a lark; but it isn't. It's the hardest kind of
work. There seem to be so many blind people--and I get tired--furious!"
"Can't we break away from this mob and have a little chin-chin by
ourselves?"
"You're not anxious, Peter?"
"This is not Shanghai," he rejoined sententiously. "Ching-Fu is not a
healthy spot for me--or for you. I've been watched. Perhaps, this
very minute----" He stopped and looked at the dour faces pressed about
them.
She shrugged. "Are you going on to Len Yang this time, Peter?"
He nodded slightly. "Perhaps."
"With me?"
"Without you," he stated firmly, dimly conscious of a stir on the
fringe of their audience.
"It isn't fair," she murmured; "I've come all this way----" She
touched her lips with the tip of a pink tongue. What she might have
added was forestalled by rising confusion on the edge of the crowd.
There were harsh voices, shrill voices; then these sounds were dwarfed
by the thunder of furious hoofs.
White with the dust of the lower trail a troop of Mongolian horsemen,
riding high in their jeweled saddles, swept into the square, shouting.
Lashing their horses, they drove into the gathering with the fury of
Cossacks.
Peter was thrown to one side by a tall man whom he had taken for a
peasant. He tugged at his pocket, but the coolie was fighting his way
toward the horsemen.
Indifferent to her struggles and screams, this giant carried Eileen in
naked, brawny arms.
Peter leaped after, shouting and cursing at those who stood in his way.
Some one tripped him. He regained his footing, shot his fist into the
jaw of an argumentative youth, and struggled on.
The onlookers were scattering with loud and frightened squeals, running
into one another, gathering in bewildered groups, darting for doorways,
like sheep attacked by a wolf pack.
Then a black horse swept so close to Peter that the stirrup stripped
the buttons from his tunic. A heavy whip stung him across the
shoulders.
When he recovered from this blow the struggling girl was yards away,
still struggling, but no longer screaming. She had been transferred to
the arms of a giant Mongol, who evidently was the leader of this pack.
Peter whipped out the automatic and let go a burst at the horseman who
now blocked his way; and the Mongolian, in the act of lifting a knife
from its holster-scabbard, dipped across the animal's flank, with his
eyes rolling toward heaven, his foot caught in one stirrup.