Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
an interested audience. Most of my captives at this stage are
cringing, are kissing my feet."
The snarling grin left his lips again, and his mood became strangely
soft, like dead flesh, so Peter thought, as he waited--with that pistol
at his backbone!
"I intend telling you an amazing story, which you may or may not
credit. I am telling it--this confession--partly because I dislike the
look in your blue eyes. Like everyone else, you loathe me. But I will
erase that look. I intend to show you I am even more human than you!
"By Buddha, I will tell that story to you--you, Peter Moore, the most
fortunate man in all China this hour. Think, before I begin, of that
mandarin, that bungling Javanese merchant, who, also, are about to die.
Then forget all else--and listen.
"This took place many years ago, when I was a young man, like yourself.
I, too, loved a woman. Can you understand me? I, too, once loved a
woman, a maiden of the Punjab. I can conceive her in the veil of my
memory still. Eyes like dusty stars, skin the color of the Tibetan
dawn, the dawn that you may never again look upon.
"Her heart was gold, so I thought. Yet it was dross. On a night in
springtime, in the bazaar at Mangalore, we two first met. I have not
forgotten. That night I fell in love with the white orchid from the
Punjab. She was more beautiful to me than life or death, a feast of
beauty.
"Len Yang was mine then, and I was a rich prince, but not so rich as
now. Drunkenly I was casting my gold about the bazaar when we met.
She saw me--and she smiled! It was the first time any woman had smiled
upon me, and I was alarmed and troubled. I was no more handsome than
now. I was the man that no one loved. _Chuh-seng_--the beast--was my
name even then, among those who tolerated my friendship because of my
fluent gold.
"And when the Punjab maiden smiled upon me, I thought to myself:
'_Chuh-seng_, love has come at last to sweeten your bitter heart.'
What should a young lover have done? I--I bought the bazaar and
presented it to her--on bended knees!
"She confessed that she could love me, despite my ugliness, this white
orchid of the plains. Peter Moore, do not look at me. You can
believe--if you do not look. She kissed me--on my lips! Again she
said she loved me. Had I been a thousand times uglier, she would have
loved me a thousand times more passionately! Heaven had joined us.
And I forgave my enemies, renewed my vows at the wheel, and blessed
every virgin star!
"Love had come to me at last! Me--the most hideous in all of Asia.
And I believed her. What would you have done, Peter Moore--you who
know so well the heart of woman? Never mind. I believed everything.
"We lingered in Mangalore. But I did not know then of the Singhalese
merchant--the trader who owned three miserable camels. He possessed
not handsomeness, but the romantic glamour which you possess, Peter the
Brazen! Reveling in my love, I was as blind as these imbeciles in my
mines. Our child was born.
"She could have taken more, had she not been so lovestruck. She could
have had my all--my gems, my pearls, and rubies, and diamonds, more
colossal than the treasure of any raja--my mines which dripped with the
precious mercury!
"Yet she stole only my gold which was convenient, and went out into the
starlit night with the Singhalese trader, to share the romance of the
blinding desert--the Singhalese trader, a man of no caste at all!
Love? That was my love!"
The hideous, gray face retreated behind talons as though to blot out
the thought of that ancient betrayal. When the talons again dropped
down, the dead softness of the face was replaced by the former sneer.
This change was quite shocking.
The beast was laughing harshly. "If I could not have love, I could at
least have hate! I have hated more passionately than any man has ever
loved!"
Peter said nothing to this, although the gray lips closed and the green
eyes looked at him expectantly, almost demanding comment. Surely this
creature was insane, with his room of the green death, his wild tales
of love of a Punjab maiden, of wholesale hate.
The Gray Dragon seemed irritated. "What have you to say now?"
"I was only wondering," said Peter, as if suddenly tired, "when that
pistol is to explode at my back."
"There is yet time," muttered his host. "No man has yet left this room
in contempt of me! Can you believe I have lied?" he snarled. "Why,
you fool!" he croaked. "I will teach you! What do you suppose has
become of that other one whom you met at the _weng_ into the hills? Do
you imagine my men were not in his camp? Every inch of the way you two
were watched.
"And what has become of your prudence? You who defied me, who escaped
me--undone by a woman! She is why you are here. Because you are such
a fool you shall die. I might have relented. I thought you were proof
against love. Is any one? Is any one proof against it but me? Ah----"
He looked eagerly beyond Peter, and Peter heard a frightened sob, then
a little cry, as the door closed heavily.
CHAPTER XV
She flew across the room to him, and pressed her hands to his cheeks.
Her eyes were sparkling with tears, and her face was very pale. Only
her lips, which were everlastingly bright, gave color to that
distressed young face.
"Peter!" she moaned. "Oh, I was so afraid!" She lowered her voice.
"What is to become of us?"
He looked down at her and forced a smile to his lips.
"We who are about to die----" he began grimly.
She gave him a twisted smile as his arms tightened about her. He loved
her for that courage.
With his arm at her waist he turned. He had observed that the Gray
Dragon had spoken truly as regarded the armed coolie at his back.
Their captor bent forward and fixed upon them the most curious of
glances. His merciless, green eyes ran from Eileen's tumbled chestnut
hair to her small, tan boots--then he regarded Peter with the same
intensity, and thereupon he seemed to be weighing the doomed lovers as
a unit, or as an idea.
A devilish smile cracked his lips.
"So this is love?" he cackled. "This is the young woman to whom you
have thrown your life away--after most splendid resistance--you, Peter
the Brazen! Do you still love her?" He pointed a crooked forefinger
at Eileen. "Tell me, would you desert him, in this first flush of your
maiden love, for a handsomer man--and steal his gold, after he laid the
earth at your feet? Would you do that?"
Methodically the talons stroked the sea-weed mustache.
"You are too anxious for death. You are romantic. Youth does have
such ideas. Even I, _Chuh-seng_, have such notions. Death? Why does
your little mind single out such simple punishment--you--lovers?
Romantically you long for death, because in the next world you would
come together again--in the lover's eternity of heaven.
"But I have a far more imaginative scheme. Separation! How does that
appeal to you?" He leaned forward and watched them. "I have an
excellent plan. One of you shall work until the end of his life in
this mine, as beautiful captives in the past quarter century have
slaved and died; the other shall labor until the end of life in my
quarries, not more than one hundred miles from Len Yang.
"Then you will not speak of death. You will struggle and you will grow
old long before your time, as the others have done, hoping that vain
hope of again meeting. And I shall grant your wish! Years from now,
when youth and the divine passion of youth have flown--when only the
bitter dregs of that rapturous love remain--then you shall be
reunited." He cackled humorously in his treble.
"O Buddha! How long have I waited for such an opportunity? How long?
How long? Is it twenty years--or forty--or a thousand--since that
night in the bazaar at Mangalore?" His green eyes rolled to the green
ceiling. And his mood underwent another vast change, this creature of
monster moods.
"Are you grateful to me, you two? You should be! It was I who brought
you together--I, the cruelest man in all Asia! It must have been a
divine night, that night on the great river, Peter Moore, when she came
into your arms. Love blazed in your hearts that night; and this
gray-eyed witch said, with downcast eyes: 'I like you, Peter Moore!'
What difference what she said? Any words would have dripped as much
with love!"
He sprang to his feet, groaning, his evil countenance undergoing
convulsions, as of terrific inner spasms.
"You shall not have that!" he shouted. "You shall not have love! What
I have done, I shall undo! You shall live apart. Love has been
refused me; love is refused all who come within my reach! That is my
decision. Nor shall you have death. One of you to the quarry--the
other to the mines. I shall be generous. You may make your choice.
And _that_ is my decision!"
The lovers stared at him. The vicious plan had gripped Peter's
imagination. Gone was all thought of the pistol, which lay even now in
the palm of his hand. One shot would have silenced the beast forever;
but he had forgotten such things as bullets and pistols.
He could realize only that, even before their first kiss had been
exchanged, they would be torn apart.
The color had receded from Peter's skin and eyes; he looked very much
nearer forty than thirty. And Eileen was reflecting that despairing
attitude. She could think only of him toiling wretchedly in the mines
or quarries, striving against a fate as unfriendly, as unyielding, as a
wall of cold granite.
The Gray Dragon sank back, with his chest heaving. His features were
working. The spasm had exhausted him; and the green brilliance gave
his gray skin a ghastly pallor. He lifted a small silver hammer and
brought it down upon the belly of a large bronze gong.
There was a stir behind them.
With the same cold hate in his expression as he addressed himself again
to the lovers, who clung together like small children, pitiful objects
indeed in this hall of pitiless green.
"The others are coming; their fate will be yours--you lovers!"
He turned to address words in dialect to the Mongolian on his right,
and in the space Eileen's breath came warmly upon Peter's ear.
"Are you armed?" she whispered.
His nod was hardly perceptible. He dropped his hand into his pocket,
and at that instant his arms were pinioned. The revolver was snatched
from his fingers.
The malicious green eyes were staring beyond them.
Peter heard a low sob, instantly stifled. Naradia, with bloodshot
eyes, was searching his face in distress. Her black hair had been
arranged in a heavy braid, which ran down her back in a glistening rope.
Kahn Meng's sad eyes lingered on Peter's for a moment, sparkling with
guilt, and his face was crestfallen. Plainer than any words could have
said, his expression cried out: "I have failed! I am sorry."
Then he advanced to the throne, taking his stand at the Gray Dragon's
side, a maneuver which was thoroughly mystifying to Peter.
The Gray Dragon seemed to ignore his presence. To Peter he said: "You
recognize your companion of last night? The man with a legion of a
thousand loyal men at his back?"
Peter nodded, muttering.
The Gray Dragon waved Kahn Meng to one side. "He is my son. He is my
son by my faithful wife! Do you understand that, Peter Moore?"
"Your son? And he will carry on your work?"
"Precisely that! You have expressed it neatly, Peter Moore. The Gray
Dragon will carry on the work of the Gray Dragon!"
The mystery of Kahn Meng was cleared aside. Fury directed at his
treachery swelled in Peter's breast and burst. It was as though a
torch had been applied. The flame of an ancient ancestral fire, when