Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
arm, trembling, as the coolies formed a grinning, shouting circle about
them. More raced in from the muddy bund.
"What are we going to do?" she groaned.
"We are going to cable your mother that you are starting for home by
the first steamer," Peter cried, swinging her into the cleanest and
most comfortable rickshaw of the lot. "The _Mongolia_ sails this
afternoon."
"What will become of you?" she demanded.
Peter gave her his ingenuous smile. "I will vanish--for a while.
Otherwise I may vanish--permanently."
Miss Lorimer reached out with her small white hand and touched his
sleeve. They were jouncing over the Su-Chow bridge, on their way to
the American Consulate. "Won't I see you again? Ever?" She looked
bewildered and lost, as if this strange old land had proved too much
for her powers of readjustment. Her rosebud mouth seemed to quiver.
"Are you in danger, Mr. Moore?"
Peter glimpsed a very yellow, supercilious face swinging in his
direction from the padding throng.
"A little, perhaps," he conceded.
"Because of me?"
The yellow face reappeared and was swallowed again by the crowd, as a
speck of mud is engulfed by the Yangtze.
Miss Lorimer repeated her question. Peter shook his head in an
extravagant denial, and helped her down from the rickshaw. They had
stopped before the consulate in the American quarter.
"I'm leaving you here," he said.
"But--but I like you!" her small voice faltered. "Aren't you going to
explain--anything? Is this--is this all?"
Peter smothered his rising feelings under an air of important haste.
"Your way lies there"--he pointed down river. "For the present mine
lies here"--and he jerked a thumb in the general direction of
Shanghai's narrow muddy alleys.
"Shall I--won't you--gracious!" Miss Lorimer stared into her left
hand. Two one-thousand-dollar Bank of China bills were folded upon it.
She was confused. When she looked back the young man who had
miraculously delivered her from an unguessable fate had been spirited
with Oriental magic from her sight.
CHAPTER IX
The bund of Shanghai was striped with the long, purple shadows of
coming night, a night which seemed to be creeping out of the heart of
the land, ushering with it a feeling of subtle tension, as though the
touch of darkness stirred to wakefulness a populace of shadows, which
skulked and crouched and whispered, comprising an underworld of
sinister folk which the first glow of dawn would send scampering back
to a thousand evil-smelling hiding-places.
The rhythmic chant of coolies on the river ended. Mammoth go-downs,
where the products of China flowed on their way to distant countries,
became gloomily silent and empty. Handsome, tall sikhs, the police of
the city, appeared in twos and threes where only one had been stationed
before; for in China, as elsewhere, wickedness is borne on the night's
wings.
With the descent of the velvety darkness the late wireless operator of
the transpacific greyhound, the _Vandalia_, slipped out of an obscure,
shadowy doorway on Nanking Road and directed his steps toward the
glittering bund, where he was reasonably sure his enemies would have
difficulty in recognizing him.
Peter's uniform now reposed on a dark shelf in the rear of a silkshop.
He had no desire to be stabbed in the back, which was a probability in
case certain up-river men should find him. The Chinese gentleman who
conducted the silkshop was an old friend, and trustworthy.
Peter now wore the garb of a Japanese merchant. His feet were
sandaled. His straight, lithe figure was robed in an expensive gray
silk kimono. Jammed tight to his ears, in good Nipponese fashion, was
a black American derby. His eyebrows were penciled in a fairly
praiseworthy attempt to reproduce the Celestial slant, and he carried a
light bamboo cane.
Yet the ex-operator of the _Vandalia_ was not altogether sure that the
disguise was a success. If the scowling yellow face he had detected
among the throngs on the bund that morning should have followed him to
the silk-shop, of what earthly use was this silly disguise?
He padded along in the lee of a money-changer's, keeping close to the
wall. By degrees he became aware that he was followed; and he
endeavored to credit the feeling to imagination, to raw nerves. A
ghostly rickshaw flitted by. The soft chugging of the coolie's bare
feet became faint, ceased. A muttering old woman waddled past.
He looked behind him in time to see a gaunt face, lighted by the dim
glow of a shop window, bob out of sight into a doorway. Turning again
a moment later, he saw the man dive into another doorway.
Peter ran to the dark aperture, seized a muscular, satin-covered arm,
and dragged a whispering Chinese, a big, brawny fellow, into the
circular zone of the yellow street-light. Quickly recovering from his
surprise, the Chinese reached swiftly toward his belt. Peter, hoping
that only one man had been set on his trail, gave a murderous yell, and
at the same time drove his fist into a yielding paunch.
With a groan the Chinese staggered back against the shop window, caving
in a pane with his elbow. Peter raised his fist to strike again.
Then a monumental figure, with a clean turban coiled about his head,
strode austerely into the circle of yellow light.
"_Ta dzoh sh[=e]n m[=o] szi_?"
"Thief," said Moore simply, indicating the broken shop window.
"L[=a]o sh[=e]n l[=a]o sh[=e]n!" growled the sikh. He seized the
luckless window-breaker by both shoulders, backed him against an iron
trolley-post, and strapped him to it.
With a jovial, "Allah be with you!" Peter Moore continued his stroll
toward the bund. Now that the trailer was out of his way for the night
at least, he could make his way in peace to the Palace bar and find out
what might be in the wind for him.
As he crossed Nanking Road where it joined the bund, a frantic shout,
mingled with a scream of fear or of warning, impelled him to leap out
of the path of a rickshaw which was making for him at a breakneck
speed. A white face, with a slender gloved hand clutched close to the
lips, swept past.
Peter gasped in surprise quite as staggering as if the girl in the
rickshaw had slapped him across the face. He shouted after her. But
she went right on, without turning.
"Licksha?" A grinning coolie dropped the shafts of an empty rickshaw
at Peter Moore's heels.
He ceased being angry as a softer glow crept into his veins. The
rickshaw turned to the right, following the other, which occupied the
center of the almost deserted bund, and speeding like the wind.
"_Ni chue ba_!" shouted Peter Moore. The girl seemed to be headed for
the bund bridge. But why? A number of questions stormed futilely in
his brain. Why had the girl ignored him? Why had she not gone aboard
the _Manchuria_, as she had promised?
The coolie joggled along, his naked legs rising and falling
mechanically. The wireless operator drew the folds of the kimono more
closely about his throat, for the night air blowing off the Whang-poo
was chill and damp.
At the bridge the rickshaw ahead suddenly stopped, waiting. Peter
Moore drew alongside, and leaped to the ground.
The near-by street-light afforded him the information that he had made
a mistake. Undeniably similar to the girl he had sent away on the
_Manchuria_ that morning was the young lady in the rickshaw. She had
the same white, wistful face, the same alert, appealing eyes, the same
rosebud mouth. Any one might have made such a mistake. It was very
embarrassing.
"Why are you following me?" she demanded.
"I thought I knew you. I am sorry. I'll go at once."
"No! Wait." Her volte relented. It was a fresh young voice, not
indeed unlike that of Miss Lorimer's. She was smiling. "Why are you
dressed as a Jap?"
"I am sorry," Peter faltered, retreating. "Mistake. You're not the
girl I--I expected. _Sayonara_!"
"_Please_ don't run away," said the girl with a soft laugh. "I'm not
afraid, or I would have run, instead of waiting, when you followed me.
I've just come up from Amoy--alone. And I leave to-morrow for
Ching-Fu--alone. You're American!" she murmured. "But why the
Jap--disguise? I'm American, too. I used to live in New York, on
Riverside Drive. Oh! It must have been ages ago!"
"Why?" asked Peter unguardedly.
"I haven't met one of my countrymen in centuries! And to-morrow I go
up the river, 'way beyond Ching-Fu, beyond Szechwan!"
"Bad travelling on the river this time of the year," Peter murmured
politely. "She's out of her banks up above Ichang, I have been told."
"Yes," replied the girl sadly. "If I could only have just one evening
of fun--a dance or two, maybe--I--I--wouldn't mind half so much.
I--I----"
Peter advised himself as follows: I told you so. Aloud he said:
"I believe there's a dance at the Astor Hotel. If we can get a
table----"
"Oh, how lovely!" exclaimed the girl. "Do--do you mind very--much?"
"Tickled to death," Peter declared amiably.
CHAPTER X
At a small round table in the end of the room over which hung the
orchestra balcony, Peter found himself in the presence of two disarming
gray eyes, which drank in every detail of his good-looking young face,
including the penciled eyebrows.
Miss Vost--Miss Amy Vost--gave him to understand that she was really
grateful for his hospitality, rushed on to assure him that it was not
customary for her to meet strange young men as she had met him, and
then frankly asked him what he was doing in China. Every time she
thought of him her curiosity seemed to trip over the Japanese kimono.
Influenced by his third glass of Japanese champagne, he almost told her
the truth. He modified it by saying that he was a wireless operator;
that he had missed his ship, and that his plans were to linger in China
for a while. He liked China. Liked China very much.
Miss Vost caressed the tip of her nose with a small, pink thumb. She
was not the kind who hesitated.
"You can do me a favor," she said, and halted.
The Philippine orchestra burst into a lilting one-step. Miss Vost
arched her eyebrows. Peter arose, and they glided off. It developed
that Miss Vost was well qualified. There was divineness in her
youthful grace; she put her heart into the dance. It seemed probable
to Peter Moore that she put her heart into everything she did.
"You spoke about my doing a favor," he suggested, glancing sternly at a
dark-eyed Eurasian girl who seemed to be trying to divert his attention.
"There is a man in Shanghai I want you to try to find for me--to-night.
Last time I saw him--this morning--he was drunk. He was the first
officer on the steamer that brought me up from Amoy. Perhaps you know
him. He's only been on the coast a short while. Before that he ran on
the Pacific Mail Line between San Francisco and Panama. His name is
MacLaurin, a nice boy. Scotch. But he drinks."
"MacLaurin? I know a man named MacLaurin--Bobbie MacLaurin."
"No!" gasped Miss Vost. "I suppose I ought to make that old remark
about what a small world it is! Do you know where Bobbie MacLaurin is?"
"No," he murmured. "Why is he drunk?"
"That is a matter," replied Miss Vost, somewhat distantly, "that I
prefer not to discuss. Will you try to find him for me? He threatened
to be--be captain of the river-boat, the _Hankow_, that I leave on
to-morrow for Ching-Fu. I'd rather like to know if he intends to carry
out his threat. Will you find out, if you can, if he is going to be
sober enough to make the trip--and let me know?" requested Miss Vost,
as the music stopped. "I'd rather he wouldn't, Mr. Moore," she added
quickly. "But I do wish _you_ were going to make the trip. I'd love
to have you!"