The tomb of Ts'in
People at whom speeches are made in public invariably feel foolish.
Yet for all the exhaustive character of his farewell, Talham
remembered on his way home several things he had intended to say, and
was half inclined to go back to say them. All the way to the hotel he
could think of nothing else but her wonderful eyes, her refinement,
her glorious voice.
She was, he then told me, the daughter of an army officer who had died
suddenly a few years before, leaving the second wife and his daughter
the most meagre of incomes. This was the text on which he delivered an
address, dealing with the duty of the state and the grudging gratitude
of the nation. So far as Tillizinni was able to trace, Yvonne’s father
was a colonel of infantry, who had spent some twenty years in various
parts of the globe, missing active service the whole of his life, and
finishing up with the command of a militia depôt. Under these
circumstances, Talham’s heroics about the “children of England’s
battle-scarred defenders” were beside the point.
“Mrs. Yale,” he said impressively, “was a wonderful woman, a splendid
woman, a business woman. I can only hope that Yvonne inherits her
splendid qualities.”
When Talham ordered his world to his own satisfaction, he was not
above adjusting the laws of progeniture. Mrs. Smith had sought his
advice as to her investments. Talham had fallen for it.
It is a subtle form of flattery employed by dowagers, who could not
hint at the physical attractions of their middle-aged and bald-headed
admirers, and still retain their self-respect; and who found in this
oblique tribute to their business capacities an effective and
profitable substitute.
But Talham was not middle-aged, and the poison of the flattery had
eaten deeper into his system.
“I am transferring five thousand shares in the Mount Li Exploration
Syndicate,” he said.
Tillizinni was not easily moved, but now he gasped.
“The Mount Li----?” he asked incredulously.
“The Mount Li Exploration Syndicate,” said Talham firmly.
“But there isn’t such a company,” protested the other.
Talham looked at him a little sadly.
“It is one of the things I have overlooked,” he said. “One of the
essentials of our communal life. It did not, I confess, occur to me
until that extraordinary woman was discussing such things as shares
and bonds, that I realised in a flash that it was impossible for me to
help her because no such shares stood in my name. Have not,” he asked
impressively, “the great events of history which have transformed the
world, been born in a moment’s inspiration? Even as I sat there, in
the excellently appointed study--I must make a note, by the way, of
the furnishing of that apartment: I should like an office arranged on
similar lines--the Mount Li Exploration came into existence.”
“In other words,” said Tillizinni with a helpless smile, “you created
the company in order to give her shares!”
“I created the company,” agreed the tall man, gravely.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CELESTIAL WAY.
It was a drizzling, miserable night; the streets were crowded with
cars and cabs carrying their occupants to theatreland. On the drenched
pavements the newspaper boys drove a thriving trade despite the
unpromising climatic conditions. Every news bill dealt with the one
subject--the mysterious murder, in the heart of London, of an
ambassador by some person or persons unknown.
That it was the Chinese Ambassador added to the general interest.
There was something bizarre and mysterious about the great empire
which appealed to the imagination, and the series of hypothesis which
appeared in the columns of the press assisted to a remarkable degree
in fostering the sense of mystery which surrounded the tragedy.
There was scarcely a police-station in London that was not at that
moment interrogating some stray Chinaman who had been brought in to
account for his whereabouts on the night of the murder.
There was not a district, apparently, which could not furnish a clue.
_The Evening Megaphone_, London’s most enterprising evening journal,
secured something of a “beat,” for it was the only paper which was
able to throw a light upon the inside mystery of a vendetta which had
apparently culminated in the Ambassador’s assassination.
“We are able,” said this journal, in large, leaded type, “to supply a
number of curious and significant facts concerning the tragedy, which
have hitherto been unrecorded elsewhere. Our representative had the
pleasure of a long conversation with Mr. T’si Soo, a wealthy young
Chinese gentleman who has been domiciled in England for a number of
years. Mr. T’si Soo is the son of the Governor of Chulung, a large and
populous district of China, and is engaged in this city in studying
constitutional law. Mr. Soo--a fine, handsome-looking young man of
commanding appearance--received the representative of _The Evening
Megaphone_ in Piccadilly. Fortunately Mr. Soo has a perfect command of
English, and the interpreter which our representative brought with him
was unnecessary.
“‘I cannot tell you,’ said Mr. Soo, ‘how grieved I am at the death of
the Noble Prince who so ably and worthily represented the Dowager
Empress at the court of St. James.
“‘The Prince, as you know, was an antiquarian of great note, but he
was also a man of strong political opinions which, I fear, have not
always commended themselves to the majority of my fellow countrymen.
“‘He was by repute a reactionary,’ he went on, ‘and earned the
animosity of a number of secret societies in China by his efforts to
secure their abolition.’
“‘But surely,’ our representative pointed out, ‘the abolition of
secret societies is not a reactionary movement!’
“Mr. Soo shook his head.
“‘You are now speaking,’ he said with a smile, ‘from the point of view
of the European. In China we regard anybody as a reactionary who
attempts to alter the position of affairs so that it corresponds with
any period of time in the past. For instance, there was a time when
there were no secret societies; to abolish them would be regarded,
therefore, as a reactionary measure since it would produce conditions
which had once existed. That, again, I say, is an Eastern point of
view.’
“‘Do you explain the murder as having been committed by the emissary
of a society?’ asked our representative.
“Mr. Soo nodded.
“‘I believe there is an association,’ he said, ‘which had a special
reason for removing the Ambassador.’
“‘It has been suggested,’ said our representative, ‘that robbery was
the object of the murder, and that a bureau had been rifled and
valuable documents extracted.’
“Mr. Soo was very emphatic in dissociating himself with this theory.
“‘That I do not believe,’ he said. ‘The people who killed his
Excellency probably travelled all the way from China, and are now,
possibly, on their way back again. They had no other object but his
destruction, and if they stole documents, they were documents
associated with the Prince’s campaign to suppress the societies
affected.’
“It may be remarked,” continued the enterprising journal, “that such
is the abhorrence in which the crime is held by every Chinaman, that
numerous offers of help have come to this paper from Chinese citizens
who desire to assist in the search for the miscreant. It may be said
that the interpreter who accompanied our representative was one of
these. It was through his instrumentality that the interview with Mr.
Soo was secured.
“With extraordinary modesty, he disappeared as soon as the interview
was concluded, and has since not been in this office.”
Whilst the contents bills of _The Evening Megaphone_ were flaring the
question at every street corner: “Was Ambassador Killed by Secret
Society?” Soo himself was interviewing the interpreter whose
enterprise and modesty the journal was at the moment praising. He was
interviewing him in a little room, the smallest in the suite he
occupied, and he was assisted in the process by three compatriots, who
gazed impassively on a Chinaman, a little less impassive, stretched
upon a small iron bed, his wrists strapped to the bed head, his feet
spreadeagled and strapped to its sides.
Soo sat on a chair smoking his inevitable cigarette, with his
inevitable monocle glued in his eye, watching the man with interest.
“First,” he said, “you shall tell me why you came here, who sent you,
and what you desired.”
“Lord,” gasped the man on the bed, “I have told you everything; by my
Father’s grace I have nothing more to say.”
His face was drawn and haggard, beads of perspiration stood upon his
shaven skull, and terror was in his eyes.
“You shall tell me,” repeated the other calmly, “who sent you, why you
came, and what you were told to do.”
He nodded to the man who sat nonchalantly smoking a pipe by the side
of the captive’s bed.
The man leant over and made a half turn of the screw upon a
weird-shaped contrivance which enclosed the prisoner’s fingers.
The man suppressed a shriek with reason, for over him leant a second
Chinaman ready to thrust a gag in his mouth.
“You shall tell me,” said Soo monotonously, “why you came, who sent
you here, and your business.”
“Lord,” whispered the man, “I will tell you all I know.”
Soo nodded to the torturer, and he loosened the screw on the other’s
finger.
“Give him water,” said Soo, and the attendant with the gag put a cup
to the other’s lips. He drank greedily.
“Lord, I was sent by my society, which, as your Excellency knows, is
the society of the ‘Banner Bearers of Heaven.’”
Soo nodded.
“They desired to discover how your Lordship felt in this matter.”
“To whom were you to report?” asked Soo.
The man hesitated, and his interrogator glanced significantly at the
screw in which the captive’s hand still rested. It was enough for the
man on the bed.
He mentioned a name.
Soo recognised it as the keeper of a Chinese lodging-house in the East
End of London--a man who was known to him to be the agent of the
Bannermen.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ABDUCTION.
Yvonne Yale had spent a tiring and a busy day shopping with her
mother. It was not a relaxation which she often allowed herself. Mrs.
Yale took shopping very seriously, and would follow a will-o’-the-wisp
of a five-shilling bargain through enticing marshes of other
departments where scarcely a weed grew which was not labelled
twenty-five shillings.
After dinner, Mrs. Yale announced the fact that she was dead tired;
she implied the further fact that the exertions of the day, shared by
her daughter, had not effected her, and that the energy dissipated by
Mrs. Yale herself was sufficient for two.
She went to bed, leaving Yvonne half a dozen letters to
answer--letters which regretted the inability of Mrs. Yale to settle
an account, but promised “next month,” not only to clear off existing
liabilities, but to extend her scope of patronage.
Yvonne’s self-respect led her to tone down the letters, to make them
less optimistic as to the future and less vague as to the present. She
finished her work at half-past eleven, and signed her mother’s name
with a flourish, enclosed the letters in envelopes, and placed them on
the hall table ready for posting.
She made her customary round of the house--their one servant was in
bed at that hour--and went to her room feeling depressed and worried.
She could not trace her state of mind to any particular course, and
she told herself that the reason was purely physical. She undressed in
record time, jumped into bed, switched out the light, and her head had
hardly touched the pillow before she was asleep.
How long she had been sleeping she could not tell, but something woke
her with a start. The room was dark, the only light being that from
the lamp in the street below. She was wide awake, and her reasoning