The tomb of Ts'in
He intended travelling across the Trans-Siberian Railway, and sending
his trunks on to Shanghai to a trusted agent. The tickets necessary
for the journey were in his desk, and his sleeping berth had been
booked for some weeks past. This thought made the old man pause: it
might be three weeks or a month before he could bring Talham to trial,
even supposing that he persuaded the Public Prosecutor to act, and a
month was a long time. He decided to sleep on it before taking any
further action.
Half-way through dinner, Gregory de Costa paid him an unexpected
visit. For two weeks Gregory had seldom been at home except to sleep,
and that night, as the old man knew, he had an engagement to dine with
a party at a fashionable West End restaurant.
“Hullo!” said the old man, not unkindly. “What has happened to you?”
The young man sank listlessly into a chair by the table.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just sick of things--that’s all!”
“After dining with Soumerez?”
Gregory shook his head. “No,” he said, “Soumerez bores me, and I don’t
feel that I could sit down to dinner at the same table to-night.”
There was a little silence, then the young man asked:
“What do you want me to do whilst you’re away?”
“Do!” replied his father. “Why, do what you’ve been doing for the last
year or two--just fool around London. I have taken a flat for you in
Jermyn Street.”
The young man played with a salt-cellar moodily.
“I’d rather go with you,” he said.
“That’s impossible,” said De Costa hurriedly. “I’ve got to go into a
country where all sorts of privations and discomforts have to be
encountered, and you’re not fit for it. You’re a young man, I know,”
he said gently, “but I’ve had the life; I have lived in most of these
wild places, and my present position is due to the fact. In my young
days I undertook certain risks and underwent certain hardships. I have
no wish that you should have any of the experiences which were mine as
a young man.”
Gregory looked at his father curiously.
“I suppose you had a pretty rotten life, didn’t you, when you were
young?”
Raymond replied with a nod of his head. His son had chosen an
appropriate word, for “rotten” indeed was the life De Costa had lived.
There was not an unsavoury transaction in the Philippines or in the
far-away trading-places of Asia with which he had not been associated.
He had financed more purely illegal schemes, had been behind more
piratical expeditions, and had been associated with more heartless
villainy than any other of his kind.
Not even the bad old traders of the South Sea Islands could show such
a record as his, and even the sanctified odour of Kensington had not
altogether dispersed the sinister atmosphere of his early days.
“It is quite impossible for you to come,” he went on. “There are all
sorts of dangers to be encountered. This is my last expedition.”
The young man reached out and took a few grapes from the silver
centre-piece, and ate them thoughtfully.
“I am very fond of you,” he said suddenly.
The old man did not conceal his pleasure.
“I think,” he said softly, “that that is a mutual fondness.”
The boy rose after a while and looked at his watch.
“I suppose I had better go along and invent some lie,” he said.
“Anyway, the dinner will be nearly finished, and I shall be in time
for whatever fun there is going after.”
His father accompanied him to the door, and watched the disappearing
tail-light of the taxi; then he returned to his study.
He spent an hour poring over the translation of the document which was
now in Tillizinni’s hands. Had he but the jade bracelet, how easy
might it be; but he had enough to work on.
Some of the references puzzled him. What were the “spirit steps,” for
instance; and what of these gigantic cross-bows which were to
discharge titanic arrows at the intruder? Possibly two thousand years
of rust and decay would have robbed them of their potency.
He picked up some newspaper cuttings dealing with Soo, and smiled, as
again and again he came across the phrase which spoke of the “bottling
up” of the fugitive. Very well; had these clever English policemen
bottled up a man who was now in America, he thought.
He tidied away his documents, and was slipping a rubber band around
one little dossier when he stopped, and raised his head, listening.
It was the faintest sound, a tiny, hushed, buzz from one corner of the
room.
Now there was only one noise like this in the world that he knew. It
was the sound of the secret buzzer which he had had installed
communicating with a tiny push near the area door. It had been
specially put in to allow his confederates to signal their presence
when his servants were out, as they invariably were when visitors of
this kind arrived.
Who could it be? He took from his desk a revolver, and made his way
noiselessly downstairs to the little hallway which led from the area
to the servants’ domain.
He crept to the door and listened; there was no sound. The bolts were
always kept well oiled. He slipped them back noiselessly and opened
the door. Two men were standing there--two small men who made no
sound.
“Come in!” he said; but still they made no sign. Then he knew that
they were Chinese.
“Come in!” he said again, addressing them in their own language.
He waited until they had closed the door behind, and turning on the
electric switch, he flooded the passage with light.
“You!” he gasped.
Well might he be surprised, for these were the two agents of his whom
he thought were on their way to China, the men who called themselves
“Happy Child” and “Hope of Spring”--who were wanted by the police for
the murder of the Chinese Ambassador, and greatly wanted by Soo T’si,
for the treacherous slaughter of their comrade--his brother.
“Why do you come here?” he asked angrily.
He spoke in the hissing Canton dialect.
They shuffled uneasily, and the smaller of the two asked sullenly:
“Where were we to go, master? Though we escaped the English police,
yet Soo T’si has set his society against us, and we have been turned
from one refuge to another.”
“Why didn’t you leave the country?”
“Lord, it was impossible,” said the other. “There were men watching
boats and trains; we were warned.”
“You can’t stay here!” said De Costa.
They offered no alternative suggestion, and he led the way upstairs to
his room. There they sat on the edge of the two chairs, forlorn,
miserable, with that peculiar hunted, haggard look which criminals of
all classes assume from necessity.
“Soo is in America now,” said De Costa. “If he could get away, why
shouldn’t you?”
“Master, we were warned,” said the taller man again. “A servant from
the boat told Hophee,” he gave the small man his nickname, “that they
were looking for us.”
De Costa’s mind worked quickly; he had been in some peculiarly
dangerous situations before. He must get these men away as quickly as
possible.
“You want some money, I suppose,” he said, and the smaller man, who
seemed to be the ruling spirit, answered monosyllably.
De Costa turned out his pockets and gave him a handful of silver and
gold.
“Come to-morrow night,” he said, “at the same hour, and I will let you
know exactly what plans I have made for you. Is there any danger until
to-morrow?”
The small man shook his head.
“You will find your way out, you know the way,” said De Costa. “I will
come down later and bolt the door after you.”
Noiselessly the two men left the room, and De Costa sat at his desk in
no enviable mood. He thought he heard the two men speaking together as
they went down the stairs to the basement. In his state of tension he
imagined that one had called to him sharply, and he opened the door
and stepped out into the hall.
“Did you speak?” he asked, and a voice from the basement answered
briefly, “No.”
He had waited to hear the door open, but realised that so perfectly
had it been prepared for midnight visitors that no sound would reach
him, and he returned to his desk again.
These men must be got rid of at all hazards; he wondered how. Perhaps
now that the attention had been directed towards Soo they might be
smuggled out of the country. They had escaped Soo, that was something,
for Soo would make short work of them if he knew how grossly he had
been betrayed.
The translation of the stolen document still lay on his desk before
him, and he folded it up carefully.
“This, at any rate, is something,” he said aloud.
“But not all,” answered a quiet voice.
He looked up startled.
Before him, in the centre of the room, with his arms folded so that
his hands were concealed in his sleeves, stood Soo T’si, and there was
a smile upon his face which was not pleasant to see.
“Don’t touch your revolver,” he said, “for I can shoot you through my
sleeve with the greatest of ease.”
“I thought you were in America,” stammered De Costa.
“I suppose you did,” said the other.
He spoke easily in English, a fact which he evidently thought called
for some comment.
“I have been speaking nothing but Chinese for the last week or two,”
he said, “and I was afraid of my English getting stale. Do you mind if
I practise it on you?”
He was so affable, and so friendly, that De Costa lost some of his
misapprehension.
“I am glad to see you,” he said. “I was afraid you had got into
serious trouble.”
Soo shook his head.
“No, indeed,” he said lightly, “one never gets into serious trouble; I
got into a particularly foul canal, which compares very favourably
with some of the streams of my native land.”
He did not attempt to sit down; he did not even move from where he
stood, or change his attitude.
“What are your plans?” asked De Costa. “I suppose you know that the
police are searching for you?”
Soo nodded.
“I have reason to believe that they are,” he said sardonically.
“Can I be of any assistance to you?” asked De Costa.
Soo shook his head.
“I’m afraid that you are absolutely useless to me,” he said quietly.
“What is that interesting document you have there?”
De Costa would have snatched up the translation from the table, but
there was a cold menace in the Chinaman’s eye which prevented him.
“It’s a little thing,” he said vaguely.
“So I see,” replied the other. “Turn it round so that I can read it,
please.”
Like a man fascinated, De Costa obeyed, and Soo took a step nearer the
table. He read the sheet through carefully, without moving his hands
from the inside of his sleeves, and De Costa wondered why, until he
remembered that Soo had threatened him with a concealed pistol.
“You don’t seem to trust me.” De Costa put a note of reproach into his
voice.
“I have very good reasons for not trusting you, De Costa. The last
time I was here you swore to me that you had not seen this document,
that you had no idea as to where it was. I have discovered since,” he
went on meditatively, “that you had it all the time, and that you were
directly responsible for the treachery of my men, and indirectly for
the death of my brother; you told your servants to bring the paper to
you at any cost--my brother’s life paid for that order.”
His voice was even and colourless, and he spoke like a man who was
reciting a lesson.
“You are wrong--you are wrong,” protested De Costa violently. “I know
nothing whatever about it. This paper only came to me a few days ago.
I tried to find you----”
Soo shook his head.
“Why do you lie?” he said. “To me, who come from the land of liars,
and am skilled in their detection. I know, because the two men you
employed, and whom I have been tracking for the last three weeks, have
confessed.”
“Confessed!” gasped De Costa.
Soo nodded slowly.
“But they have just left,” stammered the other.
“They have not left,” said Soo quietly, and withdrew his hands from