The tomb of Ts'in
audience in the name of the Daughter of Heaven, the Dowager Empress.”
The man bowed low and went back to the Yamen.
He returned almost immediately with the request that the two should
follow him.
They passed through the big, cold entrance-hall into the throne-room
of the Yamen. As they entered, a man, sitting in solitary state at one
end of the room, fanning himself mechanically, rose and shuffled
forward, stopping within a few paces of his visitors to give the
customary Chinese kow-tow.
The old Mandarin was stout and ordinarily jovial, but now his face
wore a troubled and fretful expression.
“Why do you come to this city?” he asked with asperity. “Where do you
come from? How many miles have you travelled by road?” and so through
the whole gamut of questions which are conventionally asked by those
in authority of those who come within their sphere.
The servants brought tea--little cups and placed them handy.
Tillizinni, to whom a cup of tea would have been very refreshing at
that moment, almost mechanically stretched out his hand to take one,
when Talham stopped him.
“To take tea,” he said, “is a sign that the interview is finished, and
I have much to ask our friend before the tea-drinking stage arrives.”
“Does the honourable stranger intend staying in our perfectly beastly
little village for any time?” asked the Mandarin.
Talham bowed.
“Though we are unworthy to walk through the beautiful streets of this
most divine city,” he said, “we wish your noble citizens to tolerate
our disagreeable presence for the space of a moon.”
The Mandarin eyed him coldly.
“At this season of the year,” he said significantly, “my mean and
despicable city is very unhealthy for the honourable foreigner.”
“Yet we will stay,” answered Talham promptly, “if your Excellency will
afford protection to two insignificant animals who, by the fortune of
the gods, are very precious to the Daughter of Heaven, the Dowager
Empress. So much does the Daughter of Heaven regard us,” he continued,
“that though we are as dirt under her feet, every moon there will come
a courier from Pekin to your glorious community to seek information as
to our welfare, and if”--he was apologetic--“if we are so base and
horrible that we cannot find health in so salubrious a spot, the
courier will return to the Daughter of Heaven with news of our
misfortune.”
It was threat for threat, and Talham carried the heavier guns. His
passport was in order, and he was commended by the highest in the
land, and at the end ran the “tremble and obey” of an exalted Prince
of the Royal House.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE TOMB LOCATED.
The Mandarin’s face was a study. Between fear of consequence, the
sure reprisal which would come to him from the Government if his
visitors were harmed, and the fear of the greater and more immediate
danger from a cause unknown to the visitors, but very accurately
guessed, he was in a very painful quandary.
“If the honourable strangers will accept the hospitality of my
miserable pigsty,” he said sullenly, “for a few days, at least, I will
ensure them safety from the disorderly characters who populate my
unsavoury town.”
He reached out for the cup, and the two men followed suit, for they
were dismissed.
They made their way to the house to whither Talham had already
directed his muleteers. The two men rode back through the bazaar by
themselves. There was nothing in the attitude of the people to suggest
that they had organised opposition to fear. The scowls and
half-muttered implications which greeted them was the usual lot of the
Western traveller in that part of the world.
Talham’s keen eyes surveyed the crowd as the horses made their way
slowly through the street leading to the western end of the city. He
was looking for a familiar face, and presently he found it. Over the
heads of the throng he saw a man standing quietly with his back to the
entrance of a fruit shop.
Talham tilted his chin ever so slightly, and the man, though seemingly
unobservant of his action, repeated the motion.
So far so good. Some of his men were in the city. He had never
depended upon the escort. He knew that they would fly at the first
hint of danger.
But they were armed with modern weapons, and since it was necessary
for his purpose that the various members of his old regiment should be
effectively equipped, what easier way of bringing arms into this
territory than in the hands of Imperial troops?
He had this in his mind when they reached the little caravanserai
which was to be the headquarters of the expedition.
It was a one-roofed dwelling set in the middle of a yard and
surrounded by a high wall. The building proper was divided into two
parts, the smaller of which Talham directed to be cleaned out (for it
was indescribably filthy) and prepared for the lodging of himself and
his friend.
He handed the other to the captain of the escort.
It seemed to Tillizinni hardly large enough to accommodate forty men,
but then Tillizinni was not so well acquainted with the habits and
customs of the Chinese soldiery as was his companion.
“It would take a hundred and forty,” was the cool reply when
Tillizinni cast doubt upon its capacity.
They made the little room--it was no more than a stable from their
point of view--as comfortable as possible, spreading a carpet unpacked
from one of the mules and fixing up a little much-needed ventilation.
The walls were thick, and an inspection of the outer wall which
surrounded the courtyard was satisfactory. The place could withhold a
siege given a few improvements, and these improvements Talham set
himself out to make without further delay.
He sent into the town for workmen, and as soon as day broke he had
them knocking out bricks from the wall at regular intervals.
Some news of this must have come to the Mandarin, for he sent a
hurried message demanding Talham’s presence.
The tall man rode out along to the Yamen and saw his unwilling host.
“News has come to me,” said the Mandarin without preliminary, “that
your honourable self and your honourable friend are engaged in making
alterations to the outer wall of the King-Li. Now, such conduct,” he
wagged his finger at Talham, “is against my faith. I cannot save-face
if it is known that my protection is so unworthy to the honourable
foreigners that he must fortify himself against the citizens of this
town.”
“Lao-ae,” said Talham earnestly, and he employed his full knowledge of
Mandarin Chinese to further his eloquence, “though I am but as the mud
under the wheels of your cart, though I am not fitted even to
prostrate myself in your presence, yet the Daughter of Heaven thinks
so well of me that it would not please me if I caused the great and
beautiful lady sorrow by my death. Moreover,” he added, “my love and
esteem for you, who are known from one end of the Empire to the other
as a just and wise ruler, and one marked out for special promotion to
the Governorship of Shu Shung----”
A little gleam came into the Mandarin’s eye at this broad hint, though
he might have known that Talham could lie as well as any other man.
“Yet,” the big man went on, “because I have this affection for you, I
am terrified lest trouble come upon your nobility through some
mischance to my miserable carcase.”
The Mandarin was silent.
The reference to a governorship, the dreams of his life, set him
thinking. Presently he said mildly:
“I have talked with your Excellency, and my duty is finished--_puh
p’a!_ You have nothing to fear.”
With that he allowed Talham to return to his work of putting the inn
into a condition of defence.
Talham had posted two sentries at the gate, and people were only
allowed in two at a time.
That there should be a big crowd before the foreigner’s quarters--a
crowd of curious, peering, tip-toeing, interested Celestials, goes
without saying, for the Chinese are tremendously curious.
Every now and again the officer of the guard would come to Talham,
busy with Tillizinni, working out calculations as to distances and
depths, with the information that a stranger wished to see him. Talham
would walk patiently to the gate, exchange a few words with the man
who desired an audience, and, at a nod, the stranger would be allowed
to pass.
By the evening of the first day there were occupying the little
compound some forty soldiers and some forty-five nondescript Chinamen
who had turned up from nowhere in particular, and Talham’s estimate as
to the sleeping capacity of the improvised barrack-room proved to be
no exaggeration.
He had made one wise provision, and that was that the arms of the
escort, including even the sword and revolver of the officer
commanding when he was not on duty, should be stacked in a smaller
room. In addition, he had all the ammunition which he had brought with
him similarly stored. It cramped the small apartment considerably and
filled up every available piece of space, but Talham was insistent
upon this, though the officer demurred.
In the morning, when the new guard mounted, they took over the rifles
of the men who had been on duty on the previous day.
On the third day Talham went out to make an inspection of the
problematic Mount Li. He left before daybreak and only halted at the
city gates because they were not open at that hour.
He did not return until near sunset, and when he did he was immensely
hungry, not having, as he said, eaten since he set forth, save a
couple of dubious eggs which he secured at a village en route.
“I am satisfied we are on the right track,” he said, “and I am more
satisfied because a farmer in the neighbourhood tells me that some men
have been over from Tai-San quite recently exploring the mountain.
“It isn’t a mountain really,” he went on. “As a matter of fact I have
a theory that previous to the Emperor’s death, it had no existence at
all.”
He described the place.
It lay in the neck or dip of two hills, and, apparently, had been
filled up so that the top of the hill should offer an unbroken
sky-line to the traveller in the valley beneath.
“There is no doubt at all in my mind,” said Talham emphatically, “that
this is the tomb. We have now to find the guarded entrance. You can
see the slope of the hills before they were earthed up quite
distinctly, and I think I have found the ruins of an old temple half
buried near the crest of one of these.”
He read again the Second Emperor’s description.
“That’s it,” he said. “He caused trees and grass to be planted so that
it might appear a part of the mountain.”
“But why should he have been brought so far away from the capital?”
asked Tillizinni.
“That is a question which we have never satisfactorily settled. You
might as well ask,” said the other, “why the Ming Emperors wanted huge
stone elephants to indicate the way to their tombs. There is no reason
for anything in China, except that if you see a thing for which there
is absolutely no excuse, you may be satisfied that that _is_ the
excuse!”
“You are almost lucid,” said Tillizinni with a smile.
He himself was enjoying the trip immensely; he found the relaxation
which he needed so badly. There was no telephone; nobody brought him
tangles of mystery to unravel. He was living amidst actualities,
amongst primitive forces, in a land where murder was a commonplace
everyday incident, and where the murderers seldom troubled to hide
their tracks. He recognised that there was considerable danger to
himself and to his companion if the real object of the visit was ever
discovered.
Soo would be very active just now; his spies would long since have
carried news of the arrival of the “foreign devils.”
It needed no spy, as it happened, for the Mandarin himself, with a
keen desire to “save-face” all round, had sent a private courier with