The valley of eyes unseen
And now I come to the first of those mysterious episodes that happened
on our journey up country and bear, as I now see, so profoundly on
the queer adventures we were to meet with afterwards. I have made my
account of this with great care and constant reference to the very
clear recollection of the event my memory retains; and I don't think
that in what follows there is one jot more or less than I actually
observed.
I don't know whether it was because of the heat, which was steamy and
penetrating, or because of the mosquitoes that had already come up in
clouds from the swampy land bordering the creek; but weary as I was,
I couldn't sleep a wink. I lay tossing and turning and going over in
my mind our jumpy experiences of the past forty-eight hours, and the
longer I lay, the more feverishly alert I grew. Every noise of the
night, the mumble of talk from the servants' quarters at the far end
of the inn, an occasional clanging ricsha-bell away in the city, the
screech of an early cicada on the lawns, even the subtle hiss of water
among the roots of the willows beneath our wall--all came to my ears
magnified about fourfold. When Philipson withdrew to his bedroom some
hours after I had left him, the noise he made was relatively deafening.
I heard him throw himself on to the bed with a jangle of springs, and
then lay dozing, praying for sleep but more honestly inclined to swear
at my insomnia.
At last, opening my eyes, I saw there was a curious light outside the
window, so bright that at first I thought some native house on the
other side of the creek must be going up in flames. I got out of bed
and looked on to the verandah that ran along outside our wing of the
inn. Then I saw where the illumination came from: it was the moon, full
and brilliant, which had climbed round to that side of the building
and was bathing the creek in a glory of silver and gold. Without the
distraction of stewy heat and savage mosquitoes it would have been a
picture to paint or write poetry about.
Then, suddenly, I became conscious of voices farther along the
verandah. I couldn't distinguish the words, but I knew at once the
language was not English. Nor was it any dialect of Chinese I ever
struck, and I have heard and spoken most. All caution drowned in a
prickling curiosity, I stepped noiselessly out on to the verandah
and peeped round the jutting stone jamb of the window. Now I saw the
speakers, and at the sight I could have cried out in my astonishment.
There were two figures, a man and a woman. The former looked to me
uncommonly like Saunders Philipson, dressed as I had left him a few
hours before. The real stunning surprise for me, however, was in the
appearance of the woman. She was no dusky, cramp-footed native, but
manifestly European, tall, queenly, with bare head and loose gown, and
so far as I could distinguish her features, of a remarkable beauty.
I drew back into cover of my window and stood there with thumping
heart, a pitiful mess of indecision. Philipson was, as I had already
learned, a queer fellow. He had betrayed pronounced eccentricity
in the direction of strong drink; now I saw him in his even queerer
relations with women. Who the beautiful stranger was or whence she
came, I couldn't conceive, but it seemed plain enough she must have
been there by assignation. She could only have got on to that verandah
through his sleeping chamber, for I had heard Philipson lock the door
of the sitting room before he retired, and I had certainly been too
wide awake for anybody to pass through my room without my knowledge,
even had the door not been secure on the inside, which it was. There
was no other way.
What should I do? If this was merely some clandestine romance of
Philipson's, I had a shrewd notion he would take any interference
from me vastly amiss, perhaps even to the length of breaking with me.
And yet I had to admit that the time, and our circumstances, seemed
strangely out of tune with secret love affairs. A sudden fear took hold
of me. I had already seen Philipson once the victim of treachery. Could
it be that our enemies had discovered our whereabouts and set another
snare, this time in more crafty and seductive shape?
What I should have done I don't know, but at that moment there was
a gentle knock at the bedroom door. This clinched my suspicions. I
snatched up a revolver and faced round, demanding who was there. No
answer came, but the knock was repeated. Then I realised that it was
the peculiar five taps--Philipson's own code--that had been given. I
tiptoed to the door, unbolted and pulled it ajar, covering the aperture
with my gun. An instant later I had lowered the muzzle, for there
stood Ah Sing, shivering and hoarse with excitement.
'Hab look-see master him window,' he whispered, stabbing with his
finger in the direction of Philipson's room. 'Him talkee-talkee some
_tai-tai_ my no sabbee. My no likum dat. My tinkee him talkee-talkee
some dam bad man him come hit master one big whop!'
Ah Sing, then, from his post on board the launch, had also observed
this mysterious visitor, and to his faithful mind had occurred at once
the same suspicion of a decoy. That decided me. I would risk any row
with Philipson rather than let him be held in talk on the verandah
while all kinds of villainy might be hatching behind him. I peered
along the shadowy landing, but could see nobody. Perhaps already an
enemy had gained entrance to Philipson's bedroom, where no doubt his
precious papers were left unguarded.
Followed by Ah Sing, I ran along to the door and listened. There was
no sound whatever. I tried the door: it was locked. I rapped, using
Philipson's knock, first softly, then louder, and at last called him by
name. There was no reply. Now thoroughly scared, I sent Ah Sing round
through my bedroom to warn his master from that side. He was back at my
side a few seconds later, his eyes staring, his mouth agape.
'Hab look-see master no hab see!' he panted.
It was at this instant that something inside the bedroom moved. I heard
a soft, uneven step, the key was turned in the lock, the door came
slightly open, and the muzzle of a revolver appeared round the style.
I sang out sharply:
'Philipson!'
One instant after that the door was swung wide, and we stood face to
face. I say we stood, though it would be nearer truth to say that I, at
least, staggered.
Philipson was in pyjamas. His hair was tousled down over his face and
his eyes, which he rather dazedly rubbed with his free fist, were
blinking and heavy-lidded, as of a man just roused from deep sleep.
CHAPTER V
THE MISSION OF STEPHEN POYNING
For the better part of a minute my tongue simply refused duty. I could
no more than stand and gape, while the blood buzzed in my ears and the
dim-lit doorway of Philipson's room seemed to rock sideways. Like words
spoken in a dream I heard Philipson demand what was up, and Ah Sing's
quaint pidgin-English as he panted out his version of the story.
Philipson started back as if he had been struck. His face was in
shadow, but I had an impression that his features were working, the
way of a man not quite in command of himself. That lasted for only
a few seconds, however. When he spoke again it was in the brisk,
matter-of-fact tones he would have used to order a fresh can of
lubricant for the launch.
'Odd,' he muttered. 'Odd, and nasty in the extreme! God knows who those
people could have been. I had reckoned with a native organisation,
Mirlees, but nothing more. If there are Europeans in it too--'
'Then it--'
I broke off suddenly. Neither then nor thereafter could I imagine what
it was, but something from outside myself seemed to close my lips
by force, and there came down over my brain a most uncanny sense of
hesitation and bewilderment.
We had all three rushed out on to the verandah, and stood listening,
peering out and around in every direction. There was no sound, no sign
of movement anywhere; the creek lay like a riband of orange-tinted
silver in the staring moonlight, from Nanking itself came scarcely a
murmur of noise. It was the short hour when even a vast Chinese city is
quiet between the clamour of two days.
Ah Sing kept watch for the rest of that night, but there was hardly
need--I remained vividly awake myself every minute of the time. In the
morning I rose so utterly limp that Philipson diagnosed fever from the
mosquitoes--which had bitten us both pretty voraciously--and dosed
me with a quinine mixture into which I suspect he had dropped some
pleasant opiate. At any rate, it wiped the restlessness out of me as if
with a sponge, and I slept sound till lunch.
But if I was below par, Philipson himself seemed at the very pitch of
his form, alert, vigorous, in the best of spirits. He busied himself
at the table with maps and calculations and expense-sheets, and from
an occasional remark he rapped out to me I knew he was in a downright
itch for the hour of Poyning's return. The one thing that seemed equal
to allaying his impatience during that day of forced delay was wine.
Saunders Philipson consumed, I believe, seven bottles between breakfast
and dinner time, and the proprietress was already predicting the
exhaustion of her modest cellar.
Neither Philipson nor I alluded once to the episode of last night,
yet I fancy it was in the thoughts of both of us. From time to time
throughout the day he would shoot sudden glances towards the balcony,
as if the affair had occurred to his mind; and I couldn't help
connecting his overpowering excitement of to-day with what had happened
in the night watches. For my part, I could think of little else. That
two strangers should have gained access to the verandah without our
hearing them approach was hardly less a matter for surprise than alarm.
An active man might, it's true, have shinned up the wooden pillars and
drawn his accomplice after him with a cord, yet even this supposition
seemed wild enough to me when I remembered that one of the intruders
was a woman. Or at least, I could have sworn at the time that it was
a woman. Could it be the whole thing was an illusion--that I was half
asleep when I looked out, and that my dreaming eyes had turned some
short-coated Chinaman into Saunders Philipson and his taller accomplice
into that mysterious lady of the long robe? If so, it was an astounding
coincidence that both Ah Sing and myself should fall into the same
remarkable error. Then again, who were these prowlers of the night?
It wasn't like the enemies we had known--to be scared off by the mere
sound of our voices, yet that alone is what could have happened. While
we were talking at Philipson's door, they must have taken fright and
escaped down the balcony pillars and right round the hotel by way of
the water's edge. This might even have been done with the connivance
of those inside, and there recurred rather significantly to my mind
Philipson's remark that the proprietress of the inn would want watching.
Altogether, it was about as dark and mysterious a business as you could
well conceive, and I was glad, after tiffin, of a relief from puzzling
over it any longer. Philipson began to communicate his plans to me, to
outline the route he proposed we should take, and to go into details
of equipment, service and cost. As I listened to his quiet, confident
words and followed the lines he drew across the map with such assurance
and evidently first-hand knowledge of the country it represented,
my own nerves forsook me, and before long I felt as confident and
enthusiastic as himself. That was always the way with Saunders
Philipson. His enthusiasm was more than contagious, it was epidemic;
and he seemed to be gifted with so keen a zest of life that he spoke