Chapter 31

The hour lacked a few minutes of seven when Peter ascended in the lift to the second floor of the Hong-Kong Hotel and made his way between the closely packed tables to the Desvoeux Road balcony.

Romola Borria was not yet in evidence.

He selected a table which commanded a view of the entrance, toyed with the menu card, absent-mindedly ordered a Scotch highball, and slowly scrutinized the occupants of the tables in his neighborhood. He felt vaguely annoyed, slightly uneasy, without being able to sift out the cause.

For a moment he regretted his audacity in encountering the curious eyes of Hong Kong society, a society in which there would inevitably be present a number of his enemies. It cannot be denied that a number of eyes studied him leisurely and at some pains, over teacups, wine-glasses, and fans.

But these were for the larger part women, and Peter was more or less immune to the curious, bright-eyed glances of this sex.

His attire was somewhat rakish for the occasion; and it appeared that sarongs were not being sported by the more refined class of male diners, who affected as a mass the sombre black of dinner jackets. At all Hong Kong hotels the custom is evening dress for dinner, and Peter felt shabby and shoddy in his silk suit, his low shoes, his soft collar.

An orchestra of noble proportions struggled effectively in the moist, warm atmosphere somewhere in its concealment behind a distant palm arbor with "Un Peu d'Amour," and also out of Peter's sight, an impassioned and metallic tenor was sobbing:

"Jaw-s-s-st a lee-e-e-edle lof-f-ff-- A le-e-e-edle ke-e-e-e-e-e-s--"

And Peter in his perturbation wished that both blatant orchestra and impassioned tenor were concealed behind a sound-proof stone wall.

He was tossing off the dregs of the highball when there occurred a low-voiced murmur at his side, and he arose to confront the pale, worn face of Romola. She gave him her hand limply, and settled down across from him, her eyes darting from table to table, and occasionally nodding rather stiffly and impersonally as she recognized some one.

"You see"--he smiled at her, as she settled back and fostered upon him a look of brooding tenderness--"you see, my dear, I am here, untagged. Nearly twelve hours have passed since you sounded that note of ominous warning. I have yet to feel the thrill, just before I die, of that dagger sliding between my ribs."

She accepted this with a nod almost indifferent.

"Simply because I have persuaded them to extend your parole to one o'clock. If you linger in China, you have--and need I say that the same applies to me--six more hours in which to jest, to laugh, to love--to live!"

"For which I am, as always in the face of favors, duly grateful," said Peter in high humor. "None the less I have this day, since we parted this morning, indulged in one pistol duel between sampans, with one of your admirable confrères----"

"Yes, I heard of that. But it stopped there. You winged his sampan coolie."

"And at the Canton station, if I may be pardoned for contradicting, I encountered the red-faced one. To tell you what you may already know, I punched him in the jaw, dog-gone him!"

She seemed to be distressed.

"You must be mistaken."

Peter shook his head forcibly. "A choleric gentleman born with the habit of reaching for his hip-pocket," he amplified.

She studied him with wide, speculative eyes. "He must be from the north. Some of them I do not know. But all of them have been informed."

"To permit me to live and love until one to-morrow morning?"

She nodded.

The aspiring and perspiring orchestra and the impassioned tenor had again reached the chorus of "Un Peu d'Amour."

"I could ge-e-e-eve you al-l-l my life for the-e-e-e-s--"

"Badly sung, but appropriate," commented Romola Borria.

Peter's countenance became a question mark.

"It may mean that I am giving you all my life for--this," she explained.

"For these few minutes, when we were to chatter, and make love, and be happy?" Peter demanded indignantly. "My dear----" He reached out for her hand, and she let him fondle it, not reluctantly. "I'd give all my life, too, for these few minutes with you. Do you know--you're perfectly adorable to-night! There's something--something irresistible about you--to me!"

"To you?"

"Yes," he said in a deep voice, and sincerely. "I'd come all the way 'round the world, and lay my life at your feet--thus." And he placed his knuckles on the white cloth, as if they were knees.

"Ah! But you don't mean that!"

"When I'm in love, I mean everything!"

"I know. You are fickle. Miss Lorimer--Miss--Vost--Romola--they come, they love, they are gone, quite as fatefully and systematically as life follows death, and death follows life."

"I do wish you wouldn't talk about death in that flippant manner," he gibed, wondering how under the sun he might get her out of this gloomy mood.

"But death is in my mind always--Peter. When you have gone through----"

"Romola, I refuse to be lectured."

"Very well; I refuse to talk of anything but love and death."

"Excellent, my own love! Tell me now how it feels when _you_ are in the heavenly condition."

"Most hopeless, Peter; because death, you see, is so close upon the heels of my love."

"Meaning--me?"

"No--my heart. The death of love and the death--of life follow my love. Now I want to pick up the threads of a moment ago. Peter, don't hold my hand. That woman is--staring. You said--you said, you would come away around the world to see me, to help me, possibly, if I were in trouble. You weren't serious."

"Cross my heart!"

"On the _Persian Gulf_ that day--that day I told you something of your recent adventures and your apparently miraculous escapes, I intended to ask you----"

"Seeress, I am all ears----"

"I intended asking you a favor, a most important one, an alternative----"

"The trip to Nara?"

"Yes; an alternative to that. Tell me truly how much at heart you hate the man at Len Yang. Wait. Don't answer me yet. At heart, do you really hate him, as you pretend, or are you simply bowing down to your vanity, to the pride you seem to take in these quixotic deeds? For one thing, there is very little money in what you are doing. If you should approach these adventures a little differently, perhaps, you might put yourself in a position to be rewarded for the troubles you take, the dangers you risk. I mean that."

"I admit I'm not a money hater," frowned Peter, striving without much success to feel her trend.

"It would be so easy for you to make all the money you need in only a few years by--how shall I say it?--by 'being nice.' Wait! I have not finished. You said I was a special emissary from him. You hit the mark more squarely than you thought. Oh, I admit it! I was sent to Batavia to meet you, to intercept you, and, to be quite frank, to ask you your terms."

"From _him_?"

"Yes. He has observed you. He can use you, and oh!--how badly he wants you and your boldness and that unconquerable fire of yours! He needs you! He wants you, more than any man he has known! And he will pay you! Name your price! A half million gold a year? Bah! It is a drop to him!"

"Don't," begged Peter in a whisper. "Please--don't--go on."

His face had become almost as white as the tablecloth, and his lips were trembling, ashen.

"God! I put my confidence in you, time after time, and each time you show me treachery, deeper, more hideous, than before. Please don't continue. I'm trying, as hard as I know how, to appreciate your position in this wretched mess--and trying to find some excuse for it. For you! And it's hard. Damned, brutally hard. Let's part! Let's forget! Let's be just memories to each other--Romola!"

Her face, too, had lost its color, like life fading from a rose when the stem is snapped. Her hand sought her throat and groped there, as it always did in her moments of nervousness, and she drummed on the cloth with a silver knife. She stared curiously at him, with the other light dying hard.

"Then I can only hope--a slender hope--to bring you back to the favor I asked you originally, and I place that before you now, my request for that favor--my final hope. You cannot refuse that. You cannot! You profess to be chivalrous. Now, let me--test you!"