Chapter 39

Anthony and the twins called for Peter as soon as they could tear themselves away from the many fascinating incidents attendant upon coming to an anchorage in the Whang-poo-Kiang.

It was late in the afternoon when the first company tug came down-river from Shanghai for passengers. And it was nearly dusk, the golden-brown evening of China, when they were decanted upon the public landing stage at the International Concession.

Anthony was for going directly to the Hotel Astor for dinner, but at Peter's suggestion he and the twins boarded a street-car for the ride to Bubbling Wells.

Peter stood for a number of moments in indecision as the Bubbling Wells tram went up the bund with the slow flood of victorias, rickshaws, and wheelbarrows. It was now about seven o'clock, with the sun hidden under a horizon of dull bronze. Street lights were coming on, twinkling in a long silver serpent along the broad thoroughfare, rising in a grotesque hump over the Soochow bridge, and becoming lost in the American quarter.

He would meet Anthony and the twins in the dining-room. Whoever got there first would wait. He expected to be there long before his three friends came back from Bubbling Wells.

A rickshaw coolie was wheedling him at his elbow but he paid no attention. His eyes were searching the street. It took him several seconds to reconcile himself to the fleeting apparition. What was this girl doing in Shanghai?

The rickshaw had passed, proceeding at unabated speed in the direction of Native City.

The rickshaw boy was still making guttural sounds, softly plucking at his sleeve. The shafts of the rickshaw were close to his feet. But Peter was still undecided.

"Allee right," said Peter, briskly. "French concession."

That was the direction in which the other rickshaw was headed.

He climbed aboard, and they veered out into the north-bound traffic. The girl in the rickshaw was about one block in the lead, and had no intention evidently of accelerating her coolie's pace or of turning back. She had left all decision to him, and his decision was to ask her a few questions.

His coolie trotted heavily, looking neither to the right nor left, with his pigtail snapping from side to side, as his head bent low.

"Follow _lan-sî_ veil--savvy?"

"My savvy," returned the coolie, heading toward the narrow alley of filth and sputtering oil _dongs_, breathing the odor of refuse, of cooking food.

Peter's heart was beginning to respond to the excitement. Did she have some message to convey to him that she could not trust to the openness of the bund at the jetty?

Suddenly the rickshaw ahead swerved sharply to the right into an alley that was perfectly dark. Its single illumination was a pale-blue light which burned before a low building set apart from the others at the far end.

Here the first rickshaw stopped. A ghostly figure seemed to float to the ground. There was a clink of coins. A door opened, letting out a wide shaft of orange light which spattered across the paving, flattening itself against the grim wall of the building across the way.

Peter caught the bronze glint of wires on the roof under a pale moon.

He knocked sharply on the door, and stood to one side. It was a habit he had learned from long experience--that trick of stepping to one side when he knocked at a suspicious door. The door moved outward a few inches. A long, yellow face, with a thick, projecting under lip, peered out. Peter pushed the man aside and entered.

He found himself in a low corridor of smoked wood, with fat candles disposed along the walls at intervals of several yards, on a narrow, lacquered rail. One of three doors was open.

A match was struck, the head glowing in a semi-circle of sputtering iridescence before the wood itself kindled. The hand holding the match was trembling; the weak flame fluttered to such an extent that he was denied momentarily a glimpse of the owner of the hand.

A whisper was conveying an order to him. "Please shut the door, Mr. Moore."

He reached for the door and closed it firmly in the face of the man who had let him into this place.

When he turned, the trembling hand was applying the match flame to the wick of an open lamp, a rather ornate _dong_. As the flame rose higher, casting its steady, mild luminance, he caught a glitter of metal, of polished rubber; one end of the room was almost filled with machinery.

"Romola Borria!"

She seemed to have undergone a great change. The beautiful face that had lured him once into the jaws of death was dominated now by a wistful and tender sadness, as though this girl had gone through an epoch of self-torture since they had last been together.

Yet she was still beautiful; it was as if her beauty had been refined in an intense fire. Her mouth was sad, her great brown eyes glowed with an inexpressible sadness, and her face, once oval and proud, seemed narrower, whiter, and, by many degrees, of a finer mold.

She was examining him broodingly; there was a reluctant timidity in her eyes; it was such a look as you may see years afterward in the woman you once have cast aside for some other, perhaps not quite so worthy.

"Well, you have found me, Peter," she said in a faint and tired voice, coming slowly toward him.

"Yes," he admitted, lamely: "I saw you passing the jetty. I followed--naturally. I have just come from America."

"Oh." Her voice expressed no surprise. "You came for me, Peter?"

"I thought you were dead," he confessed.

"Well, I am a hard one to kill!" A tiny smile flickered across her fine lips. "You are not married--to Eileen?"

"No--and never!" he said dully.

"But you must be in love! You are always in love--with some one."

"I am in love with no one."

"Not even----"

"I am in love with no one."

"Nor am I," said Romola Borria quietly. It seemed to come from her as a vast and reluctant confession. "I loved only one man, and my love for him is quite dead. If I should rake over the embers--oh, but I have raked them over, Peter, many, many times--and I have found not one single small ember glowing! When love dies, you know, it requires a great fire to rekindle it. Oh, I have suffered!"

"He--is dead?"

She smiled again, rather ironically. "Can a man live with a bullet in his heart?"

"I--I saw. I thought--but what does it matter what I thought?" He was trying to inject some of his old spirit into his voice. It was rather difficult, this business of laughing at the funeral of love. "Romola, you are more beautiful!"

"I have suffered," she said, in the same restrained voice.

He turned away with a shrug. He, too, had suffered, but in a somewhat different light. He was examining with a professional eye the heap of apparatus which was arranged in splendid order along the back of the small room.

"I am studying. You see, Peter," she explained, in the same rather recriminatory tones, "I was rather fond of you at one time----"

"Romola, please----"

"And because it was your profession I became interested in it. I heard the message you sent last night--to--to the place on Jen Kee Road. I was quite worried for a while."

"That was why you happened along the bund about the time the boat came up-river?"

"Perhaps." She smiled vaguely.

"You wanted to find out if I still cared enough for you to----"

"Follow me? Yes, Peter; I think that was why."

"Then you didn't know I was on my way to China?"

"No, Peter, I knew nothing."

"Aren't you connected with my good friend, the man with the sea-lion mustaches, in Len Yang?"

Romola gave a short gasp. "I never was connected with him."

"But you told me you were--back there on the _Persian Gulf_!"

She shook her head slowly, with a gentle firmness.

"No. I did not tell you that. I have seen him; yes. But I was never in his employ. It was Emiguel Borria, my late and--may I say?--my unlamented husband, who made me do those things. Peter----"

Her attitude seemed to undergo some sort of subtle change, as if she were bitterly amused. "You say you are not in love. Then what of the little golden-haired girl--the two little golden-haired girls--you left this afternoon on the bund?"

"They and the young man are passengers on the _King of Asia_. I brought them ashore to give them an insight into China-as-it-really-is."

"They are in very capable hands, then, Peter. Aren't you running some risk, though? Isn't there some chance that the men in the Jen Kee Road place may take it into their heads----"

"I am on my word of honor, Romola. I have come back to China, not to start trouble, but simply because--well, why are you in China?"

"Because I haven't the will to leave, perhaps. I stay here in the same spirit that a man or a woman lingers before a dreadful oil painting, like the shark picture of Sorolla; it is terrible, but it is fascinating. I cannot leave. If I did, I would come back, as you come back, time after time. Is that why you've come back?"

"Exactly."

"And you imagine you're running no risk with the two golden-haired maids in tow?"

Peter shook his head thoughtfully. "Perhaps I shouldn't have exposed them to danger. But they were determined, and it's partly to help the young man. Anthony is a plain American business man. He's in love with the youngest. And she, a hero worshipper. He wants to demonstrate himself."

She interrupted in a whisper. "Peter, tell me, why is it? What have you ever done? What do you say? Why--why is it?"

Peter the Brazen was looking at her blankly.

She made a gesture of resignation with her beautiful white hands.

"Well, never mind. Tell me more about Anthony."

"Anthony believes that if he can demonstrate his valor to Peggy, she will come to his arms. He really is a fine, upstanding fellow. I had intended bringing them to Ching Tong's place out Bubbling Wells way, harmless enough and watched by the police of nine nations. Ching Tong, being a friend who will put himself out for me, will play the part of a very bad villain. Anthony's revolver is loaded with blanks. Mine isn't, but that's just my cowardly nature. You can never tell what might turn up, you know."

"Naturally. Go on."

"I intend to have Ching Tong stage a very realistic fight down in his cellar, in which Anthony can overpower eight or ten Chink giants, escape out of the window with the fainting Peggy in his arms, and--and----"

"Simple enough," admitted Romola, with a mild frown. She drew him to a broad, low bench. "Somehow," she went on, "your idea rather appeals to me, too. I liked Anthony's looks--what I saw of him. And I rather liked the two little girls--twins, aren't they?"

Peter nodded. "The heavenly twins!"

"I think I'd quite agree with that plan, Peter, if you didn't happen to be in such disrepute in this neighborhood. You must realize that the Gray Dragon's men are watching you. Of course, you didn't recognize your rickshaw coolie. He is one of the Gray Dragon's men--naturally. Don't you think you are exposing those two nice girls unnecessarily to danger?"

Peter lighted two cigarettes, and passed one of them to Romola. She accepted it with an air of abstraction and puffed slowly, blowing out a thin stream of pale smoke.

"But circumstances are changed now. You see, I am on the fence--perfectly safe."

"They are still anxious for you to come with them?"

"That's it. They sent a representative last trip all the way to San Francisco."

"Of course you refused? Peter----" Her soft, white hand was resting on his; her red lips were very close to his face. "Why don't you join them? You and I!"

"You and I?"

She nodded earnestly.

Peter drew back a few inches. "I said 'no' when you asked me that before. No, I'll have nothing to do with that band--never! Going out into the wilderness, up into the mountains on some of their risky errands--with you--might have appealed to me. Not now!"

"Peter, I am afraid I still love you!"

"And yet, Romola, I'm not afraid of falling in love with you--again! But let's not speak of joining that man in Len Yang. What you're offering is--too tempting. I might give in! You are altogether too fascinating!"

"Am I?"

"I've told you that before."

"Then you will go up-river with me?"

"No--never! Why, you almost make me suspect that you're still in that beast's employ."

"I never was. I told you that."

"You've said many things that didn't stand the acid, Romola."

He stood up, looking down at her with whimsical tenderness. She was very beautiful, and when she took on that forlorn air she had the appearance of a helpless, small girl. He wondered if he would ever regret his refusal.

"Ching Tong must have time to make arrangements, and I have a dinner engagement at the Astor House with Anthony and the heavenly twins. Can't you and I have tea to-morrow afternoon?"

Romola came to him and put her two hands on his shoulders. "No," she said. "We must not be seen together. It may mean danger for you. I've been thinking over your plan to convert Anthony into an adventurer. Why not bring them all here. I have seven servants, all Chinese, and they would give their lives for me. Let me see----" She bit her upper lip thoughtfully.

"You can tell them that this place is--well, the heart of the Chinese smuggling trade. It's ridiculous, but it will appeal to them. I will dress up as a Chinese woman--oh, I've done it dozens of times in the past--and I shall be very mysterious. That will seem much more romantic to Peggy than a mere opium den. And it will be safer. I know Ching Tong's shop. It might do, if you were an ordinary person, Peter, but such an adventure should be provided with at least five times as many exits! I have them here."

Peter looked at her doubtingly, although the idea appealed to him. Outriding his admiration of the idea, however, was a recurrence of his old impression of Romola Borria. He knew that he never had been a match for her cunning, her esoteric knowledge of China.

"I have plenty of make-up pots. I'll paint up these _fokies_ to look like bandits! I'll have knives in their belts. And I'll plan the rehearsal before you come. Everything will be arranged." She seemed to hesitate. "You--you won't bring that dreadful automatic revolver of yours loaded--will you?"

Peter smiled faintly.