Chapter 50

Now Peter was an emotional young man. And wrathful notions were kindled in him before he encountered the only guard Kahn Meng's men had overlooked--may the bones of that one rest gently!

He saw little children clawing in red muck; he saw young girls with sunken breasts, their former beauty a wretched caricature, carrying dying babes upon their backs. He saw tired old men, and women, crippled, blind, with red fingers and wrists, as if they had been dipped in blood. He saw plenty to enrage him.

Kahn Meng's guards bowed gravely as he passed them at tunnel passages. He had walked perhaps three-quarters of an hour generally in a single direction, bearing a torch, when he collided with a smooth, flat obstruction.

Somewhere in the earth distantly behind him occurred a metallic rumble, followed by a gust of soft wind, fragrant with the outdoors.

He was staring at blackness, the varnished blackness of a great wooden door. He was at the threshold! somewhere on the other side of that enormous wooden barrier was the man of Len Yang! Chalked boldly upon the surface was the legend:

P. M.--straight on--K. M.

Pulling with his fingers and bracing his feet in the rough floor, the mass moved monumentally toward him. It swung wide, on great, concealed hinges.

Peter's adventurous heart was beating an excited battle call. His burning eyes strained beyond the ruddy luminance of the torch, and examined--white marble! He was at his journey's end--somewhere in the palace of the Gray Dragon!

Peter dragged the great door softly shut behind him, and found himself in a chamber of vast proportions, built of what had at one time been purest white marble, discolored entirely now by the red taint of the bloody ore. The floor was perspiring redly.

Going on tiptoe to the center of the space, he searched the blank walls, listening breathlessly.

He heard nothing but the faint patter of the dripping slime, and he went swiftly to the end of the musty antechamber and discovered at the distant end the fourth wall, hitherto unseen. Reaching from the left corner of the scarlet tomb was a narrow staircase built also of marble.

Dropping his hand nervously into his right-hand tunic pocket, he went up and pushed open another door. He found himself now in a snow-white corridor, faintly lighted by grilles overhead. The hall reached gloomily into gray distance, and it was quite vacant. An unseen fountain was playing near by. At his left was another door, closed.

The closed door attracted him. Certainly there was no other course now than a detailed exploration.

Bracing himself for a surprise in this palace of hideous surprises, he flung open the door, and entered black darkness.

Carelessly he closed the door behind him, listening and sniffing. At first he heard nothing, but he smelled altar-incense faintly.

A deep-voiced gong suddenly reverberated while Peter tensed himself. The sonorous melody lifted and crashed, subsiding into countless unmusical overtones. Lighter metal rang upon wood.

Then lights--electric lights--by the dozens, hundreds--thousands--blazed with a violent suddenness, a suddenness that Peter could compare only with that of a tropical sun leaping out of the ocean; and Peter blinked upon green. It was a hideous green, a green of diabolical intensity. He shivered. It seemed to creep, to writhe, this green.

At first he could not absorb this insane color idea; and he stood there, with his heart sinking.

He discovered that he was occupying an oblong green rug of satin. He was dazzled by the green glare of a cluster of quartz lights in front of him, and he stared, first at a monstrous green Buddha, squatting on a thighless rump between flashing green pillars, and finally at the most hideous individual he had ever gazed upon, a human, who occupied a throne carved solidly from green jade.

The glimpse was like stepping from a dark dream into the center of an aquamarine nightmare. And in the instant following his partial digestion of the viridescent scheme he was possessed with the notion that the occupant of such a chamber of horror must certainly be insane.

That was the first idea to possess Peter. He was not surprised to find that he was unafraid. Anticipation is much more fearful than realization. He had experienced many panicky moments in looking forward to this meeting; and yet in the presence of him he was cool.

The Gray Dragon of Len Yang?

From the tail of his eye he detected a man with folded arms backed against the door. At either side of the green throne stood Mongolian guards, armed with rifles. They struck the only dissonant note of the picture, for they were garbed in desert brown.

Evidently all ways of escape were closed. For two years he had contrived to elude the tracers, the killers, sent out by this creature, and now he had deliberately walked upon his swords. Death? Where was Kahn Meng?

Possessed with a feeling akin to cat-like curiosity, Peter walked slowly to the beryl throne steps, where he paused, with his fists gripped tightly in his pockets, his chin up, and his shoulders back.

Close scrutiny did not soften the bestial cruelty of the face of Len Yang's ruler. It was a startling face, as gray as fresh clay, sharply wrinkled. The nose was exceedingly long and sharp, with a crooked joint. Dirty-yellow mandarin mustaches drooped like wet sea-weed from the sides of a curling, sneering mouth.

And it was dominated by a pair of very small, very bright green eyes, set deep and exceedingly close together.

But the tenor of the face was gray, the gray of living death, and from this emblem, Peter suddenly decided, the man had been given his descriptive name.

Long, gray talons reached out from the folds of a mandarin jacket and toyed nervously with a strand of gray hair which jutted from the pigtail winding over the slanting shoulder.

The green eyes blinked as they completed the survey of Peter Moore. The curling lips were moving.

"Peter Moore!" he rasped. "The most daring foreigner who has yet visited my city! Peter the Brazen, with a reputation of breaking the hearts of beautiful women! You are late. I have been waiting upon this visit for two years!"

He leaned forward, and Peter retreated a step.

"What have you done with her?" Peter snapped.

The Gray Dragon sank back with a sigh. "Ah! Would you like to gaze upon that which can never be yours?"

"May I see her--once--before I die?"

"That is a wise statement. You are altogether wise--astonishingly so! Wisdom is a rare gem in one so young." He chuckled in an irritating treble. "Look about you again, youth. This is known as the room of the green death. Few men leave the room of the green death alive. My hounds bay when they enter.

"The young woman is here--safe. If you will answer my questions, I may permit you to gaze upon her just once before you die! Perhaps I may be so lenient as to allow you to die together. Does not that appeal to you?" he demanded, as if anxious. "You--who are so thirsty for the gold of romance?"

Peter glared at him silently, and his fingers were twitching.

His host tapped the resonant gong. Some one stepped behind Peter, for he distinctly heard the seep of silken garments.

The man on the green throne muttered, adding to Peter: "I am granting your wish. You may gaze upon her before you die. I, too, will gaze, for I prize her highly, as you know."

He sank back meditatively, and in that moment the gray face became oddly sane.

"Peter Moore, seldom do I permit men who have troubled me so sorely to escape alive. Perhaps, in face of what has happened, you are foolishly taking unto yourself credit. And still, for a reason unknown to me, I hesitate.

"Listen to me closely, youth! For these two years I have watched you with my thousands of hired eyes--you cannot realize how closely! Because I was deeply interested. You are a riddle to me. You have the emotions of a woman, and the cunning of a _hu-li_.

"Times without count word has gone forth from this green room that your death must take place. Childish curiosity to stare just once upon the foolish adventurer has caused that word to be revoked! Do not assume credit for bravery that was not yours, Peter Moore! You are not heroic; you have been a plaything. The gods are through with you.

"Harken to me, Peter the foolish. Within these green walls daily are inscribed the names of men and women who must die. Your name has been spoken, yet never once has it been written. When it is written----" He paused with a portentous hush.

"To-day, when I realized you were at last coming to me, when spy after spy ran to my feet to say that at last--at last--Peter Moore, the unconquerable, was coming to pay his long-overdue call--I hastened with that daily quota of names of those who are doomed, so that I could attend you with undivided attention.

"Can it interest you? Nine men are doomed. Within two weeks from this hour a mandarin will die by the knife, an ambassador at the court of Peking will expire by poison, an indiscreet Javanese merchant----" He waved his skinny arms impatiently.

"Those whose names are written must inevitably die. If the name of Peter Moore had but once appeared on the green silk--I could have forgotten you--and rested. But I was restrained by a most curious impulse." He looked at Peter eagerly.

"You have perplexed, almost fascinated me. Tell me first, what was your power over Romola Borria?"

Peter only grunted, angrily astonished.

"Wait!" cautioned the curling lips. "I am not ridiculing you. I am keenly desirous of knowing." He frowned, pondering. "I will tell you about that woman. Romola Borria was sent to me, and I employed her. For certain difficult tasks she was all that I desired--more beautiful than sunset on the Tibetan snow--a glorious woman, yet as cold, as unfriendly as that same snow. Her spirit was one of ice, yet fire.

"And her heart was stone--or snow also. I sent her directly to communicate a certain thing to you--to kill you in the event that you declined. Shall I tell you how many men she has put out of the way at my bidding before and after she met you? No matter.

"Romola Borria was proof against love. No man was created for her to love. Yet that snowy heart melted, that precious coldness vanished, when she met--Peter Moore!"

The Gray Dragon paused, and the cessation of his metallic voice, the quick relinquishing of the evil glint in his small, green eyes, left Peter with a deeper feeling of revulsion than previously. It had been his imaginative belief that the Gray Dragon was utterly without human traits; yet he possessed that lowest of them all, a bestial curiosity.

"I can all but read your thoughts," he went on, lidding his green eyes a number of times. "You are saying what my victims invariably say when I grant them these rare audiences before they die. Over and over you are repeating--'Beast! Beast! Beast!' Is that not true?"

"That is absolutely true!"

Malice seemed to hover about the glittering green eyes, and was gone at once. "Peter Moore, to gaze at you is like gazing into a crystal. In you I witness that supreme quality which was denied me in my youth. I can have anything in the world but that supreme, that sublime quality. I can buy anything in the world but that." The voice stopped.

Peter shifted his glance momentarily to the armed attendants who guarded this evil life. An inner whisper counseled him: "Not yet! Not yet! There is time!"

"Yet there is a chance that I may reconsider; that I may permit you to continue to live--perhaps in the mines. But certainly, Peter the foolish, you must not yield to that present impulse. Of course, you are armed. But do not move! Two feet behind you stands an excellent shot with a pistol aimed at your backbone. Men with cracked spines do not live long!" He chuckled.

"What was I about to say? Ah, yes! If I could purchase from you that quality--if I could, I say, anything in my kingdom would be yours--everything! It is the one thing I have been denied. Holy wheel! It is strange, this way I am talking! I have rarely had such an interested audience. Most of my captives at this stage are cringing, are kissing my feet."

The snarling grin left his lips again, and his mood became strangely soft, like dead flesh, so Peter thought, as he waited--with that pistol at his backbone!

"I intend telling you an amazing story, which you may or may not credit. I am telling it--this confession--partly because I dislike the look in your blue eyes. Like everyone else, you loathe me. But I will erase that look. I intend to show you I am even more human than you!

"By Buddha, I will tell that story to you--you, Peter Moore, the most fortunate man in all China this hour. Think, before I begin, of that mandarin, that bungling Javanese merchant, who, also, are about to die. Then forget all else--and listen.

"This took place many years ago, when I was a young man, like yourself. I, too, loved a woman. Can you understand me? I, too, once loved a woman, a maiden of the Punjab. I can conceive her in the veil of my memory still. Eyes like dusty stars, skin the color of the Tibetan dawn, the dawn that you may never again look upon.

"Her heart was gold, so I thought. Yet it was dross. On a night in springtime, in the bazaar at Mangalore, we two first met. I have not forgotten. That night I fell in love with the white orchid from the Punjab. She was more beautiful to me than life or death, a feast of beauty.

"Len Yang was mine then, and I was a rich prince, but not so rich as now. Drunkenly I was casting my gold about the bazaar when we met. She saw me--and she smiled! It was the first time any woman had smiled upon me, and I was alarmed and troubled. I was no more handsome than now. I was the man that no one loved. _Chuh-seng_--the beast--was my name even then, among those who tolerated my friendship because of my fluent gold.

"And when the Punjab maiden smiled upon me, I thought to myself: '_Chuh-seng_, love has come at last to sweeten your bitter heart.' What should a young lover have done? I--I bought the bazaar and presented it to her--on bended knees!

"She confessed that she could love me, despite my ugliness, this white orchid of the plains. Peter Moore, do not look at me. You can believe--if you do not look. She kissed me--on my lips! Again she said she loved me. Had I been a thousand times uglier, she would have loved me a thousand times more passionately! Heaven had joined us. And I forgave my enemies, renewed my vows at the wheel, and blessed every virgin star!

"Love had come to me at last! Me--the most hideous in all of Asia. And I believed her. What would you have done, Peter Moore--you who know so well the heart of woman? Never mind. I believed everything.

"We lingered in Mangalore. But I did not know then of the Singhalese merchant--the trader who owned three miserable camels. He possessed not handsomeness, but the romantic glamour which you possess, Peter the Brazen! Reveling in my love, I was as blind as these imbeciles in my mines. Our child was born.

"She could have taken more, had she not been so lovestruck. She could have had my all--my gems, my pearls, and rubies, and diamonds, more colossal than the treasure of any raja--my mines which dripped with the precious mercury!

"Yet she stole only my gold which was convenient, and went out into the starlit night with the Singhalese trader, to share the romance of the blinding desert--the Singhalese trader, a man of no caste at all! Love? That was my love!"

The hideous, gray face retreated behind talons as though to blot out the thought of that ancient betrayal. When the talons again dropped down, the dead softness of the face was replaced by the former sneer.

This change was quite shocking.

The beast was laughing harshly. "If I could not have love, I could at least have hate! I have hated more passionately than any man has ever loved!"

Peter said nothing to this, although the gray lips closed and the green eyes looked at him expectantly, almost demanding comment. Surely this creature was insane, with his room of the green death, his wild tales of love of a Punjab maiden, of wholesale hate.

The Gray Dragon seemed irritated. "What have you to say now?"

"I was only wondering," said Peter, as if suddenly tired, "when that pistol is to explode at my back."

"There is yet time," muttered his host. "No man has yet left this room in contempt of me! Can you believe I have lied?" he snarled. "Why, you fool!" he croaked. "I will teach you! What do you suppose has become of that other one whom you met at the _weng_ into the hills? Do you imagine my men were not in his camp? Every inch of the way you two were watched.

"And what has become of your prudence? You who defied me, who escaped me--undone by a woman! She is why you are here. Because you are such a fool you shall die. I might have relented. I thought you were proof against love. Is any one? Is any one proof against it but me? Ah----"

He looked eagerly beyond Peter, and Peter heard a frightened sob, then a little cry, as the door closed heavily.