Part 21

“An’ what’s the good worrd, Charley? Can I do annything at all for ye? I am waitin’ to buy a hat with your money whin this one wears out. ’Tis a shame to toss it away. I want ye to know Captain O’Shea, a seafarin’ friend of mine from New York. Captain, this is Misther Charley Tong Sin, comprador for Jordan, Margetson & Co., an’ the smartest comprador that ye will find between Tientsin and Singapore, if I do say it to his face.”

O’Shea shook hands with the affable young man, who laughed and retorted:

“Paddy is a great chap for the blarney, a first-chop jollier, you bet. We do some business together when my firm wants sailors for its ships. Sometimes Paddy beats me; not so often I skin him.”

“Listen to him,” chuckled the old man. “If iver I got the best of him just once, it ’ud make me too proud to live with. Well, I must be trottin’ along to me own dump. I wandered to th’ park on the chance of pickin’ up a couple of stray sailors. If ye can be of anny service to Captain O’Shea I will count it as a favor, Charley. He’s a stranger and he’s Irish, and he has made a hit with me.”

Paddy Blake departed in great haste, and Charley Tong Sin offered O’Shea a cigarette from an ornately jewelled case, remarking:

“You are in Shanghai for business or pleasure? It is a bully good town for fun; not as swift as New York, but not so slow either. I went to college in America.”

“Which is more than I did,” confessed O’Shea. “Oh, I am just looking about Shanghai, not to find out how swift the town is, but to invest a bit of money, maybe. Jordan, Margetson? That is a big shipping house?”

“The same. I am in charge of the native business,” chirruped Charley Tong Sin. “Anything in the shipping line you want, you come to see me and I will put you wise. You have done business in these ports before, captain?”

“No; mostly in the Atlantic trade. I was in the office of your firm this afternoon, asking some information about a possible charter.”

“Ah, but you did not see me. Too bad,” and the comprador added with bland self-satisfaction: “It must have been after three o’clock. Then I am in the club drinking gin cocktails every day until I go home to dinner. It is my custom. There is no man in Shanghai that does more business and drinks more gin cocktails, but I do not mix the two things. I am the wise guy, eh? What tonnage do you want to charter, and where to?”

“I am not quite ready to say,” replied O’Shea, who preferred to keep his affairs to himself even when offered the assistance of so capable an adviser as Charley Tong Sin.

“I beg your pardon. Come to my office when you have made up your mind, Captain O’Shea. For the sake of the jolly sprees I had in little old New York, I will see that you are not stung in Shanghai. What do you say to a drive on the Bubbling Well Road before you go back to your hotel? My carriage is waiting a little way from here. I came to the park to meet a friend but he has not arrived.”

The invitation was attractive and the acquaintance of the comprador worth cultivating. O’Shea accepted with thanks, and presently they climbed into a very shiny victoria with two Chinese grooms on the box. The spirited little horses, admirably matched, danced through the paved streets of the settlement and out into the wider spaces of the countryside. The shipmaster found pleasure in new places; with him sight-seeing had never lost its zest, and the Bubbling Well Road was one of the things that no voyager to the Orient ought to miss. To view it by night was rather unsatisfactory, but the air was deliciously sweet and cool, and the handsome embowered residences of merchants and diplomats and Chinese officials appeared quite magnificent when duskily discerned by the glimmer of the stars.

“You have seen the native city? No?” said Charley Tong Sin. “It is very dirty, but picturesque to beat the deuce. What you say? To-morrow morning I go to have an appointment with His Excellency, the governor, at his yamen. It is on business. Perhaps you would like to meet me there and have an audience. It is rather good fun, much red-tape, a big bunch of officials, and plenty of kow-towing. Not many foreigners have admittance to him in this way.”

It occurred to Captain O’Shea that he should very much like to learn what the government of the native city, or the police department thereof, had discovered in connection with the murder of McDougal. And to gain an entrance in company with the influential comprador, himself a Chinese, was to make his inquiries under the most favorable circumstances.

“I will jump at the chance,” he exclaimed. “A man like me that may do business in China in a small way should make himself solid with the powers that be.”

“I am sorry that I cannot meet you at your hotel and take you to the yamen,” explained Charley Tong Sin, “but to-morrow I must be very early at my office to make up the accounts of a ship that will sail for Hankow, and then I will have to hurry into the native city like the very devil. If you tell your ’rickshaw man to carry you to the governor’s yamen I will be there and see you at eight o’clock.”

“I can find my way, and many thanks to you,” cordially returned O’Shea. “The native city is strange water, but no doubt the ’rickshaw pilot will know his course.”

It was drawing near to midnight when the shiny victoria left Captain O’Shea at the Astor House and the obliging Charley Tong Sin bade him adieu. The shipmaster went yawning to his room, agreeably refreshed by the outing and ready for bed. He was a tidy man by habit, having stowed himself and his belongings for much of his life in a space no larger than a respectable closet. Even in a hotel room he left nothing strewn about.

He had no more than pulled off his coat when he observed that things were not arranged exactly as he had left them. His eyes noted one trifle, and this led him to look for others. The Chinese servant had been in to turn down the bed, leave fresh towels, and pick up burnt matches and scraps of paper, but something other than this routine handwork had been busy in the room. His things had been examined hastily, but with careful endeavor to leave them as they were. Opening one bureau drawer after another, he found confirmation of this suspicion. The articles therein had been not so much poked about in disorder as moved from their places by exploring hands.

If a thief had been in the room he found no booty for his pains, for there was neither money nor jewelry to be looted. Captain O’Shea thoughtfully picked up a leather hand-bag which was locked as he had left it. Inserting the key he looked inside. He had been careful to slip a box of revolver cartridges into a leather flap-pocket because the pasteboard covering was broken and they were apt to spill loose in the bottom of the bag. Evidently it had been ransacked, for the box of cartridges was not in the pocket, but lodged in a fold of a rain-coat which half filled the bag. O’Shea whistled softly and moved straightway to his trunk. This also was locked. Flinging back the lid, he instantly searched between the layers of clothing for the folded sheet of heavy paper on which he had drawn with a brush and stencilling ink the ominous Chinese character that was branded into the back of the red-haired sailor-man.

The paper was missing. Something had already told him that he should find it missing. He made no further search, but sat himself down on the edge of the bed and stared very hard at the blank wall. The night was as warm as before, but he felt curiously chilly.

“’Tis like as if some one had jammed an icicle into the small of me back,” he reflected. “I will not cry before I am hurt, but there’s more to this divertin’ adventure of mine than Johnny Kent and I ever dreamed of on the farm.”

Certain conclusions were boldly obvious. His real business in China had been discovered by the same agency which had tried to slay the red-haired sailor and which had murdered McDougal. The paper had been stolen because it was a clinching proof of his active interest and interference, and perhaps also to terrify and intimidate him with the realization that intelligences, hostile and secret, were spying on him. It was futile to try to guess how the knowledge of his purpose had been disclosed. McDougal may have been watched and followed, as O’Shea had already surmised, and they had been seen talking together in Paddy Blake’s place. Some listener may have been unseen during the interview at the headquarters of Inspector Burke.

To make complaint, either to the hotel management or to the police, that his room had been entered seemed a silly proceeding. To catch this kind of a thief was as hopeless as chasing a phantom. It was decidedly unpleasant to think of going to sleep in this room, for as Captain Michael O’Shea admitted to himself, with a very serious countenance:

“The lad that did that trick is likely to sift in through the key-hole if he takes the notion and chop the brand into me back after slippin’ the knife into me before I can wake up to find out how dead I am. I would like to sleep in the same bed with Inspector Burke and a battery of the Royal Artillery this night, but if I lose me nerve Johnny Kent will disown me entirely.”

With this he looked over his defences, like a seasoned campaigner, and assembled the chairs, the crockery, and the large tin bath-tub, together with the heavier articles of his own kit. Two chairs he placed against the door, one balanced on top of the other so that if dislodged they would topple over with a good deal of noise. The cord of the mosquito canopy he cut in twain, and so ingeniously suspended tub and crockery just inside the two windows that the wariest intruder must certainly set in motion a clamorous little avalanche. Then, having tucked his revolver under the pillow, he prudently commended his soul to his Maker and composed himself to slumber of a hair-trigger kind.

The night passed without alarm and Captain Michael O’Shea roused himself out soon after daybreak to smoke three strong Manila cigars and organize himself as a strategy board, or one might have said that he was clearing for action. Convinced that the game he played was a genuinely dangerous one, he was in haste to get afloat where he belonged. To dodge the wiles of an ambushed foe was not what he liked. At this kind of warfare the Chinese mind was too nimble for him.

He decided that he would keep the appointment to meet Charley Tong Sin at the yamen of the governor of the native city. No mischance was likely to befall him in broad daylight, and, given the opportunity, he would seek a private interview with that official. This business despatched, he proposed to show the water-front of Shanghai how speedily a river steamer could be manned and taken to sea.

Having eaten breakfast early and with good appetite, Captain O’Shea went out to find a ’rickshaw. Only one of them happened to be standing in front of the hotel and he had little trouble in making the swarthy, sturdy fellow in the shafts understand where he wished to go. The coolie set off at a racing trot, whisking the vehicle along with amazing ease. The passenger had not outgrown the idea that it was rather absurd and unfair for an able-bodied person to be pulled along in this fashion by another man no stronger than himself. Therefore, he nodded approval when the coolie slackened his gait and yelled at another stalwart Chinese squatted on the curbstone who picked himself up and ran behind the ’rickshaw as “push-man,” making a double team of it.

Moved by two-man power, the light vehicle made a speedy passage through the British settlement and turned into the French quarter to reach the nearest gate-way of the native city wall. Soon the order and cleanliness and modernity of European territory and dominion were left behind and the ’rickshaw had spun into the swarming, filthy streets of the immemorial China.

“The River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells can be no worse than this,” said O’Shea to himself, “and for the love of heaven was there ever such a mess of people jumbled together?”

No more than eight or ten feet wide, the alleys were crowded with pedlers and street-merchants selling cakes, fish, pork, vegetables, porcelain, furs, embroideries, pictures, bamboo pipes, their wares displayed on little wooden stands or spread upon the rutted flag-stones.

Jostling among them were laden mules, top-heavy wheelbarrows, bawling coolies sweating beneath the burden of the shoulder-yokes, hordes of idlers, screaming children, until it was to wonder why traffic was not wholly blockaded. Into this ruck of humanity, this immense confusion and noise, the two ’rickshaw men hurled their vehicle like a projectile. They shouted incessantly, threatening and reviling, nor tried to pick a way through the press. These who got in their path were knocked head over heels. Pedlers’ barrows were upset helter-skelter. The onward course of Captain O’Shea was as destructive as a typhoon.

He yelled at his headlong chargers to slow down. They were likely to cause a riot. Already a mob was buzzing angrily in their wake and several missiles were hurled at the ’rickshaw. Captain O’Shea had the sensations of a man who was being run away with. This brace of pig-tailed fiends had bolted hell-for-leather. He was of a mind to jump out and let them go their own gait, but this enlarged baby-carriage of a ’rickshaw was awkward to disembark from while under way, and he was reluctant to risk landing upon his head. If he menaced them with a revolver the mob would be apt to join forces with them against the foreigner. Still, this might be the peculiar fashion of conveying a gentleman to the governor’s yamen, and perhaps he had better sit tight and hold hard until the ship struck a rock.

Presently, however, he observed that several big swarthy men in blue cotton blouses were running alongside the coolie in the shafts and holding shouted converse with him. They appeared to be friends of his, and Captain O’Shea did not like their looks. They were hardier, more truculent of visage, than the pasty-faced Shanghai coolie class. The tough has the same ear-marks the world over, and these fellows were ruffians whom one would not care to meet in the dark.

A few minutes after these had joined company the ’rickshaw turned abruptly from one of the crowded streets and moved with undiminished speed into a wider but much less frequented thoroughfare lined with stables, straw-littered court-yards whose buildings were in ruinous decay, and hovels used as slaughter-houses where mangy dogs prowled in search of offal. The ’rickshaw tilted and veered sharply in the direction of one of these disreputable court-yards, and Captain Michael O’Shea, quite certain that he was not headed toward the governor’s yamen, acted decisively and on the spur of the moment.

Things were going all wrong and very probably he would alight from the frying-pan into the fire, but this was nothing less than an abduction. The coolie in the shafts had coiled his queue under his cap, possibly to guard against the very manœuvre that O’Shea executed. But the wind and the rapid motion had loosed the end of the thick black braid and it bobbed between his shoulders and whipped free as he ran.

Bending forward, O’Shea clutched the queue in a tremendous grip and laid back as if he were hauling on a main-sheet. The rascal’s head was fetched up with a dislocating jerk, his feet pawed the air for an instant, and his hands lost their hold of the shafts. Then, as he came down and tried vainly to get a footing, the careering ’rickshaw rammed him from behind and sent him sprawling on his face. Shot out from his seat went Captain O’Shea, his feet in front of him, a revolver in his fist, ready to bound up from the pavement and open the engagement on the instant.

The “push-man” had been violently poked under the chin by the back of the suddenly halted ’rickshaw, and he lay groaning and doubled up several feet away. The ruffianly escort, taken by surprise, ran a little distance before they could wheel and return to the scene. Captain O’Shea had a moment in which to get his bearings and take stock of the situation. Darting for the nearest wall, he braced his back against it and stood waiting. The big swarthy rascals in the blue blouses fiercely jabbered together, gazed up and down the almost deserted street, and with no more delay drew knives from their baggy breeches and charged with heads down.

O’Shea threw up his revolver for a snap-shot at the foremost of them. The hammer clicked. There was no report. He pulled the trigger again with the same result. For the third time the hammer fell with the same futile, sickening click. This was his finish. The thing was absurd, incredible. Raging, he grasped the weapon by the barrel and ran forward to swing the butt against the nearest shaven head. A long knife ripped at him and slashed his sleeve. He cracked the man’s head, but the others were at him like wolves. He dodged and tried to take to his heels, but the two ’rickshaw men blocked his path.

One of the assassins had worked around behind him and was trying to trip and get him down so that they could cut him to ribbons at their leisure. The knives hemmed him in. He slipped and fell upon one knee. The ruffians laughed.

Then, lo and behold! they were scampering frantically away, yelling in fear, scrambling over walls like monkeys, diving into the stables and court-yards, flying for the lower end of the street. In a twinkling Captain O’Shea was alone, magically snatched from death. White and shaking, he stood and gazed at a near-by corner of the crooked thoroughfare. Filing past it came a squad of British bluejackets in white clothes, and the sun winked brightly on the polished metal of their rifles and cutlasses. Beside the lieutenant, in front of them, strode a tall, slim-waisted man in khaki uniform whom O’Shea recognized as Inspector Burke. O’Shea’s assailants had been warned in time to scurry to cover before the British party had more than a flying glimpse of them. At a quick order shouted by the lieutenant, the sailors scattered into the yards and squalid buildings, but the fugitives had escaped by a dozen dark and devious exits to vanish in the labyrinths of the teeming, mysterious native city. Inspector Burke was pounding O’Shea on the back and exclaiming vigorously:

“My word, old chap! What sort of a bally row is this? The beggars nearly did for you. Lucky we happened along, wasn’t it?”

“Tis all of that,” earnestly replied the shipmaster. “And who are ye, anyhow? Is this a fairy story or a play right out of the theatre? You came on the stage about one second before the curtain rung down.”

“Leftenant Kempton-Shaw--ah, here he is--allow me to present him, Captain O’Shea--as I was about to say, he came ashore from the _Warspite_ gun-boat this mornin’ with a batch of Chinese pirates, the real thing, don’t you know. He took them out of a junk after a rather nice little shindy last week. He marched them to the Chinese prison just now, it’s in this quarter of the native city, and their heads will be cut off to-morrow. I’m awfully pleased that we were taking this short cut home. In close quarters, weren’t you?”

“I have never found them a closer fit,” said O’Shea. “I was on me way for a chat with the governor, and a gang of bad citizens tried to wipe me out. I will walk along with you if ye don’t mind. There is enough Irish in me to waste no great love on the British flag, but I will say, Lieutenant Kempton-Shaw, that I never laid eyes on a finer, handsomer lot of men than these lads of yours from the _Warspite_.”

“Thanks, and I fancy you mean it,” smiled the naval officer. “This is extraordinary, by Jove. Foreigners are fairly safe in the native city, as a rule, are they not, Burke? What do you make of it?”

“I shall have to hear Captain O’Shea’s report.”

“I have no long-winded report to offer,” incisively declared the shipmaster. “I have me suspicions, and you can guess what they are, Inspector Burke. ’Tis the same business that we talked about in your office. But I wish nothing to do with any police investigations. You will report this row of mine to the native government, I have no doubt, and I hope ye will try to collect an indemnity for me distressed emotions, but I have no time to dilly-dally about in Shanghai. I will go to sea. Will you help me find the men?”

“From the tone of your voice I infer that your business is not precisely pacific, my dear sir,” put in Lieutenant Kempton-Shaw. “Do you mind letting the _Warspites_ in on this cruise of yours?”

“Thank you, but I have set out to handle it as an affair of me own. I may have bit off more than I can chew, but I will try to see it through.”

“Meet me at my office at noon and I’ll have some men for you to look over,” said Inspector Burke. “I will pick up a crew for you if I have to make a general jail-delivery.”

As they trudged along Captain O’Shea became silent and abstracted. He was not in a mood for conversation. Conjecture pointed one way. He had been a gullible fool who deserved to have a knife stuck in his ribs. It had been as easy to trap him as though he were a lubber on his first voyage out from home. It had been with design that only one ’rickshaw stood in front of the hotel that morning when he was ready to go to the native city. And the pair of coolies were hired cutthroats who had steered him into the disgusting street among the slaughter-houses in order that he might be done away with, leaving never a trace of his fate behind him.

Reasoning back from this link to the next preceding, his room had been entered and ransacked while he was safely out of the way in a carriage on the Bubbling Well Road. Some time had been required to make that careful examination and fit keys to his hand-bag and trunk. Also, he had just now investigated his revolver and discovered that the firing-pin of the hammer had been filed, not enough for the eye to notice it, but sufficiently to cause the impact to fail to explode the primer of the cartridge.

The affable, gilded young gentleman who had invited him to drive on the Bubbling Well Road was the same kind acquaintance who had suggested that he take a ’rickshaw and visit the native city in the morning. The finger of coincidence pointed in the direction of that smartest of compradores, Charley Tong Sin.

“That kind of coincidence is unhealthier than the cholera,” said O’Shea to himself. “Maybe this sport with the college education and the taste for gin cocktails is a good friend of mine, but I will give him no chance to prove it again. I have been on the jump ever since I met him. If he is not crooked he is a hoodoo. And ’tis not impossible, after all, that he is mixed up with this gang of murderers that I am running after. The heart of him is Chinese.”

He would keep these suspicions to himself. They lacked tangible proof, and he held to the view that the business was entirely his own. He had plunged into this befogged maze of circumstances like a boy on a holiday, and it was for him to extricate himself like a man. With the warmest expressions of gratitude he parted from Inspector Burke and the naval lieutenant, and hastened in the direction of the water-front.