Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China Page 6

  CHAPTER VI

  The first operator had developed for himself at an early stage of hisoccupancy of the _Vandalia's_ wireless house the warm friendship of thechief engineer. A wireless man is far more dependent for his peace ofmind upon the engine-room crew than upon the forward crew. The latterhas only one interest in him: that he stick to his instruments; whilethe engine-room crew strictly is the source from which his blessingsflow, his blessings taking the invisible, vital form of electriccurrent.

  Wireless machines are gourmands of electricity. They are wastrels.Not one-tenth of the energy sucked from the ship's power wires findsits way through the maze of coils and jars to the antennae between themastheads.

  The _Vandalia's_ engine-room equipment was installed long beforewireless telegraphy was a maritime need and a government requirement.Hence, her dynamos protested vigorously against the strain imposed uponthem by the radio machine. Any electric engine is unlike any steamengine. Steam engines will do so much work--no more. Dynamos ormotors will do so much work--and then more. They can be overloaded,unsparingly. But the strain tells. Stout, dependable parts becomehot, wear away, crumble, snap.

  In the typical case of the _Vandalia_, the question of whether or notthe wireless men should be provided with all of the current theyrequired, was narrowed down to individuals.

  If Minion had disliked Peter Moore he could have slowed down thedynamos at the critical times when the operator needed the highvoltage; but Peter had had encounters with chief engineers before. Hehad at first courted Minion's good graces with fair cigars, radiogossip and unflagging courtesy. And on discovering that the chief wasa sentimentalist at heart and a poet by nature, he had presented himwith an inexpensively bound volume of his favorite author. Daring, buta master-stroke! He had not since wanted for voltage, and plenty of it.

  He pondered the advisability of taking Minion entirely into hisconfidence as he followed the sweated, undershirted shoulders to theengine-room galley, and thence across the oily grill of shining steelbars which comprised one of the numerous and hazardous superfloorswhich surrounded the cylinders.

  Minion was nursing a stubbornly warm bearing in the port shaft alley.

  The fat cylinder revolved with a pleasant ringing noise, the blurringknuckles of the frequent joints vanishing down the yellow, vaultedalley to a point of perspective, where the shaft projected through thehull. The floundering of the great propellers seemed alternately tocompress and expand the damp atmosphere.

  The sad, white face of Minion arose from the dripping flanks of thejournal as he caught sight of Peter in the arched entrance. A palesmile flickered at his lips.

  The chief did not in any wise reflect his monstrously heaving,oil-dripping surroundings. He was a small, deliberate man, with oceansof repressed energies. His skin had the waxy whiteness of a pond lily.An exquisitely trimmed black moustache adorned his mouth. The deepbrown eyes of a visionary rested beneath the gentle, scythe-like curvesof thin and pointed eyebrows.

  "You look worried," vouchsafed Minion as their hands met. His quietvoice had a clarity which projected it nicely through the bedlam ofengine-room noises. "Why you up so early--or so late? Anything wrong?"

  Peter took out a cigarette and nervously lighted it at the sputteringflame Minion held for him. "Mr. Minion, something's in the wind," hecomplained, and hesitated. He was at the verge of telling what he hadseen on the promenade deck, of the confusion on the pierhead, of theunaccountable behavior of the woman in the window above Ah Sih King's,of the suspicious attitude of Blanchard, of the recent plea for help.Again something checked him.

  "Mr. Minion, what is Len Yang? And where is it?"

  The scythe-like brows contracted. Minion's lucid, brown eyes rested onhis lips, seeming to await an elaboration of the query. His featuressuddenly had stiffened. His whole attitude appeared on the moment tohave undergone a change, from one of friendly interest to a keendefensiveness.

  "Len Yang is a city in China. Why?"

  The operator suspected that Minion was sparring for time.

  "Where is Len Yang?"

  "Do you mean, how does one reach Len Yang?"

  "Either."

  "Mr. Moore"--the suspicion fell from the chief's expression, leaving itcalm and grave--"you are not an amateur. You have discretion. The manwho controls Len Yang is the _Vandalia's_ owner."

  "Why, I understood the Pacific and Western Atlantic Transport Lineowned her!"

  "This man--he is a Chinese. Oh, I've never seen him, Mr. Moore. Oneof the richest of China's unknown aristocrats, the central power of thecinnabar ring. You have never gone up the river with us to load atSoo-chow?"

  Peter shook his head. "Cinnabar from his mine is brought down theYangtze on junks and transferred at Soo-chow?"

  Minion seemed not to be listening. His eyes were stagnant with anappalling retrospect. "A terrible place--horrible! Five years ago Ivisited Len Yang. Hideous people with staring eyes, dripping theblood-red slime of the mines! And girls! Young girls! Beautiful--fora while." He sighed. "They work in that vicious hole!"

  "Young girls?" Peter exclaimed.

  "Imported. From everywhere. I tried to find why. There is noexplanation. They come--they work--they become hideous--they die! Itis his habit. No one understands. Poor things!"

  Peter was staring at him narrowly. "Quite sure he imports them to workin the mines?"

  Minion nodded vehemently. "I made sure of that. I went up the riveras _his_ guest. Trouble with the seepage pumps. Hundreds of themdrowned like rats. Len Yang is near the trade route into India.Leprosy--filth--vermin! God! You should have seen the rats!Monsters! They eat them. Poor devils! And live in holes carved outof the ruby mud."

  He tore the clump of waste from his left hand and ground it under hisheel.

  "And in the center of this frightfulness--his palace! Snow-whitemarble, whiter than the Taj by moonlight. But its base is stained red,a creeping blood-red from the cinnabar. Damn him!"

  "No escape?" Peter muttered.

  "Escape!" Minion shouted. "_Dang hsin_! They call him the GrayDragon. He reaches over every part of Asia. That is no exaggeration.Take my advice, Mr. Moore, if you have stumbled upon one of hisschemes--_ni chue ba_--don't meddle!"

  The white face writhed, and for a new reason Peter smothered theimpulse to tell the agitated Minion what he had seen. Theirconversation drifted to general shipboard matters. When he left heborrowed the chief engineer's master key on the excuse that he hadlocked himself out of the wireless cabin.

  Besides a stiffening head wind the ship was now laboring into pilinghead seas. Far beyond the refulgence of the scattered lights starsshone palely. Flecks of streaming white were making their appearanceat the toppling wave crests.

  A hail of stinging spray, flung inboard by a long gust, struck Peter'sface sharply as he struggled forward, rattling like small shot againstthe vizor of his cap and smarting his eyes. The needle-like drops wereicy cold. The elastic fabric of the _Vandalia_ shivered, her broadnose sinking into a succession of black mountains. Peak gutters roaredas the cascading water was sucked back to the untiring surface.

  Gaining the cross entrance, he braced his strength against the forcesof wind which imprisoned the door, and crept down the passage.

  His heart pounded as his groping fingers outlined the cold ironnumerals on the panel. Nervously, he inserted the master key into thedoor lock, and paused to listen.

  Rhythmic snoring moaned from an opened transom near by. What othernight sounds might have been abroad were engulfed by the imminentthrobbing in the engine-room well.

  Stateroom forty-four's transom was closed. The lock yielded. The dooryawned soundlessly. A round, portentous eye glimmered on the oppositewall. An odor of recently wet paint and of new bed linen met him. Theexcited pulsing of his heart outsounded the engines.

  He shut the door cautiously, not to awake the occupants of the berths,and fancied he could again hear the warning sibilance
of the whisper,but in sleep, perhaps drawn through unconscious lips.

  Eagerly, his hand slipped over the enameled wall and found the electricswitch. Turning, to cover all corners of the stateroom he snapped onthe light.

  Stateroom forty-four, through whose doorway he could have sworn to haveseen a sandaled foot vanish less than three hours previous, was empty!

  The blue-flowered side curtains of the white enameled bunks were drapedback in ornamental stiffness. Below the pillows the upper sheets wereneatly furled like incoming billows on a coral beach. He threw openthe closet door. Bare! Not one sign of occupancy could he find, andhe looked everywhere.

  As he made to leave the room a small oblong of white paper was thrustunder the door. He hesitated in surprise, stooped to seize it andflung open the door. A gust of night, wind--the slamming of adoor--and the messenger was gone.

  Tremblingly, he unfolded the paper. His eyes dilated. Hastilyscrawled in the lower right-hand corner of the otherwise blank leaf wasa replica of the blurred sign that had caused such consternation on thepart of Lo Ong.

  The ideograph had twice been brought to his attention. It wasapparently a solemn warning. Should he heed it? He felt that he waswatched. But the porthole glowed emptily.

  Lighting a cigarette, he dropped down to the bunk, cupped his chin inhis palms, and frowned at the green carpet.

  He was being frustrated, by persons of adroit cunning. It wasmaddening. This had ceased to be an adventurous lark. It was tobecome a fight against weapons whose sole object seemed to be to guardthe retreat of some evil spirit.

  It occurred to him suddenly that he should be grateful upon one scoreat least: He had not lost the trail, for the symbols were unchanged.

  But from that point the trail vanished--vanished as abruptly as if itsdesign had been wiped off the earth! Sharp eyed and eared, alertnessnight after night availed him nothing. And not until the twinklinglights of Nagasaki were put astern, when the _Vandalia_ turned her noseinto the swollen bed of the Yellow Sea, did the traces again showfaintly.