Caravans By Night Part 19

Dusk had fallen when he awakened. He dressed quickly and went below.

Tambusami was nowhere in sight; however, he suspected his shadow was not far away. Doubtless the native knew of his appointment in the Chinese quarter, but he determined if possible not to have him at his heels. To this end he took an automobile part of the way, by a roundabout route; then, certain he had eluded his tracker, set out on foot to finish the journey.

An intense vitality lived in every line of his body as he swung along crowded streets, a tall, trim figure in white linens, smoking a cheroot with the air of a globe-trotter trickling through the evening swarm for no other purpose than to absorb atmosphere, instead of a man approaching an uncertain venture.

Native Calcutta was airing itself after a hot day, and a film of color and life unreeled in the early night. He pa.s.sed two sailors from a British man-o'-war, younger by ten years than himself, clean-clipped chaps. The sight of them brought back the old dream--freedom and the quest for fabulous isles. He rather envied that pair, irresponsibly young. Always there, this dream, lurking in the subconscious, eager for some incident to draw it into the conscious.

From the thronged bazaars he turned into a quarter that was no less crowded, but with people of a different sort. It was as though he had descended into another world, a planet of dirt and filth and sin--sin in its nakedness, as only Asiatic cities know how to strip it of its glamour. A foul artery fed with the virus of the East--beings whose faces were mottles of yellow and brown and chocolate black upon the mephitic gloom. A woman in satin trousers ran out of a balconied house and clutched his arm, whispering an entreaty; she cursed him in b.a.s.t.a.r.d English when he thrust her away. Something of psychic consciousness came to him from the street, as though fanned into momentary being were the sparks of old evil.... Babylon and Rome, and the perished cities of the Nile....

Once clear of this humanity-clogged artery with its aura of ancient sin, he found himself in the quieter, though scarcely cleaner, Chinese quarter. Jews, Pa.r.s.ees and Chinamen; black and gilt signs; open doors that, like dragon-mouths, expelled the mingled odors of _samshu_ and soy, of ca.s.sia and joss-sticks and opium; an atmosphere that transported Trent to the picturesquely wicked towns of the Straits Settlements.

The Street of the River of the Moon belied its name; it was no more than an alley and it slunk in the shadows of unpretentious houses. Its lights were dim, many-colored globes afloat on warm darkness; it was as mysterious as the numerous slant-eyed yellow men who came and went so soundlessly in its shifting dusks. After several inquiries Trent located the residence of his Excellency the Mandarin Li Kwai Kung--a dark, colonnaded pile. He jerked the leather strap that hung from a panel of the door; heard a m.u.f.fled tinkle, the padding of feet. The door opened wide enough to permit a yellow face to peer out.

"Tell his Excellency that Mr. Tavernake is here," Trent instructed.

The door closed quickly; again the padding of feet. After a moment the yellow face reappeared. This time the door opened sufficiently for Trent to see a house-boy in a slop-shop suit and a black skull-cap.

"His Excellency sends greetings and bids you enter his dwelling,"

announced the house-boy.

The door closed behind Trent. He was in a hall where a _dong_, swinging from bra.s.s chains, kindled an orange flame against the semi-darkness, where a stale-sweet scent clung to the air and gloom varnished everything.

The house-boy took his shoes and gave him straw sandals, afterward leading him through a series of doors to a corridor where the rich, stupefying odor of opium saturated the atmosphere. A sliding door was pushed back--a black door inlaid with characters in glistening nacre--and Trent stepped into a dimly illuminated area.

A lamp with a yellow shade hung by invisible means from an invisible ceiling, casting a pyramid of ochre light upon a figure that squatted on silken cushions beneath it--a figure arrayed in a loose yellow garment and the embroidered boots of a mandarin's undress. He was grossly obese, with drooping gray mustaches and oblique, beady eyes--a grotesque effigy made more unreal by the incense that floated up from a brazier at his side and wreathed bluish spirals on the dead air around him. Trent received an impression of sheeny hangings beyond the radius of the lamp; vases and gold-embroidered screens--a web of shadows, with, in its center, this gorged yellow spider.

His Excellency rose with visible effort, smiled blandly and shook his own hands within his brocaded sleeves.

"You will do me the honor to be seated?" he enquired, gesturing toward a pile of cushions opposite him. "My house is flattered that one of such fame should lighten it with his presence."

Trent waited for his host to be seated, knowing this to be a custom, then dropped cross-legged on the cushions. Followed the usual exchange of lilied words, of felicitations and compliments. Afterward, Li Kwai Kung struck a gong and a little rice-powdered, red-lipped girl appeared from behind the dusky screens, like a figure out of one of Pan Chih Yu's poems, and set a bra.s.s basin filled with scented water before Trent.

When he had washed his hands the basin was removed. More lilied words, more felicitations and compliments. Then, a few minutes later, the first course of the meal was served.

"_Ch'ing chih fan_," said the mandarin graciously--by which he invited Trent to eat.

Bamboo shoots, rice-cakes and honey; roast duck flavored with soy, seeds of lotus in syrup; prawns, sweetmeats, nuts and tea made fragrant with petals of jasmine. A very celestial meal. They talked as they ate, and if his Excellency clung to the custom of balancing food on his chop sticks and thrusting it unexpectedly into his guest's mouth, as an act of courtesy, he refrained from doing so on this occasion. Trent grew anxious to have the formalities over with. He knew he was undergoing a test; upon the success of this interview, he imagined, depended his future safety.

When the meal was finished, Li Kwai Kung asked:

"Will you join me with a pipe?... No?"

A ring of the gong brought the serving-maid with cigars. His Excellency declined to smoke tobacco; instead he spoke to the girl in his own tongue and she vanished, to reappear presently with the requisites of an opium smoker--a lighted lamp on a tray, a blue jar containing poppy-treacle, and a metal pipe. The jar, Trent observed, was a piece of blue porcelain of the Sung period.

Then, after the manner of the East, which is to say, obliquely, his Excellency approached the subject of Trent's visit.

"There are certain necessary precautions," he began, while the girl twisted a black gummy substance about a needle and held it over the lamp, "before we enter into any discussion."

Trent opened his shirt and revealed a coral pendant chased with silver, lying against his skin. Li Kwai Kung nodded.

"And if I say, 'It is a wise man who holds his tongue in the presence of knaves,'" pursued the mandarin, "what would be your comment?"

"I would reply with the ancient wisdom of Lao Tzu--'By many words wit is exhausted; it is better to preserve a mien.'"

Li Kwai Kung nodded again. "_Hao_," he grunted--and his guest did not know that was a signal for the house-boy, armed with a revolver, to retire from behind one of the many screens.

"It is needless, I am sure," the Oriental resumed, "for me to caution you, who are about to start on a journey to the dwelling-place of _He-whose-wisdom-is-as-a-lamp-filled-with-much-oil_, that the discreet man questions himself, a fool others. You will tread the path of discretion, I know, for I perceive that the light of intelligence burns with much brightness in your brain."

A pause. Trent studied the blue porcelain jar. Li Kwai Kung took the metal pipe from the girl and inhaled; bluish vapor welled from his nostrils, half-obscuring his countenance.

"The arm of the Order is long and powerful, like Mother Yangtze, and its eyes are as many as the stars." Their glances met; no expression was mirrored in either face. "Yours is a great work to do," continued his Excellency, sinking deeper among the cushions and expelling smoke. "The Order will reward the faithful; they shall flourish as the willow-branch. The first step of your journey to the City of the Falcon will be taken shortly--and what sage was it that said, 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step'?"

The obese effigy smiled, pleased with his knowledge, and Trent felt that each word had its own hidden significance. Curiosity p.r.i.c.ked him, like a needle flashing back and forth across the loom of thought. But he smoked his cigar and stared at the blue jar as if he had nothing weightier than the Sung porcelain upon his mind.

"As a man climbs a mountain by terraces, so will you travel to the city where dwells the Falcon, he who guides the workings of the Order," Li Kwai Kung went on. "There, having attained the summit, you will--er--see light. The next terrace of your journey is Burma."

He withdrew an object from under the cushions and Trent looked upon a packet wrapped in white silk. The mandarin, placing his pipe in a bowl at his side, rested a contemplative gaze upon the silken wrapping.

"Pa.s.sage for Rangoon has been booked for you on the _Manchester_, which leaves day after to-morrow. Here"--indicating the packet--"are all necessary papers. When you reach Rangoon you will take a train, as soon as convenient, for Myitkyina, where you will go to the shop of Da-yak, the Tibetan, and identify yourself by showing the symbol of the Order.

He will furnish you with a _hu-chao_, or, as you would say, a pa.s.sport, to a--er--higher terrace."

He handed the packet to the Englishman, who placed it in his pocket.

Trent's thoughts were revolving about what he had just heard--revolving and reaching no end. Myitkyina. Upper Burma. Were the jewels in Burma?

But why Burma? How were they taken there? "Under the protection of your Secret Service," Sarojini Nanjee had said. Were they hidden somewhere in the hills? Myitkyina. He tried to visualize a map; failed.... This City of the Falcon: in Burma? And the Falcon? Who was he? White or Oriental?... Groping--groping in the dark--a purposeless circle. At least, this Order was no small one.

"I believe there are no further instructions to deliver," he heard Li Kwai Kung say. "Regarding the trivial matter of your--er--incidentals, I presume you have been told to keep an account and submit it at the proper time?... No?... Then do so, as it is the wish of the Order that you suffer no personal expenses.... Stay,"--as Trent made a move to leave--"it would be ungracious for me to allow so honorable a guest to depart without further hospitality!"

The little Chinese maid brought liquor--a sort of _arak_ that, despite his Excellency's comment that it was a draught of the G.o.ds, tasted like sweetened vinegar to Trent. As the Englishman sipped the wine he continued to mull over what Li Kwai Kung had told him. The formidableness of the Order amazed him, troubled him not a little. This Falcon had a nest in Calcutta and Myitkyina. Where else? What of his brood? Why not, he mused, report what he knew to the Intelligence Department; let them swoop down upon these two nests; thus avoid any treachery that Sarojini might contemplate? An idea that he instantly dismissed, for to act prematurely was to invite defeat. He was under orders--and he had given his word of honor. Seek the root of the vine, the seed from which the Order flowered; then exterminate it.

Trent saw by his wrist-watch that it was nearly ten o'clock when he finally rose to take his leave. Li Kwai Kung lifted his corpulent person with an effort and repeated the ceremony of vigorously shaking his own hands.

"A sage once said, 'A man's actions are the mirrors of his heart,'" was his parting remark. "And, verily, I have looked into your heart!"

(Which, Trent reflected later, was a rather cryptic compliment.) "May you flourish in wisdom and wealth, as the blossoms of the almond tree flourish after the snows have melted and run down from the Yunnan-fu!"

Trent inclined his head gravely. "And may the Green G.o.ds grant you the Twelve Desires!" he returned.

The house-boy appeared; his Excellency sank among his cushions, like a spider retiring to its gossamer web; and Trent was led back through the series of doors to the outer portal, where he exchanged the straw sandals for his shoes, and left the colonnaded residence--left a world of mystery for a world of noise and heat, of odorous reality and pale lanterns that reflected upon yellow faces and sloe-dark eyes.

He was a short distance beyond the mouth of the alleyway when a gharry rolled by. He started to call after it--an impulse born dead. It was not late; he would walk. Motion accelerated his thoughts. And he wanted to think.

As he strode along the street, fragments of the obese mandarin's conversation slid into his brain and receded, like waves gently insinuating themselves upon a beach. Casually (he had turned into a narrow highway of balconies, of swinging signs and Chinese scrolls) he noticed a white woman on the opposite side of the street--only noticed her, for he knew the type that haunted this quarter. He would have expelled her instantly from his mind had not she moved from the shadow into a band of light that extended beyond a doorway; had not he seen her pause and draw away, as from a plague, as a Chinaman slunk past. The glow fell upon a face of old ivory hue, upon hair as bronze as the lettering upon the black scroll above her wide-brimmed hat.

He drew a quick breath.

The girl evidently recognized him as he recognized her, for she darted out of the band of light and to his side. Dark eyes looked into his from under the brim of her hat. She smiled, half with fright, half ashamed.

"I--I've been very foolish," she said, much after the manner of a truant child. "Please take me out of this dreadful place!"

Trent did not speak immediately; grasped her arm; looked about; hailed a dilapidated carriage that was rattling by. As it came to a halt he said "Get in!" much after the manner of a stern parent.

She smiled again, that same half-frightened, half-ashamed smile, and obeyed.