Peter the Brazen Part 61

He wondered how he could adjust himself to the routine of his old profession again, if that was the opportunity awaiting him in Len Yang.

Governmental problems, he knew, would have to be given to more specialized men, such perhaps as Kahn Meng.

He looked behind him, at the long line of men stretched down the narrow ravine like the tail of a colossal serpent. Occasionally a stone, dislodged, clattered down into the crevices. Above them the rock stretched and lost itself in the cold purple of the night. The moon carved out vast shadows, black and threatening.

They emerged at length into a broader valley, jagged with spires flashing with gleams of the moon on frequent mirror-like surfaces. Ten thousand men could have been concealed in this desolate cavern. Yet it rang with emptiness as, far arear, a steel prod struck powdery fire from the flinty path.

Hours seemed to pa.s.s as they advanced, descending constantly. At times the granite walls nearly met above them, and then a shaft of moonlight would cast freakish shapes across their vision.

Once they paused for rest near a torrential stream. Some lingered to drink. The blackness in the sky was yielding itself to the spectral glow of the new day when Kahn Meng gave the order to halt.

He took Peter aside and explained his procedure. His plan was to send fifty men through the tunnel to the main shaft to subdue the guards; the remainder of the armed coolies, numbering about one hundred and fifty, would follow, forming a protective chain to the black door, an underground entrance.

"There should be no trouble, no confusion--a bloodless revolution," he added with a nervous, elated laugh. "I will occupy the place--you will follow. Wait ten minutes."

Peter nodded.

"A tunnel, fairly straight, leads from here directly to the black door.

Have your revolver in readiness. My men may not make a clean job. The mine guards carry clubs. Each of my coolies has a rifle." Kahn Meng's eyes in the light of a torch were glittering excitedly. He grasped Peter's nearest hand in his enthusiasm.

"We are so near! Only a step!" He laughed wildly, lifted his voice ecstatically to a sing-song and chanted from Ouan-Oui: "Then----

"'Let us rejoice together.

and fill our porcelain goblets with cool wine!'"

CHAPTER XIV

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 pa.s.sed them at tunnel pa.s.sages.

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 ma.s.s 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 b.l.o.o.d.y ore. The floor was perspiring redly.

Going on tiptoe to the center of the s.p.a.ce, 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 cl.u.s.ter 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. Antic.i.p.ation 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l 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.