The Pagan Madonna Part 10

On the dresser he saw a sheet of paper partly opened. Beside it lay a torn envelope. Dennison's heart lost a beat. The handwriting was his father's!

CHAPTER VII

Jane had gone to meet his father. How to secrete this note without being observed by either the manager or the Chinaman? An accident came to his aid. Someone in the corridor banged a door violently, and as the manager's head and Ling Foo's jerked about, Dennison stuffed the note into a pocket.

A trap! Dennison wasn't alarmed--he was only furious. Jane had walked into a trap. She had worn those accursed beads when his father had approached her by the bookstall that afternoon. The note had attacked her curiosity from a perfectly normal angle. Dennison had absorbed enough of the note's contents to understand how readily Jane had walked into the trap.

Very well. He would wait in the lobby until one; then if Jane had not returned he would lay the plans of a counter-attack, and it would be a rough one. Of course no bodily harm would befall Jane, but she would probably be harried and bullied out of those beads. But would she? It was not unlikely that she would become a pretty handful, once she learned she had been tricked. If she balked him, how would the father act? The old boy was ruthless when he particularly wanted something.

If anything should happen to her--an event unlooked for, accidental, over which his father would have no control--this note would bring the old boy into a peck of trouble; and Dennison was loyal enough not to wish this to happen. And yet it would be only just to make the father pay once for his high-handedness. That would be droll--to see his father in the dock, himself as a witness against him! Here was the germ of a tiptop drama.

But all this worry was doubtless being wasted upon mere supposition. Jane might turn over the beads without bargaining, provided the father had any legal right to them, which Dennison strongly doubted.

He approached Ling Foo and seized him roughly by the arm.

"What do you know about these gla.s.s beads?"

Ling Foo elevated a shoulder and let it fall.

"Nothing, except that the man who owns them demands that I recover them."

"And who is this man?"

"I don't know his name."

"That won't pa.s.s. You tell me who he is or I'll turn you over to the police."

"I am an honest man," replied Ling Foo with dignity. He appealed to the manager.

"I have known Ling Foo a long time, sir. He is perfectly honest."

Ling Foo nodded. He knew that this recommendation, honest as it was, would have weight with the American.

"But you have some appointment with this man. Where is that to be? I demand to know that."

Ling Foo saw his jade vanish along with his rainbow gold. His early suppositions had been correct.

Those were devil beads, and evil befell any who touched them.

Silently he cursed the soldier's ancestors half a thousand years back. If the white fool hadn't meddled in the parlour that afternoon!

"Come with me," he said, finally.

The game was played out; the counters had gone back to the basket. He had no desire to come into contact with police officials. Only it was as bitter as the gall of chicken, and he purposed to lessen his own discomfort by making the lame man share it. Oriental humour.

Dennison and the hotel manager followed him curiously. At the end of the corridor Ling Foo stopped and knocked on a door. It was opened immediately.

"Ah! Oh!"

The inflections touched Dennison's sense of humour, and he smiled. A greeting with a snap-back of dismay.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "I had a suspicion I'd find you in this somewhere."

"Find me in what?" asked Cunningham, his poise recovered. He, too, began to smile. "Won't you come in?"

"What about these gla.s.s beads?"

"Gla.s.s beads? Oh, yes. But why?"

"I fancy you'd better come out into the clear, Cunningham," said Dennison, grimly.

"You wish to know about those beads? Very well, I'll explain, because something has happened--I know not what. You all look so infernally serious. Those beads are a key to a code. The British Government is keenly anxious to recover this key. In the hands of certain Hindus those beads would const.i.tute bad medicine."

Ling Foo spread his hands relievedly.

"That is the story. I was to receive five hundred gold for their recovery."

"A code key," said Dennison, musing.

He knew Cunningham was lying. Anthony Cleigh wasn't the man to run across half the world for a British code key. On the other hand, perhaps it would be wise to let the hotel manager and the Chinaman continue in the belief that the affair concerned a British code.

"If I did not know you tolerably well----"

"My dear captain, you don't know me at all," interrupted Cunningham. "Have you got the beads?"

"I have not. I doubt if you will ever lay eyes on them again."

Something flashed across the handsome face. Ling Foo alone recognized it.

He had glimpsed it, this expression, outside his window the night before.

He recalled the dark stain on the floor of his shop, and he also recollected a saying of Confucius relative to greed. He wished he was back in his shop, well out of this muddle. The jade could go, valuable as it was. With his hands tucked in his sleeves he waited.

Dennison turned upon the manager. He wanted to be alone with Cunningham.

"Go down and make inquiries, and take this Chinaman with you. I'll be with you shortly." As soon as the two were out of the way Dennison said: "Cunningham, the lady who wore those beads at dinner to-night has gone out alone, wearing them. If I find that you are anywhere back of this venture--if she does not return shortly--I will break you as I would a churchwarden pipe."

Cunningham appeared genuinely taken aback.

"She went out alone?"

"Yes."

"Have you notified the police?"

"Not yet. I'm giving her until one; then I shall start something."