The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (16 page)

That is, Taoism would be located there if MacDonald’s efforts to prevent it failed. When we had last seen the missionary who had his own little church and school compound in the northern section of Cheyung, he was trying to rent the temple in anticipation of the Taoists. Chang Pei Ying, in whose hands the rental lay, owing to long nonpayment of the land tax, had shrewdly put him off. Loyalty to the city treasury evidently prompted him to discover whether or not the purse of the hierarchy would prove larger than that of the lonely Christian.

The high-pitched, powerful-voiced chanting, like a weird incantation, that we were beginning to hear, seemed to prove that the magistrate had been repaid for his waiting.

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “we might cut across that way. It’s nearly on our road. I’d like to see what particular sort of wind-and-water magic the Cheyungese are being treated to.”

I heard Hazard chuckle. My all-embracing curiosity, of which I could no more rid myself than of my head, always amused him. His was the opposite nature, a single-track and peculiarly efficient mind that tended always to concentrate, driving straight toward its goal. In other ways we were much alike, and I rather think our great difference in this one respect rather accentuated our success. It’s not always easy to tell just what bit of knowledge may be relevant to a case.

“You’re incorrigible, Partridge,” he said. “A minute ago you wanted nothing but a bed. But I’m agreed; it’ll do no harm to have a look.”

So I called out to our number one donkey man to keep on his way to Chang Pei Ying’s official inn and we turned off the road toward the temple, following the narrow paths marked by whitewashed rocks with which the little vegetable patches were bordered. The nearer we approached the temple, the louder became the chanting—now unmistakably one of those mystic formulas, almost unworded and hypnotic in their prolonged monotony, with which the Taoist priests befog the minds of their followers.

WE WERE almost at the gateway of the temple compound when I saw vaguely a figure standing just to one side of it in the shadow of the wall, partly concealed behind the left pillar of the high archway. Some one, apparently, who wanted to keep out of sight and who would, indeed, have been out of sight to any one approaching the gate from the town. A white man, by his stature—then, impulsively, he sprang out at us. It was Missionary MacDonald.

“Mon, mon,” he greeted us, gripping a hand of each, “but I’m glad to see ye. And wherever did ye come from?”

We were both surprized, but I think neither of us betrayed it.

“From wandering up and down the earth,” replied Hazard, “like the individual who, I suppose you’ll say, is the master of this temple.”

“ ’Tis true, and ’tis not a matter for jesting,” replied MacDonald rather warmly, but he gave Hazard’s hand an extra shake before releasing it.

MacDonald was at once one of the most striking and amusing figures we’d discovered in far-off Shensi. Physically a true son of the Highlands, tall, raw-boned and powerful, he was clad from chin to heels in a long, blue gown, the close-woven goods of which was unique in Shensi and had evidently been sent him from the States. Peculiar enough he’d have looked in that costume, topped by a little blue cloth cap with a purplish button, even without his great, flaming, red beard that spread fan-shaped over the breast of his gown and enveloped his face like an aureole.

“Red-haired
kuei-tzu
” (devil), the unregenerate among the natives had called him, while to Hazard and me he was “Moses of Shensi.” But the deadly earnestness of the man forbade much levity at his expense. Really, we liked him, and he was doing a good work in Cheyung and teaching other things than his Gospel.

Greetings over, we turned toward the temple, the translation of which into a place of Taoist propaganda really omened ill for the town. The modern so-called teacher of Tao is very much a grafter, battening on the ignorance and superstition that it is his business to create and perpetuate. Great miracle-workers are the members of the hierarchy—a claim they back up by jugglery and conjuring of no mean sort, by no means forgetting to take toll as they go, in the shape of material reward or political power.

Evidently some such profitable rite was about to be enacted inside the temple, for the speaker had passed from his incantation into a speech that was urgently persuasive—to just what action I couldn’t quite make out.

“Verily, as you say,” asserted MacDonald soberly and with unaccustomed melancholy, “the one with horns and hoofs has come to this town since your departure. Ye found me meditating on his works, the better to combat them, but ’tis but peetifully weak I feel at times against the doings of Satan. Surely I am but a poor instrument for the Lord’s will.”

From that he passed to telling us, guided by a few questions on our part, all the facts concerning the Taoist invasion. The pertinent points were that it had begun nearly two months before, that its chief spirit was one Ma An Liang, who had brought with him a dozen or more Kanzu devotees, and that, already, pandering particularly to the Shensian belief in amulets, it had won over a good percentage of the townspeople, including many members of MacDonald’s own flock.

Of course, it couldn’t be expected that the Scotch zealot would speak of this temperately. Particularly bitter did he seem concerning his own lack of money to meet the bid of Ma An Liang for the rental of the temple, and he even raged a little against Chang Pei Ying for accepting the higher bid of the Taoist against his own protestations. This last was rather unreasonable. Taoism, with all its faults, was a Chinese religion, and Chang Pei Ying, with all his virtues, had the lazy-mindedness of his class and could hardly be expected to recognize its faults until they were well thrust upon him.

When MacDonald had finished I proposed that he chance a look inside the temple, but he had seen the spectacle once and refused with some heat to contaminate his eyes again. He promised, however, to wait for us at the gateway, so Hazard and I proceeded up the broken and ruinous tiled walk that led through the compound, walking on our toes and keeping well in the shadow of the shrubbery that edged it.

Climbing up a long succession of low steps, we came to a broad portico, the arched roof of which was supported by pillars. Though there were watchers in the antechamber, we each managed to reach a pillar from behind which we got a fairly good view of the conclusion of a typical Taoist ceremony.

First, there were the blue-garmented converts and near-converts, a solid mass of them, squatting cross-legged on the broken brick floor. Then was a ten-foot interval, the three major images of the Taoist Pantheon, with Laotzu the Unapproachable in the middle. Just to the right front of this inane-featured god—whose images, by the way, I half believed the Taoists did protect in some strange manner from profane hands, so various had been the tales I’d heard of men who’d come to grief from touching them—stood the man whom MacDonald had named Ma An Liang.

The place was dimly lighted by flickering candles and reddish flames from two sacrificial bowls placed on either side of the altar. Even in that light Ma An Liang was an impressive and unusual figure—tall and spare, with a uniquely thin face, high cheekbones and narrow eyes that were just now contracted to mesmeric pin-points. His one outer garment was the usual long mandarin robe with the sleeves shortened somewhat, leaving his hands free.

While his singsong, queerly fascinating voice, at once soothing and exciting, recited an unintelligible rite, his slender, clever fingers were busy with a very peculiar work.

On a small stand about four feet in front of the image of Laotzu rested a grass basket. From this basket Ma An Liang took successively many couples of articles. First there were two small knives, then two copper
tungtses,
then two bronze rings, and there were several pairs of small silver coins—all evidently collected from the credulous and tricked audience for their further befuddlement.

Each twin offering Ma An Liang held for a moment just in front of, and above, the debased modern presentment of the gentle-souled Laotzu. When he released them, they would flutter slowly downward, as if partially upheld by some strange force. But when they came before the open mouth of the god they’d pause and float suspended for a moment. Then one would slowly glide sidewise between the grinning jaws while the other, suddenly released, fell into the left hand of Ma An Liang, who reached down to receive it. He then handed it, doubtless charmed into a prosperity-insuring amulet, back to the devotee to whom it belonged, who crept up,
ke’towing
to the floor, to receive it.

It was a trick I’d heard of before—not the strangest in the Taoist repertoire—a very practical device for at once impressing and winning converts and adding to the wealth of the miracle-worker, but for the life of me I couldn’t see how it was done.

We watched this for some minutes, impressed by the cleverness of it. Then, at Hazard’s whispered suggestion to withdraw, we crept back to the gate and rejoined MacDonald, who only fumed angrily when we commented on the spectacle.

At our request he accompanied us to the gate of the
yamen,
saving us some little distance by his knowledge of a shortcut through the labyrinthic streets of the town. There he left us, again suggesting by his manner some remaining animosity against the man whose message to us had suggested such urgent need of help.

In fifteen minutes—the old mandarin’s love of the roundabout in discourse being somewhat negatived under stress—we had learned of a crime as seemingly inexplicable as I’ve ever known and of an inexorable command of self-punishment upon the innocent the like of which I thought had been abandoned in the Middle Kingdom years before.

II

“YOU have honored your unworthy servant,” said Chang Pei Ying, “in answering his summons so swiftly.”

We were seated in the magistrate’s reception-room, sipping the inevitable tea. The usual coterie of servants had disappeared at a wave of Chang Pei Ying’s hand.

“We did our ignoble best,” I replied. “The prospect of being found of use by his excellency filled us with prideful joy.”

“It is I and my ancestors’ graves that are elevated. My stupidity is great and I have need of intelligence. Save that we had sworn the honorable oath of friendship, my insignificant troubles would never have reached you.”

His appearance was more accurate than his words in suggesting the gravity of his difficulties. Of course, his calm courtesy was not a whit shaken—one could never conceive of that—and he was as immaculately gowned and groomed as ever, but he had aged years in the two months since we had seen him last, and the gentle eyes with which he had contemplated life so long were strained with worry. It was, however, with the ineffable composure of his race, rising easily above such light matters as life and death, that he told us what had happened.

Four days ago he had received from his masters in Peking, under government seal, that fatal token the use of which was inaugurated by the Manchus to save expense of trial and permit a faithless official to leave this world with some outward appearance of honor. In short, he had received the suicide cord.

He pulled it out of his gown and showed it to us. Though I’d often heard of the fatal thing, I’d never seen one before and I examined it eagerly. It was about a quarter of an inch thick and four feet long, looped at the end like a noose, silvery gray in base color but with an elongated replica of a yellow dragon woven with remarkable skill into its surface and extending from end to end. Handling the cord made the story I’d heard—that it couldn’t be duplicated save by a certain master workman in the Forbidden City—seem more credible, but, of course, it wasn’t necessary to believe that to understand the cord’s potency. It was at least as difficult of duplication as a document, and it would be received only—as in the present instance—under official seal and by a man who knew the reason he had been condemned to die.

The reason was, briefly, that he’d lost the entire government tax receipts just collected by him from the various towns of his district, which he had been about to forward to Peking. That is, the money had been stolen from him in a manner “surpassing his foolishness to understand.” Hoping to find the money by a rigid search of Cheyung and so to save his face from the appearance of carelessness, he had failed to report the loss—a fact which had evidently convinced Peking that he had himself been the thief.

Just how his superiors had learned of his complicity he couldn’t explain, except by a vague reference to the Central Government’s “ten thousand eyes.” He had been expecting a courier with the tax requisitions for the ensuing year. The courier had come with what seemed the usual roll of papers, but upon opening it Chang Pei Ying had discovered the death-commanding cord.

He had that same day learned that we were again in his district and had immediately sent for us. Not, as we gathered, that he had any idea of evading his punishment. The old magistrate lived by the ancient law of China, which forbids in honor any quibbling in matters of this sort, and to himself he was already as good as dead.

He must die whether the money was found or not, but for his memory’s good and that his sons might worship his grave in honor he prayed that Hazard and I attempt the task. Which, of course, we were eager to do for his sake, even apart from the interest of the case itself. I immediately asked for fuller details, whereupon Chang Pei Ying invited us to visit the place from which the money had been taken.

While he was leading us there he informed us that the amount had been about ten thousand
taels,
entirely in silver sycees, and that these sycees had been contained in five heavy canvas sacks weighing a hundred and fifty
catties
each, or about two hundred pounds—a weight and bulk of loot that already made the theft from the guarded
yamen
sufficiently mysterious.

FIVE minutes later, investigation of the looted treasure vault had turned the mystery into a seeming impossibility.