The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (35 page)

HAZARD shot me just the slightest sidewise glance. I was well aware that his alert mind had missed none of the incongruities of the situation, and here were two other facts that cried out for explanation! Ko Tien Chung was from Peking; Ko Tien Chung was in some danger of being compelled to take his own estimable life. That last, it was to be presumed, was a result of the ancient law that, though annulled, still retains the force of custom in many parts of China—that an official may not survive the failure of any important government mission that has been entrusted to him.

“Your Excellency extolls our merits beyond reason,” I replied. “It is to be hoped, as your lofty words would indicate, that we may be able to serve you with our mean abilities.”

The slightest widening of the mandarin’s oblique eyes betrayed his pleasure at the offer with which I knew I was but facilitating the request he intended to make. I admit it was curiosity that urged me, curiosity inspired as much by the very uncharacteristic interest with which his soldiery seemed to be awaiting the result of our interview, as by the appearance and manner of the mandarin himself. And for once Hazard gave no sign that he disapproved of our departure from the straight line of our plans.

“Your servant confesses,” said Ko Tien Chung in his even-toned, monotonous voice, “that he waited here hoping for your help, a little wind having whispered in his ears of your coming. It is not for himself that he would ask it, but for the uplifting of the Middle Kingdom and against its enemies the Ko Lao Hui, who are also your enemies. This day, with many devils assisting them, these enemies have attacked and killed my men. Furthermore, they have robbed the glorious republic of a great treasure that has come down to it through the ages.”

At this point incredulity began to stir a little within me, and that not merely because it seemed a queer coincidence that Ko Tien Chung’s troubles should be so closely related to our own pursuit. It was the first case of which Hazard and I had ever heard in which the Ko Lad Hui had actually attacked Chinese troops or officials. Indeed, the menace of the society was the greater because of the prudence of its leaders.

The Ko Lao Hui had crafty ways of punishing any one who refused to be bled for its war-fund, and they were recruiting right and left among the lower classes of Chinese society; but, so far, every movement had been an underground one, masked in secrecy. The time for open warfare hadn’t yet come and I felt that Ko Tien Chung must supply the Ko Lao Hui with a very powerful motive indeed before I’d believe his statement.

Hazard’s voice matched the mandarin’s in lack of expression, but his words indicated something of my own feeling.

“Gladly will we help you,” he said, “but, that our mean wits may work, we must first understand the matter fully.

“It is true.” Ko Tien Chung bowed. “But there is a necessity for haste. Now, though my men have fled, yet will they attack again if assisted by the foreign mandarins of whose power they have heard much. But much waiting cools the courage. Also there is another reason for acting swiftly, which you will understand when you have heard the story. On my miserable boat there will be time for the telling of it.”

At that Hazard and I exchanged a look and each read puzzled agreement in the other’s eyes. Fantastic though it sounded—what, for instance, was the treasure that that had come down through the ages?—this was a clue to Ko Lao Hui activity that couldn’t be overlooked. Glancing back toward the mandarin, my eyes fell on our guide, Wang, who was engaged in digging into the rocky creek-bottom with his slippered toe and whose boyish face was now stupidly non-committal.

“On your most excellent river-craft, then,” agreed Hazard, “we will listen to it.”

Ko Tien Chung possessed one of those passionless Chinese faces behind which a Western eye can seldom penetrate, and whatever pleasure he felt at that decision did not show by the shading of a single line. He merely bowed deeply and started back down the creek-bottom. He was a little awkward on the rough trail, but there was force and agility in his movements, too, and, when he neared the waiting group on the bank, he issued an order in a voice accustomed to command.

Another voice repeated his order and the group dissolved instantly. Whatever they might be as soldiers, as sailors these tatterdemalions were alert and clever enough—another rather surprizing fact. In a trice they had sprung down to the river’s edge and were hauling back on a stout bamboo hawser. Almost instantly appeared the wasp-waisted junk which had so far been hidden behind the high rock wall which everywhere edged the river, save where the creek had poured into it. This junk was about fifty feet long and seemed to be a handy craft, lying low in the water and plainly built for speed rather than for cargo.

The men leaped on board, the bandaged ones callously indifferent to their wounds. Ten of them settled to the sweeps, others stowed away the hawser and still others ran out a narrow plank bridge to the bank, all in obedience to a swift rush of guttural orders from a man who was evidently Ko Tien Chung’s second in command.

It wasn’t till I was half-way across the bridge to the junk that I caught a fair view of this last individual. When I did, I started without exactly knowing why. It’s true his face was most villainous-looking—a broken, brutal nose, an undershot jaw and thin, cruel lips that curved downward at the corners, suggesting the mouth of a shark. One of his eyes was gone, leaving an empty socket, and a great, reddish-black scar slanted across his narrow forehead. But it wasn’t his sinister appearance that startled me; rather it was my memory that stirred disagreeably. His face vaguely connected itself with something very unpleasant, and yet I was sure I’d never seen it before.

However, I was too busy with conjectures concerning what Ko Tien Chung was to tell us to give that impression more than a passing thought. I followed Hazard and the mandarin on board, Wang trailing behind.

At Ko Tien Chung’s invitation, Hazard and I unslung our knapsacks and seated ourselves on a narrow bench just in front of the small cabin that sat aft of the junk’s single mast. Wang immediately lay down on the deck near us and seemed to go to sleep. Ko Tien Chung took a seat facing us on the low hatch between the cabin and the mast.

The men gave way on the oars and so, without song or chanting—a strange omission for a Chinese crew—we swung off up that river which, since the beginning of China, has poured its yellow flood from western Sz-Chuen to the Yangtze and thence to the Coast.

“The honorable ghost-mandarins of the ocean will hear a strange story,” began Ko Tien Chung with his first touch of hesitation. “It is a story of the past and one of which I hope your exalted minds have heard the beginning—the story of the great treasure of Li Tzu Ching.”

II

IT WAS indeed as well for our credence in the remainder of it that Hazard and I did know the first part of that story to be sound Chinese history. Moreover, we’d heard it retailed from storytellers’ stands in market-places so often that even its details were familiar to us, and we’d also picked up certain corroboratory facts in the monastery in which Li Tzu Ching had died.

All in all, it was a story which would naturally stick in the imaginations of a people, being really an unfinished mystery of exceedingly great loot—such vast loot, indeed, that I reflected it might well account even for the unprecedented aggression which Ko Tien Chung had laid at the door of the Ko Lao Hui.

“All who have ears have heard of the great emperor-for-a-day,” I replied more carelessly than I felt.

“Will you tell me,” requested Ko Tien Chung, “the extent of your honorable knowledge?”

Hazard, sitting quietly beside, pressed me twice lightly with his elbow. It was the first intimation he’d given me that he sensed in Ko Tien Chung’s talk something more than appeared on the surface. In our slight code it was a signal to me to do whatever talking needed to be done, leaving his wits free to study the conversation and whatever else might come under his microscopic observation.

Of course I couldn’t see his face as he leaned back lazily against the wall of the cabin, but I could imagine how quiescent seemed his incessantly watchful eyes and how slack and sleepy-looking were his almost mediocre features, suggesting carelessness, indolence, inanity even—anything rather than the unrelaxing vigilance and swift, subtle reasoning for which all this was the perfect mask.

“My poor memory retains these facts,” I replied to Ko Tien Chung: “Li Tzu Ching was a rebel against the Ming dynasty, also he was the last of the noble Chinese race to occupy the Throne of Heaven. It is said that the reason for his rebellion was that the once glorious Ming dynasty had grown corrupt, its court being ruled by false advisers so that the Mongol barbarians were pressing in from the north without fear. Wherefore Li Tzu Ching rose against the traitors that would have surrendered the northern capital, drove them from its walls and then turned like a lion against the invaders. Is that not according to your exalted understanding?”

“It is true. But my friend has not told all that he knows.”

“It is known by the naked children in the streets,” I replied, willing enough to go on. “Wu San Kuei, who should have been Li Tzu Ching’s mainstay, turned traitor and united with the Manchu Mongols, and their combined forces came down against Peking like ravening wolves. Seeing that there was no withstanding them, Li Tzu Ching fled, carrying with him the wealth of Peking, first making a vow to the gods and to his ancestors that none other than the Chinese should ever possess that wealth.”

“So,” murmured Ko Tien Chung softly. “It is good that you know these things. Now, this store of wealth which the patriotic Li Tzu Ching carried away with him to the west—has it ever been recovered?”

“Concerning that there is darkness of opinion. There is no knowledge of its recovery save that some say it was given to the monastery in which Li Tzu Ching died.”

At that Ko Tien Chung smiled with polite incredulity, for which I did not blame him, for my suggestion was really unbelievable in the light of my own knowledge. There is no more poverty-stricken monastery in China than that in the Anfu district of Honan in which Li Tzu Ching took refuge after his defeat and where he finally died, and his chief attribute of merit among its priests is that he who had been ruler of the Middle Kingdom had come there without a copper
tungtse.

After our habit of picking up stray bits of information wherever we found them, Hazard and I had noted these things during our chance visit to the monastery; also we’d noted the suggestive inscription on the wall of the
dagoba
in which Li Tzu Ching is buried—

The Buddhist priest whose religious designation is “The Jewel of Heaven’s Grace.”

To Ko Tien Chung’s smile I replied something to the effect that if Li Tzu Ching’s monastery had profited by his monkhood there was certainly no evidence of it at the present day. Whereupon he bowed gravely.

“It is, of course, the talk of idle tongues. The wealth of no capital was to be compared with the wealth of ancient Peking. The annals tell of gold vessels being melted down into plates of solid gold. There were a thousand plates and each weighed a thousand ounces; there were also jewels beyond price. All these Li Tzu Ching carried away and not even the devils of Manchus have ever found that treasure. Now, I will tell you the remaining truth.”

He paused a moment, seemingly concerned at a slight change in the junk’s course. He turned and looked up-stream and I followed his look. A cargo boat heavily loaded with rice and rape had showed ahead in the middle of the stream and our
laodah
had instantly swung in toward the southern bank to avoid it widely. If I’d not been so intent on what was coming from Ko Tien Chung, I would probably have given more thought to the seeming furtiveness of that action.

The mandarin settled back in his former position and resumed impressively as if nothing had happened.

“The gold was Ming gold, gathered from the Chinese people; Li Tzu Ching was a patriot and, as he had willed, so he acted. The jewels and other treasure, which were insignificant as compared with the value of the gold, he divided among his closest followers, that poverty might not tempt them to avarice. But he hid the gold, making provision in his exalted wisdom that when the Chinese returned to their own, driving out the Manchu usurpers, it should return to them again.”

“What!” I gasped, so startled at the acumen which this statement implied on the part of Li Tzu Ching, who would have had to have his will extended over three hundred years of troublous history, that I broke unthinkingly into English.

Ko Tien Chung’s face didn’t change and I felt I might be mistaken in my impression that he understood my exclamation perfectly. After a moment’s pause he went on calmly:

“It is that great treasure of which I spoke in the beginning. It is that gold over which the Ko Lao Hui even now stand guard, waiting till their brother devils shall come to bear it away. My miserable folly is to blame, but surely the foreign mandarins will lend their strength and the light of their wisdom to the undoing of so great a mischief.”

HAZARD remained immobile, as if even this hadn’t the power to stir him. As for me, my pulse quickened considerably. I recalled that the Chinese annals did actually mention this million ounces of gold in connection with Li Tzu Ching’s last exploit. Even if the story were fiction, it so far had not been made by Ko Tien Chung. It was an enormous sum and, in the hands of the Ko Lao Hui, was full of enormous potentialities for evil. Ko Tien Chung was right in believing that Hazard and I would do our utmost to help him, and I understood why, in his last sentence, even his Oriental imperturbability had broken down a little before his anxiety.

But all along I’d been noticing something that wasn’t quite so easy to understand. That was the manner of his men. They were still silent, still attentive and, in some of the glances that were flung at us, it seemed to me I could catch a suggestion of duplicity, of hidden intent, almost of menace. I reflected that, being men of lower breeding, they were probably less skillful in hiding their real thoughts than was the mandarin. Truth lay in their looks if I could but read it, but Ko Tien Chung was waiting for his answer.