The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (42 page)

Beyond this door was a fifty-foot corridor between high walls unbroken by doors or windows. As soon as we entered this corridor the porter gave up pretense of opposition and began pounding at another heavy door at the farther end of it.

Hazard and I followed more slowly; and though in China it’s no hyperbole to say that walls have ears I chanced the whisper:

“That was clever, Hazard, if you wanted to catch the governor off guard. But hardly if you care for his good-will. Men have been given the
lingchi
(death by slicing) for less than this in the old days.”

“The old days that aren’t so old after all,” replied Hazard, who had again added to his Sikh’s disguise the deceptive mask of the commonplace. “There’s a lot I’d like to tell you, but it isn’t safe, and I’ll only say this: the governor’s good-will is an absent quantity. From now, Partridge, it’s blade against blade; but—”

WE WERE too close to the door, against which the porter was still hammering, for further talk. It was however at least a minute before a wicket in the middle of the door opened inward, and the governor himself peered out, his face still heavily bandaged, but this time with his eyes unspectacled.

He demanded what was wanted in a voice which was surprizingly angry even before he observed Hazard and me standing behind the porter. Hazard pressed the porter aside and answered the question himself, declaring our identities in a whisper and taking all blame off the porter’s shoulders as far as words could do it.

It was most important that we should see the governor at once, Hazard declared, for we had a thing to report that affected the governor closely and that could not be delayed. And since it was Peking’s command—Hazard emphasized that word—that all officials should assist us we begged an instant audience.

Did the governor hesitate before admitting us? I thought so. But if I had learned at all to read the voice and manner of the Oriental there were other emotions agitating him that were harder to explain.

For instance, after he had dismissed the porter, opened the door and bowed us in I was sure I caught a secret anxious glance from his beady and somewhat overbright eyes toward a second door which opened from the rear of the chamber. Also there was a contradictory eagerness in his reception of us, which gave me the impression that he regarded us as enemies delivered by a fortunate fate into his hands.

A large ironwood desk stood near the middle of the room, well out of line with the two doors, so that a man sitting behind it could easily observe both entrances—the usual arrangement in the cautious East. The governor took his chair; and at his ceremonious invitation Hazard and I seated ourselves upon a sort of bench which was fastened permanently to the floor just in front of his desk.

These were the only articles of furniture in the room, which was small and somewhat suggestive of a prison cell, lighted as it was by four small, iron-barred windows which had been set into the heavy stone walls just below the low ceiling of unfinished wood.

NOW that we were here Hazard did not seem inclined to hurry matters. I thought he was probably timing the conversation to suit the probable arrival of Lomond, which could not be long delayed, Lomond’s inn being only a short distance from the tea-house from which Hazard had sent the summoning message.

At any rate he held the talk to discussion of the Ko Lao Hui activities, concerning which neither said anything that the other might not have been expected to know, until after about fifteen minutes of circumlocution Hazard turned for a subject to the deaths of the governor’s three predecessors.

“Concerning that,” said the governor, “there is no doubt that the doer of the deed was the infamous Ho Shih Chang, whom I killed, wherefore I still remain alive; nor is there doubt that back of the deed was the will of Koshinga. But the manner of it is still beyond explanation.

“It was in this room that all three were found dead, and it was as if a devil had entered into them, for there was no mark nor sign to show the manner of their killing. Doubtless there was an end to the method, or Ho Shih Chang would not have attacked me with his hands.”

Hazard asked several questions rather idly, and productive of nothing. There was no doubt he was also using his eyes, and I wondered if he was equally at a loss with myself to account for the manner in which the governor’s glance was continually shifting as if involuntarily toward that second door in the rear of the chamber. Something was behind that door, something of which the governor was secretly afraid, or I was much mistaken.

But of a sudden, observing the governor’s face, I saw a thing which drove my puzzlement over that circumstance clear out of my mind.

It is well known that Chinese physicians to the mandarin class are great believers in poultices. For their fee’s sake the simplest wound is never left to heal itself but is loaded with salves and ointments; consequently their bandages are things of bulk and substance.

But the bandages which masked the governor’s yellow face lay flat and even against the skin; and the suspicion which that fact aroused was strongly supported by the freedom with which his jaws and lips moved in talking, certainly suggesting no wound.

Was I then to believe that this too was chicanery, that he was not wounded at all, that the attack on him by Ho Shih Chang was a myth, that—

But why then had he killed Ho Shih Chang? Or—had he?

The justly famed Chinese puzzle is usually a simple thing, and the more perplexing for its simplicity. One plays with it at first, perceives an apparent impossibility, grows interested, and finally loses oneself entirely in trying to solve it; and the longer one persists the more inexplicable it becomes. Then there sometimes comes the slight twist, the little flash of necessary insight.

Such a flash I got then, and in another moment I think I should have been cutting pretty close to the truth of the whole affair; but my attention was diverted by a change in the tone of Hazard’s voice.

From apparent friendliness it had passed to a stern and almost challenging note, a change the more significant in that I knew it was deliberately intended. I listened. Hazard was coming to the point of our call at last.

“These are grave things that we have talked of, your Excellency, but word has come to us of even a graver thing. It is said that you have bargained with a foreign country for assistance against Koshinga, and that for that assistance you have given a great price, taking from the wealth of the people.

“As we have heard it it would be a calamity, particularly ruinous to the republic and helpful to Koshinga. Koshinga himself could devise nothing more favorable to the Ko Lao Hui. It seemed true talk as we listened, but we have hesitated to believe it, knowing your Excellency’s great wisdom.”

The governor had started once in the middle of Hazard’s second sentence. Thereafter he sat immobile, staring straight at Hazard, his sparse eyebrows twitching nervously. When Hazard had finished he replied slowly and as if his mind was not entirely on his words:

“Doubtless you have heard the honorable truth. Your servant is sorry if the foreign mandarins do not approve of what he has done. Evidence came to me of the necessity of the act. Perhaps my miserable intelligence may be at fault, but—”

He stopped, apparently hesitating, debating something. I saw his eyes again twitch nervously sidewise toward that mysterious door to his right. That last glance seemed in some curious way to resolve his course. He rose slowly.

“There are some documents your servant would like you to see,” he said. “Perhaps the sight of them might cause you to consider my course a wise one, which is much to be desired, for it is known that in Peking your opinions are in high repute. They are so very important documents that no one but I—”

He half-turned toward that door, behind which was—what? Obviously he was making an excuse to pass through it—for what purpose? He would leave us alone in the room—again, why?

The slightly chilling thought came to me of the three mysterious deaths that had already occurred in that room—but Hazard was speaking smoothly. And rather amazingly.

“Your Excellency will please not trouble yourself. The documents will wait. Sit down!”

The last two words were a direct command. Hazard’s face had turned grim and unyielding as granite. I stared at him, half-terrified at his audacity, and yet with the peculiar feeling that it was my own fault if I did not understand it.

A moment before the explanation had been at the tip of my mental fingers; it was the same queer quirk of facts that explained the whole business—why the governor was and was not honorable and intelligent; why he had and had not power to execute Lomond’s document; why his face, though bandaged for wounds, was not wounded; why— But the governor was protesting.

“The honorable foreign mandarins—” he began with not altogether convincing indignation.

“Will remain here,” interrupted Hazard with careful and measured rudeness. “And you will remain here. You will have another visitor presently. Sit down, Ho Shih Chang!”

Ah, it was out! I gasped once, and then closed my lips. I was slightly ashamed of not having guessed it for myself, but I would have had it in another minute.

“Ho Shih Chang,” repeated Hazard, “thrice murderer and many times traitor, how did you kill the four governors, Ho Shih Chang?”

At Hazard’s first accusation the masquerading secretary had uttered a short, hoarse cry as if his throat muscles had been suddenly contracted by terror. That cry was confession; but thereafter he managed to control himself, and now he resumed his seat quite deliberately, staring at us venomously out of half-closed eyes.

But of course, dangerous though he looked, there was nothing he could do.

Stripped of his mask, he was like any other criminal; and there was still plenty of authority in the city to deal with him. For instance, Liu Po Wen—

“Why did you kill them?” went on Hazard. “Did you deliberately plan to dispose of the governors as fast as they could be appointed until at last one should come so like you in general appearance that you could pass for him by bandaging your face?

“When he came, did you so disfigure his body after killing him that it would be unrecognizable, so you could exchange clothes and identities with him? Then as governor did you plan to so use your power as to alienate the people from the government you were supposed to represent—to dispose of the people’s birthright and to invite invasion?

“A clever scheme, Ho Shih Chang—too clever for your poor wits to contrive; the work of a master in crime, Koshinga. But you erred by mingling with it your private affairs, your love-making-by-force.

“Had you no proverb to teach you the unwisdom of that? And so your day is done, as Koshinga’s soon will be, because—”

Hazard stopped short. There was the slightest of sounds behind us as if some one had followed through the door by which we had entered. I remembered that the door was hung on well-oiled hinges, that it opened and closed almost noiselessly.

Some one then had entered the room; but that knowledge was not half so terrible as the smile that came over Ho Shih Chang’s face. He straightened himself in his chair; and his voice was like the purring of a cat before it springs.

“The Wisdom of the honorable foreign mandarin is great,” he said, “but the sure horse stumbles. Moreover you have underestimated the wisdom of your brother
kwei tzu
to think that he would be so easily fooled. He is here; will you not greet him?”

By now Hazard and I were on our feet. Obviously we could not both turn our backs on Ho Shih Chang: Hazard touched my hand—a signal. I whirled quickly.

Behind us was Lomond, whom Hazard had invited. It had been a mistake, as I have said, for each of his hands held a revolver, and I looked squarely into the muzzle of one of them while the other was trained on Hazard’s spine.

IT WAS disastrous. Moreover, it was absurd and humiliating. Overconfidence had done for us, for we were both armed; and if either of us had held Ho Shih Chang directly under his gun we might at least have checkmated Lomond, have bartered Ho Shih Chang’s life for our own.

As it was I admit the short hair rose on my neck as I looked from Lomond’s gun into his passionless eyes. Here was a man who was implacable. And I had already seen that he held his accurately aimed guns as steadily as if they were held in the grip of a statue.

“So!” he said coolly. “Which one of you have I to thank for being here?”

Then without waiting for an answer he glanced past us at Ho Shih Chang and changed to the Mandarin dialect.

“You owe your visitors much,” he said. “Surely it is unnecessary that they should stand.”

Ho Shih Chang with a gloating note in his voice invited us to resume our seats; but neither of us moved. Hazard had not even turned his head, but of course Lomond’s words coupled with my own inactivity told him the whole story; and he knew as well as I that Lomond had us covered, that Lomond was in league with Ho Shih Chang, and that in writing Lomond he had in all probability insured our own deaths and made certain Koshinga’s triumph in the province of Kiangsi. If I knew my companion chagrin at his mistake was for the moment altogether eclipsing fear.

“You will not be seated, then,” Ho Shih Chang went on mockingly. “Well, it is a small matter, for we must soon say a long farewell. It is a pleasure to have met such faithful servants of the republic.”

His gown rustled; he was also on his feet.

“It is no pleasure to us,” said Hazard quickly, “to have met a traitor.”

It is a word that stings in any language; and Hazard’s purpose in uttering it was doubtless to provoke controversy and consequent delay—there being, according to his adage, opportunity as long as there is life. He might have succeeded with Ho Shih Chang, for the Chinaman began a sneering reply; but Lomond, who apparently combined Western directness with Eastern craft, interrupted him.

“Children prattle and men act. Ho Shih Chang, we are the servants of Koshinga, to whom the death of these men—whose Sikh’s disguise does not deceive me—will be as good news as the taking of the province.