The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (43 page)

“We know the death we will give them. Let us not delay.”

“My brother’s advice is good,” said Ho Shih Chang, and his gown rustled again.

I could not see what we were to do. Lomond was eying us as a tiger eyes his prey; Hazard, with his back to Lomond, was altogether helpless; and the slightest movement on my part would probably cost me my life and would certainly send a bullet crashing into Hazard’s spine.

It was a moment for finesse; but that required delay, and delay was refused us. However, I suppose it was probably as much a desperate desire to secure it as the natural desire at least to read the whole of the affair correctly before we died for our part in it, that made me put in with an assumption of carelessness:

“All things end, including life; and Koshinga’s downfall is written, whether we die early or late. We are grateful to him and his servants for adding interest to life while it lasted. Will you not add to our indebtedness by telling us how the four governors died so that there was no trace of the killing?”

At that there came to Lomond’s sallow face the only change of expression that I ever observed on it—a flicker of grim amusement. Behind me I heard Ho Shin Chang chuckle maliciously.

“You will have plenty of time to discover that,” said Lomond in English.

Then to Ho Shih Chang:

“Your Excellency, there is no recalling lost moments, and much is to be done before I leave for Foochow. There is a longer road before these two men. Let us all be starting.”

The sound of Ho Shih Chang’s slow movements had stopped; they were resumed again. He seemed to be moving away from his desk toward that door in the rear of the chamber which had from the beginning of our interview possessed such an unpleasant fascination for him.

A moment of calm thought would, I think, have explained that fascination to me, now that so many other things were understood; but there was no time for it. Lomond was also moving toward that door, edging slowly sidewise in front of me, the knuckles of his trigger-fingers whitening menacingly.

Their immediate purpose was easily understood. They were leaving the chamber; obviously we were to be imprisoned in it and somehow killed. The deadly clutch of Koshinga, whose agents these two men were, was closing in on us at last.

I risked the slightest movement backward and stole a look at Hazard’s face. It was not so hopeless as I had imagined it would be.

He too seemed to have that door—or whatever was behind it—on his mind, for he had taken his eyes from Ho Shih Chang, and shot a glance at it. But the next instant he met my look, and I thought his eyes sent me a message. His lips moved noiselessly; but among other convenient things I have learned lip-reading, and what I thought they said was:

“Hope… maybe. Friend… perhaps. Be ready… anyway.”

It was not five seconds, the length of time that my eyes had left Lomond. Again I was following his slow movements, freshly confused.

From what feature of this desperate situation Hazard had plucked even the faintest hope I could not understand. But I did know this: his eyes, microscopically accurate, had seen more than mine; his brain, marvelously active, had classified and coordinated that information with a swiftness which I could not match.

One thing only seemed to me a safe guess: if indeed we were to have a chance of escape it would come somehow from behind that mysterious door. But it was also from behind that door that our enemies planned to destroy us.

Hazard’s warning to me to be ready had hardly been necessary; my muscles were already tense, my nerves strung up. Hopeful of some added inkling of information, I watched Lomond’s face; but it was impassive as a wooden idol’s.

He continued to edge slowly sidewise, but had not moved more than his own length when Hazard spoke again, not loudly, but prolonging his vowel sounds in the manner of public speakers who wish their words to carry.

“YOU are clever, Ho Shih Chang, or rather your master is clever. As for you, have you not been oppressed the last half-hour by the knowledge of how you have bungled?

“Power and wealth would this service to Koshinga have brought you; but, as has been seen you jeopardized all by your desire for a woman, which is not the way of one who would win Koshinga’s favor. So you betrayed yourself to us—and then in your confusion you made a greater mistake, which has been apparent to me from many signs.

“In the weak hand of this woman you have placed power. What if she should use that power—to win her freedom?”

Hazard’s last two sentences in particular were stressed strongly; clearly they were intended for other ears than Ho Shih Chang’s. Clearly, of course, for the ears of the woman herself, the as yet invisible woman whose part in all this affair had been so potent.

I confess my reasoning went no further at that moment, that I understood not at all what hope Hazard could have from her; but I had the excuse of scant time for consideration, for instantly Lomond’s eyes glinted angrily and apprehensively past me at Ho Shih Chang.

“How does this false-faced devil know?” he rasped.

And then—

“Where have you put her?”

“The
kwei tzu
forced themselves on me,” replied Ho Shih Chang hurriedly as if apologizing for an indiscretion. “I was compelled to rid myself of her quickly. I placed her—”

“——!” Lomond reverted to English as—so it seemed to me—he followed a revealing glance of Ho Shih Chang’s. And instantly, as if warned of a great danger, he took a swift step sidewise.

As I have said I was fortunately already poised for a leap. It appeared that by now I was the only one in the room who was utterly in the dark as to what was likely to happen; but the visible strength of the enemy’s position lay just now behind the black muzzles of Lomond’s revolvers. Lomond’s agition opened just the faintest chance in the direction, and I was swaying slightly forward on the balls of my feet, when—

There came from somewhere a faint sound, a swift, sliding noise. Or rather there were several of these sounds, like the slipping of wood in smooth, oiled metal grooves.

Simultaneously, and so quickly that Lomond’s face had no time to register the terror that must have been his, everything went dark as if a curtain had been flung over the room. Lomond’s two targets disappeared in blackness; and his revolvers belched fire just as I launched myself at his knees.

My reaction to the unexpected darkness must have been much swifter than Lomond’s, for he had not moved when I reached him. My arms went loosely around his legs and I came up bearing him backward and trying for his wrists.

Two more shots rang out; but just as they were fired I had thrust at his arms with all my force. The next instant I had his wrists, and we were struggling like two wild beasts.

I was however able to keep his hands over his head and his revolvers useless; and presently I back-heeled him and flung him to the floor.

Behind me I heard another fall, and I knew that Hazard and Ho Shih Chang had also gone down. I had no fear as to the result of that struggle.

Without any compunction I struck Lomond’s head back against the floor and he went limp just as Hazard called over to me—

“Have you got him, Partridge?”

“Yes. Knocked out.”

“Well then, bind him.”

I heard Ho Shih Chang breathing in the manner of one upon whose chest there is a heavy pressure—doubtless the weight of Hazard’s knee.

Tearing strips from the front of Lomond’s coat, I began trussing him hand and foot. The tables were completely turned; our two opponents were entirely in our power—a transition so sudden and startling that for a minute I could realize nothing else.

But when my work with Lomond was half over a fresh terror came to me—a terror of the inexplicable. The darkness of the room was no more complete than the darkness of my mind concerning what strange means had been used to give us the mastery and by whom it had been given us.

One thing was almost certain—this I reasoned swiftly—Death still lurked very close to us, for what had happened could hardly be other than what Lomond and Ho Shih Chang had planned to happen, except that they also had been caught in their trap for us. They had planned to imprison us in that room, and there we were imprisoned; and the memory that four men had already met unexplained deaths there struck my mind a chilling blow. I tied my last knot in Lomond’s bonds and got to my feet.

“Well, Hazard—” I tried to keep my voice steady—“what is it?”

“What indeed?” echoed Hazard tonelessly. “Do you hear that sound?”

I had not noticed it; but now I heard a loud continuous hissing from somewhere overhead—a sinister sound, suggesting the hissing of a great serpent, which impinged upon what was otherwise an utter silence. Which silence, I now remembered, had been complete all along save for the sound of our voices, so remotely situated was this room of mysterious happenings.

“It’s gas,” said Hazard. “Asphyxiating gas.”

“It’s death,” chuckled Ho Shih Chang raucously, and yet I thought without quite complete conviction. “The honorable foreign mandarins have not saved themselves. They will die as—”

He choked on the gag that Hazard thrust into his mouth. Rapidly tying it, Hazard continued rapidly but with his calm unshaken:

“Yes, it’s death; or at any rate it’s meant death for others. The place is a gas chamber with walls pretty nearly soundproof, and air-tight—and I don’t suppose you noticed as we entered how the edge of inch-think planking lay flush with the surface of the stone embrasure just inside the door. Nor did the governors who died apparently notice it, though they had more opportunity; but Chinese officials aren’t an observing tribe.

“But after we’d learned that it was in this room that the governors had been killed it was easily presumed that it was the edge of a sliding inner door which had been used to imprison them, and that the windows could be closed in the same way. Yes, we’re trapped—but as for dying here, we’ll see.”

“But who,” I cried rather foolishly, for by now I should certainly have understood it, “who trapped us? Who—”

“Liu Po Wen’s daughter, of course. For—don’t you see?—it must have been she. I had that all figured out—it was our only chance. Of course, I hoped to find her with Ho Shih Chang—that was the reason for my hurry in getting here—and his manner convinced me that we had surprized him with her.

“Where had he placed her? That was obvious—behind that other door.

“That was why I tried to give her a hint in that last speech of mine to Ho Shih Chang—and succeeded. But where is that other door?”

I had felt my way over to Hazard, and together we started to grope for it. Our struggles with Lomond and Ho Shih Chang had lost us all sense of direction, and the darkness was absolute, so we made our way to the wall and began to feel around it in opposite directions. Already the air was sickeningly thick with gas; but I continued to question nervously—

“But how did you know that she could do this, could work Ho Shih Chang’s trap against him?”

“Know! Lord, Partridge, I didn’t know. But Ho Shih Chang was afraid—that meant something. And a villain’s usually a boaster; wouldn’t it have been like him to boast to her of what he had done and how he had done it, and the reward he expected to get from Koshinga?

“And the place she was hidden was the natural place for the lever or button, or whatever it is that controls this infernal contrivance, to be, for the room behind that door must be at the extreme end of the
yamen,
where the assassin could work and wait unobserved. Besides, I repeat, it was our only chance; and you know my creed that there’s always a chance somewhere.”

“But,” I continued, working swiftly around the wall, “even now, if it is she, and if we are able to communicate with her and convince her that we’re friends—”

“Three things are possible,” Hazard took the question out of my mouth. “There’s the door, which she may be able to open; there’s this whole devilish mechanism of death, which she may be able to reverse; and there’s a bare chance that if these things fail she may be able to escape and carry the tale to her father in time for him to save us.

“It’s lucky that we know him to be all that’s good in Chinese officials, for with the governor’s office temporarily eliminated he’ll be the main power in Nanchang, and we’ll have to depend upon him—”

That was like Hazard, to be already looking forward to the completion of our work against Koshinga. Indeed, I thought our triumph might be very great if only— But just then I found, not the door for which we were looking but an unbroken wooden surface which must be the thick plank panel that Hazard had said would be found over the one other exit. Straight across the room then must lie that other door; and I turned quickly, judging my course. But just then came Hazard’s voice:

“Here! I’ve found it, Partridge.”

And I was at his side in a moment. He was already pounding on the door heavily and intermittently, listening between times for that response upon which so much depended—certainly our lives and very possibly that which was vastly more important, the imminent mass movement of Asia, for good or ill.

For if we did not escape, if Koshinga’s conspiracy were not fully exposed, he might easily find other instruments, he might easily carry his plot to its completion.

AND then the response came, the thin and almost inaudible but well-poised voice of the educated Chinese woman, of that woman whose part in this affair had been as an invisible thread running from beginning to end, but which had nevertheless been perceived and traced by Hazard step by step to this culmination—the voice of the daughter of Liu Po Wen, chief magistrate of Nanchang.

“I have heard the talk of the foreign gentlemen. There is no escape from this room, for the windows are barred; but if the
Megwas
will have the patience to wait I will try—”

The air in the room was becoming deadly. The interchange of a few swift sentences informed us that though Ho Shih Chang had by his boasting made known to the woman the manner of his process of murder—the working of a lever cleverly concealed behind the drawer of a desk—she had yet to learn how the system of weights which controlled both the gas outlet and the sliding panels of plank could be reversed.