The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (48 page)

Evidently he had already purchased a number of birds from the proprietor of the stall. Now he was receiving them one by one. Over each bird he passed his hand with a caressing movement, then lifted it and flung it high into the thin haze of Gobi dust that overhung the street—free!

And all this apparently to the absolute unconcern of the passers-by—save Hazard and me.

Hazard checked his pace.

“What do you make of it?”

“An offering to Kwan-in, the Goddess of Mercy,” I murmured. “And yet—”

I do not know why I hesitated, why I continued to study the man with incipient suspicion. Worship with the Chinese is after all largely a bargaining, which is one point wherein they do not differ from some others of the human family.

This man, who seemed to mutter some mystic formula every time he loosed a bird, might have been imploring Kwan-in to avert a well-earned punishment from his head or to withhold her favor from his dearest enemy. But such offerings are usually made in the temple doorways—and besides nowadays belief in the Chinese Pantheon is rarely found in the merchant class.

“Perhaps,” said Hazard, “and yet his mercy touches his purse more deeply than most. I saw him at another stand but a few minutes back. And, if you’ll observe, he’s releasing nothing but—”

“Carrier pigeons!” I exclaimed.

“Precisely. Now what might that mean?”

“Perhaps—” I began, and then hesitated, having no better explanation than that for some purpose he was trying to denude Peking of those occasionally very useful birds. That was highly improbable, but hardly more improbable than was my first explanation in the light of this fresh fact. For though carrier pigeons are expensive birds Kwan-in favors them no more highly than any other kind; and Chinese do not ordinarily forget their business instinct even in dealing with their gods.

“Also you might notice— But he’s going. You see, he leaves the rest of the birds—as he did at the last stand. Shall we follow him?”

I nodded, as Hazard had known I would.

It was at least a chance—a rift in the surface of yellow life which flowed so smoothly and yet so mysteriously around us. Through such rifts one may sometimes get a glimpse of the hidden forces working underneath; and for four days Hazard and I had been following up such chances, peering into such rifts, conscious always that we in turn were watched and followed by emissaries of that very Force whose present whereabouts we were striving to discover.

Which Force was, of course, Koshinga, leader of the revolutionary Ko Lao Hui, and a world menace of abominable power.

Four days had now passed since Koshinga’s bold attempt to capture
en masse
the governing bodies of China and to set up his despotic rule on the ruins of the republic. He had planned to enter the Government House from below, through an extension of the old Boxer underground workings, and to fall upon the officials while they were in extraordinary session, considering how best they could block his plans.

He had failed, else China would just now be writhing in revolution; and I had had something to do with his failure. He had failed, but so had our quickly contrived plan to capture him.

Hundreds of his followers had been taken, but what mattered that to one whose fanatical devotees numbered millions? The erratic genius himself had escaped—impossibly!

It seemed positive that he had been in the tunneling when, after all exits had been located and closed, the drive had commenced; and it also seemed positive that all who had been in the tunneling had been captured. But Koshinga himself had, after a fashion of his, merged into invisibility.

His appearance—Hazard and I were of the few men, either yellow or white, who had ever laid eyes on him—was monstrous in the true sense of the word. It would have been impossible for him to disguise himself or to slip past the guards unnoticed. But the head of the Asiatic Ko Lao Hui, maddest of revolutionary
tongs,
still remained at large—himself a madman, with that madness which is the base but powerful brother of egotistic genius.

Doubtless he was smarting under his defeat, flayed with the desire to avenge himself on those who were responsible. And Hazard and I had got in his way many times before. Wherefore we walked warily as might be, but with many reasons why we would not give up our conflict with him, besides the zest that conflict added to life. It was not pleasant to think of the effect upon the rest of the world of an Asia dominated by Koshinga, the apostle of brutal power; and he was nearer to domination than many men imagined.

For instance, not many imagined how close to accomplishment was one of his purposes—the utter demoralization of China’s currency. For years Koshinga had systematically extracted tribute from every grade of Chinese Society.

He had accepted as payment for immunity from injury at the hands of his lawless
tong,
gold and silver coin only. As a consequence the currency had been sucked dry of those metals which alone gave it weight and worth, like an emptied sponge. That was a secret fact, threatening the stability of the republic, of which Hazard and I had been informed only a few days before.

So we sought for Koshinga, having reason to believe that he had not yet left Peking—or rather we sought for evidences of some fresh activity of his. And so, his actions seeming to us peculiar beyond the ordinary and consequently hinting Koshinga, we followed the villainous-featured “giver-of-freedom-to-birds.”

He turned a corner upon busy Ch’ien Men, where the crowds thicken so that even the placid Chinese lose their placidity in physical and verbal arguments for the right of way. For here two urgent floods of yellow life, entering and emerging from the Tatar city, meet and pass as they have met and passed for a thousand years.

It was an unmatchable welter of movement and color and sound, surpassing old Baghdad in possibilities of weird adventure, a flurry of odd costumes from every part of the empire, the jabbering of a dozen dialects in voices that ran queerly and fluently up and down the scale, melting all tones into an endless and compelling monotone. But our quarry was taller than the average of the crowd, and we followed his blue-buttoned cap readily.

Presently he stopped before another bird-stall. Hazard and I stood, apparently unnoticed, a little way off, and watched the queer performance repeated. But no one else of the non-curious throng, steeped in Buddhistic tradition, seemed to consider it queer; nor did the lavish spending of money interest any one save two beggars, old, goiterous and miserable, who came up whining for alms.

These the giver to Kwan-in, Goddess of Mercy, drove away with a snarl.

“COME, come!” murmured Hazard. “But he’s a bit inconsistent. When he stops at the next stall, Partridge, let’s get closer.”

We did, sipping tea at a chow-stand very near the open-fronted shop of the third fortunate merchant in birds, and watching our man very closely over our cups. He had released perhaps half a dozen birds when I saw, or thought I saw, something that might easily be a clue to the matter. I glanced at Hazard—he had noticed the same thing. Without speaking we set down our cups and sauntered carelessly up to the bird-shop.

The proprietor, busy with his profitable customer, did not seem to notice our approach, nor indeed did the customer himself. Jostled by the passers-by, we edged quietly closer until Hazard was almost at his elbow. And now the fact of what we had seen was plainly evident.

That movement of the man’s right hand over each bird, before he released it, was not a caress. Instead it was something much more in keeping with his looks—it was a search.

With the thumb and the tips of his fingers he was feeling under the wings of those carrier pigeons. Plainly he was not a seeker after merit with the gods, but after a lost bird that had carried a message.

Carrier pigeons sometimes go astray, and there were men in Peking who lived by liming, snaring and netting birds, so that left little to wonder at, save the evident importance of a message that was sought at such pains and expense and secrecy. But that last factor alone linked the thing, in nature at least, to Koshinga’s vast conspiracy, and I was still watching the man intently when—

A tiny whitish capsule, apparently loosened by the Chinaman’s handling of one of the birds, dropped to the cobblestones and lay there unnoticed by him.

A moment later Hazard drew out his handkerchief, wiped at an imaginary spot on his hand, then dropped the handkerchief and picked it up again. The capsule of course came with it.

Hazard fumbled it between his sensitive fingers, restored his handkerchief, felt of the capsule a moment with an intent look on his rather thin, student’s face, and then touched my elbow and backed away into the passing crowd.

I followed him, more puzzled now at Hazard’s uncharacteristic action in practically stealing what was obviously another man’s find than at anything else in the whole episode.

But fifteen minutes later I had completely forgotten that matter in the overwhelming interest of the message itself. For when we opened the capsule in the private stall of a Chinese tea-house we found inside it a thin slip of paper, from which these words stared up at us in Chinese ideographs:

Read, tremble at Koshinga’s words, and act quickly. Under the gate of imperial passage a door opens to the gold of the Elder Brotherhood. The door may be found by the sign of the triangle; there are three signs, and the triple pressure is the key to the door. The place for the gold is the Gobi hiding-place.

The note was unsigned, but for our understanding there was no need for signature. The tricksy gods had favored us, even those gods of whom Koshinga pretended to be master; we had stumbled, by the sheerest chance, upon what might be the means of saving the young republic, already tottering from lack of funds.

That was what I thought then.

“——, Hazard, what luck!”

“Luck? I don’t know.”

“But surely,” I whispered, for nowhere in Peking were we safe from eavesdroppers, “it’s plain. By now Koshinga expected to be dictator of China. He’d have needed money; he brought it with him. When his plans went to smash and he fled he was forced to abandon it. And it’s there where the message says it is, if we can interpret it—this message from Koshinga to—”

“To the merchant in the brown gabardine, it would seem,” completed Hazard. “Only,” he went on, smiling quizzically, “isn’t it a bit too much of a coincidence that we happened to come up to the merchant, of all men in Peking, at the exact moment when the capsule for which he was searching dropped from under the pigeon’s wing?”

“But why argue against the fact?” I questioned. “We did that very thing.”

“That’s it,” said Hazard quietly; “we did.”

He seemed about to say more but suddenly checked himself, his head slightly on one side, his eyes half-closed, his whole body tense—or so it seemed to me—in the strain of listening for something that escaped my hearing altogether.

“Well,” he went on after a moment in a nearly normal voice, “of course it’s plain—the hiding-place, I mean.”

I squinted down at the message doubtfully, but Hazard went on hurriedly.

“And if it’s as you think there’s no time to lose. There’s no reason to believe that I wasn’t seen to pick up that capsule. So let’s go.”

“But where?” I asked without any particular surprize, for if my year with Hazard had not taught me to imitate his swift deductions and sudden decisions it had at least accustomed me to them.

“Why, it’s fairly simple,” said Hazard; “I wish everything were as simple. Under the gate of imperial passage—can that be any other than the Ch’ien Men gate, the central door of which used to be always closed except for the emperor on his way to the Temple of Heaven? And we both know that the tunnel through which Koshinga planned to attack the Government House runs under that gate. We’ll know when we get directly under it by the sound of the traffic overhead.”

“Ah, yes,” I agreed. “Ch’ien Men gate is the throat of the Tatar city—we should know when we get under it.”

“Then there,” said Hazard, rising from his stool, “in the side of the tunnel should be the door that this message mentions, a door concealed so cleverly that it’s been overlooked. Then let’s see—what’s meant by the ‘three triangles’ and the ‘triple pressure?’ In a wall of earth held in place where necessary by rocks and planks, as is the wall of this tunnel, what ‘triangular signs’ would be aptest to escape notice? Clearly triangular-shaped rocks, probably small ones.

“Then the ‘triple pressure’—pressure on these three rocks, of course, probably simultaneous. That, I take it, should be enough to go on.”

“Quite enough,” I said, and now that I had his idea I could see that the puzzling words could hardly possess any other meaning. “And behind that door we’ll find—”

“We’ll find,” said Hazard slowly, “whatever it is intended that we shall find.”

I did not understand him fully, but then there were many times when I did not understand Hazard. Quite the boldest and cleverest of logicians, and with a power of imagination besides that enabled him sometimes to construct future situations with almost incredible accuracy, he was also one of the most careful of men. That is, he was careful in what he termed a subjective sense; it is there—he was accustomed to say—since mind is the master of matter, that true prudence lies. Thus—it was only one item in a large philosophy—he utterly refused to deal in prophecies of which he was not sure.

The reason for this was simple. His abounding self-confidence, his creed that in himself, regardless of circumstances, lay success, were to him priceless possessions, which he could not afford to stultify by even a mistaken forecast.

I sometimes felt that he carried that rule to awkward lengths, but at least it gave me confidence in whatever forecasts he chose to utter.

Thus in the present instance I was not even mildly surprized when, half an hour later, we had found in the apparently solid wall of that tunnel which had been begun by the Boxers so long ago in their attack against the Legations, and had so recently been carried nearly to completion by the more dangerous but kindred
tong,
the Ko Lao Hui—when we had found in that tunnel, I say, the corroboration of Hazard’s reasoning.