CHAPTER VIII.

THE CELESTIAL WAY.

It was a drizzling, miserable night; the streets were crowded with cars and cabs carrying their occupants to theatreland. On the drenched pavements the newspaper boys drove a thriving trade despite the unpromising climatic conditions. Every news bill dealt with the one subject--the mysterious murder, in the heart of London, of an ambassador by some person or persons unknown.

That it was the Chinese Ambassador added to the general interest. There was something bizarre and mysterious about the great empire which appealed to the imagination, and the series of hypothesis which appeared in the columns of the press assisted to a remarkable degree in fostering the sense of mystery which surrounded the tragedy.

There was scarcely a police-station in London that was not at that moment interrogating some stray Chinaman who had been brought in to account for his whereabouts on the night of the murder.

There was not a district, apparently, which could not furnish a clue.

_The Evening Megaphone_, London’s most enterprising evening journal, secured something of a “beat,” for it was the only paper which was able to throw a light upon the inside mystery of a vendetta which had apparently culminated in the Ambassador’s assassination.

“We are able,” said this journal, in large, leaded type, “to supply a number of curious and significant facts concerning the tragedy, which have hitherto been unrecorded elsewhere. Our representative had the pleasure of a long conversation with Mr. T’si Soo, a wealthy young Chinese gentleman who has been domiciled in England for a number of years. Mr. T’si Soo is the son of the Governor of Chulung, a large and populous district of China, and is engaged in this city in studying constitutional law. Mr. Soo--a fine, handsome-looking young man of commanding appearance--received the representative of _The Evening Megaphone_ in Piccadilly. Fortunately Mr. Soo has a perfect command of English, and the interpreter which our representative brought with him was unnecessary.

“‘I cannot tell you,’ said Mr. Soo, ‘how grieved I am at the death of the Noble Prince who so ably and worthily represented the Dowager Empress at the court of St. James.

“‘The Prince, as you know, was an antiquarian of great note, but he was also a man of strong political opinions which, I fear, have not always commended themselves to the majority of my fellow countrymen.

“‘He was by repute a reactionary,’ he went on, ‘and earned the animosity of a number of secret societies in China by his efforts to secure their abolition.’

“‘But surely,’ our representative pointed out, ‘the abolition of secret societies is not a reactionary movement!’

“Mr. Soo shook his head.

“‘You are now speaking,’ he said with a smile, ‘from the point of view of the European. In China we regard anybody as a reactionary who attempts to alter the position of affairs so that it corresponds with any period of time in the past. For instance, there was a time when there were no secret societies; to abolish them would be regarded, therefore, as a reactionary measure since it would produce conditions which had once existed. That, again, I say, is an Eastern point of view.’

“‘Do you explain the murder as having been committed by the emissary of a society?’ asked our representative.

“Mr. Soo nodded.

“‘I believe there is an association,’ he said, ‘which had a special reason for removing the Ambassador.’

“‘It has been suggested,’ said our representative, ‘that robbery was the object of the murder, and that a bureau had been rifled and valuable documents extracted.’

“Mr. Soo was very emphatic in dissociating himself with this theory.

“‘That I do not believe,’ he said. ‘The people who killed his Excellency probably travelled all the way from China, and are now, possibly, on their way back again. They had no other object but his destruction, and if they stole documents, they were documents associated with the Prince’s campaign to suppress the societies affected.’

“It may be remarked,” continued the enterprising journal, “that such is the abhorrence in which the crime is held by every Chinaman, that numerous offers of help have come to this paper from Chinese citizens who desire to assist in the search for the miscreant. It may be said that the interpreter who accompanied our representative was one of these. It was through his instrumentality that the interview with Mr. Soo was secured.

“With extraordinary modesty, he disappeared as soon as the interview was concluded, and has since not been in this office.”

Whilst the contents bills of _The Evening Megaphone_ were flaring the question at every street corner: “Was Ambassador Killed by Secret Society?” Soo himself was interviewing the interpreter whose enterprise and modesty the journal was at the moment praising. He was interviewing him in a little room, the smallest in the suite he occupied, and he was assisted in the process by three compatriots, who gazed impassively on a Chinaman, a little less impassive, stretched upon a small iron bed, his wrists strapped to the bed head, his feet spreadeagled and strapped to its sides.

Soo sat on a chair smoking his inevitable cigarette, with his inevitable monocle glued in his eye, watching the man with interest.

“First,” he said, “you shall tell me why you came here, who sent you, and what you desired.”

“Lord,” gasped the man on the bed, “I have told you everything; by my Father’s grace I have nothing more to say.”

His face was drawn and haggard, beads of perspiration stood upon his shaven skull, and terror was in his eyes.

“You shall tell me,” repeated the other calmly, “who sent you, why you came, and what you were told to do.”

He nodded to the man who sat nonchalantly smoking a pipe by the side of the captive’s bed.

The man leant over and made a half turn of the screw upon a weird-shaped contrivance which enclosed the prisoner’s fingers.

The man suppressed a shriek with reason, for over him leant a second Chinaman ready to thrust a gag in his mouth.

“You shall tell me,” said Soo monotonously, “why you came, who sent you here, and your business.”

“Lord,” whispered the man, “I will tell you all I know.”

Soo nodded to the torturer, and he loosened the screw on the other’s finger.

“Give him water,” said Soo, and the attendant with the gag put a cup to the other’s lips. He drank greedily.

“Lord, I was sent by my society, which, as your Excellency knows, is the society of the ‘Banner Bearers of Heaven.’”

Soo nodded.

“They desired to discover how your Lordship felt in this matter.”

“To whom were you to report?” asked Soo.

The man hesitated, and his interrogator glanced significantly at the screw in which the captive’s hand still rested. It was enough for the man on the bed.

He mentioned a name.

Soo recognised it as the keeper of a Chinese lodging-house in the East End of London--a man who was known to him to be the agent of the Bannermen.