CHAPTER IV

THE QUEER EPISODE AT NANKING

It was such a far-fetched observation to make that I thought the boy must be more elevated than he looked, but if he was, he could at least keep himself in hand. Finding me silent, he made no advance from his side, but took a cigarette from his own case and lit it; and there we sat smoking in silence until Philipson returned.

The moment he entered the room I could see by his face that he had taken one of those sudden resolves I was already beginning to get accustomed to.

'So you have been looking for work, Poyning,' he began, 'and you have found none?'

Poyning solemnly inclined his head. 'The dismal situation is as I have already painted it,' he said. 'You gentlemen, no doubt skilled observers of the East and its peculiarities, can perhaps suggest the reason of my failure? Tell me, is there anything in my appearance that might be expected to militate against success?'

Philipson seemed to find this funny, for I noticed he was biting his lip when he answered. 'If you will allow me to say so, Poyning,' he said, 'you are about the last type in the world the merchant princes of this country are looking for. Still, there are other employers besides the merchant princes. Perhaps I can offer you something to go on with. Would you care to earn a thousand dollars?'

'By any task a man of delicacy may fittingly undertake.'

'It is certainly a matter of delicacy--so much so that I must stipulate for absolute secrecy before I let you hear a word about it. Will you swear?'

'By all the powers of beauty and light!' said Stephen Poyning, so religiously that you might have thought he was going to cross himself.

'It is also a matter of extreme danger.'

'Not more perilous, I fancy,' returned Poyning suavely, 'than the grisly spectre of starvation which hangs over me at this moment.'

It was, as I say, a high-falutin manner of talk that this little exquisite used, but there was something in his demeanour that soon made me begin to have hopes of him; and I believe Philipson had come to similar conclusions a good deal quicker than I had.

'Very well,' he said. 'The business is this. We two have vitally important affairs to transact in Shanghai, but it is not feasible for either of us to return in person. Our matters must be seen to through an agent, and even he, I may tell you at the outset, stands quite a good chance of coming to grief at the hands of the same men who will be on the watch for us.'

Poyning clasped and unclasped his small womanly hands. 'It sounds by far the most interesting thing I have yet heard in China,' he mused.

'Now listen closely,' said Philipson, 'for I am going to give you your instructions. The people of this inn think we are on a pleasure trip from Hankow, and you must do nothing to undeceive them. You will slip out secretly to the railway station and catch the down train, which leaves this place at midnight. That will get you into Shanghai by seven in the morning. It is probable that the station will be watched, so be on your guard. You will let your ricsha-boy pull you away in the direction of the European quarter--which he will do of his own accord since you are a foreigner--but not until you come to the river will you tell him to go to the Marco Polo Hotel, and not too loudly then. That is where my friend was staying before we left. You will clean up and have breakfast, then see the manager in your own room and explain to him that my friend has been called away to Canton on urgent business and that you have come to settle his account, pack his belongings, and put them into store. My friend will give you a note and detailed instructions as to what he wants done. This will take you till ten o'clock. You will then go out and buy a good second-hand suit case without any initials on it--or at least you must studiously avoid one with your own.'

Poyning had sat quite still, with an air of some concentration. He now looked up inquiringly.

'Because your initials happen to be the same as my own,' added Philipson rather brusquely. 'Saunders Philipson is my name, and my friend is Ronald Mirlees--so steer clear of R.M. too. You will then go to Obermeyers, on the Bund, and buy a good chronometer and a sextant. You will then go to the Bank of Cathay, where you will cash a big cheque for me--or rather exchange it for a letter of credit on the Bank's Chungking branch: I will give you a note to the manager. You will then return to the Marco Polo Hotel and confine yourself to your room till after dark. Then take a ricsha down to Bubbling Well and proceed to the New Highgate Road on foot. The last bungalow on the right hand side is mine. You will approach with extreme caution, taking particular care that you are not shadowed. Go not to the front door, but to the side, and give five sharp taps--like this.' Philipson knocked with his knuckles on the table, repeating the signal twice. 'My boy, Lo Eng, will let you in. He speaks good English, so you will have no difficulty with him. You will tell him I have gone away for an indefinite period, and that he is to shut the house and return to his people; if he does not hear from me in six months, he is to hand over my belongings to the manager of the Bank of Cathay, who is my executor. Lo Eng is to give you a packet of papers marked "B," and in proof of good faith you will show him this seal. You will then get away from the bungalow unobserved, return to the hotel and settle up there, and catch the eleven o'clock train back. It is of the utmost life-and-death urgency that nobody should trace you from my house to the station or from the station here. Is that clear?'

'Lucid as Helicon itself,' said Poyning, removing his eyeglass and wiping it with a handkerchief of perfumed silk.

'Then let me hear what you are going to do.'

It surprised me a little to hear Philipson make this demand. He had rattled off his string of orders so fast that I expected he would at least give the youth something in writing, however cryptic, to remember them by. But my real surprise came when Poyning recited the whole, not only accurately, but, as far as I could myself remember, in Philipson's own words.

The latter sprang to his feet. 'Excellent,' he said. 'You already begin to justify my belief in your capability. Those are your marching orders, then. Carry them out as exactly as you have rehearsed them, and payment awaits you on your return.'

'If I might suggest two amendments--' began Poyning.

'What do you mean?'

'This. My own rooms in Shanghai are still, I regret to say, unsettled for. I propose to utilise part of the day in closing them. For this purpose I should be glad of certain of those thousand dollars in advance. The opportunity of withdrawing from that hub of commerce in strict honour and solvency may not present itself to me again, gentlemen. It must be grasped now.'

'Then you are not going back to Shanghai eventually?'

'I do not regard that as at all probable.'

'What are you going to do here?'

'I was not, to tell the truth, proposing to remain in this picturesque but somewhat unpromising field of labour, either.'

'Indeed. Well, it is no affair of mine, Poyning, but if I could put you in the way of a berth, I would--particularly if you carry out this commission of mine satisfactorily. Have you any idea _what_ you are going to do?'

Poyning's small freckled features wrinkled into a grin. 'I think it is more than possible,' he said, 'that I shall accompany you to Chungking and those more distant regions which you will be visiting in the near future.'

Philipson set down his glass with a clatter. 'What the devil do you know about our intentions?' he said sharply.

'I pretend to no exact knowledge,' replied Poyning, waving his small hand, 'but I should be dull indeed if I had gathered no inkling from what you have told me. You see, Philipson, I'm no fool, though my classical qualifications may not seem an asset in the pork-packing circles where I have vainly hawked them. You are going to Chungking--your letter of credit betrays as much. But the amount of the cheque which you will give me to change and the length of time you will be away seem to me to indicate that your true objective lies beyond that port: that you have, in fact, some rather considerable expedition in view.'

'Suppose we have. What use do you think you could be to us?'

'There, again, a little elementary thought solves the conundrum for me. The fact that you are obliged to take such detailed precautions in order to get away from this area with a whole skin argues that you would be none the worse for the company and support of a person who, though he should not be the one to proclaim it, is a good shot with small arms and no worse afflicted with cowardice than most.'

'I see,' said Philipson, drily, glancing at the watch on his wrist. '_We_ are to benefit by the arrangement, eh?'

'To the extent I have indicated,' retorted Poyning, quite unabashed. 'My profit from the enterprise, on the other hand, will be co-equal with yours. The great wildernesses of earth, gentlemen, have always called to me, and those lands which you are going to visit beyond Chungking will answer very nicely, I've no doubt, to the description of a wilderness. I would go forth into it with you. If you gratify my ambition, there is _my_ half of our mutual gain.'

Philipson looked at his watch again. 'No time to go into the matter now, anyway,' he said. 'You must catch to-night's train without fail. I will get ready the things you are to take, and Mirlees will tell you in the meantime what he wants done in Shanghai.'

While Philipson was busy at a side table with pen and ink, I gave Poyning my instructions for the safeguarding of my slender properties. He listened quietly, repeated word for word what I had said, and tapped his forehead as a man might the lid of a cash-box after locking away valuable securities in it.

'Now, Poyning,' said our leader, returning to the middle of the room, 'here is money for your expenses and purchases, the note to my bank, the cheque, and my seal. I am also advancing you two hundred dollars out of your honorarium. That enough? Right. As to whether you join forces with us for good, I say nothing yet. I like the look of you and I like the sound of you, but I do not take you right into my concerns until I have some solid proof of your steel. Get away to Shanghai and bring off these commissions successfully, and I shall be open to admit that you are a man worth my while taking on a mission which, to say no more of it, will want men of no ordinary temper. Good luck and God be with you!'

Poyning took his leave of us much in the grand manner, but as I looked at his face it seemed to me that underneath that mask of the exquisite there was something of shrewdness and sand that would go a long way and not be lightly turned back. He slid quietly downstairs and we heard no more of him. Soon after he had gone I went along to my bedroom--for I was dog-tired--leaving Philipson deep in thought and the contemplation of two fresh bottles of wine which he had had brought up.

And now I come to the first of those mysterious episodes that happened on our journey up country and bear, as I now see, so profoundly on the queer adventures we were to meet with afterwards. I have made my account of this with great care and constant reference to the very clear recollection of the event my memory retains; and I don't think that in what follows there is one jot more or less than I actually observed.

I don't know whether it was because of the heat, which was steamy and penetrating, or because of the mosquitoes that had already come up in clouds from the swampy land bordering the creek; but weary as I was, I couldn't sleep a wink. I lay tossing and turning and going over in my mind our jumpy experiences of the past forty-eight hours, and the longer I lay, the more feverishly alert I grew. Every noise of the night, the mumble of talk from the servants' quarters at the far end of the inn, an occasional clanging ricsha-bell away in the city, the screech of an early cicada on the lawns, even the subtle hiss of water among the roots of the willows beneath our wall--all came to my ears magnified about fourfold. When Philipson withdrew to his bedroom some hours after I had left him, the noise he made was relatively deafening. I heard him throw himself on to the bed with a jangle of springs, and then lay dozing, praying for sleep but more honestly inclined to swear at my insomnia.

At last, opening my eyes, I saw there was a curious light outside the window, so bright that at first I thought some native house on the other side of the creek must be going up in flames. I got out of bed and looked on to the verandah that ran along outside our wing of the inn. Then I saw where the illumination came from: it was the moon, full and brilliant, which had climbed round to that side of the building and was bathing the creek in a glory of silver and gold. Without the distraction of stewy heat and savage mosquitoes it would have been a picture to paint or write poetry about.

Then, suddenly, I became conscious of voices farther along the verandah. I couldn't distinguish the words, but I knew at once the language was not English. Nor was it any dialect of Chinese I ever struck, and I have heard and spoken most. All caution drowned in a prickling curiosity, I stepped noiselessly out on to the verandah and peeped round the jutting stone jamb of the window. Now I saw the speakers, and at the sight I could have cried out in my astonishment. There were two figures, a man and a woman. The former looked to me uncommonly like Saunders Philipson, dressed as I had left him a few hours before. The real stunning surprise for me, however, was in the appearance of the woman. She was no dusky, cramp-footed native, but manifestly European, tall, queenly, with bare head and loose gown, and so far as I could distinguish her features, of a remarkable beauty.

I drew back into cover of my window and stood there with thumping heart, a pitiful mess of indecision. Philipson was, as I had already learned, a queer fellow. He had betrayed pronounced eccentricity in the direction of strong drink; now I saw him in his even queerer relations with women. Who the beautiful stranger was or whence she came, I couldn't conceive, but it seemed plain enough she must have been there by assignation. She could only have got on to that verandah through his sleeping chamber, for I had heard Philipson lock the door of the sitting room before he retired, and I had certainly been too wide awake for anybody to pass through my room without my knowledge, even had the door not been secure on the inside, which it was. There was no other way.

What should I do? If this was merely some clandestine romance of Philipson's, I had a shrewd notion he would take any interference from me vastly amiss, perhaps even to the length of breaking with me. And yet I had to admit that the time, and our circumstances, seemed strangely out of tune with secret love affairs. A sudden fear took hold of me. I had already seen Philipson once the victim of treachery. Could it be that our enemies had discovered our whereabouts and set another snare, this time in more crafty and seductive shape?

What I should have done I don't know, but at that moment there was a gentle knock at the bedroom door. This clinched my suspicions. I snatched up a revolver and faced round, demanding who was there. No answer came, but the knock was repeated. Then I realised that it was the peculiar five taps--Philipson's own code--that had been given. I tiptoed to the door, unbolted and pulled it ajar, covering the aperture with my gun. An instant later I had lowered the muzzle, for there stood Ah Sing, shivering and hoarse with excitement.

'Hab look-see master him window,' he whispered, stabbing with his finger in the direction of Philipson's room. 'Him talkee-talkee some _tai-tai_ my no sabbee. My no likum dat. My tinkee him talkee-talkee some dam bad man him come hit master one big whop!'

Ah Sing, then, from his post on board the launch, had also observed this mysterious visitor, and to his faithful mind had occurred at once the same suspicion of a decoy. That decided me. I would risk any row with Philipson rather than let him be held in talk on the verandah while all kinds of villainy might be hatching behind him. I peered along the shadowy landing, but could see nobody. Perhaps already an enemy had gained entrance to Philipson's bedroom, where no doubt his precious papers were left unguarded.

Followed by Ah Sing, I ran along to the door and listened. There was no sound whatever. I tried the door: it was locked. I rapped, using Philipson's knock, first softly, then louder, and at last called him by name. There was no reply. Now thoroughly scared, I sent Ah Sing round through my bedroom to warn his master from that side. He was back at my side a few seconds later, his eyes staring, his mouth agape.

'Hab look-see master no hab see!' he panted.

It was at this instant that something inside the bedroom moved. I heard a soft, uneven step, the key was turned in the lock, the door came slightly open, and the muzzle of a revolver appeared round the style. I sang out sharply:

'Philipson!'

One instant after that the door was swung wide, and we stood face to face. I say we stood, though it would be nearer truth to say that I, at least, staggered.

Philipson was in pyjamas. His hair was tousled down over his face and his eyes, which he rather dazedly rubbed with his free fist, were blinking and heavy-lidded, as of a man just roused from deep sleep.