Part 21

Paddy Blake briskly led the way to a cubby-hole of a room with a very strong door, which he made fast with a bolt. There was a window whose shutters were of iron. O’Shea suspected that fuddled seamen might be tucked in here for safe-keeping when the occasion required. The two Irishmen studied each other with a kind of cheerful, candid appraisement. Each recognized in the other certain qualities to be admired. Paddy Blake was a hardened old ruffian, but he was a two-fisted little man with the courage of a terrier.

“I have come a long way to find you,” said O’Shea. “And it was imparted to me that the business that has brought me to China had best be discussed in whispers. ’Tis a mighty queer yarn----”

“Ye need not fill and back. Steam ahead. I like your looks,” broke in Paddy Blake. “Whatever passes bechune us stays inside the door. Are ye in throuble?”

“Not me. This is about a friend of mine. Tell me, Paddy Blake, and think hard. Do ye recall a strappin’ big man with red hair and blue eyes and a deep voice that used to roll the dice in your place? Hold a minute; I have not done with him. One front tooth was broken so you would notice it when he talked. And he had a crooked little finger that must have stuck out when he held a glass or waved his hand about.”

Paddy Blake puckered his brows and pinched his long upper lip between a grimy thumb and forefinger.

“What was he--a Yankee?” he asked, sitting straighter in his chair and gazing at the shipmaster with puzzled, groping interest.

“He was an American seafarin’ man--a mate most likely. You could not forget him if you cast eyes on him only once. Yankee sailors are scarce in deep-water ports. This one should stick out in your recollection like a light-house in a fog.”

“A whale of a man with a red head and an eye as blue as a bit of the Inland Sea!” vehemently exclaimed Paddy Blake. “And when was he in me place? How long ago was it?”

“’Tis yourself that must answer that question. At a guess, it was more than a year ago.”

The spry little man bounded to his feet and clutched the tails of his coat with both hands as he bent forward with his face close to O’Shea’s and rasped out:

“He has popped into me head like a flash. And a mushy-brained dunce I was not to know him at once. Eldridge ye mean--Jim Eldridge, that was mate in the China Navigation Company’s steamer _Tai Yan_, chartered to run coastwise. A whoppin’ big beggar he was, but mild-mannered and good-hearted, the quietest red-headed man that iver I saw in me life.”

“Are you sure of that?” demanded O’Shea. “Could you swear to it?”

“I remimber him as plain as I see you,” testily returned Paddy Blake. “He was not in me place often. ’Twas too rough for him.”

“And did you ever chance to hear what had become of him?”

The little man tapped O’Shea’s arm with an eloquent finger and replied in lower tones:

“It comes back to me that there was a yarn about him. ’Twas gossip, ye understand, nawthin’ that ye could put your finger on. Shanghai is a great place for wild stories. The Shanghai liar is a special breed, and he is famous all over the world. Annyhow, there was a voyage of the _Tai Yan_ steamer when he didn’t come to port in her. Shortly after that she broke her back on a reef in the Formosa Channel and all hands was lost, so I never heard anny news from her people about this Jim Eldridge.”

“That was most unfortunate,” said O’Shea; “but I am in great luck to get track of the man at all. And have you anybody in mind that might have known Eldridge when he was sailing on this coast?”

The volatile Paddy Blake who saw so many mariners pass through his place during the year was mentally sifting his recollections which were many and confusing. The big red-headed man had steered clear of rum and riot and was no steady frequenter of this unholy resort. Obviously he had made no more than a passing impression on Paddy Blake, but the old man was honestly anxious to splice the broken ends of the story, and after painful cogitation he broke out again:

“There is one man that ye should find by all means. He may be dead by now, for the liquor had harrd hold of him. I have not seen or heard of him in a long while, but he wint north from here. I mind the last time he come in me place. Pretty well pickled he was, and some o’ the lads were yarnin’ with him, and there was talk of this Jim Eldridge. Be gob! ’twas then I heard the queer gossip, in bits, d’ ye see? There had been a ruction somewheres up beyant”--and Paddy Blake waved a hand to the northward--“and this man I mintion had been mixed in it with Jim Eldridge. But when they would urge him to unwind the story he would turn ugly and shut up like an oyster, half-seas-over though he was. He was a great one for messin’ about among the Chinese, and could patter two or three dialects. A scholar and gentleman was McDougal.”

“McDougal!” roared O’Shea, taken all aback by the coincidence. “Why, man alive, this same McDougal was in your place to-night and left not an hour ago. He has just come down the coast, from Tientsin and Che-Foo.”

“’Tis a pity ye let him get away. If he wanders into the Chinese city amongst some of thim native friends of his ’twill be the divil and all to find him again. So he’s still alive!”

“I sat and talked with him and he discoursed nightmares.”

“He has lived thim,” said Paddy Blake.

“I had him and I lost him,” was O’Shea’s melancholy exclamation. “An oakum-whiskered Dutchman by the name of Spreckels breezed in under full sail and welcomed this McDougal like a long-lost brother, and carried him off to sea before ye could blink. It was comical. And I sat there like a wooden figure-head and let him go.”

“In the _Wilhelmina Augusta_--four-masted steel bark bound out to Hamburg. It was a lucky stroke for McDougal.”

“And most unlucky for me,” sighed O’Shea. Then he pulled himself together, and spoke in his hearty, masterful way. “Come along, Paddy Blake, and find me a tug. We will chase McDougal down river for the sake of a conversation with him.”

“Captain Spreckels had the _Arrow_, and she’s fast,” said Paddy Blake. “He has a good start of ye, and his bark will be ready to sail as soon as he boards her.”

“Then we’ll chase him out to sea. I have come too far to lose McDougal by letting him slip through me fingers,” and the demeanor of Captain Michael O’Shea discouraged further argument.

Paddy Blake jammed the tall hat on the back of his head, unbolted the door, and whisked through the bar-room with such speed that the shipmaster’s long strides could hardly keep up with him. They turned into the street that led to the water-front and hastened to a lighted corner of the bund where stood several ’rickshaws. Paddy darted at the drowsy coolies who were squatted on the pavement, cuffed a couple of them, and gave an order in pidgin English. They jumped into the shafts, the passengers climbed aboard, and the vehicles went spinning along the thoroughfare.

As they drew abreast of the lights of the anchored shipping, Paddy Blake looked along the landing-berths of the smaller steamers and exclaimed with an explosion of profane surprise:

“There’s a tug in the pocket where the _Arrow_ ties up. I can’t see to make her out in the dark, but we will stop and take a look. Something or other may have delayed Captain Spreckels. I hope to blazes thim seamen I sint him has not hooked it before he got ’em safe aboard the bark.”

Leaving the ’rickshaws to wait orders, they footed it down to the wharf and were convinced that they had found the _Arrow_ even before she could be clearly made out. The darkness was shattered by the troubled accents of Captain Spreckels, who was proclaiming to the skipper of the tug:

“By Gott, I cannot wait for McDougal no longer. The tide ist turned already. My wessel must go to sea mit the morning flood. It gives me sadness to lose dot scalawag, but he has runned away mit himself.”

O’Shea climbed over the guard-rail and cried:

“How are you again, Captain Spreckels? What’s this I hear about McDougal? I am after finding him meself.”

The master of the _Wilhelmina Augusta_ swung his arms and made answer:

“McDougal was a slippery customer, so? I haf a immense fondness for him. By the landing here he left me to go in a ’rickshaw, _sehr schnell_, to a room what he haf hired for to-night und fetch some little t’ings what belonged to him, mostly books und some papers mit writings on ’em. He haf come to Shanghai, he tells me, mit a small bundle which he never loses, drunk or sober. While the tug is makin’ steam und haulin’ her lines aboard he will do his errand. It vas an hour ago. I do not understand, but I must not wait.”

“Changed his mind,” suggested Paddy Blake. “Sorry ye are shy a shipmate, but the news will please me friend Captain O’Shea here. You lose. He wins.”

The hull of the _Arrow_ was trembling to the thresh of the screw, and her skipper was bawling the order to cast off. Captain Spreckels shouted farewell as the two visitors jumped ashore, and the tug moved astern into the fair-way. As they walked toward the ’rickshaws O’Shea remarked:

“’Tis no use to go rummagin’ around to-night in search of McDougal, I suppose.”

“No, but I will find him for ye to-morrow,” replied Paddy Blake. “If he has a room in the English quarter ye can gamble he will drop into my place. If he don’t I will sind a bright lad to round him up. ’Tis easy findin’ him as long as he is not livin’ in the native city. What do ye suppose become of him, annyhow?”

“Maybe he flinched from the notion of quitting the East. When it gets in the blood of these tropical tramps, the grip of it is not easy to break.”

“And he lost his nerve at the last minute,” said Paddy Blake. “I’ve seen cases like it. I’m that way meself.”

Declining a cordial invitation to have a “nightcap,” O’Shea told his ’rickshaw cooly to take him to the Astor House. It seemed extraordinary that his quixotic pilgrimage should have so soon disclosed the identity of the derelict who had drifted into the comfortable haven of Johnny Kent’s farm. This, however, did not greatly astonish O’Shea, who knew that the steps of sailormen in alien ports are not apt to stray far from the water-side. The singular feature of the business was that he should run across the sodden beach-comber, McDougal, who was the needle in a hay-stack of prodigious size. The hand of destiny was in it.

At breakfast next morning Captain O’Shea enjoyed overhearing the talk of a party of American tourists at a near-by table. In their turn the younger women did not fail to observe with interest the clean-cut, resolute shipmaster smartly turned out in fresh white clothes. After they had left the dining-room he picked up a copy of _The Shanghai Mercury_ and carelessly turned to the shipping news where these lines caught his eye:

Bark _Wilhelmina Augusta_, Spreckels master, cleared for Hamburg with general cargo. Sailed Woosung this A. M.

This turned his thoughts to McDougal and he was impatient to find Paddy Blake and begin the search. He was about to toss the newspaper aside when a paragraph seemed to jump from the page and hit him between the eyes. He read it slowly, his lips moving as if he were spelling out the words:

UNKNOWN EUROPEAN MYSTERIOUSLY KILLED

Late last night the body of a middle-aged man was discovered in the Rue Pechili by an officer of the French municipal police. The place was only a few yards from one of the gate-ways of the native city wall in a quarter which is largely populated by Chinese who have overflowed into the French quarter. The man had been dead only a short time. He is supposed to have been an American or Englishman, although his identity was unknown at the hour of going to press. He was clothed in gray tweeds badly worn and had the appearance of one who had suffered from dissipation. He had been stabbed from behind, in addition to which his body was savagely gashed and mutilated. The British police were notified and Inspector Burke immediately took charge of the case.

Captain O’Shea’s second cup of coffee stood cold and neglected while he continued to gaze abstractedly at the front page of _The Shanghai Mercury_. He was reading between the printed lines. His sun-browned face had paled a trifle. He was not afraid, but he was conscious of that same feeling of physical abhorrence which had taken hold of him when he first beheld the scarred and branded back of the man dubbed Bill Maguire.

He was absolutely certain that he could identify the “unknown European” found dead near a gate-way of the native city. It was McDougal, and he had been slain because in some manner, as yet unrevealed, he had played a part in the tragic mystery of the red-haired sailor. Intuition welded the circumstances together. With this premise O’Shea framed one swift conclusion after another. McDougal had suddenly veered from his purpose of going to sea with Captain Spreckels. With the morbid impulse of a man whose nerves were shattered by drink, he had been afraid lest the German skipper might find him and carry him off whether or no. Therefore he had fled to cover, making for the native city where he doubtless had Chinese friends. Perhaps he had been watched and followed by hostile agents from the moment he landed in Shanghai.

“I have seen others like him,” said O’Shea to himself. “They will run from their own shadows, and their friends can do nothing with them. And I must be getting a bit flighty meself or I would not sit here and take for granted things that are no more than guesswork. How do I know that the dead man is McDougal? The answer is this: ’Tis one of me strong hunches, and they seldom go wrong.”

He passed out of the dining-room and delayed in the office of the hotel to ask a question of the clerk. The atmosphere of the place was so wholly European that the China, with which O’Shea had come darkly, gropingly in touch, seemed almost as far away as when he had been on the farm in Maine. The clerk went to the porch and gave instructions to a ’rickshaw cooly, and Captain O’Shea rattled off to the headquarters buildings of the English police. A Sikh orderly conducted him into the small room where Inspector Burke sat at a desk scanning a file of reports. He was a tall, dark, soldierly man of about forty. The slim-waisted khaki tunic, the riding-breeches, and the polished brown puttees gave him the air of a dashing trooper of light-horse. Glancing at O’Shea’s card, he nodded pleasantly and said with a singularly winning smile:

“And what can I do for Captain Michael O’Shea, of New York? I am very much at your service.”

“’Tis about the man that was found murdered close by the native city last night,” was the reply.

“Ah, by Jove!” exclaimed the inspector, and his pencil tapped the desk with a quick tattoo. “An odd case, that! Most unusual. I was potterin’ about on it a good part of the night. My men report that he was in Paddy Blake’s place during the evening, but the old rip denies knowing him, of course. He wants to steer clear of the case. I’m rather stumped so far. You are at the Astor House? I fancy I saw you there at dinner last night.”

“Right you are, sir. I am more than a little interested in this dead man,” pursued O’Shea in a straightforward manner. “And I will first describe him to ye,” which he proceeded to do with the detail of an observer whose eye was keen and memory retentive.

“That’s the Johnny, to a dot,” cried Inspector Burke, alertly interested. “And when did you last see him?”

“I talked with him last night, but before we go further I will prove an alibi,” hastily answered O’Shea, suddenly realizing that his position in the matter might look compromising.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” was the easy assurance. “You are jolly well out of it and satisfactorily accounted for. This was a native job, not a bit of doubt of it. Suppose we take a look at the body. It is packed in ice in the go-down just back of this building. Your identification must go on the records, you know. Then we can have a chin-chin, and I hope you’ll be good enough to stay for tiffin with me.”

O’Shea took from an inside pocket of his coat a leather bill-case and drew therefrom a sheet of heavy paper folded several times. Spread out, it covered half the desk. Upon it he had drawn with a brush and stencilling ink a life-size reproduction of the great Chinese character that scarred and discolored the back of the red-haired sailor.

Inspector Burke flung his cigarette aside with a quick gesture and stared first at the desk and then at O’Shea. His pleasant composure was evidently disturbed, and he spoke abruptly.

“My word! You know a lot more about this job than I do. Where the deuce did you get that? The poor beggar that was butchered last night had the mark on him.”

“I know he did, Inspector Burke. I was sure of it when I read about the thing in the newspaper this morning.”

They went into the shed and viewed what was left of the ill-fated McDougal, who had tried, too late, to throw all regrets away and make a new start at the difficult business of existence. O’Shea was keenly distressed. The man had won his sympathy. He would have liked to befriend him. Inspector Burke said kindly:

“Did you know him at all well? He must have amounted to something once. Was he ever a chum of yours?”

“I never laid eyes on him till last evening in Paddy Blake’s,” answered O’Shea. “And now I will sit down with ye and spin the yarn of the sailorman that I called Bill Maguire for convenience.”

The inspector listened gravely, nodding comprehendingly now and then as if his own experience might have crossed the trail of the same story. When O’Shea ceased talking, his comment was as follows:

“Most extraordinary! I fancy we can help each other a bit. But, mind you, I don’t pretend to know much about this mysterious murder society that goes about choppin’ people up. I have heard of it, of course, but until now its activities have been confined to the Chinese. We don’t pretend to police the native city. The Chinese governor runs his own show. There are native detectives on my staff, but their work is mostly in the foreign municipality. The case of this McDougal is the first of its kind. And I rather think you have supplied the motive. He knew too much.”

“But what did he know?” demanded O’Shea. “There was this sailor by the right name of Jim Eldridge, ye understand. He got his in the same way. They were mixed up together at one time or another.”

Inspector Burke withdrew from a drawer of his desk a large envelope and emptied out several torn sheets and fragments of paper which looked as though they had been trampled underfoot. Some were covered with handwriting in English, while others held columns of Chinese characters. They were so mud-stained and crumpled, however, that only a few lines here and there were at all legible. O’Shea gazed at them eagerly, surmising what they were before the inspector explained:

“My men picked them up in the street where McDougal’s body was found.”

“Yes. He must have had a bundle of books and papers under his arm, for I heard mention of the same,” cried O’Shea. “Like enough, it was ripped apart in the scrimmage and the blood-thirsty heathen made off with whatever they could lay their hands on in a hurry. If they spied any Chinese writing they would grab at it. What do ye say, Inspector Burke?”

“There are bits of some sort of a diary here, Captain O’Shea, and odds and ends that only a native could make head or tail of. I looked them over early this morning, and one of my Chinese did what he could to help. It is impossible to arrange the fragments in any sequence, but the story you tell me dovetails rather curiously with some of the sentences.”

“There was many queer things stowed away in that noddle of his,” said O’Shea, “and he was an educated man, so he would be apt to make notes of them. And does he make any mention at all of this Jim Eldridge, alias Bill Maguire?”

Inspector Burke carefully smoothed a torn sheet of paper and laid a finger on a few lines scrawled in a shaky hand. They held no reference to the sailor, but several phrases were startlingly familiar to Captain O’Shea. The mutilated passage ran thus:

_Very horrid dreams last night--brandy failed to drive them away. Was in a steamer on the Stinking River--the Painted Joss came through the cabin port-hole, squeezing itself small as if made of rubber, and then expanding to gigantic size. It strangled me slowly, making hideous faces. This is a warning--When I dream of the Painted Joss, I am on the edge of seeing things while awake. The fear of violent death is...._

Captain O’Shea was vividly reminded of the disjointed monologue of Bill Maguire, who had shown symptoms of a similar antipathy to the “Painted Joss.”

“McDougal wrote down the Stinking River as if it was a real name,” he said to Inspector Burke. “I thought Maguire called it that because it smelled bad. If it is on the map, can ye locate it, and is there by any chance a town with the title of Wang-Li-Fu on the banks of the same?”

Inspector Burke summoned a fat, drowsy-looking interpreter and put several questions to him. After poring over an atlas for some time, this owlish Chinese gentleman vouchsafed the information that a navigable stream known as the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells did indeed flow through a coastwise part of Kiangsu province, emptying into the wide estuary of the old mouth of the Yellow River. There was a city in that region which had been great and flourishing until the Tai-Ping Rebellion laid it in ruins. It was now no more than a wretched hamlet, although in local usage it had retained the name of Wang-Li-Fu, the last syllable of which signified a chief city of a province.

“I say, this is interesting,” exclaimed Inspector Burke. “I am inclined to think that you and I have picked up a warm scent, Captain O’Shea. And here’s another bit of paper we can manage to read.”