Part 23

Jostling among them were laden mules, top-heavy wheelbarrows, bawling coolies sweating beneath the burden of the shoulder-yokes, hordes of idlers, screaming children, until it was to wonder why traffic was not wholly blockaded. Into this ruck of humanity, this immense confusion and noise, the two ’rickshaw men hurled their vehicle like a projectile. They shouted incessantly, threatening and reviling, nor tried to pick a way through the press. These who got in their path were knocked head over heels. Pedlers’ barrows were upset helter-skelter. The onward course of Captain O’Shea was as destructive as a typhoon.

He yelled at his headlong chargers to slow down. They were likely to cause a riot. Already a mob was buzzing angrily in their wake and several missiles were hurled at the ’rickshaw. Captain O’Shea had the sensations of a man who was being run away with. This brace of pig-tailed fiends had bolted hell-for-leather. He was of a mind to jump out and let them go their own gait, but this enlarged baby-carriage of a ’rickshaw was awkward to disembark from while under way, and he was reluctant to risk landing upon his head. If he menaced them with a revolver the mob would be apt to join forces with them against the foreigner. Still, this might be the peculiar fashion of conveying a gentleman to the governor’s yamen, and perhaps he had better sit tight and hold hard until the ship struck a rock.

Presently, however, he observed that several big swarthy men in blue cotton blouses were running alongside the coolie in the shafts and holding shouted converse with him. They appeared to be friends of his, and Captain O’Shea did not like their looks. They were hardier, more truculent of visage, than the pasty-faced Shanghai coolie class. The tough has the same ear-marks the world over, and these fellows were ruffians whom one would not care to meet in the dark.

A few minutes after these had joined company the ’rickshaw turned abruptly from one of the crowded streets and moved with undiminished speed into a wider but much less frequented thoroughfare lined with stables, straw-littered court-yards whose buildings were in ruinous decay, and hovels used as slaughter-houses where mangy dogs prowled in search of offal. The ’rickshaw tilted and veered sharply in the direction of one of these disreputable court-yards, and Captain Michael O’Shea, quite certain that he was not headed toward the governor’s yamen, acted decisively and on the spur of the moment.

Things were going all wrong and very probably he would alight from the frying-pan into the fire, but this was nothing less than an abduction. The coolie in the shafts had coiled his queue under his cap, possibly to guard against the very manœuvre that O’Shea executed. But the wind and the rapid motion had loosed the end of the thick black braid and it bobbed between his shoulders and whipped free as he ran.

Bending forward, O’Shea clutched the queue in a tremendous grip and laid back as if he were hauling on a main-sheet. The rascal’s head was fetched up with a dislocating jerk, his feet pawed the air for an instant, and his hands lost their hold of the shafts. Then, as he came down and tried vainly to get a footing, the careering ’rickshaw rammed him from behind and sent him sprawling on his face. Shot out from his seat went Captain O’Shea, his feet in front of him, a revolver in his fist, ready to bound up from the pavement and open the engagement on the instant.

The “push-man” had been violently poked under the chin by the back of the suddenly halted ’rickshaw, and he lay groaning and doubled up several feet away. The ruffianly escort, taken by surprise, ran a little distance before they could wheel and return to the scene. Captain O’Shea had a moment in which to get his bearings and take stock of the situation. Darting for the nearest wall, he braced his back against it and stood waiting. The big swarthy rascals in the blue blouses fiercely jabbered together, gazed up and down the almost deserted street, and with no more delay drew knives from their baggy breeches and charged with heads down.

O’Shea threw up his revolver for a snap-shot at the foremost of them. The hammer clicked. There was no report. He pulled the trigger again with the same result. For the third time the hammer fell with the same futile, sickening click. This was his finish. The thing was absurd, incredible. Raging, he grasped the weapon by the barrel and ran forward to swing the butt against the nearest shaven head. A long knife ripped at him and slashed his sleeve. He cracked the man’s head, but the others were at him like wolves. He dodged and tried to take to his heels, but the two ’rickshaw men blocked his path.

One of the assassins had worked around behind him and was trying to trip and get him down so that they could cut him to ribbons at their leisure. The knives hemmed him in. He slipped and fell upon one knee. The ruffians laughed.

Then, lo and behold! they were scampering frantically away, yelling in fear, scrambling over walls like monkeys, diving into the stables and court-yards, flying for the lower end of the street. In a twinkling Captain O’Shea was alone, magically snatched from death. White and shaking, he stood and gazed at a near-by corner of the crooked thoroughfare. Filing past it came a squad of British bluejackets in white clothes, and the sun winked brightly on the polished metal of their rifles and cutlasses. Beside the lieutenant, in front of them, strode a tall, slim-waisted man in khaki uniform whom O’Shea recognized as Inspector Burke. O’Shea’s assailants had been warned in time to scurry to cover before the British party had more than a flying glimpse of them. At a quick order shouted by the lieutenant, the sailors scattered into the yards and squalid buildings, but the fugitives had escaped by a dozen dark and devious exits to vanish in the labyrinths of the teeming, mysterious native city. Inspector Burke was pounding O’Shea on the back and exclaiming vigorously:

“My word, old chap! What sort of a bally row is this? The beggars nearly did for you. Lucky we happened along, wasn’t it?”

“Tis all of that,” earnestly replied the shipmaster. “And who are ye, anyhow? Is this a fairy story or a play right out of the theatre? You came on the stage about one second before the curtain rung down.”

“Leftenant Kempton-Shaw--ah, here he is--allow me to present him, Captain O’Shea--as I was about to say, he came ashore from the _Warspite_ gun-boat this mornin’ with a batch of Chinese pirates, the real thing, don’t you know. He took them out of a junk after a rather nice little shindy last week. He marched them to the Chinese prison just now, it’s in this quarter of the native city, and their heads will be cut off to-morrow. I’m awfully pleased that we were taking this short cut home. In close quarters, weren’t you?”

“I have never found them a closer fit,” said O’Shea. “I was on me way for a chat with the governor, and a gang of bad citizens tried to wipe me out. I will walk along with you if ye don’t mind. There is enough Irish in me to waste no great love on the British flag, but I will say, Lieutenant Kempton-Shaw, that I never laid eyes on a finer, handsomer lot of men than these lads of yours from the _Warspite_.”

“Thanks, and I fancy you mean it,” smiled the naval officer. “This is extraordinary, by Jove. Foreigners are fairly safe in the native city, as a rule, are they not, Burke? What do you make of it?”

“I shall have to hear Captain O’Shea’s report.”

“I have no long-winded report to offer,” incisively declared the shipmaster. “I have me suspicions, and you can guess what they are, Inspector Burke. ’Tis the same business that we talked about in your office. But I wish nothing to do with any police investigations. You will report this row of mine to the native government, I have no doubt, and I hope ye will try to collect an indemnity for me distressed emotions, but I have no time to dilly-dally about in Shanghai. I will go to sea. Will you help me find the men?”

“From the tone of your voice I infer that your business is not precisely pacific, my dear sir,” put in Lieutenant Kempton-Shaw. “Do you mind letting the _Warspites_ in on this cruise of yours?”

“Thank you, but I have set out to handle it as an affair of me own. I may have bit off more than I can chew, but I will try to see it through.”

“Meet me at my office at noon and I’ll have some men for you to look over,” said Inspector Burke. “I will pick up a crew for you if I have to make a general jail-delivery.”

As they trudged along Captain O’Shea became silent and abstracted. He was not in a mood for conversation. Conjecture pointed one way. He had been a gullible fool who deserved to have a knife stuck in his ribs. It had been as easy to trap him as though he were a lubber on his first voyage out from home. It had been with design that only one ’rickshaw stood in front of the hotel that morning when he was ready to go to the native city. And the pair of coolies were hired cutthroats who had steered him into the disgusting street among the slaughter-houses in order that he might be done away with, leaving never a trace of his fate behind him.

Reasoning back from this link to the next preceding, his room had been entered and ransacked while he was safely out of the way in a carriage on the Bubbling Well Road. Some time had been required to make that careful examination and fit keys to his hand-bag and trunk. Also, he had just now investigated his revolver and discovered that the firing-pin of the hammer had been filed, not enough for the eye to notice it, but sufficiently to cause the impact to fail to explode the primer of the cartridge.

The affable, gilded young gentleman who had invited him to drive on the Bubbling Well Road was the same kind acquaintance who had suggested that he take a ’rickshaw and visit the native city in the morning. The finger of coincidence pointed in the direction of that smartest of compradores, Charley Tong Sin.

“That kind of coincidence is unhealthier than the cholera,” said O’Shea to himself. “Maybe this sport with the college education and the taste for gin cocktails is a good friend of mine, but I will give him no chance to prove it again. I have been on the jump ever since I met him. If he is not crooked he is a hoodoo. And ’tis not impossible, after all, that he is mixed up with this gang of murderers that I am running after. The heart of him is Chinese.”

He would keep these suspicions to himself. They lacked tangible proof, and he held to the view that the business was entirely his own. He had plunged into this befogged maze of circumstances like a boy on a holiday, and it was for him to extricate himself like a man. With the warmest expressions of gratitude he parted from Inspector Burke and the naval lieutenant, and hastened in the direction of the water-front.

Less than an hour later he was inspecting a light-draught steamer called the _Whang Ho_ owned by the China Navigation Company. She was old, sadly in need of repairs, and about as sea-worthy for rough weather as a packing-box. But O’Shea felt confident that she could be nursed along to serve his purpose, and the larger, better vessels available for charter at short notice were not so handy for exploring muddy rivers and strange corners. Having put to sea at one time and another in craft which were held together only by their paint, Captain O’Shea asked no more of the _Whang Ho_ than that her engines should turn over. He dared not examine the machinery too closely lest he might lose confidence in his steamer, but the owners’ agent assured him that she was fit for service and he took his word for it.

“Start her fires going at once,” said O’Shea, “and if enough pressure shows on the gauges to turn her wheel as she lies at her moorings, I will sign the charter-party and insurance papers and slap down the two thousand dollars for a month’s use of the venerable relic.”

“That is fair enough,” replied the agent. “And it is as good as done. You can go ahead with getting your supplies, Captain O’Shea. I take it that you want to do a bit of exploration work for one of the American syndicates? We have done quite a lot of business with your people and their concessions.”

“It may be something like that,” briefly returned O’Shea. “And now will you be kind enough to tell me where to order a hundred and fifty tons of steam coal to be put in the bunkers this very day?”

“Our company will be pleased to let you have it, and I can guarantee prompt delivery from lighters alongside the steamer. Or I presume that Jordan, Margetson will do the same for you.”

“I think I will not deal with Jordan, Margetson,” and O’Shea’s voice was smooth and pleasant. “The comprador is a very able young man.”

“Charley Tong Sin? Well, rather. A smart chap, that.”

“Yes, very. I wish I could keep my razor as sharp.”

Captain O’Shea next visited a ship-chandler’s and submitted his list of stores, making it a condition of payment that the stuff should be in the steamer before sunset. The elderly German who served him had the tact and discretion bred of long experience with the seafarers of the unexpected Orient. It was his business to sell them whatever they might want, to take his profit and ask no questions. Yes, he could find thirty service rifles and revolvers, also cutlasses of the best steel. They were of patterns discarded by a certain European government, but excellent weapons. He would be glad to sell the captain one, five, or ten thousand of them. The captain was not a man to wag a foolish tongue; one could see it at a glance.

“You and I might do business some day,” quoth O’Shea, “but I am too busy to start a revolution at present.”

He sent a note to Paddy Blake asking him to find a dozen Chinese firemen and sailors and a river pilot, and to muster them ready for signing articles in the afternoon. He believed the old Irishman to be a ripened scoundrel at his own trade, but suspected him of no complicity in the manœuvres of Charley Tong Sin. The comprador had merely used Paddy Blake as a means of making the acquaintance of Captain O’Shea.

Five minutes after noon the shipmaster (he had taken a decided dislike to riding in ’rickshaws) trudged into the headquarters building of Inspector Burke.

“I have a choice collection for you to look over,” said the latter. “They are waiting in another room, and I should call them a worried lot. I sent my men out to pick them up, do you see, and they have not been told the reason why.”

“I cannot afford to be particular, Inspector Burke. Let me at them and I will see whether I am safer ashore among the Chinese or at sea with your exhibit of beach-combers.”

“Oh, they are not as bad as that,” the inspector assured him. “I should scarcely call them desperate characters. However, while I wish you the best of luck, old chap, I shall shed never a tear if you lose your shipmates somewhere beyond Shanghai. Let us call them soldiers of misfortune, if you like.”

He led the way into the large drill-room, where a score or more of men stood in uneasy attitudes and appeared not at all comfortable in this environment. O’Shea let his glance rove in swift, appraising scrutiny and smiled to himself as he recognized one familiar type after another. He had recruited such men as these for unostentatious ventures in the waters of the Spanish Main. Here was the red-faced, burly shipmaster ready with a glib speech and fluent curses to explain how he happened to be without his papers; the shambling ne’er-do-well with the slack mouth and the weak chin who had fled from a scrape at home to lose himself in foreign ports; the tanned adventurer, brave and resourceful, who was fit for nothing else than the life of a rover; the battered old seaman, worn out by the hardships of the forecastle, who had been cast adrift from the hospital; the cashiered army officer with the hall-mark of his caste blurred but still visible; the sharp-featured young man with the furtive eye who lived by his wits and found it very hard living indeed; the bleary tropical tramp who would sell his soul for a drink of brandy.

These and the rest of them were seedy in various ways. They conveyed a sense of failure, of having lost their grip. Their clothes did not signify this so much as what life had written in their faces. Several, in fact, were dressed in clean white duck and linen. They were fighting hard to preserve the guise of self-respect. And yet every man of them had marched to police headquarters at a word from Inspector Burke with the sick fear in his heart that his past had overtaken him, or that he was to be deported for the good of the community, or that he was to be locked up as a vagrant.

Inspector Burke felt pity for them. It was heartless to keep the poor devils in this painful suspense. With a curt nod he addressed them in a group, for they had unwittingly drifted together as if finding some small comfort in solidarity.

“This is not police business,” said he. “I sent for you to oblige my friend Captain O’Shea. He will explain what he wants, and I advise you to play square with him and I’m quite sure he will make it worth while.”

At this the company brightened and looked immensely relieved. The hang-dog manner fled. Shoulders were braced, heads held erect. They were like different men. O’Shea had a less pessimistic opinion of them. He had already concluded to show no finicky taste by picking and choosing. He would take them in a lump, good, bad, and indifferent. Those who were really competent would soon disclose it on shipboard and they could help him hammer the others into shape.

“My speech to you will be short and sweet,” said he. “I need men for a voyage coastwise and me steamer will be ready to sail to-night. You will live well and I expect ye to obey orders. ’Tis not sailors’ work or I should not take on your kind. The fewer questions ye ask the more popular ye will be with me. The pay will be at the rate of five dollars a day gold, but I will give no advances. I want ye to come aboard sober. If you handle yourselves like men I will pay ye a bonus at the end of the voyage. Those that want to go will give me their names.”

Not a man hung back or asked a question. They whispered softly among themselves, as if afraid to make a slip that might break the spell. Captain O’Shea had one thing more to say and they listened with the most devout attention.

“I took note of the small Hotel London down by the water-side. ’Tis a clean, decent place and I have had a word with the landlord. I will give every man me card. If you show it to him he will be pleased to entertain ye at dinner at once, and he will hand ye out cigars and three drinks apiece, no more. And I will meet you there for supper at six o’clock to-night.”

“Excellent strategy,” murmured Inspector Burke.

“By the way,” cried O’Shea to his pleased followers, “I overlooked something. I need a chief engineer. Can any one of you qualify?”

It appeared that none of them was sufficiently acquainted with the internal works of a steamer to pass as an expert, although a young man of a very Cockney accent thought he might do as an assistant.

Inspector Burke made haste to remark:

“I say, let me give you the very man for the job. Kittridge is his name. It’s rather awkward, for he is in clink at present, the British jail. But his time expires to-morrow--he was given thirty days--and I dare say the magistrate will be willing to sign release papers if I explain the situation.”

“I am not asking me men for references,” observed O’Shea, “but, as a matter of mild curiosity, what did ye put this Kittridge away for?”

“He tried to whip my entire Sikh police force, and he made a jolly good beginning. Then his ship sailed away and left him in quod. He was engineer in a Cardiff tramp. A very good man, I understand.”

“He sounds like it. His references are most satisfactory, especially what he did to your turbanned cops,” O’Shea cordially affirmed. “Send this Kittridge to the Hotel London, if ye please, and give him this card of mine, and tell him to wait for me there.”

Through the afternoon Captain Michael O’Shea, now master of the aged river steamer _Whang Ho_, was the busiest and most energetic of men. A hundred and one things presented themselves as necessary to be done. When at length he hurried into the Hotel London shortly before the supper-hour his men were waiting, hopeful, expectant, cheerful, smoking his cigars and with the three drinks apiece tucked under their belts. Among them was a lanky, solemn person with a pair of gray side-whiskers and a leathery complexion crisscrossed by a net-work of fine wrinkles. His whole appearance was eminently decorous and respectable and he seemed to have strayed into the wrong company. It was not far-fetched to conjecture that he might be a missionary from some station in the Chinese hinterland who had kindly concerned himself with the souls of this congregation of black sheep.

Captain O’Shea bowed to him with a puzzled, respectful air, at which the pious stranger remarked:

“Inspector Burke told me to report here and be damn quick about it. I am Kittridge, and I hear you are wanting an engineer.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Kittridge. I came near mistakin’ you for a sky-pilot. And so your favorite pastime is beating up Sikh policemen! I have a job for ye at double the wages you got in your tramp steamer, whatever they were. Are you willing?”

“I would sign on with the devil himself to get clear of this blankety-blank pig-hole of a blistering Shanghai,” promptly exclaimed Mr. Kittridge. “Where’s your ship? Shall I go aboard at once?”

“Please take a look at the engine-room and report to me here. She is the _Whang Ho_, tied up at the China Navigation Company’s wharf. Don’t be too critical, but if there’s work that is absolutely necessary I will send ye machinists to work all night.”

“I know the condemned little hooker by sight,” bitterly quoth Mr. Kittridge with a tug at his starboard whisker. “Very well, sir. I will take a squint at her and make out my list of engine-room stores. Can you get them to-night?”