Part 26

As a person of considerable confidence in his ability to master difficulties, his self-esteem had been dealt a hard blow. His imagination had pictured a large, stirring climax of his pilgrimage, and here he was all adrift in a wretched little village of no consequence whatever, the last place in the world to find the headquarters of a secret organization so mysteriously powerful as to cast its sinister shadow throughout China, and even across the seas. And yet the evidence had been by no means vague and misleading. Beginning with the fragmentary revelations of the demented sailor, coming next to the disclosures of poor McDougal’s diary, he had been led straight to the town of Wang-Li-Fu, on the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells. He had felt that the hand of destiny was guiding him.

Returning to the tavern yard O’Shea found his men cheerfully making friends of the villagers and accepting the situation with the ready adaptability of true soldiers of fortune. They looked to the leader for orders, but he had none to give them. He had been placed in the ridiculous position of providing wages and rations for a perfectly superfluous expeditionary force.

“Just what did you expect to turn up in this pigsty of a settlement?” gloomily inquired Mr. Kittridge, who seemed disappointed that he had not broken a few heads. “Whatever it was, it fell flat.”

“It did that,” frankly admitted O’Shea. “’Tis a painful subject, Mr. Kittridge, and we will not discuss it now. But I am not done with the riddle of Wang-Li-Fu.”

Three days passed, and singly and in squads the invaders ransacked the village and its suburbs, poking into shops, alleys, dwellings, and court-yards and taking stock of the inmates thereof. That the people were very poor and very industrious was all that one could say of them. And they were no more to be suspected of plotting deeds of violence than so many rabbits. Doggedly persistent, unwilling to confess himself beaten, O’Shea shifted his quest to the open country for miles outside of Wang-Li-Fu. It was a region of green fields gridironed with ditches and rutted paths, and dotted with toilers in blue cotton blouses and straw hats, who tilled their crops from dawn to dark.

It was obviously useless to extend the investigation any considerable distance away from this region. If the secret was not to be unearthed in the vicinity of Wang-Li-Fu, then his conclusions had been all wrong. The villagers assured him that this was, in truth, none other than Wang-Li-Fu, and the baffled, perplexed O’Shea could not let go of the opinion that the goal was somewhere near at hand. Otherwise, why all the elaborate stratagems in Shanghai to thwart his voyage to the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells?

He had imagined himself attacking a stronghold of some sort, a headquarters of desperate criminals who must be wiped out. But if that slippery comprador Charley Tong Sin had carried a warning to the men of the Painted Joss, he must have fled elsewhere than to this commonplace, harmless village. At any rate, it seemed absurd to tarry much longer in Wang-Li-Fu with a force of armed retainers.

At the end of a fortnight, O’Shea was of the opinion that his loyal legion had better seek to mend its fortunes in some other quarter. He was ashamed to look them in the face. The fiasco cut him to the quick. He had been as mad as poor Bill Maguire. In future he would stick to his trade as a shipmaster.

Meanwhile, the malarial poison of the marshes found its way into his blood. He failed to realize that he was ill, and paid no attention to the little flashes of fever that came by night and the creeping, chilly feeling that troubled him in the morning.

There came a day when he was unable to rise from the brick sleeping-platform. The fever increased, suddenly, violently. It caught him unprepared. His plan of retreat had not been announced, and now he was incapable of leadership. His mind alternated between delirium and stupor. When he talked it was of many inconsequential things. One might have said that the evil spirit of the Painted Joss had laid its spell of misfortune upon him. In the court-yard of the tavern his lieutenants held a conference.

“Can anybody make head or tail of this infernal situation?” gloomily inquired Mr. Kittridge. “What in hades are we going to do about it?”

“Try to pull Captain O’Shea through this fever before we think of anything else,” stoutly affirmed Mr. Parkinson. “We jammed into this crazy voyage with our eyes shut. With all of us it was anything to get clear of Shanghai. And it’s useless business to sit and growl about it as hard luck. What do you say, Major Bannister?”

The army man smiled at sight of their discouraged countenances and quietly answered:

“What else can we chaps expect but hard luck? Really, I should be surprised to find anything else. I can tell you one thing, gentlemen. I have campaigned in the tropics, and I know something about this swamp fever. We had best get out of here and take Captain O’Shea with us. If we don’t, he will die as sure as sunrise, and the rest of us will be down with it before long. It caught him first because he was fagged with worry.”

“We agree with you there,” said Mr. Parkinson. “But we seem to have overlooked a line of retreat. That was the Irish of it, I suppose. If we go down river in our two boats we’ll have to work ’em out to sea over those nasty shoals and then run the chance of being picked up adrift. We might get away with it, but it would kill a man as sick as O’Shea.”

“Why not go up-river?” suggested Major Bannister. “By means of a few words of Chinese and a great many gestures I have extracted from the village head-men the information that there is a European mission station about a hundred and fifty miles northwest of here. We can make part of the journey by boat and then hike overland. With a litter and coolies to carry it, we may be able to take Captain O’Shea through alive. It’s better than letting him die in this pest-hole.”

“That’s the most sensible speech I’ve heard since we signed on,” grunted Mr. Kittridge. “And you can pull out of this rotten Wang-Li-Fu not a minute too soon to please me.”

The village head-men were summoned, and these venerable worthies declared themselves anxious to aid the sick leader of the foreign soldiers. He had played with their children, paid the shopkeepers their prices without dispute, and sat with the old men in the tea-houses. Nor had his armed force committed any abuses, although they held the village at their mercy. It was wisdom to try to carry Captain O’Shea to his own people. The village would gladly furnish a guide and plenty of coolies, a covered litter, and a small house-boat in which the sick man could be made comfortable.

The evacuation of Wang-Li-Fu was a dismal business. The adventurers were oppressed by a sense of failure and discouragement. Their enterprise had fizzled out like a dampened match. This final act was inglorious. Their plight was worse than when they had been stranded as beach-combers in Shanghai. They carried Captain O’Shea to a sampan, or flat-bottomed boat, with a tiny cabin of bamboo and matting, which could be towed against the sluggish current of the river. The men disposed themselves in the two boats saved from the _Whang Ho_ steamer, and a squad of half-naked coolies strung themselves along a towing-rope to help track the sampan up-stream.

The sick man lay stretched upon his quilts and showed little interest in the slow progress of the flotilla. Between spells of heavy drowsiness he watched the slimy shore and fringing marsh slide past. Through the first day the wind was cool and the air bright, and the boats trailed up-river until after nightfall before they were pulled into the bank to moor. As the part of caution, no fires were made and conversation was hushed. The foreigners had an uncomfortable suspicion that this might be hostile territory, although they had discovered nothing to warrant the conjecture. But O’Shea had been babbling about the Painted Joss while flighty with fever, and Charley Tong Sin was still unaccounted for.

Between midnight and morning the sick man came out of his uneasy dreams. As it seemed to him, he was clear-headed, his senses alert, his judgment normal. Just why he should be cooped up in this native boat was a bit difficult to comprehend, but why try to understand it? There was only one problem of real importance. And now was the time to solve it. O’Shea laughed to think what a stupid, blundering fool he had been to recruit an armed expedition and come clattering into this corner of China with so much fuss and noise.

If a man wanted to find the Painted Joss, all he had to do was listen to the friendly, familiar voices that whispered in his ears. O’Shea could hear them now. He accepted them as a matter of course. His eyes were very bright as he pulled on his shoes and fumbled for the revolver in its holster under the pillow. Curiously enough, he was no longer conscious of great physical weakness. It was tremendously urgent that he should go to find the Painted Joss without a moment’s delay. His men would not understand if he should tell them about the friendly voices that were offering to show him the way. They might try to restrain him. He must leave the boat quietly, unobserved.

Crawling from beneath the matting curtain, he gained the river bank. His knees were exceedingly shaky and his hands trembled uncertainly, but he was confident that he had found the trail of the Painted Joss and that his vigor would soon return. Charley Tong Sin outwit him? Nonsense! O’Shea would have been startled beyond measure to know that he was wandering off in delirium. He would have taken a shot at any one rash enough to tell him so.

Undetected he moved along the shore, silent as a red Indian, and was presently lost in the darkness. It was muddy walking, and he turned into the tall marsh grass, where a carpet of dead vegetation made firmer footing. Frequently he was compelled to halt and regain his labored breath, but his purpose was unwavering. The voices drove him on. He had no sense of fear. After some time his erratic progress led him back to the river. There he stumbled over a log and sat down to wait for daybreak, which had begun to flush the sky.

His head throbbed as though hammers were pounding it and waves of blurring dizziness troubled him. What was more disquieting, the guiding voices had ceased to talk to him. He felt crushing disappointment and sadness. His eyes filled with tears.

Dawn found him seated dejectedly with his back propped against the log, his head drooping, while he stared at the muddy river. Here he would wait on the chance that his friends might find him. As the day brightened, his aimless vision was caught by something which powerfully awakened his weary, befogged perceptions. It acted as a stimulant of tremendous force. Sitting bolt upright he gazed at a footprint, cleanly outlined, which had become sun-dried and hardened in a stratum of clay.

It had been made by a leather sole and heel. The outline was pointed and narrow. Into O’Shea’s quickened memory there flashed the picture of Charley Tong Sin stretched upon the cabin floor of the _Whang Ho_ steamer, his patent-leather shoes waving gently as he went to sleep under the soporific influence of a knock-out blow. He felt absolutely certain that this particular print had been left by the fashionable footgear of the vanished comprador. The voices had guided him aright. It was here that Charley Tong Sin had come ashore after making his way up the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells in some kind of a native boat.

There was one chance in a million that O’Shea should have halted to wait in this precise spot where his eyes might see the thing. He dragged himself to his feet and scanned the melancholy landscape. There were no villages in sight; only the marsh and fields and a vast mound of débris to mark the place where once had stood a city. Even the walls surrounding it had been levelled. It was scarcely more than a wide-spread excrescence of broken brick and tiling partly overgrown with vegetation. The landscape could have held no more desolate reminder of the wreckage left in the wake of the Tai Ping rebels.

It was plausible to surmise that this was the real Wang-Li-Fu, the city which O’Shea had set out to find. The squalid village much lower down the river might have been founded by refugees who gave the same name to their new abode. And the villagers had been too ignorant to explain the blunder. To them there was only one Wang-Li-Fu. How Charley Tong Sin must have laughed at leaving O’Shea and his men to waste themselves in a chase that led nowhere.

It was a pallid, unshaven, tottering ghost of Captain Michael O’Shea that mustered strength to walk very slowly in the direction of the ruined city. Once he paused and became irresolute, but a little way beyond he found the imprint of a narrow shoe of European workmanship on the soft bank of a ditch. His stumbling steps led him, as by an unerring divination, toward the highest part of the great mound of débris where tall trees grew from the crumbling masonry. His painful advance became less difficult when he found a path from which the obstructions had been removed.

Presently he stood looking across a cleared space in the midst of the ruins, invisible from river or highway. In it were several small buildings and one much larger. The timbers set into its walls were carved and gilded, the curving roof of dull red tile. There was no living thing in sight. This isolated community was so situated that it was wholly concealed from strangers, and the natives of the region were apt to shun the blasted city as haunted by demons. No watchers were posted to guard against intrusion.

O’Shea crossed the open space and made for the large building, which had the aspect of a temple. Unhesitatingly he approached the massive wooden doors and found them ajar. He walked like a man in a trance, muttering to himself. Passing within, he entered a sort of anteroom partitioned by means of screens wonderfully embroidered. The stone pavement rang to the tread of his heels. The place echoed with emptiness. He pressed on and came into a room of greater extent. Its corners were lost in shadow. Rows of pillars supported the dusky rafters upon which gilded dragons seemed to writhe. The windows were small and set close to the roof and the light of early morning had not dispelled the gloom.

In the centre of the floor was an altar. Behind it towered an image of Buddha, and yet it was unlike the images of the bland and contemplative Buddha commonly to be found in the temples of the East. It was a monstrous thing. Only an artist with an inspiration from the devil could have so handled tools as to make those wooden features seem to lust after all abominable wickedness. The color of this seated statue was crimson. Amid the shadows it glowed like fire or blood. On the breast, above the folded arms, stood out in broad, black strokes a Chinese symbol or character which O’Shea recognized with a sensation of creeping repugnance.

“The Painted Joss!” he gasped.

His attention was so strongly caught and held by this malevolent image that for the moment he had eyes for nothing else. Presently, however, he became aware that another figure confronted him, a living presence. It was a man sitting in a massive chair of teak-wood, by the side of the Buddha. The bulk of him was enormous. He was both fat and mighty of frame, and not even the towering amplitude of the image could dwarf his proportions and belittle the impression he conveyed. His face was broad and heavy-jowled, the mouth sensual and cruel. With folded arms he sat and gazed at the foreign intruder. This unflinching, scornful immobility had a certain distinction. He believed that he must instantly die at the hands of this European with the white, savage face and the blazing eyes who covered him with a revolver. It was futile to cry out and summon help. As is customary with Chinese in positions of authority, this high-priest of iniquity had gone to the temple to have audience with his servitors very early in the morning. They had not yet joined him and O’Shea was quick to read his own advantage.

It was right and just that he should slay this huge man in the crimson robe who ruled the temple of the Painted Joss. He had come ten thousand miles to be judge and executioner. He was ready to kill and be killed in his turn. But the revolver was strangely heavy and it wavered so that he was unable to hold it at arm’s length. A haze bothered his vision and he could not brush it from his eyes. Something was the matter with his knees. They were giving way. With an incoherent exclamation, O’Shea fell unconscious upon the stone flagging and the revolver clattered from his limp hand. He had paid the price of exertion beyond his strength.

When his senses returned there was in his mind only the dimmest recollection of how he came to be in this dreadful place. The vagaries of fever no longer possessed him. Clear-headed but wretchedly weak and nerveless, he gazed about him and discovered that he was alone in the unholy temple. The shadows were not so heavy on the pillars, the gilded rafters, and the marble altar. The crimson image of the seated Buddha loomed flamboyant and portentous and the Chinese symbol painted on its breast was boldly outlined.

There was no way of escape. The building was a most effectual prison. His revolver had been taken from him. He could not even fight and die like a man. The fact was that this desperate extremity lacked the proper sense of reality. It was so contrary to reason and he had such shadowy, confused ideas of what had preceded, that this was more like nightmare or delirium. And it seemed impossible that he should not presently find himself awake.

What most tenaciously persisted in his memory was the image of the huge man in the teak-wood chair. He was a vision which could not be denied. Such a one as he had power to sway the wills of others to his desires, to create and direct great enterprises and send his influence afar, but never for good. If he ordered murder done in distant places his secret edicts would be obeyed, nor would his agent dare to thwart him. If there was such an organization as O’Shea had assumed, then he had stood face to face with the dominant personality, the compelling force from which radiated infernal activities.

“I saw him, whether I am meself or somebody else,” the prisoner muttered with a groan. “And he will come back and the brand will be chopped into me, same as was done to poor Bill Maguire. ’Tis a tough finish, if all this is really true. My God, I wish I knew what had happened to me. Yesterday I was going up-river with me men, and now----”

He struggled to his feet. A supreme effort of will conquered physical weakness. A man condemned to die is capable of forgetting bodily ills. Just then a young man appeared from the direction of the door-way. He wore native garments, but O’Shea recognized him. It was Charley Tong Sin, whose smile was unpleasant. In his hand was O’Shea’s revolver, which he was careful to hold ready for use. The jaunty, affable manner of the comprador had returned. He appeared very well satisfied with himself as he exclaimed, by way of greeting.

“It is an unexpected pleasure, you bet, Captain O’Shea. I have waited till you were gone from Wang-Li-Fu. It was reported that you were very sick and went up the river yesterday with your men. You decided to come and see us, to visit the Painted Joss? You wished to make some trouble?”

“’Tis the last day I will make trouble for any one, by the looks of things,” replied O’Shea. “You win, Charley.”

“You are a smart man,” grinned the other. “But you had too much curiosity. I am a good fellow. I will tell you what you want to know. You will not give it away. They are getting ready to cut your visit pretty short.”

There was the chatter of voices somewhere outside and the brazen mutter of a gong. O’Shea kept silence. He was not as resigned to his fate as Charley Tong Sin inferred. He was watching every motion of the gloating young man and his eyes measured the distance between them.

“You will feel better if you know,” tauntingly cried the Chinese. “You have seen the Painted Joss. You have seen a man sitting beside it, the great and terrible Chung himself, the ruler of the Pih-lien-Kiao, the _Sect of the Fatal Obligation_.”

“Much obliged, Charley,” grimly interrupted O’Shea. “Tell me some more. I am sorry I could not have words with the terrible Chung. And the brand that ye chop into people, your trademark?”

“It is the mark that means _The Dreadful Messenger of Chung_. It is a favor to tell you, Captain O’Shea. No other foreigner, no Chinese except the servants of Chung, have heard it spoken. But you will not speak it anywhere.”

“There’s more that I want to know,” said O’Shea, “though precious little good the information will do me.”

“Ha! Why did you not have so much sense before and mind your own business?”

It was absurd to carry on such a dialogue as this, as O’Shea perceived, but Charley Tong Sin was enjoying this session with the rash shipmaster who had formerly held the upper hand. Before the victim could be subjected to further taunts he heard the massive doors opened and other sounds to indicate that bars were sliding into place to fasten them on the inside. The huge man in the crimson robe, the great and terrible Chung, lumbered into view and seated himself in the chair of teak-wood. Charley Tong Sin humbly bowed several times. The personage beckoned the twain nearer and spoke briefly. He desired to conduct a cross-examination of his own with the comprador as interpreter.

“He wishes to know why you have come to this place?” was the first question addressed to O’Shea.

“Because ye butchered a friend of mine, a red-headed sailor by the name of Jim Eldridge,” was the unflinching reply. “He told me about your dirty devilment as well as he could, and I saw what ye did to him.”

The huge man showed signs of consternation when this was conveyed to him. He uttered a bellowing interrogation.

“He is not alive? You have talked with his ghost?” shrilly demanded Charley Tong Sin.

“’Twas him that sent me here,” declared O’Shea. “Ye can impart it to the big ugly mug yonder that I have had visits from the ghost of the red-headed sailor that he killed and branded.”