Part 27

With an excited, heedless gesture, Charley Tong Sin raised the revolver. He had been long accustomed to wearing European clothes, and the flowing sleeves of his Chinese outer garment impeded his motions. A fold of the silk fabric fell over the butt of the weapon, and he tried to brush it aside with his left hand. This other sleeve was caught and held for a moment by the sharp firing-pin of the cocked hammer.

This trifling mishap, gave O’Shea a desperate opportunity. With a flash of his normal agility he leaped across the intervening space. The comprador strove frantically to free the weapon, but only entangled it the more. The episode was closed before the crimson-robed personage could play a part. O’Shea’s shoulder rammed Charley Tong Sin and sent him sprawling, and the revolver was instantly wrested from his grasp.

“The doors are locked,” panted O’Shea, “and before your men break in, I will send the both of ye to hell. Sit where you are, ye terrible Chung. You overplayed your game, Charley.”

The comprador seemed to shrink within his clothes. His mouth hung open and his face was ashen. He was eager to clutch at any straw which might give him the chance of life. Shrinking from the scowling presence in the chair, he began to talk a sing-song babble of words that tumbled over each other.

“I will help you get away alive if you do not kill me. Captain O’Shea, I will explain about Jim Eldridge; I will not lie to you. All the secrets I will tell you. There was a steamer, the _Tai Yan_, and she came over the bar from the sea in a big storm, at the time of a flood. It was do this or go to the bottom because the engines had broke. A boat with sailors rowed up the river. They were foolish men who believed the stories that gold and silver treasure was hidden in the ruins of this old Wang-Li-Fu. And they found this temple, and they knew too much.

“All but two of the men were able to run quick to the river, but Eldridge and one named McDougal ran into this place, trying to hide. They ran into the temple before they were captured. There was a little building, but now it is ashes and much sticks of burnt wood. In that building those two men were locked to be killed next day. The red-headed man was a demon, I tell you. Walls could not hold him. In the night he set fire to the building, and it was a great blaze. But he was caught and punished.”

“Ye left him for dead, and he came to,” growled O’Shea. “And so McDougal got away!”

“I can tell you more secrets,” wailed Charley Tong Sin, but his services as an informer were suddenly cut short. The huge man in the chair had raised his voice in a tremendous call for help to his followers without. Otherwise he had sat composed, glaring at O’Shea. It was his hand that slew Charley Tong Sin as a traitor. He was on his feet, the heavy chair raised aloft. He swung it with amazing ease. It was no longer a massive article of furniture, but a missile in the hands of a man of gigantic strength. His movements were not clumsy.

The chair flew through the air. O’Shea dodged, but Charley Tong Sin flung up his arms, taken unawares. The impact would have brained an ox. The whirling mass of teak smote the terrified comprador on the head and chest and he crumpled to the pavement. He was as dead as though he had been caught beneath the hammer of a pile-driver. The tableau was an extraordinary one. O’Shea stood staring at the broken body of the young Chinese. The man in the crimson robe stirred not from his tracks. Implacable, unafraid, he had executed the last sentence of _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_.

The people outside were clamoring at the doors, and O’Shea heard the thud and crash of some kind of an improvised battering-ram. He sighed and found the thought of death at their hands very bitter. But he would not go alone. He faced the great and terrible Chung and slowly raised the revolver.

The arch-assassin bade him wait with a gesture so imperious, so mandatory, that O’Shea hesitated. The bearing of the man held some large significance. His dark, evil countenance expressed rather sadness than wrath. He slid a hand into the folds of his robe and raised the hand to his mouth. Whatever it was that he swallowed wrought its work with swift and deadly virulence. Swaying like a tree about to fall, he strode to the marble altar and fell across it with his head buried in his arms. In this posture he died, in front of the image of the glowing Buddha, whose graven lineaments seemed to express the unholy ambitions and emotions of his own soul.

O’Shea managed to walk to a corner of the temple and slumped down upon a marble bench where the Painted Joss cast its deepest shadow. His strength had ebbed again. Listlessly, almost inattentive, he heard the assault upon the doors renewed and the splintering of plank. When the Chinese mob came tumbling in he could try to shoot straight and hit a few of them, and then they would close in on him. It was the end of the game.

A few minutes and the servitors of Chung came jostling and shouting through the anteroom. Then they halted abruptly. Their noise was hushed. The light that fell from the windows near the roof showed them the lifeless figure in the crimson robe, doubled across the marble altar. In the foreground lay the battered body of Charley Tong Sin, but they had eyes only for the tragedy of the altar. They stood dumfounded, like men in the presence of something incredible.

At length the boldest shuffled forward. The others followed timidly. They appeared terrified in the extreme. It was as though they had believed their master to be invulnerable. And he was dead. Possibly they conjectured that he had been slain by an agency more than mortal. The group of Chinese clustered about the altar, whispering, regarding the body of Chung. Apparently they had not bethought themselves of the foreigner who was held a prisoner in the temple.

O’Shea rose in his shadowy corner and moved wearily past the Painted Joss. It was better to have the thing finished. He came upon the Chinese like an apparition. Their wits were so fuddled that the sight of him had the effect of another shock. If he had been powerful enough to slay the mighty Chung, then the demons were his allies. Perceiving their dazed condition, he forebore to shoot, and advanced abreast of the altar. The path to the door-way was clear, but he had not the strength to make a run for it. The hope of life, miraculously restored to him, was in the possibility that they might stand and gaze at him a little longer.

He had walked a half-dozen steps farther when one of the crowd yelled. The spell was broken. They raced after him like wolves. He turned and steadied himself and pulled trigger until the revolver was empty. The onset was checked and thrown into bloody confusion. O’Shea had summarily convinced them that whether or not the demons were in league with him, the devil was in this ready weapon of his.

They were no longer massed between him and the exit, and for the moment the advantage undeniably belonged to this mysterious, devastating foreigner.

He stumbled over the broken timbers of the doors and was in the blessed daylight, the temple behind him. He would be overtaken ere he could flee the ruined city, but he reloaded the revolver as he followed the path at a staggering trot. The mob poured out of the temple, yelping in high-keyed chorus. As a foot-racer the hapless Captain Michael O’Shea was in excessively poor condition. In fact, it promised to be the easiest kind of a matter to overtake him and leisurely pelt him to death with bricks as soon as he should have expended his ammunition.

He swerved from the rough path and crawled to the top of a low ridge of débris. Standing erect for a moment, he pitched forward and fell against a bit of wall. His figure had been outlined against the sky, and it was discerned in a fleeting glimpse by a scattered band of men in khaki and linen clothes who were tramping the marsh. They raised a shout and rushed toward the ruined city, converging until the force was mobilized within a short distance of the prostrate O’Shea.

The Chinese mob, pursuing full-tilt, found itself confronting a score and more of rifles which enthusiastically opened fire until the air hummed with bullets. There was a hasty, unanimous retreat of the followers of Chung to the temple and the adjacent buildings. Major Bannister halted to bend over O’Shea and say:

“We thought you were drowned or bogged in the marsh. What sort of a rumpus is this?”

“The Painted Joss,” murmured O’Shea. “I found it. Don’t bother with me. Go to it and clean out the place.”

The adventurers, at last earning their wages, proceeded to make things most unpleasant for the household of Chung. The resistance was brief, and those who were not penned within the temple fled in panic and sought cover in the marsh. They were taken by surprise, for the community had found the visit of Captain O’Shea sufficient to engage its attention. To him returned Major Bannister, hot and dusty, his cheek bleeding from the cut of a Chinese sword, and smilingly announced:

“Bully good fun while it lasted. What shall I do with the devils we cornered? Take them out and shoot them?”

“No. The boss of the works is dead. And I have a notion that _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_ died with him. Lug me to the temple, if ye please. I’m all in, but ’tis my wish to see the whole wicked business go up in smoke.”

Before the torch was applied, that experienced man of war, Major Bannister, suggested that he had never seen a more promising place in which to poke about for loot. The search amounted to nothing until it occurred to the major to pull the Painted Joss from off its pedestal. After much heaving and prying the great image fell crashing to the pavement of the temple. Investigation revealed that underneath it were several compartments accessible by means of cunningly fitted panels. Many papers or documents were found, wrapped in silk, and it was assumed that these were the records of the black deeds of Chung and his organized murderers. They were thrown aside, to be bundled together and taken to the boats.

It was the astute Major Bannister who smashed the bottom of one of these compartments with a rifle-butt and rammed his hand through the splintered hole. His groping fingers came in contact with closely packed rows of metal bars. In this manner was discovered the wealth of the temple, the blood-money stored and treasured by the infamous Chung, the price of many assassinations.

The gold was in stamped ingots, the silver in the lumps or “shoes” of the clumsy Chinese currency, and there were baskets of English sovereigns, Mexican dollars, and a variety of the coinages which pass over the counters of the money-changers of the Orient. Murder as a business had paid well. _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_ was a flourishing concern. The loot belonged to those who found it. They were troubled by no scruples respecting the heirs of the departed Chung, nor did they consider it their duty to surrender the spoils to the Chinese government.

That night a conflagration reddened the ruins of the dead city of Wang-Li-Fu. It was the pyre of the Painted Joss. And when the little flotilla again moved up-river early next morning, a cloud of smoke rose lazily in the still air. Captain Michael O’Shea was still alive, which was rather surprising, for he had passed through experiences extremely disturbing to a sick man. There was tonic, however, in the fact that he had redeemed his failure, the expedition was no longer a sorry jest, and the account of Bill Maguire had been squared.

He slept with tremendous earnestness through a night and a day, and when he awoke it was to roar for food and to display the peevish temper of a genuine convalescent. When off duty his comrades became absorbed in the odd occupation of arranging piles of gold bars, silver “shoes,” and minted coins on the deck of the little house-boat, like children playing with blocks. They smiled a great deal and talked to themselves. Captain O’Shea looked on with an air of fatherly interest. After all, this happy family of his had made a prosperous voyage of it. Dreams of rehabilitation cheered these broken wanderers. They would go home. No more for them the misery, the heartache, the humiliation of the tropical tramp. Their riches might slip through their fingers, but they would make the most of golden opportunity. Like poor McDougal, they had thrown all regrets away.

“’Tis share and share alike,” said O’Shea, “but there is a red-headed sailor-man at anchor on a farm in Maine and I think he has a wife somewheres. With your permission we will deal him a share of the plunder. ’Twas poor Bill Maguire that gave us the tip.”

Unmindful of labor and hardship, this contented company slowly journeyed to the head of navigation on the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells and then trudged overland while O’Shea rode in a covered chair and sang old sea-chanties in a mellow voice. When, at length, the English mission station was reached it was stretching the truth to call him an invalid. The senior missionary, a gentle, very wise old man who had lived for thirty years in the back country, heard the tale told by these tanned, ragged travellers and was horrified that such things should have existed. But he had news for them, and it was thus that he supplied a missing fragment of the puzzle of Bill Maguire:

“The man came here and we took care of him. But there was no finding out how he had been so frightfully hurt. He was dumb and stupid. Later I met a native boatman who had found him on the river-bank near Wang-Li-Fu. Evidently he had been thrown into the water as an easy way to get rid of the body. Reviving a little, he splashed his way ashore or the tide left him there. He stayed with us until he was fairly strong and one morning he was gone.”

“And did he set the house afire?” inquired O’Shea.

“Why, there were two accidental fires in the compound at that time, but we laid it to the carelessness of the kitchen coolies,” was the innocent reply.

“It was Bill Maguire, all right,” declared O’Shea. “Now, will ye be good enough to look over the Chinese documents we found hid away under the Painted Joss?”

The missionary pored over the papers for several hours. And his painstaking translation revealed all that O’Shea cared to know concerning the operations of _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_. It had worked in secret to remove enemies for a price. If a merchant wished a business rival obliterated, if an official found others in his way, if it was advantageous to create a vacancy in some other quarter, the murder guild directed by the departed Chung would transact the affair, smoothly, without bungling. And those who knew and would have disclosed the secret were frightened into silence by the sight of the brand that was called _The Dreadful Messenger of Chung_.

“It will interest you to learn, as an American, Captain O’Shea,” said the missionary, “that among these documents is a list of persons proscribed or sentenced to be slain. The most conspicuous name I find to be that of the Chinese ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Hao Su Ting. It is probable that this terrible fate would have awaited him upon his return to his own country.”

“They potted his brother,” exclaimed O’Shea. “And he was sick with fear of the thing, for I talked it over with him meself. Well, he can thank Bill Maguire for letting him die in his bed when his proper time comes.”

Three weeks later Captain O’Shea sat at his ease upon the piazza of the Grand Hotel, that overlooks Yokohama Bay. He was thinner than when he had put to sea in the _Whang Ho_ steamer, but he appeared to find the game of life quite worth while. It was his pleasure to enjoy the tame diversions of a tourist before boarding a mail-boat for the long run home to San Francisco. He smiled as he reread a letter written in the crabbed fist of that zealous agriculturist, Johnny Kent, who had this to say:

DEAR CAPTAIN MIKE:

The Lord only knows what trouble you’ll be in when this gets to China. My advice is to quit it and come home. I’m worried about you. Bill Maguire has rounded to, understand? His busted main hatch sort of mended itself by degrees. He had symptoms before you left, and you ought to have waited, but I suppose you can’t help being young and Irish.

He was terrible melancholy at first, and he ain’t real spry yet. I found his wife and little girl for him in Baltimore, and made them come on here. You guessed right about the wax doll. I bought the darndest, biggest one I could find. Bill feels that the family is living on my charity, and being morbid and down-hearted, he frets a whole lot about being broke and stranded. He’ll be no good to go to sea again. It gives him the shivers to talk about it. I don’t need him as a farm-hand in the winter, and as for having his wife as a steady house-keeper, I’m fussy and set in my ways.

Bill got up against an awful bad combination in China. I won’t tell you where it was, for I don’t want you to find it. Maybe you’ll run across a man named McDougal out there. He was with Bill when they got in trouble. Bill saw a chance to get away in the night, but he stood the crowd off somehow to give McDougal leeway to join him. And this McDougal lit out with never a thought for Bill. There was something wrong with McDougal, as I figure it out. Maybe he was a good man, but here was one time when he fell down on his job. None of us say much about it, Captain Mike, but we all pray we won’t get caught that way. You know what I mean. We’re afraid there may be a weak spot in us that we don’t know is there until we have to face the music. Anyhow, as I gather from Bill, McDougal was a quitter. If I know anything about men, he has wished a hundred times since that he had stayed to take his medicine with Bill. We would a heap sight rather see you come home alive than to go monkeying with the Painted Joss. Nothing much has happened except a dry spell in August and corn and potatoes set back. Hens are laying well.

Your friend, J. KENT.

Captain O’Shea chuckled and then became thoughtful. Paddy Blake and McDougal. Charley Tong Sin and the wreck of the _Whang Ho_. Wang-Li-Fu and the terrible Chung. Much can happen within the space of a few weeks to a man that will seek the long trail. Presently he took from his leather bill-book several slips of paper which he had received from the Yokohama Specie Bank in exchange for his gold bars and silver “shoes.” After making sundry calculations with a pencil, he said to himself:

“The share of Jim Eldridge, alias Bill Maguire, is nine thousand eight hundred and sixty-two dollars and eleven cents, and ’tis here all ship-shape in two drafts on New York. My piece of the loot is the same. But the red-headed sailorman will never be the lad he was, and he should not be worried by the lack of money to live on. And could any money pay for what he went through? ’Tis easy to know what I should do. I will not take a cent of the plunder. My share I will give to Bill, and with his bit of it he will be comfortably fixed.”

An expression of boyish satisfaction brightened his resolute features as he added:

“A man would be ashamed to take money for such a pleasant vacation as this one has been. Now, I will send a cable message to Bill Maguire and it will cheer him a lot. His account is squared. And I think I have put a crimp in _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_.”

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Page 319: “slung-shot” is a maritime tool.