The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (39 page)

Intrigue

THE whole province of Kiangsi quivered with uncertainty—the politically pivotal section of China emerged from its lethargy awake. Coming out of the uncrowded west, Hazard and I had found its villages full of whisperings, its roads lined with men of unexplained business, everything corroborative of the rumor which had fetched us, that the world’s master troublemaker, Koshinga, was about to launch there his last and greatest trouble. Four days loitering there had convinced us of the truth of the rumor.

But it had convinced us of little else. Rooted in secrecy, the centuries-old organization of the revolutionary Ko Lao Hui
tong
still worked behind an impenetrable yellow veil. Moreover, the East is never so inscrutable as when it is most active, because it never acts save with forethought, guard up; and it is only when the East is off guard that the West can hope to match its wit.

We found Nanchang a very wallow of life, its always overcrowded streets fairly boiling with the influx of strangers. A chance migration, workingmen looking for work, traders for trade—what not? This was the surface explanation.

On the other hand, we saw nothing to shake our belief that these men were Ko Lao Hui, packing the province for revolt. Underneath, insidious propaganda was working, the preachment of racial hatred, the delusion of the ignorant by the promise of world mastery, the alluring of the base by the offering of unearned wealth.

And behind all this we felt the mind of Koshinga—that Koshinga who was at once the fulfillment of a prophecy and a symbol of world dominion, deracialized, very nearly dehumanized, and a genius in crime.

The great plot to overthrow the Chinese government and to unite all Asia under his autocratic leadership was coming to a head. Manifestly the success of this plot would bring to the Western world such a peril as it has never met.

But we were sure it would hardly begin as a straightaway revolt. Koshinga’s brain was too devious for that; the sledge of his power—he had by now many millions of followers—would be preceded by the cutting edge of his cunning. And besides, as Hazard said our first night in the inaptly named Inn of Heavenly Peace:

“There are many sections of China where the Ko Lao Hui are stronger than they are here. The mass of Kiangsi is loyal enough, and what means more it’s sober-minded.

“The native Ko Lao Hui are riffraff, and these newcomers are froth. Why would Koshinga start his revolution here?

“We have to grant him cleverness. We have to assume that he has something up his sleeve—something to catch the mass that hasn’t yet been caught.”

It seemed most likely, and it was only in that event that Hazard and I could be of any use. Black-bearded, with forty feet each of scarlet silk wound about our heads and with our faces dyed dark-brown—so little does it take to turn a white man into a Sikh—we watched and listened and asked no questions, for we had learned that in China the greater the need is of information the wiser the policy of non-inquisitiveness.

Keeping away from
yamens,
where we would have had to reveal our identities, we prowled the cluttered streets and sat hour after hour in the crowded eating-places. And so we learned at least one significant thing.

Three governors of Kiangsi had recently died as rapidly as they could be appointed from Peking. Assuming that they had been murdered, suspicion pointed straight to Koshinga, for he was ruler of the lawless everywhere, obeyed as few kings are, and behind most crimes of magnitude in China. Also, according to the talk of the people, they had died as if stricken by devils with not a mark or sign to show the cause—which again suggested Koshinga, adept in mysterious disposals of those that stood in his way.

But it seemed that the direct perpetrator of these crimes had been destroyed. The present governor, a trusted official who had been sent down from the northern capital with absolute power over the unquiet province, had been attacked in his audience chamber by his secretary, Ho Shih Chang. This secretary had also served all three of the murdered men.

The governor had saved his life only by killing his assailant, whose body he had left as it had fallen—this was a touch of Oriental callousness—with the head over a brazier of hot coals, so that those who came later could recognize Ho Shih Chang’s corpse only by the clothing he had worn.

There was much street talk about this dead secretary, whose personality seemed to have been more notable than his office. Among other things it was said that he had been enamored of the daughter of the city’s chief magistrate, Liu Po Wen, whom many blamed for extravagant modernism in that he had given that daughter a foreign education.

Furthermore it was said that he had actually left the matter of Ho Shih Chang’s suit to the girl herself; and that upon her refusal to consider it and Ho Shih Chang’s importunate advances, he had forbidden the latter his compound. Which tale, considering the secretary’s death, could hardly possess any further meaning; but it was a kernel of information that stuck in our minds.

And the story of the murders itself was not without its problem.

“If Ho Shih Chang murdered the other three governors so skillfully,” questioned Hazard, “why did he change to such a clumsy method with the fourth? And if he wasn’t the assassin why isn’t this present governor killed, too? Why isn’t he killed in any case, since we know Koshinga could find another instrument in the
yamen?

“There’s something peculiar about this, Partridge. Can it be that Koshinga is at last satisfied? That would mean that the present governor’s gone over to the Ko Lao Hui, and—”

“But that’s pretty nearly impossible,” I objected. “We know that Peking’s given the governor more power than it’s ever put in one man’s hands before. So far as settling this Ko Lao Hui business he’s left absolutely free with full power to bind the government to anything. And the President and his advisers aren’t such fools as to give such authority to any one that hasn’t been proven safe.”

“True enough,” said Hazard; “but that isn’t answering my question. We’ll remember them.”

SO OUR first four days in Nanchang were like standing before an opaque curtain behind which we dimly sensed that things were moving swiftly. It’s true we got vagrant glimpses off-scene, as it were; but these were always of things that we should have known were happening without these glimpses.

For instance we learned that guns to arm his followers were being run into Kiangsi from Koshinga’s secret storage places in the west, but his Kiangsi hiding-places remained a secret.

And we gathered from snatches of talk in the bazaars that the date of the uprising was fixed, and that it was not far away. But of the exact date and manner of it we could learn nothing—and particularly we could learn nothing of that plot within a plot which we were sure Koshinga was contriving to catch the support of the soldier element.

“For he must have them,” Hazard kept repeating. “There are several thousand soldiers in the province, a small enough number but good troops. Can you imagine Koshinga not making an attempt to infect them? There’s intrigue on foot—but where?”

If we could have discovered any Ko Lao Hui meeting-place or council we would have made a frontal attack on the secret by attempting to enter it. A few months before, far back in the mountains of Lololand, we had escaped from a trap set for us by Koshinga with a certain Ko Lao Hui symbol the power of which we hadn’t yet tested. It was a small dagger which was evidently some centuries old, but which had Koshinga’s indescribably terrible face engraved on it line for line exactly as it had been prophesied by the founder of the society—a complete mystery in itself which we hoped some day to solve.

We knew it was no complete pass to the Ko Lao Hui secrets; but we also knew it was supposed to be in the possession only of men high in the order. It would have been worth while trying how far it would have carried us, and we had it with us always; but no way opened for the trial.

So we paltered about, fretting ourselves, smelling the coming storm and soaking up what knowledge we could, however irrelevant it seemed. Where a mystery is complete there is no telling what may prove an angle to it.

Once we got a glimpse of the present governor—his eyes blue—spectacled, his face still bandaged from Ho Shih Chang’s attack—as he made his way out of his
yamen
in his ceremonial palanquin and robes of office. And once we heard a completely mystifying snatch of conversation between two men who we felt sure were past the initiatory stage in the Ko Lao Hui, as they sipped
samshu
in a nefarious drinking-joint.

“First the foreign soldiers must be destroyed,” said one.

“It is written,” said the other. “Their burial place will be the gullets of the mountain birds. I have seen it in the plan of Him-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.”

That was all, heard in an unexpected lull of the human clamor that filled the place; and by the time we got closer to them they had developed caution and were talking about commonplace things. But what was the meaning of it, save that Koshinga as usual was keeping his person out of the danger zone? We knew for a certainty that there were no foreign soldiers in Kiangsi.

But there is no riddle without a key, it being essentially the key that makes the riddle. Finally, from quite an unexpected quarter we got the clue that we knew would come in time, if the time to the dénouement of Koshinga’s plot were long enough.

It was the early morning of a day that promised to be sweltering; and we were walking down a smelly alley between mud-and-stone-walled compounds on our way to the thronging streets of shops, the noise of which was already in our ears like a hive of bees at swarming time.

Ahead of us was a cross-street leading to this business section, filled with yellow men who laughed while they wrangled briskly, and other slant-eyed, silent groups whose faces said nothing at all. Suddenly Hazard, watching this passing stream, whispered to me without turning his head:

“Hello, who have we here? D’you see that man, Partridge?”

“Who?”

“That white man, straight ahead.”

“Yes, I see him. By ——,” I cried with quickened interest, “it’s Lomond!”

“Are you sure, Partridge?”

“Lomond it is. Now why—”

It was unnecessary to complete the question. It was quite plain that our immediate business now became to discover the reason for the presence in Nanchang of that man whom we had seen but once before, in Shanghai a year ago, but of whom we had heard much that was not flattering.

Paradoxically his presence cried out for explanation the more in that it seemed so natural that he should be here.

Tall and felinely graceful, clad in white duck, sallow-skinned, thin featured, fox-eyed, he was the one man of our own race whom we might expect to find preceding the vultures upon any scene of trouble. This from his reputation, for he was a diplomatic agent in the lowest sense of the word, whose machinations had in every case of which we had heard resulted disastrously to the Chinese government.

Something had always gone wrong, and that not always from the fault of the particular foreign power he happened to represent. Hazard and I had once commented on the fact that his ill-luck apparently matched his crookedness.

“But he’s a shark’s pilot-fish for all that,” said Hazard, after we had recalled all this in a few swift sentences. “I wonder what particular government’s backing him now.”

To that there was no answer, for Lomond had in the past changed his allegiance very often. For instance there was the Hupeh deal, the affair of the Kingan railroad concessions, and the matter of extra-territorial rights in Sianfu—all of them ill-fated and in each of which he had represented a different principal.

But I wouldn’t have replied in any case, for by that time we had reached the crowded street down which Lomond had passed—a narrow and dirty street with dilapidated dwellings of wood, stone, mud and canvas huddling close along its length. Lomond might have been within ear-shot; but after a moment we discovered his white-clad figure picking its way with a suggestion of fastidiousness through the yellow swarm ahead of us.

We followed him without further conversation. Alley gave upon square and square upon broader street; and still Lomond walked quickly and without hesitation, like a man who keeps his destination well in mind.

Not once did he look behind, but if he had he would hardly have noticed us. Certainly he would not have noticed Hazard, who managed to supplement his disguise as a Hong Kong Sikh policeman on leave with a second mask of utter mediocrity. It was a peculiarity of Hazard’s that he could make himself as unnoticeable against any background as a coiled black snake upon a rock; but his senses were keen as a blacksnake’s, too, and when he chose he could move as swiftly.

Presently we came to a place of shops pressing out upon the middle of the thoroughfare. Great rectangular signs covered with huge black hieroglyphics fronted these shops; and the way was still further obstructed by tinkers’ stands and chow-stalls and a motley collection of street merchants, fat and lean, vying vociferously for patronage.

Where these were not, were long lines of wheelbarrows and rickshaws whose possessors assailed us with shrill cries. The narrow way left was filled with a sweating throng of human beings, chattering and singing unmelodiously; and over all rose the short, staccato cries of the street venders:

“Yu-sa kuei”
(pastry).

“Tong-yu-nang”
(spiced potatoes).

“Ung-hsiang-tou”
(five-flavored beans).

Business was proceeding briskly, for the Chinese so combine the commercial instinct with even nerves that they would buy and sell on the hour next the end of the world. Yet here and there Hazard and I still caught those vagrant signs to which our four days in Nanchang had accustomed us. There were subtly meaningful expressions in a language well adapted to hint and parable and innuendo—a whole story caught in a phrase which yet added nothing to our knowledge.

Once we heard some one start humming almost beneath his breath the “Song of the Ko Lao Hui”—that fierce revolutionary chantey which, when sung by a number, is so like a tiger’s yowl against a distant drumming. But instantly there was a sharp word and the sound of a blow; the singer was silenced, probably by a wiser brother of the
tong.
The time for that song was not yet; silence and secrecy was Koshinga’s word.