The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 15

  Behind this is a gray, dim land, weird, unknown and unknowing. Bordering Tibet there is a population of ten million who have never heard of the Great War. Not quite as isolated as this is Shensi, but the province has endured five thousand years without a post-office. The Pekingese speak of it as a foreign country. In this the wish possibly fathers the thought, for Shensi has long been a fermenting pot of trouble. Many times, great revolutions, social maelstroms have risen there, remaining unchecked and possibly unheard of by Peking, until perhaps, as has happened twice, they swept across the Empire and turned it upside down.

  So in Shensi anything might be hidden—even the thing that Hazard and I indisputably found—and that in spite of the fact that civilization of a sort was ancient there when Romulus and Remus were being nursed by a wolf. And when Hazard, who is at once one of the most logical and imaginative of men, reminds me that the part of our experience that I deny would hardly be more remarkable in our day than was the use of the decimal system in Shensi three thousand years ago, I can hardly dispute it. And yet—

  Where there can be a natural and known explanation of a thing, I prefer it. And there was nothing stable in Sadafuki’s government of that secret valley which Hazard and I discovered far down in the Tsingling range—nothing that couldn’t have been destroyed, as it was destroyed—nothing that would have survived the breaking of the chains of fear.

  Indeed, Sadafuki’s first remark, when Hazard and I were brought into his presence, was characteristic of a quality that always contains within itself the germs of ruin.

  “You think,” he inquired, coldly egotistical, “that I can use you?”

  And that in spite of the fact that we were wearing the borrowed identities of men for whom he had sent all the way to Peking—men whose knowledge was presumably needed by the Ko Lao Hui in its vast conspiracy of warfare.

  The room in which he received us was octagonal in shape, the first door of a five-storied dagoba that stood at the lower end of the valley. Each of the eight walls was decorated—if the word is permissible—by a great silk banner on which was embroidered the horrible reputed likeness of Koshinga, head of the society. Sadafuki sat in a beautifully carved teakwood chair which stood on a platform in the very center of the room.

  He was a peculiar mixture of races. His pale, yellowish skin, smooth as fine lacquer, and his small, intensely bright, slightly oblique eyes were all that indicated the Chinese in him. His high cheekbones and brutal jaw suggested a throwback to the ancient Scythian strain, the utterly incorrigible hia jen, or “bad men,” who still persist in the northwestern provinces. His name, of course, more than hinted Japanese.

  Possibly he got his stature—he was larger than either Hazard or I—and his high, brooding forehead, from the Slav. In spite of this conglomeration of bloods, there was a suggestion of culture about him—or rather a slight, evanescent impression of a culture that had been and was gone. He spoke English with peculiar fluency, considering where we’d found him.

  Hazard and I were still standing. There are certain breaches of courtesy which may not be overlooked in the Orient without stamping oneself as inferior, a sad enough mistake anywhere. Consequently, we paid absolutely no attention to Sadafuki’s question. He glared at us for a moment, beholding, I believe, two men who, whatever their feelings, showed no signs of anxiety. Then a more reasonable look came slowly into his eyes. He smiled, though rather grimly, waved his hand, and two of the six soldiers who stood tensely watching him just within the arched doorway ran forward, placed two low chairs for us and retired on the double.

  BEFORE I sat down, I handed Sadafuki our stolen credentials, a letter from Li Fu Ching, head of the Peking branch of the Ko Lao Hui. He took the letter, read it slowly and put it carefully inside his wonderfully embroidered blue silk robe. A great bundle of keys, hung on a yellow cord around his waist, jingled as he did so.

  “You are chemists,” he stated, slightly more tolerantly.

  “Yes.”

  “American chemists—so you are from America. It was there I began—” He checked himself and resumed his arrogant manner.

  “The work in which you were to help is done,” he said.

  My first feeling at this announcement was one of relief. There are few things of which I know less than chemistry, and Hazard had been no better equipped than I to play the rôle. The risk we were taking in this exploit had only been justified by the value of the information it promised to give us. For a long time Hazard and I had been trying hard for that which we seemed to have attained—entrance into one of the secret places of that infamous society, stronger than ever the Triad was, which seemed to have attained the domination of all western China and had as its avowed end the domination of the world.

  “You secured other help, perhaps,” suggested Hazard in his pleasantly good-humored voice, scholarly always, but now most deceptively forceless, almost immature.

  At that a certain huge vanity flitted across and weakened the really strong lines of Sadafuki’s face.

  “No, no!” he contradicted sharply. “I conceived the idea and I completed it myself. I needed no other help. It was only for technical assistance in compounding—”

  He went eagerly into details to explain, to convince us of his self-sufficiency. Though I could understand but few of the chemical terms and symbols he used, at least I could appreciate the fluency with which he used them. Later I was to understand the reason for this. Then it seemed as remarkable as it was repellent that this renegade and enemy of society should possess so much of the scientific education that the Western world alone can give, only to use it ruthlessly against its givers.

  That was confessedly the final object of the thing he claimed to have perfected, after, I gathered, years of experiment. Just what his discovery was, he was plainly careful not to tell. There was a certain wildness in his manner the moment he began talking about the thing that even then led me to discredit his pretenses; nevertheless, I was actively curious. Direct questioning would, however, probably only increase the veil of cunning he drew around his words.

  “But there may be something else we can do to serve you and the Ko Lao Hui,” I suggested as he paused.

  Possibly his smile was merely complacent and triumphant, though I thought I caught a touch of silliness in it, too.

  “There remains very little for any one to do. When the sun’s in the sky, there’s no need of the stars. I’m above all assistance, as I’m above all attack. This thing—didn’t I tell you it would make me master of the world?”

  Truly, he had told us so several times in his harangue. His extravagance might be a symptom of that which I suspected; again, it might be partly caused by the fact that he was starved for conversation. Already we’d discovered that his talk with the Chinese who surrounded him was confined altogether to giving commands and imposing sentences. And we hadn’t yet learned of that other auditor.

  I remembered our rôle as loyal members of the Ko Lao Hui and counterfeited astonishment mingled with some little fear. “And Koshinga!” I exclaimed. “Oh, Koshinga! After Koshinga, of course.”  There was, however, little heart in his tone, and there was the suspicion of a smile on his face.

  I could feel my pulse beat a little faster. It was clear we had stumbled upon a mammoth egoism. Koshinga, the invisible and unknown intelligence that ruled the ten million members of the Ko Lao Hui, really was a formidable power. If this man planned to supplant him—well, in that case, his aspiration to world mastery was only a repetition of the commonest jargon of the society.

  “Koshinga is great. But,” I added humbly, “we are very anxious to serve you.”

  During my speech and in the momentary pause that followed it, I saw a curious change come over Sadafuki’s face. First there was a sudden malevolence, a flash of angry memory, and then a cunning look, evil, it seemed to me, as a demon’s dream. When he spoke again, thoughtfully, his voice had hardened and grown harsher, as if he meditated a thing worse even than the usual Ko Lao Hui program of
ruthlessness.

  “I might be able to use you,” he admitted. “But to do that I must tell you the secret—the secret of the great weapon.”

  I could see that Hazard was even more eager than I that he should do so, though to one who didn’t know him as well as I his smooth, clerk-like, almost commonplace face would have been absolutely noncommittal. Usually Hazard was well content to let me do the talking while he watched and listened with that uncanny perception of his but now he broke in with a subtle reminder to Sadafuki of how absolutely we had committed our lives to the Ko Lao Hui. This was somewhat humorous, considering that we were probably its two most dangerous enemies.

  I relished rather less his next affirmation, which was that the absolute power Sadafuki had over us might well make it safe for him to trust us. As a matter of fact, he went on to say, if Li Fu Ching hadn’t known we were entirely devoted to the cause, it was inconceivable that he would have given us the secret of the valley and sent us there in answer to Sadafuki’s request.

  At that last argument Sadafuki shrugged his great shoulders and smiled rather disdainfully.

  “Li Fu Ching knows that the road into this valley is easier than the road out,” he said.

  Of course, the fact that our guns had been taken from us immediately when we had entered the place had quite prepared for this intimation that we were prisoners.

  “But I have use for you,” repeated Sadafuki. “I have thought the thing out and I will tell you, so you may serve the cause and me—” here some suppressed passion seemed to burst beneath his voice and lift it angrily—“for no one shall deny my authority, no one. Not even she!”

  “She is of your race,” he broke off, half to himself. “She will trust you.”

  Sometimes I’m inclined to believe in premonition in a very limited sense. At Sadafuki’s last muttered words I felt a thrill of horror. But I suppose that was really caused by the unexpected information they contained—that our situation, perilous enough in all conscience, was to be still further complicated by the presence of a woman in the Hidden Valley—a woman, evidently, who had somehow managed to defy Sadafuki.

  “There is but one crime, disobedience; and but one punishment, death.” Hazard repeated suggestively the first and pretty nearly the only law of the Ko Lao Hui.

  “True,” said Sadafuki, “she must die; but first she must help me to prove the thing which I already know, but which must be proved. To do that it is necessary that she submit or be overpowered, for it is a thing that must be handled carefully, like the breath of death. Else you must submit yourselves, for the Chinese are no good for the test as you will understand.”

  That last statement was indeed true, in the light of what we came to know later of Sadafuki’s theory. One can not twice be robbed of the same thing, and already the Chinese were broken by fear.

  “We’re your servants,” said Hazard almost too meekly. “But—since we’re to know in the end anyway—who is this person we’re to help you with, that she may help you before dying?”

  “She was my wife,” said Sadafuki calmly.

  Luckily at that moment he was looking at Hazard, who has better control over his features than I. But I needn’t have been astounded. There are depths below depths of depravity; baseness beyond the comprehension of the normal-minded; there is a devil in this world that destroys humanity like a withering wind, and the name of that devil is Self.

  II

  BUT I think there is nothing clearer than that nature sets a certain definite limit on one’s worship of self, beyond which lies madness, folly and disaster. The reasoning of the complete egoist must be faulty because it is based on a lie. Hence the term egomaniac is usually no exaggeration. By the same rule, nature limits power because it is from overmuch power that egomania always springs. The slave creates the tyrant always.

  In the beginning Sadafuki couldn’t have been quite normal, else he wouldn’t have joined the Ko Lao Hui. But, having joined it, and having been given the mastery of the Hidden Valley, his further development was quite natural. His power was as absolute as could exist on earth. Considering that such power is really self-destructive, this would seem weakness of reasoning on the part of those who had placed him there had it not been that an absolutism was necessary in the very nature of the case.

  I’d begun my search for the leadership, the central intelligence, the vulnerable point of the Ko Lao Hui some four months ago. Then I only knew that the society had as its avowed aim the union of all the yellow races in a war of conquest and that, preaching this perverted patriotism, it forced tribute from high and low.

  It wasn’t until after I’d been joined by Hazard that we came to know through little things overheard in the bazaars, on the streets, in the shops and tea-rooms that the society was actually making certain preparations for this warfare, or at least for some warfare. More likely, of course, the thing would end in aggravated acts of oppression against the Chinese themselves—internecine strife which would still further weaken the empire and encourage the aspirations of her enemies. But at any rate, hidden somewhere in the interior provinces were many great establishments—magazines and other storage-places and even manufactories of war material.

  After that, next to discovering the hiding-place of the sinister Koshinga, head of the whole movement and—if the central legend of the Ko Lao Hui be true—himself the most fascinating symbol of world empire that has ever existed, our chief desire was to penetrate one of these places.

  In that we had finally succeeded.

  The two men whose identities we had stolen to effect this object were, we hoped, safely held prisoners. It had been in Sian-Fu, capital of Shensi, that we met them, suspected their mission, spied upon them and found them out. To get them into our power later had been merely a matter of bribing their servants. After we had them safely in the hills to the south of Sian-Fu, we offered them their traitorous lives—which were really forfeited according to all standards of justice—if they told us the truth and all the truth, and if we—and they—were lucky.

  That is, if they furnished us with information that would enable us to enter and return safely from the place where they’d been ordered to report, they would be permitted to live. We promised the men who were to hold them there in the hills an amount equal to that we’d already paid them when they restored the prisoners to us. If we didn’t return in a month, their jailors were to dispose of them in the least troublesome manner. It was a hard bargain, but the thing was really a war in which they’d betrayed their race; besides, Hazard and I were matching our lives against theirs. If we didn’t return, it would be because we were not alive. This was, of course, no very improbable contingency.

  So, equipped with explicit directions, passwords and the letter from Li Fu Ching, we traveled far to the southwest into the barren fastnesses of the Tsingling Mountains. On the summit of China’s watershed, where the Yellow and the Yangtse river systems are divided, we found the beginning of a certain river of which the two men had told us. Pack on back and glad of a shot at an occasional crow, we followed down between black, treeless and almost lifeless gorges for five days. At the end of that time the river had grown into a swift and unfordable stream many rods wide. The morning of the sixth day we came to the entrance of the valley, Sadafuki’s domain.

  This entrance—a masked tunnel into the side of the gorge just above where the river broadened into a great reservoir and then overran an artificial dam, a sheer drop of several hundred feet—was, of course, carefully concealed. The other end of the tunnel opened upon the eastern side of the precipitous ridge that, oval in shape, completely encircled the valley, shutting it off by a barrier nearly a mile high, even from the barrenness that surrounded it. But the valley itself, which was about three miles long and half that distance across its widest point, was very far from barren—a deep loess soil carpeted with fields of rice, millet and vegetables that must have made the place very nearly self-sustaining.

  All around the valley, at a height of about t
wo hundred yards, there ran a low wall, on the level top of which walked sentries armed with modern-looking rifles. At the very edge of the valley there was a line of interior guards. The space between the two had been carefully razed to afford a clear field of fire.

  But Hazard and I were particularly interested in a large, square, wooden building near the bottom of the falls. Piles of fresh lumber lay near it, and a great acreage of tree-stumps bordering the valley to the west showed whence the lumber had come. At the moment when we first observed the building there happened to be filing into it, like a prison chain-gang, a long line of nearly naked Chinese workmen. The sound that came up from the place suggested the humming of a great dynamo, the whirr of many wheels and the gnashing of saws into wood.

  We were conducted directly to the lower end of the valley and into the dagoba-like building, very near which the river again poured over a precipice in a cataract of foam. This, apparently the home of Sadafuki, was set in the curve of the nearly perpendicular cliff. A light bridge, the purpose of which Hazard and I couldn’t then divine, extended from the fifth and topmost floor of the dagoba to the face of the rock.

  It was, however, plain that the whole valley was a very secure prison.

  This, of course, was necessary, considering the purpose of the place, the essence of which was secrecy. It wouldn’t have done to have men escaping, blabbing of the work that was being done there. Consequently it was necessary that Sadafuki be given complete, tyrannical power and, having it, it was only natural that he should use it like a tyrant.

  The resultant atmosphere pervaded the place like a pestilence. Every one whom Hazard and I observed—our escort, the coolies grubbing in the fields, the armed guards themselves, and there were many of them—all seemed nervous, tense, strung-up with anticipatory terror. They weren’t like Chinese at all; their characteristic racial stolidity appeared to have been entirely destroyed. It seemed abnormal, unreal, and, indeed, it proved the prevalence in that valley of punishments harsher than death.