The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 23

  She was amazed, but I was not, for a sudden change from the posture of imploring lover to zealous protector would suit his plan well. By all evidence the Lolo attack should soon develop. His plan was to help her escape—just how wasn’t yet clear—to hide her somewhere, to find himself a pretext that would enable him to go to the Lolo nzemo and receive the reward for his treachery, then to return to Sybil Martin and take her—well, somewhere. Black depths yawned beneath the girl and very grateful indeed I was that I had come to Ning-Po.

  False as he was, at least Rambeau’s madness for the girl was genuine; it set his face working convulsively and narrowed his eyes like a cat’s; it swirled through his brain and out of his mouth in words that were no make-believe. I waited a minute while the girl stood as if stunned, but presently she drew back yet another step.

  “No, no!” she cried with absolute avoidance and horror. “No, no!”

  “But I love—”

  That was a lie; he did not love her. I thought it my moment to interfere and, with my revolver ready, I stepped out of the darkness.

  “You choose,” I said rather prosily, “a queer moment to protest what should be a divine truth.”

  V

  CONSIDERING everything, it would be hard to imagine a happening more embarrassing and frightening than my unexpected appearance must have been to Rambeau. Perhaps it was a certain hardihood and the realization of the necessity for quick thinking that held him for a moment in his tracks, motionless and silent, but more likely he was simply struck stiff and dumb by absolute terror. As for Miss Martin, the cry she uttered was a curious mixture of astonishment, relief and anger.

  “You! What are you doing—”

  “Pardon me, Miss Martin,” I said bowing. “I know this seems to need explanation—my following you here. Here is a partial explanation.”

  I shifted the revolver in my hand until I was gripping it by the muzzle and, keeping my eyes upon Rambeau, struck the forehead of the effigy hard with the butt of it. The green tiling—very much like glass—of which the whole effigy was composed, shattered under the blow. Fragments of it flew everywhere. Swiftly I struck again and this time the blow broke clear through the empty shell.

  Rambeau started toward the candles. I jerked the gun back, reversing it with the same movement, and covered him again.

  “That’s a parable,” I said easily, nodding toward the effigy. “Or rather, it’s a symbol—false and hollow like your protestations and broken—like your plans.”

  “What do you mean?” rasped Rambeau.

  “Why,” I said, “love’s neither insult nor attempted ruin. As for your plans— Have you an idea yet,” I asked the girl, “why he brought you here tonight?”

  “Why, he said—” she began confusedly.

  “I know what he said, but—” suddenly I turned savagely upon Rambeau. “What time’s the Lolo attack to begin?” I snapped.

  At that his face became distorted with an entirely overmastering fear. Until then I had been merely a dangerous disturber of his schemes; now I was full-fledged Nemesis. I was the messenger of a dreadful doom; I must have suggested to him the fate that might be his if I had told the Chinese all that my question indicated that I knew. He gripped at himself with his will, but the betraying panic that was in him could not be downed.

  “Attack! What attack? I don’t know—”

  “Oh, pshaw!” I put his reply aside. “Do you suppose I’d be here if I didn’t know your scheme? Didn’t know that—”

  I’d noticed that the force of my two skull-shattering blows had cracked the effigy in another place, just below the chin. It wouldn’t do now to take my gun off Rambeau, but I lifted my left arm and struck the forehead again—a hard, swinging blow. At that the clay-and-fiber compound which reinforced the tiling parted and the battered head went backward until it struck the wall behind. In the gaping orifice in the throat of the effigy appeared something very like the flaring end of a metal trumpet.

  Rambeau shivered and the girl cried out inarticulately, but I went on:

  “Do you suppose I don’t know that for a month you’ve planned to sell the village of Ning-Po—men, women and children, body and soul—to the slave-driving Lolos? And, incidentally, to abduct Miss Martin while making sure that her father died? Why it was plain to me almost from the first time I heard of this dead man’s voice. What could it be but a trick, worked as we now see it was worked? Merely a speaking-tube running—well, say to some house just outside this yamen, where one of your hired Chinese assistants—traitors to their people—talked your commands into the other end of it.”

  By the look of desperation on his face I knew my easy guess had hit the truth, but with a sudden revival of defiance he snarled:

  “What in —— does that speaking tube prove? Even if I worked it, which I don’t admit, what could I do to—”

  “The changed watchers at the gate,” I said steadily. “All unreliable men, men that could be bought, as I discovered—”

  “Oh!” gasped the girl in an extremity of horror and fear. “I see it now. He—”

  “—— you and your guesses!” cried Rambeau in a burst of not altogether hopeless rage. “If you finish as brilliantly as you’ve begun—”

  “I’ll have the whole truth,” I interrupted him. “But—”

  “I want to go to my father,” Miss Martin suddenly moaned. “I thank you, I thank you, but I want to go to my father.”

  “Perhaps,” I hesitated, “you’d better wait until—”

  Of course I would have been glad to have her go—glad to have her escape from this scene, had it not been for the confusion that I felt sure would presently ensue in the streets of Ning-Po. I suppose neither she nor Rambeau had noticed it, but the subdued murmuring, stirring, breathing, shuffling, as of watching men, that had, up to a few minutes before, faintly penetrated the walls of the yamen, had now entirely died away.

  This could indicate only one thing—a tension so great as almost to suspend animation. It was the pause before the encounter. The force which Li Sing had promised me should be on top of the wall to negative the faithlessness of the watchmen, should my suspicions prove correct, had at last sighted the stealthy approach of the Lolos. No, it was not a moment for Miss Martin to leave the yamen alone, and, as for me, I had a fancy to keep Rambeau there a little longer.

  I had a vague hope that the problem of his disposition might possibly solve itself, for that was still a problem. Well as he deserved any punishment the Chinese might conceive, I had a prejudice against surrendering him to them. There’s a sort of race feeling about such matters. In general, it’s not good that white men should be punished by any other than their own laws. An accident might easily happen, and, besides, there was one thing yet I didn’t understand.

  Rambeau had undoubtedly brought the girl here that he might spirit her away from the Lolos. How had he hoped to get her away? I would stay until I had learned that, but Miss Martin was insistent.

  “Oh, I must go. I must—” she cried distractedly.

  And, suddenly breaking into sobs, she covered her face with her hands and started to rush past me.

  Just then by what seemed merely a dramatic accident—for Rambeau had, of course, known the exact moment the Lolos would appear at the gate and had planned his rendezvous with Miss Martin accordingly—that for which I had been waiting happened. A single guttural shout split menacingly through the absolute stillness of the night. It was followed instantly by the thin rattle of the nondescript Chinese firearms and a burst of those shrill yells and dreadful maledictions with which fighting Chinese always stimulate their sluggish nerves and work up their slow but maniacal courage to the sticking point.

  Miss Martin would have gone on in spite of that outburst, but I stepped in front of her, still keeping my pistol extended toward Rambeau.

  “You can’t go now. The streets—”

  “But I must. My father—”

  I was glad to hear the anguish with which she pronounced those
last two words.

  “Your father is quite safe,” I assured her. “I’ve seen to that. There’s no danger from the Lolos.”

  Indeed, that was certain, for the sound of the firing all came from the top of the wall and outside there was merely confusion. The Lolos had evidently crept close to the gate in a mass, leaving their horses at a distance to insure secrecy of approach. This formation would have served well, had the gate been opened to them as they had expected, but the change in program made it disastrous. Their cries were of consternation, while the cries of the Chinese became increasingly furious.

  Perhaps Miss Martin sensed something of that, or perhaps it was only my words that reassured her, but she stopped, hesitated and then, her strength seeming to leave her, groped backward toward the wall of the yamen and leaned against it weakly.

  “As for you,” I began, turning my attention to Rambeau.

  I stopped, checked by an inexplicable look of hope I saw in his eyes and by the fact that, during my words with Miss Martin—although I had had him covered all the time—he had managed to edge away from me until his left arm almost touched the broad back of the chair which supported the disfigured effigy. I stared at him, wondering what was in his mind and subconsciously realizing something else, too—that a group of the defeated and disconcerted Lolos was coming down outside the village wall, toward the yamen.

  That latter fact was but natural, for the Lolos must have instantly realized that the wall under which they were huddled was to some extent a protection from the fire above and that their best chance lay in scattering along the bottom of it before breaking away into the open. And I think that, even before Rambeau made his next move, I had the glimmering idea of a connection between that approaching rush of those who had been his allies and his muscles tensed for instant action.

  But what was that connection? What could he do? The Lolos were outside the village wall, which was outside the wall of the yamen. Rambeau was within both and in order to join them….

  But while I doubted Rambeau acted. Suddenly he sprang sidewise, behind the back of the effigy’s chair, jamming himself in between that chair and the yamen wall.

  He was out of my sight but an instant, not long enough for him to draw, and springing forward, I jerked my revolver down upon him. It was darker where he was, struggling frantically in the close embrace of stone wall and immovable chair, but I could have shot him easily—too easily. It was not, however, his grotesque helplessness that made me pause, nor was it altogether the inhibiting influence of a theory I’ve long held that the plans of villains of his type have usually within themselves the elements of annihilation. Mainly, I think, it was the noise of the panic-stricken Lolos coming down outside the wall that held my finger loose on the trigger.

  So Rambeau would escape into their arms! Well, then, let him!

  The next moment he had disappeared, as if the wall of the yamen had opened to receive him. He had indeed passed through that wall, into this avenue of flight evidently planned beforehand. And, still with that queer feeling upon me of an inevitable retribution toward which he was hurrying, I squeezed after him into the cramped space between chair and wall.

  I faced an opening which had been made in the yamen wall and which the inviolateness of the effigy which screened it had no doubt shielded from discovery. If my theory of Rambeau’s intention were correct, that opening must also extend through the village wall against which the yamen was built. But in front of me was nothing but blackness—and the sound of Rambeau struggling through the narrow passage.

  I aimed my revolver into that blackness, but at that moment there was a crash of shattering and tumbling rock. Rambeau had flung himself against the thin, concealing shell he had cunningly left covering the outer end of the way which he had contrived to freedom. That shell fell outward and for one moment I saw his figure silhouetted darkly in the opening as he plunged out into the night.

  I could still have shot him, but again I held my shot. This time it was not hope for a lack of necessity for that act, but certainty, for beyond him, faint in the darkness, wildly brandishing their weapons, were the flitting forms of many Lolos. And to them, mad with panic, seeing but dimly in the night, he could, of course, have been only an enemy rushing out to the attack.

  Pity stirred faintly within me as I saw him throw up his hands, realizing his mistake. They flung themselves upon him. I think he cried out once as their spears ran him through.

  A few minutes later, when all that remained of the Lolos was the sound of hoofbeats pounding away in the darkness, and when the fire of the always defensive Chinese was abating, I returned to the room of the ruined effigy. With the feeling upon me that there was one other thing in Ning-Po that needed to be done, I took Miss Martin’s arm.

  “Now,” I said, “I will take you to your father. I have something to say to him.”

  There are, as I have said, types of human nature as infinitely varied as the trees in our forests, but through all of them there runs one common strain. There is one string in every human heart that may always be played upon. Had Missionary Martin been thrice the zealot that he was and one-twentieth part as good, I think he would still have listened to me that night, and I think I should still have had the news to carry to Hazard of a coming change in the personnel of the mission station at Ning-Po.

  The Test of the Five Arrows

  IT WAS with a feeling approaching incredulity that I lay by Hazard’s side on top of the cliff overhanging the narrow pass known as the Lolos’ Gullet and watched the long line of camels wind away into the sunset. A feeling, indeed, which matched well the blurring uncertainty of the dusk that was slowly settling over the Great Cold Mountains.

  Of course, that spirit of doubt was largely painted by an almost complete lack of knowledge of what was around us or before us. And yet I found other excuses for myself—a succession of things unprecedented even in our unprecedented quest.

  The beginning had been strange enough, the tracing of the devious intelligence named Koshinga—master of the Chinese Ko Lao Hui and world-menace—to this land which is so little known that not even fables are written about it. The vague tale we’d shortly heard of Koshinga’s plan to bring under the Ka Lao Hui yoke the never before subjected Lolos, lords of all the mountains of Northwestern Yunnan, had heaped up the measure. And it had been rather too much when, having news of that camel caravan which fitted in so well with the story, I all at once found myself hurried by Hazard into following it.

  The careful disguise and the swift packing, the secret departure from Yunnan-fu, the hurried trip to this mountain pass through which our maps told us the caravan must travel if it were really to enter China’s Forbidden Land, and our long wait here—through all this my impression of following the trail of the impossible had persisted.

  By his voice, even matter-of-fact Hazard seemed to share this feeling. Remaining motionless, with his head projecting a little over the face of the black cliff, and watching the sponge-footed beasts of burden unwinkingly with his student’s eyes, he ventured in a half-whisper:

  “We’re seeing something, Partridge, that’s never been seen before. ‘The land where the Chinese go not willingly’—that truthful description of Lololand seems to end today. How can one account for it, except as we have accounted for it?”

  “Well,” I began, “it’s difficult—”

  “And,” interrupted Hazard, “everything corroborates our theory. The drivers of the camels, I mean, and their loads. Or am I mistaken? Do you notice anything peculiar about them?”

  I had noticed it; but I don’t know that I should have mentioned it, if it had been left to myself. There was something relentless about Hazard’s spirit of inquiry that, once aroused, would have led him on unshoed feet to the end of the world.

  As for me, I do not think I lack courage; but perhaps my lesser concentration on the end permits me to see more clearly the perils along the way. However, there was no avoiding the clear answer to Hazard’s question.

&
nbsp; “Well, yes,” I replied. “For one thing, they’re not regular camel-drivers. They haven’t the regular camel-driver’s two-mile-an-hour pace. See, they’re forever gaining on the camels, and then dropping back again.

  “Then they’re too alert and erect. Camel-driving is a hereditary occupation, and the driver’s a type—and these men aren’t that type.

  “As for their loads, I’d say they were wooden boxes muffled in canvas. By their small size and the gait of the camels, their contents are very heavy.”

  “Add all that,” said Hazard slowly, “to the fact that camels are seldom or never seen here, that these have undoubtedly come down from Shensi, where we know Koshinga is slowly gathering munitions of war, and that only a necessity for secrecy would have prevented their loads from being transferred to the ponies which are the natural means of locomotion here.

  “Add the further fact that only the lack of firearms, which the Chinese have always prevented them from getting, have hindered the Lolos from conquering all this country; that therefore a gift of arms would be Koshinga’s natural bribe for their leaders; and, besides, that Koshinga would want them armed if they’re to become his servants.

  “Consider these things, and aren’t those drivers Koshinga’s men as clearly as if they wore the Ko Lao Hui ceremonial robes?”

  “I suppose so,” I replied without eagerness.

  “And, as clearly as though the boxes were transparent, they contain rifles and ammunition. Almost certainly, the same kind of rifles we found in that; Ko Lao Hui rendezvous in Shensi. And yet I don’t see—”

  HAZARD’S voice trailed off doubtfully, and very thoughtfully he followed the last of the grotesque and sluggishly moving beasts—almost as alien in that land as ourselves—as it rounded a curve in the ribbon-like trail below us and passed out of sight. Presently the sound of the tiny bells, which hung on the head-pieces of the animals, died away also, and, except for a pheasant that whirred away somewhere below us, and three black birds of the vulture type that circled slowly and stiffly above us in the darkening sky, Hazard and I seemed altogether alone in a very desolate world.