The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 30

“Shao! Shao!” (Kill! Kill!)

  The walls of the cave echoed the cries of Ko Tien Chung’s men as they poured in to the assault.

  Such was the momentum of their rush and the force of the impulse behind, that the last man of them—and that last man was Ko Tien Chung—had passed the entrance before the stunning realization of plans gone somehow wrong brought the foremost to a hesitating halt.

  The others piled up from behind and for a moment the mass of them writhed and turned, squinting everywhere, finding only a quiet cave where they’d expected to find a confused and helpless enemy. A bewildering moment indeed it must have been for them, with the evidence of their ears flatly contradicted by the evidence of their eyes—more bewildering for them even than for me.

  Before the swiftest brains among them could possibly have interpreted the situation, before they could have realized even that the suddenly silenced riflemen must be lying somewhere invisible, holding them helpless under their guns, there was a rustle near the entrance of the cave. Four of its defenders darted into the mouth of it; they whirled and flung themselves down, well-concealed behind rocks placed there beforehand for the purpose, rifles flung forward in businesslike fashion, sealing the entrance with potential death. And the instant’s glimpse of them corroborated the opinion I’d already formed as to their identity.

  They were soldiers, real soldiers—not the slovenly, unreliable troops of the provinces, but snappily moving, crisply uniformed, well-armed troops of the New Chinese army, men who were truly our allies in purpose, bulwarks of the republic for which we had so long been fighting against the lawless and revolutionary Ko Lao Hui.

  Then the gold, the Ming gold, had all the time been in their custody and Hazard and I had nearly been duped by a traitorous mandarin into helping outlaws to possess themselves of it. But where was it—this more than princely bequest of Li Tzu Ching, emperor for a day?

  In that moment’s pause, while the soldiers waited the command of their leader and the pirates glared stupidly around the cave, I looked for that long-buried gold, part of which Ko Tien Chung had claimed to have recovered. Without stirring from my position I could see almost the entire floor of the cave, but nowhere was there even a sign of excavation.

  At the inner end there was, however, a great pile of bundles and bales of goods wrapped in canvas and variously colored cloths, an accumulation which, whatever its nature, had evidently never been buried and was plainly of recent collection.

  Mine was long delayed discernment and I take no credit that at that sight a glimmering of the whole truth of the matter came to me. Ko Tien Chung allied with Ma Yola—a Chinese magistrate in collusion with pirates—well, it was a condition that had plenty of precedents in Chinese history.

  Just how exposure had come to the mandarin, just how he had been forced into the open and into his present situation wasn’t yet clear, but of a sudden his whole story, which had from the first possessed a touch of unreality, became more unreal still, a tissue of falsehood spun around a core of fact, all cleverly contrived to enlist our aid.

  “Hazard,” I whispered faintly, “there’s no gold. From the beginning it was all—”

  It was a mistake. I realized it on the instant, for, light as had been my whisper, Ma Yola had heard it. He whirled and saw us, mere shadows against the darker rock. The fact that we were living was enough to tell him how he had been betrayed and he lifted his revolver with a cry of rage and fired at us. His bullet dusted my shoulder and fragments of flying rock bruised my head.

  But he lived to fire only that one shot. Simultaneously with the report of it there came a sharp command from the other side of the chamber, followed instantly by a volleying crash of rifles. As we afterward discovered, two bullets penetrated Ma Yola’s head, but he reeled half-way around and died as the hard-bitten pirate would have probably wished to die, lunging toward his enemies.

  Three of his followers fell with him. It was the beginning of the fight, and it was very nearly the end of it. The pirates, huddled together in the open and confused and disheartened by the complete reversal of their plan, had no chance against the soldiers, even though the volume of their fire indicated that the latter were greatly outnumbered. Hazard and I hugged the floor for the next minute or two, taking no part in the firing. Indeed we were in considerable danger from flying bullets and were lucky to escape untouched.

  But presently we heard a clattering of guns on the floor and a great howling for mercy on the part of the remaining pirates, who had dropped to their knees and were holding up beseeching hands. Immediately the soldiers held their fire, but, considering the nature of Chinese punishments, I felt it was hardly mercy that was granted the pirates in taking them alive.

  Probably that was also the view of Ko Tien Chung. Anyway, after the firing had altogether ceased, he suddenly made a wild dash for the exit to the cave. It was an adventure that of course could have but one ending; it was his way of putting aside the burden of his many crimes.

  A moment later I was bending over him as he lay face upward, his arms outflung. I do not know why I had run to him, save that after all there had been something admirable in that last resolution of his. To me death seals all enmities and I may have had an unreasoning thought that I might ease his passing. However it was, I was rewarded in an unexpected fashion, for his eyes opened as I touched him. He thrust his head up at me and spat out with his last breath, viciously and challengingly, three revealing sentences:

  “Exalt the Ko Lao Hui! Down with the Republic! Death to you foreign devils! Exalt Koshinga, who will rule the world!”

  IT WAS an hour later before I had a chance to quote these words to Hazard. During that hour the young officer in charge of the handful of troops, two broken squads in all, had proved his appreciation of our help by explaining all he could, which was indeed pretty nearly everything that needed explanation. Then we had all sought what little rest was to be had before morning and Hazard and I were lying on the floor of the cave with sleeping soldiers and well-trussed-up pirates all around us, the dim candlelight flickering over all.

  By the officer’s courtesy we had in our mind these added facts concerning the episode which had just ended:

  Ko Tien Chung had really been a mandarin, a magistrate of the nearby town of Ku-Siang. Evidence had somehow come to the government that he was in collusion with the river-pirates under Ma Yola and that he had even furnished these pirates with uniforms of the provincial soldiery in which they could disguise themselves whenever they were in danger of capture.

  But Ko Tien Chung, discovering he was about to be arrested, had fled and joined his confederates and naturally they had made for the place where they had hidden the most valuable portion of their loot. This had also been revealed to the government and these soldiers happened to be just ahead of them.

  There had followed a short fight on the river bank. Ko Tien Chung’s party had been driven off and the soldiers, in obedience to their orders, had gone on to the cave, which they had proceeded to guard, as Ko Tien Chung had anticipated they would, until the arrival of help to carry off the pirates’ booty, which included much money and precious metal and was really worth many Chinese-sized fortunes. Ko Tien Chung, having learned in his official capacity of our movements, had evidently stationed himself so as to intercept us and then had followed the events that have been told.

  But all through these explanations Hazard seemed ill-content, as if there was still something about the matter that puzzled him. It was not until I told him of Ko Tien Chung’s last words that he seemed fully satisfied.

  “Then that was Ko Tien Chung’s second motive,” he said rather eagerly. “He was really a Ko Lao Hui, though probably only in the initiatory stage. But, being outlawed, there was only one way for his ambition to point—to a seat in the inner councils of the order. And of course he could bring no better recommendations with him than the news of our death at his hands.

  “I’m glad we discovered that. It clears up the one phase of the matter that has tr
oubled me all along. Though certainly our assistance in overcoming the soldiers and regaining the loot wasn’t to be despised, still it seemed to me—well, hardly strong enough a motive to stimulate such a wonderful tale as that of the projection of Li Tzu Ching’s will and wealth over three centuries.”

  I smiled appreciatively in the semi-darkness.

  “A magnificent lie it was and it would seem good evidence that the easy duplicity of the Chinese, when they once turn crooked, isn’t overestimated. Lucky for the rest of us that in the main they’re an honest race. But there’s one thing I don’t understand yet, Hazard. How in the name of second sight did you manage to see through that story and to guess—”

  “Second sight, fiddlesticks!” replied Hazard. “And I never guess. It was merely another illustration of the truth that every lie carries either within itself or in its attendant circumstances the element of self-betrayal. Now this one—”

  He paused.

  “Yes, this one?”

  “Was exceptionally easy to detect because, from its very nature, it made one doubt it. I suspected its falsity from the first and so did you—I could see that. But, until I found the bullet-holes in the hull of the junk—fresh bullet-holes undoubtedly made that morning—I was merely suspicious. Then I knew, for of course—”

  “Of course,” I put in hurriedly, feeling suddenly rather foolish that I’d overlooked so obvious a point, “that proved Ko Tien Chung’s story of the fight, at least, to be fiction, for he had described it as having taken place here at the cave. And from that it naturally followed—”

  “It was naturally to be presumed,” corrected Hazard, “that his whole story was untrue. But, presuming that, there remained the problem of fixing the identity of his antagonists. That was really the vital point, for if they were law-breakers his intentions might after all be honest, while if they were within the law he was undoubtedly outside it. It was, however, hard to conceive of a band of outlaws, even in these parts, attacking a junk as well-manned and armed as was Ko Tien Chung’s, particularly when there was nothing on board worth stealing.

  “But that might have been imagined and I was still in doubt until I noticed that the bullet-holes in the junk were absolutely uniform—all of them plainly made by the same caliber of bullet. That was evidence—mind, I don’t say it was proof—of a uniformity of weapon that we both know is to be found only in government troops. It was enough to go on, and fortunately I felt I could place some dependence upon Wang.”

  “I see,” I replied. “If the defenders of the cave had really been Ko Lao Hui instead of government troops, I suppose he was to say nothing and go his way, which he’d probably have been permitted to do, being a harmless coolie.”

  “That was it,” said Hazard. “But I was quite sure what he’d find. Good, brave, scared little Wang! That fear he showed at my orders back there on the junk wasn’t all pretense. It’s worth while thinking how often these non-fighting Chinese, being very much afraid, will nevertheless walk the way of courage.”

  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?”