Jane had gone to meet his father. How to secrete this note without being
observed by either the manager or the Chinaman? An accident came to his
aid. Someone in the corridor banged a door violently, and as the manager's
head and Ling Foo's jerked about, Dennison stuffed the note into a
pocket.
A trap! Dennison wasn't alarmed--he was only furious. Jane had walked into
a trap. She had worn those accursed beads when his father had approached
her by the bookstall that afternoon. The note had attacked her curiosity
from a perfectly normal angle. Dennison had absorbed enough of the note's
contents to understand how readily Jane had walked into the trap.
Very well. He would wait in the lobby until one; then if Jane had not
returned he would lay the plans of a counter-attack, and it would be a
rough one. Of course no bodily harm would befall Jane, but she would
probably be harried and bullied out of those beads. But would she? It was
not unlikely that she would become a pretty handful, once she learned she
had been tricked. If she balked him, how would the father act? The old
boy was ruthless when he particularly wanted something.
If anything should happen to her--an event unlooked for, accidental, over
which his father would have no control--this note would bring the old boy
into a peck of trouble; and Dennison was loyal enough not to wish this to
happen. And yet it would be only just to make the father pay once for his
high-handedness. That would be droll--to see his father in the dock,
himself as a witness against him! Here was the germ of a tiptop drama.
But all this worry was doubtless being wasted upon mere supposition. Jane
might turn over the beads without bargaining, provided the father had any
legal right to them, which Dennison strongly doubted.
He approached Ling Foo and seized him roughly by the arm.
"What do you know about these glass beads?"
Ling Foo elevated a shoulder and let it fall.
"Nothing, except that the man who owns them demands that I recover them."
"And who is this man?"
"I don't know his name."
"That won't pass. You tell me who he is or I'll turn you over to the
police."
"I am an honest man," replied Ling Foo with dignity. He appealed to the
manager.
"I have known Ling Foo a long time, sir. He is perfectly honest."
Ling Foo nodded. He knew that this recommendation, honest as it was, would
have weight with the American.
"But you have some appointment with this man. Where is that to be? I
demand to know that."
Ling Foo saw his jade vanish along with his rainbow gold. His early
suppositions had been correct.
Those were devil beads, and evil befell any who touched them.
Silently he cursed the soldier's ancestors half a thousand years back. If
the white fool hadn't meddled in the parlour that afternoon!
"Come with me," he said, finally.
The game was played out; the counters had gone back to the basket. He had
no desire to come into contact with police officials. Only it was as
bitter as the gall of chicken, and he purposed to lessen his own
discomfort by making the lame man share it. Oriental humour.
Dennison and the hotel manager followed him curiously. At the end of the
corridor Ling Foo stopped and knocked on a door. It was opened
immediately.
"Ah! Oh!"
The inflections touched Dennison's sense of humour, and he smiled. A
greeting with a snap-back of dismay.
"I'm not surprised," he said. "I had a suspicion I'd find you in this
somewhere."
"Find me in what?" asked Cunningham, his poise recovered. He, too, began
to smile. "Won't you come in?"
"What about these glass beads?"
"Glass beads? Oh, yes. But why?"
"I fancy you'd better come out into the clear, Cunningham," said Dennison,
grimly.
"You wish to know about those beads? Very well, I'll explain, because
something has happened--I know not what. You all look so infernally
serious. Those beads are a key to a code. The British Government is keenly
anxious to recover this key. In the hands of certain Hindus those beads
would constitute bad medicine."
Ling Foo spread his hands relievedly.
"That is the story. I was to receive five hundred gold for their
recovery."
"A code key," said Dennison, musing.
He knew Cunningham was lying. Anthony Cleigh wasn't the man to run across
half the world for a British code key. On the other hand, perhaps it would
be wise to let the hotel manager and the Chinaman continue in the belief
that the affair concerned a British code.
"If I did not know you tolerably well----"
"My dear captain, you don't know me at all," interrupted Cunningham. "Have
you got the beads?"
"I have not. I doubt if you will ever lay eyes on them again."
Something flashed across the handsome face. Ling Foo alone recognized it.
He had glimpsed it, this expression, outside his window the night before.
He recalled the dark stain on the floor of his shop, and he also
recollected a saying of Confucius relative to greed. He wished he was back
in his shop, well out of this muddle. The jade could go, valuable as it
was. With his hands tucked in his sleeves he waited.
Dennison turned upon the manager. He wanted to be alone with Cunningham.
"Go down and make inquiries, and take this Chinaman with you. I'll be with
you shortly." As soon as the two were out of the way Dennison said:
"Cunningham, the lady who wore those beads at dinner to-night has gone out
alone, wearing them. If I find that you are anywhere back of this
venture--if she does not return shortly--I will break you as I would a
churchwarden pipe."
Cunningham appeared genuinely taken aback.
"She went out alone?"
"Yes."
"Have you notified the police?"
"Not yet. I'm giving her until one; then I shall start something."
"Something tells me," said Cunningham, easily, "that Miss Norman is in no
danger. But she would never have gone out if I had been in the lobby. If
she has not returned by one call me. Any assistance I can give will be
given gladly. Women ought never to be mixed up in affairs such as this
one, on this side of the world. Tell your father that he ought to know by
this time that he is no match for me."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Innocent! You know very well what I mean. If you hadn't a suspicion of
what has happened you would be roaring up and down the corridors with the
police. You run true to the breed. It's a good one, I'll admit. But your
father will regret this night's work."
"Perhaps. Here, read this."
Dennison extended the note. Cunningham, his brows bent, ran through the
missive.
MISS NORMAN: Will you do me the honour to meet me at the bridgehead
at half-past nine--practically at once? My son and I are not on
friendly terms. Still, I am his father, and I'd like to hear what he
has been doing over here. I will have a limousine, and we can ride
out on the Bubbling Well Road while we talk.
ANTHONY CLEIGH.
"Didn't know," said Cunningham, returning the note, "that you two were at
odds. But this is a devil of a mix-up, if it's what I think."
"What do you think?"
"That he's abducted her--carried her off to the yacht."
"He's no fool," was the son's defense.
"He isn't, eh? Lord love you, sonny, your father and I are the two biggest
fools on all God's earth!"
The door closed sharply in Dennison's face and the key rasped in the
lock.
For a space Dennison did not stir. Why should he wish to protect his
father? Between his father and this handsome rogue there was small choice.
The old boy made such rogues possible. But supposing Cleigh had wished
really to quiz Jane? To find out something about these seven years, lean
and hard, with stretches of idleness and stretches of furious labour,
loneliness? Well, the father would learn that in all these seven years the
son had never faltered from the high level he had set for his conduct.
That was a stout staff to lean on--he had the right to look all men
squarely in the eye.
He had been educated to inherit millions; he had not been educated to
support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven
years been a jeweller's clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had
travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had
never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the
end of his resources. One fact the thought of which never failed to buck
him up--he had never traded on his father's name.
Then had come the war. He had returned to America, trained, and they had
assigned him to Russia. But that had not been without its reward--he had
met Jane.
In a New York bank, to his credit, was the sum of twenty thousand dollars,
at compound interest for seven years, ready to answer to the scratch of a
pen, but he had sworn he would never touch a dollar of it. Never before
had the thought of it risen so strongly to tempt him. His for the mere
scratch of a pen!
In the lobby he found the manager pacing nervously, while Ling Foo sat
patiently and inscrutably.
"Why do you wait?" inquired Dennison, irritably.
"The lady has some jade of mine," returned Ling Foo, placidly. "It was a
grave mistake."
"What was?"
"That you interfered this afternoon. The lady would be in her room at this
hour. The devil beads would not be casting a spell on us."
"Devil beads, eh?"
Ling Foo shrugged and ran his hands into his sleeves. Somewhere along the
banks of the Whangpoo or the Yang-tse would be the body of an unknown, but
Ling Foo's lips were locked quite as securely as the dead man's. Devil
beads they were.
"When did the man upstairs leave the beads with you?"
"Last night."
"For what reason?"
"He will tell you. It is none of my affair now." And that was all Dennison
could dig out of Ling Foo.
Jane Norman did not return at one o'clock; in fact, she never returned to
the Astor House. Dennison waited until three; then he went back to the
Palace, and Ling Foo to his shop and oblivion.
Dennison decided that he did not want the police in the affair. In that
event there would be a lot of publicity, followed by the kind of talk that
stuck. He was confident that he could handle the affair alone. So he
invented a white lie, and nobody questioned it because of his uniform.
Miss Norman had found friends, and shortly she would send for her effects;
but until that time she desired the consulate to take charge. Under the
eyes of the relieved hotel manager and an indifferent clerk from the
consulate the following morning Dennison packed Jane's belongings and
conveyed them to the consulate, which was hard by. Next he proceeded to
the water front and engaged a motor boat. At eleven o'clock he drew up
alongside the _Wanderer II_.
"Hey, there!" shouted a seaman. "Sheer off! Orders to receive no
visitors!"
Dennison began to mount, ignoring the order. It was a confusing situation
for the sailor. If he threw this officer into the yellow water--as
certainly he would have thrown a civilian--Uncle Sam might jump on his
back and ride him to clink. Against this was the old man, the very devil
for obedience to his orders. If he pushed this lad over, the clink; if he
let him by, the old man's foot. And while the worried seaman was reaching
for water with one hand and wind with the other, as the saying goes,
Dennison thrust him roughly aside, crossed the deck to the main
companionway, and thundered down into the salon.