THE QUEER EPISODE AT NANKING
It was such a far-fetched observation to make that I thought the boy
must be more elevated than he looked, but if he was, he could at least
keep himself in hand. Finding me silent, he made no advance from his
side, but took a cigarette from his own case and lit it; and there we
sat smoking in silence until Philipson returned.
The moment he entered the room I could see by his face that he had
taken one of those sudden resolves I was already beginning to get
accustomed to.
'So you have been looking for work, Poyning,' he began, 'and you have
found none?'
Poyning solemnly inclined his head. 'The dismal situation is as I
have already painted it,' he said. 'You gentlemen, no doubt skilled
observers of the East and its peculiarities, can perhaps suggest the
reason of my failure? Tell me, is there anything in my appearance that
might be expected to militate against success?'
Philipson seemed to find this funny, for I noticed he was biting his
lip when he answered. 'If you will allow me to say so, Poyning,' he
said, 'you are about the last type in the world the merchant princes of
this country are looking for. Still, there are other employers besides
the merchant princes. Perhaps I can offer you something to go on with.
Would you care to earn a thousand dollars?'
'By any task a man of delicacy may fittingly undertake.'
'It is certainly a matter of delicacy--so much so that I must stipulate
for absolute secrecy before I let you hear a word about it. Will you
swear?'
'By all the powers of beauty and light!' said Stephen Poyning, so
religiously that you might have thought he was going to cross himself.
'It is also a matter of extreme danger.'
'Not more perilous, I fancy,' returned Poyning suavely, 'than the
grisly spectre of starvation which hangs over me at this moment.'
It was, as I say, a high-falutin manner of talk that this little
exquisite used, but there was something in his demeanour that soon made
me begin to have hopes of him; and I believe Philipson had come to
similar conclusions a good deal quicker than I had.
'Very well,' he said. 'The business is this. We two have vitally
important affairs to transact in Shanghai, but it is not feasible for
either of us to return in person. Our matters must be seen to through
an agent, and even he, I may tell you at the outset, stands quite a
good chance of coming to grief at the hands of the same men who will
be on the watch for us.'
Poyning clasped and unclasped his small womanly hands. 'It sounds by
far the most interesting thing I have yet heard in China,' he mused.
'Now listen closely,' said Philipson, 'for I am going to give you your
instructions. The people of this inn think we are on a pleasure trip
from Hankow, and you must do nothing to undeceive them. You will slip
out secretly to the railway station and catch the down train, which
leaves this place at midnight. That will get you into Shanghai by seven
in the morning. It is probable that the station will be watched, so
be on your guard. You will let your ricsha-boy pull you away in the
direction of the European quarter--which he will do of his own accord
since you are a foreigner--but not until you come to the river will you
tell him to go to the Marco Polo Hotel, and not too loudly then. That
is where my friend was staying before we left. You will clean up and
have breakfast, then see the manager in your own room and explain to
him that my friend has been called away to Canton on urgent business
and that you have come to settle his account, pack his belongings,
and put them into store. My friend will give you a note and detailed
instructions as to what he wants done. This will take you till ten
o'clock. You will then go out and buy a good second-hand suit case
without any initials on it--or at least you must studiously avoid one
with your own.'
Poyning had sat quite still, with an air of some concentration. He now
looked up inquiringly.
'Because your initials happen to be the same as my own,' added
Philipson rather brusquely. 'Saunders Philipson is my name, and my
friend is Ronald Mirlees--so steer clear of R.M. too. You will then
go to Obermeyers, on the Bund, and buy a good chronometer and a
sextant. You will then go to the Bank of Cathay, where you will cash
a big cheque for me--or rather exchange it for a letter of credit on
the Bank's Chungking branch: I will give you a note to the manager.
You will then return to the Marco Polo Hotel and confine yourself to
your room till after dark. Then take a ricsha down to Bubbling Well
and proceed to the New Highgate Road on foot. The last bungalow on
the right hand side is mine. You will approach with extreme caution,
taking particular care that you are not shadowed. Go not to the front
door, but to the side, and give five sharp taps--like this.' Philipson
knocked with his knuckles on the table, repeating the signal twice.
'My boy, Lo Eng, will let you in. He speaks good English, so you will
have no difficulty with him. You will tell him I have gone away for an
indefinite period, and that he is to shut the house and return to his
people; if he does not hear from me in six months, he is to hand over
my belongings to the manager of the Bank of Cathay, who is my executor.
Lo Eng is to give you a packet of papers marked "B," and in proof of
good faith you will show him this seal. You will then get away from
the bungalow unobserved, return to the hotel and settle up there, and
catch the eleven o'clock train back. It is of the utmost life-and-death
urgency that nobody should trace you from my house to the station or
from the station here. Is that clear?'
'Lucid as Helicon itself,' said Poyning, removing his eyeglass and
wiping it with a handkerchief of perfumed silk.
'Then let me hear what you are going to do.'
It surprised me a little to hear Philipson make this demand. He had
rattled off his string of orders so fast that I expected he would at
least give the youth something in writing, however cryptic, to remember
them by. But my real surprise came when Poyning recited the whole, not
only accurately, but, as far as I could myself remember, in Philipson's
own words.
The latter sprang to his feet. 'Excellent,' he said. 'You already
begin to justify my belief in your capability. Those are your marching
orders, then. Carry them out as exactly as you have rehearsed them, and
payment awaits you on your return.'
'If I might suggest two amendments--' began Poyning.
'What do you mean?'
'This. My own rooms in Shanghai are still, I regret to say, unsettled
for. I propose to utilise part of the day in closing them. For this
purpose I should be glad of certain of those thousand dollars in
advance. The opportunity of withdrawing from that hub of commerce
in strict honour and solvency may not present itself to me again,
gentlemen. It must be grasped now.'
'Then you are not going back to Shanghai eventually?'
'I do not regard that as at all probable.'
'What are you going to do here?'
'I was not, to tell the truth, proposing to remain in this picturesque
but somewhat unpromising field of labour, either.'
'Indeed. Well, it is no affair of mine, Poyning, but if I could put
you in the way of a berth, I would--particularly if you carry out this
commission of mine satisfactorily. Have you any idea _what_ you are
going to do?'
Poyning's small freckled features wrinkled into a grin. 'I think it is
more than possible,' he said, 'that I shall accompany you to Chungking
and those more distant regions which you will be visiting in the near
future.'
Philipson set down his glass with a clatter. 'What the devil do you
know about our intentions?' he said sharply.
'I pretend to no exact knowledge,' replied Poyning, waving his
small hand, 'but I should be dull indeed if I had gathered no
inkling from what you have told me. You see, Philipson, I'm no fool,
though my classical qualifications may not seem an asset in the
pork-packing circles where I have vainly hawked them. You are going to
Chungking--your letter of credit betrays as much. But the amount of the
cheque which you will give me to change and the length of time you will
be away seem to me to indicate that your true objective lies beyond
that port: that you have, in fact, some rather considerable expedition
in view.'
'Suppose we have. What use do you think you could be to us?'
'There, again, a little elementary thought solves the conundrum for
me. The fact that you are obliged to take such detailed precautions
in order to get away from this area with a whole skin argues that you
would be none the worse for the company and support of a person who,
though he should not be the one to proclaim it, is a good shot with
small arms and no worse afflicted with cowardice than most.'
'I see,' said Philipson, drily, glancing at the watch on his wrist.
'_We_ are to benefit by the arrangement, eh?'
'To the extent I have indicated,' retorted Poyning, quite unabashed.
'My profit from the enterprise, on the other hand, will be co-equal
with yours. The great wildernesses of earth, gentlemen, have always
called to me, and those lands which you are going to visit beyond
Chungking will answer very nicely, I've no doubt, to the description
of a wilderness. I would go forth into it with you. If you gratify my
ambition, there is _my_ half of our mutual gain.'
Philipson looked at his watch again. 'No time to go into the matter
now, anyway,' he said. 'You must catch to-night's train without fail. I
will get ready the things you are to take, and Mirlees will tell you in
the meantime what he wants done in Shanghai.'
While Philipson was busy at a side table with pen and ink, I gave
Poyning my instructions for the safeguarding of my slender properties.
He listened quietly, repeated word for word what I had said, and tapped
his forehead as a man might the lid of a cash-box after locking away
valuable securities in it.
'Now, Poyning,' said our leader, returning to the middle of the room,
'here is money for your expenses and purchases, the note to my bank,
the cheque, and my seal. I am also advancing you two hundred dollars
out of your honorarium. That enough? Right. As to whether you join
forces with us for good, I say nothing yet. I like the look of you and
I like the sound of you, but I do not take you right into my concerns
until I have some solid proof of your steel. Get away to Shanghai and
bring off these commissions successfully, and I shall be open to admit
that you are a man worth my while taking on a mission which, to say no
more of it, will want men of no ordinary temper. Good luck and God be
with you!'
Poyning took his leave of us much in the grand manner, but as I looked
at his face it seemed to me that underneath that mask of the exquisite
there was something of shrewdness and sand that would go a long way and
not be lightly turned back. He slid quietly downstairs and we heard no
more of him. Soon after he had gone I went along to my bedroom--for I
was dog-tired--leaving Philipson deep in thought and the contemplation
of two fresh bottles of wine which he had had brought up.
And now I come to the first of those mysterious episodes that happened
on our journey up country and bear, as I now see, so profoundly on
the queer adventures we were to meet with afterwards. I have made my
account of this with great care and constant reference to the very
clear recollection of the event my memory retains; and I don't think
that in what follows there is one jot more or less than I actually
observed.
I don't know whether it was because of the heat, which was steamy and
penetrating, or because of the mosquitoes that had already come up in
clouds from the swampy land bordering the creek; but weary as I was,
I couldn't sleep a wink. I lay tossing and turning and going over in
my mind our jumpy experiences of the past forty-eight hours, and the
longer I lay, the more feverishly alert I grew. Every noise of the
night, the mumble of talk from the servants' quarters at the far end
of the inn, an occasional clanging ricsha-bell away in the city, the
screech of an early cicada on the lawns, even the subtle hiss of water
among the roots of the willows beneath our wall--all came to my ears
magnified about fourfold. When Philipson withdrew to his bedroom some
hours after I had left him, the noise he made was relatively deafening.
I heard him throw himself on to the bed with a jangle of springs, and
then lay dozing, praying for sleep but more honestly inclined to swear
at my insomnia.
At last, opening my eyes, I saw there was a curious light outside the
window, so bright that at first I thought some native house on the
other side of the creek must be going up in flames. I got out of bed
and looked on to the verandah that ran along outside our wing of the
inn. Then I saw where the illumination came from: it was the moon, full
and brilliant, which had climbed round to that side of the building
and was bathing the creek in a glory of silver and gold. Without the
distraction of stewy heat and savage mosquitoes it would have been a
picture to paint or write poetry about.
Then, suddenly, I became conscious of voices farther along the
verandah. I couldn't distinguish the words, but I knew at once the
language was not English. Nor was it any dialect of Chinese I ever
struck, and I have heard and spoken most. All caution drowned in a
prickling curiosity, I stepped noiselessly out on to the verandah
and peeped round the jutting stone jamb of the window. Now I saw the
speakers, and at the sight I could have cried out in my astonishment.
There were two figures, a man and a woman. The former looked to me
uncommonly like Saunders Philipson, dressed as I had left him a few
hours before. The real stunning surprise for me, however, was in the
appearance of the woman. She was no dusky, cramp-footed native, but
manifestly European, tall, queenly, with bare head and loose gown, and
so far as I could distinguish her features, of a remarkable beauty.
I drew back into cover of my window and stood there with thumping
heart, a pitiful mess of indecision. Philipson was, as I had already
learned, a queer fellow. He had betrayed pronounced eccentricity
in the direction of strong drink; now I saw him in his even queerer
relations with women. Who the beautiful stranger was or whence she
came, I couldn't conceive, but it seemed plain enough she must have
been there by assignation. She could only have got on to that verandah
through his sleeping chamber, for I had heard Philipson lock the door
of the sitting room before he retired, and I had certainly been too
wide awake for anybody to pass through my room without my knowledge,
even had the door not been secure on the inside, which it was. There
was no other way.
What should I do? If this was merely some clandestine romance of
Philipson's, I had a shrewd notion he would take any interference
from me vastly amiss, perhaps even to the length of breaking with me.
And yet I had to admit that the time, and our circumstances, seemed
strangely out of tune with secret love affairs. A sudden fear took hold
of me. I had already seen Philipson once the victim of treachery. Could
it be that our enemies had discovered our whereabouts and set another
snare, this time in more crafty and seductive shape?
What I should have done I don't know, but at that moment there was
a gentle knock at the bedroom door. This clinched my suspicions. I
snatched up a revolver and faced round, demanding who was there. No
answer came, but the knock was repeated. Then I realised that it was
the peculiar five taps--Philipson's own code--that had been given. I
tiptoed to the door, unbolted and pulled it ajar, covering the aperture
with my gun. An instant later I had lowered the muzzle, for there
stood Ah Sing, shivering and hoarse with excitement.
'Hab look-see master him window,' he whispered, stabbing with his
finger in the direction of Philipson's room. 'Him talkee-talkee some
_tai-tai_ my no sabbee. My no likum dat. My tinkee him talkee-talkee
some dam bad man him come hit master one big whop!'
Ah Sing, then, from his post on board the launch, had also observed
this mysterious visitor, and to his faithful mind had occurred at once
the same suspicion of a decoy. That decided me. I would risk any row
with Philipson rather than let him be held in talk on the verandah
while all kinds of villainy might be hatching behind him. I peered
along the shadowy landing, but could see nobody. Perhaps already an
enemy had gained entrance to Philipson's bedroom, where no doubt his
precious papers were left unguarded.
Followed by Ah Sing, I ran along to the door and listened. There was
no sound whatever. I tried the door: it was locked. I rapped, using
Philipson's knock, first softly, then louder, and at last called him by
name. There was no reply. Now thoroughly scared, I sent Ah Sing round
through my bedroom to warn his master from that side. He was back at my
side a few seconds later, his eyes staring, his mouth agape.
'Hab look-see master no hab see!' he panted.
It was at this instant that something inside the bedroom moved. I heard
a soft, uneven step, the key was turned in the lock, the door came
slightly open, and the muzzle of a revolver appeared round the style.
I sang out sharply:
'Philipson!'
One instant after that the door was swung wide, and we stood face to
face. I say we stood, though it would be nearer truth to say that I, at
least, staggered.
Philipson was in pyjamas. His hair was tousled down over his face and
his eyes, which he rather dazedly rubbed with his free fist, were
blinking and heavy-lidded, as of a man just roused from deep sleep.