THE EMPEROR TAKES A HAND
Ned stepped to the window and looked out. The street in front of the
hotel was filled from curb to curb with an excited mob.
That the efforts of those below were directed toward the building and
its occupants there could be no doubt. Many a shaking fist was thrust
up to the lighted panes where Ned stood.
The boy turned to Jimmie, spoke a few words in a whisper, and the little
fellow left the room. With him went the interpreter who had been
engaged that day.
Shouts, howls and groans of rage now came up from the street, and Ned
stepped away from the window. As he did so the prisoner who had been
making a partial confession when the uproar came, moved forward, as if
to show himself to those below.
Seeing his intention, Ned seized him by the shoulder and hurled him to
the back end of the room. The prisoner smiled and again seated himself
in the chair he had occupied before.
"Your friends are excited," Ned said, drawing the curtain at the window.
The other nodded in the direction of the window and smiled.
"My friends?" he asked.
"Certainly."
"Why do you attribute this outbreak to me?"
"Because those not in league with you and your cause would hardly
threaten American tourists, in the face of the law."
"American tourists!" snarled the other, and Ned laughed.
Jimmie now came bustling into the room, his eyes staring with
excitement. The interpreter was only a trifle less moved by the
information which had been gained.
"What is it?" Jack asked.
"He's crazy with fear again!" Frank put in.
"Say," Jimmie cried, "you'd all better be gettin' out of this place.
The people out there are goin' to raid it in a minute!"
The prisoner uttered a defiant laugh and again started for the window.
Again Ned forced him back.
"What's the trouble?" asked Frank.
"Why," was the reply, "this gink here," pointing toward the prisoner
whose disguise had been removed, "this gazabo hadn't much confidence in
his own ability to win this fight, so he appealed to the revolutionary
leaders."
"That's fine!" Jack said. "We may have the luck to see a full-fledged
revolution doing business."
"You are quite likely to."
This from the prisoner, now standing with the others at the back of the
room.
"You arranged for this demonstration in case you should be taken?" asked
Ned.
The prisoner snarled out some ugly reply.
"You planned this?" demanded Ned, resolved to know the truth.
"Yes," almost shouted the other, "and you will soon discover that it is
something more than a demonstration."
The interpreter drew Jimmie aside and whispered in his ear. Then the
boy turned to Ned.
"This boy says he saw a signal given from a window as soon as this bunch
was taken," he said. "Then crowds began forming. Say, but we'd better
be gettin' out!"
"Save yourselves the exertion," the prisoner said. "They will find you,
wherever you go!"
"Possibly," Ned said.
Then he walked to the window and again looked out on the mob. The
street was packed. Faces showing rage and desperate bravery were
uplifted. Fists were shaken at the window where he stood. In a moment
a stone came hurtling against the wall of the house.
Here and there, on the outskirts of the crowd, policemen in the funny
uniforms the police of Peking wear, were seen trying vainly to force
their way to the door of the hotel. The main entrance seemed to be
guarded, for the mob did not succeed in forcing its way in.
Presently, however, Ned saw long ladders being carried forward on the
shoulders of the rioters. Then they were dropped against the wall and
men with bloody faces--bloody from the acts of their own fellows--fought
to be first to climb.
"In three minutes," the prisoner said, "you will be torn limb from limb
if I am not released."
"Your friends certainly do insist on something of the kind," Ned
replied.
"Remove these irons and place me before the window," commanded the
other. "That will quiet them."
"And make terms with a pack of rioters?" smiled Ned.
"You can save your life, and the lives of your friends, in no other
way," insisted the other.
Ned went to the window again, although bricks and stones were flying
quite freely. The ladders swarmed with excited men, but no one seemed
able to gain entrance at the windows which were attacked.
Instead, a ladder now and then went toppling backward, carrying dozens
of rioters to death or injury. When the ladders began falling the mob
moved away from that side of the street.
"You see," Ned said to the prisoner, "that we were on the lookout for
something like this."
"How could you have been?" gasped the other.
"Our interpreter heard some of the messages sent out by mouth by the
revolutionists. I connected your possible capture with the gathering.
We were warned and made ready."
"But my men will soon be here!" shouted the other. "They are sworn to
go to death for the cause if necessary."
"But I don't see them doing anything of the kind," Ned replied. "On the
contrary, they seem to be taking pretty good care of their yellow old
hides!"
"You'll see!" howled the other.
Directly the heavy beat of marching feet came up to the window, heard
above the roar of the mob below. Far down the street Ned saw the
advancing line, bearing the colors of the Emperor.
The rioters saw the line, too, and the crowd in front of the hotel began
to thin. Then the soldiers arrived and the thoroughfare was empty save
for their presence. By this time the prisoner was in a condition of
collapse. He had planned this thing carefully, and was now in the
meshes of failure.
The street below soon cleared of the few who gathered about to witness
the arrival of the soldiers. The few prisoners, who had been taken
marched sullenly to prison. In ten minutes the city of Peking was as
quiet as if the machinations of the conspirators had never stirred the
people to riot.
"Well?" Ned said, facing the prisoner. "What do you think we ought to
do with you?"
"After all," was the reply, "you have no charges against me. My
government alone can discipline me for what has been done."
"Your government will deny any knowledge of the conspiracy," Ned
replied. "From this time on, you have no government."
"And yet I acted under instructions."
"What was the motive?" asked Frank, who saw a fine cablegram for his
father's newspaper in the story.
"The purpose," replied the other, weakly, "was to so entangle your
government that it would not dare lend aid to the revolutionary
leaders."
"And you were engaged in it?"
A nod of the head was the only reply.
"Yet you pretended to be assisting the revolutionary party. You were
present at their councils. Can it be possible that you were treacherous
to both sides?"
There was no answer.
"Suppose," Ned said, "suppose I turn you over to the revolutionary
leaders, with a statement of what you have just said? What would be
your fate? Remember that the men of the revolution were ready to fight
for you not long ago."
Still no reply. The prisoner only looked sullenly down at the floor.
"What government do you represent?" asked Frank. "What nation is it
that is protecting the imperial government of China?"
"You need not answer that question," Ned said, with a sigh.
Frank laughed.
"I see," he said. "You don't want to further implicate matters by
giving out the name of the power whose seal shows on the wax! All
right, old boy, I'll get it yet!"
"No good can come of a representative of the United States Government
presenting charges of such a character against another power," Ned
replied.
Captain Martin now arose from the chair where he had been seated for a
long time. He glanced keenly into the faces of the six prisoners and
then turned to Ned.
"Shall I take them in charge?" he asked,
"That would be useless."
"Then what can be done with them?"
"I am going to turn them over to the authorities on the charge of
attempted murder, based on the effort they made to kill us in the old
house."
"Very well," the Captain said, "now will you tell me how you set this
trap so, cleverly?"
"It was only a matter of detail," Ned replied. "I took good care to let
the native waiters here know that I had the clues I had found secreted
in my room. I also let it be known that I was a heavy sleeper.
"My interpreter, who is by no means as treacherous a chap as his looks
would indicate, heard the robbery of my room planned. He heard the hour
fixed-a quarter past twelve. So all the rest was easy."
"Oh, yes, easy, but how did you do it?"
"Frank, Jack and Jimmie helped," added Ned. "Jack was at a window over
the way. He told me by signals just how many men were to take part in
the attack on me.
"Frank, in the next room to mine, told me when the time came to be on
guard. I really do not wake easily, and he rigged a cord through the
wall so I could rest comfortably until the time for action came.
"Then when all was ready, he told me by means of colored light that all
the six were in the corridor, and that the officers I had engaged during
the afternoon were on hand."
"And you went to sleep with all this on your mind and slept up to within
a quarter of an hour of the time set for action?" asked the Captain in
wonder.
"Why, certainly," was the reply. "You see, we have been having some
exciting nights, and I needed rest. The other boys slept a good deal
this afternoon, so I left them to wake me at night. Nothing odd about
that, is there?"
"Nothing save the nerve of it."
Two high officers now made their appearance in the room and beckoned to
the prisoners. All arose save the man from whom the disguise had been
stripped. He remained in the chair into which he had dropped, seemingly
in a stupor.
"Come," said the officer.
The man arose, desperation in his eyes, and moved toward the door. A
few days before that miserable night he had been one of the leaders in
the statecraft of the world. Now he was being marched to a prison like
any ordinary criminal.
The speaker was interrupted by a quick movement on the part of the
prisoner, the man he had addressed as Count. There was no one between
he desperate man and the still open window. Ned was at the door,
Captain Martin was out in the corridor, and Frank, Jack and Jimmie were
talking together in a corner.
Handcuffed as he was, the Count leaped to the window and shot down to
the hard pavement below. There was a shrill cry as his body hurtled
through the air, then a crash.
Below passersby drew away from what lay in a bloody heap on the
pavement. A little crowd gathered, at a distance, but none knew that the
body of one of the most distinguished statesmen in the world lay there.
"It is finished!" Ned said, with a sigh. "The whole story of the
conspiracy will never be told. It is the story of a treacherous
government and a treacherous statesman.
"The documents I have will fully prove that the United States had no
hand in the gold shipment, and that is all that we care for. The old
world may take care of its own political messes."
"It is a mess indeed," Captain Martin, said. "In less than a year China
will be red with blood, and the streets of Peking will witness the
retreat of the royal family."
How true this prophecy was the readers of the daily newspapers now know.
"Well," Jack said, with a yawn, as the boys and the Captain were left
alone in the room together, "I presume it is us for little old New York
to-morrow. How do you like this motorcycle-flying-squadron business,
boys," he added. "We seem to have flown ahead of the flying squadron."
"Then we ought to fly back and look after the ones who were wounded on
the road," Frank said. "Suppose we all go back on our machines, and
really see something of the country?"
This was agreed to, and the party separated for the night. In the
morning Ned paid his respects to the American ambassador, who greeted
him courteously, but wanted to know all about the events of the trip
from the coast.
"You have gotten Uncle Sam out of a bad mess," the ambassador said, when
Ned had finished his narration, "and you will find that you will be well
rewarded when you return to Washington."
The ambassador also requested the boys to visit the other legations, but
they did not care to do so.
"Well," he said, then, "you must take a letter from me which may help
you on your way. I have been expecting you here all the week, but it
seems that you completed your work without my assistance,"
"Just what I was figuring on," Ned replied.
"I worked under surveillance all the way here, and I desired to show
that I could do something on my own account."
The boys left Peking early the next morning, and were not long in
reaching the house where the powder trap had been set for them. There
they found Hans and Sandy! The boys had followed them on from Tientsin
in an automobile which an English merchant was taking through.
Both boys were riding motorcycles, and were already proficient enough to
proceed with the others, using the machines which had been ridden by the
wounded marines, who were sent on to Peking in charge of Captain Martin.
A week was spent on the road to Taku, and the lads enjoyed every minute
of the time. The letter given them by the American ambassador brought
them every attention at Tientsin and Taku.
It was late in the fall when they reached New York. On the night of
their arrival there were many joyful meetings in the clubroom of the
Black Bear Patrol. The next day Ned went on to Washington to file his
report. When he returned it was with a very substantial reward.
"Now," he said, with a laugh, "I'm ready for the next trip. I wonder
where it will be?"
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Boy Scouts on Motorcycles, by G. Harvey Ralphson