"WHY?"
The terrible face of Peter Kirkstone seemed to contort. He looked at
Kao. And Kao's eyes were shining in that dull room like the eyes of a
snake.
"Because--it will save my life."
"And why will it save your life?"
Again that pause, again the sickly, choking effort. "Because--I HAVE
KILLED A MAN."
Bowing, smiling, rustling, Kao turned to the door. "That is all, Peter
Kirkstone. Good night. John Keith, will you follow me?"
Dumbly Keith followed through the dark corridor, into the big room
mellow with candle-glow, back to the table with its mocking tea-urn and
chinaware. He felt a thing like clammy sweat on his back. He sat down.
And Kao sat opposite him again.
"That is the reason, John Keith. Peter Kirkstone, her brother, is a
murderer, a cold-blooded murderer. And only Miriam Kirkstone and your
humble servant, Prince Kao, know his secret. And to buy my secret, to
save his life, the golden-headed goddess is almost ready to give
herself to me--almost, John Keith. She will decide tonight, when you go
to her. She will come. Yes, she will come tonight. I do not fear. I
have prepared for her the candles, the bridal dais, the nuptial supper.
Oh, she will come. For if she does not, if she fails, with tomorrow's
dawn Peter Kirkstone and John Keith both go to the hangman!"
Keith, in spite of the horror that had come over him, felt no
excitement. The whole situation was clear to him now, and there was
nothing to be gained by argument, no possibility of evasion. Kao held
the winning hand, the hand that put him back to the wall in the face of
impossible alternatives. These alternatives flashed upon him swiftly.
There were two and only two--flight, and alone, without Mary Josephine;
and betrayal of Miriam Kirkstone. Just how Kao schemed that he should
accomplish that betrayal, he could not guess.
His voice, like his face, was cold and strange when it answered the
Chinaman; it lacked passion; there was no emphasis, no inflection that
gave to one word more than to another. And Keith, listening to his own
voice, knew what it meant. He was cold inside, cold as ice, and his
eyes were on the dais, the sacrificial altar that Kao had prepared,
waiting in the candleglow. On the floor of that dais was a great splash
of dull-gold altar cloth, and it made him think of Miriam Kirkstone's
unbound and disheveled hair strewn in its outraged glory over the thing
Kao had prepared for her.
"I see. It is a trade, Kao. You are offering me my life in return for
Miriam Kirkstone."
"More than that, John Keith. Mine is the small price. And yet it is
great to me, for it gives me the golden goddess. But is she more to me
than Derwent Conniston's sister may be to you? Yes, I am giving you
her, and I am giving you your life, and I am giving Peter Kirkstone his
life--all for ONE."
"For one," repeated Keith.
"Yes, for one."
"And I, John Keith, in some mysterious way unknown to me at present, am
to deliver Miriam Kirkstone to you?"
"Yes."
"And yet, if I should kill you, now--where you sit--"
Kao shrugged his slim shoulders, and Keith heard that soft, gurgling
laugh that McDowell had said was like the splutter of oil.
"I have arranged. It is all in writing. If anything should happen to
me, there are messengers who would carry it swiftly. To harm me would
be to seal your own doom. Besides, you would not leave here alive. I am
not afraid."
"How am I to deliver Miriam Kirkstone to you?"
Kao leaned forward, his fingers interlacing eagerly. "Ah, NOW you have
asked the question, John Keith! And we shall be friends, great friends,
for you see with the eyes of wisdom. It will be easy, so easy that you
will wonder at the cheapness of the task. Ten days ago Miriam Kirkstone
was about to pay my price. And then you came. From that moment she saw
you in McDowell's office, there was a sudden change. Why? I don't know.
Perhaps because of that thing you call intuition but to which we give a
greater name. Perhaps only because you were the man who had run down
her father's murderer. I saw her that afternoon, before you went up at
night. Ah, yes, I could see, I could understand the spark that had
begun to grow in her, hope, a wild, impossible hope, and I prepared for
it by leaving you my message. I went away. I knew that in a few days
all that hope would be centered in you, that it would live and die in
you, that in the end it would be your word that would bring her to me.
And that word you must speak tonight. You must go to her, hope-broken.
You must tell her that no power on earth can save her, and that Kao
waits to make her a princess, that tomorrow will be too late, that
TONIGHT must the bargain be closed. She will come. She will save her
brother from the hangman, and you, in bringing her, will save John
Keith and keep Derwent Conniston's sister. Is it not a great reward for
the little I am asking?"
It was Keith who now smiled into the eyes of the Chinaman, but it was a
smile that did not soften that gray and rock-like hardness that had
settled in his face. "Kao, you are a devil. I suppose that is a
compliment to your dirty ears. You're rotten to the core of the thing
that beats in you like a heart; you're a yellow snake from the skin in.
I came to see you because I thought there might be a way out of this
mess. I had almost made up my mind to kill you. But I won't do that.
There's a better way. In half an hour I'll be with McDowell, and I'll
beat you out by telling him that I'm John Keith. And I'll tell him this
story of Miriam Kirkstone from beginning to end. I'll tell him of that
dais you've built for her--your sacrificial altar!--and tomorrow Prince
Albert will rise to a man to drag you out of this hole and kill you as
they would kill a rat. That is my answer, you slit-eyed, Yale-veneered
yellow devil! I may die, and Peter Kirkstone may die, but you'll not
get Miriam Kirkstone!"
He was on his feet when he finished, amazed at the calmness of his own
voice, amazed that his hands were steady and his brain was cool in this
hour of his sacrifice. And Kao was stunned. Before his eyes he saw a
white man throwing away his life. Here, in the final play, was a
master-stroke he had not foreseen. A moment before the victor, he was
now the vanquished. About him he saw his world falling, his power gone,
his own life suddenly hanging by a thread. In Keith's face he read the
truth. This white man was not bluffing. He would go to McDowell. He
would tell the truth. This man who had ventured so much for his own
life and freedom would now sacrifice that life to save a girl, one
girl! He could not understand, and yet he believed. For it was there
before his eyes in that gray, passionless face that was as inexorable
as the face of one of his own stone gods.
As he uttered the words that smashed all that Kao had planned for,
Keith sensed rather than saw the swift change of emotion sweeping
through the yellow-visaged Moloch staring up at him. For a space the
oriental's evil eyes had widened, exposing wider rims of saffron white,
betraying his amazement, the shock of Keith's unexpected revolt, and
then the lids closed slowly, until only dark and menacing gleams of
fire shot between them, and Keith thought of the eyes of a snake. Swift
as the strike of a rattler Kao was on his feet, his gown thrown back,
one clawing hand jerking a derringer from his silken belt. In the same
breath he raised his voice in a sharp call.
Keith sprang back. The snake-like threat in the Chinaman's eyes had
prepared him, and his Service automatic leaped from its holster with
lightning swiftness. Yet that movement was no swifter than the response
to Kao's cry. The panel shot open, the screens moved, tapestries
billowed suddenly as if moved by the wind, and Kao's servants sprang
forth and were at him like a pack of dogs. Keith had no time to judge
their number, for his brain was centered in the race with Kao's
derringer. He saw its silver mountings flash in the candle-glow, saw
its spurt of smoke and fire. But its report was drowned in the roar of
his automatic as it replied with a stream of lead and flame. He saw the
derringer fall and Kao crumple up like a jackknife. His brain turned
red as he swung his weapon on the others, and as he fired, he backed
toward the door. Then something caught him from behind, twisting his
head almost from his shoulders, and he went down.
He lost his automatic. Weight of bodies was upon him; yellow hands
clutched for his throat; he felt hot breaths and heard throaty cries. A
madness of horror possessed him, a horror that was like the blind
madness of Laocoon struggling with his sons in the coils of the giant
serpent. In these moments he was not fighting men. They were monsters,
yellow, foul-smelling, unhuman, and he fought as Laocoon fought. As if
it had been a cane, he snapped the bone of an arm whose hand was
throttling him; he twisted back a head until it snapped between its
shoulders; he struck and broke with a blind fury and a giant strength,
until at last, torn and covered with blood, he leaped free and reached
the door. As he opened it and sprang through, he had the visual
impression that only two of his assailants were rising from the floor.
For the space of a second he hesitated in the little hallway. Down the
stairs was light--and people. He knew that he was bleeding and his
clothes were torn, and that flight in that direction was impossible. At
the opposite end of the hall was a curtain which he judged must cover a
window. With a swift movement he tore down this curtain and found that
he was right. In another second he had crashed the window outward with
his shoulder, and felt the cool air of the night in his face. The door
behind him was still closed when he crawled out upon a narrow landing
at the top of a flight of steps leading down into the alley. He paused
long enough to convince himself that his enemies were making no effort
to follow him, and as he went down the steps, he caught himself grimly
chuckling. He had given them enough.
In the darkness of the alley he paused again. A cool breeze fanned his
cheeks, and the effect of it was to free him of the horror that had
gripped him in his fight with the yellow men. Again the calmness with
which he had faced Kao possessed him. The Chinaman was dead. He was
sure of that. And for him there was not a minute to lose.
After all, it was his fate. The game had been played, and he had lost.
There was one thing left undone, one play Conniston would still make,
if he were there. And he, too, would make it. It was no longer
necessary for him to give himself up to McDowell, for Kao was dead, and
Miriam Kirkstone was saved. It was still right and just for him to
fight for his life. But Mary Josephine must know FROM HIM. It was the
last square play he could make.
No one saw him as he made his way through alleys to the outskirts of
the town. A quarter of an hour later he came up the slope to the Shack.
It was lighted, and the curtains were raised to brighten his way up the
hill. Mary Josephine was waiting for him.
Again there came over him the strange and deadly calmness with which he
had met the tragedy of that night. He had tried to wipe the blood from
his face, but it was still there when he entered and faced Mary
Josephine. The wounds made by the razor-like nails of his assailants
were bleeding; he was hatless, his hair was disheveled, and his throat
and a part of his chest were bare where his clothes had been torn away.
As Mary Josephine came toward him, her arms reaching out to him, her
face dead white, he stretched out a restraining hand, and said,
"Please wait, Mary Josephine!"
Something stopped her--the strangeness of his voice, the terrible
hardness of his face, gray and blood-stained, the something appalling
and commanding in the way he had spoken. He passed her quickly on his
way to the telephone. Her lips moved; she tried to speak; one of her
hands went to her throat. He was calling Miriam Kirkstone's number! And
now she saw that his hands, too, were bleeding. There came the murmur
of a voice in the telephone. Someone answered. And then she heard him
say,
"SHAN TUNG IS DEAD!"
That was all. He hung up the receiver and turned toward her. With a
little cry she moved toward him.
"DERRY--DERRY--"
He evaded her and pointed to the big chair in front of the fireplace.
"Sit down, Mary Josephine."
She obeyed him. Her face was whiter than he had thought a living face
could be, And then, from the beginning to the end, he told her
everything. Mary Josephine made no sound, and in the big chair she
seemed to crumple smaller and smaller as he confessed the great lie to
her, from the hour Conniston and he had traded identities in the little
cabin on the Barren. Until he died he knew she would haunt him as he
saw her there for the last time--her dead-white face, her great eyes,
her voiceless lips, her two little hands clutched at her breast as she
listened to the story of the great lie and his love for her.
Even when he had done, she did not move or speak. He went into his
room, closed the door, and turned on the lights. Quickly he put into
his pack what he needed. And when he was ready, he wrote on a piece of
paper:
"A thousand times I repeat, 'I love you.' Forgive me if you can. If you
cannot forgive, you may tell McDowell, and the Law will find me up at
the place of our dreams--the river's end.
--John Keith."
This last message he left on the table for Mary Josephine.
For a moment he listened at the door. Outside there was no movement, no
sound. Quietly, then, he raised the window through which Kao had come
into his room.
A moment later he stood under the light of the brilliant stars. Faintly
there came to him the sounds of the city, the sound of life, of gayety,
of laughter and of happiness, rising to him now from out of the valley.
He faced the north. Down the side of the hill and over the valley lay
the forests. And through the starlight he strode back to them once
more, back to their cloisters and their heritage, the heritage of the
hunted and the outcast.