Ah Cum was himself puzzled. Why hadn't he admitted that he
recognized the photograph? What instinct had impelled him swiftly
to assume his Oriental mask?
"Why?" asked O'Higgins. "What's the particular dope?"
"If I told you, you would laugh," answered Ah Cum, gravely.
"No; I don't think I'd laugh. You never saw him before yesterday.
Why should you want to shield him?"
"I really don't know."
"Because he said he was a Yale man?"
"That might be it."
"Treated you like a white man there, did they?"
"Like a gentleman."
"All right. I had that coming. I didn't think. But, holy smoke!--the
Yale spirit in...."
"A Chinaman. I wonder. I spent many happy days there. Perhaps it
was the recollection of those happy days. You are a detective?"
"Yes. I have come thirteen thousand miles for this young fellow;
I'm ready to go galloping thirteen thousand more."
"You have extradition papers?"
"What sort of a detective do you think I am?" countered O'Higgins.
"Then his case is hopeless."
"Absolutely."
"I'm sorry. He does not look the criminal."
"That's the way it goes. You never can tell." There was a pause.
"They tell me over here that the average Chinaman is honest."
Ah Cum shrugged. "Yes?"
"And that when they give their word, they never break it."
O'Higgins had an idea in regard to Ah Cum.
"Your tone suggests something marvellous in the fact," replied Ah
Cum, ironically. "Why shouldn't a Chinaman be honest? Ah, yes; I
know. Most of you Americans pattern all Chinese upon those who fill
a little corner in New York. In fiction you make the Chinese
secretive, criminal, and terrible--or comic. I am an educated
Chinese, and I resent the imputations against my race. You
Americans laugh at our custom of honouring our ancestors, our
many-times great grandfathers. On the other hand, you seldom revere
your immediate grandfather, unless he has promised to leave you some
money."
"Bull's eye!" piped O'Higgins.
"Of course, there is a criminal element, but the percentage is no
larger than that in America or Europe. Why don't you try to find
out how the every-day Chinese lives, how he treats his family, what
his normal habits are, his hopes, his ambitions? Why don't you come
to China as I went to America--with an open mind?"
"You're on," said O'Higgins, briskly. "I'll engage you for four
days. To-day is for the sights; the other three days--lessons.
How's that strike you?"
"Very well, sir. At least I can give you a glimmer." A smile broke
the set of Ah Cum's lips. "I'll take you into a Chinese home. We
are very poor, but manage to squeeze a little happiness out of each
day."
"And I promise that all you tell me and show me will sink in,"
replied O'Higgins, frankly interested. "I'm a detective; my ears
and eyes have been trained to absorb all I see and all I hear. When
I absorb a fact, my brain weighs the fact carefully and stores it
away. You fooled me this morning; but I overheard two old maids
talking about you and the young man."
"What has he done?"
"What did he have to drink over here last night?"
"Not even water. No doubt he has been drinking for days without
eating substantially, and his heart gave out."
"What happened?"
Ah Cum recounted the story of the sing-song girl. "I had to give in
to him. You know how stubborn they get."
"Surest thing you know. Bought the freedom of a sing-song girl; and
all the while you knew you'd have to tote the girl back. But the
Yale spirit!"
Ah Cum laughed.
"I've got a proposition to make," said O'Higgins.
"So long as it is open and above board."
"It's that, but it interferes with the college spirit stuff. Would
a hundred dollars interest you?"
"Very much, if I can earn it without offending my conscience."
"It won't. Here goes. I've come all these miles for this young
fellow; but I don't cotton to the idea of lallygagging four weeks
in this burg. I've an idea it'll be that long before the chap gets
up. My proposition is for you to keep an eye on him, and the moment
he puts on his clothes to send me a telegram, care of the Hong-Kong
Hotel. Understand me. Double-crossing wouldn't do any good. For all
you might know, I might have someone watching you. This time he
couldn't get far. He will have to return to Hong-Kong."
"Not necessarily. There is a railroad."
"He won't be taking that. The only safe place for him is at sea;
and if he had kept to the sea, I shouldn't have found him so
easily. Well, what about it?"
"I accept."
"As an honest Chinaman?"--taking out the offensiveness of the query
by smiling.
"As an honest Chinaman."
O'Higgins produced his wallet. "Fifty now and fifty when I return."
"Agreed. Here are the jade carvers. Would you like to see them at
work?"
"Lead on, Macduff!"
Ah Cum raised the skirt of his fluttering blue silk robe and stored
the bill away in a trouser wallet. It was the beginning and the end
of the transaction. When he finally telegraphed his startling
information to Hong-Kong, it was too late for O'Higgins to act. The
quarry had passed out into the open sea.
* * * * *
From the comatose state, Spurlock passed into that of the babbling
fever; but that guarding instinct which is called subconsciousness
held a stout leash on his secret. He uttered one word over and
over, monotonously:
"Fool! ... Fool!"
But invariably the touch of Ruth's hand quieted him, and his head
would cease to roll from side to side. He hung precariously on the
ragged edge, but he hung there. Three times he uttered a phrase:
"A djinn in a blue-serge coat!"
And each time he would follow it with a chuckle--the chuckle of a
soul in damnation.
Neither the American Express nor Cook's had received mail for
Howard Taber; he was not on either list. This was irregular. A man
might be without relatives, but certainly he would not be without
friends, that is to say, without letters. The affair was thick with
sinister suggestions. And yet, the doctor recalled an expression of
the girl's: that it was not a dissipated face, only troubled.
The whole affair interested him deeply. That was one of the
compensations for having consigned himself to this part of the
world. Over here, there was generally some unusual twist to a case.
He would pull this young fellow back; but later he knew that he
would have to fight the boy's lack of will to live. When he
recovered his mental faculties, he would lie there, neutral; they
could save him or let him die, as they pleased; and the doctor knew
that he would wear himself out forcing his own will to live into
this neutrality. And probably the girl would wear herself out, too.
To fight inertia on the one hand and to study this queer girl on
the other. Any financial return was inconsiderable against the
promise of this psychological treat. The girl was like some
north-country woodland pool, penetrated by a single shaft of
sunlight--beautifully clear in one spot and mysteriously obscured
elsewhere. She would be elemental; there would be in her somewhere
the sleeping tigress. The elemental woman was always close to the
cat: as the elemental man was always but a point removed from the
wolf.
It was so arranged that Ruth went on duty after breakfast and
remained until noon. The afternoon was her own; but from eight
until midnight she sat beside the patient. At no time did she feel
bodily or mental fatigue. Frequently she would doze in her chair;
but the slightest movement on the bed aroused her.
At luncheon, on the third day, a thick-set man with a blue jaw
smiled across his table at her. She recognized him as the man who
had blundered into the wrong room.
"How is the patient?" he asked.
"He will live," answered Ruth.
"That's fine," said O'Higgins. "I suppose he'll be on his feet any
day now."
"No. It will take at least three weeks."
"Well, so long as he gets on his feet in the end. You're a friend
of the young man?"
"If you mean did I know him before he became ill, no."
"Ah." O'Higgins revolved this information about, but no angle
emitted light. Basically a kindly man but made cynical and derisive
by sordid contacts, O'Higgins had almost forgotten that there was
such a thing as unselfishness. The man or woman who did something
for nothing always excited his suspicions; they were playing some
kind of a game. "You mean you were just sorry for him?"
"As I would be for any human being in pain."
"Uh-huh." For the life of him, O'Higgins could not think of
anything else to say. Just because she was sorry for that young
fool! "Uh-huh," he repeated, rising and bowing as he passed Ruth's
table. He wished he had the time to solve this riddle, for it was a
riddle, and four-square besides. Back in the States young women did
not offer to play the Good Samaritan to strange young fools whom
Jawn D. Barleycorn had sent to the mat for the count of nine:
unless the young fool's daddy had a bundle of coin. Maybe the girl
was telling the truth, and then again, maybe she wasn't.
The situation bothered him considerably. Things happened frequently
over here that wouldn't happen in the States once in a hundred
years. Who could say that the two weren't in collusion? When a chap
like Spurlock jumped the traces, _cherchez la femme_, every time.
He hadn't gambled or played the horses or hit the booze back there
in little old New York....
"Aw, piffle!" he said, half aloud and rather disgustedly, as he
stepped out into the sunshine. "My old coco is disintegrating. I've
bumped into so much of the underside that I can't see clean any
more. No girl with a face like that.... And yet, dang it! I've seen
'em just as innocent looking that were prime vipers. Let's get to
Hong-Kong, James, and hit the high spots while there is time."
He signalled to Ah Cum; and the two of them crossed on foot into
the city.
It was not until the morning of the fifth day that the constant
vigil was broken. The patient fell into a natural and refreshing
sleep. So Ruth found that for a while her eyes were free. She
tiptoed to the stand and gathered up the manuscripts which she
carried to a chair by the window. Since the discovery of them, she
had been madly eager to read these typewritten tales. Treasure
caves to explore!
All through these trying days she had recurrently wondered what
this strange young man would have to say that Dickens and Hugo had
not already said. That was the true marvel of it. No matter how
many books one read, each was different, as each human being was
different. Some had the dignity and the aloofness of a rock in the
sea; and others were as the polished pebbles on the sands--one saw
the difference of pebble from pebble only by close scrutiny. Ruth,
without suspecting it, had fallen upon a fundamental truth: that
each and every book fitted into the scheme of human moods and
intelligence.
Ruth was at that stage where the absorption of facts is great, but
where the mental digestion is not quite equal to the task. She was
acquiring truths, but in a series of shocks rather than by the
process of analysis.
There were seven tales in all--short stories--a method of
expression quite strange to her, after the immense canvases of
Dickens and Hugo. When she had finished the first tale, there was a
sense of disappointment. She had expected a love story; and love
was totally absent. It was a tale of battle, murder, and sudden
death on the New York waterfront. Sordid; but that was not Ruth's
term for it; she had no precise commentary to offer.
From time to time she would come upon a line of singular beauty or
a paragraph full of haunting music; and these would send her
rushing on for something that never happened. Each manuscript was
like the other: the same lovely treatment of an unlovely subject.
Abruptly would come the end. It was as if she had come upon the
beautiful marble façade of a fairy palace, was invited to enter,
and behind the door--nothing.
She did not realize that she was offering criticisms. The word
"criticism" had no concrete meaning to her then; no more than
"compromise." Some innate sense of balance told her that something
was wrong with these tales. She could not explain in words why they
disappointed her or that she was disappointed.
Two hours had come and gone during this tantalizing occupation. At
the least, the tales had the ability to make her forget where she
was; which was something in their favour.
"My coat!"
Ruth did not move but stared astonishedly at the patient.
"My coat!" he repeated, his glance burning into hers.
[Illustration: _Distinctive Pictures Corporation. The Ragged Edge._
A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]