Mr. Shultz called from the window, "What's that?"
The door opened and a gray-clad officer stepped in. He held on to
the door-knob and, swaying a little, looked wildly from face to face.
Then his eyes fixed themselves on the General. He began to talk in a
high-pitched steady stream of Chinese. Mr. Shultz came over to the
table and stood behind the General's chair. The General asked a few
questions. The officer answered. Mr. Shultz, in an effort to
understand, puckered his mouth and knitted his forehead. One
statement struck him like a blow.
"Hell," he exclaimed and his face grew dark red.
The officer stopped on a high note like a wail and stood breathing
heavily with his mouth open. The General nodded to him. He went out.
Megan looked from one to the other, aware that something had gone
wrong, but aware also that it did not matter much now what it was.
The General, sitting back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling.
Mr. Shultz stood beside him, heavy but alert.
"I had a hunch," he said, "that something like this would happen.
That first boy that came to bring us the news was all wrong. I saw
it in his eye. I never disregard a hunch but I don't regret it."
"What is wrong?" said Megan. But no one answered her.
"We'll have to do a lot of high-speed thinking now," said Mr. Shultz.
"You've got the brains, General, I leave it to you."
Mr. Shultz went over to the window and leaned out into the dark court
listening to the stillness of the yamen. He came back.
"The place is deserted," he said. "They're all gone. I can feel it."
"Then it is useless for you to stay," said the General. "The sooner
you leave, I should say, the better."
"What is the matter?" Megan repeated more insistently.
Mr. Shultz looked at her as though he had forgotten her, but answered
pleasantly.
"The Communists have taken over the city, Miss Davis. That was the
firing we heard. The troops went over to them. Even the General's
body-guard has deserted. The boys at the telephone got word what had
happened, came and gave us a false report and cleared out. This last
officer who just came was on guard at the arsenal. They have taken
that over. I'll bet," he added, turning to look down at Captain Li,
"our little friend here could tell us something about this."
"As you leave," said the General, "you had better take Li with you
and shoot him somewhere outside. See if he is armed, will you,
Shultz?"
Mr. Shultz leaned over the back of Captain Li's chair, jerked him to
his feet and felt his body expertly.
"Nope," he answered, finding nothing.
Captain Li, who had taken his mauling with the absent expression of a
child being undressed for bed, on being released as absently sat down
again.
The room was extraordinarily still. For a moment they all sat
listening to the stillness which pressed in upon them the
completeness of their desertion.
Megan thought how absurd this all was. She had expected a night of
alarms and bloodshed and yet it had all come about in a way peculiar,
apparently, to China. The General had simply been sold out. Nothing
more would happen unless he insisted on remembering that Captain Li
also had forgotten his place in society.
Mah-li of course was safe. If she was to share the fate of the
Communists it was certain that she was now sharing their triumph.
The General had failed there at any rate. She repeated this to
herself with an exultant satisfaction. He had tried to preserve a
decorum that was already a corpse. And perhaps since he had failed,
since he had been forced to do as she asked, it might be possible to
forgive him. Even now, though she was still ready to heap every
reproach on him, she felt an obscure, imperative necessity to
reinstate him.
"I think we'd better take Li with us," said Mr. Shultz, breaking the
silence. "But I don't like to shoot him unless I have to. Come
along, General, let's get going."
The General did not answer, and made no movement of getting up. He
stared at Mr. Shultz, and Megan saw on his face the same expression
of doubt she had seen before, when he had spoken of Doctor Strike and
the safe-conduct pass. It was a doubt that struck at the deepest
roots of his beliefs.
"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Shultz.
"Do you mean," said the General, "you want me to come with you?"
Mr. Shultz looked at him in astonishment, and as the General's
meaning dawned on him he was even embarrassed. He said nothing.
The General spoke haltingly and in a low apologetic voice. "But I am
the one they are after. If I come with you your chances of getting
away are practically nothing."
Mr. Shultz suddenly regained his assurance.
"Oh, go to hell," he said jovially. "What do you think I am!"
The General dropped his eyes and bent his head. Megan saw he was
undergoing a deep humiliation; that this generosity, because he had
been unable to admit its existence, was cutting him to the quick.
She wanted him to be so humiliated and so wounded. She wanted him to
be smitten, as by a scorching bolt, with this unlooked-for example of
a generosity that not all her words or those of Doctor Strike had
been able to convince him of. Not their words, not even the obvious
trend of their lives, had touched him. Now, strangely, Mr. Shultz
had been made the instrument. Mr. Shultz was not the man she would
have chosen. This particular quality was perhaps the only estimable
one he possessed, but he had presented it nevertheless, flawless,
intact, indisputable as a diamond.
"We'd better make straight for the bay," he said. "The railroad
won't be possible. Where's your car, General?"
"About a quarter of a mile up the road. The officer who just came
drove from the arsenal in it. He left it there in case the yamen was
already in their hands."
"Will he take it away?"
"No, he won't want to be caught in it."
"Then if we get going, it may still be there. It is our only chance
I'd say."
"And at the bay, what then?"
"There is my launch. I leave it in a different place every few days.
They're not apt to know where and only the sampan will be at the
landing, a sampan like any other. To-night it should be at the
landing where they load the junks of contraband rice."
"Can the launch get us down the bay?"
"I think so. Anyway, it can get us away from here."
"Well, let us go then."
Mr. Shultz went over to the door of a small closet used as a pantry.
He opened it and disclosed the boy who served their drinks, asleep
under shelves laden with bottles. Mr. Shultz shook him until he
woke, then taking him by the shoulder propelled him across the room
to the phonograph. He took the first record he came to and put it on
the machine, turned the crank and adjusted the needle. The bright
and alien Italian magic vibrated once more through the Chinese room.
"You keep this going. Must wantche walkee, savvy?"
The boy nodded and leaned anxiously over the instrument.
"Another round before we go?" asked Mr. Shultz, coming back to the
table. "Have a little Dutch courage, General? Miss Davis?" He
looked over the litter of glasses, cards, and trays full of
cigarettes and ashes. Then he poured himself a swallow of brandy and
gulped it down. His eyes fell on Captain Li again. "Come on, big
boy, and just remember, whatever happens to us now happens to you
too."
He jerked Captain Li out of his chair. The General said a few words
in Chinese to him and Mr. Shultz pushed him forward. The General
caught his arm.
"If you'll follow me," he said to Mr. Shultz and Megan, "I think it
would be better to go out this way."
They passed into another room, unlighted except for the light coming
from the door left open behind them. They crossed two rooms and an
empty dark court, turning down a narrow runway between houses from
which they came out on an open space. Megan supposed it to be a
garden because the gravel of ordered walks crunched under their feet
and in the gusty wind the dark trees about them made sudden abrupt
gestures against the pallor of starry sky. After the smoky room they
had left the air seemed fresh and even sharp, full of the agitation
of hidden rustling leaves and grass. They came to a gate which the
General opened himself.
"The road is over there," he said. "The car, if it is still waiting,
is along this stretch."
They crossed a field. Ahead of them, sprinkled at an indefinite
distance in the dark, were a few trembling lights. The field was
full of mounds, some topped with what seemed replicas of houses.
Graves. Once a fetid odor drifted across their path like a warm
current in the cold air. Then their feet touched the smoother
surface of the road, and they almost collided with a car that,
without lights, waited there.
"Well, this is luck," exclaimed Mr. Shultz. "Think of the old bus
being here!"
The General's driver sat at the wheel. He had been waiting stolidly
and he showed no surprise at seeing them. Perhaps he was expecting
them. He climbed down without a word and opened the door. The
General and Mr. Shultz explained to him the route he was to follow.
The General and Megan got in and Mr. Shultz sat between them, Captain
Li took one of the folding seats. Against the faintly luminous
square of the windows the chenille fringes made fanciful patterns.
The car started.
"Looks as though we're going to get a good break all around," said
Mr. Shultz with satisfaction.
The sound of the motor was comforting and enveloped them in security.
That the car should have been there, that it should function so
perfectly, seemed to mean they were intended to get away unharmed.
Mr. Shultz's hunch evidently told him so, and Megan was inclined to
believe he was right. Mr. Shultz talked in a low, agreeable voice,
like a host who feels the responsibility for his guests. He talked
to Megan more directly.
"Well, this will make something for you to write home about, Miss
Davis; your friends will enjoy all your Chinese adventures."
"Yes," she answered absently.
From time to time he leaned across to peer through the window.
"Nice clear night," he said, "good wind. We'll be down the bay in no
time. If my launch isn't where it ought to be, we'll take a junk.
There is bound to be at least one there, probably more. How much
money have you got with you, General?"
"Oh, five or six hundred dollars."
"Well, I always carry some. I wish, though, I had more on me
to-night, though sometimes that's the worst place for your money."
He kept up a continuous comment to divert them, because he was
doubtful in some degree of all of them. He himself needed no
distraction; he had the peculiar resolution of a man who goes into
danger continually in order to make money, the resolution, more
dogged than courage, more suave than courtesy, of a good salesman.
Every thing of the chancey, the romantic, was so far removed from
him, he seemed to operate so definitely by rules that could not go
wrong for him, that he gave an illusion of safety. Megan accepted
safety and was conscious of the General.
She thought nothing coherent about him. His refusal to accept the
conversion she had tried to reveal to him had been followed so
rapidly by his own failure and downfall that she was not able to
strike a balance of feeling. Bitterness, satisfaction and even pity
contended with one another.
The road grew rougher, and they were jolted mercilessly. Megan took
advantage of the movement to turn her head so that beyond the bulk of
Mr. Shultz she saw the General's profile against the window. Seen
only as a dark outline, the humorous lines, the effeminate softness,
the occasional arrogance, all she disliked in him, were not visible;
only the profile detached itself, holding as in carven rock its look
of race, its sureness and purity of line. Listening to Mr. Shultz's
voice, Megan stared at the General with a growing sense of dull and
helpless regret as though she saw before her the now useless charm of
the dead.
The car stopped suddenly. Mr. Shultz let down a window and leaned
out.
"Well, here's the bay anyhow."
The General said nothing. Megan saw an embankment sloping away from
them and at its foot a small landing stretching into an indeterminate
expanse of water. On the shore by the landing a lantern hung on a
bamboo pole. Mr. Shultz peered intently into the darkness.
"Do you see your launch?" asked the General.
"Not a sign. But I see a sampan alongside the landing. It may be
mine."
"Are you sure this is where you ordered it to be?"
"Sure."
The driver stopped his engine and turned their lights off. Their
eyes accustomed themselves to the dark, and they heard the quick,
angry lap of water on the shore and the blowing of the wind. The
General pointed up the shore.
"I see people there and a junk. Perhaps they are loading."
Megan, following the direction he pointed, made out a dark cluster
that might be men and, dimly on the water, the outline of a junk with
three masts, the foremost slanting sharply forward and faintly
illumined from below by a light in the bow.
"Loading rice," said Mr. Shultz. "Some of your internal revenue,
General."
He leaned further out and peered around, then drew his head in again.
"Now let's figure this out," he said. "If the launch is not here,
they have either taken it, or some accident or carelessness is
responsible. But we can't wait around here and I think the junk is
our best chance. The sails are hoisted. In five minutes we can be
aboard. What do you say?"
"We must get aboard," said the General, but when Mr. Shultz opened
the door none of them moved, as though each was reluctant actually to
precipitate any action. Finally Mr. Shultz climbed heavily out, and
the rest followed him. They stood outside the car, exposed once more
to the vast insecurity of the night. Then they started down wide
steps cut in the bank. Megan could see the loom of the junk below
them and a great white eye staring from the bow. It was farther out
from shore than she had at first realized. The General's steps
lagged. Half-way down he stopped and said:
"They are not loading. No one has moved. There hasn't been a sound.
They are soldiers put here to guard the landing. It is no use,
Shultz."
Megan tried to see his face; there was not enough light to make out
his expression, but his voice had been flat, a little breathless. It
showed no excitement, even no fear, because he knew suddenly that
there was no hope for him. From the moment when firing broke out in
the distant city he had been lost. He knew it now.
Megan stepped close to him and whispered, "Don't give up like this.
Don't."
"Oh, it's not so good," said Mr. Shultz. Megan saw him feel his hip
pocket. "But we can't turn back now. They are coming to meet us."
And he leaned toward Megan. "If they start firing before we get
down, you run back and get in the car."
Megan watched the dark group moving along the shore toward the foot
of the steps. In a moment, if they went on down, they would be in
their midst. If they turned and went back they would, she supposed,
be fired on. And where would they go? The group of soldiers stopped
and stood apparently looking up at them.
"Oh, come on," said Mr. Shultz. "They are only Chinese soldiers. I
can wangle this."
They started down once more. At the base of the steps was a narrow
strip of beach. They stood in the light from the lantern, which made
a circle around them like the halo around a dim moon. On its edge
the fifteen or twenty soldiers hesitated, huddled against one
another. One was elbowed by a companion into the circle of light and
Megan saw his bare feet and the shine of his cheek-bones, but having
been forced forward, he only smiled foolishly and tried to step back.
But more were coming, pushing in from the dark and their shifting,
uneasy movements were forming a semicircle on the steps, cutting them
off from all but the landing. Mr. Shultz looked them over.
"Don't let them hear your voice," he said to the General. "Maybe
they won't know you under your cap. Keep an eye on Li."
He took out a cigar and with an ostentatious lack of hurry or concern
lighted it in his cupped hands. He threw the match aside with a
sweep of his arm. Then he stood quite still, puffing smoke from
between his teeth, still holding the cigar. He looked at the
soldiers, taking stock of the barrier they made, stupid, even timid,
but dismaying by mere numbers.
The wind blowing off the water caught loose hairs and whipped them
across Megan's eyes; it made a small but disturbing whistling in her
ears, and filled her with a penetrating chill. Her jaw began to
tremble with cold. Why didn't Mr. Shultz do something?
Mr. Shultz stepped abruptly out on to the landing and leaning over
the side called in a low voice, "Wake up, you louse."
A small boy's head, with startled goggle eyes, rose from the sampan
into the light.
"Well, it isn't my sampan after all," said Mr. Shultz casually
surprised. "But it will have to do. Come on." He leaned down to
cast off the mooring.
The General took Megan's arm and made a step forward, but at the same
moment Captain Li caught her other arm and jerked her away. The
unexpectedness of his movement gave it strength. She stumbled, and
he gave her a push that sent her out on the landing. Then he began
to shout, to wave his hands. Unable to move, she stood watching the
hideous activity of his puppet-like figure. Suddenly he snatched the
General's cap off and his gesture revealed a violence of purpose of
which his feeble body was incapable. His falsetto voice, as though
aware of its impotence, broke into sobs.
"He has gone mad!" cried Megan. She turned to Mr. Shultz and saw him
straighten up, the mooring rope slack in his hand. She was horrified
to see that he looked undecided, puzzled. She had been so confident
he would be able to do something.
A crashing report made her wheel around. The General's arm was still
raised, still holding a revolver, and Captain Li beside him stood
swaying on his feet, poised in the attitude of a man about to catch a
ball, his mouth open, but suddenly and astonishingly silent. As she
watched he crumpled to the ground.
The General stood alone in the ring of soldiers.
Megan for the last time turned to Mr. Shultz. The indecision in his
eyes was terrible. He looked at her almost pleadingly. Then she saw
resolution take form in them. He picked her up under the arms and
dropped her into the sampan. Megan scrambled to her knees and caught
hold of the gunwale, but Mr. Shultz jumped heavily down beside her
and shoved clear of the dock. Megan caught his arm, trying to hold
him back. She clutched at the dock.
"Don't leave him!" she cried.
"No use," said Mr. Shultz. "I've got to get you out of here."
Megan repeated stupidly, "Don't leave him!"
She saw the General standing on the shore in the midst of the
soldiers who had hesitatingly, even apparently good-humoredly, closed
around him, leaving only an opening on the side of the water, where
he could not now escape. No one had touched him. He stood still,
head bent a little forward, searching the darkness for Mr. Shultz,
for Megan, who were abandoning him. The light of the solitary
lantern shone on his hair ruffled into an unaccustomed disorder. He
looked young, fugitive, afraid. She could not see his eyes but she
felt sure they were fixed now on her, she felt they were asking her
for something, for what she had always promised him, her medicine,
her courage, her salvation. Now was her last chance. One word would
give it all to him. One word would save him. But what word? Only a
low cry escaped from her lips, an inarticulate dim signal of one
human creature to another.
But the General must have heard. He lifted his head, suddenly erect,
and Megan saw that with one hand he nervously, but with dignity, with
a final necessity for decorum, smoothed back his ruffled hair.
The small boy poled, the current caught the sampan and drew it from
the shore. There was only a tangle of struggling figures now on the
bank. Some one knocked the lantern into the water and night swirled
over Megan.
The General was gone.
[Illustration: Chapter XXIV headpiece]