The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (60 page)

“I brought you here that you might help me balk Koshinga, expose him, destroy his influence with the priests.”

“You didn’t say anything of that in Peking. You were to expose him yourself, without our help. How are we to help you? But why waste words? You are yourself a follower of Koshinga, one of the Lesser Rulers of the Ko Lao Hui.”

Sha Feng was watching the two with contemplative eyes that said nothing. Chinese immobility is justly famed, but I didn’t believe that he could have concealed his surprize at Hazard’s abrupt denunciation of Blalock, if it had been equal to mine. As for Blalock, his thin hands clenched convulsively and a tremor ran over his body but he continued to meet Hazard’s eyes steadily.

“Even if that’s true—” he began.

“And you know who we are,” Hazard continued relentlessly. “You know Koshinga honors us by regarding us as his most dangerous enemies. Knowing that, you’ve brought us here, into his power and yours. You, already a traitor to your race, a renegade, the lowest type of man—you’ve led us into a trap.”

Now, there were reasons which needn’t be gone into deeply why I found it hard to accept that explanation of Blalock’s conduct. The affair was too complicated; the bait had been laid too far from the trap; and unless Blalock was an artist at deception, his own manner had heretofore cleared him of that suspicion.

I believed that his hatred of Koshinga was real; but now, to my astonishment, his face became almost a confession of guilt. A look of shame came over it; he faltered, hesitated, seemed on the point of confessing, and then—

Then that happened for which I shall always believe Hazard was hopefully waiting. Chance might have favored him, as he modestly directs me to say that it did. But I shall always believe that, with his knowledge of what was behind that door, he had taken his position directly in front of it and commenced conversation in hopes of just such an interruption as occurred.

The door opened inward. For an instant, against a stronger light than that of the room in which we stood, a lofty-browed, brutal-jawed Chinaman in a blue mandarin gown stood revealed.

What that Chinaman had made of our low voices, or what he expected to see when he opened the door, I do not know; but I know that at the sight of us his face became convulsed with astonishment and terror. And he started to slam the door shut again.

But Hazard turned and leaped forward with lightning quickness and caught the Chinaman by the throat.

When Hazard caught him the Chinaman was already retreating as swiftly as he could. The momentum of Hazard’s leap hastened that movement and for an instant they struggled silently inside the door. The Chinaman was a large man, appeared powerful, and there was no telling but that he had companions. I sprang to assist Hazard but the Chinaman reached the door with his foot and it was slammed shut in my face.

I threw myself against it but it held fast. Behind it, the sound of the struggle continued; some one was thrown violently against the wall. Then, strained breathing, the sound of torn cloth, a swift rush of feet, an imprecation in Chinese.

Something impinged against the other side of the wall—seemed to sink into that wall and cling there. Immediately preceding that sound, a muffled pistol shot.

“Hazard!” I called as loudly as I dared, with my lips close to the door. “Hazard!”

“O.K., Partridge,” and it seemed to me there was more of exultation in Hazard’s voice than I’d ever heard in it before. “I had to shoot—he had a knife. In a minute!”

But it was several minutes before he came out again.

I waited without another word, for enough and more than enough noise had already been made, and I had a not unreasonable feeling that disaster was upon us. Besides, I was so altogether bewildered that intelligent speech seemed impossible. Here was Blalock, who had practically confessed by his manner his treacherous scheme to betray us to Koshinga; here was Sha Feng, cleverest of all Chinese secret agents, who seemed not even annoyed at that revelation; and there was Hazard, my companion, who had apparently walked with open eyes into a trap from which there seemed to be no hope of escape.

True, we might seize and overpower Blalock before he had a chance to complete his betrayal, but— And at that point I was still further puzzled to observe that Blalock had his ear pressed to the wall behind which was Hazard, and that by his face he was anxious as I was to see Hazard come out again.

No, there was more in the situation than I could even imagine. For instance, I still couldn’t rid myself of the conviction that Blalock’s hatred of Koshinga was real. But why, then, was he serving Koshinga with such unnecessary zeal? Blalock’s repeated statement of his intention to expose the falsity of Koshinga’s claims to the priests still rang true, in spite of the evidence against him. And if Blalock were serving the Ko Lao Hui, why had the Ko Lao Hui attacked him, why had the village of Kan Chow been warned against dealing with us, why—why—why?

My brain was growing muddled with these unanswerable questions; and it was a relief when the door in the partition between the two cellars opened again and Hazard came through it.

He came out swiftly and silently, and closed the door carefully behind him.

I had just time to notice that there was a gleam of triumph in his eyes that matched the exultation I had heard in his voice, when—

On the floor above our heads there sounded the
pat, pat, patting
footsteps of many running, slippered men. Of men in the chamber which we had just left, making for the head of the stairway which we had just descended. Of men who ran otherwise in an ominous silence, Ko Lao Hui beyond doubt, an overwhelming number of them.

Blalock’s trap was sprung. And once in the hands of the Ko Lao Hui and of the master of the Ko Lao Hui, we needn’t hope even for the mercy of a swift death. We had fought against Koshinga too long; we had balked him too often—and besides there was information he would want of us.

Death by
lingchi,
the slicing process; that would be our end, unless Koshinga had driven his mind still deeper into the pits of infernal imaginings than the ancient Chinese, and contrived worse torture. But that would not be if we died fighting; and there was one that I suddenly lusted to take with us.

The traitor, the renegade, he who had brought us to this pass—Blalock, who had actually turned and started toward the stairway, to meet his confederates. I raised my gun against him with a hot tingling of rage. I called to him, for with my finger on the trigger I found that I couldn’t shoot even him in the back.

“Blalock, —— you!”

And then occurred a thing that was paralyzing in its unexpectedness; for Hazard, felinely quick, reached me with one stride and thrust my hand down with an iron grip.

“No!” he hissed. “No! Let me handle this. Do nothing.”

“What in the name of Heaven!”

SUDDENLY Hazard released me, ran swiftly to Blalock, seized him by the arm and whirled him around and thrust into Blalock’s unsteady hand his own revolver.

“Take this. It will help you. Do what you intended to do. Surrender us.”

Then Hazard turned and in the same insistent whisper surcharged with will-power ordered Sha Feng, who had also raised his gun, to put it down again. Sha Feng hesitated and obeyed with a mildly puzzled look on his face.

And Blalock also seemed puzzled. He took the weapon that was forced upon him; but his face expressed absolute disbelief of the situation. Hazard had to order him to raise the weapon and cover us with it.

Hazard then sprang back to my side, and forced my revolver down again—I had involuntarily raised it—so it would seem that Blalock had caught Sha Feng and me in the act of drawing. It was as if Hazard were arranging a tableau.

It wasn’t the first time in my experience with him that Hazard had astonished me. I myself claim to be no stupider than most men; I can usually see the immediate cause of an effect, the wheel within a wheel in human affairs. But that’s logic; and Hazard added imagination, the capacity to judge the third and the fourth and the
n
th wheel, the underlying reason for things.

So I’d seen him snatch victory from defeat, seen him dive into the abyss of despair and bring up hope. But this was different. Now he had flung away hope, played into the hands of our betrayer, surrendered himself and Sha Feng and me. It was incredible!

Down the stairs came a rush of Chinese, red-sashed Ko Lao Hui with fighting faces, part of the inner guard which Koshinga had long been assembling for the rallying-point of his army. It didn’t astonish me any to find one that I knew, devil-faced Shen Yun of Sian-fu. It was he who had condemned the children of Kwang-Ho to die because that town had rebelled against Koshinga’s extortion. Hazard and I had defeated him in that design, and hotly indeed he hated us, with a hatred that was exceeded only by that of his master, Koshinga.

When I saw him, my revolver hand jerked up again; but Hazard, standing a little behind me, whispered imperatively in my ear:

“Let be. I’ve a reason. Let be.”

And because I still trusted Hazard, against all evidence, I again obeyed him.

A moment later the crowd of Ko Lao Hui surged over Blalock and well-nigh swept us off our feet, a flood of angrily jabbering men. Knives flashed and revolvers were raised against us; but Shen Yun’s coldly gloating voice held them in check.

“Koshinga has told me his will concerning these two white men, who are to die no ordinary deaths. Perhaps the secondary devil (foreign devil’s friend) who is with them also has knowledge which will be useful to him who rules. All three will wait the judgment of Koshinga. There is a safe prison in the front of the chamber above.”

Well, that was as I had expected. We were seized and searched roughly and thoroughly, stripped of everything but our clothing, and hustled up the stairs. It was while we were ascending those stairs that I heard part of a swift passage of words between Shen Yun and Blalock that was fresh food for my bewilderment.

“And you also,” Shen Yun had turned angrily upon Blalock. “Koshinga will also be glad to see your face.”

“He will be more glad of the gifts I brought him,” returned Blalock in perfect Chinese. “The two whom Koshinga has so often failed to trap and the other who is no less important.”

“That is true; but all three are of less importance than the thing you stole. You know the reward for those that betray Koshinga’s trust.”

“I know it well,” and, looking back, I saw that Blalock’s tense, overwrought features were distorted in a rather ghastly smile. “But it is you who have yet to learn the depth of Koshinga’s cunning. Tell me, how better to win the confidence of these men than by seeming to betray Koshinga? And why should I come here, where Koshinga will be in an hour’s time, if I have betrayed him?”

Truly there seemed no answer to that question; and to me no answer was needed. It wasn’t Koshinga whom Blalock had betrayed—but what did Shen Yun accuse Blalock of stealing? Was it the thing that Blalock carried in the bosom of his shirt, which felt like a roll of parchment or paper, and which Blalock seemed so desperately afraid of losing? Which indeed Hazard had admitted to be at the bottom of his reason for following Blalock?

“It is true that you have done Koshinga a service,” admitted Shen Yun doubtfully, “and it may be that your disgrace was planned to that end. You are free then until Koshinga comes; but you will not leave this place.”

The pale gleam of the last dawn that I ever expected to see was creeping into the great hall of the temple. Hazard and I were dragged from the head of the stairs past the two great stone images. I managed a glimpse at them over my shoulder, and the face of the larger of the two was the face that had glared at us in the House of the Myriad Lights; the face upon the medallion Blalock had shown me; the misshapen and remorseless face of Koshinga.

To the right of that image, kowtowing to Koshinga in the ritual attitude of devotion, was the Chinese conception of Lao-Tse, founder of the Taoist religion, who, in the belief of many, was also the first of the living Buddhas. With bowed head Lao-Tse, preacher of uprightness and mercy, was offering Koshinga a sword!

Ancient, ancient, very ancient looked both of these images; it hardly needed the evidence of the excavated temple to prove them to be centuries old. A proper stage-setting indeed for the long prophesied marvel which was now to come to pass—the appearance of the “dragon with words in his mouth,” Heaven’s messenger to Asia.

Again I thought of the man, long dead, who had planned all this, building this temple, fashioning the images, sowing the wordy seed of prophecy, weaving a web of horror that bade fair to extend over all time and throughout all the world, and I’m afraid my own spirit bowed down in fear, if not in reverence, to that arch-type of inflexible purpose, the first Koshinga, who had also fashioned beforehand the last of his line, the man-devil whose coming we waited.

XI

BUT for all that deep-seated fear, the surface of my mind seethed with a rushing, passionate curiosity. The meaning of life is to learn; and I shall never die with a question in my heart if there be time for my lips to phrase it. No sooner had the door of our prison-room closed behind Hazard and Sha Feng and me then I turned upon Hazard swiftly.

“But why, Hazard? Why in the name of sanity—”

“S-sh!” warned Hazard. “It’s not safe. We’ll be heard.”

That was very probably true, for the room into which we had been flung opened directly off the audience room of the temple; and a watch was quite sure to be placed on the door although it was heavily barred besides. But by that time a certain smoldering anger at being kept in ignorance concerning so many things had turned into recklessness.

“What does it matter? We’re done for any way. When Koshinga comes—”

“When Koshinga comes, he’ll be busy with the priests, who you remember are to arrive this morning. As for being done for, why I personally never felt more alive. Nor,” he whispered, “in all our war against Koshinga did I ever feel more hopeful.”

And it was at that remark that my anger against Hazard passed into a certain pity for him.