“Oh!” Yueh Hua’s eyes danced joyously for one fleeting moment. “Like snaring wild duck.”
He grinned cheerfully, although he felt far from cheerful, and hauled on the line until he could get one foot into the loop to steady him. Standing on the bed of the canal, he found that his shoulders were well above water. He waded several yards from the sampan, pulled the old rush basket over his head—and disappeared.
Through the basket’s many holes he could see quite well. He unfastened his pistol and held it inside the basket clear of the water line.
If anything went wrong with Yueh Hua’s story, he didn’t mean to hesitate. There might have to be two casualties in the ranks of the People’s Army . . .
The two men and the boy reached the canal bank. The boy was a grubby little cross-eyed specimen. The men were shoddily dressed irregulars of the peasant type. They carried old service revolvers.
“We want to see the man, not you,” one of them said.
He seemed to be the senior. The other, deeply pockmarked, stared dumbly at Yueh Hua.
“There’s some mistake!” Yueh Hua stood upright, open-eyed. “There’s no man on my boat!”
“You are a liar!” the boy piped shrilly.
Tony held his breath.
“And you’re an ugly little son of a sow!” Yueh Hua screamed at him.
“What lies have you been telling about me? I’m an honest girl. My mother is sick in Chia-Ting and I’m going to nurse her. If my father heard you, he would cut your tongue out!”
“Chia-Ting! Who is your father?” the man asked.
“My father is head jailer at the prison. Only wait until he hears about this!”
This flight of fancy was sheer genius.
“If you’re going to Chia-Ting,” the boy piped, “what are you doing here?”
“Resting, you mangy little pig! I’ve come a long way.”
She was a virago, a shrill-voiced river girl. Her blue eyes challenged them. But the man who did all the talking still hesitated.
“Ask her—” the boy began.
The man absently gave him a flip on the head which nearly knocked him over.
“We are doing our duty. What is your name?”
“Tsin Gum.”
“There is a reward for a prisoner called Wu Chi Foh. He escaped from Chia-Ting.”
Tony held his breath again.
“Oh!” Yueh Hua’s entire manner changed magically. “My poor father! When anyone escapes he is always punished.”
“It is a big reward. You have seen no one?”
“No one. How much is the reward?”
The man hesitated, glancing at his pock-marked companion. “Fifty dollars.”
Tony made a rapid mental calculation. Fifty dollars (Chinese) added up to about two dollars and fifty cents American. Beyond doubt, his recapture was worth more than that.
“Fifty dollars? Ooh!” Yueh Hua clapped her hands. “And my father would be so glad. What does he look like, this prisoner?”
“He is rather tall, and pretends to be a fisherman. He is really a dangerous criminal. He is very ugly.”
“I will look out for him all the way to Chia-Ting,” Yueh Hua promised. “If I find him, will I get the reward there?”
“You haven’t searched the cabin!” came the boy’s shrill pipe. “And the reward isn’t fifty dollars, it’s—”
His second, unfinished remark had sealed his fate. He saw this just in time. Turning, he ran like the wind across the rape field.
“Look in the cabin,” the senior man directed. Then, meeting a fiery glance from Yueh Hua: “He may have slipped on board,” he added weakly.
His pockmarked assistant scrambled clumsily on to the sampan, one eye on Yueh Hua. He looked in under the low, plaited roof, then climbed quickly back to the bank.
“Nobody there.”
They turned and walked off.
Yueh Hua rowed when Tony thought it safe to move, and nothing occurred on the way down the canal to suggest that they were watched. When they turned into the creek. Tony saw that the left bank was a mere bamboo jungle. But the right bank showed cultivated land away to the distant hills. It was a charming prospect; acres of poppies, the buds just bursting into dazzling whiteness; for opium cultivation had been renewed in a big way by the Communist government. Beyond, was a small orchard of peach trees lovely in a mantle of pink blossom.
“I’ll take the oar, Yueh Hua.”
“As you say, Chi Foh. But it is still dangerous.”
He took the sweep, and made Yueh Hua rest. He would never be able to understand how those small hands could manage the long oar.
She lay down, and almost immediately fell asleep like a tired child.
Chapter VI
From a guest house in the extensive and beautiful grounds of General Huan’s summer residence Dr. Fu Manchu in the grey of dawn watched the approach of two bearers with a stretcher along a winding flower- bordered path. A third man followed. The stretcher was occupied by a motionless figure covered from head to feet with a white sheet.
The young Japanese doctor who had followed, directed the men to a room where there was a rubber-covered couch and to lay the patient on it. This was done, and the bearers, who appeared to be shivering, went away.
And when the Japanese removed the sheet from the motionless body, the action seemed to excite a draft of cold air which sensibly affected the temperature of the room. The man on the stretcher apparently was a dead man. He might have been Burmese, but his normal complexion had become a sort of ghastly grey. The Japanese was feeling for his pulse when Dr. Fu Manchu came in.
“Have you selected a specimen in good condition, Matsukata?”
Matsukata bowed. “Perfect, Excellency. A former dacoit from the Shan hills who was drafted into the Cold Corps for insubordination. He can move as silently as a cat and climb better than any cat. He is one of three who escaped recently and reached the town, creating many undesirable rumors I selected him for his qualities and have prepared him carefully as you see.”
Fu Manchu examined the apparently frozen body, using a stethoscope. He lifted an eyelid and peered into the fishlike eye. He nodded.
“You have prepared him well. This one will serve.” He stood upright, glancing at the Japanese. “You were studying the pupils of my own eyes through the powerful lenses of those glasses you wear.”
“I feared. Excellency, that you had not slept.”
“You are a brilliant diagnostician, Matsukata. Chandu is a treacherous friend. Sometimes it stimulates the subconscious memory but does not induce sleep. I smoked last night and lived through incidents as remote as my first meeting, in Burma, with Mr. Commissioner (now Sir Denis) Nay land Smith.” He suddenly changed the topic. “You were expecting a report from the lodge-master in Tokyo concerning the progress of our Order in Japan?”
“It is not yet to hand. Excellency.”
“No matter. Japan is safe. You may return to the clinic.”
Matsukata bowed deeply and went out . . .
* * *
More than an hour after Yueh Hua had fallen asleep. Tony found a break in the bamboo wall bordering the creek. He had been hailed only twice from the other bank, and they were friendly hails to which he had replied cheerily. He had passed no other craft.
A narrow stream—little more than a brook—joined the creek, its surface choked with wild lilies. The bamboo jungle faded away inland. There was a sort of miniature bay. Farther up he saw banyan and cypress trees.
This looked the very place to hide the sampan until nightfall.