“I think we should start for Lung Chang at once,” she advised. “The fields are deserted now, and soon dusk will come. I believe I can find the way if we go back a mile or so nearer to Niu-fo-Tu.”
Tony loved her more and more every hour they were together. Her keen intelligence made her a wonderful companion. Her beauty, which he had been so slow to recognize, had completely conquered him.
“Let’s wait a little while longer, Yueh Hua,” he said yearningly. “I want to tell you how much I love you.” He took her in his arms. “Kiss me while I try . . .”
* * *
He tried so hard that dusk was very near when Yueh Hua sighed, “My dear one, it is time we left here!”
Tony reluctantly agreed. They pushed the boat out again to the canal and swung around to head back toward Niu-fo-Tu. He was so happy in this newly found delight whose name was Moon Flower that the dangers ahead seemed trivial.
Tony had dipped the blade of the oar and was about to begin work when he hesitated, lifted the long sweep, and listened.
Someone was running down to the canal, forcing a way through undergrowth, and at the same time uttering what sounded like breathless sobs! It was a man, clearly enough, and a man in a state of blind panic.
“Chi Foh!” Yueh Hua spoke urgently. “Be quick! We must get away! Do you hear it?”
“Yes. I hear it. But I don’t understand.”
A gasping cry came. The man evidently had sighted the boat. “Save me! Help, boatman!”
Then, Tony heard him fall, heard his groans. He swung the boat into the bank. “Take the oar, Yueh Hua, while I see what’s wrong here.”
Yueh Hua grasped him. “Chi Foh! You are mad! It may be a trap. We know we are followed—”
Gently, he broke away. “My dearest—give me my gun—you—you know where it is. If this man is in distress I’m not going to desert him.”
From the locker Yueh Hua brought the automatic. She was trembling excitedly. Tony knew that it was for his safety, not for her own, that she trembled. He kissed her, took the pistol, and jumped ashore.
Groans, muffled hysterical words, led him to the spot. He found a semi-dressed figure writhing in a tangle of weeds two to three feet high, a short, thickset man of Slavonic type, and although not lacking in Mongolian characteristics, definitely not Chinese. He was clutching a bulging briefcase. He looked up.
“A hundred dollars to take me to Huang Ko-Shu!” he groaned. “Be quick!”
Tony dragged the man to his feet. He discovered that his hands were feverishly hot. “Come on board. I can take you part of the way.”
He half carried the sufferer, still clutching his leather case, on to the sampan.
“Chi Foh, you are mad!” was Yueh Hua’s greeting. “What are we to do with him?”
“Put him ashore somewhere near Niu-fo-Tu. He’s very ill.”
He dragged the unwanted passenger under the mat roof and took to the oar.
But, again, he hesitated—although only for a moment.
There were cries, running footsteps, swiftly approaching from the direction of the hidden village . . .
Chapter IX
Tony drove the sampan at racing speed. He could only hope that they had been out of sight before the party evidently in pursuit of their passenger had reached the canal.
The banks were deserted. Moonlight transformed poppy fields into seas of silver. When, drawing near to Niu-fo-Tu, grain succeeded poppy, the prospect became even more fairy-like. It was a phantom journey, never to be forgotten, through phantom landscapes. Willows bordering the canal were white ghosts on one bank, black ghosts on the other.
Yueh Hua crouched beside him. The man they had rescued had apparently gone mad. He struck out right and left in his delirium, slapping his face and hands as if tormented by a swarm of mosquitoes.
“Chi Foh,” Yueh Hua whispered, “he is very ill. Could it be—” she hesitated—”that he has the plague? “
“No, no! don’t think such things. He shows no signs of having the plague. Take the oar for a few minutes, my dearest. He must want water.”
“Oh, Chi Foh!”
But Tony clasped her reassuringly and ducked in under the low roof. He was far from confident, himself, about what ailed the mystery passenger, but common humanity demanded that he should do his best for him.
The man sipped water eagerly; he was forever trying to drive away imaginary flying things which persecuted him. His head rested on his bulky briefcase. His hectic mutterings were in a language which Tony didn’t know. To questions in Chinese he made no reply. Once only he muttered, “Huang-ko-Shu.”
Tony returned to Yueh Hua. “Tell me, where is Huang-ko-Shu?”
“It is on the Yangtse River—many miles below Niu-fo-Tu.”
“I told him I would take him part of the way,” Tony murmured. “We must put him ashore this side of Niu-fo-Tu.”
“I wish we had never found him,” Yueh Hua whispered, giving up the oar to Tony . . .
They retraced the route by which they had come. Tony insisted on doing most of the rowing, and was getting near to exhaustion.
The countryside showed deserted.
“Let me take the oar,” Yueh Hua said gently, but insistently. “There is not far to go now and I can manage it easily. You must, Chi Foh.”
He gave in. He watched Yueh Hua at the long sweep, swinging easily to its movement with the lithe grace of a ballerina. What a girl!
Tony found it hard to keep awake. The man they had rescued had stopped raving; become quite silent. The gentle movement of the boat, the rhythmic swish of the long oar, did their hypnotic work. He fell asleep . . .
“Chi Foh!” Yueh Hua’s voice. “Wake up. I am afraid!”
Tony was wide-awake before she ceased speaking. He drew her down to him. She was trembling. “Where are we? What’s happened?”
He looked around in the darkness. The boat was tied up in a silent backwater. Through the motionless leaves of an overhanging tree which looked like a tree carved in ebony, he could see the stars.
“We are just above the place where we tied up before, Chi Foh. You remember the footbridge over the canal? There’s a path from the bridge which leads to a main road—the road to Lung Chang.” Yueh Hua caught her breath. “But . . . the man is dead!”
Tony got to his feet. He had a flashlamp in the locker; groped his way to it, found it, and shone its light on to the man who lay there.
Beyond doubt, Yueh Hua was right. Their passenger was dead. Yueh Hua knew that Tony had an automatic pistol, but he had hidden the flashlamp. He wondered if she would say something about it, tried to think of an explanation. But she said nothing.
Tony searched the man’s scanty clothing, but found no clue to his identity. In a body belt, which he unfastened, there was a considerable sum of money, but nothing else. The big portfolio was locked, and there was no key. So far he had gone when Yueh Hua called out:
“Throw him overboard, Chi Foh! He may have died of plague!”
But Tony, who had a smattering of medical knowledge, knew that he had not died of plague. Of what he had died he didn’t know, but he did know that it wasn’t of plague.
“Don’t worry, Yueh Hua. I told you before, there’s no question of plague. I must try to find out who he was.”
He went to work on the lock of the briefcase and ultimately succeeded in breaking it. He found it stuffed with correspondence in Russian, a language of which he knew nothing, much of it from the Kremlin and some from the Peiping Embassy; this fact clearly indicated by the embossed headings of the stationery. The man was a Soviet agent!