She stopped. Tony found her hand, and held it. “What then, Moon Flower?”
“My mother died. The news nearly killed me, too, for I worshiped her. I came back. Oh, Chi Foh, I found everything so changed! My poor father was still distracted by the loss of my mother, and the Communist authorities had begun to persecute him, because he openly defied their orders. A deeply religious Scotsman can never bow to Communism.”
Moon Flower opened her cigarette case, but changed her mind and closed it again. “He wouldn’t let me stay at the mission. He insisted that I return to my aunt in Hong Kong and wait there until he joined me. He knew the Communists meant to close the mission, but he wasn’t ready to go.”
“So you went back to Hong Kong?”
“Yes. We had two letters. Then—silence. We tried to find out what had happened. Our letters to Lao Tse-Mung were never answered. At last—and the shock nearly drove me mad—came news that the mission had been burned down, that my father was believed to have died in the fire. My aunt couldn’t stop me. I started at once—”
Tony wanted to say, “How glad I am you did,” but was afraid to break Moon Flower’s train of thought, and so said nothing.
“I went to Lung Chang, to my uncle’s house. I asked him why he had not answered my letters—and he told me. He had never received them! He tried to make me understand that China was now a police state, that no one’s correspondence was safe. He con firmed the news that the mission had been burned. My father was too well loved by the people for such a thing to happen, but young fools from outlying districts who had submitted to injections of the Communist poison were called in to create a riot. What Lao Tse-Mung called ‘the usual routine’. What had become of my father he didn’t know. He believed he was alive, but under arrest.”
Moon Flower, now, was what, in any other girl, he would have described as “wound up”—fired with enthusiasm and indignation.
“You see, Chi Foh, the Chinese farm worker will not submit to collective farming. My father knew that customs a thousand years old can’t suddenly be changed by a Soviet-trained overlord. He helped them in their troubles, helped them to escape from this tyranny if they wanted to leave their farms, where they starved, and look for employment elsewhere. So—he was marked down.”
She opened her cigarette case again, and this time took one out and allowed Tony to light it.
“My uncle Tse-Mung advised caution, and patience. But I wasn’t in the mood for either. Wearing a suit of peasant clothes belonging to Mai Cha, but taking some money of my own, I slipped out early one morning and made my way, as a Chinese working girl, to what had been my home. Oh, Chi Foh!”
Moon Flower dropped her cigarette in a tray and lay back with closed eyes.
“I think I understand,” he said—and it was said sincerely.
“Nothing was left, but ashes and broken lumber. All our furniture, everything we possessed, all the medical stores, had been burned, stolen, or destroyed. I was walking away from the ruins, when I had the good luck to see an old woman I remembered, one of my father’s patients. I knew she was a friend; but I thought she was going to faint when she recognized me. She didn’t, and she gave me news which saved me from complete collapse.”
“What was it. Moon Flower?”
“My father had not died. He had been arrested as a spy and taken away! She advised me to try to get information at a summer villa not far from Chia-Ting, owned by Huan Tsung-Chao, Communist governor of the province. She said he was a good and just man. Her daughter, Shun-Hi, who had been a nurse in the mission hospital, was employed at the villa. I remembered Shun-Hi. And so, of course, I made my way up to Chia-Ting. But my money was running short. When at last I found the villa, a beautiful place surrounded by acres of gardens, I didn’t quite know what to do.”
Tony was learning more and more about the intrepid spirit of his little companion on the sampan with every word she spoke. She was a treasure above price, and he found it hard to believe that such a pearl had been placed in his keeping.
“There were many servants,” Moon Flower went on, “and some of them didn’t live in the villa. I watched near the gate by which these girls came out in the evening. And at last I saw Shun-Hi. She walked towards the town, and I followed her until I thought we were alone. Then, I spoke to her. She recognized me at once, began to cry, and nearly went down on her knees.”
Moon Flower took her smoldering cigarette from the ash-tray and went on smoking.
“But I found out what I wanted to know. My father was alive! He was under house arrest and working in a laboratory attached to the villa. The Master was a guest of Huan Tsung-Chao! I had very little money left and nothing but my gratitude to offer Shun-Hi, but I begged her to try to let my father know that I was waiting for a message from him.”
“Did she do it?”
“Yes, good soul, she did. I shared her room that night and wrote a letter to my father. And the next evening she smuggled a note out to me. It said, first, ‘Bum this when you have read it, then go to Lao Tse-Mung who will get you to Hong Kong. Apply there to British authorities. Tell them the facts.’ You see, Chi Foh, I have memorized it! My father wrote that he was in the hands of Dr. Fu Manchu, adding, ‘Now known as The Master,’ He told me that at all costs I must get away from, in his own words, ‘that devil incarnate’. He warned me not to let anyone even suspect my identity.”
“Moon Flower, my dearest, whatever did you do next?”
“I went down to the river to see if I could find someone to take me part of the way. I had had several free rides by land and water on my journey from Lung Chang, and I still had enough to pay something. But I had no luck at all . . . and the police began to watch me. Finally, I was arrested as a suspicious character and thrown into jail—”
“That awful jail!”
“Yes, Chi Foh. They wouldn’t believe the story I told them. It was the same story that I told you. They punished me—”
“The swine!” Tony burst out. “It was Soong?”
“Yes. I screamed.”
“I heard you.”
The blue eyes were turned to him. “How could you hear me? Where were you?”
“I was a prisoner, too! And so I heard you scream in that ghastly place.”
“So did Wu Chung-Lo, the prison governor, a friend of my father’s. He came to see me. He released me. He could do no more. It was only just in time. As I was creeping away, a car passed close by me. The passenger was a man wearing a cloak and a military cap. In the moonlight his eyes shone like emeralds. They seemed to be turned in my direction, and I shuddered. I knew it was The Master—the man my father had called a devil incarnate. You know what happened after that, Chi Foh . . .”
“And I thank God it did happen, Moon Flower—but you’re not really called Moon Flower, after all?”
Moon Flower drew nearer to him. “Don’t look so sad, dearest, I am. I was born on the night of a new moon, and to please my mother, my father agreed to name me Jean Yueh Hua. Oddly enough, I love the moon.”
“I know you do.” An ivory vision arose in Tony’s memory. “Will you marry me on the next day there’s a new moon?” Moon Flower took his hand in both her own.
“I’ll marry you, Chi Foh—but on the first day my father is free again . . .”
* * *
Dr. Fu Manchu sat in his favorite chair behind the lacquer desk. It was early dawn. But only one lamp relieved the gloom: a green-shaded lamp on the desk. This cast a sort of phantom light over the yellow-robed figure. Fu Manchu lay back, his elbows resting on the arms of the chair, the tips of his bony fingers pressed together, his eyes half closed, but glinting like emeralds where the light touched them.