Suddenly from its crown, with a fierce hiss, came a thick spray of liquid that drenched Clifford’s face.
Pure ammonia, stifling, blinding…!
In his agony his pistol fell with a clatter to the ground, and the Chinaman, with a quick thrust of his head, sent him sprawling. Kneeling by his side, Fing-Su thrust his hand into the inside of Clifford’s waistcoat. He felt a crackle—a paper was sewn there.
And then came a diversion; the sound of footsteps, flying down the road—a woman, he saw, with his keen eyes that could penetrate the blackest gloom of night. Instinct saved Joan Bray. As she turned into the lane she stopped suddenly, conscious of the huddled figure on the ground.
“Who is that?” she asked.
At the sound of her voice Fing-Su leapt to his feet with a squeal of rage.
“Miss Bray!”
She recognized him, and for a moment was petrified with fright, then, as he leapt at her, she raised her hand in the desperation of terror and flung the thing she had been carrying. The black ball dropped short of Fing-Su, but fell on the ground at his feet.
There was a dull explosion, and instantly the road, the wood, the very Slaters’ Cottage, were illuminated by the light of the magnesium bomb. In a panic the Chinaman turned and plunged into the wood and a second later was lost to sight. On and on he ran blindly, until he came to a low hedge which separated him from the road. Near at hand a motor-car was drawn up by the side of the road, its lights dimmed. He stopped only long enough to lift out a stout and swooning girl and bundle her on to the roadside, and then the car sped furiously towards Egham.
A quarter of an hour later a search party went out to look for Mabel Narth, and it was Joe Bray who had the fortune to find her. And to comfort her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Fing-Su sat cross-legged on a divan in his over-furnished and over-scented office. The hour was four, and the roofs and steeples of East London showed black against the dawn.
At such an hour do the great men of China grant their audiences, and Fing-Su, in his flowered silk robe, his silken trousers and white felt boots, wore upon his head the insignia of a rank to which he had no title.
Between his lips was a long, thick-stemmed pipe with a microscopic bowl, but it was tobacco that he was smoking.
A heavy-eyed little Chinese girl-woman sat on her heels in a corner of the room, watching him and ready to replenish the pipe or tea cup which stood at his elbow. Squatting at his feet was an unhealthy-looking Chinaman in European dress, his big derby hat deposited on the floor by his side.
Fing-Su lifted the handleless tea cup from the low table by his side and drank noisily.
“Of all men in this evil country I have sought out you, Li Fu,” he said, setting down the cup. “I shall pay you well and there will be a great cumskaw in addition. Your name has been spoken to me because of your boldness and because you know this town so much better than I, who have spent all my years at college.”
He used the phrase which literally means ‘Forest of Pencils.’
If Li Fu felt any uneasiness, the inscrutable, pock-marked face did not show it.
“There is a law in this country which is very hard on foreigners,” he said. “By such a law I may be taken and put upon a ship and sent to China. Already I have spent three months in a prison where no man can speak to another. And, Fing-Su, in China I am a dead man, as you know, for Tuchun of Lanchow has sworn to hang my head in a basket over the gate of the city.”
Fing-Su smoked delicately, drawing at the tasteless tobacco and sending forth big blue rings of smoke to the scarlet-raftered ceiling.
“All China is not Lanchow,” he said, “and there will be changes. Who knows that you may not be Tuchun yourself some day? My friends will be well rewarded. There will be ‘squeeze’ for you, not ‘cash’ or copper or mex dollar, but gold. I know a place where there is a statue made of gold…”
He spoke of Urga, that Mongolian Mecca, where shrines are of solid gold and there is a great golden figure of Buddha, and in the cellars of the living Buddha a treasure beyond computation.
Li Fu listened apparently unmoved, his mind vacillating between the ungilded gates of Pentonville Prison and the reward he was offered. He was not a poor man as Chinamen went, but his compatriot had offered him an immediate fortune.
“You have the felicity of owning a white wife,” Fing-Su went on in his thin voice. “It would be a simple matter and none would know.”
Li Fu looked up.
“Why do you come to me? For I am not a member of your tong. And you have hundreds of men who are like slaves to you!”
Fing-Su tapped the ashes from his pipe, declined with a gesture its replenishment, and sat back in the silken cushions behind him.
“The Sage has said, ‘The slave must be ordered and the master will be served,’” he quoted. “I cannot stand behind each man and say ‘Do this.’ If I said, ‘Li Fu has offended me, let him die,’ you would be dead, because it is easy to take life. But in this other man I require wisdom and cunning or nothing will save my face.”
Li Fu considered the matter, twiddling his thumbs, his nimble mind busy. This was something more profitable than the smuggling of cocaine, his staple industry, a quicker way to fortune than the rake-off of coppers from a forbidden game of fantan. His wife, who was not exactly white but white enough, was very competent to play the part which his employer had assigned, had indeed already rented the premises which he had intended should mask a more nefarious trade than millinery.
Fing-Su knew of that projected showroom in Fitzroy Square; he knew of Li Fu’s connection, for the secrets of the little Chinese underworld came to him in the shape of gossip.
“You will pay first,” said Li Fu, and there followed a gentle but conventional wrangle, for no two Chinamen have ever struck a bargain on the first price offered.
At the end Li Fu was dismissed.
The man who entered from the little ante-room was not unused to being kept waiting by his employer, but the interview had lasted longer than he expected, and Major Spedwell was tired and not in the best of tempers.
“Well, have you settled things?” he asked shortly.
Fing-Su surveyed him through half-closed eyes.
“Yes; it was inevitable,” he said.
“You think you will get the girl without fuss? I don’t.” Spedwell sank down into a chair and lit a cigar. “You’re monkeying with a big thing, and I’m not so sure that even now we’re going to get through the next twelve hours without trouble,” he said. “Lynne has pulled in Scotland Yard–-“
“Scotland Yard!” murmured the other with a derisive smile.
“There’s nothing to grin about,” snapped Spedwell. “These birds, when they move at all, move quickly. I’ve been shadowed all day.”
Fing-Su sat up suddenly.
“You?”
Spedwell nodded.
“I thought that would interest you. And I’ll tell you something else. Miss Bray is pretty certain to be shadowed. Leggat has spilt more than we know—what are you going to do about him?” he asked abruptly.
Fing-Su shrugged his silken shoulders.
“Let him slide,” he said indifferently.
Spedwell chewed at the cigar, his eyes upon the whitening windows.
“The Yard are up and doing,” he said significantly. “That fellow Lynne captured—do you think he talked?”
“Possibly.” Impatience and weariness were in Fing-Su’s voice. “At any rate, I have decided to deal with him in the manner you know. This country stifles me!” He rose and began walking up and down the room. “So many things would be simple—in China! Lynne—where would he be? A headless body carried out and left in the Gobi Desert—or, wearing a soldier’s uniform, in some old moat. This woman interests me.”