The Pagan Madonna

When Ling Foo went forth with his business in his pack he always closed the shop. Here in upper Woosung Road it would not have paid him to hire a clerk. His wife, obedient creature though she was, spoke almost no pidgin – business – English; and besides that, she was a poor bargainer.

It was hard by noon when he let himself into the shop. The first object he sought was his metal pipe. Two puffs, and the craving was satisfied. He took up his counting rack and slithered the buttons back and forth. He had made three sales at the Astor and two at the Palace, which was fair business, considering the times.

A shadow fell across the till top. Ling Foo raised his slanted eyes. His face was like a graven Buddha’s, but there was a crackling in his ears as of many fire-crackers. There he stood – the man with the sluing walk! Ling Foo still wore a queue, so his hair could not very well stand on end.

“You speak English.”

It was not a question; it was a statement.

Ling Foo shrugged.

“Can do.”

“Cut out the pidgin. Your neighbour says you speak English fluently. At Moy’s tea-house restaurant they say that you lived in California for several years.”

“Twelve,” said Ling Foo with a certain dry humour.

“Why didn’t you admit me last night?”

“Shop closed.”

“Where is it?”

“Where is what?” asked the merchant.

“The string of glass beads you found on the floor last night.”

A sense of disaster rolled over the Oriental. Had he been overhasty in ridding himself of the beads? Patience! Wait a bit! Let the stranger open the door to the mystery.

“Glass beads?” he repeated, ruminatively.

“I will give you ten gold for them.”

Ha! Now they were getting somewhere. Ten gold! Then those devil beads had some worth outside a jeweller’s computations? Ling Foo smiled and spread his yellow hands.

“I haven’t them.”

“Where are they?”

The Oriental loaded his pipe and fired it.

“Where is the man who stumbled in here last night?” he countered.

“His body is probably in the Yang-tse by now,” returned Cunningham, grimly.

He knew his Oriental. He would have to frighten this Chinaman badly, or engage his cupidity to a point where resistance would be futile.

There was a devil brooding over his head. Ling Foo felt it strangely. His charms were in the far room. He would have to fend off the devil without material aid, and that was generally a hopeless job. With that twist of Oriental thought which will never be understood by the Occidental, Ling Foo laid down his campaign.

“I found it, true. But I sold it this morning.”

“For how much?”

“Four Mex.”

Cunningham laughed. It was actually honest laughter, provoked by a lively sense of humour.

“To whom did you sell it, and where can I find the buyer?”

Ling Foo picked up the laughter, as it were, and gave his individual quirk to it.

“I see,” said Cunningham, gravely.

“So?”

“Get that necklace back for me and I will give you a hundred gold.”

“Five hundred.”

“You saw what happened last night.”

“Oh, you will not beat in my head,” Ling Foo declared, easily. “What is there about this string of beads that makes it worth a hundred gold – and life worth nothing?”

“Very well,” said Cunningham, resignedly. “I am a secret agent of the British Government. That string of glass beads is the key to a code relating to the uprisings in India. The loss of it will cost a great deal of money and time. Bring it back here this afternoon, and I will pay down five hundred gold.”

“I agree,” replied Ling Foo, tossing his pipe into the alcove. “But no one must follow me. I do not trust you. There is nothing to prevent you from robbing me in the street and refusing to pay me. And where will you get five hundred gold? Gold has vanished. Even the leaf has all but disappeared.”

Cunningham dipped his hand into a pocket, and magically a dozen double eagles rolled and vibrated upon the counter, sending into Ling Foo’s ears that music so peculiar to gold. Many days had gone by since he had set his gaze upon the yellow metal. His hand reached down – only to feel – but not so quickly as the white hand, which scooped up the coin trickily, with the skill of a prestidigitator.

“Five hundred gold, then. But are you sure you can get the beads back?”

Ling Foo smiled.

“I have a way. I will meet you in the lobby of the Astor House at five”; and he bowed with Oriental courtesy.

“Agreed. All aboveboard, remember, or you will feel the iron hand of the British Government.”

Ling Foo doubted that, but he kept this doubt to himself.

“I warn you, I shall go armed. You will bring the gold to the Astor House. If I see you after I depart – ”

“Lord love you, once that code key is in my hands you can go to heaven or the devil, as you please! We live in rough times, Ling Foo.”

“So we do. There is a stain on the floor, about where you stand. It is the blood of a white man.”

“What would you, when a comrade attempts to deceive you?”

“At five in the lobby of the Astor House. Good day,” concluded Ling Foo, fingering the buttons on his counting rack.

Cunningham limped out into the cold sunshine. Ling Foo shook his head. So like a boy’s, that face! He shuddered slightly. He knew that a savage devil lay ready behind that handsome mask – he had seen it last night. But five hundred gold – for a string of glass beads!

Ling Foo was an honest man. He would pay you cash for cash in a bargain. If he overcharged you that was your fault, but he never sold you imitations on the basis that you would not know the difference. If he sold you a Ming jar – for twice what it was worth in the great marts – experts would tell you that it was Ming. He had some jade of superior quality – the translucent deep apple-green. He never carried it about; he never even spoke of it unless he was sure that the prospective customer was wealthy.

His safe was in a corner of his workshop. An American yegg would have laughed at it, opened it as easily as a ripe peach; but in this district it was absolute security. Ling Foo was obliged to keep a safe, for often he had valuable pearls to take care of, sometimes to put new vigour in dying lustre, sometimes to peel a pearl on the chance that under the dull skin lay the gem.

He trotted to the front door and locked it; then he trotted into his workshop, planning. If the glass beads were worth five hundred, wasn’t it likely they would be worth a thousand? If this man who limped had stuck to the hundred Ling Foo knew that he would have surrendered eventually. But the ease with which the stranger made the jump from one to five convinced Ling Foo that there could be no harm in boosting five to ten. If there was a taint of crookedness anywhere, that would be on the other side. Ling Foo knew where the beads were, and he would transfer them for one thousand gold. Smart business, nothing more than that. He had the whip hand.

Out of his safe he took a blackwood box, beautifully carved, Cantonese. Headbands, earrings, rings, charms, necklaces, tomb ornaments, some of them royal, all of them nearly as ancient as the hills of Kwanlun, from which most of them had been quarried – jade. He trickled them from palm to palm and one by one returned the objects to the box. In the end he retained two strings of beads so alike that it was difficult to discern any difference. One was Kwanlun jade, royal loot; the other was a copy in Nanshan stone. The first was priceless, worth what any fool collector was ready to pay; the copy was worth perhaps a hundred gold. Held to the light, there was a subtle difference; but only an expert could have told you what this difference was. The royal jade did not catch the light so strongly as the copy; the touch of human warmth had slightly dulled the stone.

Ling Foo transferred the copy to a purse he wore attached to his belt under the blue jacket. The young woman would never be able to resist the jade. She would return the glass instantly. A thousand gold, less the cost of the jade! Good business!

But for once his Oriental astuteness overreached, as has been seen. And to add to his discomfiture, he never again saw the copy of the Kwanlun, representing the virtue of the favourite wife.

“I am an honest man,” he said. “The tombs of my ancestors are not neglected. When I say I could not get it I speak the truth. But I believe I can get it later.”

“How?” asked Cunningham. They were in the office, or bureau, of the Astor House, which the manager had turned over to them for the moment. “Remember, the arm of the British Government is long.”

Ling Foo shrugged.

“Being an honest man, I do not fear. She would have given it to me but for that officer. He knew something about jade.”

Cunningham nodded.

“Conceivably he would.” He jingled the gold in his pocket. “How do you purpose to get the beads?”

“Go to the lady’s room late. I left the jade with her. Alone, she will not resist. I saw it in her eyes. But it will be difficult.”

“I see. For you to get into the hotel late. I’ll arrange that with the manager. You will be coming to my room. What floor is her room on?”

“The third.”

“The same as mine. That falls nicely. Return then at half after ten. You will come to my room for the gold.”

Ling Foo saw his thousand shrink to the original five hundred, but there was no help for it. At half after ten he knocked on the panel of Jane’s door and waited. He knocked again; still the summons was not answered. The third assault was emphatic. Ling Foo heard footsteps, but behind him. He turned. The meddling young officer was striding toward him.

“What are you doing here?” Dennison demanded.

His own appearance in the corridor at this hour might have been subjectable to inquiry. He had left Jane at nine. He had seen her to the lift. Perhaps he had walked the Bund for an hour or two, but worriedly. The thought of the arrival in Shanghai of his father and the rogue Cunningham convinced him that some queer game was afoot, and that it hinged somehow upon those beads.

There was no sighing in regard to his father, for the past that was. An astonishing but purely accidental meeting; to-morrow each would go his separate way again. All that was a closed page. He had long ago readjusted his outlook on the basis that reconciliation was hopeless.

A sudden impulse spun him on his heel, and he hurried back to the Astor. The hour did not matter, or the possibility that Jane might be abed. He would ask permission to become the temporary custodian of the beads. What were they, to have brought his father across the Pacific – if indeed they had? Anyhow, he would end his own anxiety in regard to Jane by assuming the risks, if any, himself.

No one questioned him; his uniform was a passport that required no visé.

Ling Foo eyed him blandly.

“I am leaving for the province in the morning, so I had to come for my jade to-night. But the young lady is not in her room.”

“She must be!” cried Dennison, alarmed. “Miss Norman?” he called, beating on the door.

No sound answered from within. Dennison pondered for a moment. Ling Foo also pondered – apprehensively. He suspected that some misfortune had befallen the young woman, for her kind did not go prowling alone round Shanghai at night. Slue-Foot! Should he utter his suspicion to this American officer? But if it should become a police affair! Bitterly he arraigned himself for disclosing his hand to Slue-Foot. That demon had forestalled him. No doubt by now he had the beads. Ten thousand devils pursue him!

Dennison struck his hands together, and by and by a sleepy Chinese boy came scuffling along the corridor.

“Talkee manager come topside,” said Dennison. When the manager arrived, perturbed, Dennison explained the situation.

“Will you open the door?”

The manager agreed to do that. The bedroom was empty. The bed had not been touched. But there was no evidence that the occupant did not intend to return.

“We shall leave everything just as it is,” said Dennison, authoritatively. “I am her friend. If she does not return by one o’clock I shall notify the police and have the young lady’s belongings transferred to the American consulate. She is under the full protection of the United States Government. You will find out if any saw her leave the hotel, and what the time was. Stay here in the doorway while I look about.”

He saw the jade necklace reposing in the soap dish, and in an ironical mood he decided not to announce the discovery to the Chinaman. Let him pay for his cupidity. In some mysterious manner he had got his yellow claws on those infernal beads, and the rogue Cunningham had gone to him with a substantial bribe. So let the pigtail wail for his jade.

On the dresser he saw a sheet of paper partly opened. Beside it lay a torn envelope. Dennison’s heart lost a beat. The handwriting was his father’s!

CHAPTER VII

Jane had gone to meet his father. How to secrete this note without being observed by either the manager or the Chinaman? An accident came to his aid. Someone in the corridor banged a door violently, and as the manager’s head and Ling Foo’s jerked about, Dennison stuffed the note into a pocket.

A trap! Dennison wasn’t alarmed – he was only furious. Jane had walked into a trap. She had worn those accursed beads when his father had approached her by the bookstall that afternoon. The note had attacked her curiosity from a perfectly normal angle. Dennison had absorbed enough of the note’s contents to understand how readily Jane had walked into the trap.

Very well. He would wait in the lobby until one; then if Jane had not returned he would lay the plans of a counter-attack, and it would be a rough one. Of course no bodily harm would befall Jane, but she would probably be harried and bullied out of those beads. But would she? It was not unlikely that she would become a pretty handful, once she learned she had been tricked. If she balked him, how would the father act? The old boy was ruthless when he particularly wanted something.

If anything should happen to her – an event unlooked for, accidental, over which his father would have no control – this note would bring the old boy into a peck of trouble; and Dennison was loyal enough not to wish this to happen. And yet it would be only just to make the father pay once for his high-handedness. That would be droll – to see his father in the dock, himself as a witness against him! Here was the germ of a tiptop drama.

But all this worry was doubtless being wasted upon mere supposition. Jane might turn over the beads without bargaining, provided the father had any legal right to them, which Dennison strongly doubted.

He approached Ling Foo and seized him roughly by the arm.

“What do you know about these glass beads?”

Ling Foo elevated a shoulder and let it fall.

“Nothing, except that the man who owns them demands that I recover them.”

“And who is this man?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“That won’t pass. You tell me who he is or I’ll turn you over to the police.”

“I am an honest man,” replied Ling Foo with dignity. He appealed to the manager.

“I have known Ling Foo a long time, sir. He is perfectly honest.”

Ling Foo nodded. He knew that this recommendation, honest as it was, would have weight with the American.

“But you have some appointment with this man. Where is that to be? I demand to know that.”

Ling Foo saw his jade vanish along with his rainbow gold. His early suppositions had been correct.

Those were devil beads, and evil befell any who touched them.

Silently he cursed the soldier’s ancestors half a thousand years back. If the white fool hadn’t meddled in the parlour that afternoon!

“Come with me,” he said, finally.

The game was played out; the counters had gone back to the basket. He had no desire to come into contact with police officials. Only it was as bitter as the gall of chicken, and he purposed to lessen his own discomfort by making the lame man share it. Oriental humour.

Dennison and the hotel manager followed him curiously. At the end of the corridor Ling Foo stopped and knocked on a door. It was opened immediately.

“Ah! Oh!”

The inflections touched Dennison’s sense of humour, and he smiled. A greeting with a snap-back of dismay.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “I had a suspicion I’d find you in this somewhere.”

“Find me in what?” asked Cunningham, his poise recovered. He, too, began to smile. “Won’t you come in?”

“What about these glass beads?”

“Glass beads? Oh, yes. But why?”

“I fancy you’d better come out into the clear, Cunningham,” said Dennison, grimly.

“You wish to know about those beads? Very well, I’ll explain, because something has happened – I know not what. You all look so infernally serious. Those beads are a key to a code. The British Government is keenly anxious to recover this key. In the hands of certain Hindus those beads would constitute bad medicine.”

Ling Foo spread his hands relievedly.

“That is the story. I was to receive five hundred gold for their recovery.”

“A code key,” said Dennison, musing.

He knew Cunningham was lying. Anthony Cleigh wasn’t the man to run across half the world for a British code key. On the other hand, perhaps it would be wise to let the hotel manager and the Chinaman continue in the belief that the affair concerned a British code.

“If I did not know you tolerably well – ”

“My dear captain, you don’t know me at all,” interrupted Cunningham. “Have you got the beads?”

“I have not. I doubt if you will ever lay eyes on them again.”

Something flashed across the handsome face. Ling Foo alone recognized it. He had glimpsed it, this expression, outside his window the night before. He recalled the dark stain on the floor of his shop, and he also recollected a saying of Confucius relative to greed. He wished he was back in his shop, well out of this muddle. The jade could go, valuable as it was. With his hands tucked in his sleeves he waited.

Dennison turned upon the manager. He wanted to be alone with Cunningham.

“Go down and make inquiries, and take this Chinaman with you. I’ll be with you shortly.” As soon as the two were out of the way Dennison said: “Cunningham, the lady who wore those beads at dinner to-night has gone out alone, wearing them. If I find that you are anywhere back of this venture – if she does not return shortly – I will break you as I would a churchwarden pipe.”

Cunningham appeared genuinely taken aback.

“She went out alone?”

“Yes.”

“Have you notified the police?”

“Not yet. I’m giving her until one; then I shall start something.”

“Something tells me,” said Cunningham, easily, “that Miss Norman is in no danger. But she would never have gone out if I had been in the lobby. If she has not returned by one call me. Any assistance I can give will be given gladly. Women ought never to be mixed up in affairs such as this one, on this side of the world. Tell your father that he ought to know by this time that he is no match for me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Innocent! You know very well what I mean. If you hadn’t a suspicion of what has happened you would be roaring up and down the corridors with the police. You run true to the breed. It’s a good one, I’ll admit. But your father will regret this night’s work.”

“Perhaps. Here, read this.”

Dennison extended the note. Cunningham, his brows bent, ran through the missive.

Miss Norman: Will you do me the honour to meet me at the bridgehead at half-past nine – practically at once? My son and I are not on friendly terms. Still, I am his father, and I’d like to hear what he has been doing over here. I will have a limousine, and we can ride out on the Bubbling Well Road while we talk.

Anthony Cleigh.

“Didn’t know,” said Cunningham, returning the note, “that you two were at odds. But this is a devil of a mix-up, if it’s what I think.”

“What do you think?”

“That he’s abducted her – carried her off to the yacht.”

“He’s no fool,” was the son’s defense.

“He isn’t, eh? Lord love you, sonny, your father and I are the two biggest fools on all God’s earth!”

The door closed sharply in Dennison’s face and the key rasped in the lock.

For a space Dennison did not stir. Why should he wish to protect his father? Between his father and this handsome rogue there was small choice. The old boy made such rogues possible. But supposing Cleigh had wished really to quiz Jane? To find out something about these seven years, lean and hard, with stretches of idleness and stretches of furious labour, loneliness? Well, the father would learn that in all these seven years the son had never faltered from the high level he had set for his conduct. That was a stout staff to lean on – he had the right to look all men squarely in the eye.

He had been educated to inherit millions; he had not been educated to support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven years been a jeweller’s clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the end of his resources. One fact the thought of which never failed to buck him up – he had never traded on his father’s name.

Then had come the war. He had returned to America, trained, and they had assigned him to Russia. But that had not been without its reward – he had met Jane.

In a New York bank, to his credit, was the sum of twenty thousand dollars, at compound interest for seven years, ready to answer to the scratch of a pen, but he had sworn he would never touch a dollar of it. Never before had the thought of it risen so strongly to tempt him. His for the mere scratch of a pen!

In the lobby he found the manager pacing nervously, while Ling Foo sat patiently and inscrutably.

“Why do you wait?” inquired Dennison, irritably.

“The lady has some jade of mine,” returned Ling Foo, placidly. “It was a grave mistake.”

“What was?”

“That you interfered this afternoon. The lady would be in her room at this hour. The devil beads would not be casting a spell on us.”

“Devil beads, eh?”

Ling Foo shrugged and ran his hands into his sleeves. Somewhere along the banks of the Whangpoo or the Yang-tse would be the body of an unknown, but Ling Foo’s lips were locked quite as securely as the dead man’s. Devil beads they were.

“When did the man upstairs leave the beads with you?”

“Last night.”

“For what reason?”

“He will tell you. It is none of my affair now.” And that was all Dennison could dig out of Ling Foo.

Jane Norman did not return at one o’clock; in fact, she never returned to the Astor House. Dennison waited until three; then he went back to the Palace, and Ling Foo to his shop and oblivion.

Dennison decided that he did not want the police in the affair. In that event there would be a lot of publicity, followed by the kind of talk that stuck. He was confident that he could handle the affair alone. So he invented a white lie, and nobody questioned it because of his uniform. Miss Norman had found friends, and shortly she would send for her effects; but until that time she desired the consulate to take charge. Under the eyes of the relieved hotel manager and an indifferent clerk from the consulate the following morning Dennison packed Jane’s belongings and conveyed them to the consulate, which was hard by. Next he proceeded to the water front and engaged a motor boat. At eleven o’clock he drew up alongside the Wanderer II.

“Hey, there!” shouted a seaman. “Sheer off! Orders to receive no visitors!”

Dennison began to mount, ignoring the order. It was a confusing situation for the sailor. If he threw this officer into the yellow water – as certainly he would have thrown a civilian – Uncle Sam might jump on his back and ride him to clink. Against this was the old man, the very devil for obedience to his orders. If he pushed this lad over, the clink; if he let him by, the old man’s foot. And while the worried seaman was reaching for water with one hand and wind with the other, as the saying goes, Dennison thrust him roughly aside, crossed the deck to the main companionway, and thundered down into the salon.

CHAPTER VIII

Cleigh sat before a card table; he was playing Chinese Canfield. He looked up, but he neither rose nor dropped the half-spent deck of cards he held in his hand. The bronzed face, the hard agate blue of the eyes that met his own, the utter absence of visible agitation, took the wind out of Dennison’s sails and left him all a-shiver, like a sloop coming about on a fresh tack. He had made his entrance stormily enough, but now the hot words stuffed his throat to choking.