The City in the Clouds

"Good Lord!" I cried, astounded at the length to which he had gone. "You're torturing yourself for me."

"Not a bit of it, Sir Thomas," he replied. "I – I rather like it!"

"And you think you will be able to get us a Chinese clientèle?"

"I am quite certain of it. First of all I don't suppose I shall get the best class – I mean the upper and more confidential servants who ascend the tower itself – for I understand there's a very rigid system of grades. But little by little they will come also. It will take us weeks, maybe months, but it will be done."

"If it takes me half a lifetime I'll go through with it," I said savagely.

"My sentiments, also," he replied, lighting a cigarette. "By the way, I hope you're not incommoded in any way by my – er – odor!"

"Good Heaven! What do you mean?"

"The Chinaman smells quite different to the European, though not necessarily unpleasantly. It's taken me quite a lot of trouble to attain the essential perfume!"

He grinned impishly as he said it, and there certainly was a sort of stale, camphory smell, now he mentioned it.

"You're a great artist, Rolston, and I don't know what I should do without you, oh, Mandarin from Yün-Nan!"

"That's another point," he said quickly. "You wouldn't guess why I'm supposed to come from Yün-Nan, where I actually did spend some years of my childhood?"

"Not in the least."

"It's the principal opium producing Province in China," he replied, with a quick look at me. "Now, Sir Thomas, I've let the cat out of the bag. You see how I propose to attract the Chinese here, and get into their confidence."

A light flashed in upon me, and I took a long breath.

"But it would never do," I said. "If we were to start an opium den in that room upstairs, we should have the police in in a fortnight, and then the game would be up entirely."

He smiled superior.

"There will never be a single pipe of opium smoked in the 'Golden Swan,'" he said. "Of that I can assure you. That will be the very strictest rule that I shall make, but I shall supply opium to the customers, in varying quantities, and at intervals, according to the need of each individual case. It is almost impossible to bribe a Chinaman with money – the better sort, that is, the picked and chosen men who will be around Mr. Morse himself. But opium is quite another thing, and besides they won't know they're being bribed. I sat hours and hours working this thing out and I'm confident it's the only way."

When he said that I realized that he spoke the truth, but I confess that the idea startled and alarmed me.

"We shall be breaking the law, Rolston. We shall be risking heavy fines and certain imprisonment if we're found out."

"To that I would say two things, Sir Thomas. First of all, that no fine matters; and secondly, that I shouldn't in the least mind doing six months if necessary. This great game is worth more than that. But secondly, and you may really put your mind at ease, we shall not be found out. I have worked the thing out to a hair's breadth and my system is so complete that discovery is utterly impossible."

"I oughtn't to let you risk it, though of course I shall share equally if anything happens."

He disregarded this entirely.

"But the stuff," I said, "the opium itself, how will you get that?"

"I have made my plans here also. I shall have to pay a price so enormous that I'm afraid it will stagger you, Sir Thomas, but it's the only way in which I can get hold of the right stuff. For what it is intrinsically worth, about sixty pounds sterling, your east-end dealer will pay four-hundred pounds, and make a big profit on it. I shall have to pay nearly a thousand and I shall want double that money – two thousand pounds."

He stared at me in anxiety.

"My dear Rolston," I said, "cheer up. My income is over twenty thousand a year, and in normal times I don't spend a third of it. Buy all the filth you want, and Heaven send that it does the trick!"

"In two days," he said, "the 'Golden Swan' will house two cases of the best 'red bricks' obtainable on the market anywhere, for it's as much by the superior quality of what I shall supply, as well as the fact of being able to supply it, that I depend. Of course, you'll get nearly all the money back."

"Confound it, no, that's going too far. We'll send all the abominable profits to the Richmond Hospital anonymously."

We talked until the fire was out and the gray wintry dawn began to steal in through the dirty windows of the bar beyond, and when all our plans were laid with meticulous care I went to bed but not to sleep, assailed by a thousand doubts and fears.

… In a week or two the upstairs room began to be frequented by silent-footed yellow men, who came and went unobtrusively. Whenever any of them chanced to meet me I was greeted with a profound obeisance which was rather disconcerting at first, but my conversation was limited to a mere greeting or farewell. Most of these men spoke pigeon English, but I had little or nothing to say to them of set purpose. It had been arranged between Rolston and myself that I was to be represented as a good-natured fool, who mattered very little in any way.

For his part, the pretended Ah Sing was up and down the stairs a dozen times every evening. He was never once suspected, his influence and importance in the lives of these aliens grew every day. But it was a long business, a long and weary business, in which at first hardly any progress towards our aim could be discerned.

"It's no use being discouraged, Sir Thomas," Rolston would say, "we're getting on famously."

"And the opium?" – somehow I wasn't very keen on discussing that aspect of the question.

"I'm employing it most judiciously, selling it in very small quantities, and of course not a grain is ever smoked or consumed in any way upon these premises. That's thoroughly understood by every one, and you need not have the slightest doubt but that the secret will be rigidly kept. At present the men frequenting the house are nearly all of the upper coolie class. That is to say, they are the gardeners, stokers of the power house, sweepers, and so forth. But, quite recently a better class of man has made his appearance. There's a young, semi-Europeanized electrician who has been once or twice. Moreover, I have gained a great point. I have become acquainted with Kwang-su, the keeper of the inclosure gate."

"That's certainly something," I replied, recalling the figure of the gigantic Chinaman in question, which was familiar to most of the residents beneath the wall. "He's a ferocious-looking brute."

"At one time he was headsman of Yangtsun, and they say a most finished expert with the sword," Rolston remarked with a grin. "All I know about him is that he'd sell his soul for the black smoke, and regards me as a most valuable addition to the neighborhood. In a fortnight or so, I am pretty certain I shall be able to pass in and out of the grounds pretty much as I like, and then a great move in our game will have been accomplished. As an undoubted Chinaman and as a confidential purveyer of opium, I shall soon have complete freedom below the towers."

"But what about the great prizefighter, Mulligan?"

"He has nothing to do with the park, as they call all the grounds around the towers. Now that the building is finished his functions are up in the air, and I gather that he lives on the third stage, just beneath the City itself, as a sort of watch-dog. The Asiatics are entirely managed by their own leaders, appointed by Morse himself."

It was as Bill predicted. In a very short space of time he was away from the "Golden Swan" as much as he was in it, and every day he gathered more and more information about the tower and its mistress – information which was carefully noted down in the silence of the night, so that no detail should be forgotten.

Of course the fact that my hotel had become a haunt of the yellow men neither escaped the notice of the neighbors, nor of the police. The former were easily dealt with, and especially my patrons. Mr. Mogridge, having invented "Ting-A-Ling-A-Ling," was disposed to look upon the "Chinks" with genial patronage, and his self-importance was gratified by the low bows with which they always greeted him as they passed to their club-room above. The lead of Mr. Mogridge was followed by others in the saloon bar, and Sliddim tactfully kept everything running smoothly. As for the police, they paid me one visit or two, were shown everything and were perfectly satisfied that the house was being conducted with propriety – as indeed it was.

The yellow men neither gambled nor got drunk, that was perfectly obvious. There was never a suspicion of opium from first to last, nor was there a single instance of a brawl or a fight. Indeed the local police-inspector, an excellent fellow with whom I had many a talk, expressed himself as being both surprised and delighted at the way in which I had the aliens in hand.

Nearly two months had gone by, and I was curbing the raging fires of impatience and longing as well as I could when two incidents occurred which greatly precipitated action.

Rolston came to me one day in a state of great excitement.

At last, he said, he was beginning to become acquainted with some of the actual officials of the towers – at last, quite separate from those who worked below. They were interested, or beginning to be so, and he urged me at once to open a smaller, inner room as a select meeting-place for such of them as he could inveigle to the "Golden Swan."

We did so at once, hanging the walls with a drapery of black worked with golden dragons, which I bought in Regent Street, a Chinese lantern of copper hanging from the ceiling, and around the wall we placed low couches. Here, in twos and threes, but in slowly increasing numbers, a different type of Oriental began to assemble, Ah Sing attending to all their wants, ingratiating himself in every possible way, and keeping his extremely useful ears wide open – very wide open indeed.

It was now that tiny fragments of personal gossip – more precious to me than rubies – began to filter through. I had established no communication with the City in the Clouds as yet, but I seemed to hear the distant murmur of voices through the void.

One evening about eight o'clock I felt cramped and unutterably bored. I felt that nothing could help me but a long walk and so, with a word to the Honest Fool, Sliddim and Rolston, I took my hat and stick and started out.

It was a brilliant moonlight night, calm, still, and with a white frost upon the ground, as I descended the terrace and made my way down to the side of the river. Here and there I passed a few courting couples; the hum of distant London and the rumbling of trains was like the ground swell of a sea, but peace brooded over everything. The trees made black shadows like Chinese ink upon silver, and, in the full moonlight it was bright enough to read.

When I had walked a mile or so, resisting a certain temptation as well as I could, I stopped and turned at last.

There, a mile away behind me, yet seeming as if it was within a stone's throw, was the huge erection on the hill. Every detail of the lower parts was clear and distinct as an architectural drawing, the intricate lattice-work of enormous cantilevers and girders seemed etched on the inside of a great opal bowl. I can give you no adequate description of the immensity, the awe-inspiring, almost terror-inducing sense of magnitude and majesty. I have stood beside the Pyramids at night, I have crossed the Piazza of Saint Peter's at Rome under the rays of the Italian moon, and I have drunk coffee at the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, but not one of these experiences approached what I felt now as I surveyed, in an ecstasy of mingled emotions, this monstrous thing that brooded over London.

The eye traveled up, onward and forever up until at length, not hidden by clouds now but a faint blur of white, blue, gold, and tiny twinkling lights, hung in the empyrean the far-off City of Desire.

Could she hear the call of my heart? God knows it seemed loud and strong enough to me! Might she not be, even at this moment, a lovelier Juliet, leaning over some gilded gallery and wondering where I was?

"Was ever a woman so high above her lover before?" I said, and laughed, but my laughter was sadness, and my longing, pain unbearable.

… There was a slight bend in the tow-path where I stood, caused by some out-jutting trees, and from just below I suddenly heard a burst of loud and brutal laughter, followed by a shrill cry. It recalled me from dreamland at once and I hurried round the projection to come upon a strange scene. Two flash young bullies with spotted handkerchiefs around their throats and ash sticks in their hands were menacing a third person whose back was to the river. They were sawing the air with their sticks just in front of a thin, tall figure dressed in what seemed to be a sort of long, buttoned black cassock descending to the feet, and wearing a skull cap of black alpaca. Beneath the skull cap was a thin, ascetic face, ghastly yellow in the moonlight.

… One of the brutes lunged at the man I now saw to be a Chinese of some consequence, lunged at him with a brutal laugh and filthy oath. The Chinaman threw up his lean arms, cried out again in a thin, shrill scream, stepped backwards, missed his footing and went souse into the river. In a second the current caught him and began to whirl him away over towards the Twickenham side. It was obvious that he could not swim a stroke. There was a clatter of hob-nailed boots and bully number one was legging it down the path like a hare. I had just time to give bully number two a straight left on the nap which sent him down like a sack of flour, before I got my coat off and dived in.

Wow! but it was icy cold. For a moment the shock seemed to stop my heart, and then it came right again and I struck out heartily. It didn't take long to catch up with the gentleman in the cassock, who had come up for the second time and apparently resigned himself to the worst. I got hold of him, turned on my back and prepared for stern measures if he should attempt to grip me.

He didn't. He was the easiest johnny to rescue possible, and in another five minutes I'd got him safely to the bank and scrambled up.

There was nobody about, worse luck, and I started to pump the water out of him as well as I could, and after a few minutes had the satisfaction of seeing his face turn from blue-gray to something like its normal yellow under the somewhat ghastly light of the moon. His teeth began to chatter as I jerked him to his feet and furiously rubbed him up and down.

I tried to recall what I knew of pigeon English.

"Bad man throw you in river. You velly lucky, man come by save you, Johnny."

I had the shock of my life.

"I am indeed fortunate," came in a thin, reed-like voice, "I am indeed fortunate in having found so brave a preserver. Honorable sir, from this moment my life is yours."

"Why, you speak perfect English," I said in amazement.

"I have been resident in this country for some time, sir," he replied, "as a student at King's College, until I undertook my present work."

"Well," I said, "we'd better not stand here exchanging polite remarks much longer. There is such a thing as pneumonia, which you would do well to avoid. If you're strong enough, we'll hurry up to the terrace and find my house, where we'll get you dry and warm. I'm the landlord of the 'Golden Swan' Hotel."

He was a polite fellow, this. He bowed profoundly, and then, as the water dripped from his black and meager form, he said something rather extraordinary.

"I should never have thought it."

I cursed myself. The excitement had made me return to the manner of Piccadilly, and this shrewd observer had seen it in a moment. I said no more, but took him by the arm and yanked him along for one of the fastest miles he had ever done in his life.

I took him to the side door of my pub. Fortunately Ah Sing was descending the stairs to replenish an empty decanter with whisky – my yellow gentlemen used to like it in their tea! I explained what had happened in a few words and my shivering derelict was hurried upstairs to my own bedroom. I don't know what Rolston did to him, though I heard Sliddim – now quite the house cat – directed to run down into the kitchen and confer with Mrs. Abbs.

For my part, I sat in the room behind the bar, listening to the Honest Fool talking with my patrons, and shed my clothes before a blazing fire. A little hot rum, a change, and a dressing-gown, and I was myself again, and smoking a pipe I fell into a sort of dream.

It was a pleasant dream. I suppose the shock of the swim, the race up the terrace to the "Swan," the rum and milk which followed had a soporific, soothing effect. I wasn't exactly asleep, I was pleasantly drowsed, and I had a sort of feeling that something was going to happen. Just about closing time Rolston glided in – I never saw a European before or since who could so perfectly imitate the ghost walk of the yellow men.

I looked to see that the door to the bar was shut.

"Well, how's our friend?" I asked.

"He's had a big shock, Sir Thomas, but he's all right now. I've rubbed him all over with oil, fed him up with beef-tea and brandy and found him dry clothes."

"He's from the towers, of course?"

As I said this, I saw Bill Rolston's face, beneath its yellow dye, was blazing with excitement.

"Sir Thomas," he said in a whisper, "this is Pu-Yi himself, Mr. Morse's Chinese secretary, a man utterly different from the others we have seen here yet. He's of the Mandarin class, the buttons on his robe are of red coral. In this house, at this moment, we have one of the masters of the Secret City."

I gave a long, low whistle, which – I remember it so well – exactly coincided with the raucous shout of the Honest Fool – "Time, gentlemen, please!"

A thought struck me.

"The other Chinese in the large and small rooms, do they know this man is here?"

"No, Sir Thomas; I am more than glad to say I got him up to your own room when both doors were closed."

"What's he doing now?"

"He's having a little sleep. I promised to call him in an hour or so, when he wishes to pay you his respects."

He listened for a moment.

"The others are going downstairs," he said. "I must be there to see them out, and I have one or two little transactions – "

He felt in a villainous side pocket and I knew as well as possible what it contained, and what would be handed to one or two of the moon-faced gentlemen as they slipped out of the side door on their way home.

Bill came back in some twenty minutes.

"Now," he said, "I'm going upstairs to wake Pu-Yi and bring him down to you. You must remember, Sir Thomas, that I am only a dirty little servant. I am as far beneath a man like Pu-Yi as Sir Thomas Kirby is above Stanley Whistlecraft, so I cannot be present at your interview. My idea was that I should creep into the bar – Stanley will have had his supper and gone to bed – and lie down on the floor with my ear to the bottom of the door, then I can hear everything."

"That's a good idea," I said, for I was beginning to realize what an enormous lot might depend upon this interview. Then I thought of something else.

"Look here, Bill, you must remember this too. I fished the blighter out of the Thames and no doubt he will be thankful in his overdone, Oriental fashion. But to him, a man of the class you say he is, I shall be nothing but a vulgar publican, and I don't see quite what's going to come out of that!"

He had slipped the gutta-percha pads out of his cheeks – an operation to which I had grown quite accustomed – and I could see his face as it really was.

"That's occurred to me also," he replied, "but somehow or other I'm sure the fates are on our side to-night."

He arose, turned away for a moment, there was a click and a gasp, and he was the little impassive Oriental again. He glided up to me, put his yellow hand with the long, polished finger nails upon my shoulder, and said in my ear:

"Sir Thomas, he must see Her every day!"

He vanished from the room almost as he spoke, and left me with blood on fire.

I was to see some one who might have spoken with Juanita that very day! and I sat almost trembling with impatience, though issuing a dozen warnings to myself to betray nothing, to keep every sense alert, so that I might turn the interview to my own advantage.

At last there was a knock on the door, Bill opened it and the slim figure of the man I had rescued glided in. They had dried his clothes, he even wore his little skull cap which had apparently stuck to his head while he was in the water, and I had the opportunity of seeing him in the light for the first time.

Instead of the flat, Tartar nose, I saw one boldly aquiline, with large, narrow nostrils. His eyes were almond shaped but lustrous and full of fire. About the lips, which had no trace of sensuality but were beautifully cut, there was a kind of serene pathos – I find it difficult to describe in any other way. The whole face was noble in contour and in expression, though the general impression it gave was one of unutterable sadness. Dress him how you might, meet him where you would, there was no possibility of mistaking Pu-Yi for anything but a gentleman of high degree.

The door closed and I rose from my seat and held out my hand.

"Well," I said, "this is a bit of orlright, sir, and I'm glad to see you so well recovered. To-morrow morning we'll have the law on them dirty rascals that assaulted you."

I put on the accent thickly – flashed my diamond ring at him, in short – for this might well be a game of touch and go, and I had a deep secret to preserve.

He put his long, thin hand in mine, gripped it, and then suddenly turned it over so that the backs of my fingers were uppermost.

It was an odd thing to do and I wondered what it meant.

"Oh, landlord of the Swan of Gold," he piped, in his curious, flute-like voice, sorting out his words as he went on, "I owe you my unworthy life, which is nothing in itself and which I don't value, save only for a certain opportunity which remains to it, and is a private matter. But I owe my life to your courage and strength and flowering kindness, and I come to put myself in your hands."

Really he was making a damn lot of fuss about nothing!

"Look here," I said, "that's all right. You would have done as much for me. Now let's sit down and have a peg and a chat. I can put you up for the rest of the night, you know, and I shall be awfully glad to do it."

He looked as if he was going to make more speeches, but I cut him short.

"As for putting your life in my hands," I said, "we don't talk like that in England."

He sat down and a faint smile came upon his tired lips.

"And do the public-house keepers in England have hands such as yours are?" he said gently. "Sir, your hands are white, they are also shaped in a certain way, and your nails are not even in mourning for your profession!"

I cursed myself savagely as he mocked me. Bill had pointed out over and over again that I oughtn't to use a nail brush too frequently – it wasn't in the part – but I always forgot it.

To hide my confusion I moved a little table towards him on which was a box of excellent cigarettes. Unfortunately, also on the table was a little pocket edition of Shakespeare with which I used to solace the drab hours.

He picked it up, opened it plump at "Romeo and Juliet" – the play which, for reasons known to you, I most affected at the time – and looked up at me with gentle eyes.

"'Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona,'" he said.

My brain was working like a mill. I could not make the fellow out. What did he know, what did he suspect? Well, the best thing was to ask him outright.

"You mean?"

He became distressed at once.

"You speak harshly to me, O my preserver. I meant but that I knew at once that you are not born in the position in which I see you. Perhaps you will give me your kind leave to explain. In my native country I am of high hereditary rank, though I am poor enough and occupy a somewhat menial position here. My honorable name, honorable sir, is Pu-Yi, which will convey nothing to you. During the rebellion of twenty years ago in China, my ancestral house was destroyed and as a child I was rescued and sent to Europe. For many years the peasants of my Province scraped their little earnings together, and a sum sufficient to support me in my studies was sent to me in Paris. I speak the French, Spanish and English languages. I am a Bachelor of Science of the London University, and my one hope and aim in life is, and has been, to acquire sufficient money to return to the tombs of my ancestors on the banks of the Yang-tse-kiang, there to live a quiet life, much resembling that of an English country squire, until I also fade away into the unknown, and become part of the Absolute."