Читать книгу The Dumb Gods Speak - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

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Mr. Cheng glanced up from his place at the opening of the door. He was seated at a beautiful sandalwood desk strewn with papers and charts of every description yet distributed with a singular neatness which eliminated any idea of disorder. A very exquisite bronze Buddha occupied the centre of the table and on his right was a blue Nankin bowl of red roses. The walls of the room were panelled with some light-coloured wood. A few beautiful rugs lay upon the highly polished floor, but the room itself contained very little in the way of decoration or furniture. Somehow or other, though, it seemed a fit setting for the man whose sanctum it was.

"You have not been wanting me, I hope?" Mark asked a little anxiously.

Mr. Cheng shook his head.

"Too much to do and think about to miss even one's dear friends," he confided. "And now, Mark, behold what has happened! I am summoned to London."

Mark obeyed his friend's gesture and seated himself in one of the high-backed chairs. He leaned forward and helped himself to a cigarette from an ivory box upon the table.

"Well," he observed, "I suppose it had to come sooner or later. To tell you the truth I am surprised that it did not come before."

"So am I," the other confessed. "All the same the work here is so enthralling that I do not like to leave."

He rose to his feet and walked the length of the room and back again with his hands behind his back. He was slightly taller than Mark, with a slim and supple figure, deep-set thoughtful eyes, dark brown hair and a complexion the duskiness of which was scarcely more than an ordinary sunburn. There was little about him to suggest the Oriental. His mouth was strong and firm—curving faintly upwards. His features had all the impassivity of the East, in repose. He spoke with singular distinctness but with no trace of a foreign accent.

"Whom did you hear from?" Mark asked.

"From Wang Kai-Hsiung himself. The dear old fellow in his quiet way is beginning to worry. I do not think, Mark, that he really understands. Why should he?"

"How can anyone understand except you and I and our friends up above?" Mark rejoined. "Thank goodness the time is not very far off when we can raise the curtain."

Mr. Cheng distinctly chuckled.

"How they will stare across Europe," he observed, "those chattering politicians who sit and bargain around their council rooms like merchants, bargain for safety, bargain for a few less ships there or a few more somewhere else, shake their heads with horror at the idea of war but take good care to be prepared for it. Mark, I used not to think so," he went on, "but I am coming to the conclusion that your people and mine are the only people with a real love of peace in their hearts. The others are all ready for a scrap so long as they think that they are going to get the best of it. If it had not been for that amazing parent of yours I fancy there would have been changes upon the map before now."

"I shouldn't be surprised," Mark agreed. "Tell me, when do you leave?"

"To-night," Mr. Cheng replied. "It is a full moon and we could find the way blindfold. I shall take my coffee with Wang Kai-Hsiung in the morning and present myself in official circles at midday. By the by, you knew something about this man Jonson who has joined the staff?"

"He was one of our vigilance men out at Beaumont Park," Mark confided. "He came here from Moscow. I have just been watching him perform at the Jetée Casino. Professor Ventura, he calls himself there. I am half inclined to believe that he makes use of one of those devices that the old man used to amuse himself with. Anyhow, I think he's all right. He wants the job of looking after us. I don't think he will do any harm."

"Not if he keeps in the background," Mr. Cheng assented. "Anything in the nature of a bodyguard, as you know, is loathsome to me."

Mark nodded thoughtfully. He threw away the stub of his cigarette into the small fire of pine logs which was burning in the open grate and lit another.

"And yet," he went on, "history has offered us a great many warnings as to the folly of risking the lives of those who are precious to the world. The rats are always there, you know."

Mr. Cheng swept away the subject with a wave of the hand.

"From what Wang Kai-Hsiung divulges," he continued, "suspicion is growing fast in influential quarters. It may be difficult to satisfy this inquisitive minister. How do things progress above?"

"Precisely according to plan," Mark replied. "In a month's time one could press the button. General Wu Lu Chên has left Manchuria and will be back in Pekin tonight. As I daresay you know, we have twenty-four military experts from my country hidden about the premises at the present moment. They will be leaving for Pekin to-morrow or the next day. When General Fan Sik Tsun leaves here again it will be for the last time."

"On that day," Mr. Cheng said quietly, yet with a curious hidden force in his words, "we shall begin to rewrite the history of the world."

Both men rose quickly to their feet. There was no mistaking the unexpected sound. Someone was tapping softly at the door. Mark crossed the room in a half-dozen strides. His right hand was resting on his hip pocket as he threw open the door with his left. Mr. Jonson stepped blandly but respectfully into the apartment.

"What the devil are you doing here?" his employer demanded.

Mr. Jonson seemed to have become the complete foreigner. He bowed very low to Mr. Cheng. He bowed again to Mark as he answered his question.

"I came for my orders, sir."

"What orders?"

Jonson seemed a little hurt. He continued, however, with untroubled calm.

"One of my two masters is leaving for a strange country," he said. "Is it not my office to accompany and protect him?"

Mr. Cheng smiled tolerantly. Mark was still angry.

"You have no office," he declared, "except to obey orders. How did you get here anyway? Don't you know that this part of the building is shut off from the Bureau?"

"But not from me," Jonson pleaded. "I am the guardian of my Chiefs."

Even Mark felt his anger abating. The little man seemed so sure of himself, so sure that he was doing the right thing. His protests were gently worded. The look of a hurt dog shone out of his brown eyes.

"See here," Mark pointed out, "you have no right on this side of the building at all and you are only required as a guardian when Mr. Cheng or I order you. Besides," he went on bluntly, "what good would you be anyway? Is that gun in your hip pocket?"

"No, sir," Jonson answered gently. "I do not often make use of a gun. It is my last resource."

"Then supposing when I opened this door I had seized you by the collar and thrown you out of the window, as you very well deserve for daring to come to Mr. Cheng's private room—What about that, eh? What sort of protection would you have been able to offer?"

"The circumstance did not arise," Jonson pointed out respectfully.

"But supposing it had, you idiot!"

"I would like very much," Jonson said, "that you should have the idea of throwing me out of that window, if it is really permitted that I am to demonstrate my ability as a protector."

"It is permitted all right," Mark assured him. "Look here."

He leaned forward and in a second Mr. Jonson was lifted into the air. But in the next second other things had happened. Mark felt himself suddenly whirling around with his feet off the ground, felt himself somehow tucked under the arm of a giant, felt an excruciating pain in his elbow and pain in his throat—and suddenly discovered that he was seated in the chair he had just vacated on the other side of the table from Mr. Cheng. Before him Jonson, unruffled, was regarding him with unabated respect.

"It was your wish that I show you, sir," he said gently. "You see, it would not have been possible to throw me out of the window. Many other things might have happened, but you would never have been able to lay your hand upon Mr. Cheng."

The latter, from the other side of the table, regarded the two with sphinx-like calm. If there was any change in his face at all it consisted of a slight deepening of that humorous line.

"Well, what do you think of that?" Mark exclaimed at last. "God bless my soul, what are you, Jonson? A pocket Hercules? Or is that another of your tricks?"

"It was just a trick, sir," the man acknowledged. "I asked your gracious permission. But you see Mr. Cheng whom I was protecting was always safe. As you revolved I felt your pockets. They were empty. No weapon."

"A very interesting exhibition," Mr. Cheng said quietly. "Perhaps you had better understand, though, Jonson, that notwithstanding my admiration for your skill and muscle it has always been my custom to deal with an aggressor myself. When I need help I shall know where to look for it. In the meantime—" he moved his head towards the door.

Jonson sighed but turned away.

"One moment," Mark called out after him as he reached the door. "How the mischief did you know that Mr. Cheng was leaving?"

The intruder smiled very slightly.

"I am attached to the establishment," he said. "It is part of my duty to know everything."

"And the key?"

"I possessed myself of it," Jonson explained. "That also was part of my duty. You will find, sir," he concluded as he took his leave, "that I shall never fail in my duty while I am attached to your Bureau, even when the problems presented to me are more difficult."

He walked down the corridor swinging his arms. Mark even fancied that he had developed a slight swagger.

"It appears," Mr. Cheng remarked smoothly, "that you have added a magician to the staff. Where did you pick him up?"

Mark shook his head.

"I didn't exactly pick him up," he protested. "There had been some correspondence before, but nothing definite. He just arrived with two bags, some scarlet pants and a black velvet coat. As I told you, he performs at the Jetée Casino here."

Mr. Cheng rose to his feet with a smile.

"They will be waiting for me in the dispersing room," he observed. "General Wu Lu Chên will be arriving at Pekin and I must talk to him before I leave."

"What about this fellow Jonson?" Mark asked.

Mr. Cheng laid his hand upon his friend's arm as they crossed the floor.

"Let him go his own way. Unless you have serious occasion to do so do not interfere with him."

Mark was somewhat staggered but he made no protest. "Your fatalistic instinct, I suppose."

Mr. Cheng shrugged his shoulders.

"I have no doubt," he said, "that the man is capable of evil deeds, that he is capable even of assassination, yet I believe that when he is in our presence evil is not with him."

"Darned if I get you there," Mark protested.

His friend smiled gently.

"You must make allowances for my outlook, Mark," he begged. "I have adapted myself to your Western ways and your Western philosophies, but there are some things belonging to my own instinctive beliefs with which I cannot interfere. I, too, can be a mystic sometimes, you know, and I have even some credence in the art of wizardry. I shall, as you would so epigrammatically put it in your own phraseology, take a chance with Jonson."

There was finality in Mr. Cheng's tone. The subject was evidently closed. He strolled across the room with his hands behind his back and stood gazing out of the window over the tops of the lime trees opposite, over the red roofs of the town, up to the fading blue of the distant hills. He stood there motionless for several moments. Without turning his head, presently he spoke.

"When I come back, Mark," he said, "the time will have arrived for my pilgrimage into the mountains. I spoke this morning with Pekin. Every day the temples in the southern provinces are being reopened. The President has disappeared. Only a few of his ministers are left. Everywhere the voice of the people is being heard calling, clamouring for government. They are asking for Hou Hsi, the descendant of the Great Empress. The statesmen who will serve us in the future are already at their places, but the time is coming, Mark, when we must disclose ourselves—therefore I must take that journey up into the mountains."

"Good luck to you, my friend," Mark declared as the two young men shook hands. "I may have something to say to you myself when you come back."