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In Chi-Foo, as in the Forbidden City, the phrase Iang-knei-tsi, which means “foreign devil,” was one seldom employed, for Colin Hemel, who in the days of the Manchu dynasty had the august and godlike ear of the Daughter of Heaven, was as terribly quick to punish now that he served a democratic president. As for Chi-Foo, Augustus Verrill sat there, and, brute as he was, he had still enough of the white man in him to resent Iang-knei-tsi.

So it was Iang-ren that people said, meaning (so we persuade ourselves) “honorable foreign.”

What they call foreigners in Chi-Foo nowadays I do not know, for Augustus Verrill is not there, and for this reason.

On a bright spring morning the interested but fearful people of Chi-Foo, straining their ears for the sound, were rewarded with the word they awaited. It was the word “shul!” which means “kill!”

A Chinaman with a thick padded coat of blue, his hands concealed in his sleeves, was picking a delicate way along the untidy street which leads to the Gate of a Thousand Regrets, when he heard the guttural whisper, and saw the crazy door of a house come flying outward.

He spun round on the heel of his felt boot, his eyes blinking in the strong sunlight, his lean brown face tense, and a grin of expectancy showing the white even rim of his teeth.

“Kill!” said the dog-faced leader.

The blue-coated Chinaman squared his elbow and a straight splinter of fire leaped from his hand.

The dog-faced man, with a grimace like one who swallows a noxious draught, went lurching against the white wall of the house, leaving it smeared and disfigured when he finally collapsed to his knees.

This was against all arrangement, for the Devil in Blue had left the inn outside the city gates, and in a second’s space the Street of Going Forth was deserted save for the blue-coated Chinaman and the gurgling thing that was huddled in the mud by the wall. The blue Chinaman looked down, frowning.

“Insensate Chink,” said he. “Blind and prejudiced instrument of fate—quo vadis?”

He took a white handkerchief from the fold of his sleeve and blew his nose, never removing his eyes from the dying man.

“Better you than me, by gad,” he said earnestly, “from all over the world to die like a pig in a wallow of mud? That’s no death for a gentleman.”

All the time he spoke aloud in English, yet so cleverly was he made up, so scrupulous was the attention he had devoted to his toilette and the et ceteras of his character that none in the city of Chi-Foo knew him for any other than Li Wan, a small-piece mandarin charged by the Daughter of Heaven to inquire into certain irregularities at the Court of Mandarin Wen-Ho-Hong, Governor of the Province of Chi-Foo.

He waited until the man was dead, then looked up and down the deserted street. The Gate of a Thousand Regrets was closed, though it was long before sunrise. The Captain of the Guard would explain the unusual happening, would also swear by his domestic gods that he saw no sight of brawling and heard no sound of shot.

At the other end of the street a little knot of small boys had gathered with folded arms, frowning curiously, and relaxing their attitude from time to time to point out, with their thin little arms stretched stiffly, the tragic consequences of the attack.

These melted as the man in blue, twirling his long-barreled Browning, walked slowly back the way he had come. The bazaar was alive with people—the bazaar which ran to the right from the street end to the very gates of the Yamen.

But even this crowd, silent and watchful, stepped on one side to give him a free passage. Once he heard a half-hearted “Shul!” and his quick ears caught the rustle of movement which is so ominous a sequence to such an urgent suggestion.

Then a jagged stone whistled past his ear, and he heard the “Ugh!” of the man who threw it.

He was half-way to the Yamen, and did not turn until another stone caught him in the middle of his well-padded back.

He whipped round as the thrower was stooping for further ammunition, and covered him.

“Oh, man,” said he, in the queer dialect of the river province, “I wish you a safe journey.”

The thrower dropped his stone as if he had been shot.

“Come nearer to me,” commanded the Blue Man, and the coolie shuffled forward through the mud, staring without expression into the gray eyes of the other.

“There is a wind on the river tonight,” said the man with the pistol.

“I sail my sampan in the wind,” stammered the other; and then, “Let me die if I have offended your honorable body.”

“Walk behind me, brother,” said the blue Chinaman, and continued on his way. The trembling coolie who had followed him did not see him grin, or know that the Devil in Blue was armed. He had used the password of the Mournful Owls—not for the first time—and here was a member of the secret society humbly serving him, though Chung-Win-Ti, the local head of the Order, lay stiffening in the mud not a stone’s throw away.

The man in blue passed hastily through the gates of the Yamen, and entered the outer Court of Justice.

He swept aside an imploring secretary full of murmurs about the Mandarin’s indisposition, and came without ceremony to the presence of the Governor.

Wen-Ho-Hong looked up as the Blue Man entered, and started.

“It is an honorable happening that you condescend to come to my hovel,” he murmured. “Does your graciousness desire something?”

“My miserable carcass has come,” said the Blue Man, a snarl on his lips, “despite the fact that your honorable assassins endeavored to send me on the journey; also, my noble prince, I fear that I have villainously slain an honorable servant of yours, Chung-Win-Ti, in the Street by the Gate.”

The æsthetic face of the other did not so much as twitch.

“If you had brought your nobleness with the other honorable members of your Commission,” he said gently, “I, unworthy as I am, would have sent forth my miserable guard to bring your felicity to the Yamen.”

For a moment they sat, two Chinamen with shaven heads and plaited queues, their hands upon their knees, watching one another; then the Governor spoke:

“Will your lordship deign to enter my poverty-stricken inner room?”

The stranger hesitated a moment, then rose without a word and followed the Mandarin through the great lacquered door, which the Mandarin closed carefully behind him.

“Now, Mr. Hemel,” he said, in English, “we can talk—what is the idea?”

Colin Hemel, the President of China’s Secret Service, lit a cigarette.

“A few slight irregularities, Augustus,” he said slowly, between his puffs. “Robbery of troops’ pay——”

“That’s nothing,” said the other lightly.

“Betrayal of the Government to the rebels—membership of a secret society.”

“That’s nothing either,” snarled the Mandarin. “Isn’t there anything else?”

Colin Hemel looked up at the beautiful carved ceiling of the sanctuary.

“When we were very young men,” he said slowly, “long before you went Chinese—I suppose the fact that we were both born in the land makes our jobs natural—there was a girl at Shanghai; do you remember?”

The other licked his lips.

“I was rather fond of her, and so were you,” Colin went on, “and when Li Hang took you up, made you his English secretary, and finally gave you a province to rule, I was jolly glad—it sort of left the way open to me.”

The other smiled faintly, but Colin seemed not to see him.

“I heard all about your wonderful success at Pekin, how you had pleased the Daughter of Heaven, and your fine new appointment—the only American to hold such a job, aren’t you?”

The Mandarin nodded.

“I used to talk about it to her, and she was a little wistful. One day she disappeared.”

The man before him averted his gaze.

“She disappeared,” repeated the Secret Service man, blowing out a cloud of smoke, “and she came here.”

There was a dead silence, which the Mandarin broke.

“Well?” he asked defiantly.

“Well,” said the other, “I have added to your crimes—that.”

The man he called Augustus—he was an Augustus Verrill before his Chinese days—nodded.

“I somehow fancied you were on the track when I heard the Commission was appointed,” he said; “naturally I tried—to stop you. I am rather a big chap with the Owls, and they do, well—they do things for me.”

“Naturally,” said the blue-coated man dryly.

“As for Miss—er—Mrs. Verrill, for, of course, I married her—you are quite mistaken if you think she is unhappy. You shall see her—if you care—after this trial. I suppose it is a trial?”

Colin nodded.

“The Commission will arrive in an hour. I came on ahead for reasons of my own.”

“To secure news of her?” The Mandarin’s eyes narrowed.

“Exactly. Can’t I—can’t I see her now?”

The Mandarin shook her head.

“Be reasonable, my dear fellow,” he said suavely. “She is in the very best of health—lives like a princess and all that sort of thing—servants—and she’s awfully happy.”

Colin rose, and paced the parquetted floor of the room, his hand on his breast.

“That is all I want,” he said, a little huskily. “I wronged you, Verrill—I’m sorry.” He held out his hand. “I always thought there was a beast in you. Somehow I never thought of her as being happy. That—that was conceit, I suppose. I’ll arrange the Commission for you.”

Later he was to remember the attempt on his life, and wonder why—if the man had nothing to fear. But perhaps he feared for her, that this masterful officer, who now enjoyed the confidence of the Daughter of Heaven, would carry her back to her people perhaps.

He went to the sitting of the Commission with a light heart.

* * * * * * * *

He who was called Wen-Ho-Hong swore by all his domestic gods, and by every sacred thing save his dead father—he was too much of a gentleman to so perjure himself—that he knew nothing of the world of the Owls, nor of any other secret society. He was charged also with having been the cause of a mutiny in the army by withholding his soldiers’ pay for a year, but here he saved himself without difficulty.

The Owls’ business was more difficult to explain away to the commissioners from Pekin. Though he thrust responsibility upon a small-piece mandarin named Ho-shi-lai, though he arrayed witnesses by the thousand—producing a sample hundred in the flesh before the grave Commission who sat, hands on knees, spectacled and impassive, in the court-house—to testify to his innocence, neither Li-hung-sao nor the teak-faced Mandarin with the winking eye, who sat at the end of the row of judges, were visibly impressed.

“The Daughter of Heaven” (they still preserve the faction of Royal Government in China), murmured Li-hung-sao apologetically, “is disturbed, and miserable sycophant as I am, and unworthy to discuss such high matters with Your Excellency, yet I must humbly ask for a better story to carry to the gate of the Celestial City.”

“Prince,” said the Governor lightly, and he glanced meaningly at Colin Hemel, “I have sworn by the Noble Dead, and I have brought witnesses to prove that I know nothing of the killing of the Sesu folk—I can do no more.”

Li-hung-sao had glanced from time to time at the third member of the Commission.

“What does Your Excellency say to this?” he asked timidly, for president though he was, the last word was with the blue-coated man at the least important place.

Colin Hemel twisted round.

“I am unworthy to give an opinion,” he said, and he was occupied in his mind with the important question—how little could he with decency fine this peccant Mandarin, before he delivered a mild admonition?

For he was anxious to have done with this farce of a trial—a farce which he had planned so tragically—and go to some place where he could see her over again and for the last time. How strange she would seem in the Chinese costume she would wear! She with her flaxen hair and gray eyes.

“Your Excellency knows,” he began, when there was a stir in the crowd, a howl like the howl of a beast, and a figure dived head down between the soldiers. It fell on its knees before the grave court.

A coolie flung after and lashed at the quivering figure in his fear and rage.

“Excellencies,” he stammered, “a woman from the kitchen—shameless.”

“Mercy, O judges!” the thing on the floor mumbled and blubbered in Chinese, and raised its head and caught the staring eyes of the Mandarin in blue. He saw the cropped hair, the gray eyes, the wasted face, the skinny arms stretched in supplication.

“Mr.—Mr. Hemel!” sobbed the wreck, and collapsed.

“Let this woman be taken to my chair,” said Hemel softly; “in the name of the Daughter of Heaven, let no man harm her.”

The court was very still; only the shuffling feet of the man who lifted the figure and the heavy breathing of the Governor of Chi-Foo were the sounds heard.

Then Hemel, white as death, leaned forward, consulting no man, and struck a gong with his bare knuckles.

Through the side door curtained with gold and black tapestries came a man bare to the waist, dull-eyed and brown. He ran forward and sank on his knees before the judge, sweeping his lithe body till his shaven forehead touched the ground.

“Go, Fa-ti-sing,” said Colin Hemel huskily, “taking with you His Excellency Wen-Ho-Hong, the Governor. Outside the city gate, near by the Plain of Ten Thousand Sorrows, you shall strike the head of Wen-Ho-Hong from his body. In the name of the Daughter of Heaven, tremble and obey.”

So they took Augustus Verrill to the appointed place, and snicked off his head before an incurious crowd, and the members of the Commission went back to Pekin in their chairs.

All except the teak-faced Mandarin, who, with three soldiers at his back, rode out of the Gate of Great Assistance, and took the bumpy road for the hospital at Foo-sang, riding beside a palanquin wherein lay a Chinese kitchen-wench who was all the world to him.