He left his hotel on a certain day when the air was fragrant with the aroma of spices, a day when caravans were passing laden with, silks and perfumes and fine porcelains. It seemed to him to forebode a mysteriously pleasant journey. All that he carried with him was bound up in a small rug. About his person was disposed a generous sum of money. But the costume he wore was the costume of a poor man. It was of blue silk, but faded and slightly frayed with age.
Li Kan breathed deeply of the air in which ten thousand eery odors blended.
The first night of his pilgrimage found him far off in the mountain fastnesses where habitations were few. He had not provided himself with charts or maps because he imagined such a procedure would sap much of the glamor from his enterprise. Thus it was that the night shadows creeping down like serpents from the bleak mountains found him rather at a loss for a roof. Night at best is a dismal tiling, suggesting sleep, which is a period of insensibility wherein a man's soul escapes to realms the location of which no human writer has ever been able to explain.
And it so happened that in his dilemma Li Kan chanced upon a filthy hostelry that was so vile it was nauseous. Li Kan was one of the few Chinamen who appreciated the gift of cleanliness. Nevertheless, he preferred the hovel to the wind-swept mountain passes.
The keeper of the inn was Ts Ah-nyi, once a famous outlaw who had quit the main roads of travel because there was a price upon his head sufficiently large to maire his death a thing to be desired. He was a short, squat, expressionless yellow-man, greasy and unkempt, who exhaled a loathsome odor that was stifling. He eyed Li Kan shrewdly, suspiciously, but he did not deny him a place wherein to sleep.
Until late into the night the two sat together drinking samshu and talking garrulously. After awhile Ts Ah-nyi commenced to grow intoxicated, not excessively so but sufficiently for him to become confidential. From a concealed pocket in his sleeve he drew a huge opal. It shimmered and gleamed in the feeble lantern-light like a tiny ball of fire.
"Have you ever seen anything like it?" he demanded in a guttural voice.
Li Kan yawned. From his own pocket he drew a mighty emerald. It was as green as field-grass in midsummer.
"Naught but this," he replied. "In all the world no other such emerald exists. It makes a pauper of me, so great is its power, because I am afraid to appear affluent else I might be robbed of it. I remain in poverty to protect this perfect jewel."
At sunrise Li Kan continued onward down the road, of the length of which he had no knowledge. To where it led, or for what purpose were enigmas. Toward noon he stopped by the wayside to eat a few nuts and to nibble a bit of cold turnip. And as he rested he reached into his pocket for the emerald. It was gone. He yawned slightly. After all, perhaps it was as well that his tale of its marvelous worth had been a fabrication. By lantern-light the green glass certainly resembled a fine jewel. Again he yawned. From the rug in which his rarest treasures were hidden he drew an opal, the gorgeous opal which Ts Ah-nyi had gloated over. In this vast world of deceit and treachery that at least was true, was real. In the sunlight it flashed more dazzlingly than by dim lantern-light.
Li Kan rose to his feet. As he pushed onward he mused. "I wonder if one can be called a robber simply because one robs a robber."
