The Fortune of the Indies/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
CROSS PURPOSES
JANE had spoken gallantly when she stood in the doorway of Mr. Tyler's office and said, "Now let's go and do something about it!"
But it was not so easy to do anything about the plight of Mark and Alan lngram. Apart from despatching notices to neighboring cities—after all, a very vague and slender hope—there was nothing to do but wait and wait. It seemed to Jane that she had spent her whole life waiting. Waiting to find the ship model, waiting for its return to the Ingrams, waiting for it to better their fortunes, waiting for news from China, for the Kyoto Maru to reach Shanghai, and now this most weary and hideous waiting of all!
Mr. Bolliver had no more heart than she for the bright, many-wondered streets of Shanghai. He felt that this was his fault, irremediably; Mr. Tyler thought—perhaps, more truly—that it was his. Jane, in a morbid probing of first causes, thought the blame was all hers from the beginning, for ferreting out too well the secret of the Fortune of the Indies. So it was not a very gay party that dined in the lofty salon of the hotel and walked aimlessly down the green bund.
Then there came a telegram, a telegram succinct but not to be understood. Mr. Tyler laid it before Mr. Bolliver with a gesture hopeful but hesitant. The message was from Changhow, and ran thus:
Got one boy one baby do you want?
"It seems hardly possible," Mr. Tyler said, "that such a telegram should be sent me if there were not some foundation for it, but—but the description isn't right."
"One boy," Mr. Bolliver mused. "They certainly wouldn't call Alan a baby."
"I should think not!" Jane burst out, scornfully.
"Then what about the baby?" Mr. Bolliver queried, hopelessly. "Jane, do you think it at all likely that either of your brothers would be traveling about with a baby?"
Jane gave the subject grave and careful consideration.
"No," she said, after deep thought, "I don't. Alan hates 'em, and Mark laughs at 'em. Certainly, they wouldn't have one with them when they were traveling around with treasures. That is— Oh, no, they couldn't. It's—it's perfectly idiotic."
"It does sound absurd," Mr. Tyler agreed. "They must be on the wrong track. But what made them wire me unless there were something to warrant it?" He reverted to his original perplexity.
They decided at last to despatch a message to this Magistrate Li-Chen of Changhow asking for more detail. And they telegraphed, also, to the European settlement at Changhow requesting that the consular officer give his attention to the matter. But Mr. Tyler was gravely troubled. He sent his messages in haste, with no second look at them, and he addressed each to the other.
So that a puzzled gentleman in the Changhow settlement read and reread these words:
Send more detail no baby involved in case to my knowledge want whereabouts Mark and Alan Ingram.
While Li-Chen frowned behind his spectacles as he deciphered the following:
Ask you will kindly investigate case of boy held by Changhow municipal magistrate and advise me result at once.
The respective replies reached Mr. Tyler somewhat later. From the settlement came this:
Regret have no knowledge of matter can you explain?
And from the yamen:
Have investigate with same result hold one boy one baby.
Mr Tyler clutched his gray forelock.
"This is maddening!" he cried. "Purely maddening! Can't they understand the English language? We're absolutely no farther on than before! But it seems conclusive that it can't be either Mark or Alan—my message to the magistrate would have brought a definite answer if it had been either. No, we're on the wrong track, Bart. But perhaps I'd better send some one to Changhow."
"Can't we go, Mr. Bolliver?" Jane said suddenly. "We'd be doing something then. Isn't it a place we could go to?"
"Certainly it is," Mr. Bolliver agreed. "But—dear me!—I promised your aunts—"
"Come!" Jane cried.
And Mr. Bolliver came.
Mark wove his way through interminable dirty streets till he worked unconsciously toward the west end of the city and wandered between the high walls of merchants' mansions down broad, flagged street-ways. So far his questionings had been met with puzzled staring, incomprehensible jabberings, and a few vaguely-pointed directions. He felt himself almost lost now, but still kept the direction of the river, he hoped. Presently he found himself near the water again, but not the water of the river. High-spanned bridges sprang into view, the traffic again became jostling and crowded, and he was pushed to one side by running barrow-coolies and chair-porters. As he stepped aside to avoid a jolting wheel-barrow, he collided violently with a bowed runner who carried the forward pole of a chair upon his shoulder. Mark went sprawling into the slime, and the next moment—wonder of wonders—there spoke in English a woman's voice, with a slow Scotch accent.
"I'm ever so sorry! No harm but mud, I hope?"
He sprang up beside the chair, which had halted close to him, and, to its occupant's extreme astonishment, poured forth half his tale in one gasp.
"You must really excuse me," he added suddenly, after a pause for breath, noting all at once the amazement in his listener's gray eyes, "but oh, if you knew how great it is to see an English person!"
O fortunate Mark, to be knocked head over heels by this chair of all others! This was Miss Macdougal from the Medical Mission Hospital, it appeared, and indeed she was the very person who'd be glad to help him out. It was not her habit, she informed him, to succor every young ragamuffin who told her a tale of woe in the streets, merely because he spoke her tongue. But she believed Mark, and told him so. She also summoned another chair, magically, and, following Mark's shadowy directions, the procession set forth for the Sien Kang landing-place.
"And you'll be the very person, too, who can tell me what to do with Ping-Pong," Mark shouted, when the chairs came within hailing distance of each other. "You can take her to your hospital, or something!"
"What in the name of mercy is Ping-Pong?" Miss Macdougal shouted back.
But it was impossible to explain Ping-Pong from the bobbing chair, so Mark waited. He had not mistaken the direction, after all. The chair-coolies trotted to within view of several landing-places, and finally, below the wall, the Sham-Poo's stumpy mast and drooping sail showed familiarly. Mark leaped forth and ran down to her, slipping and stumbling.
"Alan!" he cried. "Come on, old scout! I told you something would happen!"
But Alan did not answer. Mark dashed into the low, dark deck-house. No Alan! No Ping-Pong! No treasure chest! Nothing but the familiar dim stuffiness, the tick-tick of little leggy creatures investigating the rice-bag.
Miss Macdougal was perhaps less credulous now. She looked keenly at Mark.
"If all this is true," she said, "you're to be pitied. But it's not been my habit to indulge much in play-acting. I fear the best I can do for you is to send you on to the Settlement; there are Americans there, and if any can help you, it's there they can."
She fished in her bag and gave him a handful of cash—"for the chair-coolies," she explained,—and then she gave directions to his porters and left him swiftly. Mark stood looking after the swinging chair, wondering miserably if it would, then, be impossible for any one to believe him. He settled himself in his own chair, the coolies lurched forward, and he turned about—much as Alan had done—to catch a last glimpse of the little Sham-Poo.
The European settlement of Changhow lies four miles outside the Chinese city proper, on a sort of bund that faces the canal. The few ugly foreign buildings stand aggressively alone, and Changhow goes busily about its own affairs without the help or hindrance of the settlement. Mark alighted outside the walls of the administrative building, brushed as much of the dried mud from his clothes as possible, and entered.
To the gentleman leisurely writing at a flat desk, he said, by way of introduction:
"I'm Mark Ingram."
Then, as a dazed and dawning look of haunting memory and puzzled recognition began to take form in his hearer's eyes, he added:
"Why, sir, why shouldn't I be?"
"By Jove—you should be!" the man cried. "Mark Ingram, you say? Then you're one of them! But I say, where are Alan and the baby?"
Mark's jaw fell. He almost staggered.
"What in the name of creation do you know about Alan and the baby?" he demanded faintly.
For answer, the official flapped down before him Mr. Tyler's incomprehensible telegram.
"But—how did you get this? How did they know—? What—? When—?" Mark gave up, with a feeble groan of amazement.
"Fell on me out of a clear sky," the man stated. "No idea what it meant. No previous correspondence with the gentleman. Not more than a couple of hours elapse, when one of the parties named walks in upon me."
"If they knew about the baby," Mark was saying weakly, "they must have heard from Alan; but if they heard from him, they'd know where he was—and I don't know where he is, and—"
"I don't know where I am," the official cried. "Man alive, tell us the story and give me leave to untie my senses."
Alan sat in an outer room of the yamen. Ping-Pong lay asleep on the floor, the treasure-box was just in sight in the next room, and a burly native policeman leaned against the doorpost. They were holding "one boy, one baby"—and one box, they might have added—till further instructions came from Shanghai. The magistrate had "investigated" to the full extent of his own and his assistant's English; he failed to understand the telegram from Mr. Tyler—as well he might—and he was waiting for enlightenment. What became of the prisoners during this more or less uncertain period mattered little to him. They might have squatted in the courtyard of the yamen for a week, and probably would have done so, had not "something happened," as Mark would have put it.
Alan was anxious, weary, furiously angry, and wholly famished; even the last muddy rice had been eaten long ago. Ping-Pong, too, was hungry; she whimpered in her sleep and sucked her thumb for solace. Alan stared at her and shook his head.
"You're 'bad joss pidgin,' all right," he muttered. "You've balled up this expedition considerably. And I don't blame them in the least for thinking you must form an important part of a nefarious plot. As an existing fact, you're preposterous. Are you really there at all?"
Ping-Pong was quite there. She wriggled over with a sigh and sought to find a softer place on the flagged floor. Alan kept his eyes warily upon the treasure-box at intervals. He more than suspected that at the first opportunity every official would have a fat "squeeze" from that chest. He wondered what he could do if he should see them carrying it off out of sight. And how was it possible that he could ever get in touch with Mark? Mark, reckless spirit, for all he knew, was deep in some adventure wilder than that of the Black Joss by this time.
"I wonder if they could possibly be bribed?" Alan speculated.
While he was busy with this thought, there came a stir in the courtyard, the bump of carrying-chairs being unslung, and then there appeared through the gateway a man and a woman in European dress. Alan's heart leaped as he sprang to his feet. The man was young, and professional-looking in his white duck clothes; he might have been a hospital interne or a mission-worker. The woman was older, sandy and tall, with a slow gleam in her gray eyes and the quaintest drawl to the Chinese words she spoke to one of the young clerks.
"You spin the lingo better than I ever will," the young man said. "Tell him Dr. Rodney says he must send his mother to the hospital at once or there's no telling what'll happen. I even heard that they let some native quack put one of those awful green devil-plasters on her."
So the woman turned to address the Chinese youth, and as she talked her slow eyes strayed past him to where Alan stood, all afire, waiting his chance to speak.
"Hullo," she thought inwardly, below the Chinese phrases she spoke; "now where have I seen those eyes before?"
Her own dropped downward to where Ping-Pong, who had awakened, was twining herself apprehensively around Alan's feet. The gleam lit the woman's face; she pushed past doctor and student.
"In the name of all that's wonderful," she said heartily, "I believe you're Alan and Ping-Pong!"
At which Alan sat down abruptly on the bench and stared giddily at her.
"Now don't fash yourself," she said easily. "I've just as much as called your poor, decent brother a liar and sent him posting off to the Settlement. Rodney, will you go now and get another chair, and we'll all be off after him."
"But—" said Alan.
"But—" said Dr. Rodney.
"Havers!" said Miss Macdougal. "It's all right."
The way she addressed those surprised Chinese officials caused Alan to grin in ever-increasing respect and admiration. She spoke to them fluently in Chinese; she told them this had never been a municipal matter, anyway—it was for the settlement to deal with, as they should have seen at once. And apparently the word of the Medical Mission was law, for men ran to do her bidding—to lift the treasure-box into one of the chairs, which had arrived, and to bow, smiling gravely, at Alan.
To Alan's intense relief, it was Miss Macdougal who took Ping-Pong upon her lap, addressing her in Oriental monosyllables and running a professional finger over her plump little arms and legs. The three chairs swung out of the yamen courtyard, and Alan looked about him and began to think the nightmare was assuming more nearly the characteristics of a pleasant dream. It was a long way to the settlement—through suburban reaches where mulberry trees leaned above high walls; through the interminable narrow ways of the city, with the stench and noise and turmoil of it, the chair-coolies uttering fearful cries as they dashed among the jostling pedestrians and ingeniously avoided the thousand obstacles in the route.
At last they came to the settlement, aloof on its pathetic pretense of bund, and the chairs came to a jolting standstill outside the administrative building.
"What luck for us if he'd gone, after all!" Miss Macdougal cried as they alighted. "Was I not the doubting, faithless one—and I knew all the while I should have trusted the good honest eyes of him. Eh, no! Here he is, and all!"
Mark, who had not much more than finished his story, sprang up as she entered. He looked incredulously from Ping-Pong in her arms to Alan behind her. He leaned upon the table beside him, speechless. The administrative official hastily consulted the telegram.
"My word!" he ejaculated in awed tones, "If it isn't the rest of 'em!"
"Mok! Mok!" squeaked Ping-Pong. It was the nearest she had ever come to an attempt at the name of her rescuer. He stared at her absently.
"It's too much for me," he muttered, "too much!"
"It's strange, now," Miss Macdougal agreed vigorously, "strange enough. A city of a million inhabitants isn't a place you'd think likely to be running into the two ends of an adventure in one day. It was fate, now, Mr. Mark, giving me a chance to square myself with you after giving you the slip, with you in such a scrape."
"Indeed," Mark murmured, "you were kind enough, coming on that wild goose chase to the river. But I think you must be some sort of a wizard or an angel or something."
"Merely lucky," said she, twinkling slowly, "Come now, we'll sit down and get to the bottom of this."
Which they did. There followed a pause in the rapid-fire conversation, while another telegram was despatched to Mr. Tyler. Oh, if Mr. Bolliver and Jane—already steaming up the Soochow Creek in a passenger-launch—could have seen that message!
"And you'll take Ping-Pong, then?" Mark asked anxiously, "or tell me where to take her?"
"Yes, we'll look out for Ping-Pong," Miss Macdougal assured him. "I must say, you're the grand nursemaids; she looks as smooth and content as a kitten. Yes indeed, we'll do with her—and she'll be brought up a Christian, and one that won't forget who it was pulled her out of the river."
Mark grinned vaguely.
"Sometimes," he said, "it would be jolly if you'd let me know how she gets on. I'll give you my address. I suppose I'll get back there some day. If I'm ever a millionaire, I'd like to send her to college, or something—just for fun, you know, on account of the adventure."
"The way our grateful patients stick up red and gold votive tablets all over the hospital," Dr. Rodney said.
"Exactly," said Mark.
"Don't talk, Rodney," Miss Macdougal ordered. "Step out and be arranging for a boat. The thing these boys want to do is to reach Shanghai as fast as they can. We're keeping them in torment."
"But first we'll all dine together," cried the settlement official. "A feast, if it can be done at such short notice."
"Think of it—not rice and mud!" murmured Alan.
"Eh?" said Miss Macdougal.