The Remittance-Woman/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
HIGGINSON, A. B.
A FEW seconds after the consul left the babu returned.
“Man,” Marie said, “I am going to take a little nap—on that chair there. So would you mind remaining outside?”
“Memsahib, I regret very much, but it is against”
“Don’t be a little chocolate-éclair-colored jackass! See—I’ll curl up on that rocking-chair—and”—suiting the action to her words—“I’ll put it right near the door. You can stay just beyond the threshold, where you can look at me any time you want to. I am tired, very tired, but I know I couldn’t sleep if you stay here in the room. Aren’t you armed with that big revolver of yours?”
“But”
“Please!” .
She gave him a brilliant smile, and—thought Marie—at last he showed certain signs of strictly male humanity. He bowed.
“Yes-s-s, memsahib,” he replied, and he took his place beyond the threshold while she sat on the chair near the door, imitating a moment later the deep breathing of an exhausted sleeper, but watching carefully from beneath lowered eyelids and listening to whatever might happen on the landing.
There was silence—swathing, leaden, unbroken, except occasionally by the creaking noise of a sentinel outside grounding his rifle or the click-clank-click of a metal scabbard-tip being dragged against the stone pavement as the officers of the night watch went on their rounds.
Marie glanced across her shoulder at the iron-grilled windows. It was still night, heavy, deep violet, with a froth of stars tossed over the crest of the heavens.
She looked at her wrist-watch. Two o’clock in the morning, she could tell, by the rays of the single electric bulb on the landing. She felt despair creeping over her soul, and, pluckily, she decided to fight it back. So she began to marshal her thoughts as logically and constructively as she could. By this time she had completely dismissed any idea of coming to terms with Judge Winchester and Pailloux and whatever political party and influence they represented. These men were intriguing, unscrupulous, thoroughly evil.
But what about Moses d’Acosta, the masterful, idealistic Turkish Jew, and about Mandarin Sun Yu-Wen? How did they come into the focus of this dark-coiling adventure? It seemed that they were both dangerous enemies of the Southern radicals—thus, logically, both working for the same end. Too, they seemed to have genuine liking and sympathy for each other. Yet, she remembered, there had been that undercurrent between them as if, somehow, they were opposed one against the other; and both had been anxious about that little Chinese vase which had been the real root of her troubles—which had begun with an overdue hotel bill and had wound up with her here in a political prison. Then there was Prince Pavel Kokoshkine’s enigmatic figure, and the Chuen to yan of the Tempie of Horrors, whom the murdered Manchu woman had mentioned with her dying breath. What did “Shuen to yan” mean?
Try as she might, she was not able to fit the pieces of the puzzle into a reasonable whole. There was a missing link, and it consisted in her own relation to this mystery—her own and her mother’s. So once more her thoughts returned to the latter. She must have been a Chinese subject, Tartar or Central Asian, but whatever her race and blood, she must have been important during life, even from beyond death. Marie speculated and wondered. What and who were her mother’s people? There was that uncle of hers, dead, murdered— Who, what had he been?
Mavropoulos! It sounded to her like a Greek name. How could she be connected with it?
“My word!” she thought. “What a mess!”
She stretched her cramped limbs a little and yawned. But the next moment she imitated again a sleeper’s deep breathing as she heard Judge Winchester’s pinchbeck Lancashire accents in the corridor:
“All right, Pailloux. We shall see what the man wants.”
The door being open at a convenient angle and the babu’s back not obstructing her vision, she saw the two men coming along the corridor, saw them, through a minutely raised eyelid, stop at the door of her room and peer in.
“By Jove!” whispered Winchester. “Fast asleep! Has nerve—that girl!”
Then they crossed and entered the room where Higginson was imprisoned.
She heard the judge’s first words:
“You asked for me?”
“Yes, yer ’Onor,” replied the sailor.
“I suppose you have decided to make a clean breast of it, my man.”
“Well, yer ’Onor, I got some valuable information for yer. For a price”
“Name it!”
“I want yer to release me.”
“I’ll see what can be done. First, the information. About the gun-running, eh?”
“To ’ell with them blanked guns!” came the reply in the picaresque diction of the London docks. “It’s something different—and a bleedin’ sight more important, cully!”
“Oh!” countered the judge. “For instance”
Marie sucked in her breath. It was now evident to her that the sailor had read and understood the message which she had scribbled on the inside of the cigarette-box.
“Yes, yer ’Onor!” said the man. “It’s about a vase—funny nyme—’eathenish and chinky”
“Sssh!” interrupted Winchester.
“Sssh!” echoed Pailloux.
They stepped into the sailor’s room and closed the door from the inside, and again there was silence, while Marie waited, excited, expectant. The message she had written on the inside cover of the box had of necessity been short. But she relied on the sailor’s shrewd cockney sense to supply the missing links, all the more that she had learned from the consul that the man was in real danger and would grasp at the proverbial straw to save his neck. She glanced in the direction of the window. She did not want morning to come before she had her chance. It was still dark enough outside, with just the faintest sign of morning blazing its purple message.
She waited another five minutes, and then the door of the sailor’s room opened and, from beneath lowered eyelids, she saw Winchester and Pailloux on the threshold, and between them Higginson, who was gesticulating for dear life.
“Stroike me pink,” he exclaimed, “if I ain’t tellin’ yer Gawd’s truth!”
“I do not believe you,” said Pailloux.
“Listen!” continued Higginson. “Call me a sanguinary organ-grinder’s ring-tailed monkey if I’m lyin’ to yer two gents! I tell yer I seen that ’ere vase”
“Nom d'un nom d’un nom!” interrupted the hotel manager. “Do not name it! Call it ‘the thing!’ We told you before that it is dangerous to mention it by name, that nobody, except the judge and me and perhaps three or four important Chinese officials, know of the thing’s existence.”
“Wot ho! Wot bloody ho!” cried the sailor triumphantly, while Marie blessed his ready mother-wit. “If nobody except yerselves and mebbe ’arf a dozen toffs knows about this ’ere bloomin’—now—thing, then ’ow, in the nyme of me sainted grandaunt Priscilla, can I know about this ’ere syme—now—thing, eh? Don’t yer see that I’m givin’ it to yer straight?”
“Logical!” suddenly exclaimed the Frenchman. “Absolutely logical!”
“Now ye’re talkin’, Mister Whiskerando!” said the sailor. “It’s the truth, don’t yer see?”
“By Jupiter!” admitted Winchester. “I am beginning to believe it myself!”
“Truthful ’Arry—that’s wot me mytes calls me aboard ship!” cut in Mr. Higginson in a splendid outburst of seafaring imagination.
Winchester took Pailloux to one side and whispered to him earnestly. Then he approached the sailor once more.
“My man,” he said, “we have decided that you are speaking the truth. You could not possibly know about the existence of the—ah—thing unless—well—unless you knew. And you described the thing correctly. You know its name. Very well. We shall give you the chance you ask for.”
“All I wants is ten minutes alone with the lydy,” said the sailor. “I’ll myke ’er ’fess up, or me nyme ain’t Truthful ’Arry ’Igginson, gents! I knows wot to say to ’er! I” again his imagination surged up riotously and magnificently—“I knows a few things about ’er that’d myke yer ’air turn gray. Let me tell you, gents”
“Some other time. We are in a hurry to put our hands on the thing.”
“Right-o! Ten minutes with ’er, mebbe fifteen. Alone. That’s all I arsk.”
“Alone?” objected Monsieur Pailloux. “But”
“I got to talk to her gentle-like first. She won’t spill unless I gets ’er confidence first—and we got to be alone for that.”
“Still, I don’t see” said the Frenchman.
“We’ll leave the babu in the room. Oh, yes”—as Higginson was about to expostulate—“got to be done!” He called to the babu. “Hey, there, Hurree Chuckerjee!”
The latter approached and salaamed.
“Yes, sahib?”
“Armed, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Mr. Higginson is going to talk to Miss Campbell for a few minutes, and you’ll stay in the room with them.”
“But—yer ’Onor” interjected the sailor.
“You can talk to her in a whisper, Higginson. And it’s up to you to watch, Hurree Chuckerjee—understand?”
“Listen is obey, sahib!”
“It’s all right,” Winchester said to Pailloux. “The windows of the room are barred with iron, and there are sentinels in the street.”
“Very well,” said Higginson. “I’ll talk to ’er. And then, if I’m right and I myke the lydy ’fess up, all ye’ve got to do is look for the—now—thing after she owns up—and, gents, she’ll own up soon enough! And then, after ye’ve found it, ye’ll squash that there gun-runnin’ indictment against me and let me go back to me ship—and wot ho for the briny and Liverpool and the bar-maids of the Old Crocodile!”
“Agreed!” said Mr. Winchester.
A minute later, Marie Campbell simulated surprise and indignation when the babu took her by the arm, calling, “Ho, memsahib!” and when immediately afterward Winchester, flanked by Higginson and the Frenchman, walked up to her and told her, with a thin laugh, that he wanted “this person, Mr. Higginson, able-bodied seaman,” to have a few minutes’ private conversation with her.
“I don’t know Mr.—oh” she cried, “whatever his name!”
“Aw—lydy,” cut in the sailor, with every appearance of hurt feelings, “don’t yer remember Truthful ’Arry?” He appealed to the judge. “That’s gratitude, yer ’Onor! After it was me who ’elped ’er to”
Marie cut in rapidly, afraid the sailor’s imagination might defeat its own ends.
“I don’t know you,” she repeated.
“Don’t you?” smiled the judge.
“But, Miss Campbell,” exclaimed Higginson, winking a watery blue eye at her, “don’t yer recall as ’ow yer told me only larst week”
“I don’t remember a thing!”
“You will remember—presently,” said Judge Winchester. He turned to the sailor. “Higginson,” he said, “come straight to my private office when you are through with Miss Campbell. Know where it is, don’t you?” He smiled disagreeably.
“Yes, yer ’Onor. It’s the third door beyond the turning of the corridor, ain’t it?”
“Mon Dieu, no!” exclaimed the Frenchman.
“Indeed, no!” echoed Mr. Winchester. “It’s the fourth door. Be careful! I shall instruct the guards to let you pass.”
“Thanks, yer ’Onor,” said the sailor, pulling at his forelock. The two men walked away, while Hurree Chuckerjee and Higginson stepped fully into the room, closing the door, the former remaining near the threshold and playing nervously with the butt of his revolver while the latter walked up to Marie.
“Now, lydy,” he said in a loud voice, “I ’ad a long talk with the judge, and I promised ’im I would myke yer ’fess up. Now—come through!”
“I don’t know you!”
“Aw, ’ow yer ’urts my feelings!”
“Leave me alone!”
“Look a-’ere!” Higginson sat down close to Marie and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Wot ho, but ye’re a bloomin’ good actress!”
“Am I not?” Marie whispered back.
“Right-o! I got yer note, lydy—and now—wot are we goin’ to do with it—as the monkey sed when ’e ’ad grabbed the red-’ot poker?”
So they conversed in low, tense accents for several minutes, while Mr. Hurree Chuckerjee looked on, wild-eyed, staring, all the nerves in his cowardly body writhing as he saw the powerful play of the back muscles beneath the sailor’s thin shirt. For he knew these rough seafaring sahibs, and he did not trust them—no—not at all. Which proved that he had more than a little common sense as well as, evidently, more than a little experience on docks and water-fronts in the days before he left Calcutta for a life of adventure in yellow China.
But, after all, it appeared that Mr. Hurree Chuckerjee’s fears had been groundless. For just at that moment Higginson turned away from the girl and walked up to him, a sunny smile in his watery blue eyes and a laugh on his lips.
“Mister ’Indu,” he said, “it’s done!”
“Yes-s-s, sahib?”
“Right-o! The little lydy ’as decided to jolly well spill the truth. ’Aven’t you, Miss Campbell?”
“Oh, yes,” she said demurely.
“And now for me interview with the judge,” the sailor went on as he crossed to the threshold. “The third door, eh, Mr. ’Indu?”
“No!” cried the latter, waving pudgy, excited hands. “The fourth! The judge warned you most especially, Higginson sahib!”
“That’s so,” admitted the able-bodied seaman. “Forgetful ’Arry—that’s wot me shipmytes calls me, when they don’t call me Truthful ’Arry.”
“You must not make a mistake about the door!” implored the babu.
“I ’opes as I won’t. Wot’s be’ind that other door, cully, that ye’re all so bloody well frightened about it?”
“Nothing, sahib.”
“Right-o! Secret diplomacy—wot?”
“You must be careful,” repeated the babu. “Perhaps I had better come with you part of the way—until you meet the guards?”
“I do think you ’ad better. Although”—the sailor hesitated—“are you allowed to leave this ’ere lydy alone?”
“It is against regulation fifteen, paragraph eight. But, sahib, the windows are barred and I shall lock the door. For the first time in my life I shall therefore not adhere strictly to the printed regulations.”
“Yer are a broad-minded josser!” came the hearty reply. “Let’s go!” And Higginson put his left arm through the babu's right with a friendly smile, and then, the very next moment, before the latter knew what was occurring and how, it seemed to him that an entire firmament filled with a million bright stars was bursting somewhere in the back cells of his brain while a terrible pain shot knifelike through his eyes.
What had really happened was that Higginson had suddenly reverted to the shirt-sleeves diplomacy and tactics of the quarter-deck. With great rapidity he had drawn his left arm from the babu’s right, had turned with catlike agility, had thrust his left hand into the babu’s eye, his right into his throat, and the man went down as though he had been struck by a high-power bullet.
“Quick! We ain’t got much time!”
Higginson turned to the girl, and, with her help, inside of a few seconds they gagged the babu securely with the sailor’s handkerchief and the girl’s gloves. Working feverishly, they tore the waist-shawl from the unconscious man and, with that and the sailor’s coat and belt, tied him hand and foot. Then the sailor helped himself to the babu’s revolver and motioned to Marie to follow him.
They left the room, quickly closing the door behind them, and a few steps farther down the corridor they met one of the guards in full uniform and heavily armed. Higginson walked up to him casually.
“Did the judge tell you”
“All light. Top-side plenty good!” came the reply in pidgin-English, and the Tartar soldier kept on his way, unsuspectingly turning his back while the sailor whispered rapidly to the girl:
“Sorry I ain’t got no time to fool with Queensberry rules. I got to treat ’im as I did ’is nibs back in yer room. Can’t afford to ’ave ’im prowl round”
Again, with tremendous agility, he turned. Up flashed his right hand which held the revolver, the steel butt hitting the Tartar on the lower part of the brain. The man went down without a sound.
“Got to shyke a leg!” said Higginson to Marie, the light of battle in his blue eyes. “Ain’t got no time to tie and gag ’im. Still—that sleepin’-powder I administered to ’is bean will keep ’im in the arms of Murphy for a jolly good while.”
“You are such a sweet and peaceful soul, Mr. Higginson!” smiled the girl.
“I am!” maintained the sailor stoutly. “Peaceful ’Arry—that’s wot me pals calls me. I’m a bleedin’ lamb until some blighter steps on me toes” He interrupted himself, pointed. “Look! ’Ere’s the turning!” They made it at a run, hand in hand. There was no other guard about. “Now, then” as they stopped in front of the third door.
“Shall we” breathed Marie, wondering what lay beyond the threshold.
“We bloomin’ well got to!” replied the sailor. “It’s our only chance, lydy.” He touched the door rather gingerly. “Mebbe I was a fool doin’ wot yer arsked me in that there note yer wrote on the cigarette-box! Well—never mind. I like the color of yer eyes. Come; step into me parlor.” The door opened easily enough. He peered in. “Gawd—ain’t it dark? Well—can’t be ’elped. In we pops!”
They crossed the threshold and groped their way down some stairs slowly, carefully, perhaps a couple of dozen steps, worn slippery and hollow as by the tread of hundreds of naked feet, down, straight, down. There was not even the faintest ray of light, and the air was heavy, terribly oppressive, stagnant. But they held on their course, carefully setting foot before foot, hands stretched out at right angles from their bodies to give warning of unfamiliar objects, and finally they landed dead against a wall.
Presently, by groping tentatively here and there, they discovered that they had debouched on a narrow landing which stretched right and left. Which way should they go, they wondered. They had to turn somewhere, and so they chose the left, for no particular reason. But often since Marie speculated what would have happened to them and how the whole adventure would have ended had they gone the other way.
Still they kept on, the sailor in front, Marie following, until suddenly there was a dull noise. Higginson let out an oath.
“Gawd! That hurts!”
It appeared that he had struck his forehead a terrific bump against a low beam that barred the way. He leaned down and investigated.
“There’s space beyond. Careful, lydy!”
Bending down, they stepped under the beam and, by feeling, found that they were in a small cubicle, less than five feet in height and no bigger than six or seven feet square. The road seemed to end there. They crouched low, wondering what next to do.
“I’m goin’ to strike a match,” whispered the sailor.
Up flared the match with a brutal lemon flare, and they looked about quickly. There was no door—nothing, except
“Look!” said Marie, and pointed at the low ceiling where, square in the center, a curved metal handle was protruding. The match flickered out. “What now?” asked Marie.
“Got to try the ’andle, lydy,” said Higginson, with British stoicism.
A jerk and twist—and suddenly half the ceiling slid to one side, into a well-oiled groove, sending down a flood of haggard light.
“Come on!” said the sailor, and he lifted the girl through the hole in the ceiling and followed after.