Chapter XII: Part 12

“I had the same experience,” observed O’Shea. “And I do not know what to make of it at all. ’Twas me firm conviction that we were prancin’ into a hornet’s nest. The information all pointed that way. I would call it a funny kind of a surprise party.”

“The villagers have no intention of making it unpleasant for us. They have been giving my men eggs and melons and chickens, to keep us good-natured, I presume.”

“Well, we will find quarters and fetch our grub from the junk, and I will buy the drinks, if ye can locate them, for the joke seems to be on me.”

They found the village tavern, consisting of several detached buildings set in a large court-yard. The agitated landlord kow-towed himself almost black in the face, and in trembling accents expressed his desire to bestow all his goods upon the warlike foreigners if only his miserable life might be spared. He summarily ejected a few native guests of low degree, who fled without delaying to argue the matter. The invaders set the tavern coolies to sweeping and scrubbing the filthy buildings and took charge of the kitchen with its row of earthen fire-pots. There was no lack of room for men to sleep three and four in a row upon the _k’angs_, or brick platforms used for the purpose, and the ragged quilts were hung outside to air. In short, the tavern was transformed into a camp which had no serious discomforts.

Having taken care of his men, Captain O’Shea found leisure to ponder over the situation, a process which left him with a headache. He rambled unmolested from one end of the village to the other, searching for clues that might link themselves with the Painted Joss and the tragedy of Bill Maguire. There were two small, dilapidated temples, one of them inhabited by a few Buddhist priests in yellow robes. O’Shea was permitted to enter them and explore to his heart’s content. They were nothing more than village shrines, however, in which the perfunctory rites were held and offerings made--such places as might have been seen in a thousand Chinese towns. Nor did the village itself, excepting for an air of general decay, differ from the hamlets of a dozen provinces.

“I have a harrowing suspicion that Charley Tong Sin made a monkey of me,” ruefully sighed O’Shea, “or maybe I have been all wrong from the start. The Chinese proposition has too many twists in it for a white man to fathom.”

As a person of considerable confidence in his ability to master difficulties, his self-esteem had been dealt a hard blow. His imagination had pictured a large, stirring climax of his pilgrimage, and here he was all adrift in a wretched little village of no consequence whatever, the last place in the world to find the headquarters of a secret organization so mysteriously powerful as to cast its sinister shadow throughout China, and even across the seas. And yet the evidence had been by no means vague and misleading. Beginning with the fragmentary revelations of the demented sailor, coming next to the disclosures of poor McDougal’s diary, he had been led straight to the town of Wang-Li-Fu, on the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells. He had felt that the hand of destiny was guiding him.

Returning to the tavern yard O’Shea found his men cheerfully making friends of the villagers and accepting the situation with the ready adaptability of true soldiers of fortune. They looked to the leader for orders, but he had none to give them. He had been placed in the ridiculous position of providing wages and rations for a perfectly superfluous expeditionary force.

“Just what did you expect to turn up in this pigsty of a settlement?” gloomily inquired Mr. Kittridge, who seemed disappointed that he had not broken a few heads. “Whatever it was, it fell flat.”

“It did that,” frankly admitted O’Shea. “’Tis a painful subject, Mr. Kittridge, and we will not discuss it now. But I am not done with the riddle of Wang-Li-Fu.”

Three days passed, and singly and in squads the invaders ransacked the village and its suburbs, poking into shops, alleys, dwellings, and court-yards and taking stock of the inmates thereof. That the people were very poor and very industrious was all that one could say of them. And they were no more to be suspected of plotting deeds of violence than so many rabbits. Doggedly persistent, unwilling to confess himself beaten, O’Shea shifted his quest to the open country for miles outside of Wang-Li-Fu. It was a region of green fields gridironed with ditches and rutted paths, and dotted with toilers in blue cotton blouses and straw hats, who tilled their crops from dawn to dark.

It was obviously useless to extend the investigation any considerable distance away from this region. If the secret was not to be unearthed in the vicinity of Wang-Li-Fu, then his conclusions had been all wrong. The villagers assured him that this was, in truth, none other than Wang-Li-Fu, and the baffled, perplexed O’Shea could not let go of the opinion that the goal was somewhere near at hand. Otherwise, why all the elaborate stratagems in Shanghai to thwart his voyage to the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells?

He had imagined himself attacking a stronghold of some sort, a headquarters of desperate criminals who must be wiped out. But if that slippery comprador Charley Tong Sin had carried a warning to the men of the Painted Joss, he must have fled elsewhere than to this commonplace, harmless village. At any rate, it seemed absurd to tarry much longer in Wang-Li-Fu with a force of armed retainers.

At the end of a fortnight, O’Shea was of the opinion that his loyal legion had better seek to mend its fortunes in some other quarter. He was ashamed to look them in the face. The fiasco cut him to the quick. He had been as mad as poor Bill Maguire. In future he would stick to his trade as a shipmaster.

Meanwhile, the malarial poison of the marshes found its way into his blood. He failed to realize that he was ill, and paid no attention to the little flashes of fever that came by night and the creeping, chilly feeling that troubled him in the morning.

There came a day when he was unable to rise from the brick sleeping-platform. The fever increased, suddenly, violently. It caught him unprepared. His plan of retreat had not been announced, and now he was incapable of leadership. His mind alternated between delirium and stupor. When he talked it was of many inconsequential things. One might have said that the evil spirit of the Painted Joss had laid its spell of misfortune upon him. In the court-yard of the tavern his lieutenants held a conference.

“Can anybody make head or tail of this infernal situation?” gloomily inquired Mr. Kittridge. “What in hades are we going to do about it?”

“Try to pull Captain O’Shea through this fever before we think of anything else,” stoutly affirmed Mr. Parkinson. “We jammed into this crazy voyage with our eyes shut. With all of us it was anything to get clear of Shanghai. And it’s useless business to sit and growl about it as hard luck. What do you say, Major Bannister?”

The army man smiled at sight of their discouraged countenances and quietly answered:

“What else can we chaps expect but hard luck? Really, I should be surprised to find anything else. I can tell you one thing, gentlemen. I have campaigned in the tropics, and I know something about this swamp fever. We had best get out of here and take Captain O’Shea with us. If we don’t, he will die as sure as sunrise, and the rest of us will be down with it before long. It caught him first because he was fagged with worry.”

“We agree with you there,” said Mr. Parkinson. “But we seem to have overlooked a line of retreat. That was the Irish of it, I suppose. If we go down river in our two boats we’ll have to work ’em out to sea over those nasty shoals and then run the chance of being picked up adrift. We might get away with it, but it would kill a man as sick as O’Shea.”

“Why not go up-river?” suggested Major Bannister. “By means of a few words of Chinese and a great many gestures I have extracted from the village head-men the information that there is a European mission station about a hundred and fifty miles northwest of here. We can make part of the journey by boat and then hike overland. With a litter and coolies to carry it, we may be able to take Captain O’Shea through alive. It’s better than letting him die in this pest-hole.”

“That’s the most sensible speech I’ve heard since we signed on,” grunted Mr. Kittridge. “And you can pull out of this rotten Wang-Li-Fu not a minute too soon to please me.”

The village head-men were summoned, and these venerable worthies declared themselves anxious to aid the sick leader of the foreign soldiers. He had played with their children, paid the shopkeepers their prices without dispute, and sat with the old men in the tea-houses. Nor had his armed force committed any abuses, although they held the village at their mercy. It was wisdom to try to carry Captain O’Shea to his own people. The village would gladly furnish a guide and plenty of coolies, a covered litter, and a small house-boat in which the sick man could be made comfortable.

The evacuation of Wang-Li-Fu was a dismal business. The adventurers were oppressed by a sense of failure and discouragement. Their enterprise had fizzled out like a dampened match. This final act was inglorious. Their plight was worse than when they had been stranded as beach-combers in Shanghai. They carried Captain O’Shea to a sampan, or flat-bottomed boat, with a tiny cabin of bamboo and matting, which could be towed against the sluggish current of the river. The men disposed themselves in the two boats saved from the _Whang Ho_ steamer, and a squad of half-naked coolies strung themselves along a towing-rope to help track the sampan up-stream.

The sick man lay stretched upon his quilts and showed little interest in the slow progress of the flotilla. Between spells of heavy drowsiness he watched the slimy shore and fringing marsh slide past. Through the first day the wind was cool and the air bright, and the boats trailed up-river until after nightfall before they were pulled into the bank to moor. As the part of caution, no fires were made and conversation was hushed. The foreigners had an uncomfortable suspicion that this might be hostile territory, although they had discovered nothing to warrant the conjecture. But O’Shea had been babbling about the Painted Joss while flighty with fever, and Charley Tong Sin was still unaccounted for.

Between midnight and morning the sick man came out of his uneasy dreams. As it seemed to him, he was clear-headed, his senses alert, his judgment normal. Just why he should be cooped up in this native boat was a bit difficult to comprehend, but why try to understand it? There was only one problem of real importance. And now was the time to solve it. O’Shea laughed to think what a stupid, blundering fool he had been to recruit an armed expedition and come clattering into this corner of China with so much fuss and noise.

If a man wanted to find the Painted Joss, all he had to do was listen to the friendly, familiar voices that whispered in his ears. O’Shea could hear them now. He accepted them as a matter of course. His eyes were very bright as he pulled on his shoes and fumbled for the revolver in its holster under the pillow. Curiously enough, he was no longer conscious of great physical weakness. It was tremendously urgent that he should go to find the Painted Joss without a moment’s delay. His men would not understand if he should tell them about the friendly voices that were offering to show him the way. They might try to restrain him. He must leave the boat quietly, unobserved.

Crawling from beneath the matting curtain, he gained the river bank. His knees were exceedingly shaky and his hands trembled uncertainly, but he was confident that he had found the trail of the Painted Joss and that his vigor would soon return. Charley Tong Sin outwit him? Nonsense! O’Shea would have been startled beyond measure to know that he was wandering off in delirium. He would have taken a shot at any one rash enough to tell him so.

Undetected he moved along the shore, silent as a red Indian, and was presently lost in the darkness. It was muddy walking, and he turned into the tall marsh grass, where a carpet of dead vegetation made firmer footing. Frequently he was compelled to halt and regain his labored breath, but his purpose was unwavering. The voices drove him on. He had no sense of fear. After some time his erratic progress led him back to the river. There he stumbled over a log and sat down to wait for daybreak, which had begun to flush the sky.

His head throbbed as though hammers were pounding it and waves of blurring dizziness troubled him. What was more disquieting, the guiding voices had ceased to talk to him. He felt crushing disappointment and sadness. His eyes filled with tears.

Dawn found him seated dejectedly with his back propped against the log, his head drooping, while he stared at the muddy river. Here he would wait on the chance that his friends might find him. As the day brightened, his aimless vision was caught by something which powerfully awakened his weary, befogged perceptions. It acted as a stimulant of tremendous force. Sitting bolt upright he gazed at a footprint, cleanly outlined, which had become sun-dried and hardened in a stratum of clay.

It had been made by a leather sole and heel. The outline was pointed and narrow. Into O’Shea’s quickened memory there flashed the picture of Charley Tong Sin stretched upon the cabin floor of the _Whang Ho_ steamer, his patent-leather shoes waving gently as he went to sleep under the soporific influence of a knock-out blow. He felt absolutely certain that this particular print had been left by the fashionable footgear of the vanished comprador. The voices had guided him aright. It was here that Charley Tong Sin had come ashore after making his way up the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells in some kind of a native boat.

There was one chance in a million that O’Shea should have halted to wait in this precise spot where his eyes might see the thing. He dragged himself to his feet and scanned the melancholy landscape. There were no villages in sight; only the marsh and fields and a vast mound of débris to mark the place where once had stood a city. Even the walls surrounding it had been levelled. It was scarcely more than a wide-spread excrescence of broken brick and tiling partly overgrown with vegetation. The landscape could have held no more desolate reminder of the wreckage left in the wake of the Tai Ping rebels.

It was plausible to surmise that this was the real Wang-Li-Fu, the city which O’Shea had set out to find. The squalid village much lower down the river might have been founded by refugees who gave the same name to their new abode. And the villagers had been too ignorant to explain the blunder. To them there was only one Wang-Li-Fu. How Charley Tong Sin must have laughed at leaving O’Shea and his men to waste themselves in a chase that led nowhere.

It was a pallid, unshaven, tottering ghost of Captain Michael O’Shea that mustered strength to walk very slowly in the direction of the ruined city. Once he paused and became irresolute, but a little way beyond he found the imprint of a narrow shoe of European workmanship on the soft bank of a ditch. His stumbling steps led him, as by an unerring divination, toward the highest part of the great mound of débris where tall trees grew from the crumbling masonry. His painful advance became less difficult when he found a path from which the obstructions had been removed.

Presently he stood looking across a cleared space in the midst of the ruins, invisible from river or highway. In it were several small buildings and one much larger. The timbers set into its walls were carved and gilded, the curving roof of dull red tile. There was no living thing in sight. This isolated community was so situated that it was wholly concealed from strangers, and the natives of the region were apt to shun the blasted city as haunted by demons. No watchers were posted to guard against intrusion.

O’Shea crossed the open space and made for the large building, which had the aspect of a temple. Unhesitatingly he approached the massive wooden doors and found them ajar. He walked like a man in a trance, muttering to himself. Passing within, he entered a sort of anteroom partitioned by means of screens wonderfully embroidered. The stone pavement rang to the tread of his heels. The place echoed with emptiness. He pressed on and came into a room of greater extent. Its corners were lost in shadow. Rows of pillars supported the dusky rafters upon which gilded dragons seemed to writhe. The windows were small and set close to the roof and the light of early morning had not dispelled the gloom.

In the centre of the floor was an altar. Behind it towered an image of Buddha, and yet it was unlike the images of the bland and contemplative Buddha commonly to be found in the temples of the East. It was a monstrous thing. Only an artist with an inspiration from the devil could have so handled tools as to make those wooden features seem to lust after all abominable wickedness. The color of this seated statue was crimson. Amid the shadows it glowed like fire or blood. On the breast, above the folded arms, stood out in broad, black strokes a Chinese symbol or character which O’Shea recognized with a sensation of creeping repugnance.

“The Painted Joss!” he gasped.

His attention was so strongly caught and held by this malevolent image that for the moment he had eyes for nothing else. Presently, however, he became aware that another figure confronted him, a living presence. It was a man sitting in a massive chair of teak-wood, by the side of the Buddha. The bulk of him was enormous. He was both fat and mighty of frame, and not even the towering amplitude of the image could dwarf his proportions and belittle the impression he conveyed. His face was broad and heavy-jowled, the mouth sensual and cruel. With folded arms he sat and gazed at the foreign intruder. This unflinching, scornful immobility had a certain distinction. He believed that he must instantly die at the hands of this European with the white, savage face and the blazing eyes who covered him with a revolver. It was futile to cry out and summon help. As is customary with Chinese in positions of authority, this high-priest of iniquity had gone to the temple to have audience with his servitors very early in the morning. They had not yet joined him and O’Shea was quick to read his own advantage.

It was right and just that he should slay this huge man in the crimson robe who ruled the temple of the Painted Joss. He had come ten thousand miles to be judge and executioner. He was ready to kill and be killed in his turn. But the revolver was strangely heavy and it wavered so that he was unable to hold it at arm’s length. A haze bothered his vision and he could not brush it from his eyes. Something was the matter with his knees. They were giving way. With an incoherent exclamation, O’Shea fell unconscious upon the stone flagging and the revolver clattered from his limp hand. He had paid the price of exertion beyond his strength.

When his senses returned there was in his mind only the dimmest recollection of how he came to be in this dreadful place. The vagaries of fever no longer possessed him. Clear-headed but wretchedly weak and nerveless, he gazed about him and discovered that he was alone in the unholy temple. The shadows were not so heavy on the pillars, the gilded rafters, and the marble altar. The crimson image of the seated Buddha loomed flamboyant and portentous and the Chinese symbol painted on its breast was boldly outlined.

There was no way of escape. The building was a most effectual prison. His revolver had been taken from him. He could not even fight and die like a man. The fact was that this desperate extremity lacked the proper sense of reality. It was so contrary to reason and he had such shadowy, confused ideas of what had preceded, that this was more like nightmare or delirium. And it seemed impossible that he should not presently find himself awake.

What most tenaciously persisted in his memory was the image of the huge man in the teak-wood chair. He was a vision which could not be denied. Such a one as he had power to sway the wills of others to his desires, to create and direct great enterprises and send his influence afar, but never for good. If he ordered murder done in distant places his secret edicts would be obeyed, nor would his agent dare to thwart him. If there was such an organization as O’Shea had assumed, then he had stood face to face with the dominant personality, the compelling force from which radiated infernal activities.

“I saw him, whether I am meself or somebody else,” the prisoner muttered with a groan. “And he will come back and the brand will be chopped into me, same as was done to poor Bill Maguire. ’Tis a tough finish, if all this is really true. My God, I wish I knew what had happened to me. Yesterday I was going up-river with me men, and now----”

He struggled to his feet. A supreme effort of will conquered physical weakness. A man condemned to die is capable of forgetting bodily ills. Just then a young man appeared from the direction of the door-way. He wore native garments, but O’Shea recognized him. It was Charley Tong Sin, whose smile was unpleasant. In his hand was O’Shea’s revolver, which he was careful to hold ready for use. The jaunty, affable manner of the comprador had returned. He appeared very well satisfied with himself as he exclaimed, by way of greeting.

“It is an unexpected pleasure, you bet, Captain O’Shea. I have waited till you were gone from Wang-Li-Fu. It was reported that you were very sick and went up the river yesterday with your men. You decided to come and see us, to visit the Painted Joss? You wished to make some trouble?”

“’Tis the last day I will make trouble for any one, by the looks of things,” replied O’Shea. “You win, Charley.”

“You are a smart man,” grinned the other. “But you had too much curiosity. I am a good fellow. I will tell you what you want to know. You will not give it away. They are getting ready to cut your visit pretty short.”

There was the chatter of voices somewhere outside and the brazen mutter of a gong. O’Shea kept silence. He was not as resigned to his fate as Charley Tong Sin inferred. He was watching every motion of the gloating young man and his eyes measured the distance between them.

“You will feel better if you know,” tauntingly cried the Chinese. “You have seen the Painted Joss. You have seen a man sitting beside it, the great and terrible Chung himself, the ruler of the Pih-lien-Kiao, the _Sect of the Fatal Obligation_.”

“Much obliged, Charley,” grimly interrupted O’Shea. “Tell me some more. I am sorry I could not have words with the terrible Chung. And the brand that ye chop into people, your trademark?”

“It is the mark that means _The Dreadful Messenger of Chung_. It is a favor to tell you, Captain O’Shea. No other foreigner, no Chinese except the servants of Chung, have heard it spoken. But you will not speak it anywhere.”

“There’s more that I want to know,” said O’Shea, “though precious little good the information will do me.”

“Ha! Why did you not have so much sense before and mind your own business?”

It was absurd to carry on such a dialogue as this, as O’Shea perceived, but Charley Tong Sin was enjoying this session with the rash shipmaster who had formerly held the upper hand. Before the victim could be subjected to further taunts he heard the massive doors opened and other sounds to indicate that bars were sliding into place to fasten them on the inside. The huge man in the crimson robe, the great and terrible Chung, lumbered into view and seated himself in the chair of teak-wood. Charley Tong Sin humbly bowed several times. The personage beckoned the twain nearer and spoke briefly. He desired to conduct a cross-examination of his own with the comprador as interpreter.

“He wishes to know why you have come to this place?” was the first question addressed to O’Shea.

“Because ye butchered a friend of mine, a red-headed sailor by the name of Jim Eldridge,” was the unflinching reply. “He told me about your dirty devilment as well as he could, and I saw what ye did to him.”

The huge man showed signs of consternation when this was conveyed to him. He uttered a bellowing interrogation.

“He is not alive? You have talked with his ghost?” shrilly demanded Charley Tong Sin.

“’Twas him that sent me here,” declared O’Shea. “Ye can impart it to the big ugly mug yonder that I have had visits from the ghost of the red-headed sailor that he killed and branded.”

With an excited, heedless gesture, Charley Tong Sin raised the revolver. He had been long accustomed to wearing European clothes, and the flowing sleeves of his Chinese outer garment impeded his motions. A fold of the silk fabric fell over the butt of the weapon, and he tried to brush it aside with his left hand. This other sleeve was caught and held for a moment by the sharp firing-pin of the cocked hammer.

This trifling mishap, gave O’Shea a desperate opportunity. With a flash of his normal agility he leaped across the intervening space. The comprador strove frantically to free the weapon, but only entangled it the more. The episode was closed before the crimson-robed personage could play a part. O’Shea’s shoulder rammed Charley Tong Sin and sent him sprawling, and the revolver was instantly wrested from his grasp.

“The doors are locked,” panted O’Shea, “and before your men break in, I will send the both of ye to hell. Sit where you are, ye terrible Chung. You overplayed your game, Charley.”

The comprador seemed to shrink within his clothes. His mouth hung open and his face was ashen. He was eager to clutch at any straw which might give him the chance of life. Shrinking from the scowling presence in the chair, he began to talk a sing-song babble of words that tumbled over each other.

“I will help you get away alive if you do not kill me. Captain O’Shea, I will explain about Jim Eldridge; I will not lie to you. All the secrets I will tell you. There was a steamer, the _Tai Yan_, and she came over the bar from the sea in a big storm, at the time of a flood. It was do this or go to the bottom because the engines had broke. A boat with sailors rowed up the river. They were foolish men who believed the stories that gold and silver treasure was hidden in the ruins of this old Wang-Li-Fu. And they found this temple, and they knew too much.

“All but two of the men were able to run quick to the river, but Eldridge and one named McDougal ran into this place, trying to hide. They ran into the temple before they were captured. There was a little building, but now it is ashes and much sticks of burnt wood. In that building those two men were locked to be killed next day. The red-headed man was a demon, I tell you. Walls could not hold him. In the night he set fire to the building, and it was a great blaze. But he was caught and punished.”

“Ye left him for dead, and he came to,” growled O’Shea. “And so McDougal got away!”

“I can tell you more secrets,” wailed Charley Tong Sin, but his services as an informer were suddenly cut short. The huge man in the chair had raised his voice in a tremendous call for help to his followers without. Otherwise he had sat composed, glaring at O’Shea. It was his hand that slew Charley Tong Sin as a traitor. He was on his feet, the heavy chair raised aloft. He swung it with amazing ease. It was no longer a massive article of furniture, but a missile in the hands of a man of gigantic strength. His movements were not clumsy.

The chair flew through the air. O’Shea dodged, but Charley Tong Sin flung up his arms, taken unawares. The impact would have brained an ox. The whirling mass of teak smote the terrified comprador on the head and chest and he crumpled to the pavement. He was as dead as though he had been caught beneath the hammer of a pile-driver. The tableau was an extraordinary one. O’Shea stood staring at the broken body of the young Chinese. The man in the crimson robe stirred not from his tracks. Implacable, unafraid, he had executed the last sentence of _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_.

The people outside were clamoring at the doors, and O’Shea heard the thud and crash of some kind of an improvised battering-ram. He sighed and found the thought of death at their hands very bitter. But he would not go alone. He faced the great and terrible Chung and slowly raised the revolver.

The arch-assassin bade him wait with a gesture so imperious, so mandatory, that O’Shea hesitated. The bearing of the man held some large significance. His dark, evil countenance expressed rather sadness than wrath. He slid a hand into the folds of his robe and raised the hand to his mouth. Whatever it was that he swallowed wrought its work with swift and deadly virulence. Swaying like a tree about to fall, he strode to the marble altar and fell across it with his head buried in his arms. In this posture he died, in front of the image of the glowing Buddha, whose graven lineaments seemed to express the unholy ambitions and emotions of his own soul.

O’Shea managed to walk to a corner of the temple and slumped down upon a marble bench where the Painted Joss cast its deepest shadow. His strength had ebbed again. Listlessly, almost inattentive, he heard the assault upon the doors renewed and the splintering of plank. When the Chinese mob came tumbling in he could try to shoot straight and hit a few of them, and then they would close in on him. It was the end of the game.

A few minutes and the servitors of Chung came jostling and shouting through the anteroom. Then they halted abruptly. Their noise was hushed. The light that fell from the windows near the roof showed them the lifeless figure in the crimson robe, doubled across the marble altar. In the foreground lay the battered body of Charley Tong Sin, but they had eyes only for the tragedy of the altar. They stood dumfounded, like men in the presence of something incredible.

At length the boldest shuffled forward. The others followed timidly. They appeared terrified in the extreme. It was as though they had believed their master to be invulnerable. And he was dead. Possibly they conjectured that he had been slain by an agency more than mortal. The group of Chinese clustered about the altar, whispering, regarding the body of Chung. Apparently they had not bethought themselves of the foreigner who was held a prisoner in the temple.

O’Shea rose in his shadowy corner and moved wearily past the Painted Joss. It was better to have the thing finished. He came upon the Chinese like an apparition. Their wits were so fuddled that the sight of him had the effect of another shock. If he had been powerful enough to slay the mighty Chung, then the demons were his allies. Perceiving their dazed condition, he forebore to shoot, and advanced abreast of the altar. The path to the door-way was clear, but he had not the strength to make a run for it. The hope of life, miraculously restored to him, was in the possibility that they might stand and gaze at him a little longer.

He had walked a half-dozen steps farther when one of the crowd yelled. The spell was broken. They raced after him like wolves. He turned and steadied himself and pulled trigger until the revolver was empty. The onset was checked and thrown into bloody confusion. O’Shea had summarily convinced them that whether or not the demons were in league with him, the devil was in this ready weapon of his.

They were no longer massed between him and the exit, and for the moment the advantage undeniably belonged to this mysterious, devastating foreigner.

He stumbled over the broken timbers of the doors and was in the blessed daylight, the temple behind him. He would be overtaken ere he could flee the ruined city, but he reloaded the revolver as he followed the path at a staggering trot. The mob poured out of the temple, yelping in high-keyed chorus. As a foot-racer the hapless Captain Michael O’Shea was in excessively poor condition. In fact, it promised to be the easiest kind of a matter to overtake him and leisurely pelt him to death with bricks as soon as he should have expended his ammunition.

He swerved from the rough path and crawled to the top of a low ridge of débris. Standing erect for a moment, he pitched forward and fell against a bit of wall. His figure had been outlined against the sky, and it was discerned in a fleeting glimpse by a scattered band of men in khaki and linen clothes who were tramping the marsh. They raised a shout and rushed toward the ruined city, converging until the force was mobilized within a short distance of the prostrate O’Shea.

The Chinese mob, pursuing full-tilt, found itself confronting a score and more of rifles which enthusiastically opened fire until the air hummed with bullets. There was a hasty, unanimous retreat of the followers of Chung to the temple and the adjacent buildings. Major Bannister halted to bend over O’Shea and say:

“We thought you were drowned or bogged in the marsh. What sort of a rumpus is this?”

“The Painted Joss,” murmured O’Shea. “I found it. Don’t bother with me. Go to it and clean out the place.”

The adventurers, at last earning their wages, proceeded to make things most unpleasant for the household of Chung. The resistance was brief, and those who were not penned within the temple fled in panic and sought cover in the marsh. They were taken by surprise, for the community had found the visit of Captain O’Shea sufficient to engage its attention. To him returned Major Bannister, hot and dusty, his cheek bleeding from the cut of a Chinese sword, and smilingly announced:

“Bully good fun while it lasted. What shall I do with the devils we cornered? Take them out and shoot them?”

“No. The boss of the works is dead. And I have a notion that _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_ died with him. Lug me to the temple, if ye please. I’m all in, but ’tis my wish to see the whole wicked business go up in smoke.”

Before the torch was applied, that experienced man of war, Major Bannister, suggested that he had never seen a more promising place in which to poke about for loot. The search amounted to nothing until it occurred to the major to pull the Painted Joss from off its pedestal. After much heaving and prying the great image fell crashing to the pavement of the temple. Investigation revealed that underneath it were several compartments accessible by means of cunningly fitted panels. Many papers or documents were found, wrapped in silk, and it was assumed that these were the records of the black deeds of Chung and his organized murderers. They were thrown aside, to be bundled together and taken to the boats.

It was the astute Major Bannister who smashed the bottom of one of these compartments with a rifle-butt and rammed his hand through the splintered hole. His groping fingers came in contact with closely packed rows of metal bars. In this manner was discovered the wealth of the temple, the blood-money stored and treasured by the infamous Chung, the price of many assassinations.

The gold was in stamped ingots, the silver in the lumps or “shoes” of the clumsy Chinese currency, and there were baskets of English sovereigns, Mexican dollars, and a variety of the coinages which pass over the counters of the money-changers of the Orient. Murder as a business had paid well. _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_ was a flourishing concern. The loot belonged to those who found it. They were troubled by no scruples respecting the heirs of the departed Chung, nor did they consider it their duty to surrender the spoils to the Chinese government.

That night a conflagration reddened the ruins of the dead city of Wang-Li-Fu. It was the pyre of the Painted Joss. And when the little flotilla again moved up-river early next morning, a cloud of smoke rose lazily in the still air. Captain Michael O’Shea was still alive, which was rather surprising, for he had passed through experiences extremely disturbing to a sick man. There was tonic, however, in the fact that he had redeemed his failure, the expedition was no longer a sorry jest, and the account of Bill Maguire had been squared.

He slept with tremendous earnestness through a night and a day, and when he awoke it was to roar for food and to display the peevish temper of a genuine convalescent. When off duty his comrades became absorbed in the odd occupation of arranging piles of gold bars, silver “shoes,” and minted coins on the deck of the little house-boat, like children playing with blocks. They smiled a great deal and talked to themselves. Captain O’Shea looked on with an air of fatherly interest. After all, this happy family of his had made a prosperous voyage of it. Dreams of rehabilitation cheered these broken wanderers. They would go home. No more for them the misery, the heartache, the humiliation of the tropical tramp. Their riches might slip through their fingers, but they would make the most of golden opportunity. Like poor McDougal, they had thrown all regrets away.

“’Tis share and share alike,” said O’Shea, “but there is a red-headed sailor-man at anchor on a farm in Maine and I think he has a wife somewheres. With your permission we will deal him a share of the plunder. ’Twas poor Bill Maguire that gave us the tip.”

Unmindful of labor and hardship, this contented company slowly journeyed to the head of navigation on the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells and then trudged overland while O’Shea rode in a covered chair and sang old sea-chanties in a mellow voice. When, at length, the English mission station was reached it was stretching the truth to call him an invalid. The senior missionary, a gentle, very wise old man who had lived for thirty years in the back country, heard the tale told by these tanned, ragged travellers and was horrified that such things should have existed. But he had news for them, and it was thus that he supplied a missing fragment of the puzzle of Bill Maguire:

“The man came here and we took care of him. But there was no finding out how he had been so frightfully hurt. He was dumb and stupid. Later I met a native boatman who had found him on the river-bank near Wang-Li-Fu. Evidently he had been thrown into the water as an easy way to get rid of the body. Reviving a little, he splashed his way ashore or the tide left him there. He stayed with us until he was fairly strong and one morning he was gone.”

“And did he set the house afire?” inquired O’Shea.

“Why, there were two accidental fires in the compound at that time, but we laid it to the carelessness of the kitchen coolies,” was the innocent reply.

“It was Bill Maguire, all right,” declared O’Shea. “Now, will ye be good enough to look over the Chinese documents we found hid away under the Painted Joss?”

The missionary pored over the papers for several hours. And his painstaking translation revealed all that O’Shea cared to know concerning the operations of _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_. It had worked in secret to remove enemies for a price. If a merchant wished a business rival obliterated, if an official found others in his way, if it was advantageous to create a vacancy in some other quarter, the murder guild directed by the departed Chung would transact the affair, smoothly, without bungling. And those who knew and would have disclosed the secret were frightened into silence by the sight of the brand that was called _The Dreadful Messenger of Chung_.

“It will interest you to learn, as an American, Captain O’Shea,” said the missionary, “that among these documents is a list of persons proscribed or sentenced to be slain. The most conspicuous name I find to be that of the Chinese ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Hao Su Ting. It is probable that this terrible fate would have awaited him upon his return to his own country.”

“They potted his brother,” exclaimed O’Shea. “And he was sick with fear of the thing, for I talked it over with him meself. Well, he can thank Bill Maguire for letting him die in his bed when his proper time comes.”

Three weeks later Captain O’Shea sat at his ease upon the piazza of the Grand Hotel, that overlooks Yokohama Bay. He was thinner than when he had put to sea in the _Whang Ho_ steamer, but he appeared to find the game of life quite worth while. It was his pleasure to enjoy the tame diversions of a tourist before boarding a mail-boat for the long run home to San Francisco. He smiled as he reread a letter written in the crabbed fist of that zealous agriculturist, Johnny Kent, who had this to say:

DEAR CAPTAIN MIKE:

The Lord only knows what trouble you’ll be in when this gets to
China. My advice is to quit it and come home. I’m worried about
you. Bill Maguire has rounded to, understand? His busted main hatch
sort of mended itself by degrees. He had symptoms before you left,
and you ought to have waited, but I suppose you can’t help being
young and Irish.

He was terrible melancholy at first, and he ain’t real spry yet. I
found his wife and little girl for him in Baltimore, and made them
come on here. You guessed right about the wax doll. I bought the
darndest, biggest one I could find. Bill feels that the family is
living on my charity, and being morbid and down-hearted, he frets a
whole lot about being broke and stranded. He’ll be no good to go to
sea again. It gives him the shivers to talk about it. I don’t need
him as a farm-hand in the winter, and as for having his wife as a
steady house-keeper, I’m fussy and set in my ways.

Bill got up against an awful bad combination in China. I won’t tell
you where it was, for I don’t want you to find it. Maybe you’ll run
across a man named McDougal out there. He was with Bill when they
got in trouble. Bill saw a chance to get away in the night, but he
stood the crowd off somehow to give McDougal leeway to join him.
And this McDougal lit out with never a thought for Bill. There was
something wrong with McDougal, as I figure it out. Maybe he was a
good man, but here was one time when he fell down on his job. None
of us say much about it, Captain Mike, but we all pray we won’t get
caught that way. You know what I mean. We’re afraid there may be a
weak spot in us that we don’t know is there until we have to face
the music. Anyhow, as I gather from Bill, McDougal was a quitter.
If I know anything about men, he has wished a hundred times since
that he had stayed to take his medicine with Bill. We would a heap
sight rather see you come home alive than to go monkeying with
the Painted Joss. Nothing much has happened except a dry spell in
August and corn and potatoes set back. Hens are laying well.

Your friend,
J. KENT.

Captain O’Shea chuckled and then became thoughtful. Paddy Blake and McDougal. Charley Tong Sin and the wreck of the _Whang Ho_. Wang-Li-Fu and the terrible Chung. Much can happen within the space of a few weeks to a man that will seek the long trail. Presently he took from his leather bill-book several slips of paper which he had received from the Yokohama Specie Bank in exchange for his gold bars and silver “shoes.” After making sundry calculations with a pencil, he said to himself:

“The share of Jim Eldridge, alias Bill Maguire, is nine thousand eight hundred and sixty-two dollars and eleven cents, and ’tis here all ship-shape in two drafts on New York. My piece of the loot is the same. But the red-headed sailorman will never be the lad he was, and he should not be worried by the lack of money to live on. And could any money pay for what he went through? ’Tis easy to know what I should do. I will not take a cent of the plunder. My share I will give to Bill, and with his bit of it he will be comfortably fixed.”

An expression of boyish satisfaction brightened his resolute features as he added:

“A man would be ashamed to take money for such a pleasant vacation as this one has been. Now, I will send a cable message to Bill Maguire and it will cheer him a lot. His account is squared. And I think I have put a crimp in _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_.”

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Page 319: “slung-shot” is a maritime tool.