CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST TRAIN FROM PORT ARTHUR.
Fred Larkin's first move, on finding himself trapped, was a perfectly natural one. He scrambled to his feet and rushed to the door. It took him some time to find the knob, in the darkness, and on turning it and pulling with all his might he was not surprised to discover that it refused to yield.
"It's a bad scrape," said the reporter to himself, breathing hard with his exertions, "but I've been in worse ones, unless that threat of blowing up the house is carried out."
He had been fumbling in his pocket, and now drew from it a box of wax vestas, one of which he struck. The light disclosed a small room, perfectly bare. A glance at the heavy door convinced him that it was useless to attempt a speedy escape in that direction. There were two low windows, both with the sashes fastened down and protected by outside shutters of wood.
Fred made short work of one of the sashes, smashing it to bits with his foot. He then unhasped the shutters and peered out. The night was cloudy and he could discover nothing beyond the fact that there was a sheer drop of at least twenty-five feet to a sort of yard, which might be paved with brick or lumbered up with stones and iron scrap, for all he could see. The buildings beyond seemed to be warehouses of some sort; not a light gleamed from a single window. He shouted with all his might for help, but none came. Although he did not believe the house would "be a heap of rubbish in ten minutes"—three of which had already elapsed—he was sufficiently in doubt to be perfectly willing to leave it at once, if there were any possible way of escape.
As he stepped back into the room the flooring creaked under his foot. Lighting another wax match he found that a board was loose. He managed to get his fingers under the end, and, throwing his whole weight upward, ripped out the board. With the first for a lever, its neighbour came up easily enough. It was a cheaply built house, without a second layer beneath the surface floor. The edgewise-set planks on which the boards rested were about two feet apart. Fred did not hesitate a moment, but stamped hard upon the upper side of the ceiling of the apartment beneath his own. His foot went through the lath and plaster with a smash and a cloud of dust. Picking up the broken boards, he enlarged the hole, and, as soon as the dust cleared away, peered through the opening. The room below was as dark as his own. He "sounded" with the longest floor-board at his disposal, and was gratified to find that he could "touch bottom" at about nine feet depth. Without losing further time he crawled through the hole, hung off from the stringers and dropped.
Recovering himself from the shock of alighting in the dark, Fred hastily produced another vesta, in order to survey his new quarters. The room was entirely unfurnished, like the one above. In one respect, however, it differed from the apartment in which he had been so unceremoniously installed: the door was ajar! In a minute more Larkin stood on the pavement outside, and in another, having taken a careful survey of the premises, he was hurrying away to his own lodgings, which he reached in safety, congratulating himself on the happy issue of his evening's adventure.
Martin Stevens, like all evil-doers, was an unhappy man. For weeks and months he would toil at a self-imposed task, to earn money and fame at the expense of principles, and when he seemed to himself to have attained absolute success, and felt the crackle of his basely earned bank-notes in his pocket,—he was miserable. The luscious fruit he had so long looked forward to eating was a Dead Sea apple, crumbling to ashes at the first bite.
After his narrow escape from death at the hands of the Spaniards in Santiago, he had engaged in various questionable enterprises on the Continent, where a natural aptitude for languages soon enabled him to converse fluently in German, French, Italian, and Russian. He was already master of Spanish, as we have seen, and he had received a fine education in applied mathematics, physics, and navigation at the United States Naval Academy. Tall and rather well formed, carrying himself well, and conversing easily in the language of the country where he desired to exercise his peculiar calling—that of a professional spy—he readily obtained admittance to many councils and offices closed to the general public. He had correspondents in every court in Europe, as well as in Japan and at Pekin.
When Stevens left Tokio in disguise, with half a dozen important papers in his breast pocket, he felt that he had achieved the crowning glory of his life. The documents were indeed gladly received at the Russian headquarters, but the man was despised and distrusted. The bluff, gallant Stoessel paid the spy a large sum without hesitation; but, beyond suggesting another expedition—perhaps to the camp of General Nogi's forces, or to Admiral Togo's fleet—he had nothing more to say to him. As the high-minded Russian turned to his staff-officers, whose bronzed, manly faces bore witness to their honourable service under the Czar, Stevens sneaked off, his face sallower than ever, to cash the official draft and to gnash his teeth at the cold, contemptuous treatment he had met with when his secrets were all divulged. In this mood, plotting a new system of espionage upon the Russians, whom he hated, he had met Larkin. He had already recognised the reporter in Tokio, and had thought himself well rid of him when he fled to Port Arthur. No sight could have been more unwelcome to him than that of Larkin's merry, honest, shrewd countenance, rising before him like Banquo's ghost, when least expected.
Near Stevens's lodgings was an empty house of which he had the key, and in which he had already met representatives of that terrible class of men who are now found in all parts of the civilised world, but most where the double eagle of the Russian flag proclaims the despotic rule of St. Petersburg—the Nihilists. Revolving in his mind various plans for getting rid of Larkin without actually committing murder, he determined, on the spur of the moment, to lock him up over night at this secret place of rendezvous. He even thought vaguely of blowing up the building with a bomb, which one of his friends would supply on demand. He shrank, however, from this extreme measure, which would put his own head in peril, and contented himself with giving the war correspondent a good scare, out of pure malice, and with so disposing of his person that he would be kept out of the way over night. He had no doubt that Larkin would gain his release in some way the next morning, but there would be time, meanwhile, to don a new disguise and perfect arrangements for leaving the city. How he failed, we have seen. Fred Larkin was not an easy man to scare, or to keep within four walls against his will. The next morning, accordingly, both spy and reporter were at the railway station, eager to take the first train for the north. There was a dense crowd of refugees struggling for places, and neither of the two men was conscious of the other's presence on board when the guard's whistle sounded at last, and the long train—the last train for many a weary month, as it proved—moved out of Port Arthur.
It was six o'clock on the morning of May 6th. The sun had burst through the clouds which had rendered the preceding night so gloomy, and the country around the city stretched out on either side of the railroad in all the loveliness of spring. Fields and hillsides flushed with blossoms of almond and apricot, and opened fair reaches of greensward as the train rolled past. In sheltered nooks, by the banks of dancing streamlets, nestled those little Chinese villages which, however squalid upon close acquaintance, add a picturesque touch to the Oriental landscape. All around the horizon was piled with high hills, clothed in verdure or reddish in the early sunlight where broad ledges and stretches of sandy slope had been denuded by storm and the hand of man. Larkin almost forgot the war and the hot passions that were smouldering behind the fair peaks and along the hidden valleys of Manchuria, as he gazed from the car window and thought of the Brookfield meadows in May, the little stream where he had caught his first trout, and the pine wood which sheltered the brave mayflowers and hepaticas before the winter's drifts had melted on the northern slopes and in the deeper recesses of the forest.
But his musings were rudely interrupted. At the end of about two hours after leaving Port Arthur the train halted at the outpost position occupied by the Russian forces under General Fock. The peace of nature was broken by the sound of sappers and diggers at work, by commands harshly shouted, the tramping of horses, the rumble of wheels, the stir and bustle of an armed camp.
On again, steadily forging northward, with the engine throwing out great clouds of black smoke from her soft-coal fuel as she climbed the up-grades; through several villages without a stop, until Kinchow was reached. A sharp lookout was now kept for Japanese cavalry, which were known to be scouring the country to the east, the main body of the invaders having already made a substantial advance from Dalny, on the eastern coast. A train had been fired upon, only the day before, at a point about forty miles north of Port Arthur. There were rumours that Japanese troops were landing in force at Port Adams, on the west coast of the peninsula, near Newchwang, and that a strong detachment had occupied Haicheng, just south of Liaoyang.
The engineer pulled open the throttle, as the train struck a long, straight piece of road. The cars rocked from side to side, and cries of alarm from invalids and women were heard. The speed was frightful. Larkin clung to his seat, devoutly hoping that his journalistic career would not terminate in a smash-up on the Imperial Trans-Siberian Railroad. Just then a band of horsemen was seen galloping toward the road. They drew up sharply and could be seen to unsling their muskets. Puff! Puff! No noise could be heard above the roar of the train, but the passengers were not left in doubt as to the cavalrymen's intentions. A dozen windows were shattered by bullets, while the frightened inmates of the rocking cars crouched low between the seats. With a rush and a roar the train clattered on, leaving the assailants far behind.
On and on, through Newchwang, crossing bridges which were soon to be wrapped in flames, rattling over level plains, winding through narrow defiles surmounted with frowning fortifications, until at last the train rolled into the station at Liaoyang. That afternoon the railroad was crossed by the Japanese, the rails torn up, bridges burned and telegraph wires cut. Port Arthur was isolated from the world. Its next telegram would be sent out eight months later, to be recorded in the quaint characters of the Island Empire.
Fred Larkin, little dreaming that his captor of the preceding evening was in the same city, at once proceeded to make himself at home. He presented his credentials at headquarters, secured lodgings, and sent off a dispatch to the Bulletin that very night, describing the last train from Port Arthur and the conditions as he had found them in that city. This final portion of his telegram would have occupied about half a column of his paper. The grim censor blue-pencilled it down to eight lines and a half!