CHAPTER IV
At very nearly the hour of his former visit, Gregory Ballaston entered the warehouse of Messrs. Johnson and Company, on the following morning. Wu Ling, seated at his table, waved away the stolid-looking native foreman to whom he was giving orders, and glanced enquiringly at his visitor.
“Ship not gone?” he asked.
“We don’t sail until the afternoon,” Gregory reminded him. “Haven’t got all our fresh stores shipped, or something. I came back to have a talk. Do you mind?”
Wu Ling’s gesture was noncommittal. The young man continued.
“Last night,” he confided, sinking into a chair, “I unpacked my Image. I took it out and looked at it, with my porthole closed and my door locked, although I imagine that now that the priests are dead there is no fear of my being followed.—Wu Ling, I wish to God that you were an Englishman!”
“Why for?”
“I could talk to you more easily.”
There was a brief silence. Wu Ling, stolid, powerful, imperturbable, sat with his keen enquiring eyes fixed upon his visitor. Gregory showed signs of some slight relapse from his well-being of the day before. His natural, bronzed complexion which had almost reasserted itself, seemed to have given place again to the pallor which denoted a sleepless night. There were lines under his eyes, a restlessness in his manner.
“You found Image bad company?” Wu Ling enquired.