The young man raised his eyebrows.
“It is strange to hear you, a Chinaman, propose such a thing,” he remarked. “I suppose any one who attempted it in this country would sooner or later be cut into small pieces, for these Images are blessed just as the larger one. But there is another reason against attempting such a thing. You are a very wonderful race, you Chinese, and you were more wonderful still, generations ago.”
“Ah!” Wu Ling murmured.
“There are plenty of people,” the young man proceeded, “who say that there is scarcely a discovery in the world which you have not anticipated and then declined to use because the central tenet of your religion and your philosophy was to leave things that are. Well, they say that you discovered gunpowder and all manner of explosives about the time these Images were fashioned. They must always, from the first, have been intended for a possible hiding place, for the old legend concerning them—I know this from the only European who has ever visited the temple—declared that if these are subjected to violence in any way, then the earthquake follows. The priests all believe this implicitly, and, although it sounds a far-fetched idea, the man who first told me the story is convinced that when the jewels were stored away inside, they were imbedded in some sort of explosive.”
“It becomes more than ever a strange story,” Wu Ling said didactically.
The young man looked searchingly for a moment at his host. Was it his fancy, he wondered, or was there a faint note of sardonic disbelief in his even tone?
“Of course,” he went on, “it must sound to you, as it does to me, although you would scarcely understand the word, like rot, but the man from whom I heard it was a great person in Pekin, a friend even of the Emperor, and not only of the Emperor, but of the Emperor’s great adviser whom some people think the greatest Chinaman who ever lived. He had privileges which had never before been extended to any European.”
Wu Ling nodded gravely.
“So,” he said, with the painstaking air of one trying to solve a problem, “you were seeking to take Images from temple, away from priests to whom belong, that you might possess jewels.”
The young man coughed. Somehow or other Wu Ling’s eyes were very penetrating.