CHAPTER X. A LOST CLUE
Victoria City on Hongkong Island was almost invisible in hot mist and rain as the steamer crawled up the roads and anchored off the sea-wall. The gray harbour water appeared to steam, slopping sluggishly against her iron sides, and the rain steamed as it fell, so that the heavy air was a sort of stew of wet and heat and strange smells of the sea and land. The Lascar and coolie deck-hands were hurrying out the side-ladder, the water streaming from their faces and their coarse black hair; but, above the rattle and bustle of disembarkation, Elliott was aware of the movement of a mighty life clustered invisibly around him. The hum and roar of an immense city pierced the fog to landward; on the other side he was conscious of the presence of innumerable shipping. The noises came hollowly through the hot air, echoed from the sides of giant vessels; he caught hazy glimpses of towering forests of yards, and of wet, black funnels. The air was acrid with the smoke of coal, and the water splashed incessantly upon the sea-wall from the swift passage of throbbing steam launches. Away in the mist there was a rapid fusilade of fire-crackers, and somewhere, apparently from the clouds above the city, a gun was fired, reverberating through the mist. A ship’s bell was struck near by, and, before the strokes had ceased, it was taken up by another vessel, and another, and the sound spread through the haze, near and far, tinkling in every key:
“Ting, ting; ting, ting; ting!” It was half-past five o’clock in the afternoon.
The rain slackened, and a fresh breeze split the mist. To landward Elliott beheld a wet, white city climbing irregularly up the sides of a long serrated mountain. The waterfront along the sea-wall swarmed with traffic, with rickshaws, sedan-chairs, carts, trucks, gay umbrellas, coolies, Lascars, Chinese, Indians, Japanese. The port was crowded with shipping, from war-steamers to high-sterned junks, as motley as the throng ashore, and it was shot through incessantly with darting tugs and launches, so that in its activity it reminded him more of New York bay than of any other roadstead he had ever seen.
During the voyage from Bombay he had perforce picked up a smattering of that queer “pidgin-English” so apparently loose and so really organized a language, and when he stepped upon the Praya he beckoned authoritatively to a passing palanquin.
“Boy! You savvy number one good hotel?”
“Yes, master. Gleat Eastel’ Hotel b’long number one good.”
“Great Eastern Hotel, then—chop-chop,” Elliott acquiesced, getting into the chair, and the coolies set off as he had directed, chop-chop, that is, with speed. They scurried across the Praya, up a narrow cross street, and came out upon Queen’s Road. They passed the Club and the post-office and finally set him down at the hotel, which, in spite of its great size and elaborate cooling devices, he found intolerably hot and damp. It rained all that evening, till his clothing hung limply upon him even in the billiard-room of the hotel, and when he went to his chamber he found the sheets apparently sodden, and damp stood shining on the walls. Even in the steamy passage through the Malay Archipelago Elliott had spent no such uncomfortable night as that first one in Victoria at the commencement of the rainy season.
A torrential rain was pouring down when he awoke, after having spent most of the night in listening to the scampering of the cockroaches about his room. It was a hot rain, and there was no morning freshness in the air. The room was as damp as if the roof had been leaking, but he began to realize that this was to be expected and endured in Victoria for the next three months, and, shuddering damply, he resolved that he would hunt down his man within a week, if “Baker” were still upon the island.
By the time he had finished a very English breakfast, for which he had no appetite, the rain had ceased, leaving the air even hotter than before. The sun shone dimly from a watery sky. Elliott felt oppressed with an aching languor, but he was deeply anxious to finish his work and get away, so he went out upon the hot streets.