"Come with me to-night," he said. "I dine late, but we'll take a spin in my car and have some tea somewhere beforehand. Tell me where your house is and I'll send Ishida with the motor-car for you."
Phil gave him the address and he went out with no further word. A great, brass-fitted automobile, with a young, keen-eyed Japanese sitting beside the chauffeur, throbbed up from the shed. Bersonin climbed ponderously in. A gray-haired diplomatist, entering the Club with a stranger, pointed the big man out to the other as he was whirled away.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE BAMBOO LANE
What did Bersonin mean? Phil replenished his glass, feeling a tense, nervous excitement.
Why had he listened so intently—made him listen—to what the men in the next room were saying? He could recall it all—for some reason every word was engraven on his mind. The visit of the foreign Squadron. Speculators who had once made quick fortunes through an accident to a battle-ship. He thought of the look he had seen on Bersonin's face.
"What do you want me to do?" He muttered the words to himself. As he rose to go he glanced half-fearfully over his shoulder.
He walked along the street, his brain afire. He was passing a moat in whose muck bottom piling was being driven; the heavy plunger was lifted by a dozen ropes pulled by a ring of coolie women, dressed like men, with blue-cotton leggins and red cloths about their heads. As they dragged at the straw ropes, and the great weight rose and fell, they chanted a wailing refrain, with something minor and plaintive in its burden—
"Yó—eeya—kó—ra! Yó-eeya—kó—ra!"