CHAPTER III
Outside the bar where the Whangpoo empties into the Yang-tse lay the thousand-ton yacht Wanderer II, out of New York. She was a sea whippet, and prior to the war her bowsprit had nosed into all the famed harbours of the seven seas. For nearly three years she had been in the auxiliary fleet of the United States Navy. She was still in war paint, owner’s choice, but all naval markings had been obliterated. Her deck was flush. The house, pierced by the main companionway, was divided into three sections—a small lounging room, a wireless room, and the captain’s cabin, over which stood the bridge and chart house. The single funnel rose between the captain’s cabin and the wireless room, and had the rakish tilt of the racer. Wanderer II could upon occasion hit it up round twenty-one knots, for all her fifteen years. There was plenty of deck room fore and aft.
The crew’s quarters were up in the forepeak. A passage-way divided the cook’s galley and the dry stores, then came the dining salon. The main salon, with a fine library, came next. The port 26 side of this salon was cut off into the owner’s cabin. The main companionway dropped into the salon, a passage each side giving into the guest cabins. But rarely these days were there any guests on Wanderer II.
The rain slashed her deck, drummed on the boat canvas, and blurred the ports. The deck house shed webby sheets of water, now to port, now to starboard. The ladder was down, and a reflector over the platform advertised the fact that either the owner had gone into Shanghai or was expecting a visitor.
All about were rocking lights, yellow and green and red, from warships, tramps, passenger ships, freighters, barges, junks. The water was streaked with shaking lances of colour.
In the salon, under a reading lamp, sat a man whose iron-gray hair was patched with cowlicks. Combs and brushes produced no results, so the owner had had it clipped to a short pompadour. It was the skull of a fighting man, for all that frontally it was marked by a high intellectuality. This sort of head generally gives the possessor yachts like Wanderer II, tremendous bank accounts; the type that will always possess these things, despite the howl of the proletariat.
The face was sunburned. There was some loose flesh under the jaws. The nose was thick 27 and pudgy, wide in the nostrils, like a lion’s. The predatory are not invariably hawk-nosed. The eyes were blue—in repose, a warm blue—and there were feathery wrinkles at the corners which suggested that the toll-taker could laugh occasionally. The lips were straight and thin, the chin square—stubborn rather than relentless. A lonely man who was rarely lonesome.
His body was big. One has to be keen physically as well as mentally to make a real success of anything. His score might have tallied sixty. He was at the peak of life, but hanging there, you might say. To-morrow Anthony Cleigh might begin the quick downward journey.
He had made his money in mines, rails, ships; and now he was spending it prodigally. Prodigally, yes, but with caution and foresight. There was always a ready market for what he bought. If he paid a hundred thousand for a Rembrandt, rest assured he knew where he could dispose of it for the same amount. Cleigh was a collector by instinct. With him it was no fad; it was a passion, sometimes absurd. This artistic love of rare and beautiful creations was innate, not acquired. Dealers had long since learned their lesson, and no more sought to impose upon him.