Tokyo had been in a fever of excitement for days. The discovery had been made that a score of carloads of the arms left in the care of the Japanese army when the Czecho-Slovak troops retired from Siberia, had disappeared. At the same time Chang Tse-lin, the Manchurian war-lord, had received, from some mysterious source, a large amount of war supplies. The newspapers almost unanimously accused the militarists, the General Staff, of having engineered the transfer, in spite of Japan's agreement with the other Powers that none of them should supply the warring factions in China with arms. Dual diplomacy, the General Staff calmly overriding, for its own sinister purposes, the international pledges made by the Foreign Office. The accusation which the Japanese press so resented when made by foreigners was shouted by all the papers. And the people took it up. Now had finally come the time when the issue had been fairly made, when the yoke of the militarists must be overthrown by the rest of the Cabinet. Breathlessly the nation watched for the struggle.—But the General Staff haughtily denied the charge. They knew nothing of it all. A major in the army "confessed" that he was responsible; he had sold the arms to a Russian faction with which he sympathized. It was all his own, personal doings. He took all the responsibility. His wife committed suicide; she would not face the disgrace. The nation cried out. She was one more innocent victim of the juggernaut of the General Staff. Her husband was another, a scapegoat, a martyr. Of course, no one believed his story, a palpable invention to save the skins of his superiors. Now, what would the Premier, what would the Foreign Office do?
The gogai brought the answer. The Premier issued a statement, setting forth in tedious detail the opera bouffe proceedings of the court-martial. He confirmed the whole thing.
"The cowards!"
They did not stamp their feet, or bang fists on tables; repression was too ingrained. But as they read through the sheets, calling the attention of one another to this or that paragraph, disappointed, disgusted, sickened, hissing sharp staccato syllables between clenched teeth, it was as if the atmosphere had become charged electrically with waves of resentment, repressed hate, palpable almost as heat waves, sinister, ominous. The militarists had won again, as usual; but what of it? They had been brought a step nearer the eventual, inevitable debacle. It might seem on the face of it Oriental patience, passivity, but one could feel the tenseness of cumulative, restrained sense of outrage, injury. It was the constantly mounting head of steam in the boiler again.
But Kent had no time to study effects. He looked at his watch; only a little after nine. He would have time to cable. "Here, quick, call a taxi. Bring the bill, hayaku. Adachi-san, come along, please. I've got to send this thing right away."
A small closed car arrived. They climbed in. Immediately Kent set himself to composing a draft for his message. Sitting thus together, her warm, lithe body close to his, he sensed unconsciously the pleasure of her presence, but his mind was intent on his work, confining in the laconic form of a cable message the gist of the event. He read it over. Hang it, he should have liked to have seen the official communique which the Foreign Office must have sent out, but there was no time. He must take his chance on the gogai.
"Kent-san," she was leaning closer to him. "And now you are going to send that by the cable over to America. When will the papers there print it?"
"To-morrow the news will be all over the United States, all over the world."
"It is wonderful. How interesting your work must be. What have you written?"