CHAPTER I
Ivan Ivanovitch Brown
Scenes in Moukden—Beyond the Walls—Lieutenant Borisoff—The Cangue—Anton Sowinski—Criminal Procedure—Mr. Brown Senior—Schlagintwert's Representative—The Automatic Principle
The midsummer sun had spent its force, and as it reddened towards its setting Moukden began to breathe again. The gildings on palace, temple, and pagoda shone with a ruddy glow, but the eye was no longer dazzled; garish in full sunlight, the city was now merely brilliant, the reds and greens, blues and yellows, of its house-fronts toned to a rich and charming beauty. The shops—almost every house is a shop—were open, displaying here poultry, dried fish, and articles of common use; there piles of Oriental merchandise: silks and embroideries, parasols and screens, ornaments of silver and copper, priceless porcelain and lacquered ware. Monsters with vermilioned faces grinned from the poles—hung with branches and surmounted by peacocks with spread tail—that bore the signs and legends of the merchants and shopkeepers before whose doors they were erected: all different, yet all alike in gorgeousness of colouring and fantasy of design.
Two main thoroughfares traverse Moukden at right angles. Along these flowed in each direction a full tide of people, gathering up cross currents at every side street and alley. It was a picturesque throng, the light costumes showing in brilliant relief against the darker colours of the houses and the brown dust of the roadway. There were folk of many nations: Manchus, Mongols, Tartars, Greeks and Montenegrins, soldiers Chinese and Russian, here and there a European war-correspondent escaping from the boredom of his inn. Pedestrians and horsemen jostled vehicles of all descriptions. Workmen staggered along under enormous loads; labourers of both sexes trudged homewards from the fields, their implements on their shoulders. A drove of fat pigs in charge of a blue-coated swineherd scampered and squealed beneath the wheels of a Russian transport wagon. Here was a rickshaw drawn with shrill cries by its human steeds; there a rough springless two-wheeled mule-cart, painted in yellow ochre, hauled by three mules tandem, and jolting over the ruts with its load of passengers, some on the backs of the mules, some on the shafts, some packed beneath the low tilt of blue cotton. Not far behind, a trolley, pushed by perspiring coolies and carrying seven men standing in unstable equilibrium, had halted to make way for a magnificent blue sedan chair, wadded with fur and silk, borne by four stalwart servants. Through the trellised window of the chair the curious might catch a glimpse of a bespectacled mandarin, his mushroom hat decked with the button indicative of his rank. With shouts and blows a detachment of Chinese soldiers, red-jacketed infantry, carrying halberts, javelins, and sickles swathed to poles, forced a passage for his excellency through the crowd.
The heavy air quivered with noise: the mingled cries of street merchants and children, the clatter of hoofs, the din of gongs at the doors of the theatres, weird strains of song accompanied by the twanging of inharmonious guitars, and, dominating all, the insistent strident squeak of a huge wheelbarrow, trundled by a grave old Chinaman, unconscious of the pain his greaseless wheels inflicted on untutored sensibilities. A Russian lady passing in a droshky grimaced and put her fingers to her ears, and a wayfarer near her smiled and addressed a word to the torturer, who looked at him aslant out of his little eyes and went on his way placid and unabashed.
The pedestrian who had spoken was one by himself in all that vast throng. That he was European was shown by his garments; a western observer, however little travelled, would have known him at a glance as an English lad. His garb was light, fitting a slim, tall figure; a broad-brimmed cotton hat was slanted over his nose to keep the glowing rays from his eyes; he walked with the springy tread and free swinging gait never acquired by an Oriental. He wormed his way through the jostling crowd, passed through the bastioned gate of the lofty inner ramparts, crossed the suburbs, where the gardens were in gorgeous bloom, and, leaving the external wall of mud behind him, came into the brown, rough, dusty road, lined on both sides with booths, leading to the railway-station. Rich fields of maize and beans and millet covered the vast plain beyond, and upon the sky-line lay a range of wooded hills.
By and by the walker came to the new street that had sprung up beside the railway-station since the Russian occupation: a settlement tenanted by traders—Greek, Caucasian, and Hebrew—dealing in every product of the two civilizations, eastern and western, here so incongruously in contact. Nothing that could be sold or bartered came amiss to these polyglot traders; they kept everything from champagne to saké (the rice beer of Japan), from boots to smoked fish. Hurrying through this oven of odours, he passed the line of ugly brick cottages run up for the Russian officials, and arrived at the station. It was quiet at the moment; there was a pause in the stream of traffic which had for some time been steadily flowing southward. Save for the railway servants, the riflemen who guard the line, and a few officers desperately bored in their effort to kill time, the platform was deserted. The Russian lieutenant on duty accosted the new-comer.
"Well, Ivan Ivanovitch, what can we do for you to-day?"
"The same old thing," replied the lad slowly in Russian. "Can you send a wire to Vladivostok for my father?"