"Do you know anything against Herr Reinhardt?" he asked.
The Captain fingered his beard before he replied.
"No," he said slowly, "I know nothing. But don't let your friend become too thick with him."
Burroughs went away less satisfied than before, and watched the growing intimacy with more and more uneasiness.
CHAPTER III
A MOVE UP COUNTRY
The two young fellows settled down easily to their new life at Shanghai. Though they had been absent from China so long, the impressions of their early years had not been obliterated, but were only overlaid by the later impressions received in England. Thus they felt little of the sense of strangeness which a man feels on coming into contact with what is absolutely new to him. The narrow dirty streets, half the width of an ordinary room, paved with stone slabs, and crowded all day long with people chaffering in shrill voices, and picking their way through immense heaps of fish, pork and vegetables; the low open shops, displaying silks and porcelain, ornaments and bronzes, and a thousand other varieties of merchandise more or less costly; the numerous tea-shops and dining-rooms, more frequent even than public-houses in the east end of London; the immense variety of smells, in which Shanghai surely outrivals Cologne: all these features of the native city soon ceased to have the charm of novelty; and the clean, well-paved, well-tended quarters of the European community differed little in general characteristics from the towns of the west.
The boys met with nothing but the friendliness which Europeans settled abroad always extend to new-comers, and Errington in particular became a great favourite. Mr. Burroughs insisted that he should live with him and his family. Somewhat to Errington's surprise, he saw little of Mr. Ting. The Chinaman had met him at the quay on the boat's arrival, but after inquiring about the voyage, and promising to give him any assistance he needed, he left him to Mr. Burroughs. Reinhardt passed the group as he walked off the gangway, and Ted Burroughs noticed that he gave Mr. Ting a markedly effusive greeting, which the Chinaman returned politely and with an inscrutable smile.
Burroughs was vastly relieved when he learnt that Reinhardt was not permanently stationed in Shanghai. The German was in charge of a branch establishment of his firm at Sui-Fu, a populous treaty port many miles up the river, and paid only occasional visits to head-quarters. Errington never alluded to him, and Burroughs felt that he had perhaps been a little over-hasty in misjudging a mere shipboard acquaintance. His uneasiness returned, however, when, during a visit of a fortnight in Shanghai, Reinhardt invited Errington to several card-parties, from which he returned flushed and excited. Remembering the result of his former expostulation, Burroughs said nothing; he felt that he could not play the grandmother with his friend; but his disapproval was easily seen, and for a day or two there was a slight coolness between them.
One day Mr. Ting met Errington in the street as if by chance: in reality he had waylaid him.