“You shall have it,” said Mai Lo, calmly. “This matter is between you and me, and I will pay you the money in Kai-Nong. But let the casket alone, hereafter, and save yourself trouble. Give me the keys.”
“In Kai-Nong, when I have the ten thousand taels.”
“Very well,” was the ready reply.
My easy victory assured me I was still master of the situation. For some reason Mai Lo, finding he could not bulldoze me, was afraid to oppose me openly.
I ordered Nux and Bryonia to ride upon the elephant bearing the casket of Prince Kai, and the mandarin made no objection to the arrangement. In their native language, which I understood to some extent, I told the blacks to keep their eyes open and their weapons handy, and at a signal from us to hasten to our assistance. Then Archie, Joe and I mounted the second elephant, while Mai Lo climbed the third one, followed by a little withered Chinaman in yellow dress, whom I had never seen before.
The escort mounted the mules, several of which bore our light baggage, and then the word was given to start.
Our mahout, or elephant driver, was a small Chinaman with an enormous head but a merry and even jovial face that formed a sharp contrast to that of the impassive Mai Lo. As we started I asked him a question, to determine if he understood English, and he replied with a flood of sing-song Chinese that formed a sentence a mile long.
We were well out of the city gates before the speech ended, and when our driver found we had ceased to pay any attention to him he threw back his head and laughed as heartily as a schoolboy.
Knowing that we could talk freely together in our howdah, we three began to discuss earnestly the desertion of Doctor Gaylord and its bearing upon our fortunes.
“I’d like to know what scared him out,” said Archie. “Doc wanted the money and the treasure as badly as any of us, and his ten thousand taels was a sure thing.”