“Well, old chap,” the junior said cheerfully, “Mr. Gregory is no schoolboy. He’ll give this cursed gentleman of tongs and mystery a run for his money—a damned fine run—I’ll have a bet with you, any odds you like—and we’ll have a damned lot of fun watching him do it. But, I say, we don’t know that you are barking up the right tree; but if you are—and admitting for argument’s sake that Mr. Gregory has offended this top-dog Chink or whatever he is—I say, why the deuce should Lord High Pigtail want to take it out of Basil?”

Holman—his mother had been a Scotchwoman—had a tingling suspicion why, but he shrugged his shoulders and evaded, saying didactically, “When you’ve been in China as long as I have, you’ll know as much about their ways and their motives as I do, and that’s—nothing!”

CHAPTER XXV
Worse and Worse

THE hot day burned on towards its hottest, and the troubles at the Gregory Steamship Company boiled and bubbled like a veritable hell-broth.

At eleven a coolie was caught smuggling paraffin, disguised as a chest of tea, on to the Fee Chow. Not a word could be got out of him as to what or who had instigated him; neither threats nor bribes would make him speak, and indeed Holman had little time or nerve to spare to try the application of either coaxing or kicking. He knew that he needed all he had of both to save what was undoubtedly the ugliest situation he had ever faced. The tide must be caught at Shanghai: it was vital. And yet the ship must be searched, every inch of her—and the crew. That was even more imperative. One tin of the deadly, dangerous stuff had been detected going aboard—a dozen might be aboard undetected, hidden among the cargo.

It was terribly exasperating; but now that things were at their worst Holman faced them coolly enough, a resolute, resourceful man—strong, crisp and vigorous still after twenty years of seething Hong Kong business life. For several of those years he had, until Robert Gregory’s arrival, managed the firm’s affairs efficiently. He looked capable of doing so still for quite a number of years.

He gripped the situation hard, and dealt with it briskly, and Tom Carruthers looked on fuming, and Simpson and the other half-dozen European subordinate old hands obeyed him with confident alacrity. Carruthers would have “wrung every dirty yellow neck,” “kicked them to blazes,” “boiled them in their own paraffin”; but Simpson and the English others thought that old Holman would win through somehow—if he couldn’t, no one could—and they were serenely confident that every troubling coolie there would get his drastic deserts to the full—when Holman thought wise and had time, but not before.

But just once Holman forgot himself. When the searching was over (sure enough one tin had been successfully smuggled on and hidden) and the reloading half done, the coolies struck again. And the over-tired manager felt with Tom that that was too much.

Tom was nearly maudlin with rage by now, and when, in reply to Holman’s angry, “The men never behaved so like hell before. What the thunder does it mean?” the compradore had said oilily, “Me no savee—no catchee more money—no can do work,” Holman lost grip on himself and blurted out thunderously, “They work damn well for Wu Li Chang, don’t they?” and regretted it as soon as he had said it.