“He is now convinced that you and I speak truth,” the secretary murmured in O’Shea’s ear.
“Well and good. He looks as if it made him unwell. Now can we get down to business and tackle the mystery of it? It is Chinese writing. What does it mean? That is me errand.”
His Excellency Hao Su Ting no longer resembled a round-faced Buddha seated in reposeful meditation upon a throne of teak-wood. The words came from him in a torrential flow, and the harsh, sing-song intonations were terribly in earnest. It was a harangue that warned, expostulated, lamented with all the fervor of an issue that concerned life and death. It startled O’Shea to behold a man of his unemotional race, and one so hedged about with the dignity of rank, in this stormy tide of feeling. It ceased abruptly. The old man sank into his chair and closed his eyes. The secretary rang a gong for a servant and ordered tea. Presently the ambassador signified that he wished to retire to a couch, and others of his staff attended him into the library and thence to an upper floor of the house.
The secretary returned to join O’Shea and began to explain in his measured, monotonous way:
“I will now inform you as much as it is permitted to know. It disappoints you, I am aware, that his Excellency is unable to translate the writing character which has made so much disturbance. Nor can I translate it, either into Chinese or English words. My language is what you call arbitrary, built up of symbols, not letters. This particular character has been invented to signify some secret purpose. It has the root-sign for man, and also the two curved lines which mean a sending, a message. The rest of it is hidden from us. His Excellency is a scholar of the highest grade among the literati of China. This character, as a whole, he has never been able to find in the classics or the dictionaries.”
More puzzled than ever, O’Shea broke in to demand:
“But if nobody knows what it means, why does the sight of it start a full-sized panic?”
“Many men in China have been found dead, and upon their backs had been hacked with a sword this strange character. It was thus that the own brother of His Excellency was discovered, in the court-yard of his house.”
“I begin to see daylight,” said O’Shea.
“Ah, there is only the blackest darkness,” gravely replied the secretary. “The branded men have not been coolies, but officials, merchants, people of station. No precautions avail. It smites them like the lightning from the sky. The fear of it walks everywhere. And now it has crossed the sea like an evil shadow.”