V
Over a mournful, muddy expanse of the China Sea wallowed a top-heavy river steamer whose engines raised protesting clamor like an assemblage of threshing-machines. The gods of the air and water were in a kindly mood or else she would have opened up and foundered ere now. In the spray-swept wheel-house stood Captain Michael O’Shea, swaying easily to the crazy roll and lurch of the Whang Ho and scanning the low dim coast with a pair of glasses. Clinging to the window ledge beside him was a young man of a Chinese countenance whose raiment, the handiwork of a fashionable British tailor, was sadly rumpled and soiled. The whole aspect of the young man was rumpled, in fact, not to say excessively forlorn, and now and then he pressed his hand against a painful jaw. It was difficult to imagine that he had been an ornament of clubs, a pattern for the gilded youth, and the smartest comprador between Tientsin and Singapore.
The plight of Charley Tong Sin was made poignantly distressing by the fact that in the process of acquiring the vices of the Occident he had lost his grip on the essential virtues of the Orient. His native stoicism had been sapped and the fatalistic attitude of mind which meets death without so much as the flutter of an eyelid was eaten with dry-rot. In other words, the comprador was willing to pay any price to save his own skin, although his father before him would have suffered himself to be sliced to death by inches sooner than “lose face” in the presence of a foreigner.
Captain Michael O’Shea’s method of extracting information from this kidnapped passenger had been brutally simple and direct. Charley Tong Sin was informed that he could make a clean breast of it or be thrown overboard. And the shipmaster, when he was thoroughly in earnest, had a way of conveying the impression that he meant what he said. He believed that he knew his man. The comprador was strongly reluctant to have his head lopped off by the sword of a native executioner, which was very likely to happen if this terrible O’Shea should turn him over to the Chinese authorities. Given the promise of immunity in exchange for a confession, he could flee to Japan or the Straits Settlements and live handsomely in the society of other Chinese exiles with the funds that he had piled up during his brief and brilliant business career. Likewise there would be opportunities in shipping and commerce for a comprador of his uncommon ability.
“I would honestly enjoy killing you, Charley,” said Captain O’Shea as they stood together in the wheel-house of the Whang Ho. “You are a smart lad, but ye got too gay with me, and you overplayed your game when ye slipped under the counter of this steamer in a sampan in the dark of the night and got busy with the red paint. That sort of silly jugglery was the Chinese of it, I suppose. Now, I have tried to make it plain that your life is not worth a pinch of snuff to any one of us. There is not a man in the ship that wants to lay eyes on Shanghai ever again. They will be only too glad to quit the country if they have the price in their pockets, and I will give them the price. So ye must not hold to the notion that we are afraid of getting in trouble on your account.”
“I am worth more to you alive than if I am dead,” sullenly muttered Charley Tong Sin. “Is it not so? You think I will be handy as a pilot, as an interpreter? I have been doing a deuce of a lot of thinking. I am no fool, Captain O’Shea. I know pretty well when I am licked. I made a botch of it in Shanghai. You went blundering about like a buffalo, and I thought it was a cinch to get you out of the way.”
“’Twas the luck of the Irish that pulled me through,” said O’Shea. “Now we understand each other, Charley, me lad. I am staking all I have—me life and me money—to get to the bottom of this infernal secret society you have mixed yourself up with. ’Tis an instrument I am for the good of humanity. And if ye turn state’s evidence to enable me to make a clean, thorough job of it, I think I am justified in giving you a chance to hot-foot it out of China.”
“Let us call it a bargain, Captain O’Shea. As we used to say in New York, I am up against it good and plenty. To commit suicide, as many Chinese would do in a fix like this, is all tommy-rot. Charley Tong Sin could have no more gin cocktails—what?”
“You can begin the confession right away,” exclaimed the shipmaster.
“One thing at a time,” cheerfully replied the comprador. “I will take you to the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells and the village of Wang-Li-Fu. Then you will find many very interesting things to ask me to talk about.”