“I think I have seen Mr. Po at the yamen,” he said, speaking now in the slow grave way of the old Griggsby Doane. “You bring good news?”
“Oh, yes!” Mr. Po lighted a cigarette. “We shall doubtless in jiffy see you again at T'ainan-fu.”
Doane looked thoughtfully, intently at him, then replied in the simple phrase, “It may be.” To Brachey he said now, producing a white envelope, “I found this, cablegram held for you at Shau T'ing, sir.”
Brachey took the envelope; stood stiffly holding it unopened before him. For a moment the eyes of these two men met. Then Doane broke the tension by simply raising his head, an action which removed it from the view of the men within the tent.
“Good morning,” he said rather gruffly. And “Good morning, Mr. Po.”
He was well out of ear-shot when Brachey's gray lips mechanically uttered the two words, “Thank you.” From a distant corner of the compound came the fresh voices of young men—Americans and Australian and English—raised in crudely pleasant harmony They were singing My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. As they swung into the rolling, rollicking refrain, women's voices joined in faintly from here and there about the compound.... Brachey seemed to be listening. Then, again, abruptly starting into action, he stepped outside the tent and stared across the courtyard after Griggby Doane.... Then, as abruptly, he remembered his guest and returned within the tent, with an almost muttered “I beg your pardon.”
“Oh, go on—read your cablegram!” said Mr. Po good-humoredly.
Bradley looked at him; then at the envelope—turning it slowly over. His hands trembled. This fact appeared to disturb him. He held one hand out before his face and watched it intently, finally lowering it with a quick nervous shake of the head. He seated himself again on the cot; tore off an end of the envelope; caught his breath; then sat motionless with the bit of paper that meant to him everything in life, or nothing, hanging between limp fingers. A puzzling reminder of the strange man, Griggsby Doane, was the painful throbbing in his head.... They were singing again, about the compound—it was the college song of his youth, Solomon Levi.
He thought, with another of those odd little mental and physical jerks, again of his guest; and heard himself saying—weakly it seemed, like a man talking in dreams—“You will think me...” But found himself addressing an empty enclosure of canvas. Mr. Po had slipped out and dropped the flaps. That he could have done this unobserved frightened Brachey a little. He looked again at his trembling hand.
Again he raised the envelope. Until this moment he had assumed that it could be but one message to himself and Betty; but now he knew vividly better.