It was done in order. An hour after, when all the village was attracted to the threshing-floor, and the bullock-carts were creaking in, and the sweating, harried Englishmen were pushing back the natives, lest they fall under the wheels, Mr. Jasper perceived the man who had so fascinated him set out, alone and without conveyance, along the sandy western road toward the railroad.
It was a night late in October when Routledge reached Calcutta, where he was forced to sink deeply into the native life to avoid recognition. With two months’ files of the Pioneer, he sat down to study the premonitive mutterings of the Russo-Japanese war. They were wide in aim, but deep with meaning for the man who had mastered the old game of war. The point which interested him most in regard to this inevitable fracture of the world’s peace was not brought out in the Pioneer. Just how much did the awful activity of one Tyrone patriot, Jerry Cardinegh, have to do with the ever bristling negotiations between Tokyo and St. Petersburg?... In the light of the present developments, the Anglo-Japanese alliance was one of the cleverest figments of diplomacy in the history of national craft. Japan was a fine tool, with a keen and tempered edge. It would take all the brute flesh that Russia could mass in Manchuria to blunt it. Decidedly, Russia would have none left to crumple the borders of British India. Meanwhile, England had nothing more serious to do than to collect her regular Indian tributes, attend her regular Indian famines, and to vent from time to time a world-wide whoop of encouragement for her little brown brothers, facing the Bear.
“That reminds me,” Routledge reflected with a start, “that all this is my work. I took it from Jerry Cardinegh.”
He breathed hard, and perused again the long, weary story of negotiations, the preliminary conflict. It appeared that Russia recognized Japan’s peculiar interest in Korea, and called it reasonable for her to take charge of the affairs of the Korean court.... “By the way,” Routledge mused ironically, “the Anglo-Japanese alliance was hung on the fact that Korea was to be preserved an automatic unit. However, the Anglo-Japanese alliance was hung in haste.”... The Czar observed that he had a peculiar brotherly regard for Manchuria, and that Japan must bear in mind that her Korean business must remain for all time south of the Yalu. “Don’t cross that river,” said Nicholas.... Ominous courtesy, rejections, modifications, felicitations, and the thunder of riveting war-ships in each navy-yard of the respective Powers involved. Brute boy, Japan, at a white heat from Hakodate to Nagasaki; Russia sweetly ignoring the conflagration and sticking for Great Peter’s dream for a port in the Pacific.
And so it stood when Routledge closed his last Pioneer in his Calcutta hiding-place, and embarked European steerage for Shanghai. Two days north of Hong Kong, the steamer ran into the first breath of winter, and Routledge drew out the great frieze coat to go ashore in the Paris of China. Far out on the Hankow road, he ensconced himself in a small German hostelry, and caught up with the negotiations through the successive editions of the North China News. Not a line anywhere regarding the life or death of Jerry Cardinegh.
Closer and closer, the Powers drew about to hear the final back-talk between Russia and Japan. The latter said that she would establish a neutral zone along the northern Korean frontier, if Russia would do likewise on the southern frontier of Manchuria. Some humorist in England observed that you cannot have a neutral zone without war; and the correspondents set out from England, via America, where they picked up the men from New York, Chicago, and Three Oaks—travelling west to the Far East. At this point, Routledge, with great secrecy, made possible through a solid friend in New York, secured credentials, under an assumed name, for free-lance work in the interests of the World-News. Thus passed the holidays. The first month of 1904 was remarkable for the unexampled tension created by Japan burning the cables for Russia’s last word.
Routledge thrilled in spite of himself. He felt that this was to be his last service and the biggest. What a farce were the negotiations, with Japan already a-tramp with soldiery and the great single-track railroad from St. Petersburg to Port Arthur groaning with troop-trains; with India locked tight in the strong white British hand for at least another decade; with England turned to watch her Asiatic agent spitted on the Czar’s rusty bayonets—what a farce, indeed, with Russia willing, and Japan determined, for war.
Late in January, and a snowy twilight. Routledge stood for a moment on the Bund in Shanghai. He was sailing that night for Chifu, and wondering as he stood in the falling dark, his face concealed in the high-collar, how fared Jerry Cardinegh in the crux of these great affairs. Was he dead—or dead in brain only? Of Noreen—thoughts of Noreen were always with him.
One of the launches of an Empress liner was leaving the Bund in a few minutes for the ship in the offing—her nose turned to Japan. Routledge was thinking that he would have to play the game alone now, if never before. He smiled at the thought of what the boys gathering at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo would do if he should turn up among them.... Suddenly he felt a man’s eyes fixed upon him from the right. He turned his head carelessly, and discovered a figure marvelously like Finacune’s stepping overside into the launch. It disappeared into the small cabin. Routledge turned his back to the launch with that degraded, shrunken sensation which concealment always incited.