"It would be natural, as I said before, for you to return to Shanghai, except that I have heard from Dr. Ti Kung, who, I perceive, picks well his associates. These are delicate matters; these are times to try men's souls. Our friend is now healing at sea. I am grievously concerned, however, over wounds that could delay such a man for six days. Much depends upon his coming. The character of Dr. Ti Kung's service cannot be duplicated. In saving his life, Friend Romney, you have done one of those significant things upon which the destiny of a great people hangs, and an action that can never be publicly known. It is with utmost pleasure that I ask you to remain under my roof. I hope that we may succeed in making you comfortable in the interval before your friend arrives. There is to be a particular servant for you in this house—one of my favourites—"
Minglapo clapped his hands, and a small but almost perfect creature of the boy-class appeared, alert in every sense and apparently without inertia.
"This is Bamban. He is yours, Friend Romney, and you who know so much of China realize that a bestowal of this kind between man and man means that Bamban is no longer my servant."
Fastidious in his ways, swift and delicate in all his doings, Bamban appeared to embrace his new master with the sudden look of eager intelligence which shot out from under his lifted brows. Romney knew enough about China to realise that Bamban held something in the deeps of his being that could not be transferred. At the same time he knew that only some significant treachery on his own part toward the interests of Minglapo could ever call this reservation into action.
In the several days following Romney became convinced that he was being studied in ways beyond Western ingenuity to fathom; and though he was schooled to be guileless in intent and at the same time wise as the serpent, the processes of surveillance which he imagined about him were either above or below his own levels. He had nothing to conceal, and no plan apart. He met all fancied subtleties by being himself, just that, which in the case of uncomplicated purpose is the invariable master-stroke. The fact is, Romney had learned much from the Great Drift. He could let himself go. His nerves had left the surface once more, covered themselves in the cushions of health. He did not know the particular passion that drove Ti Kung and Minglapo, but he felt it big and gripping. He even felt at last that he was identified with a movement potent and far-reaching enough to command those powers of his which all his former dealings with men made him repress.
Though Minglapo did not appear to be a man of great riches, there were objects of priceless beauty in his establishment, which was a shop only on the street floor. No one appeared to buy while Romney was there. Once while the American was standing in the rear of the shop, the floor raised a little before his feet, and he was aware of a deep oil-lit basement that had every look and indication of being a fully equipped chemical laboratory—vials, flames and crucibles, tables with spawn-trays and culture-boards. An oppressive, earthy breath as from fungoid growths touched Romney's nostrils from the opened trap. Minglapo called him to the dais at that instant and the trap itself was abruptly closed. The Chinese upon whose shoulder the door had been raised did not emerge. There was something aged and wasted about the figure, the eyes spent and hollow.
Romney enjoyed the challenging mystery of it all. The two upper floors, high-ceiled and extending far back from the street, formed little less than a palace. Ti Kung's house in Shanghai was austere as a monastery compared. Romney found himself surrounded with luxuries startling even with his considerable acquaintance in the East. Ensconced here in the midst of influences insistently languorous, he was amused to find a tendency of his own character to tighten rather than to let down. The first night in Ti Kung's house had seemed to straighten him out and render distasteful abandonment such as he had known. Abandonment here, he was well aware, would bring about the same results as the wastrel days on the water-fronts. He had entered into that with the fixed purpose of letting life go. It had refused to leave him, and now he was rather distantly glad to be alive.
In his own quarters, on the second day, he drew forth the frayed and soiled chiffon waist, washed it carefully and put it back in his breast. It was no more than a handkerchief. It had seen him through strange days and roads. He was the least maudlin of men, but the little fabric meant something striking and imperishable in his nature—something of him no longer, but around him. She was not the woman, but she had made the picture of what a woman could be. The farther from her, the more he appreciated. She had known in two weeks what it had taken him nearly a year to find out—that they were not for each other. The change had come to him from the months in the Drift—something to break his unparalleled infatuation. All her wonder and daring and splendour remained clear, and yet the terrible draw of her had somehow eased upon his heart. In a word, he saw as quite true another of her sayings—that love can never be on one side alone in a great romance.
Late the fifth afternoon of his stay in the house of Minglapo, Romney got the first inkling of the real business at hand. There had been talk at the dais for several moments, when the old master turned at the soft swinging of one of the shop's rear doors, and without finishing the sentence on his tongue, remarked:
"And now, Friend Romney, you are ready to meet a countryman of yours, General Nifton Bend—"