Very low in the doorway appeared that long, sad, strange face, and again the leap in Romney's breast and the impulse to hurry forward and help the Hunchback to the cushions. At the same time—a hot thrill for an unemotional man—the thought that his association with Ti Kung and Minglapo meant association with Nifton Bend, the genius of Young China.
At the moment of the General's entrance from the rear, the servants had sprung to the main door opening on Merchant's Square, closed and barred it as if for the night, though the afternoon was not entirely spent. The servants of the shop were banished and the three sat down together....
Romney's mind had rushed back not only to his first meeting in the native professor's house in the Congrou district of Peking, but to Longstruth's where his impressions of that brief former interview became vivid and animate again for the listening of Moira Kelvin. The Hunchback seemed to bring again something of her almost as intimate as her perfume....
Daylight did not reach them now. The dead expressionless look had come again to the General's eyes. Romney felt his own face turn bloodless under the second appraisal, as was the other's in the warm gathering dusk. The unhasting and uninflected voice spoke again—the voice of a man with a single purpose, a man so close to the end that he laughs at pain. The words came slow and steadily, like running water:
"... We are working for the future of China. We may be wrong. We are doing the thing as we see it. Our deepest convictions are that we are right. We do not mean to meet Japan in this extraordinary crisis in the old fashion of arms and battle-lines. We do not care to fight. We favour theoretically the expediency of toleration, and yet we observe to the east and south, India, and on the north and west, Japan. Old India is magnificent in philosophy and yet so far without the physical impulse to protect herself; Japan, empty-minded, imitative, is furious with the idea of her own raw power of men and guns. If mind is a finer and more potent force than matter, we believe that guns and explosives and battle-lines are to be mastered by a thought. It cannot be written that Chinese age and wisdom shall succumb to the upstart and hot-headed people that has not even a language of its own—"
Nifton Bend's face was lit. Romney did not comprehend. This man, an authority on arms and military matters, spoke now against their use in case of war with Japan. He may have been a mystic in so far as his vision of the future went, but he had been enough of the manipulator of matter to make the new Chinese army. Did he plan to use some force of extermination more powerful than gases and explosives?
Minglapo now spoke to Romney, though his hand affectionately touched Nifton Bend's shoulder.
"We have learned to accept a lift of the General's eyelid, Friend Romney. He had not been thirty seconds in this room before you were approved. Already Dr. Ti Kung had approved you—and I. Still you would not have touched this inner circle as now but for your action in saving our Doctor's life. It appears they burned his house that night in Shanghai. You were intrusted with papers that contain certain of our plans. You may be asked to carry them again—even to Japan. There is for you a possibility of being an instrument toward the ending of all war from the world. China need act but once to end all war. It is a superb adventure for you, and incidentally you will be a power in preventing the world-calamity of a Japanese Asia."
Nifton Bend now spoke again:
"The history of that package which you so safely brought to us would make the raciest of novels. Once I hoped to become a novelist myself. That was in the days before the big dream of being a foster-child to the ancient Yellow Mother. In order that you may not be troubled longer by working in the dark, I am going to tell you something of what the yellow packet contains—"