The Yellow Snake (22 page)

    Superintendent Willing arrived soon after—a thin, cadaverous man with a mordant sense of humour and a low opinion of humanity. In some respects he was nearer to the typical idea of Joe Bray's imagination than the three men he had met earlier in the evening, for the superintendent spoke little and conveyed an impression of infallibility.

    "You know we searched the
Umgeni
this morning? She's due out tonight."

    Clifford nodded.

    "There was nothing in the shape of contraband. Perhaps they're going to send it by the
Umveli
—that's the sister ship. They're lying side by side in the Pool. But she's not due to sail for a month, and she goes to Newcastle first. Have you seen anything of my man, Long—the fellow I put to trail Miss Bray?" And when Clifford shook his head: "I thought he might have reported to you. He's probably gone back to Sunningdale with her. Now, Mr Lynne, what is the business end of this Chink's operations?"

    "Fing-Su? So far as I can gather, his idea is to create a new dynasty in China! Before he can bring that into being he would in the ordinary course of events have to fight the various mercenary generals who have sliced up the country between them, but I rather imagine he has found the easier way. Every general in China has his price—always remember that the Chinese have no patriotism; are unconscious of any sentiment for the soil that produced them. Their politics are immediate and local. Most of them aren't aware that Mongolia has become a Russian province. The generals are bandits on the grand scale, and battles are decided by the timely desertions of armies. Strategy in China means getting the best price for treachery and keeping your plans dark until the last minute."

    "And Narth—he's rather a puzzle to me," said Willing. "I can't see what value he can be to Fing-Su and his crowd. The man is no genius, and certainly no fighter."

    "Narth is very useful; make no mistake about that. Although he is practically bankrupt, he knows the City intimately—by which I mean that when it comes to a question of negotiating dollars against lives, there won't be a better man in the City of London than Stephen Narth. He is personally acquainted with the great financial groups; he has the very knowledge which Fing-Su lacks. If Fing-Su succeeds there will be some valuable concessions to be had—Narth is to be the broker! At present he is a doubtful proposition, and Fing knows it. The money he has borrowed from our Chinese friend doesn't give Fing-Su the grip on him that he imagines. Stephen has got to be clamped to the Joyful Hands with bonds of steel. Perhaps the mumbory-jumbory of the initiation service might hold him—but I doubt it."

    He looked at his watch.

    "It's time we made a move," he said. "I have arranged for an electric launch to meet us at Wapping. Have you a gun?"

    "Don't want it," rsaid the superintendent cheerfully. "I've a walking-cane that's got a kick in it and makes no noise. But I think the evening is going to be wasted. I've searched the
Umgeni
——"

    "I'm not going to look at the
Umgeni
," interrupted Cliff grimly. "Her sister ship's lying alongside——"

    "But she doesn't sail for a month."

    "On the contrary," said Cliff, "she sails tonight."

    The superintendent laughed.

    "You know very little about ships," he said. "She'll be held up at the mouth of the river and her papers searched, and unless they are in order she'll not leave the Thames River."

    "They will be in order," said Clifford cryptically.

    To the artist the Pool of London has a peculiar beauty of its own. Here lie the great ocean-going steamers, and along this watery highway passes the traffic of half a world. It is a place of soft tones, on a fine evening; a nocturne of greys and blues and russet reds. It is a veritable pool of romance even in the drab days of winter, when the stained hulls and the grime-coated funnels come slowly out of sunny seas to rest on these mud-coloured waters.

    On a dark and rainy summer evening, with an unaccountable northerner to chill the bones of those adventurers who set forth upon the surface of the river, the Pool has little attraction. Clifford found his big electric launch waiting at the greasy flight of stairs, and slipping under the stern of a Norwegian timber ship, he steered to the middle of the river. A police skiff came out of the darkness, challenged them and was satisfied, and followed in their wake. The tide was running in and was favourable to their enterprise, for they could afford to go half-speed.

    Clifford's scheme was to find a hiding-place on board the ship, and if they were undetected to go down-river with the ship to Gravesend, where the ship would be held up to take on a pilot and for the examination of papers, before being allowed to proceed on her voyage. If they were discovered, Willing had the necessary authority to account for their presence and to conduct an eleventh-hour search for forbidden exports.

    There were ships to left and right of them, some silent and dark, save for their riding lamps, others ablaze with lights and noisy with the rattle and whine of donkey engines as they unloaded into lighters with the aid of great branch lamps swung over the side. A belated pleasure craft passed them, a glittering palace of a thing, from which came the strains of a wheezy band.

    The four men who occupied the launch wore oilskins and sou'westers, and the need for this protection was emphasized before they had reached the middle of the river, for the drizzle became a downpour.

    "Give me China, where the sun is always shining!" murmured Joe Bray, squatting on the floorboards, but nobody answered him.

    After a quarter of an hour Superintendent Willing said in a low voice:

    "There are the boats, right ahead on the Surrey side."

    The
Umgeni
and the
Umveli
were, as he had said, sister ships, and were more twin-like than most sister ships are. Their black hulls and funnels were familiar objects to the riverside loafer; they had the same curiously advanced navigation bridge, the same long superstructure running forward. Both had a single mast, and both sported a gilt and unnecessary figurehead of Neptune.

    There was no need to ask which was the
Umgeni
. Her decks were brilliantly illuminated, and as they came in sight of her a fussy little tug was drawing away three empty lighters from her side. A little more than a ship's length from her the Umveli swung at her moorings, a dark and lifeless shape.

    "You didn't search the
Umveli?
"

    "No, it hardly seemed necessary. She's only been in the river a little more than a week, and she's been unloading all that time."

    "By night," was Clifford's significant comment. "The ship which apears to be unloading by night might very easily be loading by night."

    The brilliance of the
Umgeni
illuminated the starboard side of her sister ship, and Lynne set the nose of the launch towards the shore, setting a course that would bring him in the shadow of the vessel.

    "Rather low down in the water for an empty ship, isn't she?" he asked, and the superintendent agreed.

    "She's going round to Newcastle in ballast to undergo repairs," he said. "At least, that is my information."

    There was little chance of confusing the two vessels. The word
Umgeni
in letters a yard long sprawled over the hull of that busy craft in great raised characters. As they came upon the dark side of the Umveli, Lynne looked up. They were passing under the stern, and he saw something which interested him.

    "Look at that," he whispered, pointing.

    The letters 'vel' had been removed from the stern of the ship.

    "What's the idea?"

    "They are changing names, that's all," said Clifford laconically. "In two hours the
Umveli
will go down the Thames with the
Umgeni
's papers, and in the morning the
Umgeni
, newly christened, will steam out to sea ostensibly on its way to Newcastle." They were moving silently, and the dark-covered launch would not be visible to ordinary eyes; nevertheless, when they came abreast of the companion ladder a screeching voice hailed them.

    "What boat that?"

    "Passing," shouted Lynne gruffly.

    He focused a pair of night-glasses on the ship and presently he saw another look-out standing on the forecastle; and, more important, three shadowy shapes were on the bridge and smoke was coming up from the funnel.

    "They keep a pretty good watch for an empty ship," he said, expecting to be hailed again by the man on the forecastle, but evidently this watcher was not so vigilant as his fellow. Clifford saw him turn and walk slowly towards the ladder that led to the well of the deck, and instantly sent the launch about so that it came under the clipper bow..

    Reaching up, he caught hold of the chains with a rubber-covered boathook and steadied the launch, and in another instant had drawn himself up hand over hand till his arm encircled the bowsprit. As he peeped cautiously along the forecastle he heard somebody in a far-away voice call a name, and the forecastle watcher descended out of sight. In an instant he conveyed the intelligence, and first Willing and then Joe Bray, who displayed remarkable agility, followed him through the deserted ship. After seeing them safely on board, the launch drew off in accordance with instructions.

    "We'll get down into the well," whispered Lynne, and, hurrying ahead, he ran down the ladder, expecting every moment to be challenged.

    But the well was deserted. From an open doorway in the forecastle he heard the sound of a mouth-organ being played, whilst from ahead of him came the clop-clop of a hammer against wedges where the hatch was being finally closed. A narrow alleyway led from the well beneath the main deck, and if the party could reach this without attracting the attention of the men on the bridge, there was a possibility of finding a hiding-place.

    Keeping in the shadow of the bulwarks, Cliff Lynne crept along, Joe in his wake, and they reached the alleyway without incident. Here a hiding-place was revealed. Immediately under the bridge (and exactly two decks lower) was a large cabin which, to judge from the scratches and discolorations on the bulkhead, had been used for carrying cargo. Two dimly burning bulkhead lights showed that the place had been converted to carry passengers. There was a table, two or three chairs, a package bearing the label of a well-known bookseller, and on the floor, a brand-new carpet, its creases rising in rectangular ridges.

    Though the room ran the width of the ship it was not more than six feet in depth. In the after steel wall were two narrow bulkhead doors; one was padlocked and bolted, but the other stood ajar, and, pushing it open, Clifford stepped in, turning on his pocket-lamp.

    It was a tiny cupboard of a place, without windows, air being admitted through a deck ventilator, he guessed, for the atmosphere was pure and there was a gentle current of air. In a corner was a small brass bedstead, which had been clamped to the deck; in the farther corner was a recessed wash-place with a newly-fixed shower-bath and an earthenware basin. This and an incongruously ornate wardrobe, much too big for so small an apartment, completed the furniture.

    Hearing the sound of feet on the deck outside, Clifford beckoned his two companions into the small room. Through a crack in the door he saw a Chinese sailor enter and look round. Presently he went back to the door and shouted something, and another sailor joined him and they talked together in a dialect with which neither Joe Bray nor Clifford was acquainted. They were obviously Southern Chinese, and whatever was the subject of their discourse amused them for they punctuated their speech with raucous squeaks of laughter.

    And then, to Clifford's horror, before he could realize what was happening, one of the men put out his hand, gripped the door of the cubby house and slammed it tight. Clifford heard the grind of the bolt slipping into its place, and the slam of the outer door. They were trapped!

    It had been for Mr Stephen Narth a day of unrelieved misery. What remained of a conscience largely atrophied by self-interest was surprisingly sensitive to the knowledge of the evil he had done to an innocent girl. Again and again he had repeated Fing-Su's assurance that no harm would come to her, and again and again his reason rejected this futile act of self-deception. And then, on top of the other causes for misery, the news had come like a thunderbolt that Joe Bray was alive and that the treasure his fingers were reaching to touch was phantom gold!

    Joe Bray was alive!

    He had perpetrated an elaborate jest upon his heir. The easy way out was no longer a way at all, easy or difficult. His one surviving hope was vested in the integrity of Fing-Su.

    Stephen Narth was too intelligent a man to believe that the native would keep any promise he had ever made. And yet £50,000 was at stake. Would even the most fantastic of Chinamen lose his hold upon that enormous sum, as undoubtedly he would if Stephen Narth decided to break loose from his association. Bankruptcy? What was bankruptcy but an unpleasant incident which might come to any man, and had come to many better and more highly placed than Stephen Narth? And with bankruptcy the ambitious Chinaman might whistle for his money.

    This was the only comforting thought that the afternoon brought to him. The prospect of his initiation only filled him with a mild nausea that he should lower himself to the level of this 'mountebank Chink.'

    He was a member of two societies which might be described as 'secret', and his general knowledge of such matters was broad enough to acquaint him with most of the formula: of initiation. He looked forward to the evening as a tiresome and uncomfortable waste of time. A journey to South London would have been a wretched experience at any hour or season, but the prospect of making his visit in the middle of the night, and of spending two hours, as he supposed, in the company of Chinese coolies, revolted him.