THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER A NOVEL BY SELWYN JEPSON NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. 8. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY. N. J. TO TWO OF THE NICEST PEOPLE I KNOW- MR. AND MRS. EDGAR JEPSON 2136529 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE FOURTH SEAT 9 n HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG . . . 28 HI THE FORKING OF THE RIVER . . . 57 IV CUTTING CORDS 71 V JIMMY ....... 82 VI AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK . . . . 95 VH THE SMILING COOK . . . . 113 VIET PISTOL PRACTICE 115 IX THE LIVER-FACED LOVER . . . 138 X A BEGINNING 157 XI MILK 173 XH AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS . . . 1 88 Xm MUTINY 202 XIV THE BLOOD LUST 2l6 XV THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS . 233 XVI THE BIG MAN COMES . . . .252 XVII DUFFY GOES 264 XVni THE OPEN SEA 280 XIX POETIC JUSTICE 2 96 XX AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT . . . 318 The Qualified Adventurer CHAPTER I THE FOURTH SEAT ON a fine June morning a young man sat in his office in Dalkeith House with his feet tucked away in the bottom drawer of his desk, which had been pulled out to receive them, while he nursed the telephone and spoke into it in snappy sentences: "Very sorry about that, Turner, it was a question of leaving out the second house ad. or cutting four inches of a story I'd already hacked pretty badly. I put 'em both through in the last issue." The re- ceiver buzzed and crackled and the young man held it farther from his ear. Presently the other end quieted, and he answered, "Oh, all right. I'll phone the Works and see about it. Sorry. Good-by." He jerked the hook on the instrument. "Put me through to Mr. Horrocks, please. Hullo? Mr. Horrocks? 'Adventure Novels' speaking. Could you let me have 'The Firebrand of Galloway 9 io THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Creek' back? I want to cut another four inches. What? Yes, but it's the old question of house ads. again. Mr. Turner says he must have the second in. New paper out next week. Yes; I'll let you have the galleys back before I go to-night. Thanks. Good-by." The young man sighed deeply and scowled out of the window at the scurrying crowd; journalists, typists, lino-men, office-boys, and the thousand other people who produce newspapers for the world that pivots round them. The mid-day search for lunch had begun. The young man glanced at his wrist-watch. Then he reached for the telephone again. "Mr. MacArthur, please. Hullo. Mac? Food" And he slammed down the receiver. Then he dis- entangled his legs from their drawer, found his towel and soap in a bundle of galley-proofs, yawned pro- digiously and walked out of the room. The young man was Peter Duff; he was thin, he was sandy-haired, and he looked out on the world through big horn-rimmed spectacles. His face was pale, his nostrils fine and sensitive. His eyes might have been blue; in some lights there could be no doubt about it. He was very thin. MacArthur once suggested THE FOURTH SEAT 11 that if ever the police actually got on Duffy's track he would only have to turn sideways to escape observation altogether. Peter Duff resented the imputation and bought several elastic exercisers with which to thicken himself, but with very little result beyond the conviction that he had wasted his money and his time. And Peter Duff was a journalist. For three years he had pursued that occupation with consider- able aptitude for his particular branch of it ad- venture. What Peter Duff did not know about adventure was not worth knowing. He could tell you exactly what should happen at any stage of any adventure you cared to take mentally. His friends in Dal- keith House, and he had many, came to him often to unravel the situations they had worked up in the story they were sub-editing at the moment. And Duffy after demanding the story up-to-date in as short sentences as the sub-editor of it could put it, would jerk out the proper end for it in expert words. Duffy, as the world knew him, was an expert in adventure. At the age of five Duffy had learned to read. By the age of fifteen he had mastered the world's litera- ture of adventure. He could quote verbatim whole 12 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER chunks of Jack London, Stacpoole, and Victor Bridges; and he was always ready to do it. That gift had something to do with the getting of his par- ticular job at Dalkeith House the sub-editing of Dalkeith Adventure Novels four of which he pre- pared for the eager youth of Great Britain every month. Occasionally he wrote one himself, but as he pointed out to Mac Arthur and Binks: the sub- editor who knew his job sub-edited, and let the other fellow do the work. Duffy was repeating this maxim to a man in the "wash-house" when Binks joined him. Binks was tall and broad with flaxen hair and a cherubic countenance; very pink and very white. " 'Morning, Binks. How's the 'sob' stuff?" "Fair to middling. James is holding up that 'Gutter to Greenroom' synopsis and won't tell me if he wants the story or not. I've got to get some money from somebody in the course of the next fortnight," said Binks cheerfully. The fact that he was short of money did not weigh heavily upon him. "I phoned Mac. He's meeting us at the Cafe," said Duffy. "Good," said Binks. "Well, buck up, or he'll let somebody collar our seats," said Duffy gloomily. THE FOURTH SEAT 13 They walked out after collecting their hats and sticks, descended in the lift and walked through the revolving door into the sunlight of Fleet Street. Duffy drew a deep breath and blinked in the bright light. Then he turned to Binks. "We're deeper in our rut, Binks," he said. "We're plowing along in the dear old rut." "Who's getting in a rut?" asked Binks he was thinking of Mildred and that 1000 a year he had got to get from somewhere before . . . "She ought to know," he added. Duffy scowled at him. "Forget Mildred for a moment. I say we are getting in a rut. Day after day, week after week, year after year we do exactly the same thing. We arrive at the office always half-an-hour late; work, lunch, same place, same table, same waitress. Mac always has steak, fried, and a Bass; he knows he always has it; Trixie knows he always has it; but she takes his order, dish by dish, as though he'd never been to the Cafe before. I don't believe Mac has ever done anything he hasn't done before. We eat, go back to the office turn out the same stuff don't give 'em anything new or they'll think they're being done five-thirty we go home same thing all over again next day. Every week-end you go down I 4 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER to Mildred's Mac takes his motor-bike to pieces again." "What about you?" asked Binks. "I suppose you aren't in a rut?" "Yep I know I am but I do try to kick you blighters out of it." He looked gloomy. "You do; and spoil our lunch by taking us to some low Soho joint, making us eat rotten food. It all tastes exactly the same, and we have to make a bus journey there and back to get it. I hate the food and I hate the bus," said Binks. "Has it ever occurred to you," asked Duffy sol- emnly, "what might happen at Pineffii's? Do you realize a man was knifed there three years ago and that there is every chance it will happen again? If it does, and I am not there, I will never forgive you. We ought to eat at Pineffi's!" "We ought not," retorted Binks. "I may be conservative; I may even be in a rut, but I certainly like my lunch in comparative peace. It's made bloodthirsty enough by your conversation. I should have thought you got quite enough blood- shed in 'Dalkeith Novels' without wanting to drag it into your meals." "One can never have one's fill of adventure," said Duffy solemnly, and he blinked through his spec- THE FOURTH SEAT 15 tacles at the unimaginative Binks. "Adventure is life, and life is adventure, in everything is adventure if you care to look for it," he added. Binks refused to be dragged into the discussion of a matter in which he knew Duffy was unassail- able. He felt sometimes that if Duffy had been allowed to go to France by the medical people, France might have knocked a little of it out of him; but he was not sure. It might have made him worse; he might conceivably have thrived on it. Duffy certainly knew more about the inside strategy of the war than either himself or MacArthur, though they had both been in the thick of it. Duffy's demonstration of the Battle of Loos with the salt- cellar and most of the cutlery had fed them up at many meals. He preserved an aloof silence. By this time they had reached the Cafe, and Duffy, with a gloomy frown, followed Binks across it to their table. He did not approve of the way in which Binks nodded to acquaintances and passed airy words with the cashier; besides she frizzed her hair. Binks was thoroughly at home. He was the perfect habitue that was the word. So Duffy tried to look as though he was a trusty member of the Secret Service and not the mere friend of Binks. He managed very well to give the im- 1 6 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER pression of a heavily mustached, much mufflered servant of the Crown about to denounce a traitor. He almost slouched. MacArthur had already taken his usual seat; he put down his "John O'London," the only paper he ever read, and greeted them cheerfully. He looked hard at Duffy. "How's Duffy? I hope you disarmed him at the door, Binks?" Binks laughed. "No; but he's still talking about Pinem's." "As long as he doesn't taste it, I suppose it's fairly harmless," said MacArthur. "I've known him far more dangerous." He might have been talking about a patient in a lunatic asylum. Duffy was used to it he helped himself to a roll. Trixie came to them and they gave their orders. MacArthur studied the menu carefully and ordered steak, fried, and a Bass. "Try a Worthington, Mac," suggested Duffy. "I had Worthington yesterday," replied Mac- Arthur. "Never!" ejaculated Duffy, surprise and joy spreading over his face. He reached across the table and shook MacArthur firmly by the hand. THE FOURTH SEAT 17 "Owl ! " remarked MacArthur. "What's the mat- ter with him, Binks?" "Only the rut business again/' said Binks in a tired voice. "Pass the rolls, Mac. Thanks." There was a short pause, then Binks commenced: "By the way, do you people realize that you have to pay at least thirty guineas for a decent fur coat?" "I did not," said MacArthur. "Why?" "Mildred has got to have a fur coat. They cost thirty guineas." "You can get two very nice little .32 automatics for thirty guineas," remarked Duffy. His voice had an enthusiastic ring in it. "I saw two at Carnage's the other day. I think I'm going to buy them." Binks opened his mouth to point out the stupidity of buying automatics no one was ever going to use when one could bring ecstasy to the heart of a fur- coatless Mildred for the same money, when a small, round little man with golden spectacles and a shiny bald head stopped at their table and eyed the fourth seat. "Is this chair reserved, gentlemen?" he inquired in a soft, rather engaging voice. They assured him it was not, and all three smiled their welcome. They felt their lunch was incomplete if the fourth i8 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER seat remained empty through it. While the small, round little man divested himself of his coat a light, extravagant coat Duffy leaned across the table and hissed between his teeth: "Dealer in precious stones; rich; married." The dealer in precious stones returned and seated himself. He peered at the menu MacArthur handed him. The three waited respectfully. "Is the grilled chicken good?" he asked at length. "Not bad," answered Duffy. Binks and MacAr- thur looked at him; their journalistic minds apprais- ingly fixed on the fact that Duffy had never eaten grilled chicken at the Cafe even in his palmiest days. "The only place to eat grilled chicken is the Maison Coquille in the Rue d'Arriere Paris but I expect you know that," he went on. "Yes yes," assented the little man, rather too hastily to be convincing. "Though the Pallistrado people do it pretty well but it's some little while since I was in Madrid. It has probably gone off a good deal since the war. Most of those big places have." Duffy was gazing gloomily at the fan-light over their heads. He was obviously back in Madrid before the war. MacArthur picked up his paper and began to read THE FOURTH SEAT 19 "Answers to Correspondents." Duffy had started and he knew from experience that there would be no stopping him. It depended on the amount of strain the fourth seat man's credulity could stand.. Usually it was more than one expected: Duffy was a singularly convincing young man he was a spe- cialist. "You know Madrid, young man?" asked the little man. Duffy hated being addressed as "young man." His gloom deepened and he ceased regarding the fan-light to look steadily at the little man. "Pretty well but things were a little too hot at the time for me to take very much notice of the city itself. I was fully occupied with its citizens," and Duffy broke his roll expressively. "Oh?" said the little man in a tone that invited details. Duffy knew the value of a pause. He removed his horn-rimmed spectacles and screwed up his eyes while he polished the big lenses with a very ornate silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. He re- placed the spectacles on his nose and leaned for- ward: "You've heard of Meredith of the Foreign Office?" "I think so yes?" 20 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Well, he finds me things to do, you know, when I get sick of sitting around. There was a little matter he wanted fixed in Madrid. The extremist party revolutionaries, you know collared some important naval secret by bribing a fellow in the Spanish Admiralty. Then they started in to black- mail Don Miguel, being as usual very hard-up. There was no harm in their doing that, it's a recognized thing, you know, out there; but Don Miguel suddenly decided that a Britisher had put them up to it and held the papers, intending to get all he could out of them and then sell out to the British Admiralty. Don Miguel got the "wind up" sufficiently to cable our people here. Meredith sent me along." Duffy stopped and ran his fingers through his sandy hair. The little man regarded him with respectful eyes. Duffy felt he had really found some one to appreciate him. He became even more convincing. His voice dropped a tone and he spoke slowly. "It took me every day of three months to get those papers back where they came from. Longest job I ever had." Here Binks interrupted. Binks had been enjoy- ing himself. THE FOURTH SEAT 21 "There was that Los Angeles business," he said. "You wasted six months on that." Duffy turned grateful eyes on him. "Don't I know it! But you must admit that was a frost. If Hiram K. had told me the whole story right away at the beginning I need hardly have spent a fortnight at it. It was only a matter of getting Kitten knocked on the head. When I did find out, and then without any help from Hiram K., Kitten offered no trouble at all. Nor would he five months earlier. I had him under my thumb from the beginning." "That's so," said Binks gravely, and he adopted the air of a patient listener again. The little man had been looking from one to the other. He seemed very eager not to miss a word. Trixie brought his grilled chicken, but he hardly noticed it. MacAr- thur did. He looked up from his paper and sniffed audibly. "Well," continued Duffy. "I spent the first month trying to find out who Don Miguel really meant when he talked about the Britisher. As we thought, he was a nebulous person more or less created for the purposes of a scapegoat. After I had proved this to them the least I could do was to produce the real crook. I spent the second month 22 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER trying to do it. Eventually I discovered through the wife of the man who'd sold the documents that he'd been very pally with a woman who had a con- siderable say in the extremist crowd; the crowd who had organized the shooting up of certain Cab- inet ministers in Madrid. That was the beginning of the end. I satisfied myself the girl was the culprit and after extracting the documents and a confession from her, bundled her out of the country and took the fruits to the Spanish Admiralty." Duffy finished with a complacent . smile and ex- amined his finger tips. The little man looked at him carefully. He seemed to be weighing two things in his mind: Duffy's extremely youthful appearance against the convincing tone of his recital. The convincing tone turned the scale. Presently the little man took a small object from his waist-coat pocket, and handed it across the table to Duffy. "What do you make of that?" he asked. He was an earnest little man, and his eyes never left Duffy's face. He seemed to have made up his mind. With extreme care Duffy examined the small ob- ject through his spectacles. "Marble black marble," he said at length. "Chi- THE FOURTH SEAT 23 nese or Japanese, but I don't know what the carving is. It looks rather like a button." "It is a button, a Chinese mandarin's button. But it is not marble, it is jade, black jade, and about three hundred to four hundred years old," said the little man. His voice trembled a little. Even if he was not a dealer in precious stones, Duffy de- cided, he was a fellow specialist, and he began to feel qualms of conscience at having pulled the little man's leg. But he could not very well declare him- self a leg-puller, so he turned the mandarin's button over in his hand. It had a very satisfactory feel, and Duffy almost stroked it. He rubbed it between his fingers. The little man produced two more pieces of jade from another pocket, and handed them across to Duffy. "I like to see a man feel a piece like that," he said; "after a while one feels a new piece almost before one looks at it. Do you collect jade, young man?" "No," said Duffy. "It costs money, doesn't it?" "Some people spend a lot of money on it," replied the collector, "but as a rule they never get much to show for it. Quantity, perhaps, but not quality." 24 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Duffy nodded and passed the jade to MacArthur, who, feeling that the conversation was now on a more intellectual plane, folded up his "John O'Lon- don" and put it in his pocket. The jade was duly admired, and thereafter the little man kept the conversation firmly on the sub- ject. They talked about the country where jade had been mined and carved in the middle centuries, and the collector of it asked Duffy in a curiously eager voice if he knew anything of China. Had he been there in the course of his adventures? "No," replied Duffy without thinking. Then he realized his reticence and proceeded to recognize in it the hand of conscience. He felt he had failed his reputation. To any one but a fellow specialist, Duffy would in all probability have furnished a detailed account of his last international adventure in that land. Binks looked at him in surprise. This reticence was indeed unlike Duffy. "Why do you ask?" Duffy asked of the little man, and then feeling that his reputation as an adventurer could not be allowed to suffer any longer, added: THE FOURTH SEAT 25 "But, of course, I know the general run of that part of the world pretty well as far as the sea is concerned." Binks' face cleared of its surprise. The little man nodded with a satisfied air and re-pocketed the pieces of jade, which Mac Arthur handed him. He kept his eyes on Duffy, and Duffy had the feeling that if those eyes had not been so mild, they might have been likened, with but little stretch of imagination, to those of an eagle. Of Binks and MacArthur the little man was entirely oblivious. At length Trixie brought them their bills and, as usual, Duffy, who was a small eater, had diffi- culty in persuading her that the other two had eaten between them four of the five rolls. The matter finally and amicably settled, they bade the little man, who still remained in the fourth seat, "good day," and started for the cashier's desk. Duffy brought up the tail of the procession, reached the desk, and discovered he had left a glove. He scowled the scowl of a detective who has overlooked an important clue and walked back to their table. The little man beamed on him and held up the glove. 26 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Good!" he exclaimed in a low voice. "My little trick has met with success." And he chuckled. Duffy took the glove and looked solemnly at this little man who played tricks with adventurers. The collector beckoned with a round forefinger and Duffy bent down. "Here is my card," whispered the little man, slipping it into Duffy's hand. "If you care to look in some day during the next week I think I've got an idea that may appeal to you." Then he raised his voice. "So glad you discovered your loss before you'd gone any further. Good-day. Good-day to you." Duffy feeling a little bewildered but fully con- vinced he had met an adventure at last, raised his hat politely, slipped the card into his pocket, and hurriedly paid his bill. Binks and MacArthur were waiting for him a trifle impatiently. "Glove," he said in explanation. "Left it on the table." And he left it at that. Duffy waited until he was in his office again be- fore examining the card; then he sorted it out from a bundle of papers and old envelopes, and read thereon: THE FOURTH SEAT 27 "MR. CARFEW NORTHCOTE" and below the name an address in St. John's Wood. To Duffy the very name spelled adventure, and he propped his link with romance against his inkpot: Then he clasped his long fingers together and lost himself forthwith in a maze of dreams which had no little spice of conjecture in them. In fact he thoroughly enjoyed himself. Later Duffy cut four inches out of "The Fire- brand of Galloway Creek" and returned the proofs to Mr. Horrocks. His attitude to the whole pro- ceeding was undistressed to the point of cheer- fulness. CHAPTER II HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG Ax five-thirty Duffy slammed his desk, collected the weekly budget of Dalkeith House publications from the top of the cupboard, and set off homewards to Harpenden. In Harpenden Duffy had dwelt as long as he could remember, amidst the quiet serene atmos- phere shed upon the world by his Aunt 'Tilda, for when Duffy's parents died of typhoid within a week of each other it was Aunt 'Tilda who descended upon the small child and took him to live with her at "Thornby," hoping to find in the caring for him an outlet for a mother-love she had been denied. For Aunt 'Tilda there had only been one man, a noble man, the Curate of St. Stephen's, Harpenden. He, to his everlasting regret, loved another. Poor noble soul! And so Aunt 'Tilda had brought up Duffy in the way he should go, with all the painstaking Christian regard for the proprieties that troubled her mid- Victorian mind. 3$ HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 29 In his very early days the young Duffy had discovered the wisdom of going the way he should go with as little noise as possible. He had learned to dwell in the placid world of "Thornby" with an, ease of mind truly remarkable in a soul of such violent inclinations. In his natural patience he possessed an invaluable asset. It was a rare patience, a patience for the people who could not understand him. He found that patience very necessary at the age of fourteen, when he decided to keep a blood- hound, and later, when he found life a poor sort of thing if it were not enlivened by the possession of a revolver, for the people who did not understand him increased their number considerably under the strain of these two. The police, in a burst of confidence which they did not have to live very long to regret, granted Duffy the license necessary to procure and keep the revolver and ammunition. It was a revolver of astounding caliber. When the police took it away along with what re- mained of the ammunition, Aunt 'Tilda breathed a sigh of profound relief and Duffy had to content himself with the less romantic possibilities the local rifle club offered him. 3 o THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER The bloodhound Duffy managed to keep, despite the violent protests of the neighboring chicken farmers, for six years, but it was more than Har- penden or Aunt 'Tilda could stand when Duffy and the bloodhound trailed a terror-stricken grocer over four long miles of rain-soaked plow-land. So the bloodhound went the way of the revolver, and Harpenden once more allowed its chickens to wander as they would. But in spite of Aunt 'Tilda's occasional lack of understanding Duffy had a sincere affection for her, and she was devoted to him in spite of his efforts to interrupt the even tenor of their way. He was ruminating on the vague chance that that tenor was once more to be interrupted, as he left the office. In Farringdon Street, Duffy stopped at a second- hand book-seller's and bought a large volume on Chinese Jade and two on the geographical aspects of China. Laden with these and the Dalkeith House pub- lications he eventually trudged down the quiet main street of Harpenden and up the flagged path of "Thornby." Aunt 'Tilda welcomed him and gave him his high tea, beguiling him through it with the delin- quencies of Mrs. Parmarsh, who had been caught in HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 31 the flagrant act of smoking a Russian cigarette through the window of her sitting-room. "Russian! my dear, Russian!" cried Aunt 'Tilda, "and in Harpenden of all places. It seems even here we cannot escape the terrible consequencs of this this emancipation of women." Aunt 'Tilda said "emancipation" as though it came out of a medical dictionary and was therefore not quite nice. Duffy shifted his mind sufficiently off the book on Jade, which he had leaned against the tea-pot, to wonder idly how his aunt knew it was a Russian cigarette. He said nothing about his meeting with "Carfew Northcote," knowing the futility of trying to con- vince his aunt that it is possible to speak to a man to whom one has not been introduced in the regu- lation manner without having one's pocketbook snatched. Presently Aunt 'Tilda retired into the spotless, copper-bedecked kitchen to galvanize Annie into a more feverish attack on the already glittering silver on the sideboard. Duffy gave her the bundle of Dalkeith publications to distribute to the kitchen staff, and settled himself to the Chinese Jade. He had been deciding in his own mind that he must wait at least two days before he called on 32 . THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Mr. Carfew Northcote. At whatever cost to his desire to learn "the idea that might appeal to him," he must not appear too eager. That was not busi- ness and certainly not the policy of an adventurer. An adventurer waits for the adventure to come to him, he does not go to the adventure. At least a hardened adventurer does not. But this decision to be politic and act in accord- ance with the rules formulated by the recognized adventurers did not stand very long before the flood of Duffy's desire to be one of them as soon as he possibly could. Or perhaps Madeleine had something to do with it, or rather Madeleine's skepticism. Madeleine was the daughter of Mrs. Parmarsh of the Russian cigarettes and she was a delightful girl of delightful parents. They lived opposite "Thornby" in a rather quaint house set in a garden full of roses. Duffy had known the Parmarshes over a year and Madeleine a week longer than that. He had noticed that Madeleine traveled up to Town in the same train, and looking for adventure as usual, he found it one morning in the shape of a bullet-headed man with side whiskers who entered into a discussion with Madeleine about the advan- HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 33 tages and disadvantages of fresh air in a stuffy smoking carriage on a warm summer's morning. Duffy was in the carriage. He entirely agreed with Madeleine, and implied as much in his remarks to the bullet-headed one concerning his appalling manners and disrespectful attitude towards a lady. Duffy made a very good knight errant. The upshot of it all was the arrival of a bullet-headed man with side whiskers on the platform of the small station of Elstree in a cloud of dust. The bullet-headed man did not want to alight at Elstree and certainly not in a cloud of dust. But Duffy, observing both the slow speed at which the train was moving, and the convenient platform, opened the carriage door and pushed the bullet- headed one out of it. The fact that the train was moving a trifle faster than Duffy had supposed was responsible for a scattering roll on the part of the bullet-headed one before he came finally to rest. This caused the cloud of dust. Ultimately, also, it caused Duffy to spend ten good shillings at the sympathetic County Court, and caused Madeleine to become, as was entirely proper and fitting, Duffy's devoted admirer. Duffy felt that the court, in spite of its sympathy, 34 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER had not a very high sense of the value of chivalry; in fact to any one else the result of that court's finding would have been discouraging. To Duffy it was not. He had gained a devoted admirer. Madeleine, while the glory of Duffy's noble action was still shining in Harpenden, introduced him to her people, and ever since he had strolled across the road to "Hurst Green" one or two evenings a week. Every morning he traveled up to Town with Madeleine by the 9.20; occasionally he would harrow the feelings of Binks and MacArthur by taking her to the Cafe for lunch. They did not ob- ject to Madeleine; on the contrary they found her entirely in sympathy with them, especially when Duffy became more than usually bloodthirsty, but Duffy always brought Madeleine to lunch without first informing them of that intention, and they in- variably looked upon it as an attempt to pry them out of their sacred rut. Duffy had often tried to analyze his feelings towards Madeleine, but with very little success. He felt sometimes that she lacked the proper appre- ciation of the more exciting things in life, but his feeling was probably due to her ability to see HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 35 through his efforts in the realms of high adventure. He did not like her when that ability displayed itself. He should indeed, then, have known better than to tell her the story of the jade collector and his "idea that might appeal." Duffy met her on Harpenden Station the next morning and they found their seats in the 9.20. Madeleine noticed Duffy's volume: "Chinese Jade." "Whyfor so studious, Duffy? Surely 'Adventure' arrived yesterday?" she asked. " 'Adventure' arrived yesterday," replied Duffy. "But I have got to learn all there is to be learned about jade before Friday. It's absolutely neces- sary." His air was serious. And then he told her about the little man in the fourth seat. Madeleine was frankly incredulous. She was perfectly willing to believe that the little collector had sat in the fourth seat, but that he had conceived an "idea that might appeal" no. She saw in that only an ornate explanation on Duffy's part for his reading "Chinese Jade;" besides, why ever should Duffy expect that the "idea" had anything to do with jade? Merely because the collector had shown him a black jade button? 36 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "I have a hunch," replied Duffy with an expres- sion on his face in which solemnity and pain were nicely blended, "that the 'idea' is something to do with jade and China. I am going to buy two more books on jade and I have two on China. China and jade. I'm sure of it," and he scowled a little at Madeleine's disbelief. Why shouldn't Madeleine believe him? Couldn't she see he was not "rotting" this time? He wished he had not left the little man's card at the office; it might have convinced her. And thereafter Duffy was subdued; to say sulky might be a little strong, but he came very near it. Madeleine dismissed the subject as unworthy of Duffy and for the remainder of the journey talked about the Amateur Dramatic Club of which she was the enthusiastic organizer and Duffy the shining light, a light due mainly to his perfect willingness to play the villain's ignoble part in play after play, sketch after sketch. His rendering of Captain Hook in Peter Pan had caused the children of Harpenden many sleepless, terror-filled nights. Yet when Madeleine referred to that rendering he found he could not attempt the glow of pride that the reminder usually brought him. HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 37 Duffy had the acute feeling that Madeleine had failed him her disbelief rankled, for he could not see any more than could the shepherd boy, that the lot of the man who calls "wolf" with frequency is hard indeed when the wolf at last arrives. Duffy bade Madeleine "good-by" at the top of Farringdon Street and strolled down to Dalkeith House, his head bent in earnest thought, his arm crooked round "Chinese Jade." Friday. Two days. There would be two days of harrowing anxiety before he could learn the cause of it. Two days can be a mortal long time, sometimes. The realization of this fact came to Duffy with overwhelming force at the foot of the steps that lead up to Dalkeith House, and it was with a harrowed scowl that he walked up them and through the swing doors. Parsons, the gold-dipped commis- sionaire who regulates the comings in and goings out of visitors to Dalkeith House, greeted him with a "Good morning, sir." Duffy acknowledged the wish, and walked into one of the lifts. He raised his hat politely to three ladies of his slight acquaintance, sub-editresses of various girls' papers, but the frown still ruffled his brow as the outward and visible sign of the battle 38 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER that raged in his mind. He was torn between the desire that had flourished in him all his life the desire for the exciting things and the desire that came from a rather newer phase in his development the desire to be politic. He entered his room, opened his desk, slipped the book on jade into a drawer, hung up his hat and dropped languidly into his chair. The struggle was wearing. Then he picked up Mr. Northcote's card and held it before him between finger and thumb the desire to be politic wavered in its de- termination and lost much of its strength. It was on the point of disappearing altogether when the door opened and Tibbets, the small and traditionally unwashed office-boy, brought in the "Adventure Novels" post. "Morning, Mr. Duff; post, sir wot the silly fools sees in this 'ere tripe 'adventure' stuff, I can't never understand. 'Ow they ever gets readin' it, let alone writin' to yer about it, beats me abso bally lutely it does!" Duffy looked at Tibbets with stony disapproval. Tibbets had been in the office a good ten months about three times as long as any of his predecessors and although Duffy had insisted that he should HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 39 read every "Dalkeith Adventure Novel" that was published that he might acquire a respect for the great and wonderful life that those novels depicted, Tibbets remained in exactly the same attitude of mind that he had shown when he first entered the precincts of Dalkeith House; he felt that beyond the present and ultimate destiny of the "Red Cap Wanderers," nothing in the whole plan of creation mattered a tuppenny damn and he said so. He began saying so again, but Duffy was in no mood to listen. "Get out, Tibbets, get out!" he said, and opened the top letter of the bundle the boy had brought. "Aw Goggles!" remarked Tibbets, and slid swiftly round the door. There was no real need for speed, however, for Duffy did not rise to the insult. He was still worrying. Should he wait until the end of the week or should he go to Mr. North- cote to-day ? He read through several letters from readers, understanding them very little. Inquiries into the private life of the editor, inquiries into his health, did not stir him. With one reader he sympathized. This one wanted the address of a certain stalwart "Novel" hero, whose doings had decided him to 40 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER throw in his lot with the great one, and join him on his next adventure. He was tired of the dull rou- tine of days. Duffy understood. Once more he picked up the small piece of paste-board that linked him to the wonder of life, and again studied it. Again the de- sire to be politic lessened and dwindled; again it was on the point of disappearing altogether when he was interrupted. This time it was MacArthur who walked in, with his face, like his voice, hinting at some tragedy. "Duffy, I want to ask you something. Are you busy?" he said. Duffy slipped the card into his pocket and turned. "Hullo, Mac? What is it?" MacArthur looked at him for a moment, then he said: "Well, as a matter of fact, something rather dis- turbing has happened. You know I've got an old aunt in Scotland ?" "Yes." "Well, she she wants me to go and stay with her during the summer. I'm going away in a fort- night's time and I've been trying to make up my mind." HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 41 "Yes?" said Duffy expectantly. There was a short pause. "That's all," said MacArthur. "All what do you want me to do? Make up your mind for you?" "No no," said MacArthur hastily. "No but, well, Scotland's a long way away; and I don't know " Duffy looked at his friend; what in the world was the use of a man who couldn't make up his mind? Couldn't make up his mind! Then he re- membered that he couldn't make up his own and he looked at MacArthur with less angry eyes. "I think you had better go, Mac," he said. "It will do you good to get away from Town for a while. Rest, you know give it a rest get out of it for a while." "Yes upset my entire life; I know it will! That's exactly what I am afraid of!" MacArthur's voice was almost frightened. Duffy looked at him in a pitying way. "Poor old Mac you won't be able to go to the Cafe every day for three whole weeks. Poor old Mac!" "Yes," said Mac. "Three whole weeks." 42 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "But I think you had better go." "You do?" said MacArthur gloomily. "Yes." There was another pause, during which Duffy looked out of the window and the other filled his pipe. Then MacArthur said slowly: "I'll think about it," and he turned towards the door. As he passed out, Duffy called after him: "And that, my dear Mac, is just as close to Scot- land as you will ever get. Shut the door!" The door slammed, and Duffy began pacing slowly up and down the room. He was thinking, and Mac- Arthur did not occupy a very large place in his thoughts. Now here conies into the story Mr. Farrow. Mr. Farrow has no real bearing on matters except as an instrument of Fate, for he was directly responsible for Duffy having to go to Russell Square that morn- ing, and in Russell Square an incident took place or rather had its birth that materially assisted Duffy to make up his mind as to which of the two desires he should follow. Mr. Farrow was the chief of Duffy's department, and he held a sway that was very little disputed over some five or six small papers of which Duffy's concern, "Adventure Novels," was one. HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 43 At eleven o'clock, then, Mr. Farrow a genial and extremely boyish man of some forty-six years came into Duffy's room with a bundle of manuscript and a bright smile. "Good stuff, this, Duff, good stuff," he said and put it on the desk. "Use it for the first number next month." "Right," said Duffy. "I thought you'd like it." "And by-the-way," Mr. Farrow went on. "Are you very busy this morning?" "Not very." "Well, I think you'd better go up to Russell Square and see James about those covers. If we don't wake him up we shall never see them at ail- not that they will be very wonderful if we do," said Mr. Farrow bitterly. He hated his artists frankly and all the time. He nodded and left the room. And that is how Duffy started off for Russell Square. Before he left Dalkeith House he telephoned to Binks and told him he was going out; also he warned him that MacArthur would want to know whether he was to go to Scotland or not. Binks promised to deal with the difficult matter in the proper spirit. With an easy mind, or at least a 44 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER mind untroubled by anything but its original prob- lem, Duffy set forth into Fleet Street on his way to Russell Square and the studio of Mr. James. He decided that he would walk, since the day was fine and the streets as yet uncrowded. Before cutting through to Holborn by Fetter Lane, he stopped at a tobacconist's and bought a fivepenny cigar. He also lit it. Then he proceeded I will not say he swag- gered on his way. In the window of Carnage's he was arrested by the sudden sight of a row of rifles of varying pattern and caliber. They started a train of thought that whiled his way to Southampton Row: he dispatched the last mutineer as he turned up it. I am making a point of Duffy's day-dreaming because I believe that if he had not been so de- liciously engaged he might not have acted as he did. A man who is at all deeply preoccupied is some- times in a state that borders very near that of hypnosis, for he is more or less at the mercy of any suggestion of sufficient force that may be impinged on his mind which in that state is almost entirely subconscious. Thus it was that Duffy obeyed without question the suggestion of a small, dapper, and entirely re- spectable man with a little tufty beard who came HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 45 hurrying round the corner of Russell Square and almost knocked Duffy down with an attache case that he was carrying. "Sorry!" the man gasped out. "They're after me!" "Who?" inquired Duffy politely. "The devils, the devils! Stop 'em, stop 'em!" and the man waved his hand in the direction of the Square, jumped off the curb, and ran swiftly across the road. Duffy looked at the retreating figure with con- siderable interest and then turned to the corner. Obediently he was going to stop 'em. He never bothered himself to wonder who or why or what or anything else. In his still half-dreaming state he was just going to stop 'em. He took up a strategic position against the wall at the corner, and waited. He assumed, and rightly, that whoever "they" were, they would come round the same corner as the pursued man, whose retreat- ing figure had just vanished down one of the side streets. At this point Duffy's conscious mind resumed its usual control of things, but it did so a fraction of a second too late to prevent his sub-eonscious mind from completely altering the whole course of his 46 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER day; indeed, if it had not been for his daring, the daring that only a true adventurer could have shown, he might never have interviewed Mr. James about the covers for "Dalkeith Adventure Novels." Duffy heard, with the aid of his returning acute- ness of hearing, heavy, relentless footsteps approach- ing along the pavement round the corner, and he flattened himself against the wall in readiness. The man was coming swiftly for all his heaviness. He rounded the corner; a big towering figure, coming at full tilt, snorting with determination. As I have pointed out before, Duffy was still a little dreamy, but although he was sufficiently awake to put out a quick foot that entangled itself among the lower limbs of the big figure and effectually brought it sprawling to the ground; he was still sufficiently dreamy not to notice that the big figure was that of a policeman it was necessary to his dulled perception that he should see the wallowing result of his action before the full realization of what had happened smote upon his now completely awakened consciousness. But we will give him credit for the extreme speed with which his mind worked, now that it was awake; he saw the policeman, he heard his howl of surprise, he realized that he had somewhat violently aided HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 47 and abetted an escaping felon, that the authorities would find no sympathy for his action if they caught him, and that the wisest possible course he could adopt under the circumstances was instant flight.. He adopted it. By the time the big policeman had found the feet that had been so suddenly and painfully re- moved from beneath him, Duffy was thirty yards down the street and going like the wind. The policeman gathered a certain amount of air in his lungs and followed, though hardly like the wind. But he did his best; a good best since four adult pedestrians, a boy with a basket, and two dogs joined him their assistance called for his best. But it was not a good enough best, for Duffy was able to round the next corner and then the next before the policeman and the pedestrian abreast of him reached the first. Consequently he was able, four minutes later, to walk serenely and unpursued into Russell Square and across it to the studio of Mr. James. He was still breathing a little heavily as a result of his brush with the law of his country while he talked to Mr. James about covers. The artist looked at him carefully once or twice, but he made no com- ment Duffy was far too wise to confide in a man 48 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER like James. James would tell everybody in the household, which would of course include the cook and the cook well, it would have been as well if Duffy had left his card on the pavement when he put out his foot and tripped up the policeman. There- fore he held his peace. After concluding the matter of covers, Duffy took his leave, conscious as he did so that Russell Square might not be as healthy a spot for him as could be desired. From the fact that the policeman had come round the corner of it, he assumed that to that Square the policeman belonged, and that he might very well have got back into it after his fruitless chase. But Duffy scorned to ask Mr. James if he possessed a back entrance to his studio, and he walked out into the Square again with a brave tread that hid the anxiety of his heart. There was no sign of the policeman, and Duffy crossed the Square with an easier mind; also the thought came to him that it was not very likely that the minion of the law would recognize him if he saw him. He would need to be a very observant minion. And for the next few minutes, Duffy's thoughts reverted to Mr. Northcote and the problem that confronted him. This time he almost decided that HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 49 he would be politic if nothing else, and that he would steel himself to the difficult task of waiting until Saturday, or perhaps Friday. Then he would go and learn what there was to learn. But these decisions amounted to very little, for here he saw the policeman, or to be exact the police- man saw him and furthermore recognized him; a fact that was borne in upon Duffy by a piercing whistle behind him. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, saw the descending hand of vengeance and once again adopted the wisest course of action by taking to his heels. He ran hard and he ran well, and he set down to the serious occupation of putting as much distance as possible between his pursuer and himself. The policeman must have wasted a lot of valuable breath in his shouts of: "Stop thief! Stop thief!" Anyhow, Duffy deemed it a waste of breath, but the words gave him an idea he lifted his hand occasionally as he ran and pointed ahead of him. It rather created the impression in the minds of the people, who seemed to be growing thicker and thicker every moment, that the quarry was somewhere in front of Duffy; they admired the determined manner in which he ran. By the time the more intelligent 50 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER of them saw through the ruse, he had passed them. Some of them joined in the chase, and by the time Duffy had crossed the Square and entered Southamp- ton Row, the crowd that shouted in the rear must have acquired considerable dimensions. He shot across the road like a hare, escaped a car by the merest fraction of an inch, reached the opposite pavement, and flashed down the short alley- way that leads into Queen's Square. As he came into it and turned sharp to the right, the exhilaration of the chase seized him. That he should be the ob- ject of it did not worry him particularly; it was sufficient that there should be chase and that he should have a part in it. The street into which he had turned was narrow, empty, and cobblestoned, and it led back into South- ampton Row, coming out into it by the fire station. Duffy clattered down it singing. I do not know what song he sang I do not think it matters; but it was a slow song and in admirable contrast to the speed at which he was moving. Also it was a triumphant song. As he reached the end of the street he looked back and saw a mob of people pouring into the other end. The entrance was black with people and they all shouted different things at him, the sound reaching him like the angry murmur HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 51 of a swarm of bees that have been disturbed on a quiet morning angry and menacing and dangerous. For a few precious seconds Duffy stopped, turned, and faced them, then in full sight of them put his hand round to his hip pocket and pretended to pull a pistol from it and pointed a finger at them. Something seemed to move over the crowd a sort of ripple as they stumbled in their run and many of the foremost flung themselves on their faces so that those behind swayed and deviated to avoid them. Duffy's action justified the waste of the seconds it occupied, for when he turned and broke into a run again, the crowd had straggled and broken its mass formation. When Duffy clambered onto a bus at the corner, only four of the pursuers saw him and only one boarded the same bus. The remaining tiiree got on the one behind. Duffy clambered up the stairs and was on the top before the foremost, a youth of about seventeen, reached the step. Duffy sat on a back seat and waited for the boy to come up; he saw the remain- ing three scrambling for the bus behind. The main body of pursuers had by this time overflowed into the busier streets and he saw groups of bewildered and perspiring people standing in knots, discussing 52 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER the matter or running up and down aimlessly and asking each other questions. The general onlookers, who could not understand what it was all about, seemed a little perplexed. Then Duffy heard the youth on the stairway, slipped off his glasses, and looked straight in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a stupid, heavy-faced boy standing against the back and examining the passengers with a suspicious, wor- ried expression. He hardly looked at Duffy. For a moment he stood there and cudgeled his brains; he was obviously in considerable doubt about what he was to do next. Then he ran down and looked inside; Duffy followed him, brushed against him, and stepped neatly off the bus, thanking heaven that Providence had provided the world with so many stupid people. "And that is that!" remarked Duffy to himself as he stood on the curb by Holborn station and watched three anxious-looking men who were stand- ing on the top of the next bus, craning their necks to see what was happening on board the one he had just left. They were still standing in the same posi- tion as the bus rounded the corner at the bottom of Kingsway. "I think," said Duffy, "that a cup of coffee " HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 53 and he walked into Lipton's, seated himself thank- fully at a table, and gave the order. While the waitress was away he took out his glasses and polished them carefully before he put them on his nose. Then his thoughts returned to the problem. For quite a time he sat and stirred his coffee, frowning thoughtfully, and the desire for adventure and the desire to be politic fought out their battle up and down the field of his mind. This time there was no lessening or dwindling in the desire to be politic; rather was there an immense increase in force of the desire for adventure. So strong indeed did it become that it swamped all else; it routed its enemy the politic and in triumph stalked up and down the field of Duffy's mind. Damn policy! He was going to get his adven- ture; its taste was sweet in his mouth, and he real- ized at that moment that whatever else happened he must have adventure! Then swift on the heels of that realization came memory, the memory of Vont Gathers, detective, hero and central figure of the crime series of "Dal- keith Adventure Novels." Duffy remembered that Vont Gathers was never tired of telling the world: "Delay is destruction; decide and act!" 54 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Duffy decided and acted. With swift strides he crossed to the cashier's desk, paid for his coffee, and then hurried round into Hoi- born station. There he occupied a telephone box for a short three minutes, in which he intimated to Mr. Farrow that a matter of appalling urgency had occurred that necessitated his immediate and undi- vided attention. Yes; he had seen James and the covers were put in hand. Then he spoke to Binks and told him he might not be back in time for lunch. No; he would not go to Pineffi's. Duffy left the telephone with a heart that beat strong with anticipation. How could he have dallied with decision so long! He bought another fivepenny cigar and ultimately and with fine extravagance, hailed a taxi; gave the driver the address in St. John's Wood and in true accordance with the methods of the best adventurers, shouted before he got into the cab: "Double your fare if you get me there in fifteen minutes!" The driver touched his cap and ground in the clutch. The taxi may have possessed two cylinders, it might even have had four; it scorned, however, to use more than one in its effort to reach St. John's HE SNARLED LIKE A DOG 55 Wood, but within a short twenty minutes Duffy found himself, after a journey of hours, standing on the pavement in front of a large, roomy-looking house, standing by itself in a garden of a size ex-- ceptional in a neighborhood so full of houses. Duffy gazed up at the windows, and after a mo- ment's thought, walked slowly up and down in front of the house. He examined it with the trained eye of a sleuth. Everything seemed in order. Duffy could find no grounds for suspicion that there was anything extraordinary about it. In fact he had to admit to himself that it was a perfectly ordinary house. He felt a tinge of disappointment which disappeared a moment later, however, at the thought that the least suspicious in this world is usually the most to be guarded against. The truth of this struck him even more forcibly as he came level with the front gate. He was looking up the short path at the front door, a large pretentious affair in black oak, when it opened sufficiently to allow for the passage of a man through it. To Duffy the man seemed to come through it with uncommon spewed, a speed which landed him at the bottom of the short flight of steps with an alarming crash. 56 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER A hat, a stick, and a suit-case followed him. The door slammed. Duffy instinctively slipped his hand round to his hip pocket. The involuntary action pleased him immensely. Then the late inhabitant of the house picked him- self up, rubbed himself, and after gathering up the hat, the stick, and the suit-case, limped painfully down the path. He looked very hard at Duffy when he reached the gate and snarled at him like a dog. Then he limped down the road. At the end of forty yards he stopped, rubbed himself again, and placed the hat on his head. Duffy watched him out of sight, turned and looked at the black oak door. Then he walked slowly up the path to it. FOR a moment Duffy hesitated. It was a formid- able door when one got right beneath it. Then he remembered that he was a hardened adventurer, and knocked twice with a firmness that demanded instant recognition. The door opened with extreme suddenness, and Duffy beheld a butler; red- faced, bewhiskered and of enormous stature. One of the sleeves of his bulging morning coat was rolled up, displaying the forearm of an expert. He was breathing a little heavily. Duffy shifted his horn-rimmed spectacles until they were firmly on his nose and said in a loud, clear voice: "I want to see Mr. Carfew Northcote." "You have an appointment?" asked the butler with none of the suavity Duffy knew a well-ordered butler should display. "Mr. Northcote gave me his card," Duffy pro- duced it, "and asked me to call." He still retained 57 58 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER a loud, clear voice, but with a little difficulty. The butler was something in the nature of a watch-dog; he bristled, and reached out an enormous hand for the card. "What name shall I tell him if he's in?" He looked at the card suspiciously. "Duff Peter Duff," said Duffy. "All right," said the watch-dog, and flinging aside all effort to play the butler, closed the door in Duffy's face. Duffy immediately seized the knocker and used it twice with furious vigor. The butler was indeed no butler. The door opened again, and Duffy was in the hall before the watch-dog realized he had been passed. Duffy got well down the wide hall before he turned. Then he said: "You will take my name to Mr. Northcote, and I will wait here. I don't think you know who I am, but in case you did not hear my name, I am PETER DUFF," he said loudly, and he scowled at the watch- dog. "Yes, sir," said the butler. He used the word "sir" with obvious reluctance. He still looked sus- picious, but a little less determined. Duffy seated himself on a settee, placed his hat THE FORKING OF THE RIVER 59 and stick on a chair, and watched the butler's width of back disappearing up the broad stairs. He still scowled, but it was more to conceal his triumph than anything else. He had behaved with extreme credit to his new profession. A hardened adventurer left on the door-step ! The hall in which Duffy sat was adorned with a display of arms and weapons that warmed his heart towards the little collector. Even if he was small and wore a timid expression, Mr. Car few Northcote must have the martial spirit. Duffy rose and walked over to the opposite wall and took from it a dagger; something in the shape of the ivory sheath attracted him. He drew the blade, long but not too long, and just the right width. He held it in front of him and watched the sunlight that came through the window flicker on its flawless steel. A man could go anywhere with a friend like this. He made quick little flour- ishes with it, and was driving a terror-stricken foe into the corner when he was interrupted by the butler. "Mr. Northcote will see you if you will step this way, Mr. Duff," he said in a tone that was not over- polite, but probably as polite as he had ever used. "Thanks!" said Duffy briskly and returned the 60 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER ivory-sheathed dagger to its hook with not a little reluctance. He followed the butler up the stairs and into a room such as he had never seen before. The butler closed the door and left him standing on the threshold, gazing about him with amazed eyes. The room was papered with a dull, golden orange paper that gave one the impression of perpetual sunlight; the hangings and carpet were blue, the blue of an Italian lake. After the interior decorat- ing of "Thornby," this magnificence and harmony of color made Duffy gasp. When he reached the middle of the thick carpet he realized that there was but the minimum of furniture in the room and that the walls were re- freshingly bare of pictures. Then he saw the reason. On the mantelshelf was a piece of jade, pale green jade, mounted on an elaborate stand of black wood. It was a tall bowl of exceeding simplicity, perhaps fourteen inches high, drawn in lines as per- fect as one could conceive, lines such as the Greeks had never found. It came, as only it could come, from a world-old civilization, where esthetic ex- pression had reached an amazing perfection. It was Chinese. That Duffy recognized, and even if he could not analyze the bowl's beauty, it gave him THE FORKING OF THE RIVER 61 immense satisfaction to look at it. Furthermore he had seen it before there was a full-plate illustration of it in his book on jade. With his exact mind he had learned its name and its artist. Duffy stood and looked; he almost lost himself in contemplation of an object that intrigued him in a way that nothing else had ever done. It fas- cinated him in a subtle, disturbing manner, giving him very much the same feeling that a large empty church sometimes gave him if he by any chance got into one. The jade bowl had an atmosphere, a de- cided atmosphere. Then Duffy was startled by a voice at his side: "A very, very wonderful thing. I see you think so, too." It was the little collector. "Yes," said Duffy. "By Pi T'ung, isn't it? I thought it was in the Field collection." "There is one very like it in the Field collection," admitted the little man. "But this is better, decid- edly better." His collector's enthusiasm radiated from him. "You seem to know more about jade than you did yesterday, my young friend," he said. "I bought 'Chinese Jade,' " Duffy told him. "I mugged it up last night. I like it." 62 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Good!" said the little man. "You may find it useful." Duffy inwardly congratulated himself. "Chinese Jade" might well prove to have been worth the purchasing. The little man was looking at him with pleased eyes. "That's the sort of boy I like," he said. "Well, if you will come into the study, we will get to busi- ness." Duffy let the accusation of youth pass unheeded. He was about to learn what it was all about. He followed the little man across the corridor into a smaller room; there was more jade in it, but it was in smaller pieces and less distinguished than the bowl in the orange room. The collector offered Duffy an easy chair and placed a box of excellent cigarettes by his side; Duffy sank into the chair and lit a cigarette. He was on the point of inquiring into the mysterious, if hurried, departure of the young man who snarled like a dog, and the reason why Mr. Northcote kept such a large butler, but he thought better of it. A hardened adventurer does not show surprise at such ordinary everyday things. No doubt the little man would enlighten him at the proper time. Duffy set- THE FORKING OF THE RIVER 63 tied himself comfortably and fixed his eyes on a jade figure by the window. The birds were singing lustily from the garden in the June sunshine; everything was very satisfac- tory. For a moment Duffy's mind dwelt on Made- leine; would she believe him if she could see him now? And Binks and Mac Arthur, seated in their offices in Dalkeith House; they were only half -alive. Never in their wildest dreams had they experienced half what he had been through this morning. Duffy was thanking Heaven from the bottom of his heart that he was an adventurer, when the little man broke into his musings. "Now, Peter Duff, I am going to tell you a story and I want you to listen very carefully, for if I have my way in the matter, I want you to finish it for me. I think you will, I think you can; you are a boy after my own heart." The little man was silent for a moment, he swung round in his chair and gazed out of the window. "Go ahead," said Duffy. "Well, this story commences with a Prussian, called Von Splatz," he began. "And Von Splatz was one of the officials in the Court of the Manchus at Peking in the days before the Boxer Rising. 64 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER He was a trusted member of the Manchu household and did pretty well out of it because he was a rascal and did not mind serving Chinese masters for what he could get out of them. "At the time of the Rising, Von Splatz was the keeper, among other things, of the Treasure of the Manchus, which consisted of some of the most won- derful jade that Chinese art had ever produced. When the European forces marched on Peking and there seemed every chance that they would burn it without any difficulty, Von Splatz was entrusted with the difficult task of transporting the Treasure of the Manchus to a place of safety. In the panic of the moment, nobody seems to have thought of the stu- pidity of letting Von Splatz have anything to do with it at all. "As far as we know the party that carried the Treasure consisted of about twenty Chinese coolies superintended by Von Splatz and two of his friends, also Prussians. The proposed hiding place was vaguely described to one of the Manchu Princes by Von Splatz as one of the numerous islands in the group which lies scattered, as I expect you know, for some hundreds of miles just off the mainland. "Von Splatz and his party left Peking the night before the avenging forces descended on the city, THE FORKING OF THE RIVER 65 carrying the Treasure of the Manchus. And as far as the Manchus are concerned that was the last ever seen or heard of Von Splatz and the Treasure, to say nothing of the two other Prussians and the twenty coolies. The whole caravan might never have existed for all the knowledge the Manchu Princes had of it thereafter. They only knew their Treasure had disappeared and they were very angry. They have excavated nearly every one of those islands since then, but they have found no jade. "This is what happened. Von Splatz, with the help of his two friends, managed to escape the Euro- pean troops, worked his way by slow degrees to the coast, commandeered a small junk, loaded the Treas- ure chests on board and sailed for a small and un- inhabited island some two hundred miles from the coast. Here Von Splatz made the coolies bury the Treasure, marked the spot, took exact measurements, and proceeded, with the aid of his two friends, to shoot the twenty coolies and throw them in the sea. Having accomplished this feat, the precious three sailed back to the mainland. Within cable length of the cliffs Von Splatz calmly shot his two friends, locked the cabin door on their bodies, scuttled the junk in twelve fathoms of water, and swam ashore. 66 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "As the story goes Von Splatz joined the Prussian contingent of the avengers, enjoyed himself thor- oughly with that black-hearted mob at the sack of Peking and afterwards returned with them to their native land." The little man paused a moment. "Do you follow it so far?" "Yep " said Duffy to whom a golden world had gradually unfolded. "And then . . . ?" he asked, trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice. The little man continued : "Von Splatz spent the next few months in Berlin, spending the immediate fruits of his share in the sack of Peking. He paid for his pleasure with a stroke of apoplexy and died, but not before he had told his wife the full story and given her the direc- tions for finding the Treasure of the Manchus. "Ultimately she came to me about six months ago, knowing I was an expert in jade, and offered to sell me the directions. Much to her surprise I bought them; at first she had tried to find enough money to outfit an expedition herself, and failing, endeavored to interest two firms of oriental art deal- ers in Germany and one in France, but they all laughed at her. At least one of the German firms thought there might be something in it, but their THE FORKING OF THE RIVER 67 hard-headed shrewdness did not admit speculation. They contented themselves with sending one of their staff over to find out all about it when they learned I had bought the directions. Whoever he is he must be a particularly conscientious man because he has attempted to burgle this house six times in the last four months." "Ah!" interrupted Duffy, "I see the watch- dog!" "The watch-dog?" The little man looked puz- zled. "I mean the butler," Duffy explained. "Oh, yes. Curley Carson. Invaluable man, in- valuable man." "So I should think," said Duffy. "I watched him dealing with a gentleman in a very professional manner, as I came in." "Ah, yes. I was just coming to him. That was another effort on the part of the Prussian firm. That young man came to me with excellent references and desired to become my unpaid Secretary in order to learn all about jade. Yesterday I caught him go- ing through the private drawers of my bureau. He did not see me until I was well in the room; when he did, he dropped a bundle of pamphlets and swore vilely. I discharged him at once, but this morning 68 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER he came in in the middle of my work and tried to explain. I told Curley to throw him out." Duffy admired the little man even more. Direct action had always appealed to him. "Now," continued the collector, "this is where you come into the story. I have chartered a ship, or perhaps I had better call her a boat, called The Rose of Washington Square/ which is owned and captained by a Captain Fellowes. 'The Rose of Washington Square' is sailing in a week's time for the China Seas to recover the Treasure of the Man- chus and you, Peter Duff you are going with her!" Peter Duff shut his eyes and gripped the arms of his chair with both hands. "The Rose of Washington Square" was sailing in a week's time for the China Seas to recover the Treasure of the Manchus and Duffy was going with her! He opened his eyes and looked at the little man as he would at a god. With extreme difficulty he controlled the desire to seize him by the hands and dance him round the room. The non-committal air with which he said: "It sounds very attractive, Mr. Northcote," was a masterpiece of acting. THE FORKING OF THE RIVER 69 "Listen," the little man was saying, "Captain Fellowes is a swashbuckler; there is no doubt of that, and I have decided I must have some one on board his ship who is going to play straight with me and watch him. Some one who is not afraid of risking a little and who has experience with this sort of people. Captain Fellowes I have seen on three occasions only, but on each he did little else but assure me how honest he is. I have learned in the course of my life as a collector of oriental art, never to trust the man who tells me he is honest. The really honest man is never conscious of his honesty. Captain Fellowes is known as 'Honest Pig Fellowes.' He may be all he claims to be but I'm not sure. "I met you at that restaurant yesterday; I heard your conversation with your amiable friends, you told me a little of yourself, and I am satisfied I could not find a better man to go with 'The Rose of Washington Square.' I want you to superintend the whole adventure, for adventure I can promise you it will be. Captain Fellowes will navigate the boat, see to everything to do with the getting to the island, and supply the men to dig for the Treasure. "You will direct operations, and having got the Treasure on board 'The Rose of Washington 70 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Square/ will guard it and eventually deliver it here, at this house. I am going to leave everything to you; in fact for all intents and purposes you will deputize for me; I, alas, am too old now to go flying to the ends of the earth adventuring after jade. I have to content myself with collecting it. But you, what will you do?" The little collector leaned forward, his eager eyes peering at Duffy, who sat motionless, his fingers clasped. Presently he rose and walked to the win- dow, and looked at the sky and the clouds and the trees; a fresh breeze fanned his cheeks. He realized he had come to the great moment in his life, the moment when his next words would determine the course the stream of his life should follow. It was the forking of the river. He turned and walked up to the little man. "What will I do?" said Duffy. "I will sail on 'The Rose of Washington Square.' " Then he took off his horn-rimmed spectacles and polished them industriously. CHAPTER IV CUTTING CORDS FROM this moment began a week of unalloyed bliss for Duffy; he passed through it with all the ecstatic joy of a youth who has "made the dreams come true." The atmosphere of real adventure into which he had fallen with such unexpectedness and with such unqualified success, held him in its thrall. Again and again he thanked Heaven from the bottom of his heart that he was an adventurer. His real pleasure started when he reached Dal- keith House after his interview with the little col- lector and was able to tell them all that he was about to set sail for the China Seas in quest of hidden jade; and the fact that nobody seriously believed him hardly stirred him. He tendered his resignation to "Dalkeith Adventurer Novels" with a tranquil heart. He would no longer sub-edit them; he would live them. Binks and MacArthur were at first incredulous, which was natural, but when Duffy produced a letter 71 72 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER of introduction to Captain Fellowes of "The Rose of Washington Square" their disbelief weakened. Duffy then showed them Mr. Northcote's check for eighty pounds, his first month's salary in advance, with which to purchase the necessary outfit for an adventure of this kind, and their disbelief changed into an awed respect for his appalling cheek, as they termed his part in the affair. They made no effort to conceal their firm con- viction that the little man was mad and that Duffy had traded on that madness to the tune of a thou- sand a year and a voyage round the world. Duffy merely smiled the superior smile of the man who knows better and pardoned their idiotic blindness to the true state of things. He did not attempt to persuade them. They would learn. Later in the week, however, as the day came for his departure they told him that he was a lucky if undeserving young dog, wished him all success, and promised to write to him so that he found their let- ters at his various ports of call if any. When Duffy broke the news to his Aunt 'Tilda she flung her arms to the ceiling and exclaimed in accents of acute agony: "Lord, a'mercy, what has the boy done now?" and gave a creditable imitation of hysterics, but CUTTING CORDS 73 Duffy calmed her with assurances that he would run his head into no unnecessary danger and wear a chest protector on chilly nights. He then gave her thirty of the eighty pounds and asked her to purchase for him the more intimate if less interesting articles of apparel necessary for a sojourn in tropical latitudes. He very firmly impressed upon her the fact that he was not going to the polar seas. He abominated heavy woolen pants and all his life he had dreaded his aunt's determination that he should wear them. For a not very powerful-willed woman she displayed an amazing force in her efforts so to clothe him. The pleasant task of seeing to her nephew's wardrobe fully occupied Aunt 'Tilda's time, and she had the day of her life among the harried Colonial outfitters of London. Her natural philosophy towards Duffy and his wilder efforts in search of the exciting life, reasserted itself. The natural phi- losophy of the Colonial outfitters towards the Aunt Tildas of this world underwent a severe strain hi this particular case. But they did their best. The remaining fifty pounds Duffy expended him- self on the more interesting but still necessary arti- cles of equipment that determine the hardened ad- venturer from the rest of mankind. 74 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER After obtaining a license he went to Carnage's and speedily became the proud possessor of a pair of automatic pistols in a shining mahogany case, along with two holsters. The bigger of the pistols had a long, vicious-look- ing barrel, which the salesman explained to Duffy would ensure extreme accuracy in the expert hand. He told Duffy he could see at a glance that he was selling it to an expert. That salesman was a good salesman. The second of the pair was smaller, but its barrel was none the less vicious-looking. It was short and snub-nosed; and built for close-quarters work, it fitted the hip-pocket, and could be drawn with rapid- ity by an expert. Here again the salesman proved his value. He could see at a glance that Duffy would need very little practice before he regained his former speed in that performance. For convenience' sake both pistols had been se- lected .32 bore, so that the same ammunition would fit either. Duffy bought two thousand rounds of ammunition and ordered another two thousand to be sent to him, c/o "The Rose of Washington Square," lying in its dock at Tilbury. CUTTING CORDS 75 In the boot department Duffy purchased a very fine pair of suede mosquito boots that reached the knee. He would need them on Taiho Shan, the island of the Treasure. Also he bought two pairs of breeches to go with the boots; one pair khaki- colored, the other white, regretting as he did so that there was not sufficient time to have them made to measure. The breeches of a hardened adventurer always fit to perfection. But the ready-made pairs did not look so bad, he decided. By this time the fifty pounds had considerably dwindled, but Duffy bought a prismatic compass in a leather case that hung from the shoulder. He would need it for taking the necessary bearings when it came to locating the exact spot of the buried jade. He also bought two large metal-bound boxes of sufficient size and stoutness to hold his out- fit. With these purchases Duffy found it necessary to take a taxi to St. Pancras in order to get them to the Harpenden train. In it he suddenly realized that "The Rose of Washington Square" would carry a prismatic com- pass if she were properly equipped, but he consoled himself with the thought that very probably it would not be exact. An amateur adventurer, of course, would never have worried about a little detail like 76 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER that; but a hardened one does not take chances; he knows that it is the little things, like the exactness of a prismatic compass, that count. One thing, in the midst of his pleasure was worrying him, and that was the fact that the little collector had given Honest Pig Fellowes a copy of the directions for finding the treasure. Duffy had a copy, but he wished to be the sole possessor of those directions on board "The Rose of Washington Square." Mr. Northcote had made him morally re- sponsible for the success of the expedition and Duffy felt that that moral responsibility would be less heavy if he held the whip hand. If at any time Honest Pig Fellowes felt constrained to dis- pense with Peter Duff for the purposes of the expedi- tion he might very well do so. Duffy's value, as the holder of the key to the situation, would be consid- erably higher. When Duffy reached home with his purchases his aunt had not yet returned from her fray with the Colonial outfitters, and he found himself at lib- erty to examine the automatics without causing un- necessary alarm. They were of beautiful workmanship and of the latest design. The salesman had told the truth when CUTTING CORDS 77 he said that in the hands of an expert nobody would get very near that expert unless he so desired. Duffy decided at once that he must become an expert with as little possible delay. He buckled the bigger pistol in its holster round his waist and under his coat, the smaller he slipped into his hip-pocket. He also took two hundred rounds of ammunition and set off for the local rifle range. At that time of the day it was deserted, and he spent two hours of solid practice and complete en- joyment; he also used up the two hundred rounds. His expertness surprised himself, so he must have been very apt; while in drawing from the pocket and firing ten shots with extreme rapidity in any given direction, he excelled. On the way home to "Thornby" he practised do- ing this, and it says something for the newly ac- quired caution of a hardened adventurer that he did not actually fire ten shots. Indeed the round policeman he met on the way, and who observed Duffy suddenly whip round in the middle of a stately walk, a glittering, vicious- looking object in his hand that had appeared as if by magic, was sufficiently impressed to chase Duffy a heavy mile at the end of which he lost him. 78 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Later the round policeman wrote the masterpiece of an official report concerning Sinn Fein activities in the quiet town of Harpenden. If the mystery was never cleared up, the policeman ultimately be- came a sergeant despite the opinion of his fellow- constables that the armed Sinn Feiner was a crea- ture of his imagination, conjured up for the sole purpose of earning undeserved promotion. But by that time Duffy was under another sun, and having successfully eluded the minion of the law, he forgot all about him in thinking out appro- priate names for his two lethal weapons. An adven- turer usually displays little eccentricities of that sort. After much thought he decided to call the long but lethal one, "Elizabeth," and the short, but equally lethal automatic, "Gilbert." He felt the names were appropriate, but in what manner he did not know; nor did he care. They were good names. When he reached "Thornby," tea, a well-earned tea, was awaiting him; he ate as a hardened adven- turer who has done well. On four afternoons he shot solidly for two hours. At odd moments during the day he would whip CUTTING CORDS 79 Gilbert out of his hip-pocket with increasing speed. The last two days of the precious week were very full, mainly for Aunt 'Tilda; but eventually all Duffy's outfit was packed away in its metal-bound boxes and dispatched to "The Rose of Washington Square," which was expecting Mr. Peter Duff with considerable speculation, since Mr. Northcote had written to Captain Fellowes informing him of Duffy's commission. Actually Honest Pig Fellowes confided in his mate that Mr. Peter Duff was going to be superfluous but he expressed it in particularly vivid and pic- turesque words. Duffy cut the last cord that bound him to his old life with a relentless heart. An adventurer, to Duffy at all events, does not indulge in unnecessary sentimentalism, and his farewell to Madeleine was not marred by any such display. The evening before he was due on board Duffy said "Good-by" to the Parmarshes. At the gate he lingered when the time came for him to go, with Madeleine. She was subdued, her cheerful chatter markedly absent. "We shall miss you, Duffy," she said. "The 9.20 will not be very entertaining for me now." 8o THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Duffy felt uncomfortable. "I'm sorry you should feel that way," he said. "But I expect you will soon find some one else to talk to," he added cheerfully. Madeleine did not immediately protest that she would not; she knew and Duffy knew that it was more than likely that she would. She had reached that age when the desire to experiment is very insistent, and one could not experiment with Duffy. Indeed, to tell the truth, she had found of late that the task of playing the part of Duffy's devoted admirer was becoming a little irksome; she was young and Duffy would wear horn-rimmed spec- tacles. With the easy forgetfulness of youth, she had allowed his summary dealing with the bullet- headed man to fade in her memory. Duffy, on the other hand, was male-like looking into the future with eager eyes. Already more than half his mind was at sea with "The Rose of Wash- ington Square" and Madeleine seemed dim, even as she stood before him. They shook hands presently, discovering that neither had anything to say, and Duffy, very little affected, walked across to "Thornby," where his mind was soon occupied by the extreme difficulty of CUTTING CORDS 81 persuading Aunt 'Tilda to give up the idea of going to Tilbury with him on the morrow. An adventurer, hardened or not, does not take his aunt to see him off on his adventure. Aunt 'Tilda cajoled, but Duffy was adamant and caught his train in the morning alone. JIMMY DUFFY'S first impressions of "The Rose of Washing- ton Square" were vaguely disappointing to him as he stood on Parnel's Wharf and looked across at her. To his mind she was not sinister enough to be in complete keeping with the truest atmosphere of ad- venture. She was built in the long, rakish line of a fast traveler; high in the fo'castle and with a long gradual slope to the stern, but though her single fun- nel was raked, it was short and squat and comfort- able. He was reminded of a particular, black barnyard fowl that dwelt in Harpenden in the lively days of his bloodhound. When he clambered up the gangway of "The Rose" from the dinghy he had hired to carry him across to her, he found everything covered with a black layer of coal-dust, while odds and ends of gear and tackle littered the deck. Through these he picked his way to a deck-hand who was scrubbing 83 JIMMY 83 industriously in the scuppers, and inquired for Cap- tain Fellowes. A dirty thumb indicated a companionway in the waist of the ship, and Duffy walked down it into the main-cabin. It was, for a tramp steamer, a large cabin, well lighted by a skylight; cushion-covered lockers ran down one side; above were wide ports that gave a comprehensive view of the muddy waters and muddier boats of Tilbury. On the other side were three doors which Duffy surmised opened into sleep- ing cabins. A long table occupied the center of the saloon under the skylight, and at it sat two men, one tall and with great breadth of shoulder and shaggy hair, a pointed beard poking expressively from his chin. The other was smaller, narrow-shouldered and boasting a livery-white face, from which a week's unattended hair sprouted dirtily. "Captain Fellowes?" asked Duffy, and shifted the heavy mackintosh he was carrying to his shoul- der. He blinked at the two men through his spec- tacles. "I am Captain Fellowes," answered the bigger man, and he stuck out his chin; "and who may you be?" 84 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "I am Peter Duff," said Duffy firmly; he felt a little nervous at the sight of these two in their greasy, stained jerseys and dungarees. They might look romantic but they savored of the wharves. "Oh, yes, Mr. Duff, we were expecting you," said Honest Pig Fellowes. His voice, although thick and throaty, had a rather pleasant northern burr in it. Duffy decided that he would not have much diffi- culty in hitting it off with him. He might be rough and he might be "honest," but he seemed a man. "Let me introduce you; my mate, Mr. Weames," he said. Duffy turned to the smaller man and murmured something to the effect that "he was pleased to meet him." Actually he was not so pleased. He formed an instant and strong dislike for him. Mr. Weames seemed essentially evil, sly and dishonest. Also he reminded Duffy in a vague way of some one he could not remember. Of the two he infinitely preferred the open air of scoundrelism of Honest Pig to the more reptilian atmosphere of Mr. Weames. Honest Pig was prob- ably an unprincipled ruffian, but he was not a cow- ard. While Duffy observed all this carefully, Mr. Weames also seemed to be taking a keen interest in JIMMY 85 Duffy, but from the slight sneer on his face he did not seem to be impressed. Duffy, at first a little an- noyed, afterwards found a measure of satisfaction in it. If it came to trouble Mr. Weames would under- rate his ability as a hardened adventurer. It might prove exceedingly useful. He produced Mr. Northcote's letter of introduc- tion and handed it to Honest Pig, who received it in a gnarled fist and read it through laboriously. There was little in it, but it was to the point. It officially gave Mr. Peter Duff full executive pow- ers in all matters to do with the lifving of the jade, and enjoined Captain Fellowes to place all means at his disposal for that purpose. All of which Cap- tain Fellowes had learned from his employer's previ- ous letter, which had acquainted him with Duffy's existence, qualifications, and part he was to play in the expedition. Honest Pig laid down the letter and looked up. "I hope we will get on well together, Mr. Duff," he said, "for I assure you nothing makes more for the success of a business of this kind than a crowd that pulls together." And he held out his hand. Duffy gripped it firmly. He felt he could "pull together" with the captain pretty well. 86 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Mr. Weaines watched them through his narrow, black eyes. "I've set this berth apart for you, Mr. Duff," said Honest Pig, and he rose and opened the center of the three doors. "I think you will find it ship- shape. If you want the steward, Evans, pull this bell-rope. Kick him once or twice and he'll answer like a bird. I've trained him." "Sure!" said Duffy in the tone of a man who habitually kicks his inferiors. He saw that his boxes had arrived along with the two thousand rounds of ammunition from Carnage's. Honest Pig went back to the table and com- menced an earnest discussion with his mate on the advisability of purchasing a long-boat and where it was to be done. If they were to get away on the evening tide, it would have to be dealt with at once. Mr. Weames was of the opinion that Bates might have a long-boat. Duffy changed into a dark-blue jersey and dun- garee trousers, and joined them. Honest Pig noted the change of attire with approval. "Much more useful, Mr. Duff. I can see you know how to go about things." Duffy glowed, and forthwith entered firmly into their discussion about the long-boat. At the end JIMMY 87 of a quarter of an hour Duffy had convinced them that they couldn't do better than let him find one. Five minutes later he was in one of the ship's boats, being rowed by two of the crew to the wharf. He noticed that these particular men were not very prepossessing, they were a little slow and by no means willing. Duffy asked them if they had sailed with Captain Fellowes before. Neither of them had. Further inquiries elicited the information that with the ex- ception of Evans, the steward, none of the present crew, fifteen in all counting the engine-room, had sailed in "The Rose" before. Duffy was wondering at this when it struck him that in all probability it was Honest Pig's policy why, though, he did not know. From a dock policeman Duffy learned where Bates, purveyor of long-boats, was to be found, and he set off with one of the men, leaving the other to look after the boat. The dock policeman, used as he was to curious things, stared after the small, sandy-haired sailorman with his air of authority and his horn-rimmed spectacles. At the emporium of Mr. Bates, Duffy found a long-boat of sufficient long-ness to satisfy him. He wanted to make quite sure that the Treasure of the 88 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Manchus should have plenty of room on board it, since the treasure, when it was unearthed, would have to be transported to "The Rose" in it. After reducing the price of the long-boat by one- third, he told Mr. Bates to send it to "The Rose" at once, cash on delivery, and returned to Honest Pig forthwith. The Captain complimented him upon his dispatch, and later, when the long-boat arrived, inquired the reason for its exceptional size. Duffy explained, and was further complimented on his foresight. When Duffy sat down to supper with the Captain and Mr. Weames, he felt thoroughly one of them. Honest Pig he frankly admired, not too obtrusively of course, while the prospect of Mr. Weames as a ship-mate became more palatable. That night Duffy fell into the sleep of a fully hardened adventurer in a bunk that was the essence of comfort, with the lap of the Thames against the bulkhead as a pleasant lullaby. At ten o'clock next morning (Duffy had yet to learn the mystery of "bells") the good ship "Rose of Washington Square" up-anchored and slid through the open mouth of the Thames into the arms of the welcoming sea. She beat her way with an even, if slightly rolling, JIMMY 89 gait into the sunlight of freedom. To Duffy as he stood at the taffrail, taking deep breaths of the salt breeze, the breeze that whispered "adventure ad- venture adventure" in his ear, everything was a-sparkle with the joy of exquisite life. The hum of the crew, still cleaning up after the weeks in dock and the cries of wheeling sea-birds, made the sweetest music he had ever heard. The fierce shouting of Honest Pig at some slothful deck- hand hardly roused him; rather did it fit in with the whole atmosphere of things. At ten o'clock that night Duffy lay in his bunk, horribly and beastly sea-sick cursing himself and cursing the sea, but mostly he cursed himself. The hardened adventurer is never sea-sick. For the first time in the adventure Duffy felt he had failed. Three awful days passed, awful for Duffy but of an average ordinariness for the other members of "The Rose's" personnel. On the morning of the third day Duffy awoke, weak but hungry. He dressed, shaved an ugly but adventurer's growth from his chin, and went on deck. Evans was lay- ing breakfast in the saloon and Duffy as he passed through the saloon caught a sniff of appetizing fra- grance from the calaboose. 90 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Captain Fellowes was on the bridge with the mate. He called a cheerful greeting to Duffy, who joined them. "Thank goodness that's over," he said. "I think I can take a little notice of things now. I can't un- derstand why it got me down. It's never happened before." This was strictly true since Duffy had never been more than four hundred yards from dry land in his life, and that, the only occasion, was by means of the pier at Brighton. Honest Pig commiserated with him. Mr. Weames grunted something and consulted the compass. "Where are we?" inquired Duffy. "About forty miles west of the French coast," replied Honest Pig, "and considering we've a head current, we're not doing so badly." The sea was choppy and the sky wild with rain clouds; but it was a fresh, vivid morning for all that, and Duffy felt better than he had felt for a long while. At this point Evans beat lustily on the gong to announce breakfast, and leaving "The Rose" in the hands of the steersman, the three descended into the JIMMY 91 saloon and commenced their breakfast. Duffy fell to with a readiness that brought a smile to the face of Honest Pig. "That's right, sonny," he said. "There's plenty more where that comes from; Yen San has been worrying some about you." "Yen San?" "Yep Yen San; he's the cook," answered Hon- est Pig. "You must meet him, he's one of the slick- est cooks I've ever struck. He's a bit keen on gravy, but I've always reckoned that's a fault on the right side. He came aboard the day before you arrived; said he'd been out of a berth for months and begged me to give him a trial. I don't hold with Chinks as a rule but I'm glad I let him sign on. Damned good cook, I'll tell the world!" Duffy had noticed before that Honest Pig had a leaning in his speech towards Americanese. He was not American; he came from the region of New- castle, he had told Duffy, and he put the slang down to Honest Pig's shady business having taken him to the New World. It is bigger, and for that reason more sparsely policed. Duffy looked across the table at the mate, who was sucking up his food with what seemed unneces- 92 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER sary noise. He might, from his manner of taking nourishment, have hailed from Central Europe, and Duffy made a mental note that he must look at the back of Mr. Weames' head. That portion of the anatomy is sometimes a very good guide to a man's birthplace; at least it is to a student of human beings, which every successful adventurer must of necessity be. Duffy had a hankering to discuss the Treasure of the Manchus with Honest Pig, but the presence of Mr. Weames decided him against it. He wanted to know where the directions were kept not that he wanted to lay surreptitious fingers on them, but he wanted to keep a watchful eye on them. He did not like Mr. Weames, and he could tell from the manner in which Honest Pig addressed him, that they had not sailed together before. The captain seemed to be on his guard against the mate. He was turning these things over in his mind when a sudden movement on the part of Honest Pig attracted his attention. Honest Pig was listening intently, his cup arrested on its way to his mouth. Duffy also listened intently, and heard light foot- falls on the deck above their heads and a moment afterwards, down the companion-way. JIMMY 93 Mr. Weames heard them now, above the sound of his eating, and also listened intently. All three gazed expectantly at the foot of the companion-way. Then a pair of feet, bare, with above them a length of bare leg, appeared on the steps, and a second later a girl walked into the saloon. She was dark, very dark, with the raven-black hair of the gipsy cropped in close curls. Dark eyes, and lips full and red against a fair skin; she was beautiful with an almost savage vividness. She wore a white, close-fitting jersey and a navy-blue serge skirt. She stood and looked at the three men, while Duffy surprised, so he assured himself, for the first time in his life, gazed at this dramatic vision with startled eyes. The atmosphere of the cabin was electric almost alive with expectancy for the next move. It came from Honest Pig in the form of a short, savage bark: "Hell-and-damnation, Jimmy, how the devil did you get here?" he shouted, and he dropped his cup with a shattering crash. Jimmy vouchsafed not a word, but pulling a chair 94 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER to the table, seated herself with the most exquisite calmness in the world and rang the bell for Evans. Then she answered: "Down the companion, Daddy." CHAPTER VI AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK EVANS appeared through the door of the galley cor- ridor, which led up to the opposite end of the cabin, and approached the table. Jimmy turned to him and said: "Good morning, Evans; another place, please." Evans shifted his weight onto the other foot and looked acutely uncomfortable. The girl stared at him. "Well?" Her voice was like the crack of a whip. "Er er, yes, Miss Jimmy," said Evans in the grip of undiluted terror, and he stumbled hurriedly out of the cabin. Honest Pig sat in a frozen silence after his first outburst; he was apparently bottling up some stir- ring emotion. Duffy gripped the edge of the table and waited. When Evans had gone, Honest Pig said in a thick, throaty voice: "Jimmy, would I be troubling you mightily if I asked you to explain what you mean by this?" 95 9 6 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER The girl examined her little finger carefully for a moment, then she looked up at her father. "Daddy, I couldn't stick Miss Craven's. I know I'm beastly bad-mannered, and uneducated, and all that, and . . ." she searched her memory "... a disgrace to my own father,' but even for you, Daddy, I couldn't stay another moment with that horrible woman and her stupid, stuffy way of living. The first night I was there she discovered I didn't wear armor plate and called me 'a heathenish, little savage,' and when I kicked the butler for knocking a kitten off a chair, she put me to bed without any supper like a kid. You sent me there to be 'fin- ished off,' Daddy. I tell you I pretty nearly was, and that inside of twenty-four hours!" Jimmy, stopped for breath; her eyes were flash- ing. Honest Pig was watching her, his jaw stuck out. Then she went on: "I thought of you going off to China in The Rose,' adventuring across the world, while I en- joyed a year of hell that's what it would have been hell," she used the word with the ease of habit, "and well, I just locked the Craven beast in her room the other morning and came down to Tilbury, got across to 'The Rose' without being seen inter- viewed Evans while you were ashore at the Agent's AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK 97 signing on the crew, and threatened to flay him alive if he didn't help me. Then I stowed-away in the after-hold until we were well at sea. Evans brought me food and found me a hammock, which I slung very cosily. I've slept most of the time," she added. Honest Pig looked helpless; his rage at being disobeyed was evaporating. He knew perfectly well that at her age nothing would have induced him to leave his father's boat. There were four genera- tions of seafaring blood in Jimmy, to say nothing of her mother's hot-headed wilfulness to give it vitality. After a long moment Honest Pig smiled and the ice was broken the girl ran around the table and kissed him. The matter was closed. Duffy liked the look of Jimmy; she was very vivid, and he liked vivid people, while her obvious appetite for adventure struck a sympathetic chord in his heart. At the same time he had to admit to himself that adventuring was not a girl's job; Duffy, poor soul, was trying to reconcile her with Made- leine, and hardly realized the weakness of the effort. But adventuring was not a girl's job; none of the adventures he could remember had a girl in them except for the hero to rescue from awkward pre- 'dicaments. Jimmy gave the distinct impression that 98 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER she could very well look after herself, but in spite of this impression, Duffy rather foolishly observed: "Risky business; lifting jade." "Risky!" Jimmy's voice was scornful, and she seemed to notice Duffy for the first time. "Who's that, Daddy?" she asked. "Let me introduce you," said Honest Pig. "My young devil, Jimmy Mr. Peter Duff; also the mate, Mr. Weames." "How d'ye do?" said Duffy. Jimmy stared hard at him, rather as though he was a hitherto unknown species of lepidoptera. She took no notice of Mr. Weames, who scowled and went noisily on with his food. Evans came in with Jimmy's breakfast; he walked a little sideways, keeping Honest Pig well in view all the while. Honest Pig eyed him with an ominous thought- fulness. Jimmy saw it, and said: "You're not to blow him up, Daddy. I couldn't be allowed to starve and anyway he only helped me because I put the fear of God into him." "You did that, miss," said Evans fervently, and he hurried out again. Honest Pig laughed again, and then frowned; it struck him forcibly that Evans was more afraid AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK 99 of the captain's daughter than he was of the captain. That was not discipline. Duffy was annoyed at the attitude Jimmy had adopted to him, and this time he found no satis- faction in the fact that he had not instantly been recognized as a hardened adventurer. He took up the conversation in firm hands, therefore, and put it onto the subject of treasure. "How long will it take us to reach Taiho Shan?" he asked Honest Pig. "Depends on a great many things," said the captain. "With the average luck we ought to do it in about eight to ten weeks; we shall have to put into Aden for coal, and again at Shanghai. We don't want to have to answer a lot of silly damn questions from interfering Chinese gunboats or any other gunboats for that matter when we've got the Treasure on board. The quicker and farther we move without having to deal with a coal shortage the better." "Yes," agreed Jimmy. "In that sealing expedi- tion we burned all the movable stuff on board to keep our heels showing to some dam' yellow 'T.B.D.' that stuck its interfering nose into the mid- dle of a very prosperous piece of business." Duffy gazed at her with envious eyes. The word ioo THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "dam' " grated rather, and he could not remember Madeleine ever having used it. Again he felt a little out of his depth with this new factor in the situa- tion. The conversation during the rest of the meal dealt with the Treasure of the Manchus. The fact that it was mainly, if not solely, jade puzzled everybody but Duffy, who by this time had acquired a passing knowledge of that hardest of all stones, and he was able to tell them about it. They listened with defer- ence, and Jimmy became quite enthusiastic about it. Duffy had a value of a sort, but he wished that it was a value of a more exciting nature; he felt, however, that the adventure was as yet in its early beginnings. Time would show. After breakfast Honest Pig retired into the chart- house, a substantial affair perched aft with the deck-house, and busied himself with mathematical calculations that kept him quiet most of the morn- ing. Mr. Weames took the bridge and snarled ami- ably at anybody who came near him. Jimmy commandeered one of the fo'castle hands and started him on her cabin, which was next to Duffy's. She wanted it thoroughly spring-cleaned. Duffy hung around for a while and tried to assist AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK 101 them, but he seemed to get in the way. Presently Jimmy, who was very hot and dusty, suggested he should go and find something else to do: "Have you been down in the engine-room, Mr. Duff?" she asked. "MacNab loves people to go down and admire it." "No, I haven't," said Duffy. "How do I find it?" "Dowa the after-companion," said Jimmy, as she drove a sleepy cockroach into a corner and dis- patched him; Duffy frankly did not interest her. She had been used all her life, from the age of nine, to be exact, to the rough, loud-voiced sons of the sea. A man who swore and was ready with his fists, she knew and understood, but this small person with horn-rimmed spectacles and a knowledge of jade was outside her experience as a type. Though she told herself she was not interested in him she had to admit that he was a problem. If she knew how to deal with the man who swore and was ready with his fists, she felt that that same dealing would be quite effective with Duffy; he was small, and with the optimism of youth she assured herself that if occasion arose, she would have no difficulty with him. Duffy met MacNab. MacNab was a dour little 102 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Scotchman, a Scotchman because chief engineers on ships always are. He wore a perpetual sneer, and a piece of cotton-waste as a necktie. "Good morning," said Duffy. "I'm Peter Duff. I've come to see your engines." "Guid morning ta ye, Mr. Duff. This is a damned awfu' tin-can, this boat, but she's a bonny set o' engines in her. Look na," and he stroked a descend- ing piston-rod affectionately. Duffy learned all about marine engines for an hour, and when he left Mr. MacNab he left a friend. Duffy had appreciated some of the romance of a ship's engine-room, and furthermore the part it played in the heart of the little engineer. He was another expert, and Duffy adored experts with all the expert's enthusiasm. Then he returned to his cabin and fetched out Elizabeth and Gilbert; on his way through the saloon he passed Jimmy, who observed his armory with some curiosity. She even thought it worth while to follow him. Duffy made his way to the stern, and on a portion of deck hidden from the bridge by the funnel, com- menced his practice. He began with half-an-hour of drawing Gilbert from his hip pockets with either AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK 103 hand, finding that he could draw almost as speedily from the left as the right. Jimmy stood and watched him for a while; then she got tired of it and went below again to her spring- cleaning in a troubled state of mind. This pistol expertness on the part of the super-cargo in addition to, or rather in contradiction of his horn-rimmed spectacles and his generally meek atmosphere, gave her food for thought. She was surprised. Later she was even further surprised to hear a crackling fusilade of shots that sounded uncom- monly like a battle. She snatched her Colt, an old- fashioned, rakish affair of six chambers, and ran up the companionway. Duffy, with a youth's desire for noise and an ad- venturer's desire for accurate shooting, had wedged a piece of board into a winch, and with a tar brush painted a small black spot on it. With great policy he first of all fired ten shots into the air with Elizabeth, and waited. Honest Pig arrived first, in a great hurry and a pistol in each hand. "Hell!" shouted Honest Pig. "What the devil are you fooling with?" "Target," said Duffy succinctly, and reloaded 104 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Elizabeth. Honest Pig glanced at the target; it was unharmed. "Well, don't start fooling without warning me another time," he said. "I'm getting on now, and these shocks don't do me any good. Don't kill anybody; we're not over-crewed as it is." "Right!" said Duffy. He managed to convey a suspicion of concession in his voice. Honest Pig put the pistols in his pocket and went back to his chart-house; at the same moment Jimmy and Mr. Weames came round the smoke-stack together. Duffy aimed at the bull's-eye of his target with extreme care, fired and missed. He fired again and again missed. Mr. Weames sneered almost audibly and walked away, and Jimmy, with a superior smile, watched Duffy miss the target altogether with a third shot. "Stick to it, Mr. Duff, stick to it! It took me six months to handle a gun," she said. "Oh," said Duffy politely, and turned to her. "You can shoot?" "Some," Jimmy remarked. "Some." "I'll take you on," said Duffy. "I've spent a little while at it. I remember in Arizona . . ." he stopped; the same reticence which had prevented him in the case of the little collector deterred him AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK 105 now with Jimmy. He did not want to pull her leg. "What's the bet?" asked Jimmy. Duffy thought a moment. "If you win I'll give you a book on jade; if I win I'll call you 'Jimmy.' " "Done!" said Jimmy, and she gripped his hand with strong fingers. It was the first time she had touched him, and he was amazed at the pleasant thrill it gave him. They tossed for first shot, and Jimmy won. She held her Colt at her hip and put a bullet half an inch from the black spot. "Best of nine shots," said Duffy, and firing Eliza- beth carefully, hit the black spot. Jimmy's smile faded. She fired twice. One bul- let widened the hole of her first, the second struck the center of the bull. "Not bad," said Duffy, and shot carelessly, hitting the board about four inches from the bull. Jimmy's smile reappeared; she reloaded the Colt in all cham- bers and fired six shots in rapid succession; the black spot was hit twice. Duffy looked respectful and also reloaded. "You know," he said, "this isn't really fair. You've got a very old-pattern gun. Elizabeth is the newest of her kind." io6 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Elizabeth?" queried Jimmy. "Do you call it Elizabeth?" "Yes," said Duffy. "She's very exact. Watch." Then he carefully cut the black spot out of the target with a ring of holes. It was really rather an exhibition. "Well, I'll be hung! " said Jimmy under her breath. "I don't think we can count it a fair win," said Duffy. "But I'm going to call you 'Jimmy,' " he added. "All right," she said thoughtfully. The problem of Duffy had assumed master proportions; he could use his armory. She would have to keep a wary eye on him; for what gave her greater thought was the uncomfortable feeling that he had engineered the whole thing from the beginning in order to call her "Jimmy." She also noticed that his atmosphere was not really meek when one got into full touch with it. Duffy had made the necessary impression and was happy; also he could call her "Jimmy." At lunch she tried to open the subject of Duffy's shooting, but he turned it aside adroitly. He saw no reason why Mr. Weames should know more about it than he did already. He wished the mate's bliss- ful ignorance to remain undisturbed. Mr. Weames was sullen almost to the point of AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK 107 snarling; he seemed worried about something and Duffy wondered what it could be. He made one or two ineffectual efforts to find out what it was, but Mr. Weames would not bite he merely growled. "The Rose of Washington Square" had by this time crossed the Bay and was plowing her way through warmer seas. The afternoon was sultry and Duffy spent it with Jimmy and a book on jade under an awning Honest Pig had had rigged under the lee of the bridge. To Duffy it was a pleasant after- noon; perhaps because he wore a white silk shirt and white drill trousers for the first time in his life, but mainly because he had discovered one of the most delightful occupations in the world, which is to watch the face of a pretty girl. Evans brought them tea, and over it they again discussed the Treasure of the Manchus, and, as a seemingly natural sequence to it, the surliness of Mr. Weames. Duffy discovered that she shared his distrust of the mate, and though they did not actually put it into direct words, they formed a mutual compact to watch that worthy gentleman. Mutual compacts between the sexes are pleasant things. Then occurred what Duffy afterwards called the key to the whole adventure. 108 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Late that night he was leaning against the rail watching the moonlight glittering on the wake, smok- ing one of Honest Pig's cigars and meditating upon many things, and Jimmy not a little. He was beginning to understand her; at least he thought he was. A girl whose life had been spent, with very rare intervals, on a ship under all the skies and in all the seas that both hemispheres could offer; her companionship always that of men, and hard men at that; living in an atmosphere where romance and adventure were the daily order of existence; who had developed of necessity the keenest sense of self- reliance and independence; who swore and shot like a man such a girl could hardly be expected to conform with the precepts of maidenly behavior laid down in Duffy's mind by his limited experience of female psychology gained in Harpenden. He could not imagine Madeleine firing a six-chambered Colt on the deck of an ocean tramp unstockinged and unshod. The night was still and very big, the sea troubled only by a gentle swell. The ship was quiet save for occasional snatches of song from the fo'castle, which presently ceased as sleep overcame the singers. The light in the deck-house, where Honest Pig had his berth, went out; the sky-light over the saloon still AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK 109 glowed yellow, where Mr. Weames was studiously surrounding the contents of a whisky bottle. Jimmy had retired early when she saw him at his efforts. Duffy lost himself in speculation; he wished he could remember where and when he had seen the likeness to the mate. It troubled him as a forget- fulness unworthy of an expert adventurer. And so he thought on. Then came a throaty murmuring from the saloon through the open sky-light. Mr. Weames had found some one to talk to. Duffy wondered idly who it could be. He thought of Evans and then remem- bered that he had shut up the lazarette and turned in earlier than usual. The murmuring grew in volume until it reached the aspects of a fight a tumbler crashed on the floor of the cabin. Duffy walked over to the sky- light and looked down through the open shutter. Mr. Weames was directly beneath him, holding with two bony hands the throat of a Chinaman and slowly throttling the life out of him. The unfortu- nate man was bent back across the table, and Duffy saw his face clearly over the mate's shoulder. He also heard Mr. Weames explaining his behavior. "I'm goin' to shtrangle you, you sh-shtinkin' yel- i io THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER low dog I'll teach you t' water my whishky dam' your yellow face!" and he banged the Chinaman's head on the table. "Waterin' my whishky! I'll choke the life out o' you!" Duffy realized that it was extremely likely. With a groping hand he found an idle, wooden pulley-block and lifting it carefully, held it directly over Mr. Weames and let it drop. It caught the mate squarely on the back of his mouse-colored head; he staggered back, let go of the Chinaman's throat, and slid to the floor, face downwards. The Chinaman leaped up like a cat, snatched the pulley-block, and like a shadow, slipping across the saloon to the corridor that led to the calaboose, dis- appeared down it. All this only occupied a few seconds, but by the time Duffy had run down the companionway and into the saloon, Jimmy, in her pyjamas, was already in it and was rolling Mr. Weames over onto his back. Duffy helped her to examine him. He was breathing stertorously. "Nothing much," said Jimmy. "What in the world's happened to him? Some one seems to have hit him on the head with a mallet. Who was it?" "No idea," said Duffy, the adventurer's caution AN IDLE PULLEY BLOCK in coming to his aid. "Did you see any one leaving the saloon?" he asked. "Not a soul." "Do him good," remarked Duffy, looking con- tentedly at the recumbent mate. "The fellow's a pig." "I know, he's all kinds of a pig, and I expect one of the hands couldn't stick him any longer but that's not sufficient excuse to knock him on the head with a mallet. Discipline, Mr. Duff, discipline; Weames isn't another hand, he's the mate" said Jimmy. "Well, I don't see the point of making a fuss," said Duffy. "He must have been pretty drunk when it happened. I don't suppose he'll remember a thing about it to-morrow morning. I'm sure it isn't the mallet- wielder's fault he's the mate." Duffy saw that if there was an inquiry it might very well end in his having to tell the truth, in which case Honest Pig would never forgive Mr. Weames for trying to throttle the best cook he had ever had, for the Chinaman must have been Yen San. Honest Pig might put the mate in irons until he could land him at the nearest port, and that Duffy did not want. He thoroughly disliked Mr. Weames, but he could not shake off the feeling that it was from the liver- ii2 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER faced mate that the adventure was coming and Duffy wanted that adventure. It was what he was there for; how would it sound for a hardened ad- venturer to return to his employer and tell him that everything went without a hitch? It was quite im- possible. Jimmy broke in: "Get me a gun," she said; "I'm going to have a look round." Duffy fetched Gilbert out of his case, exchanged the loaded magazine for an empty one, and returned with him to Jimmy. Gilbert was still vicious-look- ing, but quite innocuous. Jimmy took the pistol from him and pattered up the companion with a determined air. Duffy dragged Mr. Weames into that worthy's bunk and left him sleeping a drunken but perfectly healthy sleep. Then he turned in, and when he heard Jimmy come back, fell asleep; lulled by a quiet, even rise and fall of sound: the snores of the mate in the next cabin. CHAPTER VII THE SMILING COOK THE next morning Duffy met Yen San while Mr. Weames lay in his bunk, a tortured victim of his head and his unappeasable curiosity. For the muddled life of him he could not think where he had acquired such a large and painful lump on the back of his muddled head. Evans, who ministered to the stricken mate, found him an exacting patient, while Honest Pig, who paid him a visit after breakfast, advised him to take more water with it. Mr. Weames was disrespectful. And Duffy met Yen San. He found him in the calaboose, seated on an overturned biscuit-tin, peel- ing potatoes and reading a volume of Emerson's Es- says that was propped in front of him. He wore a silk handkerchief round his throat. Duffy looked at Yen San and Yen San looked at Duffy, and neither said a word. Never in his life had Duffy seen such an attractive Chinaman. Yen San's forehead was broad and high, his nose and lips sensitive to a degree. His eyes, which conveyed 113 ii4 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER very little but promised a great deal, were set well apart. Altogether he was a very pleasant person to gaze at. Then a smile broke across his face a smile that began nowhere and ended nowhere. It reminded Duffy of a patch of sunshine that gradually grows to brilliance on a ripe cornfield, and then fades when the clouds close above it. It was a rare smile. Neither spoke a word for quite a minute, but a multitude of things were understood. Among them was the fact that Yen San was perfectly willing to nurse his throat in silence. This was borne out later when they watched through the open port a small, black object bobbing and dancing into the blue distance. It was the idle pulley-block. Duffy watched it a little regretfully; it had made him another friend, and he did not like to think of it floating about with the jetsam of the sea. CHAPTER VIII PISTOL PRACTICE DUFFY'S faculty for making friends had displayed itself with some prominence up to this point, but here his faculty failed him and the friend he lost was the last he would have chosen to part with had he had any choice in the matter. Indeed Duffy's fac- ulty might be leveled against him as a failing in an adventurer. He did get on with people; ad- venturers do not. It is essential to the success of their calling that they should have enemies plenty of enemies. Although this losing of a friend did not affect the Treasure of the Manchus except in a remote way, it is worth recording as an incident in which Duffy approached nearer the true adventurer than at any other point in the whole affair. Much of the rest of it was merely heroic, and though this began with all the promise of pure heroism, its result spoiled it as such, so we must call it adventure, which stipu- lates no orthodox endings. This particular incident had for its scene the "5 u6 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER native quarter of that most unsavory of all ports, Aden, into which "The Rose of Washington Square" crawled languidly one blazing noon. A furious, blasting, blinding, equatorial sun beat down upon the unpleasant smells with all the enthusiasm which in that part of the world it displays throughout nine months of the year. Duffy wore his suede top-boots to protect his feet from the grilling deck; that is on those occasions when he worked up sufficient energy to walk on it. I mention his boots because they were the direct cause of Jimmy's going ashore; she saw Duffy's boots, envied him for them, and decided that she must have a pair, and those at once. In all proba- bility she would have worn Duffy's had they been smaller; for during the last weeks the two of them had grown very good friends good enough friends, at all events, to wear each other's boots if necessary. First of all, they had paired off naturally in the little society so much older than themselves in years, with the result that they spent much of the day to- gether. They had made it a habit to watch the painted glory of the Eastern sunsets, together and that in itself will bring people near to one another; but also in their points of view they found much in common, although they gained them from such dif- PISTOL PRACTICE 117 ferent worlds. Moreover, in their distrust of Mr. Weames, they had a bond of common interest. Nevertheless, Duffy still felt that this was not the sort of life a girl should lead. Adventuring was a man's job. Then Jimmy decided that she must have suede mosquito boots, and in order to purchase them, went ashore without telling Duffy; perhaps she wanted to surprise him with them; or perhaps she did not want to take Duffy and his boots into a store and ask for a pair "like those." The first intimation that Duffy received of her intention was the sight through the port of his cabin of her slim, white-clad figure on the jetty. She was alone. After feeling a little piqued that she had not asked him to go with her, he decided that Aden was no place for an uncavaliered white girl, and he searched out Honest Pig in his chart-house and said so. "Don't worry about her, Duffy," said Honest Pig. "The little devil can look after herself all right." Duffy, through no effort on his part, had quickly acquired his usual sobriquet. "Aden's a beastly place," he said thoughtfully. "Well, if anything goes wrong, it's Aden I'm wor- rying about, not Jimmy," replied Honest Pig, with ii8 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER an air of complete satisfaction. They left it at that. But by six bells Jimmy had not returned, and Duffy's restlessness assumed uncomfortable propor- tions. To give himself something to think about, he took Elizabeth and Gilbert from their case, and un- deterred by the fact that he had spent half the morn- ing at it, he oiled and cleaned them with extreme care. At seven bells he got out a large manual on navigation and tried to absorb it, but in spite of his growing proficiency in that difficult art, he could not concentrate. He now admitted to himself that he was worrying, and even added a rider to the effect that Jimmy was the cause. What in the world had she found to interest her in Aden? Besides, it smelled abominably. She had no business to be wandering about it alone. Duffy went down to the calaboose where Yen San, with all the artist's care, was preparing dinner, and asked him if he knew the port at all. "Me know him velly little," said Yen San. "Him velly much one stinking hole." "Yes. Miss Jimmy's gone ashore," said Duffy. Yen San looked wise. "Along no fella boy?" "Nope," said Duffy shortly. "You'mgofindher?" PISTOL PRACTICE 119 "Yep I think so. Will you keep dinner hot for us?" Yen San nodded. "And no need to tell the Captain where I am. Tell him I've gone fishing, if he asks you, but he won't," said Duffy. He felt slightly ashamed of himself for not being able to share Honest Pig's optimistic belief in his daughter's ability to look after herself. He fetched Gilbert and some am- munition from his cabin and went ashore by the gangway. The swift twilight of the tropics turned into starlit night almost as Duffy placed his foot on the jetty, and he blessed the gathering darkness that hid him from the watch. He stumbled a little on the firm ground after his weeks at sea. It was an- noyingly steady, but by adopting a slightly rolling walk he managed to counterbalance the effect. Almost instinctively Duffy turned from the broader streets of the European quarter and made his way into the narrower, darker alleys of the native town. Jimmy would not hanker for the European. The alleys seemed full of shadows, and the low, crooked houses leaned inwards upon him. It was Duffy's first experience of an Eastern city, and it did not impress him very much. There was 120 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER little of the picturesque to be seen, even in the star- light, but what there was smelled horrible. One or two dark figures slouched past Duffy, others slipped in and out of doorways and passages, and once a scream shattered the night air he caught his breath and slid his hand round to his hip pocket, then re- laxed as he realized it was a man's scream. The winding street was lit occasionally by shafts of yellow light on the cobbles from open doorways. Duffy was beginning to wonder how he was going to find Jimmy in this jumbled warren of buildings. There seemed so many of them, and they all promised lurking, knife-armed shadows behind the doors. Even a hardened adventurer with an expert draw does not rush blindly into every hornet's nest, so Duffy may be forgiven for being circum- spect. Presently the main street widened and the lights became more frequent, while from the increasing number of natives Duffy surmised that he was com- ing to the scene of Aden's night life. Bazaars and shops took the place of habitations and he strolled unconcernedly down the middle of them with his yachting cap on the back of his head. It did not occur to him that he was the only white man in that part of Aden. The white men who had stewed in PISTOL PRACTICE 121 Aden any while had learned to avoid it after dark. It was unhealthy. Outside the biggest, brightest and noisiest of the bazaars, Duffy halted and looked at it. Then he walked into it with an air of quiet interest and an eagle eye for Jimmy. Men stared at him with curious and none too affectionate glances. It was a good demonstration of the strange but well authenticated fact that a man can go among the wildest of wild animals with a fair chance of im- munity provided he not only shows, but also feels, no fear. Duffy did not feel afraid, because he did not know there was anything to be afraid of. For the same reason Jimmy played fan-tan in a far but interested corner with no other thought than to add to the little pile of winnings that were heaped on the table before her. As Duffy reached the center of the bazaar under the solitary lamp, in the middle of a jostle of brown, evil-smelling bodies, she laughed a clear, ringing laugh of extreme pleasure. She had won a big stake. Duffy heard the laugh and made a slow and diffi- cult way towards it; she certainly had no business to be here. The brown bodies seemed to become ever thicker and their smell even more evil. Within twelve feet of the table Duffy came up against the 122 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER outer fringe of interested spectators. He wedged himself between them and began pushing his way gently through. Jimmy laughed again the clear, ringing laugh of a happy child as he came to the inner fringe of brown, evil-smelling bodies. He was beginning to scowl at the thought of Jim- my's foolishness. Also he felt she had got an illicit adventure ahead of him. Actually he had arrived in time to draw level. The opportunity came in the sound of a sudden scurry and the swaying of the interested spectators. Then a cry from Jimmy. "Hands off it, you scum. My God, if I had my Colt!" Duffy thrust his head between two brown, greasy shoulders with a butt that would have done credit to a ram, and he saw Jimmy with both hands cover- ing her pile of money a brown hand pulling at them. Then there was a glitter against the dark back- ground, as a wicked-looking knife slashed down and stuck, quivering, a brown hand grasping its shaft. It seemed to have pinned one of the slim, white hands to the table. Shouting incoherent, stuttering words, gazing through a red mist, but cool deadly cool Duffy PISTOL PRACTICE 123 sent a bullet through the brown hand and snapped his teeth with satisfaction as he saw the blood spurt from it. A man on the other side of the table top- pled forward two casualties with one bullet; not a bad beginning. A howl of agony came swiftly upon Gilbert's vi- cious crack, and then pandemonium. A hundred yells and a savage roar that promised death, a vision of glistening, rage-filled eyes on every side, and Duffy put a bullet between a pair of the nearest. Then he jumped for Jimmy's side, caught her up the knife still buried deep in the table while a thin trickle of blood ran across the white hand. The owner of the knife sat on the floor and screamed, waggling his shattered fingers. Duffy put a bullet through the chest of a man who rushed at him with a stool, while with a second he smashed the hanging lamp into a splintering ruin, and plunged the bazaar into Stygian blackness. He held Jimmy by the arm. "Are you badly hurt?" he asked quickly. The mist was clearing from his eyes. He was beginning to realize what had been happening. "No," said Jimmy, "only cut the skin." "Thank heavens!" he said. "Come on. We've got to get out of this!" 124 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "My boots!" "Your what?" He had to shout above the volume of yelling. "My suede boots; they're under this chair, some- where," said Jimmy in his ear. Duffy groped and found a parcel. "Here, catch hold. I shall want both hands," he said quickly, and still holding Jimmy in a firm grasp, steered her to the nearest wall. It was built of flimsy mud and straw, and with a few hearty kicks with his heel, he managed to make a hole large enough for them to crawl through. He went first, stood upright, took three cautious steps forward in the darkness, and fetched up against a wall. He was in a passage, and he turned to call Jimmy. He found her by his side. "Where are we?" she asked. "The Lord knows; I don't," he answered. "But we may as well try and find out." First he hitched Jimmy's parcel by its string to a hook on his belt, then he led the way down the passage in the direction of the street, from which came the confused shouting of most of the male population of the native quarter. They had gath- ered for entertainment. Half-way down the passage Duffy stumbled over PISTOL PRACTICE 125 a round object that rolled at his feet; he picked it up. It was a round, earthenware water bottle. At the end of the passage they came to a rickety, leather-hinged door. "Now," said Duffy, in an adventurer's whisper, and he gave Jimmy the water bottle. "Hold it by its neck. You may need it." Then he filled Gilbert's magazine with extreme care and opened the door. They were in the middle of a howling, shouting mob. For the first few yards not one of the brown, evil-smelling seekers after entertainment saw them, and Duffy led the way down the side of the street in the direction of the jetty. Jimmy edged up to him and held his hand with her right; in her left she firmly grasped the narrow neck of the water bottle. Then their white clothes in a crowd, which, if it wore any clothes at all, wore the less immaculate shades, gave them away. A howl of greater unison broke out behind them, and Duffy took frankly to his heels. Jimmy ran easily by his side, still holding his hand. They tore as hard as they could lick down the darkness of the main street, a patter of bare feet behind them. At the end of fifty yards Duffy bethought himself of his role of adventurer, scowled heavily, turned 126 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER and put five shots into the darkness. Two howls of surprised agony answered his effort. The patter- ing feet sounded less insistent, and hand in hand the adventurers continued their exhilarating race they found themselves laughing as they ran. At the point where the narrower turning that led to the jetty ran into the main street, they stopped and listened. One pair of feet held the trail with a determined patter, and back by the bazaar the seekers after entertainment still howled lustily. "Quick, Jimmy; give me the water bottle and run for 'The Rose.' I'll fix this chap," said Duffy. "I don't want to shoot; it will bring them all down on us." "I'm going to help fix him," said Jimmy. "You're not. You're going back to 'The Rose.' It will take less time for one to get from here to the boat at the last minute than two. I expect there are others behind this chap, but if I settle him it ought to give me time to get to 'The Rose' without being spotted. We don't want them to know where we come from. This is a mad enough business and we don't want to prolong it." Jimmy hesitated, started to object, then handed over the water bottle and started off for the jetty. PISTOL PRACTICE 127 Duffy took up a strategetic position under the over- hanging eaves of a house and, gripping the water bottle, waited for the follower. He came noisily and blowing through his teeth; the starlight showed up his figure. Duffy stepped swiftly out of the shadows and flung the water bottle into the stomach of this more per- sistent seeker after entertainment, as though the poor man had not lost sufficient wind already. With what he had left, however, he gave a short howl and collapsed in the gutter. Duffy turned at once and swung round the corner. He made hell-for-leather for "The Rose." At this point a new factor introduced itself, with no invitation whatever, into the adventure which had begun so calmly, so serenely, and which was culminating into the wildest and most exciting of all the wild and exciting things that Duffy had as yet had the luck to fall into. The alley to the jetty was a path of moonlit cob- blestones, flanked on either side by the blackest of shadows, and between these and down the path Duffy fled for the safety of "The Rose," just as Jimmy had done a few moments before or should have done. Duffy must have reached the half-way point of 128 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER this alley when he saw the last thing in the world he wanted to see just then he saw Jimmy. She had stopped on the edge of the shadows; and with her head bent, was feeling and groping in front of her. Duffy saw the gleam of her white clothes and ran up to her. Also he said "damn" between his teeth and cast a quick look behind him. As yet the entrance to the alley was empty, but for how long? "What is it?" he said impatiently. "We've no time to stop!" "It's a cat," said Jimmy. "It jumped out in front of me as I ran, and I kicked it. I couldn't help it. As it was, it nearly brought me down." "Damn the cat!" said Duffy, and wondered at the same time why in the world, when she had all the hardening effect of a hard training to her credit, she should stop at this highly crucial moment to search for a cat she had banged into by accident. It was entirely beyond him. Jimmy straightened herself. "Damn the cat as much as you choose, Duffy, but I'm going to find it." "What are you going to do with it?" "I want to see that it isn't very much hurt." PISTOL PRACTICE 129 "It's an Eastern cat; you can't hurt an Eastern cat; it's used to it," said Duffy. "Come onl" "I am going to find that cat." There was a note of finality in her voice. Duffy, furious and enraged at this unadventurous if human waste of time, gave another look in the direction of the town, and then began groping in the dark with her. The cat refused to show itself. Duffy crowed and crooned and made squeaky voices with his lips; again he cursed the whole business; again and again he urged Jimmy to buck up and cease increasing the risk that would drag them both into a far more serious trouble than ever the cat would experience in the whole length of however many lives it had left. But she took no notice of him, save to give him the parcel containing the boots, that she might grope the better. Then, just as the last shred of Duffy's patience was about to disappear in incoherent ravings, some- thing caught his eye, and he swung round. A small, angular kitten was standing, with a tail that challenged the straightness of the straightest poker, in the middle of the moon path; regarding 130 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER their efforts with what seemed to Duffy to be ill- concealed amusement. "Here it is!" he said. "Thank heavens! We may still have time ! " He reached down and caught up the kitten, seized Jimmy by the arm, and started once more for the jetty. He could not have told you why he picked up the kitten, unless perhaps he realized that if the kitten came so would Jimmy. "All right! " said Jimmy. "I can manage." And she moved her arm out of Duffy's hustling clutch. She had been dependent enough for one night. "Come on, then!" And side by side they ran on. At the end of thirty yards a shrill cry came from behind. Duffy turned in his run and saw a robed figure that waved a glittering sword, and bore down on them at a pace they never could have beaten. "I knew it! I knew it! " snarled Duffy. "Here! take the animal and carry on!" And he almost flung the cause of this bungled end of the adventure at her. What the kitten felt about it all is not really of great importance, since it ought to have had better sense and better manners than to have inter- fered in the first place; we will dismiss it for the moment, therefore, with the single observation that it yowled in a thoroughly Eastern and dismal way. PISTOL PRACTICE 131 Jimmy caught it and "carried on." She did not stop to argue with Duffy this second time. She felt that she was more or less to blame for the situation and furthermore that he could be trusted to deal with this later development by himself. He did most expertly. The native saw him stop, and his shrill shouting became more shrilly triumphant. If he had been an observant man, he would have advanced more cautiously; but he was not, so he did not see the wicked glitter in Duffy's right hand. Duffy waited, almost patiently, for the swords- man to come within a range that would ensure that Gilbert's efficiency be supported by absolute accur- acy on his part. The brightness of the moonlight and the brightness of the target at which he had to shoot, made it a comparatively easy matter. In- deed, he felt at that moment that it was too easy, and a certain compunction for the nearing avenger crossed his mind. It did not, however, prevent him from placing a bullet with extraordinary neatness in the exact cen- ter of the avenger's chest. The range could not have been above fifteen yards, and the bullet came to the man in the middle of a more than usually enthusiastic bound with a force 132 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER that checked him with a horrible jar, toppling him head over heels onto the cobbles with a rasping choke that rang horridly in Duffy's ears. It was very unpleasant, and he cursed the position in which he had been placed that made the killing a necessity. He said "damn" again, and again it was between his teeth. Then swiftly he rolled the body into the shadows, and keeping well within their shelter, made for "The Rose." Here I think I might insert an accurate if ironic detail. Duffy could not have covered half the distance between the scene of the delay and the boat when a mangy, limping, highly unbeautiful cat no kitten, mark you walked a little painfully across the path in the moonlight, and inspected the dead avenger in the shadows. Whether it was that the cat did not like the smell of his dead but fellow-townsman, or he was still very bad-tempered and sore as the result of his meeting with Jimmy in full flight, I do not know; but he spat with extreme distaste and stalked, still painfully, in the direction of a more inhabited part of Aden and what vague sympathy he might hope to find there. And so it was that the kitten, which was lapping PISTOL PRACTICE 133 so gratefully at a plate of soup on the cabin floor when Duffy walked in serenely and sedately a min- ute and a half later, had no earthly claim to the un- expected adventure that had befallen him beyond the fact that he had been prowling peacefully in the immediate neighborhood of it at that particular moment. Thus can Fate fall upon the even course of a life and change it utterly; so did it strike the surprised mind of the kitten. Later, the same evening, also, it struck Duffy, but rather less mercifully. Immediately he reached the cabin he was con- scious of an impending "something." He could not define it, and he went warily at first; all his senses keen and eager. "Sorry I'm late," he said, and following his usual precept that explanation is not an adventurer's policy, he seated himself. He would "let the other chap do the talking." Honest Pig looked at Duffy with suspicious eyes. He stuck out his jaw then he looked with equally suspicious eyes at his daughter. She was flushed and breathing a little hard. Then he looked at the kitten, who was more innocent of air than either of its fellow adventurers. 134 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "What the devil have you two been up to?" said Honest Pig. "Buying boots," said Duffy instantly, and waved the parcel in the air. "Do you usually run when you buy boots?" asked Honest Pig, with a glance at Jimmy's face. "Chilly night," said Duffy. "Sprinted the last hundred yards." "Dam' hot night. Who won?" "I did," answered Duffy, with extreme prompt- ness, but if he had not been so eager to win he might have thought, and had he thought he would not have fallen into the trap. "Then why did Jimmy come down to dinner first?" asked Honest Pig, in a tone that showed he had vindicated his suspicions. "Now, tell me what you've been doing!" he shouted, and banged the table with both fists. "I heard a shot just now. What does all this mean?" Duffy had been feeling during this last cross-ques- tioning that Honest Pig should be told exactly why Jimmy ought not to be allowed ashore by herself in these sort of places. After all, adventuring was not a girl's job. He saw that these particular incidents were the sort of things that might happen at any time, and if the important quest on which he had PISTOL PRACTICE 135 sailed was to be jeopardized by the likelihood of others, then the sooner it was put a stop to the bet- ter. Therefore he told the whole story with an exactness of detail that must have showed him as a master of the art of story-telling. To his accurate shooting he made but a passing allusion; Mr. Weames was still in ignorance of it, and the time had not come for his enlightenment. Jimmy, at the beginning of the story, looked across at him with a look that would have withered a less conscientious soul. Scorn, surprise and in- effable contempt were admirably mingled in that look, and Duffy felt his heart twist a little, but with a stern will he bade it be quiet. He must place this source of adventure beyond the chance of breaking out afresh; Mr. Weames as a source of adventure was another matter. Half-way through the recital Jimmy rose and went into her cabin for a moment, returning with a clean handkerchief, which she wound round the finger that the knife had grazed. Again she looked at Duffy with the same look, only in this, perhaps, the contempt was more virulent than before. At the end of the story, after a moment's silence, Honest Pig said in a voice that forbade argument: "Jimmy, I forbid you to go ashore by yourself 136 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER again. If you want to go, I'm sure Duffy will go with you. He seems quite capable of looking after you." "Very well, Daddy," she replied in a perfectly murderous voice. "I I " and she stopped. Then Honest Pig laughed. He laughed till he cried, and he finally lay on the cushioned seat that he might laugh with more ease. For the second time that night the kitten received the shock of its young life the noise was ear-splitting. Duffy smiled a little wanly; he felt rather than saw the burning flush of shame and rage on Jimmy's face, for she kept it averted. Mr. Weames also laughed; Jimmy went white. After dinner she went on deck, and Duffy fol- lowed her. At the rail he caught her up; he wanted to explain. Explain! "Jimmy " he began, but the way she turned on him silenced him. She leaned back against the rail and her wrath was sublime; in it all her savage beauty was aflame. Her father had laughed at her! "You're a sneak, a dirty little sneak, Duffy," she said in a voice of biting contempt. "I disliked you when I first saw you, but God knows I couldn't dislike and hate you more than I do now. I hate you, d'you hear? I hate you!" PISTOL PRACTICE 137 And she brought her hand down across his face with a ringing slap, and thus did Duffy, the adven- turer, lose a friend. It was just as well for the kitten that it retired early to a comfortable nook in the corner of the deck-house. Duffy would not have been pleasant to meet that night. CHAPTER IX THE LIVER-FACED LOVER DUFFY derived very little satisfaction from his con- scientious effort to see that his mission should not be impeded by side issues, however adventurous. He began to understand why that rough but long- suffering father, Honest Pig, so often referred to his daughter as "the little devil." She was a little devil. The first few days after her frank expression of feeling Duffy spent in vain endeavor to persuade himself that he had acted solely for the best and that he was wrong in thinking the result bad. He ac- cused himself of allowing his heart to rule his head, a thing an adventurer never permits; but all the endeavor in the world would not convince him that that result was not only bad but beastly. The round of their life, for all its vast setting, was limited to the narrow confines of "The Rose," but those confines were not too narrow for Jimmy's sur- prising ability to have nothing to do with Duffy. The fact that he had saved her from a very nasty 138 THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 139 situation counted as nothing against the unpardon- able crime of telling her father how she had got into it and how he had got her out, adding to it all the suggestion that she ought not to be allowed ashore alone in future. And when her father at once placed Duffy in the position of cavalier, then laughed till he cried at the whole thing and his daughter in particular, the finishing touch was complete. She told herself she was through with Duffy, his adven- turous instincts and his horn-rimmed spectacles. Why, those alone ought to have warned her against him in the beginning. So Duffy, in spite of his hardened adventurous- ness, was not a little unhappy, for now that he was barred Jimmy's company and friendship, he appre- ciated to the full what they had meant to him. He spent much of his time with Yen San and the rest with Honest Pig; Yen San was very wise and therefore could not understand why Duffy should worry himself about such an insufficient thing as a girl, while Honest Pig watched the state of affairs with an amused but unsympathetic smile. The only third person who was really affected was Mr. Weames, whose surliness disappeared in an almost benign joviality. He took to wearing white i 4 o THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER duck and parting his mouse-colored hair. Also he endeavored to watch the sunsets with Jimmy. To Honest Pig's comments on these portents, Duffy replied with an elaborate disinterestedness that by its very elaborateness rang false. Honest Pig continued to smile, while Duffy adopted a permanent scowl and cleaned and oiled Elizabeth and Gilbert with heavy frequency. When he could manage it without attracting the attention of Mr. Weames, he practised hard with them. His opportunities in- creased as Mr. Weames' attention became more and more absorbed in his captain's daughter. At times Duffy felt, with no shame to his adven- turer's heart, a strong inclination to destroy the source of promised adventure, at others he took him- self severely to task for allowing the calm, serene, collected, dispassionate mind of a hardened adven- turer to be perturbed by the coldness of a mere girl towards it and all else connected with it. He tried to let Yen San convince him. "Women," said the wise Yen San. "Women! . . ." and he would gaze meditatively at the blue sea through the calaboose port. "They play, and are to be played with toys." He sounded very wise, but Duffy could not con- ceive Yen San or anybody else with five times the THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 141 wisdom playing with Jimmy, unless it was to in- crease that wisdom. They might do that. No; to the first part of Yen San's wisdom: "they play," Duffy attached some importance. It may have been his will to believe, but he thought it quite likely that Jimmy was playing with Mr. Weames. Poor Mr. Weames; he did not look very strong. It was one afternoon in the chart-house during this unhappy state of things, that Duffy discovered that Honest Pig kept the directions for finding the Treasure of the Manchus in his cash box, a flimsy affair. "Do you think they're safe there?" asked Duffy. "Safe as they would be anywhere else," said Honest Pig, carelessly. "But I don't see who wants to collar them. They wouldn't be any use to any- body without a ship to take the stuff away when they found it. There's only one ship about, and that's mine!" Duffy did not tell Honest Pig that he had a copy of the directions; it seemed quite an unnecessary advertisement. "As you say," he agreed, "it's your ship." "Glad some one recognizes it," said Honest Pig. "I begin to doubt it myself sometimes with some of these wharf rats I've managed to ship this voyage. 142 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Lot of lazy, impudent swabs, that's what they are. In the good old days I could have kicked a little ginger into their dam' thick heads. These dam' Unions won't let you run your own ship now!" Duffy was glad he had not been a deck-hand in the good old days. Honest Pig wore elevens to boot his mass of burly, muscle-bound carcass. "You manage pretty well," said Duffy soothingly. "Yes, and I should manage a good deal better if I hadn't such a gink of a mate. That man ought never to have left 'The Horse and Cat,' or wherever he served his whisky-sodden apprenticeship," re- torted Honest Pig. He was in an unbeautiful mood. "You don't mind his palling up with Jimmy," answered Duffy, forgetting that he had not noticed it. "Jimmy can look after herself," said Honest Pig. "As she did in Aden?" Duffy could not resist the shaft, since he could not forget that Honest Pig's remark before that ill-fated episode had been to much the same effect. Honest Pig grunted after the manner of his kind, and took down a chart, while Duffy opened his "Ele- mentary Navigation." The matter was closed. Day after night, night after day, "The Rose" chugged her steady, China way across a steamy blue THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 143 ocean under the tropical sun, or under a matted spangle of stars and a serene moon at night. Duffy grew and thrived in the thrall of it, his nature ex- panding in the expanse that nature showed him. This was the life he had visioned in the close print of many a "Dalkeith Adventure Novel" so keenly, and at last, as he had always dreamed, he was living it, a part of it, his home in it. More and more he felt the adventurer he had always known himself to be, more and more remote were the days when that knowledge was theory, and when he imparted it to a disbelieving Madeleine. True, his attempt at bring- ing it into practice with Jimmy had failed in some ways, but she, at all events, needed no convincing of its reality. She could not forget that attempt nor could she forget Duffy's part in it, however much she told her- self he had flung away all the praise he deserved. It emphasized Mr. Weames as an increasing nuisance and there were times when she wished sincerely that some one would hit him on the head with a mallet again; it might keep him in his bunk for a while, and give her a breathing space. He cloyed. She even caught herself wishing that Duffy was not such a dirty little sneak, for he would have made a far pleasanter companion. But it could not be helped; i 4 4 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER he was a dirty little sneak, and that was all there was to it. Admittedly, she could derive a certain amount of pleasure from the torturing of Mr. Weames by a constant and ever inconstant attitude towards him. She drove his usually all-conquering soul into fre- quent states of frenzy, but even the most womanly of women, and Jimmy had much of the woman in her, tires eventually of that absorbing game. And Mr. Weames, furious in his all-conquering soul at being played with, wanted to play all the more. Jimmy sickened of it early. She found she could not in her heart of hearts work up any real en- thusiasm for the man who allows a girl to make him dance to whatever tune she plays. Duffy, on the other hand, possessing far less of the all-conquering soul where women were concerned than the mate, had offered her no temptation to play any sort of tunes for him to dance to save that of an easy, good- fellowship. And since that tune is essentially a duet, she had had to dance to it too. So there came a time when she could stick this new companion no longer. On two successive nights the all-conquering soul of Mr. Weames bade him attempt to kiss her; which it should have known THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 145 better than to do, but success on former occasions must have made it bold. The first time was in a romantic setting of East- ern moonlight with a faint banjo accompaniment from the distant fo 'castle deck, and the all-conquer- ing soul of Mr. Weames, languishing for demonstra- tion, urged him to kiss her. For a moment what native wisdom the mate possessed murmured caution in his ear, but the urge was too insistent. He tried to kiss her with that brave air of condescension that marks the all-conquering soul. It was a poor try. In the first place, the mate's bearded, liver-white face can hardly be said to have approached Jimmy's within kissing distance, while in the second, Jimmy, affecting not to notice the mate's intention, walked swiftly to the companionway and down it into the saloon. It was an unsatisfactory end to his brave effort and Mr. Weames swore to the moon and threw a marlin-spike in the direction of the banjoist. Neither gave him any satisfaction; the banjo took no more notice than did the moon. Jimmy, on entering the saloon, bade her father "good night," ignored Duffy carefully, and went into i 4 6 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER her cabin, where she decided that she was sick of the mate and damned his presumption in fitting if unmaidenly terms. She had divined the urge of his all-conquering soul. On the second night, Mr. Weames augmented his courage by the larger part of a bottle of whisky. This also permitted, or even suggested, that he should throw an affectionate arm round Jimmy's slender waist and thus render her escape impossible while he again endeavored to press his lips to hers. Again he failed, to the sorrow and rage of his all- conquering soul. Jimmy thrust an exceedingly sharp elbow into the pit of his stomach and said: "Don't be a fool, Mr. Weames. You're drunk!" The mate removed his arm that his hand might massage the pit of his stomach, and said: "I'm not drunk. What's a kiss, hang it all?" "Too much from you," said Jimmy brightly, and went down into the cabin. She was angry with her- self for having given Mr. Weames the impression that he could even think of kissing her, let alone actually attempting it. Duffy looked up from his "Navigation," which Honest Pig was explaining to him, and noticed the flush on her cheeks. He cursed Mr. Weames softly and watched her enter her cabin. Well, her love THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 147 affairs, since she no longer had anything to do with him, were entirely her own business, but for all that he allowed himself to wonder what she saw in the obviously scoundrelly mate. That same mate leaned over the rail to give the pit of his stomach greater ease, and cursed Jimmy loudly and long. He was not used to this sort of love-making. He could not, from the depths of his all-conquering soul, understand how a mere chit of a girl like Jimmy could not only dispense with his caresses but even repel them, and that with unseemly violence. He would kiss her, the stuck-up little minx! Be dam' if he wouldn't! Jimmy, for all that her experiences did not in- clude that of a mate who wanted to kiss her, knew instinctively that Mr. Weames would not remain content with a pain in the pit of the stomach. His all-conquering soul would demand amends, and no more hanky-panky. Quite frankly the mate admitted to himself that he would not be running any risks if it were not that he relied upon Jimmy's independence of spirit. He knew she went to Honest Pig for nothing, relying on her own resource for everything. If she did not like being kissed she would not go to her father to explain her distaste she would explain it herself, 148 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER and Mr. Weames could trust his own all-conquering soul to waive that explanation and overcome the distaste. But he must have underestimated her resource. I think that Jimmy would have dealt quite as firmly with Mr. Weames as she did in any case, but Duffy may have affected it by his effort the follow- ing morning. He had just relinquished the wheel with some reluctance, for in keeping "The Rose" on her course he found an outlet for his romantic energy; an en- ergy, incidentally, which Honest Pig watched with an eagle eye; when Jimmy, cool and refreshing in the sweltering heat, came up from the main deck and leaned against the rail. She watched the hands sluicing down the burning decks, occasionally offering them a word of advice. Duffy noticed that her usually unsullied brow was puckered into a thoughtful frown and that she had all the appearance of being absorbed in some inner conflict. Indeed so absorbed was she that she an- swered Duffy's remark. "Is it going to get any hotter?" he asked. "If it does, we shall fall for something in the way of a storm," she said. Her brow was still thought- THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 149 ful. Then the frown became a scowl as she realized she was talking to the dirty little sneak. She turned round and gazed at the horizon, while the men moved along to an unsluiced part of the deck. "I say/' said Duffy, "that chap Weames isn't an- noying you, is he?" This time he received no answer, but continual snubbing had hardened his finer sensitiveness, so he continued: "If you feel bad about it, I can tell him off. I don't stand by and see people bullied, you know," and he scowled his most adventurous scowl. His remark, when one looks at it, was fatuous in the extreme, but that might be attributed to his nervous- ness. He was making overtures. Jimmy growled in her throat, for a moment hold- ing back her words, then she said slowly to the horizon: "If you don't veer off this 'helpful' tack, I shall have you thrown overboard. Mr. Weames would do it for me cheerfully, Mr. Duff." She still con- templated the far horizon. Duffy looked at the slim back. "Sure!" he said unhappily. "I'm sorry." And 150 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER he went away vainly trying to convince himself that his adventurous heart was hardened against the turn- ing of a slim back. He felt rather helpless against that heart and the back. But this had a deciding effect on Jimmy. It showed her that other people had noticed the work- ings of Mr. Weames' all-conquering soul and that if it worked much longer they would be laughing at her. Her independence was at stake and the time was at hand for resource. That night she called it to her aid. After supper she went on deck as usual, and in the bright moonlight awaited the inevitable coming of Mr. Weames. Ten minutes later he came, brave and bridling, his cautious mind convinced by a gen- erous peg. He greeted her with true manliness. Duffy had watched the mate fortifying himself with a peg of whisky unnecessarily generous for such a warm night, and in spite of his decision to have nothing to do with the matter, and completely dis- regarding Jimmy's threat, he followed Mr. Weames at a sleuthful distance when he went on his all-con- quering errand. By the time he reached the scene of action, it was well started. He heard Jimmy's voice clearly in the still air. THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 151 "Oh, Mr. Weames, you mustn't really, you know you mustn't!" Duffy stopped thunderstruck. Jimmy's tone could only be qualified by one adjective coy. And whatever Mr. Weames must not do, she quite ob- viously would not mind very much if he did. That was what Mr. Weames also understood, but had his cautious mind been unaffected by his generosity in the matter of whisky, this sudden capitulation before his all-conquering soul would have struck him as only suspicious. But his cautious mind was blind. His eyes too could not have been over clear- sighted, for he pursued with all-conquering vigor Jimmy's dim, white-clad figure as it ran coyly down the deck. He felt, with all of the victor's readiness, that he was about to satisfy the insistent urge. This readiness must have added to his blindness, for as he ran he did not see the dim, white-clad figure bring a sort of hop, skip and a jump into its flight. If he had, his cautious mind might have reasserted itself in time to save him, but as it was he caught his feet in a taut, almost invisible length of whip-cord, stretched some six inches from the deck, and staggering, pitched headlong through an open hatch a coal -bunker hatch. He landed with no comfort and less dignity on a i 5 2 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER sliding, choking heap of coal. As he pitched he was aware of the taut whip-cord, but the awareness came a little late. Duffy, who had sped with some eagerness in the wake of Mr. Weames, was able to pull himself up in time to avoid a like calamity. He thanked heaven that his cautious mind was awake, and he forthwith seized the stout, wooden cover used for battening down the hatch, and fixed it securely in its place. Then he untied the whip-cord, rolled it into a ball, flung it overboard, and with leisurely steps, made for the companionway, and "The Rose" steamed blissfully on in happy ignorance of a mate in one of her coal bunkers. Duffy reached the saloon at the same time as the dim, white-clad figure, and he politely made way for it. Honest Pig looked up as they came in together; he watched them carefully. "What have you two been doing now?" he asked when he saw their flushed faces. "Do you always move at a run?" Jimmy mumbled something, looked at Duffy, and saw in his eyes the light of knowledge. He had seen the discomfiture of her liver-faced lover, and pa- tiently she waited for him to tell Honest Pig the THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 153 whole story. But Duffy did not speak; he had learned his lesson. With nothing more enlightening than a polite "good night" he entered his cabin, shut the door and seated himself on the edge of his bunk. He was perturbed, and for that reason took off his horn-rimmed spec- tacles and polished them. He was debating in his mind if it would harm Mr. Weames to spend the night in a coal bunker. He did not want to lose the source of adventure, but at the same time he recog- nized that it might have a salutary effect on him. Then he decided, though up to the moment he had shown none of the signs of it, that it was Jimmy's affair, and not his. With an even mind he fell asleep. I think we ought to go back to Mr. Weames in his coal bunker, swearing and spitting dust, watching the moonlit patch of sky being blotted out as the hatch was battened down. When the light went he swore with what fluency the coal dust would allow, the cautious mind of him fully awakened by his arrival on the coal, all his all-conquering soul aflame with rage. He said "Damn the little minx!" a great many times and worked himself into a fine fury. Occasionally he banged the steel bulkhead with a 154 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER piece of coal. The furnaces, which did nothing to alleviate his sufferings, were in the next section. He conceived during that black, evil night, an un- quenchable, vicious hatred for Jimmy, who, thinking she had only dampened the ardor of an unpleasant fellow, had in reality made for herself an enemy of a bitterness she could scarcely have comprehended. She slept that night the untroubled sleep of one who is satisfied. . . . . . At breakfast the next morning, Jimmy, Honest Pig and Duffy were seated in their places when Honest Pig asked: "Where is Mr. Weames? He ought to be about by now; he wasn't over-drunk last night." The other two surmised circumspectly in differing degrees of cautiousness. "It isn't his watch. Bang his door, Duffy," Hon- est Pig added. Duffy banged the mate's door. That he should receive no answer caused him little surprise. At this moment came a shout of laughter from the lower regions of the ship. MacNab had answered the rapping on the bulkhead. A few seconds later a motley figure walked slowly into the cabin; its face was black, its once immaculate duck was black, and THE LIVER-FACED LOVER 155 it left a trail of black coal dust behind it on the white boards. "Good God ! " cried Honest Pig. "What the devil is it?" "It looks a little like Mr. Weames," said Jimmy with wonderful control. She had a swift contrast of Mr. Weames the lover and Mr. Weames in his present terrible condition, and she wanted badly to laugh. The kitten left in a scurrying hurry. Honest Pig glared at the apparition for a moment. Then he burst into one of his hurricane shouts of laughter, which Jimmy and Duffy discreetly shared. Mr. Weames mouthed for a moment in inarticulate rage, then broke for his cabin door and slammed it behind him. While he scrubbed the worst of the coal from his person, he told himself of all the things he was going to do to Jimmy. He was no longer only a scoundrel he was a dangerous scoundrel. When Honest Pig recovered sufficiently to order Evans to clear up the trail of coal dust, he asked again what it all meant. He could not help but connect the flushed faces of the two on the night before and the havoc rendered on Mr. Weames. The two facts leaped together in his mind. When Jimmy answered, it was in safety, for Honest Pig had laughed. 156 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "He tried to kiss me," she said simply, "so I threw him in a coal bunker." Honest Pig looked at her, admiration growing in his eyes, then he said: "Good! Dam' good!" and he laughed again. Mr. Weames heard the laugh, and he swore viciously. CHAPTER X A BEGINNING AND thereafter the relations of the people in the little world of "The Rose" were again changed. Jimmy and Duffy were once more linked by the murderous scowls with which the mate enlivened all his dealings with them, while Honest Pig began to take a little more interest in the human beings about him; an interest he could hardly help since he dwelt in an atmosphere impregnated with the feelings each was giving forth. This link between Jimmy and Duffy was below the surface, for though outwardly she still preserved a snubbing, disinterested attitude and he felt in his heart all the distress his adventurous mind would allow, they each recognized that the other was an ally in the matter of Mr. Weames. During the next fortnight that "The Rose of Washington Square" spent in fighting a heavy head current to Shanghai, Duffy occupied himself with his navigation. It had all the practice he could have desired, for Honest Pig went down with fever 157 158 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER and Mr. Weames went surlier than ever. Also he drank a great deal of whisky, with the result that the handling of the ship fell much into the hands of Duffy, while Jimmy dropped almost insensibly into the shoes of the mate. She even found herself being shouted at by an infuriated Duffy, who at times would dance up and down the bridge and swear at them all. They both discovered that Hon- est Pig had been right when he alluded to his crew as lazy wharf rats. They certainly did the minimum of work in the maximum amount of time. With Honest Pig's number elevens safely tucked away under his berth, and his virulent tongue rendered weak by fever, they did even less and took more time to do it. On the first day of the second week, however, Duffy, by a combination of skill, speed and a great deal of luck, managed to create an impression in the thick heads of an assembled crew that did much to bring them safely into the port of Shanghai. It was over the matter of a coil, or rather an un- coil, of rope which caught Duffy's eagle eye. He called the bo'sun. "Just a minute, Green. Who's responsible for this?" and he indicated the scattered rope that should have been coiled into a neat heap. A BEGINNING 159 Green, a thick-set, typically sailing-ship sailor with a delicate shade of red brick suffusing his ample countenance, looked carefully at the rope. After some thought, he said briefly: "Timson." He saw no necessity for addressing the super-cargo as "sir." Duffy had slowly come to the conclusion during the past week that if he was going to get "The Rose" into Shanghai, it would not be done by swearing at people from the bridge. He had got to demonstrate. All the most hardened adventurers recognized and employed the great principle of demonstration as the father and mother of result. Duffy had got to display this ability he wanted results. He looked at the coil of rope with a heavy scowl. Obviously, the next step was to pipe all hands on deck. Demonstration is absolutely useless without an audience. "Pipe all hands!" said Duffy, and he clambered onto the bridge and inspected the compass. Jimmy was at the wheel, and she saw his scowl. He seemed very vital to her, which would have warmed his heart had he known, for he desired to look vital. Somewhat languidly the hands appeared below him on the deck, and they gathered into questioning 160 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER knots; Duffy's scowl thickened. Then he shouted in an amazingly loud voice : "Listen to me! There are one or two little things I want to point out to you fellows, and this is the only chance you're going to get of hearing me. I'm getting sick of talking!" The men looked up, amusement their chief emo- tion. Jimmy gazed at Duffy in surprise. "Watch that compass!" he snapped. She watched it, and wondered why. Duffy turned to the hands. "I don't like the way the work on board this boat is being done. Captain Fellowes has put me in vir- tual charge while he's sick, and I'm going to see a little smartening up, or there's going to be hell to pay. I'm not in the habit of permitting slackness or slovenliness on board the ships I captain!" His voice held the traditional ring of icy determination, and in the midst of his shameful nervousness he found a moment to admire his own words. Then he went on: "Is Timson down there?" There was a moment's silence, then a gruff voice answered: "Aye, sir!" Duffy walked deliberately down the ladder of the bridge and stood on the lowest rung. A BEGINNING 161 "Step forward a moment, Timson! " he said, loudly enough for them all to hear. A tall, lanky man came forward and stood some six feet from him. "You are Timson?" asked Duffy. "Aye, sir!" "Do you look after this part of the deck?" Timson looked uncomfortable. "Aye, sir!" "Are you responsible for that rope over there?" The man looked at it. "Aye, sir ! " "Then why in hell isn't it coiled?" shouted Duffy with a suddenness that made them all jump; Jimmy allowed "The Rose" to swing off her course by a point. Timson looked more uncomfortable, and he smiled a little foolishly. He obviously had not grasped the gravity of the situation. Then he said slowly: " 'Aven't 'ad no time, sir!" "Then you've dam' well got to find time," shouted Duffy, even more loudly and with even greater de- termination, and he jumped the six feet that sep- arated him from Timson like a cat and caught that unfortunate disciple of the great principle of demon- stration under his lantern jaw with a small but ex- 162 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER ceedingly hard fist. Timson, surprised and utterly bewildered, staggered backwards and collapsed in the scuppers, where he sat and rubbed his jaw medi- tatively. He was still utterly bewildered. Duffy, thrills of excitement and triumph running up and down his spine, turned on the crew. "Don't let me catch anybody else playing that game I'll use a marlin-spike to the next joker! That will do," he added in level tones, and he mounted the bridge again. The hands dispersed quickly. Jimmy looked at Duffy with something like re- spect in her dark eyes. She had great difficulty in reconciling Duffy, the dirty little sneak, and Duffy displaying one of the qualities she most admired in her father. Quick, decisive action. Further she saw the necessity for it in this case and later she appreciated the results. She did not know that Duffy that same evening presented a surprised Timson with half a pound of tobacco. "The Rose of Washington Square" was an admir- able ship for the next week; she almost captained herself, and Duffy put into practice the valuable knowledge acquired from a small volume of "Lao- Tse's Sayings" which Yen San had given him. In it he found the text of the philosophy, "Govern a A BEGINNING 163 great nation as you would cook a little fish; but little." Duffy applied it to the crew of "The Rose" ; he governed them but a little, and it worked. The next day Mr. Weames began to put in a more regular appearance and Duffy wondered at it until he discovered that the only two cases of whisky in the lazarette were empty. The mate shivered and scowled for a couple of days in spite of the heat, after which he felt better and only scowled. Honest Pig began to move about again, and when "The Rose" put into Shanghai he was fit enough to superintend the coaling. Duffy relinquished the reins of government reluctantly but he saw that in the holding of them he had attained two objects at least a firm belief in his ability to captain a ship and a slight progress into the hardened heart of Jimmy. She snubbed him less frequently and on rare occasions spoke to him without waiting for him to speak first. In the midst of the coaling, when "The Rose" was at her blackest, Duffy took Jimmy ashore firmly. She would not have gone but for the fact that Duffy invited her unexpectedly and she had no refusal to offer; also she wanted to avoid the unromantic and dirty operation of coaling. Honest Pig would not have let her go alone; it was better to have Duffy i64 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER offer himself as a cavalier than to have to ask him to fulfil that role. They walked down the main thoroughfare of Shanghai, with its weird mixture of China and Europe in evidence at every step. All the notices were in English and Chinese, and articles in the shop windows priced in dollars had the Chinese equiv- alent below. The American and European offices were opening with an early morning bustle, the place was full of hurrying people. After their long period at sea, the world seemed indeed full to the two ad- venturers. Duffy led the way to the agents whose address the little collector had given him, and found there await- ing him a letter from his employer, one from Binks and MacArthur enclosing the four "Dalkeith Ad- venture Novels" for the previous month, and further a gratifying check for his salary up-to-date. "We are now rich," he said to Jimmy, in the door- way on their way out, "and lest we suffer from that embarrassment, we will forthwith rid ourselves of it." Jimmy looked very cheerful, and much to her own annoyance and Duffy's satisfaction, smiled happily. Then she remembered her part and frowned. It is difficult to hate a man who is suf- A BEGINNING 165 fering from an embarrassment of riches and wishes to rid himself of the annoyance. Jimmy had not had many opportunities of seeing the brighter side of life in the cities, and she badly wanted to accompany Duffy. But her father, how- ever much he swindled and bamboozled other people, had taught Jimmy that though it is permissible to do all manner of evil things to evil people, one must play the game with oneself. Most of Honest Pig's code was a twisted philosophy born of bitter experi- ence in a world that taught it as the only means of life, but in this one particular, the only one for which Jimmy had found real sympathy, Honest Pig had discovered a spice of truth. He played straight with himself. Jimmy seriously hated Duffy, not with the venom with which Mr. Weames hated her, but with the hate that a vivid, rather savage nature can show; it isolated him from her scheme of life completely. So when Duffy suggested that they should go shopping together and later have lunch at the big hotel on the parade, she debated the ethics of the matter with no little thoroughness. Finally she said firmly: "Look here. If we have lunch, I shall pay for mine. If we have any expenses, I am going to i66 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER stand my share. I want you to understand I am accepting nothing from you beyond your escort. That I cannot very well help. My father wishes it." "Sure," said Duffy hurriedly. This sudden re- minder of how things were between them came as a cloud across the sun. He thrust it from his mind as best he could, but the conscientious manner in which Jimmy insisted on exact calculation when it came to deciding how much Duffy spent on liquor chocolates, which he purchased the moment he had cashed his check, made that forgetting difficult. Duffy told her, when they were back in the street, that he had spent one dollar-fifty on them, but for Jimmy that was not sufficient evidence. She had to reenter the shop and ask the assistant, who told her that they cost two dollars. With great firm- ness she presented him with a dollar. Then they went shopping. At an outfitter's Duffy purchased three more silk shirts and three suits of white drill. After watching the expert Duffy choosing the shirts, Jimmy told the man who served them that she wished for three silk shirts. "The next department, madam. Ladies' Outfit- ting," he said. "I don't want ladies' shirts I want those," said A BEGINNING 167 Jimmy. "There is a good deal more wear in them." "For tennis, madam? I think you'll find them rather heavy." "Heavy for tennis! I do not play tennis," said Jimmy. And she left the department with three excellent but gentleman's extra-weight, best, shan- tung silk shirts. Duffy was pleased with her firmness, but vaguely disturbed that a girl should want to wear men's shirts. But in another department, where Duffy bought three gentleman's extra-weight, best, shan- tung breeches, Jimmy fell instantly and frankly in love with the idea of wearing like garments. The scandalized assistant served her with three pairs of breeches. Duffy gave it up; but he had a vision of Jimmy in a white silk shirt, white silk breeches and brown suede top-boots. It was a vision that appealed to his adventurous mind, and he began to realize that she was the only girl in a thousand who could create that vision and look right. They sent their parcels to "The Rose" by a messenger. Then they retired into a palm lounge and ate a great many various but cooling fruit sundaes. Later still they entered the grill-room of the biggest hotel in Shanghai with determined feet. They were going to lunch. 168 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER The waiters eyed them with some curiosity; Duffy with his brown face, sandy hair and horn-rimmed spectacles, and Jimmy, her dark hair and eyes con- trasting strongly with her white, simple frock, to- gether with the air of hard-bitten adventurousness about the pair, excited no little attention. At the biggest hotel in Shanghai, strange men from the cor- ners of the world eat and loiter awhile. They are adventurers and accepted as such unquestioned, but they have nothing of the youth that these two had. The waiters were eager, and Duffy ordered a simple but satisfying meal. Over their coffee, they talked of the Treasure of the Manchus. "I've worked it out," said Duffy. "Taiho Shan is about two hundred miles northeast by east. We ought to be ashore there within an easy week of our leaving here. The jade will not take long to get aboard." "Are you going to unpack it?" asked Jimmy. She felt she ought not to be talking to Duffy at all, but this seemed a holiday probably when they were on board "The Rose" again she would have little difficulty in hating him as strongly as ever. He was a difficult person to hate. "Yes," answered Duffy, "if it is still in the orig- A BEGINNING 169 inal chests. It will give us something to do on the homeward voyage." "Is Mr. Northcote a very great friend of yours?" she asked him. He did not answer he was looking over her shoulder with a curious expression, almost triumphant. Then he looked down quickly and said: "Don't look round, Jimmy," his voice had dropped to an adventurer's whisper. "Weames is sitting at the next table." Jimmy reached for her purse-bag, took out a small mirror, and in it inspected her flawless features. "Yes, I see him," she said. "What an enormous man he's with. He's much bigger than Daddy. See how his eyebrows meet. He's got a devil of a temper." "Yes," said Duffy; "I wonder who it is?" Mr. Weames and the big man were seated at the neighboring table, their heads bent together in ear- nest conversation. Occasionally the big man would nod with satisfaction as the mate explained some- thing to him. "Weames is supposed to be on board," said Jimmy. "Well, he's not," Duffy remarked, and he inspected the two at the next table with great care. He had i 7 o THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER a triumphant feeling that the source of adventure was not going to disappoint him. It looked ex- tremely fishy. Presently Mr. Weames took out his watch, glanced at it, reached for his panama hat, shook hands with the big man, and after one or two final remarks of some decisive nature, hurried out. The big man sat for a few moments toying with a liquor glass and smiling to himself; he was evidently very pleased with himself. Then he also went out, and the two were left to their conjectures. "Something's going to happen," said Duffy joy- fully, "and it's not going to be a feather-bed affair, whatever it is. Those two were hatching the devil's own game." "They looked like it," Jimmy answered, "but I don't see quite what they can do. At the same time this business has gone a great deal too smoothly for my liking; we're due for trouble of some sort." And they fell to discussing the probable nature of it. Jimmy was not very much impressed with the capabilities of Mr. Weames. She thought him a poor sort of scoundrel, but Duffy was more opti- mistic; he thought that if a piece of villainy had sufficient to show for the effort the mate might rise to it. They tired of the discussion after a while A BEGINNING 171 and the settling of the bill diverted them; again Jimmy paid her share. The afternoon heat drove them again into the palm court and they sat there silent, watching the people, Duffy allowing his eyes to rest on the refreshing beauty of the girl, and again he felt the yearning of his heart and again he told himself he had no business to listen to it. He detected a weakening in the fight and he put it down to the languid warmth of the day. His job was to find the Treas- ure of the Manchus, not to fall in love with a pretty girl. Besides, she still hated him. That evening they returned to "The Rose" in time for supper and found Honest Pig seated with Mr. Weames in the chart-house, poring over a chart of the Archipelago. Honest Pig was ruling a faint pencil line to a small dot in the middle of the blue expanse of sea. "There we are," he said, as they came in, "two hundred and ten miles with nothing in the way. As far as this chart can be relied upon, Taiho Shan is the only island within a hundred mile radius of that particular point. We shall have that jade aboard within ten days." "Good," said Duffy, and looked at Mr. Weames. The mate's usual scowl had given predominance to 1 72 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER a new expression partly sneering, partly trium- phant, but a little uncomfortable. He gave Duffy the impression of a small boy who hears his grown- ups talking of the jam in the cupboard, the jam he covets and has plans to steal. Duffy was as sure as ever he was in his life about anything that Mr. Weames had designs on the Treasure of the Manchus, and his adventurous in- stincts rose within him in an overwhelming flood. He was ready. The mate realized Duffy's interested gaze and replaced the new expression with a more than vicious scowl. It was poisonous, and Duffy scowled back, heartily. Honest Pig watched this interplay with amused surprise he even burst into a small roar of laughter. CHAPTER XI MILK THE discomfort of Mr. Weames was undoubtedly a fact, and a fact that showed in a nervous irritability for the rest of the evening. During supper he kept his head bent and at times fidgeted with a fork. Duffy continued to watch him carefully and with a certain amount of quiet, rather gloating pleasure. Indeed, by the end of the meal he had reduced the mate to a supine fury that burned ominously in that villain's little black eyes when he could no longer avoid meeting Duffy's joyful gaze. It caused him to leave the saloon to take his watch in a savage mood the moment the meal was finished. The others noticed it and remarked on it. Honest Pig was of the opinion that Weames would make a very poor sort of scoundrel if he could not learn to control his feelings, and a heated discussion followed his assertion. Duffy refused to have his villain un- derrated. His will to believe in the mate's wicked- ness was sublime; it quite warped his judgment. Honest Pig finished the argument by suggesting that 173 i 7 4 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER that was what had happened. Therefore Duffy left the cabin in a mood that was not perhaps savage, but at least disturbed. His usual air of self-suffi- ciency was not very evident. That, at all events, is the reason I would suggest for his unfortunate inter- ference in an affair that spoiled the quiet of the evening and temporarily what there may have been of his personal beauty. You will remember that the mate left the cabin first it was his dog-watch. Then apparently Duffy was the next to leave; but actually he was not. Before he went, the kitten, whose young life seemed to have been marked out by Destiny to bear the brunt of many strange and unusual happenings, licked its whiskers of some of Yen San's artistic gravy, surveyed the argumentative scene with a cer- tain distaste, rubbed its head against Jimmy's leg, and then ambled nonchalantly up the companion- way and out into the shadows of the deck. In the shadows it found much to remind it of far-away Aden; though true it found them clean shadows. For a while it examined several details it had not observed before about the construction of a boat davit, chewed the end of a rope, and finally strolled aimlessly into the middle of the deck. Here it evolved a complicated but gyratory game with the MILK 175 end of its tail in the moonlight; a game that occupied all its attention and energy for some while. It was still at it when Duffy came up and began walking up and down in a manner approved by all conspirators, deep in speculation. The kitten was far too absorbed to notice him. Nor did it notice Mr. Weames. Mr. Weames was on the quarter-deck, and his mood had by no means lost its savagery. It did it no good when presently he discovered that he had no tobacco. He cursed, and came down the ladder of the poop. On the third step he slipped, lost his hold, and slithered down the remaining steps in a very ungraceful and undignified way. He arrived at the bottom, cursed again, but more furiously, and walked towards the cabin companion. Then his eyes fell on the kitten and, a moment later, his boot. The kitten banged rather sickeningly against the bulwark, and howled once; and the mate felt a bit better. He had vented his spleen and it cost him nothing; and though it cost the kitten some- thing, it was less than it cost Duffy, who really had nothing to do with it all. Duffy turned at the end of deck, whither his pac- ing had taken him, in time to see the mate's brutal and unnecessary violence on the kitten and to hear 176 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER the howl of that unfortunate animal as it hit the bulwark. It was exactly what Duffy wanted, and his subsequent action was characteristic of him. The mate continued on his way to the companion, feeling a little better. Duffy ran down the deck after him, reached him and touched him on the shoulder. "Just a minute, if you please, Mr. Weames," he said. The mate looked round. "What's the matter now?" he asked, his ill-temper coming out in his voice. "Only a minute, only a minute," repeated Duffy. Then he led the mate into the exact center of the deck, and almost to the same spot where the kitten had been playing. He took the mate by each shoul- der and stood him in front of him, gauging distances with a glittering, determined eye. The mate watched these strange preparations with an ill-concealed, sneering amusement, which for a very good reason, however, did not remain with him long. The reason was this: Duffy drove his fist into the sneering face with an appalling suddenness and force that flung the MILK 177 man across the deck. He fetched up in the scup- pers with a crash that seemed to shake the world. It was the same blow that had so startled Timson when he played his uncomfortable part as a disciple of the great principle of demonstration; a blow that only Duffy's extraordinary luck could have enabled him to use twice. The mate clambered unsteadily to his feet, and Duffy danced towards him, thrilled with a sense of power. "Dear Mr. Weames dear little fellow! And you are going to learn the extreme stupidity of kicking kittens and showing your nasty temper! Come on, come on! " And he jumped up and down with joyful anticipation of flooring the mate again. Mr. Weames clutched a stanchion and wiped his mouth. Then he took out a knife. "Damn you, Duff; you're going to pay for that!" And he hunched himself for a spring; the knife curving forward in an ugly, vicious sweep. For a second Duffy eyed this tangible evidence of the mate's unsporting instinct with eyes that were anxious and a little indignant. Then his luck gave him one last display of its potentialities and forthwith flickered out. He made a vigorous lunge i 7 8 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER with his foot that caught the mate's wrist and kicked the knife out of his hand. It struck the rail and splashed into the quiet water of the dock. That, as I have just remarked, was the last piece of good fortune that Duffy experienced during the whole painful incident. Mr. Weames snarled and swore and leaped. The two men were much the same height, but Weames had all the advantage of years, and the weight and breadth they gave him, with the result that the ensuing fight was a foregone conclusion; a conclusion that would have come sooner, perhaps, if Duffy had not been remarkably superior in his speed and foot work, and if Jimmy, followed by Honest Pig, had not come upon the scene at the outset that is, at the moment Mr. Weames sprang. They had heard the crash of the mate's fall, which was the first intimation they received that things were not entirely peaceful on board. And so, like the rest of "The Rose's" personnel, they pro- ceeded to take an intelligent and quite unbiassed interest in the moonlit battle. For the first few minutes Duffy managed to keep out of the mate's reach, occasionally lingering in the face of one of his whirlwind rushes to plant careful telling blows on the more tender portions of his MILK 179 anatomy. He derived enormous satisfaction from the sudden grunts of pain that told him when his fists got home. After a while the mate gave up his whirlwind tactics and at the expense of his desire to give his audience a chance of seeing a fighter at work, contented himself with a methodi- cal, ding-dong exchange of blows with his lighter opponent. All the time, however, he had the sat- isfaction of knowing that he was driving Duffy back and that he would have to make a stand some- time. Then he would teach him to hit men under the jaw indiscriminately. We ought to turn to Jimmy at this point, and examine her feelings about the matter. They were, as a matter of fact, very much those of her father and the men who were looking on. She was concerned rather with the technicalities of the fight than her personal feelings about the fight- ers. She completely alienated all desire to ask why these two should be battering each other about so absorbedly. She was simply interested in the ef- fect the cause mattered little. Had she known that Duffy had championed the weak her kitten she might, or indeed she would, have been less impersonal. Probably she would have stopped things before they went as far as they did. 180 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER And so she watched; leaning against the rail, her head tilted back, her eyes half-closed, her breath coming a little quickly. Once or twice she said something to Honest Pig, who either agreed or dis- agreed in cryptic grunts. "It will do that little man a lot of good to be knocked around a bit," she said. "Weames seems to have settled down to it in real earnest. Do you think he'll kill him?" "Not if I have anything to do with it," Honest Pig growled into his beard. "Duff is too good to waste in a scrap with a skunk like that." "Glad he's fighting fair." "Who? Duff? He's not much chance of doing anything else." "No; I mean Weames," said Jimmy. "I should have thought he'd have tried a knife. He's that sort." "He is." "Well, he's whiter than I thought," she admitted. She had not been in time to see the mate's instant resort to that lethal weapon, nor Duffy's expert dis- posal of it. By this time the fight was very obviously a one- sided affair, and one or two murmurs came from the men. They had no love for Weames; he did MILK 181 not inspire it, and though they had a wholesome respect for Duffy's speed and fistic ability, which, indeed, was rapidly dwindling, they liked him better. Jimmy suddenly realized that she wished some one would stop the matter before anything serious hap- pened to Duffy, and disgusted with herself she in- stantly thrust the wish from her, and concentrated all her attention on the technicalities. She won- dered when, how, and where the mate would use the finishing blow; the effect of it on the unfortunate Duffy she did not allow herself to contemplate. She refused to soften. And Mr. Weames proceeded. Duffy was pretty nearly exhausted, and his legs seemed to have lost all connection with the rest of him. He tottered and swayed, and hit at the re- lentless, dogged destruction that drove him where it would, with feeble blows that grew every second more feeble. He was bleeding from the nose and mouth, and a cut in his forehead trickled blood into his eyes. His spectacles had disappeared early in the fight, and he wondered vaguely what had hap- pened to them; they were the only pair he pos- sessed. Altogether he felt very little of a true adventurer and he disliked himself intensely. Towards the 182 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER end a terrific jolt in the throat flung him back and down he lay limply for a second, wondering why the mate did not kick him. He forgot that the mate was fighting for an audience he wanted them to see a more spectacular finish. He did not dis- appoint them. Duffy picked himself slowly to his feet, giddy and sick at heart and very sore. Then the gallant spirit in him urged him to one last effort. He gathered himself together and made a decidedly vigorous attack. But it was quite blind and barely conscious. "God! But he's game!" said Honest Pig, and he took a step forward. "Leave them be," said Jimmy quickly, and she caught his arm. "Let them finish it out." She knew the end had come and she knew she would not like it; but her determination that the good that was coming to Duffy should not be hin- dered, prompted her words and her detaining hand on her father's arm. Then she caught her breath and with an effort kept her eyes open; she would not be weak! The mate drew back from Duffy's rush, keeping him off with one hand; smiling triumphantly as MILK 183 he worked round so that the moon shone full on the boy. Then he drove his fist hi a blow that sounded across the spellbound deck, full into Duffy's face. It was a poor blow, technically, and not as deadly as it looked and sounded, but it was spectacular. It called a gasp from his audience. Duffy swung round to it, his arms whirling, stopped, poised for a second, and then sagged for- ward to his knees, twisting as he did so. Then he toppled quietly over onto his side and lay still. The cause of the weak had found a martyr. What the mate would have done next is a little doubtful, and we can only surmise that he might not have followed very conscientiously the admir- able rules laid down by the Marquis of Queensbury, for he was out to kill. Mercifully, however, Honest Pig ran forward and stood over the fallen adven- turer. "That's enough, Weames. I think you are still taking the watch," he said sharply. The mate shook himself scowled at his van- quished foe, and then turned with a: "Aye, aye, Captain Fellowes;" he went back to the quarter-deck. Later he swore a bit and rubbed his jaw, and then settled down to cultivate an active 184 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER contempt for Duffy; which in the light of future events was as well, although Duffy was in no state of mind or body to realize it at the moment. As he lay there on the deck, his senses, his head and his conception of himself as a hardened ad- venturer rambled round the four quarters of the star-lit heavens. He was unhappy. Presently he stirred, aware that he was very wet and that water was being poured over him by two of the men. Out of the corner of his sound eye he perceived Jimmy. She was looking down at him with a critical, still dispassionate expression. Coldly calculating was what she intended it to be and coldly calculating it was. Duffy sat up. "Feeling better?" she inquired. He nodded slowly and dragged himself up with the aid of his self-appointed seconds. "Thanks: I think I can manage," he said, and passed his hand over his eyes. Then he swayed again. "Hold up, son, hold up!" said one of the men, and between him and his companion, Duffy was assisted down to his cabin. Jimmy followed the dismal procession and picked up the spectacles of the fallen which were glittering MILK 185 at the side of the companion way; they were un- broken. Duffy lay back in his berth and dabbed his face with a towel, conscious only of his extreme soreness and the vivid picture that Jimmy made as she stood in the doorway and watched him. He wished most heartily that she would go away; he wanted to be alone that he might rearrange his scattered wits and regain the dignity that should be so obvious in a hardened adventurer. Then he lost everything that remained of his bat- tered self-respect. Honest Pig appeared behind the girl and smiled in a friendly, sympathetic way; a tribute indeed from a man who kept his sympathy buried deep in a strange, savage heart and very, very rarely allowed it to show itself. Duffy appre- ciated the smile, but he did not appreciate Honest Pig's words: "Give him a clean up, Jimmy, my devil; he looks as though he could do with one." Jimmy hesitated a moment; then remembered that she would do as much for a dog, and nodded. Hon- est Pig smiled again, bade Duffy "Good night," and went. Duffy groaned helplessly. Then Jimmy became coolly efficient with a sponge and towel: she uttered no word unless it 1 86 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER was a short direction that amounted to command when she wanted him to turn his head or hold the towel while she bandaged the cut on his forehead. Taking one thing with another and adding to them this extremely unadventurer-like experience of having to be bound up and be sympathized with, Duffy can be excused the impression that the world was a very horrible and highly disappointing place with no proper respect at all for its more romantic inhabitants. If it had not been for the bandage that hid the top of his head from his eyes up, he would have scowled malignly. When Jimmy finished her task she left him, feel- ing virtuous but a little disappointed in herself. She ought to have sent for one of the hands to do this first-aid work on a dirty little sneak; and from this we can see how completely she had resumed her emo- tion concerning him after its brief relaxation in Shanghai during the day. She had picked up the thread of her hate and her contempt for him where she had dropped it the interval had not changed things at all. Before she closed the door on him, however, she relieved her feelings a little by saying in a tender tone: "Good night, Mr. Duff; you'll do nicely now; get MILK 187 to sleep as soon as you can. I will send Evans in with a bowl of milk good night! " Milk! Duffy growled into his pillow and turned on his side. Milk! How ultimately adventurous! ( Presently Evans came and brought with him the milk. Also came the wiser and sadder kitten, hold- ing its tail gallantly erect with a fine spirit. It entered the cabin on three small legs, determined to make a show of things. Damn the mate! Of course the kitten may have come to thank its fallen cham- pion, but my own feeling is that it came in pursuit of the bowl of milk however, it is a matter of small importance. At all events Duffy dragged back the remainder of his pride when Evans had gone, by putting the bowl on the floor and turning his face to the bulk- head. The kitten lapped. Duffy lay awake for a while and disliked every- thing and everybody, thoroughly ashamed of him- self. Later he fell into a troubled sleep with a grate- ful but replete kitten curled in a warm and comfort- able ball upon his feet. Another day was done. CHAPTER XII AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS AT eight bells the next morning "The Rose of Wash- ington Square" put her nose on the thin pencil line and started for the black dot Taiho Shan. At three bells Captain Fellowes walked into his chart-house, and reached down the log-book to record this fact. On top of the log-book was his cash box. He caught the handle to lift it off and the lower part of the box swung open, scattering the contents on the table. For a moment Honest Pig looked at the open box and the litter of papers in surprise. Then he put the box on the table and with trembling fingers he sorted them through. The directions for finding the Treasure of the Manchus were missing. For a moment Honest Pig stood aghast, his lips working, his jaw limp. Then the man of action pre- vailed and his jaw assumed a truculent angle. He bellowed like an angry bull at the damned nerve of the thing. Duffy was on the bridge when the first burst of its AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS 189 bellowing issued from the chart-house. He hurried down to it and into its doorway to see Honest Pig snatching a pistol out of a pigeon-hole. "What the deuce is it?" asked Duffy in some anxiety. The war-like appearance of Honest Pig was alarming. "Some devil has burst in my cash-box and stolen the directions," he shouted. "Who?" "I don't know, but I'm dam' well going to find out!" Honest Pig's determination was a fine thing to see; his jaw was even more aggressive. "When were they stolen?" asked Duffy, arrang- ing this new development in his mind. "They were there yesterday morning and I haven't had my eye off the chart-house except dur- ing the night. Somebody got in then. My God, the devil's cheek of it." Honest Pig commenced bellow- ing again, and he made for the open door. Duffy closed it and stood there with his back to it. "Look here, Captain Fellowes," he said clearly and decisively, "we're not going to do any good looking for them that way/' and he pointed to Hon- est Pig's pistol. "If we're to find them it will be by careful investigation. I have learned that work- ing in the dark, secretly, is far more effective in 190 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER cases of this kind than blustering about where every- body can see you. It puts them on their guard." Duffy had dropped naturally into the character of Vont Gathers, sleuth and detective. Honest Pig quieted down a little to the extent of slipping the pistol into his pocket. "What do you propose to do?" he asked. He seemed disappointed in Duffy. The watch and wait attitude did not appeal to him, and he felt that Duffy's adventurousness should demand instant ac- tion. "First we will hold a council of war," said Duffy, and he went out to find Jimmy. He found her lying in a cane chair under the awning, reading Lao-Tse. Duffy approached her after ascertaining that the deck was empty. "It's happened," he said in a whisper. "Come on. They have opened the first round," and he led the way into the chart-house. She saw the scattered contents of the open cash-box and watched Duffy close the door. "Weames has collared the directions," he said, and there was a gleam of triumph in his eye. "What?" cried Honest Pig. "Weames?" "Weames has collared the directions," Duffy re- peated. "Who else?" AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS 191 "How do you know?" asked Honest Pig. "Nobody else would have any object. I am sure he took them." "Yes," Jimmy agreed. "We know he's quite likely to have taken them, but what can he do with them?" "Yes, why has he taken them?" Honest Pig broke in. "And how are we going to pick up the Treas- ure without them? We've got to get them back, and I'm going to shoot the dam' skunk. I've been look- ing for an excuse." His voice rose. "All in good time," said Duffy, "but listen to me a moment." He seated himself at the table, and with the expert's mind, reconstructed for the benefit of the other two. "Weames is a scoundrel, we know that. Weames is on board this boat to queer our pitch. I don't know quite where he comes from, but it doesn't really matter. Anyway, he stole the directions dur- ing the night, and handed them over to a big, bearded ruffian, leaving it to the last possible moment so that they should not be missed until we were well at sea and far from Shanghai." "Big, bearded ruffian?" asked Honest Pig, for whom the reconstruction of the affair was moving a little swiftly. i 9 2 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Yes," said Duffy with a frown at the interrup- tion. "Jimmy and I saw him in the grill-room where we had lunch yesterday in Shanghai. Weames was with him and they were hobnobbing hard about something. This is what it was." Honest Pig turned to Jimmy for confirmation. "Yes, that's true," she said. "I'm beginning to see what Mr. Duff is driving at. Go on." "Well," Duffy continued, "Weames probably sold the information about our quest to the big man, and stole the directions for an additional consideration. He must have known the risk I can see why he didn't desert when he did it. He must have known, too, that we would suspect him before any one else." He looked puzzled. "What next?" asked Honest Pig. "The big man will take a boat and the directions, go to Taiho Shan and lift our jade." "The devil!" said Honest Pig. "We must get back to Shanghai and and " "and what?" asked Duffy. Honest Pig looked worried. "We could cable Northcote for the directions," he said. "And get them, I expect, but what use would they be if the Treasure has already been lifted?" Duffy AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS 193 felt he had the whip-hand of the situation. He was glad they would not have to cable the little collector. It would not seem very expert. "No," he said, "we will not go back to Shanghai, we will get to Taiho Shan just as fast as we dam' well can, and before the big man." "What's the use of that, if we haven't any direc- tions for finding the stuff?" Honest Pig looked tri- umphant. "We have got directions," said Duffy, and he enjoyed the dramatic effect of his words. Honest Pig bounced to his feet. "What do you mean?" he said. "I have a copy of the directions," Duffy said quietly. "Mr. Northcote gave it me when I agreed to superintend the lifting of the jade." "The devil he did!" cried Honest Pig. "I didn't know!" "No," replied Duffy, "you didn't know. If you had, so would have Mr. Weames. I tell you I've suspected him from the beginning." "Where are they?" asked Jimmy. "Are they safe?" Duffy looked at her with a slightly injured ex- pression. i 9 4 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Perfectly safe," he said. That a hardened adven- turer should run risks with important documents! "Then I can shoot the skunk," said Honest Pig in a relieved tone, and he put his hand in his pocket for the pistol. "No," said Duffy firmly. "I am not going to have any shooting yet." "Whose ship is this?" demanded Honest Pig. "Damnation, are you forgetting, Duffy?" "No, I'm not!" said Duffy. "But the Treasure end of this game is mine. Weames has put his oar into it, and he's mine he's part of the Treasure game," and he banged the table to emphasize his words. Honest Pig started to speak and stopped with a growl, while Jimmy looked at Duffy hard. For the first time in her life she had seen her father bull- dosed that was the word bull-dosed in his own chart-house. And Duffy had done it Duffy who had been so licked the night before. But Duffy thought nothing about it, he was content that he had preserved the source of adventure. He felt he owed something to Mr. Weames for his bringing the big man into the story and increasing its adven- turous possibilities. He was grateful to him. "We must watch the mate carefully, and with- AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS 195 out arousing his suspicions," he said. "In the mean- time let us see MacNab about a little more steam. If we can get to Taiho Shan twenty-four hours ahead of the big man, it will be more than we shall need." Honest Pig opened the door and called to one of the hands: "Ask Mr. MacNab to step this way, if he pleases." The man went on his errand and Honest Pig turned to Duffy. "Am I to talk to MacNab, or will you, young man?" He spoke with a trace of irony in his voice. Duffy wisely said he wanted to think, and when MacNab entered the chart-house, he appeared to be absorbed with a pair of compasses and a chart. MacNab was wiping his face with an oily rag and swearing at the heat; he brought the romantic smell of hot oil with him. He sat in a chair and looked round. "It's hot, Capt'n Fellowes, dam' hot. Did ye want to see me?" "Yes, MacNab; I want another steady five knots for the next thirty hours," said Honest Pig. "Can we do it?" Mr. MacNab gazed at him with an aggrieved ex- pression and said: i 9 6 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "What maur, what maur ! Why, mon, d'ye want to lift them en j ins off their Ham' plates? This is no record breaker, this boat. She's guid, but she's not fast." "Five extra knots an hour mean everything to us now, MacNab. Can we do it?" "Well it's a question of the enjins I canna sit on them," said MacNab. He believed in steady, un- labored speeds. "Those engines were refitted five months ago," said Honest Pig. "We must have another five knots. We must have them!" he added in a small shout. "Steady, mon; I'm telling ye ye canna blow the guts oot of a set of enjins in the middle of the China seas for the sake o' five knots. We're a sight awa' fra Tilbury." MacNab's brogue was broaden- ing. Duffy looked up from the chart. "Well, will you do your best for us, Mr. MacNab? There's been some dirty work aboard this ship, and we're trying to circumvent it," he said. "Dirty work?" cried the engineer. "What dirty work?" For a moment Duffy hesitated, then he told Mac- Nab the whole story. He saw that MacNab could be obstinate, but by appealing to his Scotch sense AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS 197 of straight-dealing, he might squeeze out those extra five knots. Mr. MacNab, a stanch Presbyterian, saw the sit- uation, wiped his face again with the oily rag, touched his forelock to Jimmy, and disappeared down the engine-room companion. Presently the squat funnel of "The Rose" blackened the blueness of heaven with an ever-thickening belch of dirty smoke. The speed crept up and up until the increase showed a full five knots; here it wavered awhile before dropping half a knot. At a four-and-a-half increase it remained steady. Duffy took the wheel and watched the compass with an eagle eye. "The Rose" rarely shifted half a point. For all Duffy's injunctions that nothing should give Mr. Weames cause for alarm or suspicion, the mate could scarcely be expected not to wonder at this sudden increase of speed. He observed it, he wondered at it, and the scowl on his face deepened and thickened until it was the veriest father of all scowls. Then he interviewed Green, the bo'sun; he was a particular friend of Green's and he had little difficulty in extracting from him the story of the council in the chart-house. He connected the visit i 9 8 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER of Mr. MacNab to that council with the sudden in- crease in the ship's speed. His scowl became per- manent. Before the evening meal he went into his cabin to cool his interior economy with a little whisky, and he bethought him of his revolver. He slipped it into his hip pocket, then as an afterthought took it out and inspected the chambers. It was unloaded and Mr. Weames would have sworn from the bottom of his much damned soul that it had been fully loaded when last he saw it. He opened his chest for some more cartridges; the package was missing. Mr. Weames stamped up and down the cabin for a moment in a fury of rage he felt not only sold, but a little afraid. This work- ing in the dark, when somebody other than himself did the working, was disquieting to a man of his ragged, whisky-sodden nerves. This problem of the missing cartridges puzzled him to the extent of causing him to forget the whisky. The only place where he could be certain of finding a revolver would be the deck-house, where a small armory was kept under Honest Pig's watch- ful eyes. All through supper the matter so troubled and absorbed his mind that he did not notice the air of AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS 199 tension that pervaded the main cabin. Jimmy and Honest Pig watched him like terriers at a rat's hole. Duffy, had he not foregone the meal to ensure "The Rose's" undeviating course, might have slackened that tension. It would have aroused the suspicions of the most guileless of arch-angels. Immediately after the meal the mate left the saloon, and when the others gathered under the awning there was no sign of him. Honest Pig was in favor of a search for him, but Duffy dissuaded him. "He can't do much more mischief, there's not much room for it. He still thinks we know nothing of the theft of the directions." "Why has his scowl got worse then?" asked Jimmy, putting down Lao-Tse. "Bad whisky," said Duffy, "or he's discovered I've taken his cartridges." Honest Pig looked at him. "You took his cartridges?" "Yes. I threw them out of his cabin port when he went aft, after lunch," said Duffy. "He's much better without them." "That's so," agreed Honest Pig. He would have agreed more heartily if he'd seen Mr. Weames slip into the deck-house fifteen minutes before, and slip 200 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER out a second later with a revolver in each side-pocket and a trouser pocketful of cartridges. As we have seen, Honest Pig still felt that Mr. Weames wanted shooting; he had never felt the desire for instant and decisive action so strongly as he had in this case. But if he had seen Mr. Weames making his way into the fo'castle at that moment by a roundabout route that avoided the space of deck under the awning, that desire would have over- come all Duffy's cautious preaching. Only on very rare and official occasions does the officer of a ship visit the men's quarters. The visit of Mr. Weames could under no circumstances be termed official. He remained in it for a full two and interesting hours. When he left, an observer in the bright moonlight would have noticed a certain lack in the mate. He lacked his scowl. Duffy lay awake till early morning, his busy mind working on a thousand plans and plots, turning over all the sea adventure stories he could remember, searching for the next move. Many possible ones presented themselves and were thoroughly debated, or summarily rejected. By the time sleep overcame him, he had decided one thing, and that whatever AN EXTRA FIVE KNOTS 201 the move, it would be played in the open, and fur- ther, it would not be bloodless. He looked forward to it with all the adventurer's eagerness for the ex- citing things of life. CHAPTER XIII MUTINY BREAKFAST, which Evans had set under the awning, was early the next morning. The sun had broken through a pearly mist, turning the sea and sky to gold. Duffy had just come off his watch and was below, sprucing up. Jimmy, as she sat at the table, could hear him whistling cheerfully it was the cheerfulness of an adventurer who is about to take the spice of life. Jimmy had found since their shopping expedition that it was more and more of a task to hate Duffy as she told herself she should. His demonstration with Timson, his council of war over the missing directions and furthermore the bull-dosing of her father, and lastly the subtle alliance between them in the matter of the mate and the gameness of his fight with him, had all helped towards the building of a half -a wakened admiration for him that discom- forted and dismayed her. It aroused a smoldering resentment in her heart that he should have won that admiration with apparently no direct effort, a MUTINY 203 resentment which she knew perfectly well was un- just. A psychologist would tell you that it was a form of defense, a defense not against him so much as against herself. As she thought over these things, Duffy appeared, radiant and excessively cheerful, and he bid her "good morning" in a cheerful, friendly voice. Also, he complimented her upon the becoming effect of her white silk shirt, breeches and suede top-boots. To her horror she found herself blushing, and it so upset her that she forgot to snub him. Almost angrily she told herself she did not care whether he liked her appearance or not. His eyes were frankly admiring and she saw that they were not on her clothes. They were on her face. The blush came again and she blessed her father for arriving at the unhappy moment. Honest Pig, also ; was cheerful. "Good mornin', Jimmy. Good mornin', Duffy!" he cried. "Inside three hours we ought to sight Taiho Shan and then for the Treasure! Where's our pet villain?" "I heard him in his cabin," said Duffy. "At least I heard a cork go. It's about the only sound that penetrates the partition. Still want to shoot him?" 204 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "I shouldn't mind," admitted Honest Pig, "but we're pretty sure to have licked his scoundrelly friend with our speed. As long as we get the dam' jade it doesn't much matter about the mate. Time to deal with him later." Jimmy was glad of the conversation that occupied Duffy's attention. She did not want him to look at her like that; if she could have felt indignant, it might have been different, but she could not. She demanded of herself the whereabouts of her inde- pendence; it seemed sadly lacking this morning. Evans came with a creation from the expert hands of Yen San, and Honest Pig eyed it joyfully. In the early days of the voyage he had held suspicions of some of those same creations until their invariable tastiness dulled his distrust. He now relied blindly upon the artistry of Yen San. "Tell Mr. Weames breakfast is ready, Evans," he said. In a few minutes the mate appeared jovial, no scowl sullying his unbeautiful features, not even the ghost of a frown. The three gazed at him in amaze- ment. Not since the days before his night in the coal bunker had Mr. Weames been so painfully cheerful. His good humor flowed from him in an endless stream he was sticky with it. Before he MUTINY 205 had been at the table a minute and a half he had made two jokes, bad jokes admittedly they were, but still jokes. Duffy felt a wave of suspicion float over him. Mr. Weames' cheerfulness was suspicious in itself, but the two jokes threw the matter far beyond suspicion in the realm of certainty. The devil in Mr. Weames was uppermost. The mate directed most of his cheerfulness at Jimmy; he almost simpered at her and he certainly ogled her like an evil spider at a fly. Jimmy smiled sweetly at him all the time. At the end of the meal Honest Pig climbed up onto the bridge, Mr. Weames disappeared below, while Jimmy and Duffy remained under the awning. For a moment Jimmy entertained the desire for flight, but she could not indulge it without letting it appear obvious and therefore a sign of weakness. Duffy leaned back in his chair and half-closed his eyes, allowing them to rest on the girl's face. It was beautiful; even at this time when adventure stalked cheerfully about the ship, he no longer made any attempt to curb his heart with his adventurer's mind. He almost admitted that the adventure owed half its glory to this independent, dark-eyed girl who hated him. He no longer looked upon that 206 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER hatred as something to disturb him; rather did it intrigue him. He remembered now that Hawthorne firmly averred in one of his books that hatred and love are kindred emotions, and are by their very difference, yet sameness of essence, transmutable. Of the process Duffy knew nothing and indeed cared less; he was a patient soul, as we have seen before. Jimmy realized the scrutiny after a moment and said almost fiercely: "Don't look at me like that!" "Like what?" asked Duffy, opening his eyes and sitting up. "You know perfectly well what I mean," said Jimmy. She felt she had not helped herself very much by her outburst and she changed the subject. There was the suspicion of a smile on Duffy's lips. "Whatever is Mr. Weames doing? He must be playing some very deep game," she said. "He's obnoxiously friendly." "He certainly is," said Duffy. "I should have thought he would feel very un- comfortable and worried if he's stolen the direc- tions," she said. "He must be afraid all the time that we will discover they have gone." "One would think so," Duffy agreed. "But it MUTINY 207 looks as though he doesn't care very much whether we do or whether we don't. Even the extra four- and-a-half knots, which even if they did not tell him we knew what he was up to, would put the 'wind up' him as far as his big friend is concerned. It must have queered his calculations. Actually I believe he knows we have discovered the theft, in which case our extra speed shows we can do without the directions he's stolen. But if that is so he doesn't appear to worry." They were silent for a while, then Duffy rose, found Jimmy her volume of Lao-Tse, and went be- low to his cabin. There he took Gilbert out of his case, fitted the magazine and slipped him into his hip pocket. Then he returned to the deck. He had provided for emer- gencies after the manner of a true adventurer. For the next hour he studied the beauty of Jimmy with great esthetic satisfaction' to his spirit. At five bells the starboard horizon assumed a hazy line, like a hair on the clean edge of it. At seven bells "The Rose of Washington Square" hove to in a small lagoon and Taiho Shan lay within a cable's length. The island that had held the Treasure of the Manchus in its lonely keeping through the weary 208 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER years was a dot, a small dot, in the midst of a blue infinity. It was no bigger than its name, and barer than the barest. Three trees on the edge of a low cliff and a few scrubby patches of grass throve thinly in the sandy soil, attempting vainly to give the impression of vegetation. It was an unromantic, desolate spot. Duffy stood on the bridge and looked at it, Jimmy and Honest Pig stood by his side, the crew lined the rail, and they all looked at it. The thoughts that passed through their minds varied consider- ably. We will examine Duffy's it is his adventure. To begin with he was not disappointed with Taiho Shan. It looked as a truly romantic island should look unromantic; it would fulfil all the expectations he held of it. But one point troubled his expert mind which did not concern Taiho Shan so much as the quest of its Treasure. This was the point: trouble in all the best adventures invariably comes some time before the actual climax; trouble should attend the whole business from the raising of the curtain to the grand finale. True in this case, Duffy admitted the direc- tions for finding the Treasure had been stolen, but as trouble from the adventurer's point of view, it MUTINY 209 had been overcome too easily by the simple expedi- ent of possessing another copy of those directions. And now, to all appearances, the actual lifting of the jade was to be but a matter of time and a certain amount of energy in the hot sun. Duffy frankly wanted trouble. To be able to carry the Treasure of the Manchus in safety to the little col- lector with the flag of success flying from the mast through evil plots and bloodthirsty efforts on the part of rival adventurers, would give his future standing as an adventurer a sound foundation. As a qualification it would be invaluable. Duffy wanted trouble, and he got it they all got it. It came in the shape of Mr. Weames, standing on the roof of the deck-house, his legs firmly apart, with a pistol in each hand. He drew attention to himself by flicking a piece out of the wheel with a bullet. At the crack of the shot, the three on the bridge swung round and beheld the piratical figure. "Stick 'em up! Stick 'em up, damn you!" yelled the mate. There was a second's breathless silence and hesi- tation; then Honest Pig, his face distorted with rage, slowly lifted his hands. Jimmy raised hers. They 210 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER were both unarmed and completely taken by sur- prise. Duffy, on the other hand, was armed and, apart from the suddenness of Mr. Weames' intervention, unsurprised. He had hoped for something of this kind, and his previous disappointment vanished. For a moment he thought of Gilbert waiting in his hip pocket, vicious and deadly, itching to be drawn by his owner's expert hand and used before the mate could even see his flash. Duffy, by some ef- fort of will, resisted the temptation to be expert. In the first place he might, by an unlikely error of judgment, only wound Mr. Weames, in which case the mate would go down but he would go down shooting. Jimmy was too close to him for Duffy to run the risk of that happening. In the second place a glitter down on the left caught his eye and he turned his head slightly. The glitter came from a pistol, held in the unwav- ering hand of Green, the bo'sun. It covered the bridge. Every man of the hands held a weapon of some sort an iron bar, a marlin-spike, and in some cases a knife. It had all the appearances of a well-staged and orthodox mutiny. Duffy was satisfied; he lifted his hands above MUTINY 211 his head in the breathless silence. Then Honest Pig found his rage-quivering voice and spluttered: "What the hell, Weames? What the hell?" And he bounced a little in his impotent rage. "Keep still, dam' you, keep still!" said the mate. "I'd drill you without a second thought, you dam' slave-driver. We're sick of your bullyin' ways!" "It's mutiny, that's what this is! Mutiny on high seas!" yelled Honest Pig. "My God, I'll have you all strung up for this! " "You won't be in a position to string anybody up, Captain Fellowes," said the bo'sun. "We will deal with you all right, not 'arf we won't." The hands murmured blasphemous agreement. "Is MacNab in this?" asked Honest Pig of the mate, ignoring the bo'sun. "He was, up to a few minutes ago," answered Mr. Weames. "But he wouldn't listen to reason until Smith persuaded him with a piece of steel piping. Smith says he can run the engine-room, so we're all right there. Good man, MacNab; I'm sorry he was so obstinate." "Oh, the devils!" Jimmy said between her teeth. "The devils!" Duffy scowled; he might have stopped things earlier, but then he might have made them worse 212 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER by moving too soon. He could not tell. He had held a great liking for the little Scotch engineer. "Now," said the mate, "come off that bridge, the three of you, and get into the chart-house; move sharply and keep those hands up! I don't want any more deaths. We can call one an accident, but four accidents look fishy but I wouldn't think twice if you started foolin' ! Come on ! Move ! " They moved, Duffy contriving to lead the way so that he was first inside the chart-house. The moment he was round the door he slipped Gilbert out of his pocket into the top of his boot. He did it with remarkable speed and lack of unnecessary movement. No one perceived it; not even Jimmy, who was following directly behind him. Duffy thanked heaven that foresight is an adventurer's first essential, for Mr. Weames and the bo'sun followed them into the chart-house, and while the mate kept his pistols on them, the bo'sun ran his hands over their pockets. From Honest Pig he took a sheath-knife and from Duffy, Gilbert's spare magazine; it did not seem to strike him as strange that the magazine should be alone, and he made no additional search for the pistol to which it belonged. Green seemed to be a trusting fellow for a mutineer, and Duffy observed his lack of thor- MUTINY 213 oughness with a smile of contempt. If ever he played the role of mutineer, he would play it as it should be played with unceasing suspicion. Mr. Weames was too occupied with telling Honest Pig what he thought about him and gloating over them to notice the bo'sun's carelessness. He was poisonous, and they were glad when he and the bo'sun went away, locking the door after them and leaving them alone. "Well," said Honest Pig with the pathetic air of a strong man worsted by cunning. "This is a hell of a fine business. Why the devil couldn't you have let me shoot that skunk when I wanted to. We wouldn't be in this mess now." Duffy accepted the rebuke in silence. "What is Mr. Weames playing at?" asked Jimmy of the world at large. "This mutiny is an excuse for something or other." There was a long silence while they watched two of the hands screw up the window and place heavy pieces of timber across it. These they also screwed firmly home, rendering it impossible as a means of escape. "I think I can see what this means," said Duffy slowly. "My guess was right. Weames discovered somehow that we knew the directions had been 214 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER stolen, saw the extra speed, assumed we had a copy of them and were suspecting a rival attempt to lift the jade; so he engineered the mutiny in order to hold us up until his big friend arrived. He gave your direct action methods" Duffy turned to Hon- est Pig "as an excuse to the hands for mutiny. He must have put in a little revolutionary agitating, some time." "He wouldn't need to do very much," growled Honest Pig. "That dirty crowd would as soon mu- tiny as play loyal. Show 'em a little cash and an easy time and they'd not worry any about the chance of chokey when we got home. We're some way away, y'know." "That's so," said Duffy, and he dug into his boot, fished up Gilbert, and slid him into his hip pocket. Honest Pig's admiration was good to see. "Good ! " he said. "Dam' good ! " "Gilbert will be useful," said Duffy. "I count him as a distinct asset; there are ten good cartridges in his magazine. One can do quite a lot of damage with ten good cartridges." He almost smacked his lips. "I wish I had a gun," said Jimmy, "and I wouldn't need more than one cartridge; I could get that devil with it. I'm thinking of MacNab." MUTINY 215 Her lips, usually full and generous, were drawn in a thin line; she looked very savage. Duffy decided that he liked her like that. "Well," he said, "we can't all shoot Mr. Weames, and we're not in a position to toss for the privilege yet. I'm going to think," and he went over to a bench by the window, lay down on it and closed his eyes. Honest Pig sat with his head in his hands and occasionally allowed a rumbling growl to tremble in his throat. The angle of his jaw was aggressive. And Jimmy leaned her elbows on the table and watched Duffy with dark, brooding eyes. CHAPTER XIV THE BLOOD LUST AND so they sat, while "The Rose of Washington Square" lay in the lazy lagoon of Taiho Shan within throwing distance of the Treasure for which she had crossed the world. Her captain was a prisoner in his own chart-house; his daughter and the adventure specialist with him; the chief engineer was being thrown like a sack of coal out of his own bunkers into the shark-infested sea with an ugly, gaping hole in the back of his skull, by a set of scoundrelly mutineers, superintended by an equally scoundrelly mutineer of a mate. What with one thing and another, she was a pleas- ant ship at the moment, was "The Rose of Wash- ington Square." And Duffy lay there on his bench and thought on, and Honest Pig continued his growls at lessening intervals, while Jimmy, tired of watching Duffy and his mental processes; slept peacefully in her chair, her head pillowed in her arms. 216 THE BLOOD LUST 217 It was stifling in the darkened chart-house with only a barricaded window to ventilate it, and by lunch time they were too hot to eat. When Evans brought them a tray of Yen San's excellent food with an air of bravado that was not convincing, (even though the bo 'sun guarded the door) none of them fell on it with avidity. Indeed, Duffy was the only one who ate at all, but what little nourish- ment he took, he took because he felt that no sit- uation however distressing should keep a hardened adventurer from his food. He wondered what Yen San thought about things. Probably very little he was a detached soul, was Yen San. While he ate, he inspected the small part of the ship that was visible through the crevices of the barricaded window. It seemed deserted. The mu- tineers were below, and from the noise that came from the saloon they were celebrating the success of their bid for independence. "Pity you got that whisky at Shanghai," said Duffy; "the brutes might do anything with a little of it to loosen the beast in them." Honest Pig growled again, and Jimmy awoke from the doze she had slipped into after the coming of the food. "We may be able to do something if they get 2i8 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER drunk enough," she said, "though what I don't quite see." "We shall think of something," said Duffy cheer- fully. "But I'm wondering when the big man will arrive. I don't suppose we've beaten him by more than a few hours, especially if he has a moderately fast boat." Honest Pig growled again, but with an angrier note. "I wish I could get my hands round that mate's throat. I'd only want a minute with him and you could keep your guns," he said savagely, and clenched his hands in front of him. Duffy looked at them; they were huge and knotted and very capable. In the silence that followed they heard the voice of Mr. Weames raised in uproarious music; it must have been a psean of triumph, for Honest Pig rose and began striding up and down. Duffy, whose thinking had apparently produced no definite plan, occupied himself by going round the chart-house and tapping the walls. They rang hollow, all of them, but they offered no secret panels or sliding doors. In one of them he found a small knot hole that gave him, by dexterous gymnastics, an even smaller view of the deck than did the win- THE BLOOD LUST 219 dow; but it cheered him up if it did nothing else. He regarded it in the nature of a loophole for Gil- bert's barrel, though he felt doubtful whether he could have shot anybody from it. He pushed Gil- bert's barrel through it as an experiment. Suddenly Jimmy said in an eager voice: "Couldn't we blow away the lock of the door with that?" "We could," said Duffy, "but we will not. The door is bolted on the outside. Also, I do not want to have a scrap against such odds as we are up against. One or maybe all of us would get hurt." "Well, how are we going to smash this mutiny?" asked Jimmy, to whom apparently the prospect of an odds-on-the-mutineers fight did not cause much alarm. Her voice was a little plaintive. She was beginning to feel that Duffy had had too much to say already in their policy. "Cunning!" said Duffy. "Cunning and a little patience!" "And while you are being cunning and patient the big man is getting nearer and nearer to our jade. He will increase the odds!" she said. "I expect he's got another set of murderous devils with him." "Good!" said Duffy. "The more the merrier." But for all the apparent cheerfulness and opti- 220 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER mism of a hardened adventurer, he admitted to him- self that things did not look happy. Mr. Weames' drunk was merely a little more unpleasant, he had not the grace to get respectably drunk and roll about in a state of incapability. It merely removed in- hibitions in him. "I wonder if the scoundrel has had a snoop round for your copy of the directions," said Honest Pig. "Well, if he has he didn't find them, but I expect he's quite content to wait for his friend," Duffy said. "Where are they?" asked Jimmy. "Pasted on the bottom of one of my big boxes with another piece of plain paper over them to keep them clean." "That's cute," said Honest Pig. "Dam' cute! " And again they fell silent. It seemed too hot to talk, and it did not seem much use anyway. At the end of another half-an-hour, matters de- veloped in an unexpected and rather alarming way. There came the sound of footsteps along the deck and the unlocking and unbolting of the door. Green appeared, his delicately tinted face a little redder, and with him came the distinct atmosphere of a conqueror. He still held the unwavering pistol. Honest Pig growled at the sight of him. "Go away, damn you," he said. THE BLOOD LUST 221 " 'Alf a mo', 'alf a mo'. Capt'n Weames wants to see Miss Fellowes most pertickler. Come along, miss!" Duffy jumped up. "Get out of this and tell your scoundrelly Weames if he wants to see Miss Fellowes, he can want unless he likes to come and see her through the window! There's no harm in that, I suppose; it would only be unpleasant for us all." ' 'Ere, young man, not so ready with your names or I'll dot you one on your ginger head. Come along, miss," said the agreeable Green. "Look here " began Duffy, outraged by the double accusation of youth and the possession of ginger locks. He was twenty-four and his hair was sandy. The bo'sun snarled at him. "Stow it, carn't yer, stow it! Now, miss, I ain't got all day to stand 'ere and argue. It's 'ot, dam'd 'ot in this blarsted sun!" And he waved the pistol in an alarming way, while with his free hand he clutched Jimmy's wrist. Duffy and Honest Pig both moved forward to- gether, hindered each other, and before they could get clear, the bo'sun had pulled the girl through the 222 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER door and slammed it. It had a spring lock then he shot the bolts. "Damn!" said Duffy; he cursed himself for not moving quicker and Honest Pig for moving at all. With a little care they might have disarmed the bo'sun, for he was alone and the air of a conqueror was not all air; mainly, it was whisky with very little water in it. "Damn!" said Duffy again. "I don't trust those swine, they might do anything. What the devil did you want to ship that whisky for?" "Jimmy can look after herself," said Honest Pig, but the remark held little of its usual conviction. "Can she?" said Duffy bitterly. "Oh, you swash- bucklers, are you never born with imaginations?" Honest Pig looked a little startled. He could not remember being called a swashbuckler before; it was a new and disturbing experience and he wondered what he ought to do about it. But Duffy had dropped on to the bench, his head sunk in his hands. "I " began Honest Pig in a growl. "Shut up!" snapped Duffy between his hands. Honest Pig shut up. The next few minutes were a little hell for Duffy, the adventurer, and he thought as he had never thought before. THE BLOOD LUST 223 In many a "Dalkeith Adventure Novel" he had watched the hero in a similar situation and wondered why his emotions were always stamped with a tor- tured, feverish dread and a violent desire to throw himself headlong into the very jaws of death to rescue the girl. But Duffy understood it now, and he lived through that same emotion with all the vividness that a keen imagination could bring into it. For a moment he told himself that the emotion of the hero of fiction is accounted for by his being in love with the girl surely he could not be in love with Jimmy? Then, at this critical point the mind of the hardened ad- venturer capitulated before the cry of his very hu- man heart. He admitted unreservedly that he loved Jimmy with all the strength of his being, and he was not ashamed of it. His adventurous mind, hardened though it was, accepted and gloried, positively glo- ried, in the all-absorbing fact. He jumped to his feet, rushed to the window and looked through the crevice. The deck was deserted. He stood quite still and listened, bidding Honest Pig do likewise. From the saloon there came a confused murmur, conveying nothing to their eager ears. 224 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "What are they doing? What are they doing?" cried Duffy in his agony of soul. We must follow Jimmy as the bo'sun dragged her through the door into the sunshine of the deck. If she had not been just as surprised as the two men left in the chart-house, she might have wrenched herself free the moment the mate's messenger clutched her wrist, but before she realized what had happened she found herself in the blazing sunlight, which, after the half-dark of the chart-house, almost blinded her. She recovered from the shock in a second or so and tried to pull her wrist away, but the bo'sun tightened his grip and shot the bolts on the chart- house door. "It's no use doin' that, young lady," he said, "you'll only make yerself 'ot and me 'otter. In which case I shall melt and me 'and 'olding some- think colder like will remain 'ard, an' you'll be walkin' about the deck with an 'and on your wrist an' no one at t'other end of it! " And Green laughed whole-heartedly at his little joke. The laugh died in a howl of surprised pain. Jimmy had bent quickly and buried her teeth in the THE BLOOD LUST 225 bo'sun's hand a thing which as a rule she would only have done with some one she liked. His was a hard hand, but not hard enough to resist the white teeth; it still held her wrist, how- ever. The bo'sun howled again but in an angrier key; he put the pistol in his pocket and swung his hand round. It caught the girl on the side of the head, and she staggered and almost fell. He dragged her up with a savage jerk. "Little vixen!" he snarled at her. "I'll teach yer!" And he hit her again. At the second blow she dropped forward on her knees, half-dazed by the savageness of it, and she held her lip between her teeth to stop the cry of pain. She would not show the bo'sun he had hurt her. He hit her once more and forthwith dragged her to the saloon companion. He thrust her down before him and she entered the cabin. It was crowded, hot, and abominably full of whisky. Four men sprawled in various attitudes across the long seat at the side, and at the table were three others and Mr. Weames. A shout went up at the sight of her and the mate 226 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER rose unsteadily to his feet and made an elaborate bow that lost nothing of its intended sarcasm in its failure to be dignified. "Goo' afternoon, Jimmy, my dear," he said. "It was very kind of you to accept my invitation which, I may add, was also extended by my friends here," and he waved his hand at the ruffians, who greeted his speech with a shout of applause. Jimmy stood in front of the table and looked at them steadily. She attempted no reply. "Now, gentlemen, our little lady's health," the mate went on, pleased with the success of his ex- tempore greeting. And he grinned evilly at her. In the look in his eyes she saw the vicious hate she had inspired. It was something of a shock to her, and she began to feel fear, which too was a shock. She could not remember having experienced the emo- tion before. The mutineers drank her health, solemnly and in large tumblers. "Smash the glasses!" came a cry from one of them, and it was followed by a succession of splin- tering crashes as they flung their glasses onto the floor, adding to the litter of empty bottles and bro- ken glass. The saloon, usually so neat and clean, was in appalling disorder. THE BLOOD LUST 227 "More glasses! " shouted the mate. "Damn the glasses!" some one answered him. "What's the matter with the bottles?" There was a chorus of " 'Ere, 'ere's." Green sucked at his bitten hand and scowled at the girl. "That vixen bit me," he said. "You ought to 'ave better taste in your friends, Capt'n Weames." "Bit you, did she?" The mate laughed. "You should be more careful, Mr. Green, handlin' high explosive!" There was another shout of laughter. "But she mustn't do that," he continued, feeling that he was at last appreciated; "she must pay a forfeit." " 'Ere! 'ere," shouted the men. "What forfeit do you suggest, Mr. Green?" Mr. Green thought. "How would a kiss make up for the bite?" sug- gested the mate, and he grinned again at the girl, knowing how he was torturing her. "Come along, my dear, give our old friend Green a kiss," he said in a coaxing tone that barely con- cealed its undercurrent of satanic pleasure. The question of a kiss made clear his intention of re- 228 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER venge for the other little episode which had centered round the same matter. The bo'sun, smiling with satisfaction at the pros- pect of such a balm to his injured hand, presented his brick-red face within a few inches of the firm lips. With a sudden swing, Jimmy smacked the brick- face with the full strength of her young hand. The bo'sun spun round and clutched the table. As she watched him the girl was reminded of a previous occasion, when she had used the swing on Duffy. The unhappy result of it on Mr. Green appealed to the whisky-stimulated humor of the mutineers, and they roared joyously, drowning the swearing of the bo'sun. He caressed his burning cheek with his unbitten hand; no longer was his cheek a delicate tint of brick-red it was scarlet, bright scarlet. Mr. Weames scowled. This last, although it amused the hands, was not in his original pro- gram, and his vision of a humiliated Jimmy was lacking in substance. She looked virtuously indig- nant and far from humiliated. The mate opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him short. "If you've finished, Mr. Weames," she said, "I'll go back to the chart-house. No air at all is a great deal better than the air of a pig-stye," and she looked THE BLOOD LUST 229 round the disordered saloon. "Pigs!" she added clearly. The boisterous good humor of the mutineers came to a sudden end and the scowl of Mr. Weames deepened into a snarl. "You come off the high horse, my girl, or I'll " He searched for a suitable blood-curdling threat, and Jimmy dropped her words neatly into the silence. "Dirty mutineer!" she said dispassionately, and she looked at his blotched, ugly, snarling face with frank distaste and contempt. "Dirty mutineer ! " she remarked again. The silence became if anything more intense while the mate found his words. "Come here!" he shouted, and lurched a little with the fury of his outburst. "Come here, I tell you; damn your superior ways! Come here!" In another moment he would be screaming with rage. Jimmy gazed at him, cool and unimpressed. Her serenity served only to increase the man's drunken rage. "I'm going to kiss you, and then I'm going to cut that pretty face of yours to ribbons. Come here! Damn you!" She stood quite still, and for a moment the mate stood there swaying to and fro, his arms low at his 230 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER sides, the hands crooked and menacing. Then in a staggering rush he made for her, a stream of pro- fanity pouring from his lips in a shrill scream. He was beastly mad. Jimmy met the charge with the heel of her suede mosquito boot; the mate ran into it, and caught it on his shin-bone, just below the knee, which is the most painful of all the painful places in which a man can be kicked. Jimmy had learned it in Peru from a General of that republic. He had firmly impressed upon her that nothing on two feet can take it and remain on them. The mate could not. He howled piercingly and fell on his face, cutting his lip on the base of a broken bottle, his hands clawing the floor. The girl did not wait; she turned and fled up the companionway, with the cry of a human wolf-pack behind her and fear, black fear in her heart. She had a dim idea of what she had set loose. She reached the chart-house door as the first of the pack ran up onto the deck, and with frantic hands she hammered on the door. "Daddy, daddy, they're going to kill me!" she cried, and kicked at the panels; then she saw the bolt at the top of the door. She pulled at it with trembling fingers. It would not move. There was an answering cry from within and a THE BLOOD LUST 231 heavy body flung itself against the other side of the door. "Together!" said Duffy to Honest Pig, and they flung themselves again. The door barely shivered, it was oaken and heavy, built to withstand fifty years of wind, storm and sun. Had it opened outward they might have snapped the lock and the bolts, but it opened inward, and the jamb was as oaken as the door. "We've got to get out!" Duffy cried, and Honest Pig rumbled in his throat. By this time the mutineers were pouring onto the deck, and among them Jimmy saw the mate, his chin covered with blood, a wicked knife in his hand. He came at a hobbling run, snarling. She left the door and ran round the deck-house; clearing the hatch-way, she made a rush for the quarter-deck. The pack gave tongue the blood call at the sight of her, and in the sound came a hand that clutched at her heart. A cold hand of numbing terror, the terror of the hare with the dog's breath warm at its side. She cleared in her run the short flight of steps up to the quarter; on the deck she turned and saw them streaming in a long line behind the mate, 232 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER some twelve of them, each as primitive as primordial man with all but the brute stripped from them. The blood-lust in their eyes she could almost feel their teeth tearing her flesh. How long could she hope to stand against that raging, maddened crowd? The mate reached the steps and this time the toe of the girl's boot met his face: he dropped back- wards into the crowd that had formed behind him. "My game!" he said between his bleeding lips, "my game ! Let me up ! " They helped him, and he clambered up the steps again, slashing in front of him with his knife. Jimmy's last breath of fight went out of her of a sudden; the strain was too heavy even for her stub- born spirit. The mate got past her boot and was standing on the deck, mouthing and triumphant, his small black eyes gleaming with the red light of murder. It was a maddened, insensate beast that clutched for her; no man. And as the human fingers of it clutched, Jimmy sank to her knees, her hands before her eyes. She screamed twice, while the mate stood gloating and snarling down on her wholly triumphant, the quarry at his mercy. CHAPTER XV THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS WHEN Duffy and Honest Pig realized the futility of bruising themselves on the chart-house door, and the coolness of the hardened adventurer returned to Duffy, they held a hurried consultation. "She's running for it," said Duffy, with his ear to the door, "and those devils are coming up the companion. What in the world can she have done to them?" "God knows, I don't," said Honest Pig, "but we've got to get out and see. What about your gun; can't you jigger this lock?" "What about the bolts?" "I'm thinking about my little devil," Honest Pig said. "She's in a hell of a hole!" "Do you think I don't know that?" asked Duffy, and he clenched his hands. "And we're going to get her out of it," he added in the tone of one who has been repeating a sentence to his subconscious mind. The noise of shouting and of stamping feet roared 233 234 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER across the length and breadth of "The Rose/' and the lonely air of Taiho Shan echoed and reechoed with it. Duffy sweated the agony of suspense, and he glanced at the four walls of the chart-house with angry eyes. Four walls what were four walls? Then his glance fell on the tortoise stove in the corner, and he saw that the chimney piping went out through the roof. He remembered, then, the short length of it outside that carried the smoke clear. The piping was about six inches in diameter and ran through a plate of galvanized iron fixed in the boarding of the roof. The plate was circular and about eighteen inches across. Duffy flung himself across the chart-house and wrenched away the lower length of piping, and a shaft of brilliant sunshine pierced the darkness like a golden stream. "Cute!" said Honest Pig, who saw his object. "Dam' cute!" Duffy stood on the stove and examined the result of his inspiration. The iron plate was bolted to the roof with four stout bolts, the nuts on the inside, while about a foot of piping still remained which ran through the plate and into the outer world. Duffy grasped one THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS 235 of the nuts between his thumb and forefinger, and twisted it remained tight and immovable. "Damn ! " he said, more from excitement than dis- appointment. "Spanner ! " he snapped down at Hon- est Pig who was bouncing about below. Action, the adventurer's soul-mate, had replaced the torture of inaction. "Spanner? Spanner? I think I've got a span- ner," and Honest Pig dragged the drawers of the table to the floor and upset them. He groped for an age-long minute in the half-dark. "Buck up!" said Duffy at last. The blood-call of the human wolves was sounding from the other end of the ship. "I can't see the dam' thing," said Honest Pig. Duffy jumped down and went to his assistance, and for another age-long minute they groped to- gether among the odds and ends of tackle, tools and papers. "Got it!" said Honest Pig at last. Duffy snatched it from him without a word and clambered back onto the stove. After a seeming year of fiddling he obtained the right span and started to work on the first nut. It unscrewed reluctantly the second moved more easily. In the middle of unscrewing the third he heard 236 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Jimmy's first scream; it sent a thrill of terror through him, and his heart pounded madly. "I'm coming/' he said aloud to himself, "I'm coming! Oh, the devils, the devils; ten cartridges, ten lives if they've hurt her. Oh, the devils! And in the stomach, every dam' one of them; they die longer that way, screaming. Jimmy, Jimmy, give me three seconds!" The third nut dropped on the stove with a clatter. As he gripped the fourth, the second scream came; it rang endlessly in Duffy's ears. The fourth nut dropped and with a strong push he slid the iron plate a couple of inches. Then he worked the length of piping out of it, and placing both hands against the edge, shoved it along the roof. "I'm out," he called down to Honest Pig; "I'm out!" And with a big effort he worked his head and shoulders through the hole and in a second was standing on the chart-house roof, blinking in the glare. Then he slipped Gilbert out of his hip pocket. The mutineers were gathered below the quarter- deck, and so engrossed were they in the drama going on above that they did not see Duffy behind them. The roof of the chart-house formed an admirable vantage ground from the point of view of vision; THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS 237 there was nothing between it and the quarter-deck save the hands, who were on a lower level. Duffy felt he would be able to command the situation from it and the sight that met his eyes showed him the full necessity for that commanding. Mr. Weames, or rather what his own hatred and the whisky had made him, was sitting on the bar of a hand- winch. Across his knee was Jimmy, her slim body bent back in a torturing position; with one hand the mate had pinioned her arms behind her, while with the other he held the wicked-looking knife, glittering and flashing as it moved to and fro in the sun. The girl's face, usually so warm in coloring, was dead white; even the red lips were pale, the eyes wide and staring with horror. Duffy realized that he had broken into the world of affairs at the critical point another five or six seconds and, well, ten mutineers would have been squirming in the waist of the ship. Then clear across the intervening space came the mate's voice, harsh and trembling with triumph, aware of the watching, appreciative audience below. "Now, my little Jimmy, I am going to kiss you! D'ye hear?" he said. "And then and then, my beautiful devil," his voice lingered caressingly over 238 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER his next words: "Then I am going to carve my name on your face!" and Duffy saw him snarl, lifting his lip like a dog. There was a murmur from the listening pack. This was indeed devilment, and their appreciation grew; their leader was a man be damned if he wasn't. "Now!" said the mate, and he forced the strain- ing head further back as his bleeding mouth found hers. For a moment the two figures remained still and tense, then the white one twisted round and the mate raised his head, leaving the white skin stained with blood. "Dam' good! " he said. "And now for that pretty face!" Duffy held Gilbert in a hand that trembled, but with an effort of will he called to his aid the icy coolness of an adventurer and raised the pistol, short and vicious and deadly. Even as he did so Jimmy saw him, and a faint, weary smile wreathed her stained lips she knew, why or how God knew, that he would come. She watched the slowly descending knife almost with interest. It would not touch her cheeks. It did not. It clattered on the deck as Mr. THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS 239 Weames screamed and slid off the winch, a bullet in the elbow of his right arm. Jimmy lay still where he had dropped her in a dead faint. Duffy had noticed with relief that the mate car- ried no pistol, or apparently did not. He might have one in his left-hand pocket; so to make sure he should not reach it, Duffy shot him again in his left elbow with great rapidity. As swiftly he shot the bo'sun, who was on the edge of the startled crowd, through the center of his brick-red countenance. The only mutineers who carried firearms were accounted for and it was more for the benefits that would arise from demonstration that prompted Duffy to shoot two more men, the first in the leg, the second in the wrist. That settled the matter completely. The mutiny was over, and a crowd of thoroughly sobered, thoroughly frightened men, huddled for a moment in the lee scuppers, then broke and scat- tered. "Cowards," remarked Duffy to himself, and he turned to see Honest Pig trying to wedge himself through the circular hole. "Is she all right?" he asked with what breath he had not squeezed out of himself. 240 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Yep," said Duffy briefly. "Fainted on the quar- ter-deck; I'm just going over. I'll open the door for you." He put Gilbert in his pocket, lowered himself onto the deck by his hands, slipped him out again and made his way to the bo'sun. From his body he took the key of the chart-house and a revolver, and re- turning, let Honest Pig into the world again. He gave him the bo'sun's revolver. "You'd better go and kick what little fight there may be left in them out of the brutes. They're hiding around somewhere," he said. "I'll see to Jimmy." "Right!" said the captain of "The Rose," who admitted no man his master; and he went about the business of rearranging the muddled ideas of his crew with the concentrated vigor of four hours' en- forced rest in a darkened chart-house, and his sea- boots size eleven. After a glance round to see that there were no mutineers about who not having witnessed his dem- onstration still felt the call of independence, Duffy walked up the companion onto the quarter-deck. He watched the mate squirming with almost complacent eyes, but under the veneer of adventur- ous coolness, he could not put from his mind the THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS 241 fact that within the last two minutes he had killed one man and wounded three more. The shooting in Aden he had done in the dark and the heat of battle. There was something vaguely disturbing in this almost deliberate killing and wounding in the bright light of midday. He took two pistols from the pockets of the unfortunate Mr. Weames, and walked over to Jimmy who still lay on her side where she had fallen. To free his hands he placed Gilbert in his hip pocket and disposed of the mate's revolvers in the tops of his mosquito boots. He bent down and slipped his arms under the girl's shoulders and lifted her gently. She stirred a little and sighed, then her head drooped patheti- cally. With great care he picked her up in his arms and carried her across the decks to the shade of the awning. He put her in her cane-chair, propping her up with cushions. She lay motionless, her cheeks still white but a vague color and life slowly appearing in them, and Duffy sat and watched with anxious eyes he thought of getting her a little whisky but decided that she might come-to while he was away, and when she did he wanted to be with her, so he contented himself with dipping his handkerchief in a bucket of 242 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER sea-water and bathing her face and blood-stained lips. Duffy's mind was chaotic as a long, inconsequent stream of visions and memories of Jimmy ran through it in bewildering disorder. Jimmy's bare feet as they came down the companionway the third morning of the voyage his first sight and impression of her with all her beauty and freshness. Then the shooting match the wild night in Aden, and inevitably the memory of the consequences her blazing, furious eyes as she swung round on him and called him a dirty little sneak then her dis- posal of Mr. Weames in the coal bunker and a thousand other little things came before his eyes that had helped to build up in his mind the wonder and delight of this girl he loved. He wondered, too, what she would say to him; would she still hate him? He felt that if she did his patience would be hard put to it, for although towards most things in life that patience was almost infallible, Duffy recognized how insistent was this new emotion that had changed the world for him. He was an adventurer, surely hardened, but this change gave adventure a new significance. Actually he was a true adventurer. Then he thought of Mr. Weames with the knife THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS 243 slowly descending on its sacrilegious errand, and he remembered his snarl, the snarl of a dog. In an instant memory threw a vivid picture before his eyes; the summary exit of his secretary from the little collector's house on the morning of Duffy's first interview. Weames was that secretary, emis- sary of the Prussian firm of oriental art dealers! Duffy saw the whole thing and a great many details and motives became clear in his mind. But chief of them all was the motive for the mutiny. It was very likely that the mate's big friend in the Shanghai hotel was the Prussian firm's Chinese agent Weames had been commissioned to steal the direc- tions somehow and send them to the big man, who would be on the spot to clear the jade. He failed to steal them in London, wangled the position of mate on board "The Rose," stole the directions the day before "The Rose" left Shanghai and handed them over to the big man. Weames must have been very surprised when "The Rose" increased her speed, and from it guessed that there was another copy of the directions on board. To ensure that it should not be used he had engineered the mutiny. Duffy wondered at the blundering stupidity of a man who could carry things so far with success, only to spoil it all at the last minute with a couple of 244 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER bottles of whisky and a personal hatred. It was Prussian if it was nothing else. He looked at Jimmy; she was breathing more strongly and her cheeks were almost normal in color, her lips almost their wonted vividness. He could spare a hurried moment, and he ran to the fo'castle from which came the earnest bellowing of Honest Pig. He had just finished a picturesque speech when Duffy went up to him and said quietly: "I'm morally certain that big man is coming. We've got to get the jade aboard without the waste of an unnecessary minute. Get them onto it; I'm going to stay with Jimmy a few minutes longer and by the time you've got the tackle and stuff into the long-boat, I'll be ready with the directions. 7 ' "Right!" said Honest Pig, and he bawled forth about six orders in a heavy bellow. The hands jumped to it. In the child-like memory of these sons of the sea, the mutiny was already a matter of yesterday. Duffy returned to the awning and drew across either end the curtain that shut off the rest of the ship, leaving the seaward side open. He dropped into his chair and watched the girl's face. Presently the dark eyes opened and gazed un- 245 comprehendingly across the blue lagoon at Taiho Shan, idle in the idle sea. Duffy caught her hand. "Jimmy!" he said sharply, "you're all right now, dear; look at me!" The dark eyes turned and she looked at him; there was still the shadow of fear in them and in them bewilderment struggled for memory. "The knife the knife," she whispered, and the hand he held clutched his tightly as she burst into a paroxysm of tears. It was reaction from the strain brought by the knowledge that she was safe. Duffy still held her hand, acutely uncomfortable. He could not remember having beheld a weeping girl before, and a beautiful one at that. For a man of experience he felt a sudden sense of helplessness, and he wished for a moment that he had cultivated the subtler art of love-making. Madeleine had never wept any more than he had made love to her. He trusted for once entirely to his instinct, which bade him take her in his arms, and he lifted her out of her chair to his knee. Then in the midst of her sobbing he kissed her once. It was a timid kiss, the first he had ever bestowed upon any one, and with this expression of his emotion came all the wonder of feeling that is part of that experience. He was frankly surprised 246 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER and very agitated; never had his poise of mind been so ruthlessly shattered. Even Jimmy's screams as he worked his way out of the chart-house to her, had not given him this overwhelming sensation. He did not consider the bestowal of a second kiss the idea never crossed his mind. As his surprise and agitation died and gave place to something almost approaching ecstasy, Jimmy's sobs grew less frequent and she leaned her head against his shoulder. The softness of her hair against his cheek surprised and delighted him. He stroked it gently and talked to her as he would to a frightened child. Thus he held her, thoroughly and completely happy in the nearness and feel of her, until he saw that she had fallen into the deep sleep of absolute nervous and physical exhaustion. Then he carried her down to her cabin through the vile mass of the saloon, stepping carefully and firmly in the middle of a man lying across the doorway in a drunken sleep. The man snorted, rolled over and lay still again. Duffy put the sleeping Jimmy in her bunk, pulled off her boots, loosened her belt, and left her to sleep till she awoke, confident in sleep, the great healer, to pull her together again. THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS 247 Then he closed the door softly and entered his own cabin, turned one of the metal-bound boxes upside down, cut away the patch of paper with his knife and took out the directions. From her case he took Elizabeth, bolstered her and strapped her round his waist, while the prismatic compass he slung over his shoulder. Then he sought Honest Pig and watched him superintend the loading of the long- boat with the necessary tools. As Duffy watched, he pondered deeply over the mystery of this new emotion that had come into his heart; disturbing yet surely delightful. He blamed himself a little for having taken advantage of her tears and her temporary loss of the independ- ent spirit she had not minded his kiss apparently, but then he was doubtful if she had noticed it. How soft her hair was and fragrant. "How is she?" asked Honest Pig in the middle of Duffy's dreaming. "All right; sleeping it off," he answered. "I've put her in her bunk." "Good," said Honest Pig. "I've just looked at that skunk up there," and he pointed to the quarter- deck. "Shall we throw him overboard?" "No," said Duffy, and immediately accused him- self of being soft-hearted, but he went on: "We've 248 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER had enough blood on this boat without spilling any more." "But he'd spill it in the lagoon," said Honest Pig with a commendable regard for accuracy. He could not understand this sudden softening in Duffy. "Same thing," Duffy said firmly. "We'll make him up a berth in the chart-house where you can look after him; I don't want him anywhere near Jimmy in her present state." Honest Pig growled at the prospect of nursing Mr. Weames. "I'll go ashore with five men," said Duffy. "I think you'd better stay on board to look after things, and the sooner the bo'sun joins the sharks the better. The sun is hot." "Yes," the captain growled. "Also Weames may die in it. I really think it better that we should divide forces. Six of us ought to manage the Treasure between us." "Your show," said Honest Pig briefly, and on Duffy's suggestion they acted. Honest Pig watched with gloomy eyes the long-boat being lowered away, Duffy seated at the tiller. Then he superintended the summary disposal of the bo'sun's body and the establishment of Mr. Weames in the deck-house, gloomily. Only the groaning of the mate while he THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS 249 attended him relieved his feelings. Once or twice he went to the door and watched the party on the island they seemed very busy under Duffy's capa- ble leadership. The adventurer's feelings as he stepped onto the sand of Taiho Shan were jubilant. The story had reached its climax after a thrilling and satisfying phase. That the Treasure of the Manchus should be anywhere else but where the directions indicated, Duffy did not suppose for a moment; the fact that it enjoyed a rival seeker seemed to make its exist- ence a certainty in his mind. On the directions, which he knew almost by heart, four gallant trees were indicated, and the fact that there should be only three did not disturb him. Von Splatz in his hurry might have made a trifling mistake of that kind. The first bearing that he took was from the most northerly of the trees and it led them straight to the center of the atoll; he paced the requisite number of paces along the line and set his men to digging on the spot. At the end of twenty minutes nothing showed for their efforts but a gaping hole in the sandy soil and a feeling of acute discomfort in the blistering sun. Duffy went back to the trees and there observed a slight hollow in the ground some ten feet in front 250 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER of the most northerly tree. It was the spot where the fourth tree had grown until a storm or hurricane had up-rooted it and flung it into the sea. Von Splatz had not made any mistake and the directions distinctly instructed that the bearing should be taken from the most northerly of the trees, so with the trained mind of a sleuth, Duffy decided at once that the pacing should commence from the little hollow. Ten feet beyond the hole they had already started, he set the men to work again. Ten minutes' enthusiasm, or such that the sun allowed, exposed the top of a massive chest a foot below the surface, and at the end of half-an-hour four chests like the first lay side by side in the shallow pit. Solid chests they were and heavy with their contents two stout iron handles on either side gave ample hold for four men. One by one Duffy watched them carried down the beach and loaded on board the long-boat, with ex- hortations and threats. The Manchu Princes, had they been there, could not have found fault with the way Duffy handled their Treasure. He was care incarnate. The spades and picks were collected and put on board, the five sweating mutineers took their places, THE TREASURE OF THE MANCHUS 251 and Duffy jumping into the stern, gave the order to push off. The first half of the story was almost told, and his claim to the rank of Qualified Adventurer al- most justified. In his expert charge the Treasure of the Manchus was out in the world again: jade that would bring esthetic ecstasy to the spirit of the lit- tle collector. Duffy wanted to sing, he even started on the first rollicking bar of a rollicking pirate song, but something stopped him ere he set the echoes ring- ing across the quiet lagoon. Away to the southeast a black, ominous smudge marred the even line where sea met sky. Smoke was that black smudge, smoke from a steamer's furnaces. CHAPTER XVI THE BIG MAN COMES SMOKE from a steamer's furnaces: the furnaces of the big, bearded man's ship as he came alocg that same black line from Shanghai, hot in the search for the jade of the Manchus, the jade that Duffy had taken from its hiding place on Taiho Shan and which lay before him in the long-boat. "Row, you blighters, row!" yelled Duffy at the five men. The five men rowed, and with a rasping scrape the boat slid alongside "The Rose"; the davit ropes hung down to the water waiting for Duffy's return, and the men looked at him in surprise as he steered the long-boat to the stern. "Captain Fellowes, ahoy!" shouted Duffy in a gruff and thoroughly piratical voice. Honest Pig looked over the rail and saw the long- boat with its cargo. "Good, you've got it!" he said, and turned to order the davit men to their posts. "Half-a-minute!" Duffy called. "Throw down a 253 THE BIG MAN COMES 253 ladder, we can leave the stuff a little while. I want to talk to you." "Sure," said Honest Pig. Presently a rope-ladder uncurled from the side and smacked into the boat. The five men clam- bered up, followed by Duffy with the long-boat's painter tied to his belt. "What's the game?" asked Honest Pig, as Duffy came over the rail. "That!" answered Duffy with a wave of his hand to the southeast, where the horizon was marred by an ever-thickening cloud of smoke. "Hell!" said Honest Pig to the lagoon, and he spat into it expertly. Duffy drew the long-boat by its painter round to the lee of "The Rose's" rudder and there lashed it securely. "That can wait a while," he said, and scowled at the smudge of smoke. "Steam's right down, I sup- pose?" "Yes, curse it. I've got four men onto the furnaces but it's a considerable wait before we can get up sufficient pressure to move any," said Honest Pig; and again he damned the mate. "I'm afraid it is the big man," said Duffy. "There is no reason why anybody else should come to this out-of-the-way corner of the world." 254 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Nope," assented Honest Pig. "He's the guy, sure enough. Oh, why didn't I shoot that mate? Waste of time to keep him alive, that's my feelin's. What are we going to do?" "Well, we haven't the steam to run for it," said Duffy, "so we've no option but to fight for it. We can't bluff him." "If we dropped Weames overboard, we might," remarked the captain hopefully. He was beginning to realize in his slow mind that his chances of losing the mate were becoming more and more scanty. "None," said Duffy decidedly. "We couldn't bluff him very long. There are two large holes on Taiho Shan but very little jade. Besides, the absence of Mr. Weames would look fishy very fishy." "Well, what about the jade?" "Leave it where it is; it's as safe in the long- boat as ever it will be and we should be wasting valuable time getting it aboard. Now for a little organization!" And Duffy set to work with a cool, determined mind on the task of converting "The Rose of Washington Square" into a battleship. Honest Pig yelled and shouted at his crew the orders that Duffy evolved it was Duffy's time to take command. "We'd better cover those treasure-chests," he said, THE BIG MAN COMES 255 and saw that a sail was thrown over them; the long-boat assumed a mysterious atmosphere. Across the main deck a barricade was hastily con- structed of boxes, barrels and odd spars, while loop- holes were cut in the deck-house, where Mr. Weames lay and listened to their preparations for war with his usual scowl. The hull of a large steamer had taken the place of the smudge of smoke, and, from her rapidly in- creasing size, was coming up fast. "She moves," remarked Honest Pig, "and she knows where she's moving to. If I know anything, Taiho Shan will see life in hectic spots." "Good!" said Duffy, and he pulled a piece of oily rag through Gilbert's vicious barrel. "Better get some food into the deck-house," he added. "I'll see Yen San," answered Honest Pig, and he went below. Duffy examined the sea and the sky and the big man's ship with careful eyes. The sun was low and its setting but the matter of an hour; within an hour and a half it would be night, for in these latitudes the short tropical twi- light was short indeed. Already the early signs of sunset were apparent in a growing redness in the gold of the west, and a night breeze that stirred the 256 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER three trees of Taiho Shan, ruffling the limpid lagoon and fanning Duffy's cheek. He felt that the utter peace of sea and sky was like the ominous silence before a howling, raging, tearing storm that comes swiftly from a clear, un- troubled horizon. After a searching glance over the barricades and loop-holed deck-house, he rang up the engine-room from the telephone on the bridge. The voice at the other end of the tube assured him in blasphemous words that all that could be done to raise the steam pressure was being done. "Good. Stick to it," he said, and forthwith hur- ried down to Jimmy's cabin. He tapped at the door and receiving no answer, stepped quietly inside and went to the bunk. She still slept peacefully; the tired look on her face had almost gone and he had not the heart to hinder its going, so after a minute he left her, de- ciding that she should have all the sleep she could get before the fresh ordeal that awaited her. The new emotion still surged and trembled in his heart and the sight of her did nothing to quiet it. It was a changed and altered Duffy who went on deck. He recognized that he had something more THE BIG MAN COMES 257 to fight for than jade and the thought was ex- hilarating. When Honest Pig returned from his interview with Yen San, they served out arms and ammunition from the armory. Duffy refused a rifle, pinning his faith on Elizabeth and Gilbert; he took, however, a cartridge belt and filled it with ammunition for them. He then went below again and changed into a dark jersey and dark trousers, slipping on a pair of rub- ber-soled shoes. He saw that white clothes are not conducive to successful night work, nor top-boots to swift movement. Satisfied that his equipment for the fray was complete, he returned to the bridge. "What about Jimmy?" asked Honest Pig. "Will she be fit to do anything?" "We'll see," answered Duffy. "She looks a good deal better and I don't think her nerves are much affected." "Nerves?" said Honest Pig scornfully. "Nerves? You should have known her mother ! " Duffy could imagine the sort of girl that Honest Pig had married or rather the girl who had married him. "What was she like?" he asked. "Ragin' mad most of the time," said Honest Pig. 258 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "She'd got a gun-hand and biceps that would have shocked you! I found her shootin' her father into the sea for beating her mother. Some gel, I'll tell the world." Duffy understood Jimmy's independence and again he wondered if she had realized his kiss. The chances seemed about even and the result, one way or the other, lay on the knees of the Gods, which, as some wise men once remarked, is often a cold and uncomfortable place. The sun went down in a blaze of red-gold and green that flung rays of living light to the far corners of the sea and sky. Taiho Shan might have been the lost island of Daldicon's dream; ethereal and very weird in the strange light. "It's a wonderful evening," Duffy remarked. "And we're going to have a clear night." "No," said Honest Pig, who had been looking thoughtfully into the northwest. "Look yonder." And he pointed to where the line of horizon was muffled with a slight haze. "Mist, if not fog," he added. "Maybe an advantage maybe not," said Duffy. "Aye," said the captain, and he turned to the southeast again. The steamer was some seven miles away now, THE BIG MAN COMES 259 and increasing in size every moment; Duffy was reminded of a sparrowhawk. She was almost swoop- ing. "Half-an-hour and she'll be up," said Honest Pig. "Are we going to wait for them or shoot without asking questions?" "Better wait and see what they do. I think I'll go and wake Jimmy," and buckling Elizabeth and her attendant cartridges round his waist, Duffy went below again. As he entered her cabin, Jimmy sat up, rubbing her eyes, bright with sleep, but no longer bewildered and frightened. They were very alert. "What's happened?" she asked at once. "Is the mate dead?" "No; wounded in both arms and lying in the deck-house. Are you feeling better?" he asked, watching her carefully. She had not noticed his kiss, or if she had she had decided to ignore it, but at all events she seemed friendlier. The Gods had been kind. "What else?" she asked, and swung her feet out of the bunk and began pulling on her boots. "I've got the jade, four chests of it, in the long- boat astern; the big man's in the offing and will be up in half-an-hour steaming like the devil," he 260 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER said concisely, wasting no words. It was to be busi- ness, nothing but business. It was something of a relief and the knowledge gave his mind untram- meled energy for dealing with the problem in hand; that of preserving the jade. "Fight?" queried Jimmy, and took the long Colt off its shelf and commenced buckling it round her waist. "Yep; barricade across the main-deck; deck-house loopholed and provisioned. Everything ready for him," he snapped, his words expert in detail. "Is the crew quiet?" "Quiet as lambs. I shot two wounded them." "Good!" "I shot Green through the face he's dead." "Better still," she said. "Come on. I want to look round," and she led the way out of the cabin and up on deck. Duffy followed her, debating in his own mind the advisability of her joining in the scrap that he felt sure there would be no avoiding. Advisable or not, he decided, she would take a lot of keeping out of it. He was becoming almost used to the idea of a girl adventuring, and he almost consoled himself with the thought that Jimmy could not be called anything but an exceptional girl. It was rather an admission. THE BIG MAN COMES 261 "You all right?" Honest Pig asked her as she appeared. "Yes, thanks," she said, and it was left at that. Duffy felt somehow that the narrowness of her es- cape should have impressed them both, but it had not. Their philosophy bade them be concerned only with the fact that she had escaped, not with even- tualities had she failed. It was the true spirit of adventure and when he recognized it as such, he saw its value. After all, it was the only way to get things done. The big man's steamer was now clear, almost to her smallest details. She was white, spruce and built for speed, her long lines those of a greyhound. Duffy saw the futility of trying to run from her, even had they sufficient steam. She would have done fifteen knots to their five. They could see a little group of men standing on her bridge, and through glasses the big man among them thick he was and heavily bearded. "We were right! " said Duffy. "It's the big man," and he handed the glasses to Jimmy. "Yes, it is he, right enough," she agreed. In silence they watched the space between the two ships lessen and lessen; heard the chug-chug of the white boat's engines. A short ten minutes 262 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER brought them within megaphone distance and the three of them moved up to the barricade among the men who stood with their rifles ready. " 'Rose' ahoy!" came a voice from the big man's bridge clear and distinct across the water. Honest Pig raised his megaphone. "Ahoy! What d'ye want?" he shouted. No answer came and they watched the white steamer slow down, swing round and drop her anchor just outside the reef blocking the entrance to the lagoon, some hundred yards away. Then another voice rang out from her. It was the big man's voice, slurring and guttural. "Haf you mister Veames aboard?" he called. Honest Pig answered him. "We have. What d'ye want with him?" "I want to talk mit 'im!" "Well, you can't he's sick!" "Sick? Vat you mean sick?" yelled the big man, and even at that distance Duffy could detect sus- picion in his voice. Through a short silence, during which a quick conference was held, the two ships lay quiet and motionless. "What shall I tell him?" asked Honest Pig. "Tell him what you like. It's better to declare war at a distance than to let them come aboard THE BIG MAN COMES 263 and wipe us off our own decks. Besides they've seen the barricade," said Duffy. "They know we're go- ing to fight." "True enough," said Honest Pig, and he raised the megaphone again and shouted through the rap- idly falling darkness. "Go to the devil 1" A moment's silence; then the reply. "Ve are coming aboard!" "You're dam' well not!" Again the silence, and the group on the steamer's bridge disappeared. The stars came out swiftly and in a few short minutes it was night, clear and bright save in the northwest which was blurred with the on-coming mist. A solitary sea-bird called eerily on Taiho Shan behind them. Then a strange thing appeared in the middle of the black shadow that the darkness had made of the steamer. It was a continual, flickering flash fol- lowed by whirring, spluttering thuds among the boxes and barrels of the barricade and simultan- eously a sharp crackle, vicious and sustained, broke the silence into trembling sound. The big man was asserting his claim to the Treas- ure of the Manchus with a machine gun. "DOWN! Get down!" shouted Duffy, and he flung himself flat on the deck, pulling Jimmy with him. "What the devil have they got there?" asked Hon- est Pig. "The place is crawling with bullets! " "Lewis gun," said Duffy. "Fires in short bursts. Forty-seven rounds to the drum." He looked cau- tiously at the flashes on the steamer over a barrel. "They haven't wasted any time," said Honest Pig. And they crouched behind the barricade, listening to the hum and smatter of bullets. "We'd better give 'em a little to think about," said Honest Pig presently, and he slid his rifle be- tween two boxes and aimed carefully at the flash of the machine gun. He emptied the magazine at it, reloaded, altered the elevation of his sights, and tried again. The Lewis stopped. "Hit some one, I think," said Duffy hopefully, but almost as he spoke the gun broke out again. The bullets were all among them. The man on the other 264 DUFFY GOES 265 side of Jimmy sighed quietly and turned over on his back another cried out from the end of the line. Two hits. "All hands concentrate fire on that flash!" called Duffy to the men, "and let it have it. Don't shoot carelessly!" For some minutes they kept up a steady fusilade. The Lewis fired on and three of "The Rose's" crew took no more interest in the proceedings. Timson, Duffy's disciple of the great principle of demonstra- tion, was one of them. "This can't go on," said Duffy. "We'd better get into the deck-house; they must have rigged up a pretty effective protection for that gun." One by one they withdrew from the barricade under Duffy's orders, but however expert those or- ders were, two more men went down in the effort. It was a shaken, considerably decreased little band that collected in the deck-house. Seven men out of an original eleven were out of action; three, including Honest Pig, who had been hit by a flying splinter, were slightly wounded. Duffy lit a candle and shaded it carefully, while Honest Pig dabbed a trickle of blood that ran down the side of his face and swore lustily. He went over to Mr. Weames, who lay on a mattress in the 266 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER corner, and vigorously cursed him, Bis father, his mother and his maker who was not the Almighty. It gave him very little satisfaction. The mate scowled at him and then laughed sardonically. "It's no good swearing," said Duffy. "We've got to think of something, and quickly. Has anybody got an idea?" He had several himself and perhaps it was as well he did not instantly force them upon his followers for followers they certainly were, now. His plans lacked nothing of the adventurous. "Could we board them and scupper that gun?" asked Jimmy. There was a chorus of impolite disagreement. To board the steamer had been one of Duffy's plans, and when it was suggested by some one else, he saw the wildness of it. It would be practically im- possible to get right up to the steamer without being detected. However much they eliminated sound from their movements, a boatload of men is always a noisy affair. To tackle a Lewis gun at close range in an open boat would be suicidal. Duffy went to the door and looked out; the big man was still asserting his claims enthusiastically and had incidentally reduced the barricade to match- wood. Even the thickening mist had not interrupted DUFFY GOES 267 him, for though he could no longer see "The Rose" he knew the range and elevation. "I've got it!" said Duffy. "We must tow The Rose' out of the line of fire. This mist hides us completely and we shall be better able to see what we are about in the morning." "Cute!" said Honest Pig. "Dam' cute! We can use the long-boat or better still and quieter would be a couple of sweeps from 'mid-ships muffled." "Yep, that's the idea," assented Duffy. "Four volunteers I'm one! " "I'm another," said Jimmy. "No: we want men/' said Honest Pig. "Those sweeps take some pulling. I'll take you three," and he singled out three of the hands, leading them out into the mist that billowed and eddied around them, enfolding "The Rose" in a mantle of inky blackness. The Lewis gun still held its fire, but the bursts were shorter and at longer intervals. The big man had evidently decided since "The Rose" had ceased fir- ing that if there was anything left of her de- fenders, that remnant would be small and insignifi- cant. He was living up to his Prussian reputation for thoroughness, however, by firing on to make sure. One man was left with Jimmy and Duffy and they stood at the deck-house door, discussing things. 268 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Once a bullet splintered through the boarding and ricocheted round and round, finally dropping on the table. Duffy picked it up and examined it. "Dum-dum!" he said between his teeth. "The devils!" Mr. Weames laughed sourly. "Frederick was in the Prussian Guard," he said. "He knows his job!" They could hear Honest Pig and his men getting out the sweeps; it must have been a difficult task in that blackness. Once an imprecation reached them from one of the hands as he collided with his fellow. "Going all right?" called Duffy in a voice that would just carry to them, and Honest Pig answered: "Fair to middlin', but damn this fog!" Duffy was not so sure, however, that the fog ought not to be blessed. If it did not actually prove their salvation it would, at all events, delay the issue for some hours. Indeed, should it last through the next day there was every chance that they might slip past the big man's steamer under its cover. By midnight they should have sufficient steam to move on their own power. I He discussed the possibility with Jimmy, who seemed to think that it was quite feasible, but very much a matter of luck. DUFFY GOES 269 Duffy tried hard to find out her exact attitude towards him from her impartial, almost non-commit- tal air. She was indeed impartial, but he thought that her hatred for him, if not actually banished by his rescue of her, had undergone no little evapo- ration. She no longer looked at him with smolder- ing, brooding eyes; she did not look at him at all, and in that he rested his hopes. His instinct told him that it was a good sign. "Are you feeling quite fit now?" he asked, trying the effect of reminder on her. "Quite, thanks," she said, and walking over to Mr. Weames, she looked down on him for a few mo- ments in silence, then returned to the door. "Did you smash the bone?" she asked of Duffy. "In the left not the right," he said. "What are we going to do with him if we get out of this?" "Send him back to his friend Frederick of the Prussian Guard, I suppose. He's no use to us." "He's not," she said shortly, and stood there run- ning her finger round the butt of her Colt, deep in thought. Duffy would have given a good deal to see into her mind at the moment; he did not think she was considering the problem of the mate alone. 270 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Then all speculation was banished in the sudden- ness of what followed. The Lewis gun had been silent for some little while, and the silence emphasized a shot that could not have been fired more than twenty yards away. It was answered by a queer, horrible cry from 'mid- ships, followed by a splash in the lagoon. Duffy gripped Jimmy's arm. "Who was it?" he whispered, dread clutching at his heart. He was almost sure the cry was Honest Pig's. "The splash was one of the sweeps," said Jimmy practically. "A body makes quite a different noise." She evidently did not recognize her father's voice in the cry. Then a shuffling sound, eery and utterly unlike anything Duffy had ever heard, reached them from the deck; it came nearer and nearer stopping once or twice and then commencing. It was a struggling noise, full of effort. It was made by Honest Pig. He dragged himself up to them out of the dark- ness, supporting himself by his arms; his body loose and lifeless behind him. "He's got me! He's got me, the devil!" he gasped out, and the two rushed forward and helped DUFFY GOES 271 him to his feet with difficulty and into the deck- house. They lowered him carefully into a chair. "Daddy, daddy, where are you hurt?" Jimmy cried in an agonized voice. "Oh, the beasts!" "My side: it feels all smashed in," Honest Pig muttered almost to himself. Duffy saw the death glaze stealing over the pain-filled eyes. Jimmy caught the dying man's hands in hers. "You'll get better, daddy. You must get better! You can't die!" Then she clasped his head in her arms. Duffy, a sense of horror and stupefaction overwhelming him, could only stand and watch them helplessly. Then Mr. Weames laughed a long, satisfied laugh which penetrated Honest Pig's withering conscious- ness and flung him into amazing action. He stood up, almost without an effort, and tottered forward a little on his paralyzed legs. Then he dropped headlong across the mate with a crash that seemed to shake the whole ship. A quiver passed through her even as a shudder trembled over the body of Honest Pig. The heap in the corner lay still the mate lay still. Honest Pig had fulfilled his vow, but he had not shot the mate he had broken his back. With a strangled cry Jimmy flung herself on her 272 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER father's body and Duffy turned away, gazing out into the fog, a thousand feelings and thoughts surg- ing through him in bewildering chaos. It was the suddenness of the thing that affected him so. Other men had died within the hour, but Honest Pig- Honest Pig the strong, the invincible. It seemed in- credible that a mere piece of lead out of fog-bound darkness should destroy so completely. Even the fact that Honest Pig had killed in death did not impress Duffy with its significance until later. Again the silence was shattered; this time by two shots from under "The Rose's" quarter. Another man cried out from 'midships. The big man was running a risk they had not dared he was boarding them! Duffy groped his way to the rail and peered into the mist: he could see nothing in the thick dark- ness that hid the water. A faint creaking to his left gave him a clue and he fired five rapid shots in its direction with Elizabeth. The echoes rose and fell and died away; no answering shot came the creaking had stopped. For a moment he stood lis- tening, the trained ear of an adventurer analyzing each little sound; the lapping of sea against the ship's side as she swung in the gentle current that swept through the opening in the reef; the swish, DUFFY GOES 273 swish of two ropes that crossed and stirred; occa- sionally the drip of water falling into the lagoon from the wet anchor cable, and a quiet sobbing from the deck-house where Jimmy wept out her grief. From 'midships came no sound, and Duffy wondered what had happened to the survivors of the three hands who had been with Honest Pig; there should be at least two of them. The question was never settled, and the fact that he neither saw nor heard them again worried him little they were still mutineers in his eyes, and as such deserved small consideration. He picked a cautious way back to the deck-house; once he tripped over the body of a man, and shiv- ered a little. He was experiencing all the helpless- ness of a child that is lost in a thick and unpleasant wood. The discovery that he loved Jimmy, the find- ing of the Treasure of the Manchus, the sudden appearance of a rival in a fast steamer with a- ma- chine gun, its quick, deadly havoc among the crew, and lastly, the killing of Honest Pig, had found the answering readiness of a hardened adventurer to cope with matters, sadly lacking. The movement of the story was as swift as he had always demanded it should be in the far-away days 274 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER when he sub-edited "Dalkeith Adventure Novels." Its swiftness left him gasping. Jimmy was sitting at the table, crying softly, and the sight of her pathetic helplessness stirred new feelings in Duffy's heart. She was now utterly alone in the world except for himself, and he saw that with the fleeting of Honest Pig's virile spirit much of her own had gone out of her. She had lost her complete independence. He went over to her side and put a clumsy but still comforting arm round her shoulders. "Buck up, Jimmy: you mustn't cry, now. We've still got to get out of this hole. He ... he would rather we did," he said gently. "What's the use?" she asked. "Oh, daddy, daddy " and the sobs came again. "The big man's boarding us, I think," Duffy said after a while. "We can still do something." At last he persuaded her to leave the deck-house, and after blowing out the candle he closed the door after them. He did not want Jimmy to go back there. He had come to the conclusion that they could no longer hope to get away with the jade in "The Rose," short-handed and un-captained as she was, DUFFY GOES 275 and he doubted his capacity to handle her himself: again this new-found caution that he would have scorned a month or so ago! The adventurer might have been described by some as half-hearted, but the description would have been unjust. He was still firmly determined to convey the Treasure of the Manchus to the little collector, but the added responsibility in his life made his methods less those of a hardened adventurer with nothing to lose. He had something to lose. The ship was deadly quiet when they recon- noitered, holding each other's hand lest they should lose touch with each other, for the mist was, if any- thing, thicker than ever. Duffy led the way to the barricade which had indeed been battered by the continual fire. Timson and the other men lay among its ruins . . . they were all dead. Leaving Jimmy to keep a look out, Duffy found his way to the stern and by tugging at the painter of the long-boat, ascertained its safety then he slid his hands round the side until they met the hooks of the rope ladder by which he had climbed aboard from the long-boat with the Treasure party. He dragged the ladder round until it was hanging sheer from the stern, directly beneath the long- 276 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER boat's painter. Then he rejoined the girl, and to- gether they made their way into the main-cabin. Duffy outlined his plan. "The big man is sitting in a boat somewhere out there in the mist, waiting to come aboard," he began as he lit a hurricane lantern. "It would be almost impossible for us to stop him altogether. We might hinder him and shoot one or two of them, but we should not be any better off " Jimmy interrupted with something of her former spirit in her eyes and voice: "I want two lives at least!" she said between her teeth. It was the primitive call of blood for blood; a life for a life. "And lose your own in getting them," said Duffy. "No; your father paid his own bill when he fin- ished Weames. He would far rather I got you away safely; I know he would." She did not seem to notice the showing of his proprietary instinct and listened in silence while he spoke. If she thought any more of vengeance she kept it to herself. "I propose that we get away in the long-boat," Duffy went on. "Provision her, take a large beaker of water, blankets and so forth, and make for the nearest steamer route. There must be one some- DUFFY GOES 277 where about here, so close to Shanghai. Then we must trust to luck at any rate we stand more chance of getting the jade to England that way: we would never do it in 'The Rose,' even if there were no big man trying to snaffle the Treasure. What do you say?" She nodded agreement. She did not really care what happened to her. Hastily Duffy collected food from the lazarette, and filled a water-beaker; he saw no sign of Yen San in the deserted calaboose and he vaguely won- dered what had happened to the Chinaman, but there was no time to find out. Every moment was pre- cious, for the success of his plan depended upon leaving before the big man plucked up sufficient courage, or persuaded his men, to risk a boarding. The dead quiet of "The Rose" must have been dis- concerting to that gallant guardsman. Silently they carried their bundles to the stern, and after several anxious, difficult journeys up and down the rope-ladder, while Jimmy held the long- boat close in, Duffy eventually got everything they would need aboard. There are a surprising num- ber of things an expert can think of as necessary for a voyage in an open boat on the West Pacific everything, indeed, from an electric torch to a tin- 278 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER opener. At last everything was ready and Jimmy followed him on his last descent, carrying the painter with her, while he held the long-boat steady with the bottom of the ladder. Then they shook the lad- der free, dropped it into the lagoon, and in a moment were swallowed up in the mist. It was with forlorn hearts that they settled down for their voyage. Duffy packed away their food and blankets in the lockers and then helped Jimmy to get out the oars as silently as possible. The difficult task of getting out of the lagoon and through the reef had to be accomplished without any noise that might give them away to the big man. Duffy made his way carefully to the stern, clambering round the side of the Treasure chests, and carrying his prismatic compass blessing it for its luminous dial and pointer. Then he discovered that there was something else besides jade lying in the safety of the long-boat. He put his hand on the back of a man's head a pig-tailed head Yen San's. "Well, I'll be " Duffy began to whisper, but a sudden blow on his arm cut the ejaculation short. It was Yen San's wrist; he must have held a knife for there was a slight splash in the lagoon. DUFFY GOES 279 Duffy thanked the lucky star that guides the des- tiny of adventurers and said ungrammatically: "It's only me, Yen San Duff; and for God's sake don't make a noise!" Yen San clicked his teeth in the darkness. CHAPTER XVIII THE OPEN SEA JIMMY heard the sound of the disturbance in the stern and scrambled round the Treasure chests. She found Duffy listening to Yen San's whispered explanation. "When the killing and guns and noise made life an unpleasant task on the big boat," the Chinaman was saying softly, "Yen San betook himself under cover of night into this littler and safer boat. Twice did a bullet try to hide itself in the body of Yen San, twice did Yen San throw himself on his face and crawl, crawl like a dog on its belly. Then he climbed like a monkey, since a dog cannot climb, down the little thin rope and into this velly com- fortable boat. And here he stayed." He was about to continue, but apparently de- cided that he had given a full enough explanation. He subsided into silence. "Well, you will have to come along with us," said Duffy. "I hope you haven't any other plans because we cannot put you back on 'The Rose.' 280 THE OPEN SEA 281 The gentleman who tried to hide bullets in your body is trying to hide others in ours, so we are leaving him." "Where do you go now?" asked Yen San, whose pigeon English had improved into a more picturesque and lucid language. "To the nearest steamer route," said Duffy. He was very glad that Yen San had missed with his knife stroke, for judging by the pain in his arm, it had been delivered with no little force. "It is well. I go with you," Yen San remarked somewhat superfluously, since he had very little choice in the matter. Indeed, his only alternative was the lagoon. Duffy put Jimmy and Yen San to the oars and holding the tiller, concentrated all his attention on his compass. The little luminous arrow-head had got to show them the way out of the lagoon, the opening in whose reef lay almost due north accord- ing to Duffy's calculations. "Now!" he called softly, and he felt the rudder quiver as the long-boat began to move through the placid water. The mist still lay like a thick and stifling blanket over the sea, not a breath of air stirred and all was quiet. Even the two at the oars made very little 282 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER noise; just an occasional slight splash as their blades cut into the water, or the drip from them as they moved backwards for the next stroke. Of the big man's boat there was no sound or sign; somewhere out in the mist, perhaps ten, perhaps a hundred yards from them, it was waiting or moving. It was an ordeal that was worse for Duffy, perhaps, than any of them since with him lay the responsi- bility of avoiding the big man and steering them through the reef. For some ten minutes the long-boat headed stead- ily into the mist, unchallenged and unnoticed. Duffy had reckoned that the opening in the reef was some sixty yards across and that even allowing for quite a big miscalculation in its direction, the short- ness of their distance from it would ensure their getting through it somewhere. Actually he steered clean through the very center of it with the result that he did not know when they were through. Only did the passing of time give him a suspicion of what had happened; certainty came a few minutes later. Before that, however, they heard the big man's boat. Duffy could not estimate from the sound of voices that they heard, how far or how near it was, but THE OPEN SEA 283 whatever its distance the voices were clear in the sound-carrying mist and in German. "Easy! " called Duffy to his crew, and as the long- boat glided through the water on the impulse of the last stroke, they listened intently. The big man was persuading vehemently. His men were declining vehemently. "I wish I understood them," said Jimmy. "So do I," assented Duffy. "They say," said Yen San after a moment's listen- ing, "they say that they will see their honorable captain cooking in a hot place before they go on board the ... the . . . cattle ship." "You understand German?" said Duffy with con- siderable surprise. "A little," said Yen San. "I occupied myself with advantage for four years in Berlin." Then after a pause he went on: "The big noise in the little boat states to his reluctant men that if they do not obey his honorable orders he will hide a great many bullets in their . . . their verminous bodies. He suffers great anger." "Well, if he suffers it as noisily as that," said Duffy, "we can put in a little hard rowing while he's at it. Now!" And again Jimmy and Yen San bent to their oars 284 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER while Duffy watched the arrow-head of his compass. Five minutes' heavy pulling, for heavy it was with the load of jade aboard, brought them complete proof that they had passed safely through the reef. The proof was a sudden whiteness in the black curtain before them and Duffy, who faced the way they were moving, saw it first. "Easy!" he cried softly, and slewed the long- boat broadside-on to the white patch. "It's the steamer," he whispered. "Row on slowly; we'll go round her." Through a mist that seemed perhaps a little less dense, Duffy steered carefully with peering eyes. As they glided round the steamer's bows, the great plan came to him. "Yen San, can you speak German?" he asked, with difficulty keeping the rising note of eagerness out of his voice. "I can," said Yen San. "Good!" Duffy ordered in the oars and pointed the long- boat's nose at the white patch instead of into the open sea beyond. They slid up to the steamer's side, catching it with the palms of their hands. There was not the smallest scrape, and Duffy moved THE OPEN SEA 285 the long-boat slowly along to the gangway that he felt sure would be there. They reached it and found that its lowest step came within two feet of the water. "Luck!" said Duffy quietly. "Luck! Come here, both of you." They came and gathered round him in the stern. In swift, concise sentences he told them his plan, daring, simple and complete. Its very daring made it all the more possible. Jimmy was frankly driven from her grief by it, while Yen San allowed his usual impassive mind to awaken to the point of quoting a short passage of Emerson inaccurately. Then Duffy crept forward and lashed the painter to the gangway. Presently two dim figures mounted that same gangway with swift, careful feet, and came cau- tiously out onto the black mist that hid the deck. Alien figures they were, and menacing. They stood motionless for a few breathless moments, peering and listening. Then a short cough came from the binnacle above their heads. Together they moved in its direction and up the companion that led to it-*-silent still, and menacing. 286 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER Again a pause until the vague silhouette of a man showed against a star-lit sky that suddenly appeared through the mist. It was the look-out man. The two figures rushed him together the first, Yen San, curled himself like a piece of vicious steel round the surprised man's legs almost at the same moment that Duffy brought down the heavy butt of Elizabeth on the back of the man's square head. A grunt and a stagger and the square-headed man would not cough again for some little while. "See to him in a second," said Duffy. "Come on! This is where you play your part," and he led the way to the engine-room telegraph. The dial was very comprehensive, telling one every degree of speed that it was possible to obtain, ahead or astern. Duffy switched on his little electric torch that he took from his pocket, inspected by its light the telegraph, held his breath, then pulled the in- dicator over to "Full steam ahead" and at the same time handed the speaking tube to Yen San. There was a moment's suspense, then Yen San said in deep, guttural and thoroughly German tones : "Fahrt wie der Teufel; wir wollen den vieti-trans* port versenken!" A thick voice answered him smartly and un- questioning. THE OPEN SEA 287 "Good," said Duffy when Yen San told him the result, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "Go back to the long-boat and when we begin to move, lash out an oar so that we don't bump against the side. I'm going to wait until we move, set a course, and then lash the wheel dead ahead after that it will be a matter of luck. This mist is lifting." Yen San disappeared into the darkness without a word, while Duffy slashed through the anchor cable with a savage sheath-knife. Almost immediately the heart of the steamer be- gan to beat and she moved, slowly at first but with gathering speed. And, as though to mark her return to life, a gust of wind came from the south, cold and unexpected, stirring the mist into a thousand whirl- ing eddies. Then another gust and another, and in a second a steady breeze was blowing. In a moment the sky was visible, clear, moon- and star- lit, and through the lower darkness came a silver glitter the sea. The mist had gone as suddenly as it had come, leaving Taiho Shan and its three trees bathed in moonlight, while "The Rose of Washington Square" lay clear-cut and detailed in the lagoon behind the reef. Duffy saw a crowd of men moving about her decks, an occasional flash as the moonlight caught a 288 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER rifle barrel. The big man had run the risk, boarded unhindered by repelling force in time to hear the most alarming and surprising thing in the world: the first chug-chug of his beautiful white steamer as she swung round and headed with no uncertain air for the open sea. He stood on the bridge of "The Rose of Wash- ington Square" and howled unanswered prayers and curses to the wide heavens. At times he danced a futile but Dervish-like dance, and once he emptied his revolver harmlessly into the sky. Then Duffy lashed the wheel of the beautiful white steamer and ran down the companion to the gang- way and down that into the long-boat, which was cutting through the water, lashed firm and fast to the steamer. "They'll crowd every ounce of steam into her boilers for the next hundred miles," he said to the other two, the triumph of success in his voice. "The big man trained his crew well and they'll carry on till they're told to stop. I shan't tell them to stop. They are expecting 'The Rose' to go up with a bang any minute, thanks to Yen San's German. He told the engineer she was being blown up." "Couldn't we take command and make for Shang- THE OPEN SEA 289 hai?" asked Jimmy. "We could easily subdue the engine-room." "We might," said Duffy thoughtfully; and he fell to thinking of the plan. It held possibilities. Then he remembered the look-out man they had put out of action and returning to the binnacle, gagged and bound him with efficiency against the moment he should return to thick-headed consciousness. Duffy's original plan had been to allow the steamer to steam furiously for the horizon and event- ually to cut adrift from it, leaving it to discover the absence of its crew at its leisure. The matter would need discussing. They discussed it at length. The success of Jim- my's plan to commandeer the steamer depended mainly on the number, or lack of number, of men in its engine-room. There might be three or there might be five. It was a big risk, and Duffy pointed it out. "Risk," said Jimmy. "What is all this talk of yours about risks, Duffy? You don't seem to have worried about them very much up to the moment." Duffy smiled happily, and said: "You see we've actually got the jade now the worst part of the business is over as far as that is 290 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER concerned and it is merely a matter of careful going to transport it home." He did not tell her that she had been added to his list of responsibilities. The time was not yet ripe. Yen San sat on his heels and looked back at the distant blotch that still remained of Taiho Shan and "The Rose of Washington Square." His eyes were fixed and unblinking; he had taken no part in their discussion. He may or may not have listened to the fitful argument that continued until the first sword of red fire pierced the deep shadow of the sky and warned them of a new day. "Dawn," said Duffy, and they watched the steady brightening of sea and sky. It was different so close to the water they seemed nearer to it than when they had watched it from the deck of "The Rose" a seeming year ago. Jimmy, who had made no sign or allusion to the death of her father since her first outbreak of grief, found in the eternal mystery that a dawning always conveys a sense of overwhelming loneliness. It prompted her to slip a slim hand into Duffy's as they leaned side by side against one of the treasure chests. Duffy thrilled and understood. It showed him that she looked to him now and the action sym- THE OPEN SEA 291 bolized the lessening of her independent spirit. She trusted him, forgiving and forgetting his lapse in the shattering shock of deep experience. He rejoiced and realized a sense of completeness, almost of ful- filment. This was the dawning of a new day in the world, and a new day in his adventure. A day brighter than all the days that had gone before. Into the stillness yet turmoil of his mind broke the mellow, wisdom-speaking voice of Yen San. "Suppose, honorable companions, that we per- suaded the dogs in the ship's heart to obey our hon- orable orders to Shanghai how would we get this most valuable Treasure onto a ship for the West? Their excellencies, the Customary Officers, forbid the carrying of jade out of the Celestial Empire. What should we do?" "Smuggle it!" said Duffy instantly. Yen San looked with his oblique eyes at Duffy and then at the four massive chests of jade, express- ing in the slow movement of his head far more than any words could have done. He emphasized the largeness of the chests and the relative smallness of Duffy. "Yes?" he said softly. Duffy thought for a moment. Then he said: "Well, whatever we do we must do speedily. 292 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER The big man will get 'The Rose' to sea as fast as he can. Daylight will show him that the Treasure has gone; in fact he might manage to keep within two or three hours of us all the way. Steam was almost up when we left. If we make for the coast it must not be Shanghai." "But Shanghai is the only place where we are likely to get a home-going boat willing to carry us," said Jimmy. "Unless we pick one up somewhere out at sea," suggested Duffy. They fell silent, each debating the point in their minds, while the steamer chugged stanchly along into the brightening day. Jimmy let her fingers drag through the swiftly passing water and occasionally looked at Duffy under her dark lashes. She ob- served how much better-looking he had become under the combined effect of sun and sea; his chin was firmer, his eyes clearer and quite blue. Yen San broke the silence again. He always man- aged to hit the right moment at which the greatest attention might be obtained. "Are you, my honorable companions, in any great hurry to reach the land of your fathers?" he asked quietly. THE OPEN SEA 293 They both reviewed this new point for a moment, then almost together said: "No; why?" "Well," the Chinaman said, "it seems a course of greater wisdom to Yen San that we should abide in complacency and peace in the paradise of Chi'ung- To for a period, until the bearded-one-with-many- bullets shall have forgotten us and our valuable pos- sessions which he covets," and he indicated the Treasure of the Manchus with a graceful movement of his hand. "Chi'ung-To?" said Jimmy. "I thought Chi'ung- To was a legend." "Chi'ung-To is no legend," said Yen San. "Chi'ung-To is an island." "Where?" asked Duffy, who had read in his books on China of the much-talked-of Chi'ung-To; its mystery in fact had called forth a whole chapter from the pen of an authority. "You have a chart?" asked Yen San. "No," said Duffy. "A chart of this part of the world?" "Yes." "Half-a-minute." Duffy ran up the gangway of the steamer; made a few careful observations for any sign of life; 294 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER reached the big man's chart-house with swift strides and found on its table, spread out where it had last been examined, a fellow of the chart Honest Pig had shown him. As he gathered it up he noticed a little cross in red ink that drew attention to the small speck of Taiho Shan. On the way down to the long-boat Duffy realized the wisdom of Yen San's suggestion. The big man might have sufficient influence in Shanghai to make that port very hot for them. It was best avoided for a while. Besides they had indefinite time be- fore them provided their food lasted. Duffy handed the chart to Yen San, who bent over it for a few minutes in silence. Then he pointed with a long fore-finger. "That," he said, "is Chi'ung-To." It was a speck, unnamed and surrounded by a mass of reefs; it looked no bigger than Taiho Shan. For all the attendant markings round it, in its broad, unsullied expanse of chart it looked deserted indeed, but none the less secluded. It lay some hundred miles behind Taiho Shan and nearer the mainland. "Looks quiet," said Jimmy. "It is," assented Yen San, and he produced a watch, a ruler, and a stub of pencil from the sleeves of his loose shirt-kimono affair. Then, using one THE OPEN SEA 295 of the chests as a table and a corner of the chart for his papers, he made rapid calculations. "I can take you to Chi'ung-To," he said at length. "There are food and shelter and peace on Chi'ung- To." Duffy and Jimmy looked at each other for a sec- ond in mute consultation. The resolution was passed. "Good," said Duffy. "Take us to Chi'ung-To, Yen San." Without a word Yen San clambered for'ard and cast loose the painter, while Duffy seizing the tiller and holding it hard over, steered the long-boat clear of the side of the steamer as it slid past. At the same moment the sun slipped over the lip of the world and it was day. Even as the big man's steamer, well-ordered and obedient, drove an unwavering course for the far horizon, the long-boat hoisted its brown sail into the clear morning air, caught the steady breeze, and sailed cheerily away for Chi'ung-To. CHAPTER XIX POETIC JUSTICE THROUGH the long day under a fierce sun until the cool of evening, the long-boat, with its freight of jade and its crew of adventurers, sailed for a horizon that came no nearer. The three took turn and turn about at the tiller, and Yen San kept a watchful eye on their course. They made their midday meal off tinned peaches and large square biscuits in the hurry to leave "The Rose" Duffy had carried away a case of Cali- fornian peaches under the impression that it held bully beef. The peaches were tasty but not sus- taining; the biscuits, however, though flavorless and of an unappetizing hardness, made the meal quite satisfying. But in that heat they had little inclina- tion for food. After it Jimmy slept fitfully for a while, stirring and moaning a little in her sleep. Though con- sciously she gave no sign, subconsciously she was fighting the first great sorrow she had ever known. Her father had been the only companion she had 296 POETIC JUSTICE 597 ever had, and the loss of him cut into the very depths of her being. Her philosophy, instinctive and unformulated though it was, upheld her through the worst of the experience, and already she was taking more interest in what was happening about her, while Duffy and Yen San tacitly avoided the subject of Honest Pig's death. When they talked which was seldom they talked of Chi'ung-To. To Duffy the prospect of a desert island was en- trancing; indeed, he wondered that it had not oc- curred to him before as an absolute necessity. What romance or adventure had ever been complete with- out one? He questioned Yen Sen about Chi'- ung-To and learned very little. Yen San was monosyllabic to the point of ignoring the matter, giving the impression that beyond being able to assure him that the island did exist, he would have to answer his own questions when they arrived. That evening they sailed languidly into the glow of sunset along a path of crimson. The breeze that had carried them all day dropped; later, however, it freshened again and they proceeded as steadily as before. Yen San's sudden intervention in the adventure aroused in Duffy all his former interest in the China- man. He watched the impassive face and wide-set THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER eyes and his mind dwelt on the accomplishments of the man. He could cook like very few cooks; he had an astounding knowledge of the philosophies of the world; he spoke German as fluently as English; and, in addition to all these, he could sail a boat across an unknown sea with expert hands. True Yen San was an Oriental and the only one with whom Duffy had come into close contact, but even for an Oriental, he decided, there was an inordinate air of mystery about him. Sitting or lying still, which Duffy had perforce to do all day, allowed him to spend the greater part of his energy on his thoughts. He was conscious, above everything, that life had indeed opened itself out before his eyes like an amazing flower. It seemed that he had only just commenced to live and that in spite of the fullness of his adventures so far, as yet he was but on the fringe of things. He was right he was on the fringe of things. The next morning, some three hours after sunrise, they sighted Chi'ung-To, glowing like a jewel in its setting of blue and gold. It was bigger than Taiho Shan and covered with luxuriant trees and gaily bedecked bushes. Almost circular, it lay within the usual limpid lagoon, but a lagoon bluer perhaps than most, for the bright greens of the trees and the POETIC JUSTICE 299 masses of red blooms that swept down to the white beach emphasized the vividness of its color. It was indeed an Island of Paradise. Duffy gazed at it in wonderment, and even Jimmy, used as she was to the islands of the Pacific, was not a little stirred. "Paradise," she said. "Chi'ung-To has earned its name." Yen San alone seemed unimpressed, or if he was, he did not show it. The reef allowed a clear passage for the long-boat, and Yen San, putting down his Emerson and taking the tiller from Duffy, steered a decisive course into the lagoon, running cleanly aground on the smooth sand of the beach. By expending a good deal of energy, which the weight of the Treasure of the Manchus demanded, they pulled the boat out of reach of the tide. "And that," said Duffy a little breathlessly, "is that." "It is," agreed Yen San wisely, and began un- loading their stores, cacheing them in a pile in the shade of a convenient palm tree. Jimmy and Duffy explored the immediate neighborhood. The vegetation was thick, and did not permit them to penetrate very far from the beach. Presently 300 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER they returned and lay down on the cool sand in a nook between two rocks, watching the glittering sea. At least, Jimmy watched it, for Duffy was more con- cerned with the effect of a bright scarlet flower that the girl had tucked behind her ear. It contrasted admirably with the blackness of her hair and the delicacy of her skin; she was very beautiful the very spirit of the sea and the sky and Chi'ung-To. He wanted to make her talk that he might watch the shades of expression that would move across her face, and the light in her eyes when she turned to him but he was loath to disturb her, and speech, he decided, seemed somehow unnecessary and out of keeping with things. He wondered immensely what she was thinking about. Presently she spoke, slowly, and looking across the lagoon with dreamy eyes the while. "Duffy," she said, "what is the matter with me? I've got such a funny feeling here." And she put a slim hand on her breast. "Pain?" he asked. "No; not pain at least I suppose it is a sort of pain," she said. "I've never felt it before." He looked worried, and said a little hesitatingly: "Is ... it ... your father?" "No; I'm not worrying about daddy. He al- POETIC JUSTICE 301 ways managed pretty well when he was alive and I'm not afraid for him now that he is ... is dead. He'll pull through wherever he is." Duffy shook his head in perplexity and they fell silent, the girl puzzled and he wondering. Yen San was examining the chests of jade tap- ping them and trying to unfasten the locks. Pres- ently he gave it up and walked over to them, a slouching, bent figure. "Food," he said, "I will find food. Will you make heat that I may cook?" "Right," said Duffy, and lazily he set about gath- ering sticks and dry leaves, while Yen San disap- peared into the thickets, leaving the two alone. "We'll open those chests after we've eaten," said Duffy, and he dropped a bundle of twigs. "I won- der what sort of jade they hold. Mr. Northcote seemed to think it would be very wonderful I hope it is, for Heaven knows we've had a thick enough time getting it." "Let's open it now," she said. "We can get the fire going and then open the chests. Yen San will be some time at his cooking. I suppose he is quite 'straight'?" she added. "Yep," said Duffy. "I'm sure he's 'straight.* You see, he is by way of being rather grateful to me, 302 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER I think. He is another I saved from the tender hands of Weames ' He stopped suddenly, re- membering his decision that his rescue of her should be forgotten. But it was too late. He realized instantly that she was thinking about it. For a few seconds there was a distinct "feeling" in the air. He busied himself with the fire and after one or two efforts had the satisfaction of seeing the pile of brushwood blaze up. He thought the crisis was past, but suddenly Jimmy commenced: "Duffy, I I want to say, though I don't sup- pose you can ever forgive " "No!" shouted Duffy. "No!" And he turned and ran along the water's edge. Jimmy looked after him with blank surprise in her eyes had he taken leave of his senses? She felt intuitively that what she had been about to say was the one thing in the world he wanted to hear, yet he had apparently run from her to avoid that hearing! She was right he had, but it was not because he did not wish to hear her, he did; what he did not wish was what he knew her apology might cause him to do. Duffy was still firmly convinced that his immediate job was to get the Treasure of the Manchus to England not to make love to his partner in that adventurous business. Let him fulfil POETIC JUSTICE 303 his commission and then, time and energy would show. At this point I think we might examine an atti- tude in Duffy's mind towards certain aspects in life love and all that it implies. He had, indeed, flung from him in his pursuit of the more furious things of life much of the conventional, orthodox atmos- phere which had impregnated his whole life in Har- penden from its earliest beginnings, but in his search through the realms of fiction for ever more glorious adventure, he had not had reason, or opportunity for that matter, to delve deeply into the ethics of the greatest of all emotions. Aunt 'Tilda, mid-Victorian, and with the poor noble curate of St. Stephen's as her guiding inspira- tion, had cherished and given forth to Duffy as ultimate truth her views on the various relations between man and maid. And Duffy, now that he was confronted with what was certainly the greatest experience in his life that of falling completely in love very naturally brought to bear on the situation the wisdom of Aunt 'Tilda. The point is that he did not realize his feelings as being the result of that wisdom; it is to be feared that if he had he would, though with no disrespect to Aunt 'Tilda, have summarily rejected 304 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER them as false and useless. He had absorbed the teaching, half-heedingly and subconsciously, with the result that when the need arose for some definite ambition with regard to Jimmy, his subconscious mind produced, with the readiness it will always display, a perfect scheme of procedure. That procedure entailed a fixed income and a nice six-roomed house complete with all modern improve- ments, set on the hills above Harpenden within comfortable distance of Town. He had no fixed income and no six-roomed house; therefore, before he could presume to make love to Jimmy he must be certain that the ideal his subconscious mind sup- plied was attainable, or at least within reasonable reach of his purse. The Treasure of the Manchus in England would be a feather in his cap it would distinguish him as a Qualified Adventurer and would enable him to command a more or less fixed income. Qualified Adventurers must have a market, a good market, in the world. Duffy did not attempt to work out the part that Jimmy was to play in the future program of his life; if he had he would have seen the complete incompatibility of Jimmy and the six-roomed house, and in happy inconsequence, would have picked her up and kissed her at once. POETIC JUSTICE 305 It can only be said that Duffy's conscious mind had not yet grappled with the problem, and prob- ably it was as well. Jimmy was in no mood, nor even in the spirit, to be rushed. Furthermore if she loved Duffy as much as Duffy loved her, she did not realize it. Realization so often comes later to the woman than to the man. So thus we have Duffy climbing into the long-boat with the intention of expending his energy in open- ing the Treasure of the Manchus as an outlet for his emotions, while Jimmy stood by the fire and watched him with eyes that were no longer surprised, but alight with understanding; a smile, doubtful a little, but happy rather than unhappy, wreathing her lips. Duffy found an ax in one of the lockers and inspected the lock of one of the chests. Then he called to the girl: "Come on; I'm going to open it!" She came and helped him the more intimate question shelved in the interests of the jade. Eventually they persuaded the lid of the chest to swing back on its hinges and the first layer of silk packing was revealed. With fingers that trembled with excitement they pulled it away and brought to light the first piece. It was a temple-gong of green 3 o6 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER jade like the little collector's bowl in the orange room of his house in St. John's Wood. Duffy held it up to the light and they both ad- mired the effect of sunlight through the translucent green, that had had no light shining through it since the day it had been packed away by Von Splatz. Duffy found that the simplicity of the piece ap- pealed to Jimmy. "Mr. Northcote said that all the beautiful things in the world are simple things," he remarked. "In art, literature, architecture, sculpture the simple always stands above the complex." And carefully spreading some of the silk packing on the sand, he rested the gong in it. As he was turning to the chest again, Jimmy held up her hand and said quietly: "Listen, Duffy!" He stood still and after a moment heard a steady crashing among the undergrowth of bushes where the woods fringed the beach. "That's not Yen San," said Duffy quickly, a note of alarm in his voice. "It's made by more than one man! Where's my gun?" and he slid his hand round for Gilbert. "I've left him with the pile of stuff under the tree. Damn!" And he started off at a run up the beach, Jimmy by his side. Within twenty yards of the pile an amazing com- POETIC JUSTICE 307 pany marched sedately out of the wood, right in front of them. The two pulled up in consternation and surprise. Chi'ung-To was no uninhabited island! Indeed, it boasted a platoon of Chinese sol- diers, garbed in regulation uniform of white drill and carrying service rifles on their shoulders. At the head of the little column was a short, tubby little Chinese officer with a spiky, black mustache and a very martial air. He barked an order in Chinese and his men halted, formed line with commendable smartness, and "ordered arms." The tubby officer stepped forward, clicked his heels, bowed politely, and said: "If I do hot inconvenience your very honorable excellencies I would beg of you march a little way with us. Your honorable presence is desired." Duffy found words at last; this new exigency de- manded tactful dealing. The platoon of soldiers looked far too regulation and far too well armed to take liberties with. Diplomacy was the weapon they must use. "We will come," he said, "when we have prepared ourselves/' and he led Jimmy to the pile of stores. He picked up Elizabeth and her belt, put Gilbert in his hip pocket and gave Jimmy her top-boots, which she had taken off when she reached the sand. 3 o8 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Who the devil are these soldiers?" the girl asked. "Yen San told us the place was deserted. This looks black; especially with that jade in the long- boat!" "It does," Duffy agreed. "We've got to be jolly careful how we act and what we say. In fact the least we do of either, the better. 'Let the other chap do the talking' is a fine motto in a case of this sort. Got everything you want?" "Yes," said Jimmy. Duffy turned to the little officer, who had been watching their preparations with inquisitive, beady eyes. "We are ready," he said. The officer bowed again, turned to his men, and again barked at them. They divided into two parties, one of which marched over the beach to the long-boat; the other, in charge of the officer, formed an escort round the two adventurers. Then another order and they started through the woods. Once Duffy tried to prise a little information as to the desirer of their presence. He received no answer. As they plodded along, side by side, they dis- cussed in low tones the new problem that had arisen so suddenly, and the probable whereabouts of Yen San. POETIC JUSTICE 309 "I -say," said Duffy suddenly, "why should he have gone so far for food? There are cocoanut palms right on the edge of the beach and any amount of those bushes with that kind of raspberry on them." The question would have to settle itself, and they gave up useless speculation. They talked of other things, and again Duffy found himself grappling with the problem of their relationship even while the Treasure of the Manchus seemed to be so seriously in the soup. The woods through which they marched were very thick, and but for the fact that the soldiers were returning by the same route that they had cut on their way out, the going might have been difficult indeed. As it was Duffy wished he was wearing his top-boots instead of the rubber shoes in which he had left "The Rose," for the thorns and brambles troubled him a good deal. At the end of about twenty minutes' steady walk the trees thinned out, and they found themselves at the opening to a great clearing that must have been half-a-mile across and extending to the opposite side of the island. In the distance they canght the glitter and light of the sea. The sight that greeted their eyes was surprising 3 io THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER to say the least of it, and they were growing used to surprising things. In the center of the open space was a low, white, veranda-skirted bungalow, set in the midst of a well-ordered, cultivated garden; broad paths led up to it from different directions. On either side were smaller bungalows, groups of cluster- ing huts and store-houses. It was a little colony that carried with it an amazing air of completeness and self-sufficiency. Coolies, babies and dogs moved, crawled and sported in the warm sun. "Well, I'll be blowed!" said Duffy. "Uninhab- ited! Yen San was talking out of the back of his neck!" "He was," assented Jimmy. "This is a regular village!" They followed the lead of the little officer, who left his men at the entrance to one of the paths and took them up to the veranda of the big bungalow. He bowed them into long chairs and disappeared through a wide, curtained doorway. Jimmy and Duffy sat and looked at each other: their surprise growing, their expectancy at its keenest. "What next?" asked Duffy rather plaintively. He loosened Elizabeth in her holster, not because he thought there was an earthly chance of his using POETIC JUSTICE 311 her without being extremely foolish, but because the feel of her butt comforted him a little. Suddenly the little officer stepped quickly out of the doorway and held back the curtain. There was a moment's pause while the two adventurers watched the door with every sense strained to its utmost faculty to perceive. Then the coolness of a hard- ened adventurer deserted Duffy altogether. Yen San, the cook, resplendent in the most ex- travagant, gorgeous raiment, walked solemnly and regally onto the veranda, closely followed by an- other Chinese in equally wonderful clothes and of an amazing similarity of figure and feature. In silence these two seated themselves opposite Jimmy and Duffy, who were sitting bolt upright in their chairs stiff with surprise. Then Yen San waved a commanding hand at the little officer, who clicked his heels, saluted, and stepped smartly off the veranda, disappearing down the path. After a short, pregnant silence Yen San said slowly: "Allow me to present to you my brother, Ki- Wang-Toy, Manchu Prince, and myself, Fu-Sang, also Manchu Prince. These, my brother, are Miss Fellowes and Mr. Duff, my very honorable com- panions of whom I have spoken." Ki-Wang-Toy inclined a gracious head and fixed 3 i2 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER them with an unblinking stare. Duffy mustered his shattered thoughts. "How d'ye do?" he said, and then burst out: "What the deuce does all this mean, Yen San? Manchu Princes? I don't understand!" His mind whirled as he tried to grasp the meaning of this startling turn of events. Beyond one crushing fact, that the Treasure had fallen into the hands of these two, he could comprehend nothing of what it meant. The whole fabric of the adventure had been com- pletely upset and re-arranged, and as he recognized it, he was acutely conscious that the whip-hand was his no longer. The full realization of the calamity grew and grew upon him as Yen San, Manchu Prince, conveyed to him in slow, carefully-worded sentences the death-blow to the grand and successful finale he so ardently desired. "I will explain to you, my friend, for friend you certainly have been, Mr. Duff, those parts of this story you may not fully comprehend"; the China- man's voice was softly modulated, kindly and very patient. "You have been wondering, no doubt, how it happens that Yen San, the cook, should appear before you in these strange clothes and seated on this veranda. Chi'ung-To has for many years been the island home of the Manchu Princes; here, far POETIC JUSTICE 313 from the homes of other men, it has been our custom to rest from the wearying task of governing the Celestial Empire. I must pray you excuse the sur- prise we have caused you and let me explain how it is that you are here where no Westerner has ever set foot." Yen Sen paused a moment and then continued: "Many years ago the jade of the Royal House was stolen from the reigning Princes by a scoundrel and a traitor. I speak of Von Splatz. Von Splatz, as you know, my friend, sought to turn the trust that was imposed upon him into a means for his own profit. He stole and hid away the most cherished possessions of the Manchu Princes. To his own country he returned, died, and passed on his secret to his wife, who afterwards sold it to an Englishman; your employer, Mr. Duff. Now I pledged myself to my brothers that I would seek through the world till I found that secret. Many times since the evil day on which Von Splatz left Peking have I come near to learning what I desired so strongly to learn, but many times did Fortune turn from me. "At last when 'The Rose of Washington Square' set forth to seek the Treasure, Fortune smiled upon me and my house. From the beginning to this end when our jade is again our own the gods of Des- 3 i4 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER tiny were with me. Even while Death sought us that misty night, when all seemed lost, we escaped and brought the jade to its home. By your aid, my friends, we achieved an impossible thing. When I obtained that most uncomfortable post of cook on 'The Rose of Washington Square' I knew not how the thing was to be accomplished. Almost did it accomplish itself. It is well." Yen San ceased, and through the daze that fogged and bewildered, Duffy saw the smile on the Chinaman's face, the smile like a sudden glow of sunshine over a ripe corn-field. Would to God he had never seen that smile! With a rage of disappointment that drove all the patience and acceptance of the inevitable from his mind, Duffy whipped Elizabeth from her holster with a speed that he had never before equaled, and covered Yen San with her unflinching barrel. Through the calm recital that the Chinaman had just concluded, Duffy's realization of the appalling failure in which his adventure had culminated had grown and grown until its horror and significance struck him like physical blows. He would have to return to Mr. Northcote a beaten and humiliated man. Beaten not by superior craft but simply by luck sheer luck. How could he have known that POETIC JUSTICE 315 Yen San's offer to take them to Chi'ung-To held such an ulterior motive as this? And Jimmy his heart might yearn for her, his mind be absorbed in thoughts of her but to what end? She was linked fast to the Treasure of the Manchus he could not have the one without the other; throughout the adventure he had held that rigidly before him. He flung his words, sharp and incisive, across the veranda: "Yen San, you cunning devil. I trusted you saved your life made a friend of you on a boat where no one had a word for 'the yellow dog' and this is my reward! This is what you do to me! You've ruined me! Irretrievably! And so now I am going to shoot you where you sit! Your men can kill me afterwards, but you shall go first!" His finger tightened on the trigger. "You are going to die, Yen San, Manchu Prince," he said quietly. "No," said Yen San. "Yes!" "I am not going to die," said Yen San evenly. "Because, my friend, you possess what all great men possess. You possess a sense of justice." "Justice what do you mean? Do you call steal- ing a man's very life from him justice?" 3 i6 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Very life?" said Yen San. "All that makes life worth while, anyway," said Duffy. "But jade: does jade make life worth while? There are surely other things besides jade?" "There are," said Duffy bitterly, "and I'm think- ing of them." There was a sudden silence, tense and full; almost unconsciously they all realized what he meant. Yen San looked at Jimmy and smiled his wise and benevolent smile. Then he turned to Duffy and said: "My friend, let us deal with the matter of the jade. I want to show you the justice of this end. By what name do you call the Treasure?" "The Treasure of the Manchus," said Duffy, furious with himself for not shooting the Chinaman. He was a failure. ". . . of the Manchus"; Yen San echoed his last words. "The Treasure of the Manchus," and he spread out his thin, sensitive hands in an eloquent gesture. "For to the Manchus does it belong." For a long minute silence fell upon them again. It was the great moment, the great climax, in the adventure. It was the right ending, and in spite POETIC JUSTICE 317 of its shattering consequence to himself, Duffy recognized it. He took his eyes from Yen San, looked down at Elizabeth, vicious and deadly, and turning his head, looked deep into the girl's eyes. The hunger of her heart "the sort of pain" lay in their dark shadows, and slowly comprehension grew in Duffy's mind. Apart from the gratification of his profes- sional pride, what, after all, was the value to him of the Treasure of the Manchus? He flung back his head and laughed a laugh of pure relief. He had succeeded in separating Jimmy from the jade and had seen in her eyes the answer to the problem that his own mind had created. In hers it had never existed. To her this apparent fail- ure was neither here nor there; it became an inci- dental that faded into small significance in the light of a far greater, far more important thing that had come to them both. Failure? Indeed, it was suc- cess! In the jubilance of his heart, Duffy turned to Yen San. "The Treasure of the Manchus," he said quietly, "has returned to the Manchus. It is well." And he slid Elizabeth back into her holster. CHAPTER XX AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT BUT although Duffy had more or less settled the problem of his heart, we have still to look into the matter of his mind and see how his professional pride came out of the adventure. Concerning this duality of the matter, I think we might call his pride the head aspect; the heart aspect to be found in his relations with Jimmy. Throughout the adventure these two aspects had been closely bound together first the one, then the other predominating in what must have been to Duffy a bewildering confusion. This confusion dis- appeared in the actual losing of the jade when he discovered that the girl did not attach the impor- tance to it that he had somehow supposed she would; on the heels of that discovery came the realization that the success of winning the jade was superficial compared to the far more fundamental importance of success in winning the girl. Thus were the two aspects separated and given their proper values. But we must not leave any loose ends. We must 318 AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT 319 follow the matter up, for Duffy, conscientious still with regard to his employer, decided that although Jimmy came first in his immediate ambitions, he must be patient and clear up the hash he had made of Mr. Northcote's venture as best he could before making any actual, definite declaration of his love to the girl. It sounds weird, but Duff was weird, and we must take him as we find him. It is clear that a great many men would have found no time, in their consideration of the girl, to worry about the effect of their failure on a distant, far-away em- ployer who ought to have known better than to have employed him. Yet Duffy, attribute it to what you will, was dif- ferent he carried the thing through and inciden- tally, I think, made a more clear-cut finish to the story artistically than might otherwise have been the case. We will go back, before Duffy and Jimmy, to the Cafe where the adventure had its earliest beginning when the little collector had strolled down the room to Duffy's table and had introduced himself to him and his two friends Binks and Mac Arthur. Those two friends walked to that same table one bleak December day, six months after the eventful 320 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER fortnight that had torn their Duffy away from them. It had been a loss, his going, a loss they only real- ized later when their fitful attempts to find a fitting third for the combine failed dismally. Much as they had laughed and amused themselves at Duffy's ex- pense, they found that one can only do that with a particularly patient soul. Duffy's successors had not been patient souls. Therefore they were alone when they came to the usual table, but it was none the less annoying to find that all four chairs were leaning forward to show they were engaged inclusively engaged. Binks called Trixie, peremptorily. "Why is our table engaged?" he demanded. "Is this the sort of treatment that should be ac- corded time-honored customers?" asked MacArthur, a wealth of injury in his voice. "This has never happened before!" And he frowned heavily at the unfortunate waitress. He regarded this as another insidious attempt to prise him from his sacred rut. "I'm very sorry, sir, but I couldn't help it," Trixie said. "A gentleman came in about half-an-hour ago and said he wanted a table for four that table. He wouldn't have no other! He's coming back at one o'clock. He'll be here any minute, now. Won't those seats over there do?" AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT 321 "No!" said MacArthur. "Where's the mana- geress?" "It's no good asking her," said Trixie. "The gentleman arranged it with her." "Curse these stockbrokers!" MacArthur snarled. "I suppose he was a stockbroker?" "Indeed, sir, I don't know. He was an old gen- tleman." "Then he ought to know better," he said. "First the bookstall goes and sells its last copy of 'John O' London' and then you go and let any wandering stockbroker collar our our table!" He looked round at the Cafe with soured eyes. "All right," said Binks soothingly, "we can sit over there, Mac, for to-day. Can we have this table to-morrow, Trixie?" "Yes, sir, of course you can. I really couldn't help it, really, I couldn't." Gloomily MacArthur followed Binks to the other table, which was just across the gangway, and gloomily he surveyed the menu. He had mentally come to the conclusion that he could not fare better than on steak, fried potatoes and a Bass, when Binks suddenly said: "Hello! There's Duffy's friend, Mr. Northcote; he's the chap who got hold of our table!" 322 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Ha!" snapped MacArthur, and jumped to his feet. "I'll ask him to find another one." And be- fore Binks could stop him he had crossed the room. "Ass," commented Binks, and he followed his friend with the intention of keeping him as cool as the blood of many Border kings would permit. He felt sometimes that MacArthur carried this sort of business to unnecessary extremes. It was almost a mania with him, a disturbing mania. MacArthur reached the little collector, who for all that six long months had passed had not changed at all. Indeed, except for the fact that his expensive overcoat was heavier and fur-collared, it might have been only yesterday that he had come into their lives and sown the seed of real adventure in Duffy's heart. He recognized MacArthur at once and had seized his hand in a welcoming clasp before that aggra- vated scion of Border kings could speak. "My dear sir, I am so glad, so glad you could come," said the little man; "I was afraid you might have been prevented. You see, I made sure of our table. Oh, yes, and there is the other young man." And he relinquished his hold of MacArthur's hand to grasp that of Binks. "How do you do," said Binks, who was as sur- AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT 323 prised as his friend, but better able to respond, since his confusion was not rendered speechless by his rage. Binks had not the tenacious affection for the sacred rut as had MacArthur. "He is about due," said Mr. Northcote, and took an extravagant gold watch from his pocket. "Due?" said MacArthur, whose interest was aroused. "Who is due?" "Don't you know?" asked the little man in sur- prise. "Didn't he cable you as well?" "Who?" "Mr. Duff." "Duffy!" said the two together. "Duffy!" "Yes; look here." And the little man pulled out a bulging pocket book, took from it a cable- gram, and handed it to MacArthur. " 'Meet friend and self at usual cafe table fourteenth one o'clock. Duff.' ' he read out, then added: "Funny thing he did not let us know." "Yes, I was quite sure 'friend' should have read 'friends,' and by the word he meant you two young men. I suppose he is bringing some one with him. We must have another chair." 324 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "I suppose he wants us," said MacArthur doubt- fully. "Yes, I think so," said Binks. "Why should he waste money on a cable when he knew perfectly well we should be here anyhow?" "How?" asked MacArthur. "Suppose we had changed our . . ." Binks gave a short laugh. MacArthur turned on him suddenly, scowling. "Owl," he snarled. They asked Trixie to bring another chair, gave her their orders, and fell to discussing things. "Do you think he managed to get the jade?" asked Binks. The little collector shrugged his shoulders. "He may have or he may have not," he said. "One never knows, but he struck me as being a very capable young man." "He's capable enough," said MacArthur. "But " "But what?" "Oh, well, he's a little wild, you know." "Wild?" "What Mac means," broke in Binks, "is that Duffy would never stand for acquired habits." The little man looked perplexed, and Binks told AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT 325 him about the sacred rut. At the end of it the col- lector took out his watch. "One o'clock," he said. Almost as he spoke a hush came from the outer room of the crowded Cafe. They could not see it from their table, and their eyes went to the wide doorway between the two rooms in expectancy and were gratified, even as the same hush came over their room. Duffy entered, and by his side was a girl, a beau- tiful girl, attired in a ravishing fur coat of Chinese- fox, with a toque of the same fur on her head, the black hair curling from beneath its white edge. Yen San had given Jimmy the skins, the most beautiful skins that the Celestial Empire can produce, and in Shanghai they had been made into a coat and toque, on a design submitted by Duffy. He was justly proud of the effect the effect, no doubt, that pro- duced the hush in the startled Cafe. Duffy was sunburned, and his overcoat empha- sized by its heaviness the fact that a warmer sun had not long since beaten down on him. Also he looked bigger and infinitely more healthy and, need- less to say, infinitely an adventurer. They made their way past the interested patrons to the table where the little collector and the other 326 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER two were awaiting them. MacArthur fixed his eyes firmly on Jimmy and kept them there firmly. Only Binks noticed the solemn expression on Duffy's face and his air of discomfort through the next few minutes. An air that only brightened when he introduced Jimmy to them; afterwards, when he ordered their food, it settled about him again. Binks was unhappy. It looked to him very much as though Duffy had failed. The little collector, trained by constant dealing with men, displayed none of the eagerness Binks expected he would show in his anxiety to hear the result of the expedition. He was patient, and ap- parently far more interested in his food. Hardly a word was spoken during the first course Jimmy was subdued and downcast. Duffy saw it, and felt a wave of gratitude sweep over him. She realized the heavy cost his confession of failure would mean to him. When Trixie had carried away the plates, Duffy took off his horn-rimmed spectacles, polished them, and gave a little preparatory cough. The table waited. Then he spoke, and the fact that they all hung on his lips gave him little satisfaction. Had he had better news to impart it might have been different. AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT 327 "Mr. Northcote," he began, "I am going to tell you the whole story as it happened, incident for incident, point for point, dwelling on the little de- tails which always make or mar any story. Miss Fellowes here has been through the whole adven- ture with me and she will bear witness that I give it you accurately and that I leave out nothing. In- deed, for her peace of mind it would be kinder if I did, for some of it cannot bring anything but pain to her." Duffy's voice was slow and methodical; almost reminiscent of Yen San's. In places he might have been accused of pomposity, but he must t>e forgiven that when one realizes that he had been arranging and re-arranging the things he was to say at this dismal moment all the way from Chi'ung-To to Shanghai, and from Shanghai home. The little collector nodded and Duffy continued. He kept his eyes on the fan-light above his head, and told them the whole story. He told them of the gradual working up to the climax where success and the Treasure of the Man- chus waited for him on Taiho Shan. The actual finding of it and getting it into the long-boat; the fight to keep it from the big man; the death of Honest Pig; the escape with Yen San and Jimmy carrying away the jade to a place of safety only 328 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER to find that by so doing he had played into the hands of the most dangerous rival he had; and the last scene of the story on Chi'ung-To where the Treas- ure returned to its real owners. It made thrilling listening to the three who knew not the open sea, and the wild excitement that the ends of the earth can show, and when Duffy had finished, they sat silent for a long moment, grasping the amazing things that had happened to him and this beautiful girl. And though Duffy had made no reference to his feelings about her, they felt and realized their existence. Even, I think, as did the little collector, for all that that aspect of life had passed him years ago. "And so," said Duffy quietly, "I have failed." The little collector looked at him hard, and said nothing. He seemed a little mesmerized by the fast and furious course that the adventure had taken. Then Duffy put his hand in his breast pocket and drew forth a little blue silk bag, and began untying the cord that bound it. They all watched him. He emptied its contents into his palm and banged it down on the table, disappointment and humiliation ripe in his heart. The silence unnerved him a little frank expression of the collector's feelings would have been easier to bear. AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT 329 "These," said Duffy, "are all I have to show for the last six months Yen San gave them to me and told me they would pay for the expedition, pay for my help in finding his jade, and . . . and leave me one over for something else." And he took his hand away and exposed four dull green pebbles about the size of thrush's eggs. Uninteresting pebbles they were, and not at all ro- mantic-looking. "I don't know what they are," Duffy added. "They may be valuable on Chi'ung-To, but " And he shrugged his shoulders. The other four looked at them in silence for a moment, while Duffy once again removed his spec- tacles and began polishing them. Then the little collector shot an eager hand across the table and seized the pebbles with trembling fingers. "God bless my soul, God bless my soul," he whis- pered. "Valuable on Chi'ung-To! Valuable . . . God bless my soul!" "What's the matter?" asked Duffy, and he put his glasses on his nose. The little man placed the four pebbles on the table between them, and gazed at Duffy with an extraordi- nary expression in his eyes. Almost were they wor- shiping. He choked a little, and said: 330 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER "Young man, young man, you have got there four of the finest emeralds Europe has ever seen." His voice was high-pitched with emotion as he added: "I am a dealer in precious stones. I know what I am saying. Those are four of the finest uncut emeralds in the world." In a flash Duffy remembered his first impression of the little man: "dealer in precious stones!" "Emeralds!" he said a little helplessly, and look- ing across at Jimmy, saw the brightness of her eyes. "Yes," said the collector, "emeralds. You must leave this matter entirely to me. Pay for the ex- pedition ! God bless my soul ! They would pay for twenty expeditions! Listen, Mr. Duff. I will take the finest of these emeralds. I do not want it for the money it would bring. I want to possess the finest emerald in the world. If I ever give up my hobby, collecting jade, I will collect emeralds. This shall be the first. Two of the others I will have cut and sold for you, the last well, you will want to use it for something else. Yen San was a wise and an observant man when he said you would need it. I will have it cut as it should be cut, and set as it should be set." And in the midst of his transport of excitement the little man permitted himself to wink youthfully. AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT 331 Duffy thanked heaven that Jimmy did not see it she was examining one of the emeralds with specu- lative eyes. Binks and Mac Arthur exchanged glances, and then looked at Duffy. It was so exactly like him to carry four of the finest emeralds hi the world about in his pocket without knowing it but it did not detract from their pride in him. He had vindi- cated the combine. The most amazed of the five was really Duffy; and it was not only due to the unexpectedness of this turn of the adventure he thought had finished, but also to the sudden and complete reversal of all his emotions. As far as he could see the little col- lector was a great deal more overjoyed that he should have returned with emeralds than that he should have brought back the jade he had been sent out to find. Again he looked at Jimmy things were different now and much of the practical side of the problem had been solved in this magical way. The little man picked up the emeralds, and after putting them in their bag, hid them away in his pocket tenderly. The conversation became general and the whole story was told and re-told, discussed and re-dis- 332 THE QUALIFIED ADVENTURER cussed. They held a perfect orgy over it until well into the afternoon. It was through a deserted Cafe that they made a leisurely way to the cashier's desk; the tables had emptied themselves of their feasting crowd some while ago. Even the waitresses had disappeared after setting the tables for tea. The collector, between Binks and MacArthur, led the procession through the doorway, while Duffy and the girl brought up the rear. The little man was explaining to an interested audience the process of cutting and polishing precious stones. At the doorway between the two rooms Duffy halted as though struck by an absorbing idea. He gazed up at the ceiling for a moment, and then seized Jimmy by the arm and with very little ten- derness, pulled her back out of sight. "Jimmy," he said softly, "we've won, we've won!" "Yes," said the girl. "And I'm very, very glad." And she looked at the detaining hand on her arm. "Well," he went on, "I am going to buy a boat, outfit her and then I am going to the ends of the earth in her." He looked at her with the deter- mined expression of a qualified adventurer and added distinctly: "And I am going to take you with me. We are AND HE LEFT IT AT THAT 333 going to get married to-morrow!" He almost scowled at her, so determined was his face. Jimmy flushed and tried to smile she even tried to say something, but failed hopelessly. After all, what can a girl do with a hardened adventurer when he seizes her with extreme sudden- ness by the shoulders and kisses her violently? He is rather a proposition. At the door Duffy met the inquiring glances of his friends with an airy wave of his hand. "Glove," he said shortly. "I left it behind." The adventure was complete, and he left it at that. m ther ofts o/l A 000127954 6 i; ; Hilli ,!!'.