Part 8 (2/2)

The yellow light grew stronger. Equipment of the cabin emerged: a crock of rice and fish, a corked jug, a bundle of crude chop-sticks bound with frayed twine, a dark mess of boiled sea-weed on a greasy slab.

He looked down. The girl moved her head. Their eyes met.

Timid, gray ones with innocent candor searched him. s.h.i.+ning dark hair rippled down either side of a pale, lovely face. She was younger than he had expected, more beautiful than he had hoped. Her rosebud of a mouth trembled in the overtures of a smile.

His feelings were divided between admiration for her and horror--she had escaped so narrowly. In the realization of that moment Peter shaped his course. His following thought was of finances.

He brought to light a handful of change. Less than one dollar, disregarding four twenty-cent Hu-Peh pieces; hardly enough to pay off the sampan coolie.

His charge sighed helplessly, thereby clinching his resolution. ”I haven't a penny,” she said.

He explored the side-pocket of his coat, hoping against fact that he had not changed his bill-fold to his grip. His fingers encountered an unfamiliar object.

The struggling pantheress flashed into his mind. And the wrinkled envelope she had drawn from her satin jacket and pressed into his hand.

Past dealings with Chinese gave him the inkling that he had been unknowingly bribed.

A scarlet stamp, a monograph, was imposed in the upper right corner of the pale blue oblong.

”Money--Chinese bills. Full of them!” Miss Lorimer gasped. ”I saw it.

What are they for? And why did that dreadful woman----”

”Jet-t-e-e-ee!” sang the coolie, swinging the oar hard over. The sampan grated against a landing. ”Shanghai. _Ma-tou_! _H[=a]n liang bu dung y[=a]ng che l[=a]i_!”

Peter was counting the pack. ”Fifty one-thousand-dollar Bank of China bills!”

Excited yelpings occurred on the _ma-tou_. The rickshaw coolies were d.i.c.kering for their unseen fare.

Peter tossed the sampan boy all the coins he had, and left him to gibber over them as he lifted the girl to the jetty. She clung to his arm, trembling, as the coolies formed a grinning, shouting circle about them. More raced in from the muddy bund.

”What are we going to do?” she groaned.

”We are going to cable your mother that you are starting for home by the first steamer,” Peter cried, swinging her into the cleanest and most comfortable rickshaw of the lot. ”The _Mongolia_ sails this afternoon.”

”What will become of you?” she demanded.

Peter gave her his ingenuous smile. ”I will vanish--for a while.

Otherwise I may vanish--permanently.”

Miss Lorimer reached out with her small white hand and touched his sleeve. They were jouncing over the Su-Chow bridge, on their way to the American Consulate. ”Won't I see you again? Ever?” She looked bewildered and lost, as if this strange old land had proved too much for her powers of readjustment. Her rosebud mouth seemed to quiver.

”Are you in danger, Mr. Moore?”

Peter glimpsed a very yellow, supercilious face swinging in his direction from the padding throng.

”A little, perhaps,” he conceded.

”Because of me?”

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