Part 22 (1/2)
The blood boiled into Peter's brain, and the pencil slipped from fingers that were like ice. There was only one girl in the world who answered to that description. Eileen Lorimer! She had been captured again, and brought back to China!
He grabbed for the paper. It was gone. Gone, too, was the black-garbed attendant, hastening to his master.
Harrison was pawing his shoulder with a skinny, white hand, and making noises in his throat.
”You lucky fool! He'll give you _c.u.mshaw_. G.o.d, you have sharp ears!
Only one man I ever knew had such sharp ears. He always gives _c.u.mshaw_. _Na-mien-pu-liao-pa_! You must divide with me. That is only fair. But--what difference? Here you can enter, but you can never leave. You have no use for silver. I have.”
The face of Eileen Lorimer swam out of Peter's crazed mind. Miss Vost, that lovely innocent-eyed creature, fitted the same description!
Peter stared stupidly at the ma.s.sive transmission key, and disdained a reply. Miss Vost--and the red mines! He shuddered.
Harrison was whining again at his ear. ”He says yes. Yes! Tell that fellow yes, and be quick. The Gray Dragon will give him an extra thousand taels for haste. Oh, the lucky fool! Two thousand taels!
Tell him, or shall I?”
How could Peter say no? The ghastly white face was staring at him suspiciously now.
While he hesitated Harrison pushed him aside, and his fingers flew up and down on the black rubber k.n.o.b. ”Yes--yes--yes. Send her in a hurry. A thousand taels bonus. The lucky devil!”
Out of Peter's anguish came but one solution, and that vague and indecisive. He must wait and watch for Miss Vost, and take what drastic measures he could devise to recapture her when the time came.
The pallid lips trembled again at his ear. ”Here! You must divide with me. A bag of silver. _Yin_! A bag of it! Listen to the c.h.i.n.k of it!”
Peter seized the yellow pouch and thrust it under his silken blouse.
He was beginning to realize that he had been exceptionally lucky in catching the signals of the Szechwan station. He was vastly more important now than this wretch who plucked at his arm.
”Give me my half!” whined Harrison.
Peter doubled his fist.
”Give me my half!” Harrison clung to his arm and shook him irritably.
Peter hit him squarely in the mouth.
CHAPTER XVIII
As night melted into day and day was swallowed up by night, the problem which confronted Peter took on more serious and baffling proportions.
His hope of entering the ivory palace was dismissed. It was imperative for him to give up the idea of entering, of piercing the lines of armed guards and reaching the room where the master of the City of Stolen Lives held forth until some later time.
That had been his earlier ambition, but the necessity of discarding the original plan became hourly more important with the drawing near of the girl captive.
If he could deliver Miss Vost from this dreadful city, that would be more than an ample reward for his long, adventurous quest.
He could not sleep. Perched on an ancient leather stool upon the roof of the wireless building, he kept a nightly and a daily watch with his eyes fixed upon the drawbridge. A week went by. Food was carried up to him, and he scarcely touched it. The rims of his eyes became scarlet from sleeplessness, and he muttered constantly, like a man on the verge of insanity, as his eyes wandered back and forth over the red filth, from the shadowy bridge to the s.h.i.+ning white of the palace.
Drearily, like souls lost and wandering in a half world, the prisoners of Len Yang trudged to the scarlet maws of the mine and were engulfed for long, pitiless hours, and were disgorged, staggering and blinking, in Tibet's angry evening sun.