Part 37 (1/2)
Nevertheless, he merely grunted and relapsed again into the form of meditative lethargy which of late had grown habitual if not popular with him.
A little after noon the train thundered into the narrow, dirty streets of China's most flouris.h.i.+ng city, geographically, the New Orleans of the Celestial Empire; namely, Canton, on the Pearl River.
As Peter and his somewhat amused young charge emerged into the street he cast a furtive glance back toward the station, and was dumfounded to glimpse, not two yards away, the man with the red, deeply marked face.
His blue eyes were ablaze, and he advanced upon Peter threateningly.
It was a situation demanding decisive, direct action. Peter, hastily instructing the girl to hold two rickshaws, leaped at his pursuer with doubled fists, even as the man delved significantly into his hip-pocket.
Peter let him have it squarely on the blunt nub of his red jaw, aiming as he sprang.
His antagonist went down in a cursing heap, sprawling back with the look in his washed-out eyes of a steer which has been hit squarely in the center of the brow.
He fell back on his hands and lay still, dazed, muttering, and struggling to regain the use of his members.
Before he could recover Peter was up and away, springing lightly into the rickshaw. They turned and darted up one narrow, dirty alley into a narrower and dirtier one, the two coolies shouting in blasphemous chorus to clear the way as they advanced.
After a quarter of an hour of twisting and splas.h.i.+ng and turning, the coolies stopped in front of a shop of clay-blue stone.
Paying off the coolies, Peter entered, holding the door for the girl, and sliding the bolt as he closed it after her.
He found himself in the presence of a very old, very yellow, and very wrinkled Chinese woman, who smiled upon the two of them perplexedly, nodding and smirking, as her frizzled white pigtail flopped and fluttered about in the clutter on the shelves behind her.
It was a shop for an antique collector to discover, gorged with objects of bronze, of carved sandalwood, of teak, grotesque and very old, of s.h.i.+ning red and blue and yellow beads, of old gold and old silver.
On the low, narrow counter she had placed a shallow red tray filled with pearls; imitations, no doubt, but exquisite, perfect, of all shapes; bulbular, pear, b.u.t.ton, and of most enticing colors.
But the small girl was babbling, and a look of the most profound surprise came slowly into the old woman's face. A little pearl-like tear sparkled in either of her old eyes, and she gathered this cherished grand-daughter from far away Maca.s.sar into her thin arms.
At that sight Peter felt himself out of place, an intruder, an interloper. The scene was not meant for his eyes. He was an alien in a strange land.
As he hesitated, conjuring up words of parting with his little friend, he gasped. Peering through the thick window-pane in the door was the red-faced man, and his look sent a curdle of fear into Peter's brave heart. Would he shoot through the pane?
The girl, too, saw. She chattered a long moment to her wrinkled grandmother, and this latter leaped to the door and shot a second strong bolt. She pointed excitedly to a rear door, low and green, set deep in the blue stone.
Peter leaped toward it. Half opening this, he saw a tiny garden surrounded by low, gray walls. He paused. The maid from Maca.s.sar was behind him. She followed him out and closed the door.
”_Birahi_,” she said in her tinkling voice, and with gravity far in advance of her summers, ”we must part now--forever?”
He nodded, as he searched the wall for a likely place to jump. ”It is the penalty of friends.h.i.+p, _birahi_. You do not mind if I call you _birahi_ in our last moment together?”
”No. No.”
”I am curious, so curious, my brave one, about the red-faced man, and the one with the black coat. But we women are meant for silence.
_Birahi_, I have played no part--I have been like a dead lily--a burden. Perhaps, if you are in great danger----”
”I am in great danger, small one. The red toad wants my life, and you must detain him.”
”I will talk to him! But the others, the black-coated one--what of them? They would like the feel of your blood on their hands, too!”