The Island Where Time Stands Still (48 page)

During the day various people he had questioned en-route had confirmed that he was still on the right scent and said that the party ahead were now also travelling slowly owing to the obvious tiredness of their ponies; so, in the hope of further decreasing their lead, he had ordered a fresh start for two o'clock in the morning.

That had proved a tactical error. The country through which they were passing was rough, sparsely wooded and mountainous. Despite that, as long as the moon was up they had made steady going, but soon after it set they had taken a wrong track which had eventually petered out, and had been unable to find their way back to the right one. For three bitterly cold and exhausting hours they had cast this way and that in the darkness, dragging their unwilling ponies by the bridles across shallow streams and up steep hillsides. Eventually they had called a halt on a piece of high ground but soon after, as dawn broke, their luck returned, for they saw the road winding through the valley below them.

With revived spirits they set off again towards Chwan-tsing, knowing that they now had only another eight miles or so to go. Then, after they had been on their way for half an hour, they saw the figure of a man lying at the road-side. As they approached he raised himself and called feebly to them. Dismounting, they had gone to him, propped him up against a rock and given him a drink of water. He had been very badly beaten up and left to die in a nearby gorge, where he had lain all night; but with the coming of morning he had managed to crawl as far as the track in the hope that some travellers would soon appear. It was while they were examining his injuries that his face had struck one of
the men as familiar; then they had recognised him. Breaking off his narrative, Tû-lai asked:

‘And who do you think he was?'

‘Our old Communist friend in a different rig-out,' Gregory hazarded.

‘No.' Tû-lai smiled. ‘Kâo's servant P'ei!'

‘Snakes alive!' Gregory exclaimed. ‘I had forgotten all about him.'

‘So had I. But that is not surprising, as I had never even spoken to him and hardly knew of his existence. Apparently when you all left with Shih-niang he was sick; so it was arranged that he should remain behind until he had recovered, then catch you up.'

‘That's right; but that was a fortnight ago, and he had only eaten something that disagreed with him. Where has he been in the meantime?'

‘Until four nights ago he was still living in the house. You know what that great courtyard of ours is like. People of all sorts are always coming and going there. On the flimsiest pretext anyone could scrounge a living from the open cooking fires for months without any particular notice being taken of them.'

‘And what the devil was he doing up in this part of the world?'

‘He was carrying off Josephine.'

‘What! D'you mean that it was he, and not the Communist, who kidnapped her?'

‘Not in the first place. P'ei played his cards very skilfully. He saw the other man presenting Josephine with bunches of flowers and making up to the old duennas; so he guessed what he was up to and let him do the dirty work for him. All he had to do was to keep his eyes skinned every night, and when he saw our bird tether some loaded ponies in a gully about half a mile from the house he simply hid nearby. When Josephine and her kidnapper appeared he slogged the chap on the back of the head and made off with her.'

‘I see. That explains the state of the Communist the following morning and his actions afterwards. P'ei would not
have known that he had Josephine's trinkets on him, and evidently did not bother to go through his pockets. By selling her pearls he was able to hire a couple of toughs and ponies to give chase. He was after P'ei while we were after him; and last night he succeeded in getting the girl back.'

‘You've hit it.'

‘I'm beginning to see daylight about Kâo now, too,' Gregory said thoughtfully.

‘Are you?' Tû-lai raised his eyebrows. ‘Then you are more clever than I am.'

‘I mean, it seems obvious that P'ei only pretended to be ill on Kâo's orders, and it was just an excuse so that he could be left behind to get hold of Josephine.'

‘Yes, that part's plain sailing; but not the fact that Kâo gave him orders to kill her.'

‘To kill her! In heaven's name, why?'

Tû-lai shrugged. ‘I haven't an idea. In view of his negotiations with my father, it seems quite inexplicable, doesn't it? One can understand his trying to get her without paying up the half-million, but to kill her afterwards seems the act of a madman. Perhaps that is the explanation. His having planned to kill Shih-niang for no apparent reason was another piece of craziness. Perhaps he is a homicidal maniac.'

‘No. There must have been a reason for that, because your father gave his consent to it.'

‘True.'

‘Besides, ruling out for a minute this statement of P'ei's, there is now an explanation for Kâo's intending to kill Shih-niang. If he was expecting P'ei to turn up with Josephine, he would not have wanted two Princesses on his hands, and may have thought it necessary to close Shih-niang's mouth about the part she had played.'

‘That certainly could not have been the reason he gave my father for wanting to do away with her.'

‘No; but he could have invented some other for your father's edification.'

‘That's possible; although I can't see why he should have mentioned it to him at all. Still, as he did, that gives us one
good hope of solving the mystery. I shall be very surprised if my father did not leave some entry about it in one of his secret diaries; and, for that matter, others about the whole affair from the beginning. As soon as we get home we'll hunt through them.'

Gregory nodded. ‘From what you say they may give us a lot of data. I doubt, though, if they will tell us how the Communists got on to Shih-niang in Tung-kwan, and they certainly won't tell us why Kâo ordered P'ei to kill Josephine. About that—do you really think P'ei was speaking the truth?'

‘I'm as certain of it as I can be of anything.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘For the excellent reason that he had not carried out his orders. The girl is still alive. At least, she was about three hours ago.'

‘That is certainly a bull point. What reason does P'ei give for having disobeyed his master?'

‘Very sensibly, I think, he feared that when he had killed Josephine, to ensure that he never gave away the secret of her murder Kâo would kill him. So he decided that instead of doing what he had been told, and rejoining your party, he would settle down to spend an honourable old age in China. To do so he needed money, and he was shrewd enough to realise that little Josephine, simply as a piece of warm female flesh and blood, was quite a valuable bit of property. Assuming that as soon as her disappearance was discovered we should think he had taken her south to Tung-kwan and Kâo, he came north and was heading for the frontier. Here, in Chwan-tsing, he hoped to sell her for a tidy sum to the chieftain of one of the Mongolian tribes across the border.'

‘I see. And what have you done with him?'

‘I had him hanged from the nearest tree!'

‘Damnation!' Gregory exclaimed, starting forward. ‘There are scores of questions I would have liked to ask him. He might have thrown light on all sorts of queer happenings that took place on our journey. And with patience
we might have got a lot more out of him about this extraordinary game that Kâo has been playing.'

Tû-lai waved a casual hand. ‘Don't worry, I squeezed everything out of him that there was to squeeze before he died; and I mean that literally. At first he was very reluctant to talk, so I had my men lower a boulder weighing half a ton on to his stomach. As he was already suffering from internal injuries the effect must have been pretty painful and—'

‘I'm not over-scrupulous myself,' Gregory interrupted, ‘but you may spare me the murky details. The thing is, what else did you get out of him?'

‘Nothing that is of any great importance.' Tû-lai gave a loud yawn. ‘I'll answer any questions you may have later; but if I don't go and lie down now I shall fall asleep where I sit.'

‘At least tell me where you believe the girl to be at the moment, and what you propose to do about her?'

With an apologetic smile, Tû-lai lisped, ‘I am sorry. After the gruelling we had last night I am feeling dead beat; otherwise I should have gone in pursuit already. We came upon P'ei about half past seven this morning, and got in here at ten o'clock. On arriving I learnt that the Communist, Josephine and the two hired men had spent the night at this inn. They didn't leave till nearly nine o'clock, so I missed them only by a little over an hour. My men found out that on leaving the town they took the road south, which leads to the head of the Ma-tien river. About twenty miles from here it crosses the boundary into the province of Kansu, so it looks as if for some reason he is anxious to get out of Shensi; but the fact that they made such a late start shows that now he has got the girl back he no longer feels that there is any necessity to hurry.'

Tû-lai paused a moment, then went on, ‘The nearest town of any size down the river is King-yang; but it is well over a hundred miles away, so we should be able easily to overtake them before they get there. As they can have no idea that they are being followed, and particularly now they
have a woman riding with them, it is unlikely that they will cover more than twenty-five miles a day. I suggest that we should sell all the ponies and buy fresh ones, but not start until moonrise. That will give us a good six hours sleep and time for a meal before we leave. With fresh mounts, between nine o'clock and two in the morning we should have no difficulty in doing twenty miles. That is nearly as much as they will have done today. Then if we set off again at dawn we ought to catch them up by midday; or, at least, by the afternoon. Do you approve?'

With a nod, Gregory stood up. ‘Yes. You get to bed at once. Chou and I will see to exchanging the ponies, and buying some more camp equipment in case we have to spend the dark hours of the night out in the open. I wish to God that you hadn't been in such a hurry to hang P'ei. Still, now it's done, it can't be helped.'

Giving another yawn, Tû-lai shook his head sleepily. ‘After we had given him the rock to nurse, he would have died anyway before we could have got him here. And what does it matter as long as we get the girl?' Then he stumbled upstairs to the room which he had ordered to be prepared for him.

In accordance with their arrangement they started out soon after nine. The first part of the way was easy enough, and, even when they got into the rugged country in which the Ma-tien had its source, in the bright moonlight there was no danger of their losing the track. Since they had all had a good rest and were remounted, they could if they wished, have gone considerably more than the twenty miles before the moon set, but had they done so there was the danger that they might overshoot their quarry; so at about one o'clock they halted on the edge of a wood where there were plenty of fallen branches to keep a fire going, and made camp.

Next morning they cooked a meal at sun-up, and, filled with excitement, took the road again at a trot. Another ten miles brought them to the head of the river, and soon afterwards it developed into a narrow but swiftly flowing stream
that every few hundred yards swirled between half-submerged rocks or hurtled in a cascade of foam over low waterfalls.

It was eleven o'clock, and they were beginning to look about for a suitable site to make their midday halt, when, on breasting a rise, they sighted their quarry moving at a walk through the valley below them.

Even at that distance Gregory had no difficulty in identifying the party ahead. The small male figure in the lead was the Communist, the even smaller figure beside him, wrapped in a hooded cloak, was the Princess Josephine. Behind them rode the two hired men, each leading a baggage pony. But he was not alone in his swift appraisal. At the same instant Tû-lai and his men had also realised that the chase was as good as over. With wild shouts, all twelve of them kicked their ponies into a gallop and careered off down the hill.

Cursing them for their impetuosity, Gregory followed. He was afraid now that, having been given such good warning, the party ahead might get away and succeed in hiding themselves in some cave or gulch of the fantastically broken ground, before they could be caught.

As his pony pounded down the slope he saw all four turn their heads to look back. Evidently assuming that they were about to be set upon by brigands, they too broke into a gallop.

But their leadership was bad. Instead of turning off the track while they had the chance, and disappearing among the huge boulders that lay in the valley on its side away from the river, they cantered on up the opposite slope. By the time they reached its crest Tû-lai's leading men were up to within a quarter of a mile of them.

When Gregory in turn crossed the ridge he saw that Josephine and her companions were still sticking to the track and down in the next valley bottom. The man had her pony by the bridle and was forcing it to keep pace with his own. But she, evidently unused to riding, was swaying wildly
in her saddle, and looked as if she might fall off at any moment.

The hired men had abandoned their led ponies, but, even so, had dropped behind. At the foot of the next slope Tû-lai's leading men came up with them. That gave the two riders ahead a short respite as, instead of galloping on, the Lin retainers stopped to mill round the hired men, pull them from their saddles, and make them prisoners.

Gregory was a good horseman, but he was not pressing his mount. He felt that as Tû-lai had tracked the Communist down this was his party. He considered it certain now that the quarry would be captured; so he was quite content to take no part in the culmination of the chase, but watch it from well in the rear.