The Yellow Snake (13 page)

    "It's like this——" attempted Joe, louder still.

    "The moment he got me out of the way," continued the other remorselessly, "he sneaked down to Canton with his pal the doctor and followed me home on the next boat, leaving instructions that the death wire was to be sent as soon as he reached England."

    Here Joe asserted himself violently.

    "You never would have married nobody if I hadn't done it!" he roared. "You've got a hard heart, Cliff! Dying wishes don't mean no more to you than a beer-stain on a policeman's boot. I had to die! I thought I'd come along to the wedding and give you all a surprise——"

    "You're indecent, Joe," said Clifford gravely. "You're the kind of man who can't stay put."

    He turned to Joan, his lips twitching.

    "I had my suspicions when I saw no reference to his death in the English newspapers," he said. "Joe isn't particularly important in relation to the rest of the world, but he has a pretty big name in China, and the least I expected was a couple of lines of regret from our special correspondent in Canton. And then when I saw in the
North China Herald
an announcement that Mr Joe Bray had booked a suite on the
Kara Maru
——"

    "In the name of Miller," murmured Joe.

    "I don't know what name you used, but one of the reporters saw your baggage going aboard and recognized you on the street, so the camouflage wasn't as blinding as you thought."

    Joe sighed. From time to time his eyes had been straying towards the girl, in a furtive, shamefaced way, but now he had the resolution to look at her straightly.

    "I must say"—he waggled his huge head ecstatically—"I must say, Cliff, that you've got the pick of the bunch! She's rather like my sister Eliza, who's dead and gone now twenty-eight years. On the other hand, she's got my brother George's nose——"

    "You're not going to sidetrack me with your personalities," said Clifford. "You're a wicked old man!"

    "Artful," murmured Joe, "not wicked. It's like this——"

    He stopped, evidently expecting an interruption, and, when it did not come, was at some loss to proceed.

    "I've had a lot of disappointments in my life, young lady," he began oracularly. "Take Fing-Su! What I've done for that boy nobody knows except me and him. And when Cliff told me what sort of a feller he was, you could have knocked me down with a feather! I've been kind and generous to that pup, I admit it..."

    As he rambled on, the girl's brain grew more active. Joe Bray alive, meant the end of all Stephen Narth's plans—how would it affect her, she wondered. She recognized with a feeling of dismay that the reason for the marriage had disappeared, and was painfully startled to discover that there was any cause for unhappiness in this development.

    Her eyes met Clifford Lynne's and fell; for it was as though in that brief glance he had read her thoughts.

    "...When I realized what I'd done I said to him, 'Cliff, I'm sorry.' Did I or did I not, Cliff? I said, 'If I'd known what I know now, I'd never have parted with them shares.' Did I or did I not, Cliff? To think that that dog—I might even call him worse if you wasn't here, young lady—should get these silly and wicked ideas into his head!"

    Joan was beginning to understand now. "A romance-hound," Clifford had called the old man, and she saw now the ponderous diplomacy which had produced this present condition of affairs. Joe had invented his own death in order to ensure the alliance of the man he loved with a member of his family, and it was a little pathetic to think that even 'the family' was largely a figment of his imagination. He had known Stephen Narth as a name and had been his almoner. He must have heard of Stephen's daughters, but of Joan's existence it was fairly certain he had been completely ignorant.

    "Does Mr Narth know you're——" She hesitated to say 'alive' and substituted "back in England?"

    Joe shook his head, and it was Clifford who answered.

    "No, Narth mustn't know. I'm keeping Joe down here for a day or two until things develop. And most of all, Joan, Fing-Su mustn't know. That credulous native has accepted the news of Joe's death without question. For the moment he is concentrating his efforts upon securing the one founders' share which will give him control of the company."

    "Would it actually give him that control?" she asked, in surprise.

    He nodded.

    "It sounds absurd but it is a fact," he said gravely. "If Fing-Su could get that share, he would be able to kick me out, take complete control of the company, and although, of course, he would be liable at law to deal fairly with the ordinary shareholders, in fact he could divert a sum of ten million pounds to his own purpose."

    She shook her head helplessly.

    "But surely it is impossible for him to buy that extra share—isn't it, Clifford?"

    He nodded.

    "There is only one method by which Fing-Su could get control," he said slowly, "and I'm hoping that he doesn't realize what that is."

    He offered no further explanation. Soon after, he disappeared into the kitchen to brew coffee, and the girl was left alone with the big man—an experience which promised considerable embarrassment, for Joe got up and closed the door carefully behind his partner.

    "How do you like him?" he asked in a hoarse whisper as he settled himself again in his chair.

    It was an awkward question to answer.

    "He's very nice," she said—ineffectively, she thought.

    "Ye-es." Joe Bray scratched his chin. "He's a good scout, Cliff. A bit hard on other people, but a good fellow." He beamed at her. "So you're one of us—that's fine! You're the kind of girl I'd have picked. What's the others like?"

    She was spared the embarrassment of an answer, for he continued:

    "Yes, Cliff's hard! A little drop of gin never did nobody any harm, you take it from me, miss. It's good for the kidneys, for one thing. But Cliff's pussyfoot—well, not exactly pussyfoot, you understand, but he doesn't like seeing bottles around."

    She gathered that such a sight was not altogether objectionable to Joe Bray.

    "Yes, I'm glad he picked you—"

    "To be exact, Mr Bray, I picked him," she said, half laughing, and he opened his pale eyes wider.

    "Did you? Did you? Well, he's not a bad fellow. Too quick with his gun, but that's youth, always wanting to be killin' somethin'. You'll have a lot of children, I've no doubt, miss?"

    At this moment came a very welcome Clifford Lynne, carrying a brand-new silver tray laden with brand-new silver coffee-pot and cups. He put the tray upon the table, and he had hardly taken his hand away when there was a faint click. The sound was so close upon the noise made by the setting tray that Joan scarcely noticed it. She saw Cliff look towards the shuttered windows and put up his finger, signalling silence.

    "What's that, Cliff?" The old man looked up quickly with a startled expression.

    Clifford drew back the curtain, and for the first time the girl saw the steel-shuttered windows, each of which had as ornament a long oval boss.

    "Don't talk!" he whispered, and reaching out his hand switched off the light.

    The room was now in complete darkness, but suddenly she saw, in the place where one of the bosses had been, a narrow opening, as Clifford Lynne took the cover from the loophole.

    The moon had risen, and through the slit he could survey the bare space before the house. Nobody was in sight, and with his eyes glued to the loophole he waited. Presently his patience was rewarded. A dark figure was moving in the cover of the trees and making a circuit towards the house. Presently he saw another, and then a third, and even as he looked a head rose within a few inches of him. Evidently the man had been crouching under the window. In the light of the moon the watcher saw the round, almost shaven head, the broad nose and high cheekbones of a Chinese coolie. In one hand he carried a small package fastened by string to his wrist; the other held a sickle-shaped hook.

    He reached up with this, caught the iron guttering and, with an extraordinary exhibition of strength which at other times would have excited Lynne's admiration, drew himself up to the roof. Clifford waited till the dangling feet had disappeared from view, and passed silently to the rear of the cottage and out into the open. As he did so, he saw a glint of steel in the moonlight that shone upon the belt of firs. Here, the tree-fellers had been busy all day, and the stumps of pines showed whitely in the moonlight. But the trees still grew thickly some fifty yards from the cottage.

    The cottage was surrounded; nevertheless, he did not hesitate, but, keeping in the cover of the outhouse, he reached a point where the roof line was visible. He had hardly reached his post when he saw a head come up over the roof-tree and presently, clear in the moonlight he saw the Chinaman walking swiftly towards the square-shaped chimney.

    He had again fitted his silencer to the nozzle of his pistol.

    
Plop!

    The man on the roof staggered, swayed a little, and then came slipping and sliding down the close-set slates and fell with a groan almost at his feet. He heard a twitter of excitement from the concealed watchers in the trees; saw somebody come running out of cover, and fired. Instantly there was a scamper to safety. Clifford Lynne's prowess as a shot was no secret to these men.

    Still he waited, expecting an attack to develop. And then, from the far end of the drive, he heard the splutter of a motor-lorry being started, the grind of gears and the whine of the machine as it moved off. It was the shrill jabber of some belated passenger who had jumped aboard as the trolley was moving which satisfied Clifford that the attackers had been called off, and he turned his attention to the motionless figure that lay on the ground.

    Going inside, he called Joe, and the two men carried the wounded man into the kitchen.

    "Fing-Su brought them down in a motor-lorry," he said. (He afterwards discovered that the vehicle was a motor-bus which was used at the Peckham factory to convey workers into the country.)

    "Is he dead?" asked Joe.

    Clifford shook his head.

    "No; the bullet hit him just above the knee, that is the only injury," he said as he wrapped a towel about the wound. "The fall from the roof knocked him out. O man!" he called in the dialect as the coolie opened his eyes and began to glare from one to the other.

    "I am killed!" gasped the man, his face puckering fearfully as he recognized Lynne.

    "Who brought you here?"

    "None! I came of my own wish," said the native, and Clifford grinned unpleasantly.

    "Soon," he said, "I will take you into the wood and I will light a little fire on your face and you will talk, my friend. But for a while you will stay here with Shi-su-ling."

    He gave the native name of the helpless Joe Bray, and it was not a particularly flattering one.

    Going back to the girl, he expected to find her in a state of agitation and was agreeably disappointed. But she knew that something was wrong and guessed that that something was a natural sequel to the knife-throwing incident earlier in the evening.

    "Yes," nodded Cliff, "it was a Chinaman who wanted to get even with me. I think I'd better cut out the coffee and take you home. They have gone now," he added incautiously.

    "They? How many were there?" she asked.

    There was nothing to be gained by deceiving her. Rather, he thought, she had better know the full extent of the peril.

    "Probably more than a dozen were in the attack, and what they expected to get I don't know."

    "You," she said significantly, and he nodded.

    "I rather fancy I was the booty," he said. "The important fact is that they are gone and there is nothing more to fear."

    He was examining her face, and she had the sensation that he was making a final appraisement of her character.

    "But first I will say something that is certain to alarm you," he said. "There is nothing to be gained by beating about the bush. Fing-Su will stop at nothing, as I know. If he gets the idea into his thick head that I am fond of you—as I am—he may shift his attentions to you. Does that frighten you?"

    She shook her head.

    "Probably because I'm deficient in imagination," she said, "but I'm not frightened."

    He opened a steel cupboard in one corner of the sitting-room and took out a round black object, the size of a large plum.

    "I want you to keep to your house and not go out after dark," he said. "Also, I wish you to put this ball somewhere in your bedroom where you can reach it easily. If there is trouble of any kind, throw it out of the window—it isn't very heavy."

    She smiled.

    "Is it a bomb?"

    "In the ordinary sense, no. It would do you a bit of damage if it burst close to you, and I'm not suggesting you should keep it under your pillow. In the daytime lock it away in a drawer; at night keep it where it can be reached. You're scared," he accused.

    "No, I'm not," she protested indignantly. "But you'll admit you are doing your best to frighten me!"

    He patted her on the shoulder.

    "Will anything happen tonight?" she asked, as she took the object in her hand and put it very carefully into her bag.

    He hesitated.

    "I don't think so. Fing-Su is neither a quick nor a thorough worker."

    She looked round for Joe Bray as he escorted her to the door.

    "I wanted to say goodnight——"

    "Joe is busy," he said. "You'll see enough of the old devil—too much. Don't forget this, though: Joe doesn't know the meaning of fear. He's a moral coward and he's foolish, but I've seen him tackle five hundred howling fanatics with a broken rifle and a clasp-knife."