When De Costa went back to his house he was determined at all costs to revenge himself upon the man who had slighted him, and who had brought such misery to his son.
He was prepared to brave any consequences--for an angry man is neither logical nor reasonable, and until his temper cooled he was wilfully blind to the danger which he himself might incur through the publicity of a trial. That was his mood when he reached the gloomy house in Kensington.
Over a frugal dinner he reviewed all the happenings of the past few weeks, and bitterly cursed his luck. Yet the planning and the scheming of years had not altogether ended in nought.
Armed with the information which he was able to give them, his exploration parties would soon be on their way to Mount Li.
The books which were open to Tillizinni were open equally to him. Within a rough radius he also had located the mountain of the Emperor.
His house was in disorder: holland sheets covered most of the furniture, his valuables had been removed to the bank, and his heavy baggage already stood roped and corded for the journey which he had set himself.
He intended travelling across the Trans-Siberian Railway, and sending his trunks on to Shanghai to a trusted agent. The tickets necessary for the journey were in his desk, and his sleeping berth had been booked for some weeks past. This thought made the old man pause: it might be three weeks or a month before he could bring Talham to trial, even supposing that he persuaded the Public Prosecutor to act, and a month was a long time. He decided to sleep on it before taking any further action.
Half-way through dinner, Gregory de Costa paid him an unexpected visit. For two weeks Gregory had seldom been at home except to sleep, and that night, as the old man knew, he had an engagement to dine with a party at a fashionable West End restaurant.
“Hullo!” said the old man, not unkindly. “What has happened to you?”
The young man sank listlessly into a chair by the table.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just sick of things--that’s all!”
“After dining with Soumerez?”
Gregory shook his head. “No,” he said, “Soumerez bores me, and I don’t feel that I could sit down to dinner at the same table to-night.”
There was a little silence, then the young man asked:
“What do you want me to do whilst you’re away?”
“Do!” replied his father. “Why, do what you’ve been doing for the last year or two--just fool around London. I have taken a flat for you in Jermyn Street.”
The young man played with a salt-cellar moodily.
“I’d rather go with you,” he said.
“That’s impossible,” said De Costa hurriedly. “I’ve got to go into a country where all sorts of privations and discomforts have to be encountered, and you’re not fit for it. You’re a young man, I know,” he said gently, “but I’ve had the life; I have lived in most of these wild places, and my present position is due to the fact. In my young days I undertook certain risks and underwent certain hardships. I have no wish that you should have any of the experiences which were mine as a young man.”
Gregory looked at his father curiously.
“I suppose you had a pretty rotten life, didn’t you, when you were young?”
Raymond replied with a nod of his head. His son had chosen an appropriate word, for “rotten” indeed was the life De Costa had lived.
There was not an unsavoury transaction in the Philippines or in the far-away trading-places of Asia with which he had not been associated. He had financed more purely illegal schemes, had been behind more piratical expeditions, and had been associated with more heartless villainy than any other of his kind.
Not even the bad old traders of the South Sea Islands could show such a record as his, and even the sanctified odour of Kensington had not altogether dispersed the sinister atmosphere of his early days.
“It is quite impossible for you to come,” he went on. “There are all sorts of dangers to be encountered. This is my last expedition.”
The young man reached out and took a few grapes from the silver centre-piece, and ate them thoughtfully.
“I am very fond of you,” he said suddenly.
The old man did not conceal his pleasure.
“I think,” he said softly, “that that is a mutual fondness.”
The boy rose after a while and looked at his watch.
“I suppose I had better go along and invent some lie,” he said. “Anyway, the dinner will be nearly finished, and I shall be in time for whatever fun there is going after.”
His father accompanied him to the door, and watched the disappearing tail-light of the taxi; then he returned to his study.
He spent an hour poring over the translation of the document which was now in Tillizinni’s hands. Had he but the jade bracelet, how easy might it be; but he had enough to work on.
Some of the references puzzled him. What were the “spirit steps,” for instance; and what of these gigantic cross-bows which were to discharge titanic arrows at the intruder? Possibly two thousand years of rust and decay would have robbed them of their potency.
He picked up some newspaper cuttings dealing with Soo, and smiled, as again and again he came across the phrase which spoke of the “bottling up” of the fugitive. Very well; had these clever English policemen bottled up a man who was now in America, he thought.
He tidied away his documents, and was slipping a rubber band around one little dossier when he stopped, and raised his head, listening.
It was the faintest sound, a tiny, hushed, buzz from one corner of the room.
Now there was only one noise like this in the world that he knew. It was the sound of the secret buzzer which he had had installed communicating with a tiny push near the area door. It had been specially put in to allow his confederates to signal their presence when his servants were out, as they invariably were when visitors of this kind arrived.
Who could it be? He took from his desk a revolver, and made his way noiselessly downstairs to the little hallway which led from the area to the servants’ domain.
He crept to the door and listened; there was no sound. The bolts were always kept well oiled. He slipped them back noiselessly and opened the door. Two men were standing there--two small men who made no sound.
“Come in!” he said; but still they made no sign. Then he knew that they were Chinese.
“Come in!” he said again, addressing them in their own language.
He waited until they had closed the door behind, and turning on the electric switch, he flooded the passage with light.
“You!” he gasped.
Well might he be surprised, for these were the two agents of his whom he thought were on their way to China, the men who called themselves “Happy Child” and “Hope of Spring”--who were wanted by the police for the murder of the Chinese Ambassador, and greatly wanted by Soo T’si, for the treacherous slaughter of their comrade--his brother.
“Why do you come here?” he asked angrily.
He spoke in the hissing Canton dialect.
They shuffled uneasily, and the smaller of the two asked sullenly: “Where were we to go, master? Though we escaped the English police, yet Soo T’si has set his society against us, and we have been turned from one refuge to another.”
“Why didn’t you leave the country?”
“Lord, it was impossible,” said the other. “There were men watching boats and trains; we were warned.”
“You can’t stay here!” said De Costa.
They offered no alternative suggestion, and he led the way upstairs to his room. There they sat on the edge of the two chairs, forlorn, miserable, with that peculiar hunted, haggard look which criminals of all classes assume from necessity.
“Soo is in America now,” said De Costa. “If he could get away, why shouldn’t you?”
“Master, we were warned,” said the taller man again. “A servant from the boat told Hophee,” he gave the small man his nickname, “that they were looking for us.”
De Costa’s mind worked quickly; he had been in some peculiarly dangerous situations before. He must get these men away as quickly as possible.
“You want some money, I suppose,” he said, and the smaller man, who seemed to be the ruling spirit, answered monosyllably.
De Costa turned out his pockets and gave him a handful of silver and gold.
“Come to-morrow night,” he said, “at the same hour, and I will let you know exactly what plans I have made for you. Is there any danger until to-morrow?”
The small man shook his head.
“You will find your way out, you know the way,” said De Costa. “I will come down later and bolt the door after you.”
Noiselessly the two men left the room, and De Costa sat at his desk in no enviable mood. He thought he heard the two men speaking together as they went down the stairs to the basement. In his state of tension he imagined that one had called to him sharply, and he opened the door and stepped out into the hall.
“Did you speak?” he asked, and a voice from the basement answered briefly, “No.”
He had waited to hear the door open, but realised that so perfectly had it been prepared for midnight visitors that no sound would reach him, and he returned to his desk again.
These men must be got rid of at all hazards; he wondered how. Perhaps now that the attention had been directed towards Soo they might be smuggled out of the country. They had escaped Soo, that was something, for Soo would make short work of them if he knew how grossly he had been betrayed.
The translation of the stolen document still lay on his desk before him, and he folded it up carefully.
“This, at any rate, is something,” he said aloud.
“But not all,” answered a quiet voice.
He looked up startled.
Before him, in the centre of the room, with his arms folded so that his hands were concealed in his sleeves, stood Soo T’si, and there was a smile upon his face which was not pleasant to see.
“Don’t touch your revolver,” he said, “for I can shoot you through my sleeve with the greatest of ease.”
“I thought you were in America,” stammered De Costa.
“I suppose you did,” said the other.
He spoke easily in English, a fact which he evidently thought called for some comment.
“I have been speaking nothing but Chinese for the last week or two,” he said, “and I was afraid of my English getting stale. Do you mind if I practise it on you?”
He was so affable, and so friendly, that De Costa lost some of his misapprehension.
“I am glad to see you,” he said. “I was afraid you had got into serious trouble.”
Soo shook his head.
“No, indeed,” he said lightly, “one never gets into serious trouble; I got into a particularly foul canal, which compares very favourably with some of the streams of my native land.”
He did not attempt to sit down; he did not even move from where he stood, or change his attitude.
“What are your plans?” asked De Costa. “I suppose you know that the police are searching for you?”
Soo nodded.
“I have reason to believe that they are,” he said sardonically.
“Can I be of any assistance to you?” asked De Costa.
Soo shook his head.
“I’m afraid that you are absolutely useless to me,” he said quietly. “What is that interesting document you have there?”
De Costa would have snatched up the translation from the table, but there was a cold menace in the Chinaman’s eye which prevented him.
“It’s a little thing,” he said vaguely.
“So I see,” replied the other. “Turn it round so that I can read it, please.”
Like a man fascinated, De Costa obeyed, and Soo took a step nearer the table. He read the sheet through carefully, without moving his hands from the inside of his sleeves, and De Costa wondered why, until he remembered that Soo had threatened him with a concealed pistol.
“You don’t seem to trust me.” De Costa put a note of reproach into his voice.
“I have very good reasons for not trusting you, De Costa. The last time I was here you swore to me that you had not seen this document, that you had no idea as to where it was. I have discovered since,” he went on meditatively, “that you had it all the time, and that you were directly responsible for the treachery of my men, and indirectly for the death of my brother; you told your servants to bring the paper to you at any cost--my brother’s life paid for that order.”
His voice was even and colourless, and he spoke like a man who was reciting a lesson.
“You are wrong--you are wrong,” protested De Costa violently. “I know nothing whatever about it. This paper only came to me a few days ago. I tried to find you----”
Soo shook his head.
“Why do you lie?” he said. “To me, who come from the land of liars, and am skilled in their detection. I know, because the two men you employed, and whom I have been tracking for the last three weeks, have confessed.”
“Confessed!” gasped De Costa.
Soo nodded slowly.
“But they have just left,” stammered the other.
“They have not left,” said Soo quietly, and withdrew his hands from the veiling sleeves.
De Costa went as white as death, for the hands of Soo T’si were scarlet with blood.…
Twenty minutes later a constable slowly patrolling his beat came to the front of the house De Costa occupied, and automatically threw the light of his lamp over the front door. It seemed in order, and he passed on. He had not gone a dozen yards when he heard a sharp crack, and turned to see a tongue of fire leap from the window of the house he had passed, for even as he had stood watching it, the flames were eating their way through the wooden shutters which covered the window, and the body of old De Costa lay wrapped in a fiery sheet.
