“I’ll give you a word of warning,” he said; “it may be useful to you. You’ve got more money than a Chinaman should have. Go back to your country; use your wealth to cultivate the land, and get that Emperor bug out of your mind.”
He heard a quiet, confident laugh, and knew that his seed had fallen upon a very stony place indeed. As the gate closed softly on him, and the key was turned, he walked swiftly towards the canal bank, throwing his light ahead. The bank was deserted, and he turned back the way he had come, alert, expectant, never doubting that, if it suited Mr ‘Grahame St Clay’s’ purpose, he would have to fight his way to safety. He was still in his stockinged feet, and as he paused a dozen yards from the big gate of the factory, he heard the faint squeak of a hinge. The gate was opening.
He knelt down and looked back along the bank, and saw a procession of stealthy figures moving out from the passageway. That he was in deadly peril he did not doubt. Without the slightest hesitation he slipped his pistol back into his pocket and, sitting on the timbered edge of the canal, he dropped into the water. Very silently, making no splash, he struck out for the opposite bank and for a barge that was moored by the side of a wharf. The water was foul and greasy, but that was a minor discomfort compared with what awaited him if he fell into the hands of the Federation.
Presently he reached and caught hold of a chain, and in silence drew himself to the grimy deck of a coal barge. A few steps brought him to the wharf. A dog growled savagely somewhere in the darkness; from the opposite bank he heard a twitter of excited comment. They had missed him, and had guessed which way he had gone.
Picking his way across the littered wharf, he came at last to a high wooden gate, surmounted by a rusty spike, as he discovered when he tried to climb. Searching the gateway, he found the wicket, turned the handle, and, to his relief, the door yielded.
The danger was not yet past, he realized, as he ran through a labyrinth of narrow lanes and reached an untidy road, dimly lighted by street lamps. As he reached the road he saw the dim light of a car at the far end, and dropped behind a timber baulk. The machine was moving slowly, and somebody by the side of the driver was sending the rays of a powerful hand-lamp left and right. He heard the sibilant whisper that he knew so well and waited, his dripping pistol in his hand; but the car passed and, rising cautiously, he ran back the way he had come, reached the Canal Bridge without mishap and, most welcome sight of all, two policemen walking together. One flashed his lamp upon him as he passed.
“Hallo, guv’nor, been in the water?”
“Yes, I fell in,” said Clifford, and did not stop to offer any further explanation.
At the end of the Glengall Road he found his taxi waiting, and half an hour later he was enjoying the luxury of a hot bath.
He had much to think about that night, principally about that long line of wheeled vehicles he had seen in the shelter of the shed; for he had recognized them as battery upon battery of quick-firing guns, and he wondered what plans Mr Fing-Su had for their employment.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mr Stephen Narth was not as a rule the most pleasant person at the breakfast table. In ordinary times Joan Bray rather dreaded that early meal, when the bacon was generally too salt, and the coffee too strong, and when Mr Narth was wont to recite the extraordinary expense of running his house.
Since the interrupted luncheon party Stephen Narth’s manner had undergone a remarkable change, and he was never so pleasant to the girl as he was on the seventh morning after the arrival of the queer man from China.
“They tell me that your friend has got his house finished and furnished,” he said, almost jovially. “I suppose we shall be putting up the banns for you, Joan? Where would you like to be married?”
She looked at him aghast.
She had not associated the repairs to the Slaters’ Cottage with her own matrimonial adventure. In truth, she had not seen Clifford Lynne since that afternoon he brought her back from London. Joan had the uncomfortable feeling that she had been rather left in the air; she was suffering a little from the reaction of Clifford Lynne’s violent proposal. The period of calm which had followed his eruption into her life was in the nature of an anti-climax; she remembered once a great politician who had come to the town where she had spent her childhood, and who had been welcomed with bands and banners; just as he was about to commence his speech expressing his thanks for the welcome, a fire had broken out in an adjacent street, and his audience had melted away, leaving him forlorn and wholly unimportant compared with the conflagration which had suddenly gripped the fickle interest of his admirers. She could sympathize with him.
“I haven’t seen Mr Lynne,” she said. “And as to marriage. I’m not so sure that he was serious.”
Mr Narth’s manner changed.
“Not serious? Rubbish!” he exploded. “Of course he’s serious! The whole thing is arranged. I must talk to him and fix a date. You shall be married at Sunningdale Church, and Letty and Mabel shall be your bridesmaids. In fact, I think you girls had better go up to town and see about your clothes. It had better be a quiet wedding, with as few guests as possible. You never know what this fellow will do; he’s such a wild harum-scarum that is likely as not he will come with an escort of niggers! You had a chat with him, didn’t you, when you came back from the—er— office?”
This was the first allusion he had made for some days to the lunch.
“Didn’t he tell you what was his salary?”
“No,” said Joan.
“Really, father,” said Mabel, spreading butter on her toast, “isn’t his salary a matter rather dependent on you? Of course we shall have to keep him on: it would be a dirty trick to let Joan marry him and then throw him out; but I really think he should be spoken to—his manner is most disrespectful.”
“And his language is appalling,” said Letty. “Do you remember, father, what he said?”
“‘Hell’s bells,’” mused Mr Narth. “It is a new expression to me. I should imagine that he had a contract with poor Joe Bray, so the question of his salary may not arise for some time. Joe was a very generous man and he is certain to have given this fellow enough to live on, so you need have no qualms on the subject, my dear.”
“I haven’t,” said Joan.
“Why he has repaired the Slaters’ Cottage so extravagantly, I don’t know,” Stephen continued. “He surely doesn’t expect that I shall allow him to stay here! A manager’s place is—er—near the business he manages. Of course, I don’t mind giving him a few months’ leave—that is usual, I believe—but he will find it difficult to sell the cottage for anything like the cost of the repairs.”
He glanced at his watch, rubbed his mouth vigorously with his serviette and got up from the table, and with his departure to town events at Sunni Lodge looked as though they would settle down to normal. But he had not been gone more than two hours when his car came up the drive and the chauffeur brought in a note to Joan, who was deep in her household accounts. Wonderingly she opened the letter.
Dear Joan,—Can you come up straight away? I want to see you. I shall be at Peking House.
“Where is Peking House, Jones?” asked the girl.
The man looked at her oddly.
“It’s near the Tower, miss,” he said, “not a quarter of a mile from Mr Narth’s office.”
Letty and her sister were in the village, and, putting on her hat, the girl entered the waiting car. At the far end of Eastcheap, and within sight of that grim old pile that William the Conqueror had built upon Saxon foundations, was a new and handsome stone-fronted building that differed from its neighbours in that it towered six stories above the tallest. A broad flight of marble steps led up to the handsome portico and the marble-lined hall. But its real difference, to the girl, was the character and nationality of its occupants. A stalwart Chinese janitor in a perfectly-fitting uniform ushered her into a lift that was worked by another Chinaman, and as the lift ascended she saw that the marble corridors were alive with little yellow men hurrying from room to room. When she got out of the lift she saw, through a door, a large room where, behind serried lines of desks, sat row upon row of spectacled young Chinamen busy with ink, brush and paper.
“Queer, isn’t it?” The Cockney clerk who had been her companion in the lift grinned as they stepped out. “It’s the only place in the City of London run entirely by Chinks! Peking Enterprise Corporation—heard of it?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t,” confessed the girl with a smile.
“There isn’t a white clerk in the building,” said the young man disgustedly; “and the girl typists—my God! you
