The Yellow Snake

“You don’t even know whether she’s come back?” He sighed. “I’m not very much worried about her, because Scotland Yard has put a man to shadow her. He’ll probably report later.”

“How did you get Scotland Yard into this, Cliff?” asked the big man curiously. “And if they’re in, why don’t they pinch Fing-Su?”

“Because they haven’t sufficient evidence to pinch anybody,” said Clifford shortly.

He was beginning to feel the strain of this battle with the invisible forces of the Chinaman.

“You’ll be able to satisfy your curiosity about Scotland Yard. It’s quite an unromantic place. Superintendent Willing is calling tonight and is going with us down-river. Can you swim, Joe?”

“Anything that’s manly I can do,” said Joe emphatically. “Get out of your head, Cliff, that I’m a back number. There’s I nothing that ever walked in trousers that could get me hollering for mother. A man of fifty is in the prime of life, as I’ve often said.”

Superintendent Willing arrived soon after—a thin, cadaverous man with a mordant sense of humour and a low opinion of humanity. In some respects he was nearer to the typical idea of Joe Bray’s imagination than the three men he had met earlier in the evening, for the superintendent spoke little and conveyed an impression of infallibility.

“You know we searched the Umgeni this morning? She’s due out tonight.”

Clifford nodded.

“There was nothing in the shape of contraband. Perhaps they’re going to send it by the Umveli—that’s the sister ship. They’re lying side by side in the Pool. But she’s not due to sail for a month, and she goes to Newcastle first. Have you seen anything of my man, Long—the fellow I put to trail Miss Bray?” And when Clifford shook his head: “I thought he might have reported to you. He’s probably gone back to Sunningdale with her. Now, Mr Lynne, what is the business end of this Chink’s operations?”

“Fing-Su? So far as I can gather, his idea is to create a new dynasty in China! Before he can bring that into being he would in the ordinary course of events have to fight the various mercenary generals who have sliced up the country between them, but I rather imagine he has found the easier way. Every general in China has his price— always remember that the Chinese have no patriotism; are unconscious of any sentiment for the soil that produced them. Their politics are immediate and local. Most of them aren’t aware that Mongolia has become a Russian province. The generals are bandits on the grand scale, and battles are decided by the timely desertions of armies. Strategy in China means getting the best price for treachery and keeping your plans dark until the last minute.”

“And Narth—he’s rather a puzzle to me,” said Willing. “I can’t see what value he can be to Fing-Su and his crowd. The man is no genius, and certainly no fighter.”

“Narth is very useful; make no mistake about that. Although he is practically bankrupt, he knows the City intimately—by which I mean that when it comes to a question of negotiating dollars against lives, there won’t be a better man in the City of London than Stephen Narth. He is personally acquainted with the great financial groups; he has the very knowledge which Fing-Su lacks. If Fing-Su succeeds there will be some valuable concessions to be had—Narth is to be the broker! At present he is a doubtful proposition, and Fing knows it. The money he has borrowed from our Chinese friend doesn’t give Fing-Su the grip on him that he imagines. Stephen has got to be clamped to the Joyful Hands with bonds of steel. Perhaps the mumbory-jumbory of the initiation service might hold him—but I doubt it.”

He looked at his watch.

“It’s time we made a move,” he said. “I have arranged for an electric launch to meet us at Wapping. Have you a gun?”

“Don’t want it,” rsaid the superintendent cheerfully. “I’ve a walking-cane that’s got a kick in it and makes no noise. But I think the evening is going to be wasted. I’ve searched the Umgeni–-“

“I’m not going to look at the Umgeni,” interrupted Cliff grimly. “Her sister ship’s lying alongside–-“

“But she doesn’t sail for a month.”

“On the contrary,” said Cliff, “she sails tonight.”

The superintendent laughed.

“You know very little about ships,” he said. “She’ll be held up at the mouth of the river and her papers searched, and unless they are in order she’ll not leave the Thames River.”

“They will be in order,” said Clifford cryptically.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

To the artist the Pool of London has a peculiar beauty of its own. Here lie the great ocean-going steamers, and along this watery highway passes the traffic of half a world. It is a place of soft tones, on a fine evening; a nocturne of greys and blues and russet reds. It is a veritable pool of romance even in the drab days of winter, when the stained hulls and the grime-coated funnels come slowly out of sunny seas to rest on these mud-coloured waters.

On a dark and rainy summer evening, with an unaccountable northerner to chill the bones of those adventurers who set forth upon the surface of the river, the Pool has little attraction. Clifford found his big electric launch waiting at the greasy flight of stairs, and slipping under the stern of a Norwegian timber ship, he steered to the middle of the river. A police skiff came out of the darkness, challenged them and was satisfied, and followed in their wake. The tide was running in and was favourable to their enterprise, for they could afford to go half- speed.

Clifford’s scheme was to find a hiding-place on board the ship, and if they were undetected to go down-river with the ship to Gravesend, where the ship would be held up to take on a pilot and for the examination of papers, before being allowed to proceed on her voyage. If they were discovered, Willing had the necessary authority to account for their presence and to conduct an eleventh-hour search for forbidden exports.

There were ships to left and right of them, some silent and dark, save for their riding lamps, others ablaze with lights and noisy with the rattle and whine of donkey engines as they unloaded into lighters with the aid of great branch lamps swung over the side. A belated pleasure craft passed them, a glittering palace of a thing, from which came the strains of a wheezy band.

The four men who occupied the launch wore oilskins and sou’westers, and the need for this protection was emphasized before they had reached the middle of the river, for the drizzle became a downpour.

“Give me China, where the sun is always shining!” murmured Joe Bray, squatting on the floorboards, but nobody answered him.

After a quarter of an hour Superintendent Willing said in a low voice:

“There are the boats, right ahead on the Surrey side.”

The Umgeni and the Umveli were, as he had said, sister ships, and were more twin-like than most sister ships are. Their black hulls and funnels were familiar objects to the riverside loafer; they had the same curiously advanced navigation bridge, the same long superstructure running forward. Both had a single mast, and both sported a gilt and unnecessary figurehead of Neptune.

There was no need to ask which was the Umgeni. Her decks were brilliantly illuminated, and as they came in sight of her a fussy little tug was drawing away three empty lighters from her side. A little more than a ship’s length from her the Umveli swung at her moorings, a dark and lifeless shape.

“You didn’t search the Umveli?”

“No, it hardly seemed necessary. She’s only been in the river a little more than a week, and she’s been unloading all that time.”

“By night,” was Clifford’s significant comment. “The ship which apears to be unloading by night might very easily be loading by night.”

The brilliance of the Umgeni illuminated the starboard side of her sister ship, and Lynne set the nose of the launch towards the shore, setting a course that would bring him in the shadow of the vessel.

“Rather low down in the water for an empty ship, isn’t she?” he asked, and the superintendent agreed.

“She’s going round to Newcastle in ballast to undergo repairs,” he said. “At least, that is my information.”

There was little chance of confusing the two vessels. The word Umgeni in letters a yard long sprawled over the hull of that busy craft in great raised characters. As they came upon the dark side of the Umveli, Lynne looked up. They were passing under the stern, and he saw something which interested him.