Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China

"How serene the joy, when things that are made for each other meet and are joined; but ah,-- how rarely they meet and are joined, the things that are made for each other!...

Communication between certain individuals in China and their relatives and friends in Chinatown must, for political and other reasons, be conducted in a secret way. In Shanghai, M...

The junior operator toyed with the heavy transmitting key while Peter Moore, who knew the behavior of his apparatus as he would know the caprices of an old friend, adjusted helix-p...

Peter turned over the log-book and the wireless-house to Dale, a few minutes before midnight. "Everything's cleared up. The static is worse, and KPH may want you to relay a messa...

The _Vandalia_ was wallowing majestically through long, dead black swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the peak and glanced overside. Broad, phospho...

The first operator had developed for himself at an early stage of his occupancy of the _Vandalia's_ wireless house the warm friendship of the chief engineer. A wireless man is far...

That a recrudescence of those involved in the murky affair might be imminent was the thought induced in Peter's mind as the green coast of Japan heaved over the horizon. With each...

Peter was conscious of a hot stickiness at his throat where the claws had taken hold. Then he concerned himself with the gray shape that lay quite still on the iron deck at his fe...

The bund of Shanghai was striped with the long, purple shadows of coming night, a night which seemed to be creeping out of the heart of the land, ushering with it a feeling of subt...

At a small round table in the end of the room over which hung the orchestra balcony, Peter found himself in the presence of two disarming gray eyes, which drank in every detail of ...

With the pristine dawn, Robert MacLaurin arose from his bed like a large, yellow mountain; for his pajamas--every square yard of them--were of fine Canton silk, the color of the bu...

No member of the earth's great brotherhood of dangerous waterways is blessed with quite the degree of peril which menaces those hardy ones who dare the River of the Golden Sands. ...

When Peter descended the stairway into the narrow vestibule which served as reception-hall, dining-saloon, and, incidentally, as the corridor from which the _Hankow's_ four small s...

Peter Moore's curiosity regarding the motives which were sending Miss Amy Vost into Szechwan, most deplorable, most poverty-stricken of provinces, was satisfied before the _Hankow_...

They came to Ichang next noon. Peter was on deck watching the somewhat hazardous procedure of transferring large grass-bound cases of tools from a tidewater steamer to the stern o...

With the coming of noon Peter sat down under a stunted cembra pine tree and contemplated the distant rocky blue ridge with a wistful and discouraged air. He removed from his trous...

A road as white and straight as a silver bar led directly between the black, jutting shoulders of the hills to the gates of Len Yang. Peter, with his heart beating a wild symphony...

As night melted into day and day was swallowed up by night, the problem which confronted Peter took on more serious and baffling proportions. His hope of entering the ivory palace ...

She bends over her work once more: "I will weave a fragment of verse among the flowers of his robe, and perhaps its words will tell him to return." --LI-TAI-PE. The ...

The coolie plunged into the water with a weltering splash which sent a small spiral of spray almost to the deck. For a moment the man in the water pedaled and flailed, vastly frig...

At dinner Peter met the notables. It seemed the fat and handsome captain had taken a fancy to him. And it was as Peter had deduced earlier. These passengers were stodgy Dutchmen...

To Peter this revelation was like the addition of a single grain to a bucket brimming with sand. "Well, what of it?" he barked. "To a man who is fat and untidy, a man old enough ...

When Peter snapped off the switch he found that he was trembling, trembling from his knees to his neck. With a feeling akin to guilt he wiped the sweat from his face and walked un...

It came to Peter as he climbed up the iron-fretted steps to the lonely promenade-deck that life had begun to take on its old golden glow, the luster of the uncertain, the charm of ...

Because of the fatigue which possessed his every muscle, fatigue springing from the arduous, the trying hours now past, Peter the Brazen was sleeping the slumber of the worthy, whe...

Night brings counsel, say the French. Only in sleep does one mine the gold of truth, said Confucius. When Peter was aroused by the golden dawn streaming through the swinging port...

When Peter emerged from the wireless room, having completed his business for the morning, he found Romola Borria with elbows on the rail gazing thoughtfully at a small Chinese girl...

During the remainder of the voyage Romola Borria did not once, so far as Peter was aware, leave her stateroom. Her meals were sent there, and there she remained, sending out word ...

Wearing a slight frown, Peter made his way through piles of indiscriminate luggage to the port ladder, where his sampan and the maid from Macassar were waiting. As he descended th...

The shadows were lengthening, the sky was of a deeper and vaster blue, when the train came to a creaking stop in the Kowloon Station. Peter emerged, scanning the passengers warily...

The hour lacked a few minutes of seven when Peter ascended in the lift to the second floor of the Hong-Kong Hotel and made his way between the closely packed tables to the Desvoeux...

"Romola, I said no to Nara long ago." She threw up her head. "A woman should need to be informed but once that her love is not wanted. This is not what I meant." "Ah! Another ...

On his hands and knees he crouched, and began crawling, an inch at a time, toward the French window, dragging the automatic over the thick satin carpet. He reached the window. It...

In the months which had passed since their romantic parting on the bund at Shanghai, Peter the Brazen had founded all of his roseate notions of Eileen Lorimer upon the one-sided da...

There was a noticeable ripple when Eileen Lorimer walked into the ballroom that evening in the winsome attire of a Quaker maid, with Professor Hodgson, as Pierrot, on one side, and...

At about five o'clock the next afternoon Peter, in his hotel bedroom, called for a pitcher of ice-water, the major portion of which he disposed of before considering the next move....

"Oh! Chiang Nan's a hundred li, yet in a moment's space I've flown away to Chiang Nan and touched a dreaming face." --TS'EN-TS'AN. A young man can get himself into tr...

It was on the night that the _King of Asia_ cleared Nagasaki for the short run across the Yellow Sea into the flow of the Yangtze-Kiang that Peter was sought out by that pleasant y...

Anthony and the twins called for Peter as soon as they could tear themselves away from the many fascinating incidents attendant upon coming to an anchorage in the Whang-poo-Kiang. ...

A light spring rain was drizzling down when Peter ordered four rickshaws of the proud Sikh who stood guard over the porte cochère of the Astor House. Long bright knives of light s...

"Is this a part----" began Peter. "No, it is not." Romola's face seemed thin with her growing anxiety. Obviously the tossed knife was not a part of the evening's performance. "...

An eye, red like the play of fire about a distant volcano crater, glowed a number of paces in front of him. But not a candle, of the dozens that had been burning when he last went...

Apparently Anthony had not observed this specter. Peter seized his arm, the left one. "We must start. Wake them up." Anthony shook a nervous negative. "I've tried. That wine!...

Foggy consciousness. A roaring like that of the ocean on a rockbound coast. He seemed to be floating in a medium of ice. Once his dragging arm scraped a wet, slippery timber. T...

The sky was clearing. Rain had ceased dripping from the bulging black clouds, and a slender rod of golden sunlight pierced through and marked a path upon the red bricks of the inn...

A match hissed; the flame of the lamp rose up slowly. With a flutter of skirts the girl followed, her head inclined, as though she was humiliated or greatly embarrassed. She went...

Peter shot the bolt and listened to the sad grumble of the river as he endeavored to adjust this strange incident to the stranger events of the very full evening. Not until the my...

Lingering in his vision was a leering face. Mud had been thrown into his eyes, and the filth was plastered from eyebrows to nose. In a flash he recognized the face. Months ago h...

"You are in time!" He gripped Peter by the shoulder. "Have you stopped them?" gasped Peter. Kahn Meng indulged in a bitter laugh. "Only the wind could overtake them." He shrug...

Now Peter was an emotional young man. And wrathful notions were kindled in him before he encountered the only guard Kahn Meng's men had overlooked--may the bones of that one rest ...

She flew across the room to him, and pressed her hands to his cheeks. Her eyes were sparkling with tears, and her face was very pale. Only her lips, which were everlastingly brigh...

Somewhere in the distance a sweet-voiced temple bell resounded dreamily. Vague odors of sandalwood and wistaria swam in the soft, cool air. A ray of warm sunlight fell upon Peter...