CHAPTER VI

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 more dependent for his peace of

mind upon the engine-room crew than upon the forward crew. The latter

has only one interest in him: that he stick to his instruments; while

the engine-room crew strictly is the source from which his blessings

flow, his blessings taking the invisible, vital form of electric

current.

Wireless machines are gourmands of electricity. They are wastrels.

Not one-tenth of the energy sucked from the ship's power wires finds

its way through the maze of coils and jars to the antennae between the

mastheads.

The _Vandalia's_ engine-room equipment was installed long before

wireless telegraphy was a maritime need and a government requirement.

Hence, her dynamos protested vigorously against the strain imposed upon

them by the radio machine. Any electric engine is unlike any steam

engine. Steam engines will do so much work--no more. Dynamos or

motors will do so much work--and then more. They can be overloaded,

unsparingly. But the strain tells. Stout, dependable parts become

hot, wear away, crumble, snap.

In the typical case of the _Vandalia_, the question of whether or not

the wireless men should be provided with all of the current they

required, was narrowed down to individuals.

If Minion had disliked Peter Moore he could have slowed down the

dynamos at the critical times when the operator needed the high

voltage; but Peter had had encounters with chief engineers before. He

had at first courted Minion's good graces with fair cigars, radio

gossip and unflagging courtesy. And on discovering that the chief was

a sentimentalist at heart and a poet by nature, he had presented him

with an inexpensively bound volume of his favorite author. Daring, but

a master-stroke! He had not since wanted for voltage, and plenty of it.

He pondered the advisability of taking Minion entirely into his

confidence as he followed the sweated, undershirted shoulders to the

engine-room galley, and thence across the oily grill of shining steel

bars which comprised one of the numerous and hazardous superfloors

which surrounded the cylinders.

Minion was nursing a stubbornly warm bearing in the port shaft alley.

The fat cylinder revolved with a pleasant ringing noise, the blurring

knuckles of the frequent joints vanishing down the yellow, vaulted

alley to a point of perspective, where the shaft projected through the

hull. The floundering of the great propellers seemed alternately to

compress and expand the damp atmosphere.

The sad, white face of Minion arose from the dripping flanks of the

journal as he caught sight of Peter in the arched entrance. A pale

smile flickered at his lips.

The chief did not in any wise reflect his monstrously heaving,

oil-dripping surroundings. He was a small, deliberate man, with oceans

of repressed energies. His skin had the waxy whiteness of a pond lily.

An exquisitely trimmed black moustache adorned his mouth. The deep

brown eyes of a visionary rested beneath the gentle, scythe-like curves

of thin and pointed eyebrows.

"You look worried," vouchsafed Minion as their hands met. His quiet

voice had a clarity which projected it nicely through the bedlam of

engine-room noises. "Why you up so early--or so late? Anything wrong?"

Peter took out a cigarette and nervously lighted it at the sputtering

flame Minion held for him. "Mr. Minion, something's in the wind," he

complained, and hesitated. He was at the verge of telling what he had

seen on the promenade deck, of the confusion on the pierhead, of the

unaccountable behavior of the woman in the window above Ah Sih King's,

of the suspicious attitude of Blanchard, of the recent plea for help.

Again something checked him.

"Mr. Minion, what is Len Yang? And where is it?"

The scythe-like brows contracted. Minion's lucid, brown eyes rested on

his lips, seeming to await an elaboration of the query. His features

suddenly had stiffened. His whole attitude appeared on the moment to

have undergone a change, from one of friendly interest to a keen

defensiveness.

"Len Yang is a city in China. Why?"

The operator suspected that Minion was sparring for time.

"Where is Len Yang?"

"Do you mean, how does one reach Len Yang?"

"Either."

"Mr. Moore"--the suspicion fell from the chief's expression, leaving it

calm and grave--"you are not an amateur. You have discretion. The man

who controls Len Yang is the _Vandalia's_ owner."

"Why, I understood the Pacific and Western Atlantic Transport Line

owned her!"

"This man--he is a Chinese. Oh, I've never seen him, Mr. Moore. One

of the richest of China's unknown aristocrats, the central power of the

cinnabar ring. You have never gone up the river with us to load at

Soo-chow?"

Peter shook his head. "Cinnabar from his mine is brought down the

Yangtze on junks and transferred at Soo-chow?"

Minion seemed not to be listening. His eyes were stagnant with an

appalling retrospect. "A terrible place--horrible! Five years ago I

visited Len Yang. Hideous people with staring eyes, dripping the

blood-red slime of the mines! And girls! Young girls! Beautiful--for

a while." He sighed. "They work in that vicious hole!"

"Young girls?" Peter exclaimed.

"Imported. From everywhere. I tried to find why. There is no

explanation. They come--they work--they become hideous--they die! It

is his habit. No one understands. Poor things!"

Peter was staring at him narrowly. "Quite sure he imports them to work

in the mines?"

Minion nodded vehemently. "I made sure of that. I went up the river

as _his_ guest. Trouble with the seepage pumps. Hundreds of them

drowned like rats. Len Yang is near the trade route into India.

Leprosy--filth--vermin! God! You should have seen the rats!

Monsters! They eat them. Poor devils! And live in holes carved out

of the ruby mud."

He tore the clump of waste from his left hand and ground it under his

heel.

"And in the center of this frightfulness--his palace! Snow-white

marble, whiter than the Taj by moonlight. But its base is stained red,

a creeping blood-red from the cinnabar. Damn him!"

"No escape?" Peter muttered.

"Escape!" Minion shouted. "_Dang hsin_! They call him the Gray

Dragon. He reaches over every part of Asia. That is no exaggeration.

Take my advice, Mr. Moore, if you have stumbled upon one of his

schemes--_ní chü bà_--don't meddle!"

The white face writhed, and for a new reason Peter smothered the

impulse to tell the agitated Minion what he had seen. Their

conversation drifted to general shipboard matters. When he left he

borrowed the chief engineer's master key on the excuse that he had

locked himself out of the wireless cabin.

Besides a stiffening head wind the ship was now laboring into piling

head seas. Far beyond the refulgence of the scattered lights stars

shone palely. Flecks of streaming white were making their appearance

at the toppling wave crests.

A hail of stinging spray, flung inboard by a long gust, struck Peter's

face sharply as he struggled forward, rattling like small shot against

the vizor of his cap and smarting his eyes. The needle-like drops were

icy cold. The elastic fabric of the _Vandalia_ shivered, her broad

nose sinking into a succession of black mountains. Peak gutters roared

as the cascading water was sucked back to the untiring surface.

Gaining the cross entrance, he braced his strength against the forces

of wind which imprisoned the door, and crept down the passage.

His heart pounded as his groping fingers outlined the cold iron

numerals on the panel. Nervously, he inserted the master key into the

door lock, and paused to listen.

Rhythmic snoring moaned from an opened transom near by. What other

night sounds might have been abroad were engulfed by the imminent

throbbing in the engine-room well.

Stateroom forty-four's transom was closed. The lock yielded. The door

yawned soundlessly. A round, portentous eye glimmered on the opposite

wall. An odor of recently wet paint and of new bed linen met him. The

excited pulsing of his heart outsounded the engines.

He shut the door cautiously, not to awake the occupants of the berths,

and fancied he could again hear the warning sibilance of the whisper,

but in sleep, perhaps drawn through unconscious lips.

Eagerly, his hand slipped over the enameled wall and found the electric

switch. Turning, to cover all corners of the stateroom he snapped on

the light.

Stateroom forty-four, through whose doorway he could have sworn to have

seen a sandaled foot vanish less than three hours previous, was empty!

The blue-flowered side curtains of the white enameled bunks were draped

back in ornamental stiffness. Below the pillows the upper sheets were

neatly furled like incoming billows on a coral beach. He threw open

the closet door. Bare! Not one sign of occupancy could he find, and

he looked everywhere.

As he made to leave the room a small oblong of white paper was thrust

under the door. He hesitated in surprise, stooped to seize it and

flung open the door. A gust of night, wind--the slamming of a

door--and the messenger was gone.

Tremblingly, he unfolded the paper. His eyes dilated. Hastily

scrawled in the lower right-hand corner of the otherwise blank leaf was

a replica of the blurred sign that had caused such consternation on the

part of Lo Ong.

The ideograph had twice been brought to his attention. It was

apparently a solemn warning. Should he heed it? He felt that he was

watched. But the porthole glowed emptily.

Lighting a cigarette, he dropped down to the bunk, cupped his chin in

his palms, and frowned at the green carpet.

He was being frustrated, by persons of adroit cunning. It was

maddening. This had ceased to be an adventurous lark. It was to

become a fight against weapons whose sole object seemed to be to guard

the retreat of some evil spirit.

It occurred to him suddenly that he should be grateful upon one score

at least: He had not lost the trail, for the symbols were unchanged.

But from that point the trail vanished--vanished as abruptly as if its

design had been wiped off the earth! Sharp eyed and eared, alertness

night after night availed him nothing. And not until the twinkling

lights of Nagasaki were put astern, when the _Vandalia_ turned her nose

into the swollen bed of the Yellow Sea, did the traces again show

faintly.