TROUBLE AT TINGCHOW
When, amid an ear-splitting salvo of whistlings, the squat little river steamer made ready to stop at Ting-chow, the Kiangsu’s passengers got up and listlessly wandered to the rail to watch the white-clad machine-gun crews on bow and stern cast off the canvas covering of their weapons. Only two figures remained relaxed in long white-covered deck chairs near the stern and sipped from tall glasses, while the whistle’s screams made speech impossible. One of these, revealed to the last detail by the sunset’s glare, swung white-duck-covered legs to the deck and sat up with heavy brows gathering in an impatient frown.
“What a racket! By God, North, I’ll be jolly glad to see Shanghai unless some beastly tuchun (*Chinese war lord) gobbles the Kiangsu on the way. A few more days of this wretched trip would be enough to send me to the madhouse.”
“It has been pretty grim!” The man thus addressed shifted his long gray-flannelled body to better regard rugged bluffs which above the Yangtze were eclipsing the sunset and said, “I say, Smith, look at all that—Wang Kung’s communists must be treating the local gentry pretty rough.”
“Yes, this is worse than the last stop.”
The first speaker’s small blue eyes briefly studied the swarm of frightened humanity which choked the pier and milled well back up the bluff.
“I say, North, this lot really look terrified. I fancy there’s the answer.” The speaker’s eyes shifted towards the sky line which at intervals was streaked with sinister spirals of smoke. “Their work—no doubt.”
Moodily Captain North regarded several groups of gray-clad soldiers with red gingham arm bands; these, with field guns menacingly emplaced on the heights, stared sullenly at the black-painted steamer now rounding to the overcrowded wharf.
“Glad we’ve got that,” Smith added and pointed to an English flag fluttering lazily from the stern flagstaff.
Captain Hugh North, D. C. I., took another sip from his glass. “Hope it proves as effective later on—somewhere I heard that Wang the Mongol doesn’t like Anglo-Saxons worth a thin damn.”
He broke off, for the still, hot air of evening now fairly quivered to the deep shouts of the Kiangsu’s white officers and to the shrill cries of her yellow crew.
From the rail a plump, carefully dressed matron agitatedly called out, “Oh, Captain North, you must come and see this distressing spectacle!”
“Thanks, but I’ve had quite enough of them recently,” North smiled.
“But really, you must! Hundreds and hundreds of the poor things are trying to get aboard. Oh, mercy!” she convulsively clutched pink cheeks and emitted a shrill squeak, “some of them have fallen into the water! And oh—I—dear, dear! the crew’s being so brutal with them. I—I really shall have to complain again to Captain Carstairs. Mr. Smith, do look at this dreadful sight!”
Muttering, the Englishman got to his feet and crossed to her side. “You too, Captain,” she commanded as the clamor of despair swelled louder. But Captain North shook his narrow head, settled back even more firmly into his deck chair, and instead took a long draught from his high-ball glass. On setting it down his thin-lipped mouth curved into an unexpectedly boyish grin as his gaze encountered the backs of the passengers leaning eagerly over the rail.
Curious, he mused sardonically, how much a person’s after elevation told about him or her. For example, Major Tanaka’s rear, neatly sheathed in tight gray breeches, was as muscular and leanly adequate as the Japanese major himself.
How accurately described was Mrs. Amanda Chat-field by this vista of too tightly foundationed green silk and that ample, quivering, and opulent area. To tell what the woman was like one really did not have to see the face she was thrusting far out over the rail. To her left, the more charming contours of Miss Cynthia Chatfield filled and held the eye. North heaved a little sigh. How eloquently those curves belied the wide-eyed innocence stamped on Cynthia’s lovely and perfectly trained visage.
Next her was the back of that unusually friendly Englishman called Michael Smith. What a powerful neck the man had; his very small ears looked almost inadequate above those broad and muscular shoulders which still retained a certain drilled flatness despite the fact that Smith was definitely entering middle age.
And in the back pocket of the man on Smith’s right North noted the distinct bulge of a short automatic, so he curiously surveyed the tall outlines of Mr. Chang Ya-chang. An interesting type, North reflected, and a new one in China. Mr. Chang had none of the usual Chinese meekness and deprecatory manner. English educated, he had absorbed enough of Western philosophy to go about quite self-assured and assertive of his rights.
The flow of Captain Hugh North’s meditations was checked when a deep voice from the bridge successfully penetrated the clamor on the pier. “That’ll be all! No more aboard. Get that gangplank in! Dammit, Evans! Tell your men to use those batons, or they’ll mob you!”
The Kiangsu’s whistle shrieked, English voices bellowed commands, and like a harsh note on an organ swelled such a shrill wailing cry that it prompted North to go to the rail and glance down at the panic-stricken throng.
“Five or six have drowned already. Look! more are being pushed in. Hell must be loose around here,” Smith remarked when the heavy batons of the steamer’s crew whirled like flails in an effort to beat off the frenzied refugees who clung to the gangplank’s guard rail.
Wailing loudly, holding out handfuls of silver and bills, as well as long strings of cash, Chinese of every station in life were surging to the wharf’s edge, while on the bluff above, those swarms of soldiers in red-clay-stained uniforms commenced to finger their rusted miscellany of weapons.
“Mon Dieu!” grunted a short, withered-looking French colonel. “A white man!” From the rear of the crowd a violent commotion had commenced, which resolved itself shortly into a trio of men in dark-green uniforms. Two of them were big Manchurians who with vicious energy wielded their heavy clubs to clear a path for the third. Stepping over the refugees felled by his underlings, the white man gripped a battered musette bag in one hand and with the other used a heavy riding crop to slash aside clawing hands.
Gradually the three forced a path to the disputed gangplank until Captain North was able to get a clear view of the man in the gray-green uniform. Then he drew a slow breath, and the skin over his high cheek bones tightened a little as he watched the belated passenger.
At the sound of a smothered exclamation he glanced to the left and saw Mr. Chang Ya-chang’s long hands gripping the rail convulsively as he stared down at the lanky figure in green who was following his retainers across the bit of planking to which the frenzied mob was clinging.
Instantly bells jangled in the depths of the steamer, and all along the lower rail white and Chinese sailors slashed unmercifully at the heads of refugees who strove to clamber onto a deck already jammed to capacity with a sweating mass of men. Twice more the Kiangsu’s whistle sent its hoarse scream ringing far out across the hot yellow waters of the Yangtze; then the screws throbbed, and the gap of rubbish-strewn water separating ship and wharf widened swiftly. When the powerful current had swung the Kiangsu well away from the pier the gray-clad soldiers began to come down from the bluffs, rather like wolves closing in on a herd of snowbound deer.
Indifferent to the tragic scene, a white-coated boy appeared on the roof of the dining saloon and placidly began to wring the necks of squawking chickens destined for the evening meal.
“The fighting last week was all around here,” Smith remarked when more of the shore was to be seen.
“Tell me about it,” North invited, as he turned back to his chair. “All we heard in Hankow were a few consular radio reports that Yuan Li-tsing, the governor of Kiangsu, had given Wang Kung a trimming.”
Mr. Smith’s small blue eyes darted nervously about, and he spoke in an undertone.
“Have to be careful what I say,” he muttered. “Things are pretty tense in Shanghai now, and we tea merchants have to watch out for boycotts, irresponsible courts, and all that. But this much I will say—General Yuan still has a jolly good grip on Shanghai and Kiangsu province.”
“He a good soldier?”
“Rather! The old fellow’s a fine tactician, but he’ll have to beat Wang all over again as soon as the Mongol reorganizes and digs up some munitions.” Mr. Smith paused and uneasily eyed the crowd which stood about discussing the Kiangsu’s entrance into the war zone.
“Short of munitions?” prompted North with studied carelessness.
“So they say,” was Smith’s brief reply. “Wang Kung wants Shanghai and means to get it. It’ll be bad for us if he does.”
“How’s that?” North became aware that the Englishman’s small blue eyes were regarding him with a more than casual interest.
“You seem very interested, Captain?”
“I am—naturally; we all are, since we’re going to Shanghai.” Smoothly he went on: “Why would Wang’s capture of Shanghai be worse than Yuan’s regime?”
“Old Yuan’s not a bad chap. Gets on famously with the British and Americans. Wang Kung, on the other hand,” Smith lowered his voice still more, “seems to be friendly, a damn sight too friendly, with French and Italian interests.”
Further conversation was interrupted by a departure of the passengers from the rail. Among the first that turned away was the tall Chinese who sat at North’s left in the Kiangsu’s dining saloon. Utterly blank of expression, he made his way swiftly and silently to the lounge door and disappeared.
“Oh, dear”—North almost cringed to find Mrs. Chatfield’s ample and well groomed bulk looming over him—“when we get to Shanghai I’m going to complain to our consul. I think it’s perfectly awful for Captain Carstairs to let his men use clubs. Poor dear Cynthia will never get over this. Will you, dear?”
Cynthia’s white-rabbit face altered its expression in no detail as she said, “No, Mama dear.”
“Really, Captain North”—with a disconcerting lack of warning Mrs. Chatfield veered onto a new tack—“I think something ought to be done about that dreadful Mrs. Braunfeld. I was just saying to Cynthia, the woman can’t have a shred of decency—not a shred! Even the way she looks at that nice young Mr. Trenchard is indecent. It’s quite outrageous, especially here in China, where we civilized white people should set an example to the heathen.”
Captain North shrugged a little. “Young Trenchard’s old enough to look out for himself. Besides, I’ve heard that Mrs. Braunfeld is very good company. I shouldn’t mind meeting her myself.”
Mrs. Chatfield glared, and then broke into a shrill giggle, “Oh, Captain North, you’re such a joker. For a moment I really thought you meant it! Why, the creature’s notorious from Peking to Hong Kong. Look! There he is now, trailing after her like a lost puppy. Really, I am going to protest to Captain Carstairs about her. It’s outrageous, simply outrageous, that Cynthia should have to—to travel on the same boat with women like Ruby Braunfeld.”
Reading no reaction whatsoever on the pleasantly brown face of her victim, Mrs. Chatfield flushed a little and folded her fan with a snap. “Well, well, it’s nearly dinner time. Come, Cynthia dear.”
“Yes, Mama.” And Cynthia trotted off after the expensively corseted and rigidly indignant bulk of her parent.
North sank back into his chair, heaving a deep and expressive sigh.
“Just brimming over with the milk of human kindness—the dear old soul.”
“By God,” came Smith’s voice, “she’s looking simply ripping this afternoon!”
Startled, North found the Englishman’s gaze fixed on the slender figure framed with conscious effectiveness in the lounge doorway.
He perceived, too, that Smith was not alone in his attentiveness. Monsieur Fournier’s hand crept up automatically to twirl his pointed black mustache to more uncompromising rigidity, and even Major Tanaka relaxed a little.
Ever interested in one who tops the field of his or her chosen endeavor, North studied Ruby Braunfeld when she stepped with a graceful, easy stride from beneath the awning, and the sunset made her ash-pale hair glow like a polished silver casque. She murmured a soft “Good-afternoon” to Monsieur Fournier, smiled at the Japanese major and, to North’s great surprise, nodded briefly to Michael Smith.
“Stunning creature, eh, what?” Smith presently remarked in a voice that strove to be casual. “Knew her once, years ago.”
“In China?”
“No.” Michael Smith’s eyes wandered to the bank where some naked little boys in round straw hats were riding a trio of water buffaloes down to a wallow. “It was in Berlin—not long after the war. At that time she was married to a Bavarian cavalry captain. Poor beggar was killed soon after in a duel over something someone said about her.”
“Then she’s German?”
Smith’s eyes flickered to North’s impassive visage. “No, she’s Austrian.”
A slightly constrained silence settled on the group. Hugh North decided that Ruby Braunfeld must possess a very rare combination of charm and beauty. That gorgeous sapphire on her finger, the perfection of her afternoon dress of blue printed silk, and the string of enormous pearls about her neck, all attested that, as Mrs. Chatfield had once acidly pointed out, Mrs. Braunfeld was one of those rare women who knew what she wanted and got it.
He presently heard her saying, “I say, Dickie, be a good boy and ask Major Tanaka to join us—he’s such a dear.”
Few men, North decided, could fail to be attracted by the lazy richness and the faint accent of that contralto voice. Ruby Braunfeld! In the dusty, empty old city of Peiping, in hectic Canton and in busy Hong Kong her name was forever on men’s lips.
North suddenly found himself wondering what she had been doing in Nanking. Something very important, he thought—white women who knew China as Ruby must didn’t go traveling for pleasure when rival tuchuns warred in the Yangtze valley.
Deeply interested, he watched how swiftly a flush of pleasure mounted into Major Tanaka’s usually impassive features, how smartly his well varnished dress boots clicked together as he bowed over the enormous sapphire on her hand.
“Please, Dickie,” she drawled, “I am so ver-ry thirsty. Get me a drink of water, please.”
“Right-o. Be back in two shakes.” Richard Trenchard’s handsome young features tightened above the collar of his neat linen suit, harsh disappointment written on them. The ever observant Captain North, however, was interested to read a very different expression in the Englishman’s wide-set blue eyes. They were unmistakably lit with an excitement which seemed not unpleasant.
As he pulled out his worn brown suede tobacco pouch and commenced to load a cherished Dunhill, North permitted his eyes to rest speculatively on the figure of Mr. Chang, who had reappeared to seat himself almost opposite, a rigid expression on his bony features and a dark glint playing in his eyes. Apparently something had upset him, for he glanced alternately at his watch and at the lounge door. Hard little lines curved the corners of his mouth.
“Taking young Trenchard a long time to find that drink,” Smith abruptly observed. “Imagine he’s off sulking. A spoiled cub, that’s what he is. I don’t know what Ruby—Mrs. Braunfeld sees in him—Good God in heaven!
“Do you know who that is?” Smith spoke without looking at his companion, or he would have seen the subtle change in North’s expression as a figure filled the saloon door—a swaggering figure clad in a none-too-clean dark-green uniform that was liberally laced with tarnished gold. Built not unlike North himself, the man who had so recently boarded the Kiangsu stood in the doorway.
“Take a good look at him,” Smith muttered, “and tell me if you ever saw a crueler pair of eyes.”
North’s reply came in inflectionless tones: “I have seen General Steel before—several times. I don’t have to look.”
“You know that bloody-handed devil?”
“Oh, yes. As I’ve said, Sam Steel and I are old—” He left the sentence unfinished.
“Friends?” inquired Smith with a sudden sharpness.
North laughed. “Hardly. Sam Steel came very near killing me once. By the way, who’s he fighting for?”
“At present he’s one of Marshal Wu Feng-pei’s white mercenaries. Charming fellow, Steel—had three hundred-odd of his own men beheaded last month for an attempted mutiny. They say he knocked off a few himself.”
Thumbs hooked into a well worn Sam Browne belt, Sam Steel lingered in the lounge door, oblivious of the fact that two women passengers were waiting to pass. With deliberate truculence, his hard yellowish eyes examined the passengers until they came to rest on Captain North, smoking placidly on the stern.
“North! By God!” The big man’s body stiffened and he scowled. But almost immediately a tight and mirthless grin appeared, and he swung forward over the deck with the sunset light striking a double row of weather-beaten decoration ribbons above his left breast pocket.
“Well, well, if it ain’t the old bloodhound himself!” he rasped. “So G-2 sent you to China, eh?”
Deliberately North took the pipe from his mouth and gazed upward. “Hello, Steel. Thought that was you coming aboard just now. Going to Shanghai?”
Steel nodded curtly.
“Yeh, been lending a hand to old Wang Kung—he needed it, too. But now I got a little business over in Chapei. How’s the bright-haired boy of the U.S. Intelligence these days? On duty?”
“Intelligence?” Michael Smith looked up sharply in time to see an irritated flush go surging towards the gray patches above North’s temples.
“No, I’m on leave.”
“Says you!” The other laughed loudly, and pulling a long Russian cigarette from a gold-and-green enamel case, proceeded to light it. Uninvited, Sam Steel then seated himself. “Guess I’ll roost alongside a minute, since we ain’t stacking up against each other this time.” He grinned reflectively. “Boy! You sure did put the skids under me that time in Cuba.” A wide scar running along Steel’s right cheek darkened. “Don’t know as I’ve forgiven you for that, neither. I’ll let you know after I’ve had a drink, Cap.”
“Any way you like it, Sam,” North replied as he inwardly cursed the big soldier of fortune. Damn! Chang, Fournier, Smith, and the other passengers were looking at him with a new interest.
Just then Ruby Braunfeld reappeared, having completed a circuit of the deck with Major Tanaka.
“Du lieber Gott!” North heard her gasp, and on glancing up saw the natural color drain from the lovely oval of her face when she caught sight of the green-uniformed figure at his side.
General Steel, who had seen nothing of Ruby’s appearance, arose and said, “So long, Cap—gotta inspect this here bumboat and see if there are any good-looking dames aboard. Yellow gals are nice, but they’ve got no bows to ’em, and I—” The adventurer bit the sentence off short, and his body contracted. His eyes had encountered the now serene greenish ones of Ruby Braunfeld. As he did so young Trenchard came in, a glass in his hand.
“Here you are, dear,” he said. “I had a—” He got no farther, for Steel’s green-clad figure swung across the deck and halted, towering above Ruby Braunfeld’s rigid form.
“So it’s you.” He laughed, but it was a laugh without mirth. “Guess you thought we wouldn’t meet again?”
Only the dull threshing of the Kiangsu’s screws broke the silence for a moment, then Ruby said, her lips curved in a dazzling smile, “Don’t be unpleasant, Samuel. Our affaire is all over and done with.”
“Maybe, Babe, maybe,” rasped Steel. “You done me dirt once, and I’m thinkin’ you owe me somethin’.” His face hardened into such an evil expression that the woman shrank back. “But mebbe I’ll forget it if you’ll be nice to little Sam. See you ain’t been doin’ bad by yourself—you’re lookin’ swell, Babe.”
Mrs. Braunfeld forced a smile. Her carefully manicured fingers tightened on the handle of her fan.
“This is Mr. Richard Trenchard—”
“Trenchard!”
There was a sudden change in Steel’s manner. It was as though he had suddenly recollected an unpleasant fact. “So you’re the—” Trenchard’s voice cut in icily as he stepped to confront Marshal Wu Feng-pei’s hard-bitten lieutenant. “You will please not use that tone. I intend to marry Mrs. Braunfeld.”
“Marry her!” Steel’s scarred blond head suddenly went back in a roar of loud laughter. “Don’t be too sure about that, Buddy.”
Alert to every nuance, Captain North watched the adventurer turn on a muddied boot heel and with a dull jingle of spurs stride off in the direction of the Kiangsu’s bar.