RED CLAY FROM TAIHUNG
“Says Cap’n Hugh North!” Steel rumbled, and at the same time his bloodshot eyes flickered around North’s cabin.
Something in Steel’s manner roused North to a sharp wariness. Apparently he was trying to decide something—unspoken inquiry was in his eye.
The adventurer was dressed as before, save that, disdaining shirt or undershirt, he had pulled on a dark-green tunic and had buttoned only two or three of its tarnished buttons, leaving visible much of his muscular throat and hairy chest. Significantly ready, a holstered automatic swung over his right hip.
“Have a skag, Cap?” He tendered a package of Russian make.
“Thanks,” North grimaced as he replied, “but I haven’t sunk to smoking those young Roman candles.”
For a long moment neither man spoke and only the steady hiss of water along the Kiangsu’s sides broke the stillness.
“You been talkin’ to Ruby, haven’t you?” inquired Wu Feng-pei’s mercenary general without shifting his eyes from North’s face.
The Intelligence Captain merely nodded.
“She’s a sweet little hell-cat,” Steel went on, and settled himself into a straight-backed chair. “Yep, Ruby sure knows how to sink her claws in a guy’s wad. So you talked, eh?”
“Yes, we had a talk. How did you know?” Yes, North decided, Steel was uneasy about something and seeking reassuring knowledge of some kind.
“Happened to see you come out of her cabin.” The big man’s face loomed nearer, and his slash of a mouth curved into a smile. “And say, listen to a chunk of advice about dear little Ruby: trust her as far as you can throw a bull by the tail and believe nothing she tells you till it’s proved.” Steel expelled a great lungful of smoke. “Well, what d’you think of the little broad?”
“She’s easy to look at, but I suppose she could be very mean if she wanted to.”
“And how! She’s smooth—take it from me, Cap! I ain’t no high-school kid, yet she took me over the jumps like Grant took Richmond!”
Marshal Wu Feng-pei’s general cocked his battered head to one side and reflectively eyed his cigarette. “I was just back from the Riff campaign, loaded with jack and rarin’ to go, when I met Ruby on a liner out o’ Frisco for Manila. Boy, how I fell for them green lamps o’ hers! We got off in Hawaii, and I blew in nearly twenty grand on her. I was fixin’ maybe to marry her when she grabs what’s left of my wad and beats it for Saigon with some Frog ship-owner.” Sam Steel’s buttons glinted with the harsh laugh he uttered.
What had this hard-bitten individual come to find out? Or to do? North remained silent and attentive, arms crossed on his chest, settling back not too heavily on his chair. Silence, he reflected, is a great questioner.
For a moment or two the adventurer, who for all the world might have been a condottiere born five centuries too late, smoked in silence, his weather-beaten hands toying with the five-inch cigarette and revealing a heavy gold link bracelet clasped about his left wrist.
“Well, Cap,” he commented suddenly, “you were a fool to let yourself get roped in on this mess.”
“I couldn’t help it, could I?” North objected. “Once we pull into Shanghai I’m not going any further with it. I’m sailing for the States in a couple of days, thank God.”
A gold tooth set among Steel’s otherwise strong white ones shone as he suddenly leaned forward.
“It’s just as well, Cap.”
“What do you mean?” Captain North, impassive of feature, felt a pang of genuine uneasiness. What was afoot in Shanghai?
Steel pursed sun-cracked lips and started to spit on the floor but checked himself and instead chose the waste basket.
“From what I seen around Taihung, Cap, inside of a week there’ll be plain and fancy hell popping around Shanghai. Foreigners will be squawking for protection, and a bunch of Bible pounders will be scragged or snatched off by t’ao-pings (*deserters or semi-bandit soldiers).” Steel threw back his head and laughed softly.
“So you’re glad I’m going?”
“You bet—I’ve got a few eggs to fry in this mess, and you’re too damned smart. There’s very few hombres who could give me the works the way you did in Cuba. Damn your soul, anyhow.” He frowned momentarily. “If it hadn’t been for you I’d have had old Machado out, Menocal in, and, more important, I’d have had two hundred grand in my pockets instead of thanking God I could find a lousy fisherman to run me over to Haiti.”
North shrugged. “I do what I’m paid to do, Steel.”
“So do I,” Steel drawled. “But I ain’t so fussy who hires me. And say, I admire your sense in not gettin’ all steamed up about that cub’s gettin’ bumped off. And, by the way, Cap, why do you suppose he got bumped off?”
Elaborately casual was General Steel’s query.
“You know as much as I do.”
“Didn’t find anything—er—interesting on him?”
“No. Did you think I would?”
“Maybe. When a guy gets murdered like that there’s generally a reason.” Steel seemed to consult inwardly before he added very slowly. “North, I’m thinkin’ you’re lyin’.”
The Intelligence Captain moved no muscle of his face, but his hands crept down as if to tighten the belt above that invisible .32.
“Your opinion doesn’t count a hell of a lot with me, Steel.”
“Mebbe. Come clean, what did you find on him? It won’t hurt to tell me.”
Satisfaction filled North. Steel was interested in Trenchard, and deeply so, at that.
“No concern of yours, Steel, but I still say that I found nothing exciting.”
“On the level?”
“Yes. You were with Wang Kung’s army during the drive on Shanghai?”
Steel’s face hardened, and he settled back a little—but only a little.
“Sure. Dropped in to see Gus Neiblinger. Right now he’s Wang’s chief of staff.”
“Nice of Wu to give you leave to go visiting in busy times like these.”
“Yeah,” mocked Steel, “wasn’t it lucky for Wang? Yuan would have beat hell out of him if I hadn’t been on deck. Wang’s a lousy general.”
North leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Didn’t see Trenchard in those parts, did you?”
“No,” snarled Steel. “What made you think so?”
“Saw red clay on some of Trenchard’s shoes. Like that on your spur straps. I happen to know that there isn’t much of it in this province except around Taihung—and I’ve been told Wang’s headquarters are in that vicinity.”
“Damn you, North, you’re too smart for your own good.” An evil gleam played at the back of the mercenary’s eyes, and his hand strayed downwards towards the butt of his Luger automatic. North suddenly revealed the outline of his much handier .32.
“You flatter me, Steel,” North said almost amiably, “and if the shoe fits—”
“Well, it don’t.” The adventurer relaxed a trifle, and the vari-colored ribbons above his left upper pocket glistened like a miniature rainbow. “Say, you don’t think—”
Angry color lingered in the scar sweeping across Steel’s left cheek; then his expression gave way to suspicion as he glowered at that calm and collected figure seated across the little cabin until North laughed.
“Come on, Steel, relax and tell me what you’re aiming to do in Shanghai?” North invited with a wide smile. “What’s wrong—guilty conscience?”
“I’m down to try to scare up some machine guns, ammunition, and some light tanks for my boss.”
Promptly Steel veered off on a safer tack. “You should come up to Kuseng sometime, North, and watch my boys drill. Got a bunch of white Russians helping me, and believe me, Cap, these little tin-pot tuchuns around Shanghai are going to be hollering bloody murder and looking for tall trees pretty soon. Say, why are you looking at me like that?”
“I was just wondering, Colonel—er—General, about the real reason you went to Wang’s H. Q. A little look-see, maybe?”
The other’s thin slash of a mouth tightened.
“Well, the boss did tell me to kind of throw an eye over this local scrap.”
“He’s interested?”
Steel’s manner now became distinctly wary, and his eyes sought his muddied field boots.
“No, we’re not in shape yet.”
North promptly wrote that statement off, for filed in the C-2 safes in Washington was a detailed report prepared by Captain Hugh North to the effect that the army of Wu Feng-pei was undoubtedly one of the best in all of war-racked China.
General Sam Steel yawned cavernously, stretched, and got to his feet. “Well, Cap, so long as you aren’t going to play ball and answer me a few questions I think I’ll hit the hay.”
In the doorway he looked back over the dull gold of his epaulette and inquired, “You’re sure, Cap, you found nothin’ interestin’ on Trenchard? Maybe just a paper or two that might be unlucky to have?”
The Intelligence officer, still seated, shook his head and said crisply, “No use trying that, Steel, it doesn’t work with me. Good-night.”
“No?” the other returned with dangerous gentleness. “Well, for your sake, I hope you’re telling the truth. And say,” he added, “when you find ‘Carol’s doll’ tie a blue ribbon on her hair for me.”