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Edward Phillips Oppenheim

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STOLEN IDOLS

By

E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1925

Copyright, 1925,

By E. Phillips Oppenheim.

All rights reserved

Published May, 1925

Printed in the United States of America

STOLEN IDOLS

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER I

The two ships, pursuer and pursued, quaintly shaped, with heavy, flapping sails, lay apparently becalmed in a sort of natural basin formed by the junction of two silently flowing, turgid rivers—rivers whose water was thick and oily, yellow in colour, unpleasant to look at. The country through which they passed was swamp-riven and desolate, though in the far distance were rice fields and the curiously fashioned roofs of a Chinese village. The sun beat down upon the glasslike water. The air was windless. Further movement seemed impossible until from the smaller boat, through unexpectedly opened hatches, half a dozen oars were suddenly thrust into the water. The huge Chinaman who stood at the helm, yellow-skinned and naked to the waist, picked up an enormous pole and let it gradually down into the river bed. The oars, languidly though they were wielded, cut the water, and the dhow began slowly to move. Wu Abst, the Mighty Terror of the Great River, as he loved to hear himself described, grinned mockingly as he looked backwards towards his pursuer. He shouted words through the glistening heat intended to convey his contempt of those who fancied that he was to be caught napping. Then he bent over his giant pole and glanced with satisfaction at the distant bank, which already showed signs of their progress. At the bend of the river, not three miles distant, was a stretch of water into which no such craft as that which had chased him could follow. He relit his pipe, therefore, and smoked like a man at peace, whilst below the sweat rolled from the naked bodies of the men who were emulating their Roman predecessors of two thousand years ago. Wu Abst, pleased with their efforts, shipped his pole for a moment, and, leaning over the side, shouted encouragement and exhortation to the toilers. Then suddenly the words died away upon his lips. His whole frame stiffened. The remains of the grin faded from his face, the whole expression of which was now almost ludicrously changed. For across that little stretch of river came the horrible sound of which he had heard, the pop-pop-pop denoting the use of some devil-made mechanical contrivance, which triumphed over windless airs and opposing currents.

His horrified gaze became fastened upon the pursuing ship, now also moving, and not only moving, but moving very much faster than anything which all the efforts of his toiling gang were able to accomplish. Bewilderment gave place to anger, which in its turn became merged almost at once in the philosophy of his race—the graveyard of all emotions! He shouted an order to those down below. There was a clatter and a rumble as the men shipped their oars, and another more metallic sound as they exchanged them for other weapons.

Wu Abst thrust his hand through the window of a small cuddy hole, which he called his cabin, and drew out a long, antiquated rifle. It was one of a type manufactured in Birmingham fifty years ago, rejected since then by every South American band of patriots planning a revolution, and scoffed at even by West African savages. He nevertheless dropped a cartridge into its place and waited whilst the other ship glided almost alongside. His eyes swept its deck, and his bloodthirsty intentions were promptly changed. With expressionless face he slipped his weapon back again through the cuddy hole and called down another order below. Then he leaned over the rail and raised his hand in salute. A man who was seated aft in a basket chair upon the deck of the approaching ship, rose to his feet and came to the side. He wore Chinese garb and he spoke in Chinese, but his linen clothes were spotlessly white and he wore no pigtail.

“Are you Wu Abst, the river pirate?” he called out.

“I am Wu Abst,” was the reply. “And who are you?”

“I am Wu Ling, the peaceful trader,” the other answered. “I bring prosperity to those whom you seek to rob.”

Wu Abst spat into the river.

“I know of you,” he growled. “You trade with foreign money. You take the jade and the gems, the silk and the handiwork of these people and sell them rubbish.”

“Where I take,” the other rejoined, “I give something in return, which is more than you do.”

“What is your business with me?” Wu Abst demanded, glancing sullenly at the two Maxim guns trained upon him, behind each of which was seated, cross-legged, a brawny and capable-looking Chinese sailor.

“Last night,” Wu Ling announced, “I traded at the village of Hyest, and I heard a strange tale. I heard that you had on board your ship a foreigner tied with ropes, and that you were waiting to reach your own stretches to throw him to the crocodiles. Is this the truth, Wu Abst, or am I to search your ship?”

“It is the truth,” the other admitted grimly. “He is a foreign devil who merits death and even torture. He is a thief and a sacrilegious pest upon the earth.”

“You speak hard words of him,” Wu Ling observed.

“What words other than hard can be spoken of such?” Wu Abst retorted. “Presently I shall tell you of his deeds. I like not your speech, Wu Ling. You speak our tongue but speak it strangely. There are rumours of you in many places. There are some who say that not only is the money with which you trade the money of foreign devils, but that you, too, are one of them in spirit if not by birth.”

“What I am is none of the present business,” Wu Ling declared. “What of this prisoner of yours?”

“I shall speak of him now,” Wu Abst answered. “Then, if you are indeed a man of this country, you shall see that I do no evil thing in casting him to the crocodiles. He was caught, a thief in the sacred temple of the sacred village of Nilkaya, in the temple where the Great Emperor himself was used to worship. The priests who caught him tied his body with ropes—not I. They brought him to the riverside, and they gave me silver to deal with him.”

“Your story is true,” Wu Ling admitted. “The circumstances you relate are known to me. But there were two of these robbers. What of the other, his companion?”

“The priests say that he escaped, and with him the two sacred Images of the great God, reverenced for nine hundred years,” the pirate confided. “It is because of the escape of the other that they wish to make sure of the death of this one.”

Wu Ling considered for a moment.

“Wu Abst,” he pronounced at last, “you have told me a true story, and you have acted in this matter as a just man. Therefore these guns of mine shall bring no message of evil to you, nor shall I declare war, so long as you keep to your side of the river and above the villages where I trade. But as for the foreign devil, you must hand him over to me.”

Wu Abst raised his hands to heaven. For a time his speech was almost incomprehensible. He was stricken with a fit of anger. He shouted and pleaded until he foamed at the mouth. Wu Ling listened unmoved. When at last there was silence he spoke.

“It is clear to me what you intended, Wu Abst,” he said. “There was to be torture and more silver from the priests before you cast this prisoner to the sea fish.”

“It is a hard living that one makes nowadays,” Wu Abst, the Terror of the River, muttered.

“Nevertheless in this matter I am firm,” the other insisted. “Hand me over the foreigner and go your way. You know of me. I travel into dangerous places when I leave my ship, and I have a score of men below who could hew their way through a regiment of your cutthroats, and a gun in the bows there which would send you to the bottom with a single discharge. I am your master, Wu Abst, and I command. Bring me the foreigner and go your way.”

So, a few minutes later, a half-naked, barely conscious, young Englishman, the remains of his garments rags upon his back, blue in the face from lack of circulation, a hideous and pitiful sight, was carried up from the hold of Wu Abst’s sailing dhow and laid upon the deck of the trading schooner of Wu Ling. His cords were cut, brandy and water were poured down his throat, a sail reared as a shelter from the sun, whilst from a small hose, cool, refreshing water was sprayed over him until consciousness returned and speech began to stammer from his lips. Then, from the petrol engine, commenced once more the noise which had brought consternation to Wu Abst. The ship swung round in a circle and passed on its way down the river. Wu Abst, with a little shrug of the shoulders, relit his pipe. Perhaps, after all, there would have been no more silver!

That evening seemed to the released man like a foretaste of paradise. He lay on a couch in Wu Ling’s cabin, with the roof and sides rolled back and nothing but a cunning arrangement of mosquito netting between him and the violet twilight. Above was the moon and the brilliantly starlit night; on either side occasional groves of trees—trees growing almost down to the river’s edge, some with poisonous odours, others almost sickly sweet. Sometimes there was a light from a distant village, but more often they were enveloped in a thick, velvety darkness. And they were pointing for the great port at the mouth of the river, and safety. The released man was sipping brandy and water, and smoking. His host sat opposite him, grave and enigmatic.

“I talk English little,” Wu Ling said, “but I understand all. Speak your story, and tell how called.”

The young man raised himself slightly.

“My name is Gregory Ballaston,” he announced. “I am an Englishman, as you know, a traveller and fond of adventure. For years this story of the temple of Nilkaya has been in my brain. I heard all about it from some one who lived in Pekin for many years.”

“The story?” Wu Ling enquired politely.

“In this temple,” the young man narrated, “is a great statue of a Chinese god—Buddha, I suppose—and on either side of it are two smaller ones made from hard wood, marvellously carved, and, some say, a thousand years old. Each is supposed to be a counterpart of the greater God, and yet they demonstrate an amazingly presented allegory. They bear a likeness to one another, they bear a likeness to the God himself, but each is curiously different. In one you seem to trace the whole of the evil qualities which could ever enter into the character of man, and in the other, all the good qualities. One is hideous and the other beautiful. Yet, if you put them side by side and glance quickly from one to the other, the two seem to grow together so that the impression of the Image which is left in your mind is that of the great God above. They are called the Body and the Soul.”

“This story I have heard,” Wu Ling admitted.

“I have heard it many times, but I scarcely believed it—until I saw,” the young man continued. “I had only a few minutes in the temple and there was danger all around, yet for a moment they took my breath away. I could scarcely move. Why, the man who fashioned them might have been an oriental Phidias.”

“Proceed,” Wu Ling begged.

“Well, the point of the story is this. Generations ago there was a great rising amongst the people, an invasion from the north, and robbers seem to have overrun the whole place. They sacked even the temples, and the priests—those who had warning of their coming—stripped their robes and their temples of all the precious stones which they possessed, and hid them.”

“Hid them,” Wu Ling repeated. “Ah!”

“Some of this story, you have, of course, heard,” the young man went on, “because your trade brings you, I suppose, within a hundred miles of Nilkaya. The temples were rich in jewels—the emperors of China had sent them gifts for centuries—and the legend is that all the most valuable were concealed within these two Images—the Body and the Soul.”

“That,” Wu Ling commented, “is a strange story.”

“As I told you,” the young man continued, “I heard it from one who lived in Pekin and I believe that it is the truth. For centuries the priests have possessed a manuscript which has been handed down from one High Priest to the other, and this manuscript tells how these Images have been fashioned, so that there is within them a hollow place. There are directions for finding it, and for opening the Images, and they say that without these directions no man in the world could guess how to do it. I have spoken with one who has visited the temple, and who was not quite so much pressed for time as I was, who has seen these Images only a few feet away, and who insists upon it that there is not a sign of any possible aperture or any break in the wood.”

“A simple thing,” Wu Ling suggested blandly, “would be to break with choppers.”

The young man raised his eyebrows.

“It is strange to hear you, a Chinaman, propose such a thing,” he remarked. “I suppose any one who attempted it in this country would sooner or later be cut into small pieces, for these Images are blessed just as the larger one. But there is another reason against attempting such a thing. You are a very wonderful race, you Chinese, and you were more wonderful still, generations ago.”

“Ah!” Wu Ling murmured.

“There are plenty of people,” the young man proceeded, “who say that there is scarcely a discovery in the world which you have not anticipated and then declined to use because the central tenet of your religion and your philosophy was to leave things that are. Well, they say that you discovered gunpowder and all manner of explosives about the time these Images were fashioned. They must always, from the first, have been intended for a possible hiding place, for the old legend concerning them—I know this from the only European who has ever visited the temple—declared that if these are subjected to violence in any way, then the earthquake follows. The priests all believe this implicitly, and, although it sounds a far-fetched idea, the man who first told me the story is convinced that when the jewels were stored away inside, they were imbedded in some sort of explosive.”

“It becomes more than ever a strange story,” Wu Ling said didactically.

The young man looked searchingly for a moment at his host. Was it his fancy, he wondered, or was there a faint note of sardonic disbelief in his even tone?

“Of course,” he went on, “it must sound to you, as it does to me, although you would scarcely understand the word, like rot, but the man from whom I heard it was a great person in Pekin, a friend even of the Emperor, and not only of the Emperor, but of the Emperor’s great adviser whom some people think the greatest Chinaman who ever lived. He had privileges which had never before been extended to any European.”

Wu Ling nodded gravely.

“So,” he said, with the painstaking air of one trying to solve a problem, “you were seeking to take Images from temple, away from priests to whom belong, that you might possess jewels.”

The young man coughed. Somehow or other Wu Ling’s eyes were very penetrating.

“Well,” he admitted, “I suppose in a way it was robbery, but robbery on a legitimate scale. I don’t suppose you’ve read much European history, have you?”

“Read never,” Wu Ling replied.

“That makes it difficult to explain,” his companion regretted, pausing for a moment to breathe in, with great satisfaction, a gulp of the cool night air. “However, most of the territories in different parts of the world which England possesses and a great deal of her inherited wealth, have come because centuries ago Englishmen went across the seas to every country in the world and helped themselves to pretty well what they wanted.”

“That,” Wu Ling remarked, “sounds like Wu Abst, the pirate.”

Gregory Ballaston smiled.

“Well,” he continued, “the invasion of a foreign country for purposes of aggrandisement is robbery, I suppose, only, you see, it is robbery on a big scale. We looked at this present affair in the same way. If it is true that there are a million pounds’ worth of jewels in these images, what good can they possibly do to any one hidden there for centuries? No one could see them. No one could derive any good from them. Their very beauty is lost to the world. Robbery, if you like, Wu Ling, but not petty larceny.”

Wu Ling shook his head with an uncomprehending smile.

“Of course you won’t understand that,” the other observed. “Still, what I mean to say is, that the very danger of the exploit, the fact that you risk your life—look how near I came to losing mine!—makes the enterprise almost worth while. Nothing mean about it, anyway.”

“Ah!” Wu Ling murmured meditatively. “And now please tell, where Images?”

The young man was silent.

“That’s a long story, Wu Ling,” he sighed. “There were two of us in this. The other got away. He didn’t desert me exactly. It was according to plan, but he had to leave first, and he left damned quick.”

“And the Images?” Wu Ling persisted softly.

Gregory Ballaston leaned back. The night had become a thing of splendour, the water, no longer yellow, but glittering with the reflection of the moon. They were passing through a narrow strip of country which might have been the garden of some great nobleman’s palace. There were flowering shrubs down to the river’s edge, a faint perfume of almond blossom, in the distance a stronger scent of something like eucalyptus, and all the time a divine silence. After his terrible quarters in the pirate ship this was a dream of luxury. The young man was full of gratitude to his benefactor, and yet he hesitated. Could one trust any Chinaman, even though he has saved one’s life, with a secret like this?

“The Images no longer stand in the Temple, Wu Ling,” he said, “but just where they are now I do not know. It was my part of the affair—if you understand military language—to fight a rearguard action. I did, but there were too many of them for me. They fought like furies, those priests. I might have killed them, but I hadn’t the heart to do it. I shot one or two in the limbs, and then chucked it when I saw it was no use. Whether my friend succeeded in getting away with the Images or not, I shall not know for many days.”

They passed a tiny village. From a plastered house with a curving roof, two lanterns were hanging. A girl’s figure was dimly visible through the strings of thin bamboo, rustling musically together in the breeze. She was singing to a kind of guitar, an amazing melody, uncouth in its way, and unintelligible. Yet the young man turned over and smiled as he listened.

“Is there no other thing but money to be desired amongst you of the West,” Wu Ling asked, “that even in youth you risk so much?”

Gregory Ballaston clasped his hands behind his head. He was gazing steadily up at the stars, listening to the melody dying away in the distance. Although he addressed his companion, he had the air of one soliloquising.

“The further West you go, Wu Ling,” he said, “the more you need money to taste life. Artistically, of course, it’s all wrong, but then the world’s all wrong. It’s slipped out of shape somehow, during the last thousand years. We aren’t natural any longer. The natural person accepts pleasure, but doesn’t seek it. Directly you seek, you begin a terrible chase, and we’re all seekers over westward, Wu Ling. We have lost the art of being. We have lost the gift of repose. We have lost the capacity for quiet enjoyments. Sport, ambitions and love-making have all joined in the débâcle. No one man can live alone and away from his fellows, even if he sees into the evil of these things. All life to us has come to run on wheels which need always the oil of money.”

“And for the chance of gaining that,” Wu Ling murmured, “you young Englishmen have come so far and risked your lives.”

The young man looked round the cabin and beyond. There was a rack of rifles against the wall, boxes of ammunition which reached to the ceiling. The moonlight outside glinted now and then upon the muzzles of the Maxims.

“You yourself, Wu Ling,” he pointed out, “run risks. For what? For the same thing. For wealth. You wouldn’t carry those firearms unless you had trouble sometimes. You are past the time of life when an adventure alone appeals. You too seek wealth, and you seek it with Maxim guns and Enfield rifles to protect yourself.”

“There are evil men upon the river,” Wu Ling admitted. “There are men like Abst and others, but these are for protection. We have a proverb in this country—‘The strong man only is safe.’”

“A wise saying,” the young man acknowledged drowsily.

Wu Ling rose to his feet.

“Our guest must sleep,” he said. “Soon the night will be cold and they will draw coverings over the netting.”

“I’m awfully afraid I’m turning you out of your quarters,” Gregory Ballaston apologised.

“I have others,” was the courteous reply. “It is for sleep I leave you.”

He passed out and, walking to the stern of the boat, stood pensively watching a little streak of silver left behind. Forward the young man slept—slept as he had never hoped to do again in this world. All through the night they made lazy progress towards the great city which fringed the ocean.

CHAPTER II

Wu Ling, the trader, Chinese representative of the great house of Johnson and Company, at home and amongst his merchandise, was strangely installed. He sat in the remote corner of a huge warehouse, packed from floor to ceiling with an amazingly heterogeneous collection of all manner of articles. There were bales of cotton and calico goods from Manchester, woollens from Bradford, cases of firearms from Birmingham, and six great crates of American bicycles in the foreground. A Ford automobile stood in the middle of the floor, and, farther back, in the recesses of the room, which seemed to be of no particular shape, and which wandered into many corners, were piles of Chinese silks, shelf after shelf of china bowls and ivory statuettes. Hanging from the walls were mandarins’ robes of green and blue, embroidered with many-coloured silks, fragments of brocade, and one great pictorial representation of the grounds of an emperor’s palace, woven with miraculous skill into a background of pale blue material. From the more distant parts of the warehouse came an insidious, pungent odour, as of a perfume from which the life had gone but the faintness of which remained; a perfume which spread itself with gentle insistence into every corner of the place and seemed to envelop even its more sordid details with an air of mystery. In the great open yard, blue-smocked Chinamen were packing and unpacking in amazing silence. The only sound in the warehouse itself came from the clicking of a typewriter before which, on a plain deal bench, was seated a black-haired, sallow-faced youth in European clothes. From outside, there drifted in through the open window, in a confused medley, the strange noises of the quay, the patter of naked feet, the shrill cry of the porters and occasional screech of a siren. A white mist hung over the harbour; a hot, damp mist, concealing in patches the tangled mass of shipping....

Into this curious chamber of commerce, ushered by a Chinese boy, came Gregory Ballaston, the Englishman whom Wu Ling had rescued a short while ago. The Chinese boy murmured something and departed. Wu Ling nodded a welcome to his visitor—a grave, reserved welcome.

“No gone England yet,” he observed.

The young man sank into the chair which the other’s gesture indicated. He had evidently found his clothes, for he was very correctly dressed in the European fashion. His manner was self-possessed and his voice level. Nevertheless his pallor was almost ghastly and there were still blue lines under his eyes. He had the air of a man who has been through some form of suffering.

“You have heard the story of my friend, Wu Ling?” he asked.

The Chinaman shook his head and pointed around.

“Much affairs,” he explained. “Very busy. Smoke cigarette?”

Gregory Ballaston helped himself from the open box.

“My friend got away,” he recounted; “reached Pekin and got safely on to the train. At some God-forsaken place on the way here, the train was held up. There seems to have been confusion for an hour or so. When the soldiers arrived, my friend was found with his throat cut, and the Chinaman who had been his guide and interpreter was killed too.”

Wu Ling inclined his head gravely. The story was not an unusual one.

“Robbers in China are bad men,” he declared. “And the Images?”

The young Englishman touched his forehead. The heat was great and there were drops of moisture upon his fingers.

“One was still amongst the train baggage,” he confided. “It is now safely on board the steamer. The other was taken away by the robbers.”

Wu Ling reflected for several moments, looking downward upon the table. He seemed indisposed for speech, and presently his visitor continued.

“Of course,” he went on, “according to the superstition, one is supposed to be worthless without the other. I am going to risk that, however. Mine is under lock and key in the purser’s safe, and I sha’n’t even look at it until we’re well out of these seas.”

“The steamer sail at four o’clock to-morrow,” Wu Ling remarked, glancing at a chart.

The young man nodded.

“I have been on board already,” he said. “I came back to pay my promised call upon you and to thank you once more for all you did for me.”

Wu Ling waved his hand.

“It was nothing,” he declared. “Wu Abst, bad man. If he had killed you, there would have been trouble on the river. My trading all disturbed. You safe now. Better leave the Image behind.”

“I’m damned if I do,” was the emphatic reply. “It’s cost my pal’s life and very nearly mine. I am going to stick to it.”

Wu Ling was thoughtful. Apparently he was watching some of the porters at work in a distant corner of the warehouse.

“Which Image you have?” he enquired. “Body or Soul?”

“I haven’t undone the case,” the young man answered. “I don’t care which it is, so long as the jewels are in it.”

“You think you get the jewels?” Wu Ling asked gently.

“If they are there, I shall,” was the dogged reply. “Superstitions are all very well in a way, but a wooden image is a wooden image, after all.”

Wu Ling said nothing. There was a curious significance about his silence which seemed somehow to embarrass his visitor, who rose presently to his feet and looked around. He was inspired with a desire to change the conversation.

“What an amazing place this is!” he exclaimed. “I suppose you have some wonderful Chinese things.”

“We spend life collecting them,” Wu Ling answered. “In return you see what we give,” pointing to the bales of calico and woollen goods and the crates of bicycles. “Perhaps you care buy some curios?”

Gregory Ballaston shook his head.

“No money,” he confessed. “I shall have to get a credit from the purser as it is.”

Wu Ling rose slowly to his feet.

“Come,” he enjoined. “I show you something. Follow!”

The young man, not altogether willing, followed his guide to the extreme end of that amazing warehouse, through a recess into a further dark room also filled with a strange conglomeration of articles from which seemed to come with even more troublous insistence the same curious odour, lifeless yet disturbing. Beyond was still another door towards which Wu Ling made his way. His companion hesitated.

“I have not a great deal of time,” he said. “I want to see the Consul before the place closes.”

“You have time to see what I shall show,” was the almost ominous rejoinder.

They paused before the door which, to Ballaston’s surprise, was studded with great nails and of enormous strength. Wu Ling produced a long, thin key from his pocket, which he inserted into a very modern-looking aperture. The door swung ponderously open. Inside there was no window, nor apparently any form of ventilation, and again that odour, cloying and nauseating, swept out in stabbing little wafts, almost stupefying. The young man, confronted with a pool of darkness, would have drawn back, but there was suddenly a grip upon his arm like a ring of iron.

“Wait!” Wu Ling ordered. “There shall be light.”

And immediately there was. From some unseen switch the dark chamber was flooded with the illumination of many electric bulbs. Ballaston gasped as he looked around. It was almost as though he had found his way into some Aladdin’s cave. On shelves of red, highly polished wood were ranged lumps of jade and quartz, bowls of ancient china of which even his inexperience could gauge the pricelessness, silk coats, faded but marvellously embroidered, barbaric stones in open trays, a great circlet of Malay pearls, and, on a shelf alone, staring at him, bland and unmistakable, the other of the twin Images which he and his friend had dragged down from their pedestals in the Temple. Ballaston stared at it speechless. The face itself had a touch of sphinxlike mysticism, the remoteness of a god, the benevolence of a kindly spirit. The work in it seemed so slight; the result so prodigious. Ballaston found words at last.

“The other Image!” he cried. “Where did you get it?”

“In this city,” Wu Ling explained, “nothing of this sort is sold unless it come first to us. Three nights since there appeared a messenger. I sought the man from whom he came at his hiding place in the city. With him I traded for the Image.”

“You purchased it!” the young man gasped.

“Whom else?” was the composed reply. “In this country, from the dark forests of Northern Mongolia, the temples of Pekin, or the mines on the Siberian borders, all that there is for which men seek gold comes here. We pay. They sell.”

“But you can’t keep it,” Ballaston exclaimed, “not in this country. The priests will hear. You will be forced to return it. If it belongs to any one——”

He stopped short. Wu Ling read his thoughts and smiled.

“The priests of the temple, which you and your accomplice ravaged,” he announced, “live no longer. They were murdered by the people many days ago, for their sin in permitting you to enter the temple. Furthermore, the Images are now defiled. The hand of the foreigner has touched them. They can never again take their place by the side of the Great Buddha. You bought with blood, and I with gold.”

There was the sound of shuffling footsteps close at hand. An elderly man, dressed in shabby European clothes, stood behind them. He looked over their shoulders at the Image, and there was for a moment almost a glow in his worn and lined face.

“This,” Wu Ling confided, “is a man of your race. He is of the firm—a partner—not because of business, but because he is a great scholar. He reads strange tongues, manuscripts from the monasteries of Thibet, the archives of ancient China. He was once a professor at one of your universities—Professor Endacott. He is now of the firm of Johnson and Company.”

The newcomer acknowledged indifferently the young man’s greeting.

“You are looking at a very wonderful piece of carving,” he said. “I once spent a year in Pekin to see that and its companion Image.”

“Young man has other,” Wu Ling explained blandly. “He and friend stole both from temple. This one come here—you know how. The other he has on ship, taking with him to England.”

Endacott’s whole frame seemed to stiffen. He frowned heavily. His tone carried a far-off note of sarcasm, which might have belonged to the days of his professorship.

“The young man has chosen as he would,” he remarked. “He possesses the Body, and here, still in the land which gave it immortality, remains the Soul. Now they are separated. What will you do with your Image, young man, if you reach your country safely?”

“There is a legend of hidden jewels,” was the eager reply. “You perhaps know of it.”

“I know the legend well,” the other admitted. “There is treasure in one, perhaps in both. Which do you think might hold the jewels—the Body or the Soul?”

“I am hoping that there are some in mine, anyhow,” Ballaston answered.

“That may be,” was the tranquil comment. “On the other hand, we may find the whole story to be an allegory. You may discover nothing but emptiness and disappointment in the Body. Here, at least, in the Soul, you find reflected by the divine skill of the craftsman, the jewels of pure living and spiritual thought. You were of Oxford, young man?”

“Magdalen.”

“You have the air. Nearly all of your age and small vision scoff in your hearts at any religion which may seek to express the qualities for which that Image stands. It is your ill-fortune that you have the Body. When you are home you will unpack your case, you will place the Image amongst your treasures, and I can tell you, even though it is thirty years since I saw it, what you will see. You will see a brooding face and eyes cast down to the dunghills. You will see thick lips and coarse features. You will see expressed as glaringly as here you see the triumph of the spirit, the debasement of the body. You will watch your Image and you will sink. You will never look at it, you or others, without conceiving an unworthy thought, just as you could never look upon this one without feeling that some one has stretched down his hand, that somewhere there is a murmur of sweet voices speaking to you from above the clouds.”

“But the jewels!” the young man persisted.

“Bah!” Endacott muttered, as he turned on his heel.

Ballaston, with wondering eyes, watched the erstwhile professor disappear.

“Looney!” he murmured, under his breath.

“I desire pardon,” Wu Ling interpolated politely.

“A madman!”

Wu Ling smiled.

“He is a personage of great learning,” he declared. “He is a friend of Chinese scholars who have never spoken to any other foreigner. He has great knowledge.”

“What are you going to do with that?” Ballaston asked, motioning towards the Image.

Wu Ling sighed. He stood for a moment in silent thought, his eyes fixed upon his treasure. Then gently and almost with reverence he turned away, beckoned his companion to precede him, passed out and locked the door.

“Who can tell?” he ruminated. “We have a great warehouse here filled with strange goods, as you see, another and larger in Alexandria, an agent in New York. All the things come and go. We do not hurry. We have jade there which we have not even spoken of for twenty years, silk robes from the chests of him who was emperor, ivory carvings from his Summer Palace, denied even to the great merchants. Perhaps we sell. Perhaps not.”

“You must be rolling in money,” the young man sighed.

“I desire pardon,” Wu Ling rejoined, mystified.

“You must be wealthy—very rich.”

Wu Ling smiled tolerantly. He turned back, swung open once more the door, and turned on the light. He pointed to the Image, serene and benevolent.

“What counts money?” he murmured.

They were about halfway through the outer warehouse on their way to the lighter room beyond, when a thing happened so amazing that Ballaston stopped short and gripped his companion by the shoulder. Returning towards them was Endacott, and by his side a girl. She was dressed simply enough in the white clothes and shady straw hat which the climate demanded, but there were other things which made her appearance in such a place curiously incongruous. She broke off in her conversation and looked at Gregory Ballaston in frank astonishment. It was certainly an unusual meeting place for two young people of the modern world.

“I am taking my niece to see our new treasure,” Mr. Endacott observed, a little stiffly. “Will you lend me the key, Wu Ling, or will you take us back yourself?”

“I will return,” Wu Ling replied gravely. “The young gentleman will excuse.”

“If I too might be permitted one more glimpse,” Ballaston begged.

The girl smiled at him and glanced at her companion. Mr. Endacott recalled the conventions of his past.

“I should like, my dear,” he said, “to present our young visitor to you, but I am not sure that I remember his name, or that I have even heard it.”

“Ballaston,” the young man interposed, with some eagerness, “Gregory Ballaston.”

“This, then, is my niece, Miss Claire Endacott,” the ex-professor proceeded. “She will be your fellow traveller, I imagine, if you leave on to-morrow’s steamer.”

The two young people shook hands, and they all turned back into the recesses of the warehouse.

“You are coming to England?” Ballaston asked.

She nodded.

“It is so nice to meet some one who is going to be on the ship,” she said. “I came from New York here last month, knowing scarcely a soul.”

After that they remained without speech for a few moments. Somehow or other their surroundings and their mission seemed to demand silence. Wu Ling gravely opened the door and turned up the light. The girl drew a little breath of joy as she gazed at the Image.

“But that is wonderful!” she exclaimed.

“It is the work of a great master,” her uncle explained gravely. “The hand which fashioned that Image was the hand of a man who knew the secrets of the ages, who came as near the knowledge of what eternity means as any man may. There is much to think about—little to speak of.”

Their silence was the silence of entrancement; Ballaston’s attention alone curiously distracted. It was a strange environment for her modern and vivid beauty, this chamber with its clinging odours, its ancient treasures of silk and ivory, the time-defying Image gazing serenely past them. Wu Ling and Endacott himself seemed entirely in the setting; the girl, with her masses of yellow hair and almost eagerly joyous expression, a butterfly wandered by chance into a vault. Yet he had another impression of her before they left. He caught a glimpse of her parted lips, the strained light in her clear, grey eyes, as though in a sense her spiritual self were reaching out towards the allegory of the Image. Then her uncle gave the signal. Wu Ling gravely switched off the light and they trooped back into the warehouse.

“Somehow,” the girl reflected—“I suppose it is because I have just come from the art classes and the museums of New York—I feel as though that were the first real thing I have ever seen in my life.”

CHAPTER III

“Well,” Claire exclaimed, laughing at Gregory Ballaston across the table, “how have you enjoyed your dinner?”

“Immensely,” he answered, with enthusiasm.

“Have you ever dined more strangely?”

“I don’t think I have,” he confessed. “It was most frightfully kind of your uncle to ask me. I was never so surprised in my life.”

“Nor I,” she admitted candidly. “To tell you the truth, when we all came together in the warehouse this afternoon, it seemed to me from his manner that you were not particularly good friends, and I was afraid he was going to hurry me off without a word. Then your intense curiosity to have another look at that Image——”

“Entirely assumed,” he interrupted. “I wanted a chance to be introduced to you.”

“Of course that wasn’t in the least obvious,” she laughed. “Anyhow, even then I never dreamed of this. It was just when you were going that he asked your name again and seemed so interested. Do you realise that he must know something about you or your family?”

“I wondered,” Gregory admitted.

She glanced at the door through which her uncle had disappeared in search of cigarettes.

“Anyhow,” she continued, “it is delightful to think that you are going to be a fellow passenger on the Kalatat. Don’t you sympathise with me for being rather glad to get away from here?”

He looked around at the almost empty room, at the comfortless linoleum upon the floor, the Chinese servants, moving like ghosts about the table, at the cane-bottomed chairs, the few articles of cheap furniture. It was an amazing environment.

“Your uncle,” he remarked, a little hesitatingly, “apart from his household surroundings, seems to be a man of great taste.”

“He has wonderful knowledge,” she said, “and a wonderful sense of beauty, but he lives absolutely within himself. I am perfectly certain he doesn’t know that he has eaten curried chicken and rice every night for a week. Why, if I hadn’t thought of it, we’d have had nothing but water for dinner.”

“You’re a good Samaritan,” he murmured.

“Come and sit outside,” she invited. “The verandah is the only possible place here. We’re a great deal too near the rest of the houses, but the city looks almost beautiful now the lights are out, and the harbour is wonderful. The chairs, as you will discover, are horrible, and there isn’t a cushion in the place.”

“Tell me about yourself,” he begged, when they were established, “and why you came here.”

“You see,” she confided, “Mr. Endacott’s brother, my father, was a professor at Harvard. He died when I was eleven years old and my mother died a year afterwards. I was sent to boarding school in Boston and New York. When I was nineteen I was to be sent either to an aunt in England or to my uncle here. My aunt in England lives at a place which reminds me of your name—Market Ballaston, it is called.”

He looked at her in astonishment.

“Why, that is where I live!” he exclaimed. “Tell me your aunt’s name?”

“De Fourgenet,” she replied. “She married a Frenchman, the Comte de Fourgenet.”

“Good God! Madame!”

“Madame?”

“That is what we call your aunt in the neighbourhood,” he explained. “She is my father’s greatest friend. You know, of course, that she is an invalid.”

“I have heard so,” the girl admitted. “A motor accident, wasn’t it?... Uncle,” she went on, as he stepped through the window, “do you realise that Mr. Ballaston knows Aunt Angèle?”

“I imagined that he might,” Mr. Endacott acknowledged, a little drily. “It was not until I heard your name for the second time,” he continued, turning to the younger man, “that I realised who you must be.”

“It is a very small world,” Gregory Ballaston remarked tritely, as he accepted one of the cigars which Mr. Endacott was offering.

“Geographically it has contracted for me during the last twenty-five years into a radius of a few miles round the city here,” Mr. Endacott confided. “To come back into the world again at my time of life will seem strange.”

“But you won’t really mind it,” the girl assured him. “You will find a country house not too far from Aunt Angèle, you will have all your manuscripts, your books, your treasures round you. It is true, isn’t it, that you sit in your little office every day without stirring? Why, you can do the same thing in England as here. And then, there must be some of your old Oxford friends who would like to see you.”

Mr. Endacott smiled thinly.

“Thirty years,” he reminded her, “is a long way to look back. To pick up the threads, the friendships dropped more than a quarter of a century ago, is not easy. At the same time,” he went on, “it is right that I should return to England. It marches well with affairs here.”

“You must have found the life out in these parts very interesting, sir,” Gregory Ballaston remarked. “I don’t know whether it would get monotonous to you, but to any one coming upon it suddenly it is an amazing corner of the world. Off the ship, I have only seen three Europeans since I have been here.”

“It is for that reason,” Mr. Endacott pointed out, “an unsuitable place for my niece. My establishment here, too, is impossible. No European woman could keep house under the prevailing conditions. That is why I am hurrying my niece off, although I myself shall follow before long.”

“My father will be interested to see you again,” Gregory ventured.

“Your father, if his tastes had lain that way,” Mr. Endacott ruminated, “might have been a brilliant scholar. He preferred sport and life. We met, not so many years ago, in Pekin. He was dabbling in diplomacy then. He certainly had the gifts for it. He was, in fact, the most popular Englishman who ever appeared at the Court there. He was received and granted privileges where I could never follow him. He was, I suppose, your instigator in this buccaneering expedition of yours.”

The young man laughed a little uneasily. There had been a vein of contempt in the other’s tone.

“I suppose it must have seemed a horrible piece of vandalism to you, sir,” he remarked. “However, there it is. The adventure appealed to me and we wanted the money badly enough.”

His host looked out across the harbour at the swaying lanterns of the small boats and beyond to the great lighthouse.

“Money!” he repeated. “The password of the West. Somehow I never thought I should return to it.”

“Money counts for something out here, too,” Gregory protested. “Look at your friend and partner, Wu Ling, trading up the river with machine guns and rifles to protect himself. For what? To make money. He’s doing it for Johnson and Company. You’re one of the firm, Mr. Endacott.”

The latter nodded.

“Touché,” he admitted. “But let me point out to you, young gentleman, that the things Wu Ling brings back to our warehouses are things of beauty.”

“Which he pays for with rubbish,” Gregory rejoined. “Half of your warehouse is an abomination; the other half, I admit, a treasure house.”

Mr. Endacott gently inclined his head.

“I cannot defend myself,” he acknowledged. “I am a partner in the firm because they insisted. All my savings for twenty years, which I advanced to them, were, they tell me, the foundation from which the business has been built up. But, believe me, I have never seen inside a ledger. Once every twelve months, a strange little man brings me a slip of paper. I look at it, and the business for the year is finished.”

“It is perhaps as well,” Gregory observed, “that your associates are probably honest. Wu Ling, for instance.”

“Wu Ling is an amazing person,” Mr. Endacott pronounced.

“Is he altogether Chinese?” Gregory enquired. “There have been times when he has puzzled me.”

“No one but Wu Ling knows who Wu Ling is or where he comes from,” was the enigmatic reply. “He is a power unto himself.”

“He saved my life,” Gregory remarked, “but I don’t think that he approves of me.”

“Tell me, Mr. Ballaston,” the girl asked, “have you looked at your Image yet, the one you have on the ship?”

“Not yet.”

Mr. Endacott turned his head. He was seated on the most uncomfortable of the three uncomfortable cane chairs; a stiff, unbending figure. His eyes were turned speculatively upon his visitor.

“If there be any truth in the legend,” he advised, “you will do well to leave it in its case.”

Gregory was doubtful.

“I rather wanted to examine it,” he admitted. “The part of the legend which interests me most is the part which has to do with the jewels.”

“Naturally,” Mr. Endacott agreed, with unconcealed sarcasm. “Yet, in the story of the fashioning of the Images, there has been nothing more vehement than the warning issued by the High Priest in whose day it was done. Here, he pointed out, by the great art of the sculptor, the Body and Soul were torn apart. All that was good and virtuous and that made towards the beautiful in life was carven into the Image which our friend Wu Ling seems to have purchased from the robber. All that was debased and evil and which prompted towards sin was graven into the features of the one which you possess. Together, side by side, they were supposed to make up the sum of humanity—the good and the evil balancing. Side by side, they might be looked at without evil effect; they might inspire thought—reflection of the highest order. There were indications there of what to avoid, what passions to fight against; indications there, too, of what a man’s aim should be, how to uplift oneself above sin and how to climb always in one’s thoughts towards the spiritual.”

They both listened, fascinated, to Mr. Endacott’s thin, reedy voice; his still words, spoken without emphasis or enthusiasm, as they might have been spoken to a class of student philosophers. It was the girl who first ventured upon a question.

“But, Uncle,” she demanded, “you don’t seriously believe that to live with either of these statues without the other could really affect any one’s character?”

“So runs the legend,” was the quiet, almost solemn reply. “So it is written in one of the manuscripts recording their history. The superstition, if it be a superstition, has at least a logical basis. An environment of beauty and spirituality tends towards holiness; an environment of bestiality must, on the other hand, in time debase. Before these Images were fashioned, the philosophers of past ages used their symbolism for a text, ‘If thou wouldst be holy, live with holy and spiritual things. If thou wouldst avoid sin, turn thy back upon the presentment of evil’.”

“But you don’t really suppose, sir,” Gregory ventured, “although, of course, the idea is beautiful, that there is anything supernatural in the influence which those Images might bring to bear upon any one’s life?”

“My dear young man,” Mr. Endacott expounded, “I do not even know what empires of thought the word supernatural covers. I have pointed out the logical basis for such a teaching. That is all. We are in a world here where one does not lightly reject superstitions. In the West there exists a great world reared to the gods of materialism, unwarmed with the flame of spirituality; the world of gold and stone and huge banking accounts, and prosperous cities, and hurrying, hastening lives. The Western brain holds no corner for superstitions, but casts them scornfully away. Live here for twenty years and you find the brain more elastic, its cells more receptive, even its philosophy less inevitably based upon the fundamental but dry-as-dust mathematical principles. Keep your Image in its packing case, Mr. Gregory Ballaston. It will be time enough when you get home to search for the jewels.”

The ’rickshaw which Gregory had ordered came lumbering up the hill. He rose with reluctance. Even in her stiff, uncomfortable chair, there was something very attractive about Claire, as she lay with her hands clasped behind her head, the light of a lantern upon her suddenly thoughtful face. He reflected, however, with a little thrill of pleasure, that for six weeks she would be more or less his companion.

“If we don’t meet again before I sail, sir,” he begged, turning towards his host, “let me thank you for your hospitality. It will be a great pleasure to see you and your niece in Norfolk.”

“This must be our farewell for the present, at any rate,” Mr. Endacott said, as he shook hands. “My niece is going on board early to-morrow morning, as I myself have a meeting to attend in the afternoon. My respects to your father. We shall meet without a doubt in England.”

“And we,” Gregory added, in a lower tone, as he bent over his young hostess’ fingers, “shall meet before then.”

She looked up at him, smiling. They were young and he was very good-looking. Nevertheless she was American-trained, and it was in a spirit of frank comradeship that she replied.

“I know that we shall have a lovely time on the voyage. Until to-morrow, then!”

Gregory Ballaston was carried down the rough road, past the tangle of high modern buildings—rabbit warrens of humanity—past the plastered and wooden structures of older days, with their curved roofs and narrow windows, through the confused streets which at every step became more thronged, towards the harbour, taking very little note of his progress, his thoughts engrossed, his mind fixed upon one problem. Already the memory of that strange meal, amidst surroundings so sordid that even the girl’s presence had been unable to modify them, was becoming overshadowed. His late host’s cold words of advice seemed to have made not the slightest impression upon him. He thought of the small packing case in the purser’s office with almost feverish impatience, joyful of the permission to sleep on board for the night, anxious only for the moment when he should reach the quay. Somehow or other Endacott’s serious, stilted talk had immensely confirmed his belief in the existence of the jewels, and as for the rest—the warning he had received—this, in all probability, simply proceeded from the vapourings of a mind steeped in Orientalism, the mind of a scholar, removed for half a lifetime from the whole world of common sense and possibilities. Morally, he was as other young men. He would have scorned to cheat or lie; he had an inherited sense of honour and a sportsman’s probity. A mean action would have revolted him—he was capable of a great one. He was a little selfish, a little narrow in his pride of name and race, as courageous as any man might be, with the undoubted conceit of his class. Such as he was, he had no fear of change. He had never indulged in self-analysis. He accepted himself for what he was, which, on the whole, was something a little better than the average. He had no presentiment of even temporary ill-fortune, as he stepped into the ship’s boat waiting by the quay, and looked eagerly across the harbour to where the great steamer lay anchored with her blazing line of lights.

CHAPTER IV

At very nearly the hour of his former visit, Gregory Ballaston entered the warehouse of Messrs. Johnson and Company, on the following morning. Wu Ling, seated at his table, waved away the stolid-looking native foreman to whom he was giving orders, and glanced enquiringly at his visitor.

“Ship not gone?” he asked.

“We don’t sail until the afternoon,” Gregory reminded him. “Haven’t got all our fresh stores shipped, or something. I came back to have a talk. Do you mind?”

Wu Ling’s gesture was noncommittal. The young man continued.

“Last night,” he confided, sinking into a chair, “I unpacked my Image. I took it out and looked at it, with my porthole closed and my door locked, although I imagine that now that the priests are dead there is no fear of my being followed.—Wu Ling, I wish to God that you were an Englishman!”

“Why for?”

“I could talk to you more easily.”

There was a brief silence. Wu Ling, stolid, powerful, imperturbable, sat with his keen enquiring eyes fixed upon his visitor. Gregory showed signs of some slight relapse from his well-being of the day before. His natural, bronzed complexion which had almost reasserted itself, seemed to have given place again to the pallor which denoted a sleepless night. There were lines under his eyes, a restlessness in his manner.

“You found Image bad company?” Wu Ling enquired.

“I hate the beastly thing already,” Gregory acknowledged.

Wu Ling clapped his hands softly together. The screen of bamboos was pushed to one side and Mr. Endacott appeared. He had discarded his European clothes in favour of the dress of a native Chinese gentleman, and he carried a white umbrella.

“Our young friend again,” he remarked, with a brief salutation.

Wu Ling pointed to a chair.

“He wish talk to you.”

Mr. Endacott glanced at his watch before he sat down.

“I am about to visit the head of the Chinese University here,” he announced. “A man of rare intelligence and great learning! Why should I waste my time? Have you found the jewels in your Image, Mr. Ballaston?”

“Not a sign of them up to the present, sir,” Gregory admitted. “I am not very happy about them, either. As you know, the whole thing was a pretty dangerous enterprise, and I’ve only half succeeded. The Image is heavy enough, but I can’t see any possible aperture anywhere.”

“The recovery of the jewels,” Mr. Endacott remarked, leaning a little forward, with his hands clasped upon the knob of his umbrella, “was scarcely likely to be a simple matter.”

“I realise that,” Gregory confessed. “Already I am beginning to feel a sort of hatred of the thing. For the first time last night,” he went on, “I felt inclined to take seriously what Wu Ling here and you have said of these Images; that neither of them has any real existence separately. Side by side they have looked down upon that procession of worshippers through all these years. Side by side they must be, you have told me, according to the superstition, if the jewels are to be found.”

Mr. Endacott inclined his head.

“Our young friend is showing signs of intelligence,” he admitted. “He is beginning to travel along the lines of the allegory.”

“If this is true,” Gregory asked bluntly, “what is the use of my taking one to England and leaving the other here in this warehouse?”

“The only reason for such a course seems to be,” his companion murmured, “that one does not belong to you. Perhaps you can trade with the firm. I myself am not a trader. Wu Ling is. Wu Ling, I am sure, is at your disposal.”

“How can I trade?” Gregory demanded. “What do you suppose brought me out here on an enterprise like this? Love of adventure a good deal, I grant you, but, behind it all, sheer and absolute need of money. We are poor in England to-day, Mr. Endacott, we people with estates. I haven’t the money to buy your Image. After my experience of last night I would rather consider an offer from you for mine.”

Wu Ling smiled. He talked for a moment in Chinese to his companion. The latter showed signs of agreement.

“Wu Ling’s attitude is mine,” Mr. Endacott pronounced. “If by any chance you had acquired the statue we possess and we had yours, the firm of Johnson and Company would trade. Not now. We are content.”

“Then you don’t believe in your own allegory?” Gregory queried.

Wu Ling was looking into the dark recesses of the warehouse. There was nothing to indicate that he had heard or understood, but it was he who replied.

“Yes, I believe in it,” he admitted. “We both believe in it, but we have many jewels and I think that these will be hard to find.”

“If you had both the Images,” Gregory suggested, “you could break them up.”

Mr. Endacott raised his hand to his forehead as though in pain. Wu Ling’s expression appeared unchanged. Yet somehow or other he gave one the impression of having listened with distaste to words of blasphemy.

“You speak like a huckster from the new cities,” Mr. Endacott said wearily. “They are great works of art, these Images, sanctified by the years, alive by virtue of their greatness. To raise a hand against them would be barbarous. Besides, Wu Ling and I believe the legend. We believe that those will die who treat the Images roughly.”

Gregory remained discontented. He took a cigarette from the large wooden box which Wu Ling pushed towards him. The box was of some sort of sandalwood, but it, too, seemed to give out the peculiar odour of the place.

“Last night,” he confided, “when I sat alone with my Image, it came back to me how my father himself had insisted upon the necessity for securing both Images. He too must have been impressed by the legend. He’ll think my errand a failure if I return with one.”

“Without money how buy?” Wu Ling asked. “Johnson and Company, we are traders. For gold we sell anything on earth. Without gold, how can buy?”

“It is a problem,” Gregory admitted gloomily.

“You had, perhaps, a proposition?” Mr. Endacott suggested.

“Something of the sort. That is why I came to see you this morning. I wondered whether you would let me take your Image to England with mine, and, whilst they were together, have them examined in the British Museum, and see if any possible trace of opening or access to the interior of them is to be found? Of course, I shall do that with mine when I get there, anyhow, but you see I am beginning to fall in line with your superstition. I feel that both Images ought to be treated at the same time.”

“And if the jewels should be discovered?” Mr. Endacott enquired.

“We would divide equally,” was Gregory’s prompt proposal.

Wu Ling, a man not given to gestures, beat the air in front of him gently with the fingers of his hands.

“We would not agree,” he said. “I would not agree. Mr. Endacott would not agree. Our partner, who is not here, would not agree.”

Gregory frowned. He followed Wu Ling’s steadfast gaze, followed it into the further recesses of the second warehouse. He began to think of the Image he had lost, the Image in the steel chamber. A sense of its beauty suddenly possessed him. He coveted it passionately.

“In a way,” he ventured, “the Image which you have locked up there, the Image which you call the Soul, rather belongs to me, don’t you think? I have, at least, a claim upon it. I fought to secure it. My friend lost his life in defending it.”

Wu Ling’s smile was almost a genuine effort at mirth. Mr. Endacott chuckled sardonically.

“If I were you, young man,” he advised, “I don’t think that I would pursue that line of argument.”

“It was stolen property,” Gregory persisted doggedly.

“And the stolen property was stolen,” Mr. Endacott reminded him.

There was a silence. An impasse seemed to have been reached. It seemed indeed as though there were nothing more to be done, no further argument he could use. Yet Gregory Ballaston sat as though rooted to the spot. To leave the place with his desire unattained seemed almost a physical impossibility. Then, unexpectedly, Wu Ling spoke at some length.

“What you come here to say,” he began, “has reason. You come here with an idea which is right. Body and Soul you cannot part. Your Image without that one which belongs to Johnson and Company is a thing of evil. The Image we have locked in our treasure chamber is a thing of great beauty, and no more. You who desire the jewels cannot buy. We, to whom the jewels mean little, will not sell. Listen to me, young gentleman. I propose something.”

“Go on,” Gregory begged eagerly.

“You,” Wu Ling continued, “have a quality of the Chinese in you, or you would not have risked life for this adventure. You are gambler. Me too. I offer this. I will gamble with you for the two Images.”

Gregory Ballaston held his cigarette away from his mouth and stared at the speaker. Temporarily, at any rate, his nonchalance had left him.

“Are you in earnest?” he demanded.

Wu Ling nodded gravely. Gregory glanced towards the professor. The latter also inclined his head gently.

“If Wu Ling says so,” he murmured.

“Gamble! But how? What games do we both know?”

“There is a Chinese game,” Wu Ling began——

“Not having any,” Gregory interrupted drily. “I have heard of these Chinese games. What about poker?”

“Not understand,” Wu Ling regretted.

Gregory sat for a moment or two deep in disturbed thought. More than anything he had ever coveted in the world he coveted that other Image.

“Look here,” he decided at last, “I accept. But we don’t need to play a game at all. Send for a pack of cards, have them well shuffled and deal a card to each of us. The highest wins.”

Wu Ling nodded approvingly.

“It is simple,” he assented. “We do that. If you win, my porters shall pack Image and you can take it to ship. If you lose you bring yours here.”

Gregory moistened his lips which were already a little dry.

“It is agreed,” he said.

Wu Ling opened one of the lower drawers of his desk. He searched for a few moments and then produced an ordinary pack of playing cards. He laid them upon the table.

“In here?” Gregory demanded, glancing at the silent forms, always moving around them.

“Why not?” Wu Ling replied. “What we do is nothing to them. They see nothing. They work.”

Mr. Endacott chuckled as he took the cards in his hands and shuffled them.

“You will lose, young man,” he warned Gregory. “I’ve seen a great many games of cards in this city, but I have never yet seen a European who could hold his own against a Chinese.”

“This isn’t a game,” Gregory pointed out. “It’s just a show-down. My chance must be as good as his. We’ll make it the best of three, though.”

“How?” Wu Ling queried politely.

“A card each three times,” his partner explained, “and the one who wins twice out of three times gets the Images. It appears to me that I too am rather largely interested in this. Any choice as to who turns the first card up?”

Gregory shook his head, cut the cards which were handed to him, and passed them to Wu Ling. The latter hesitated only for the fraction of a second. Then he threw one card to his opponent and one to himself. Gregory’s card was a knave; his own a queen.

“One up to the firm,” Mr. Endacott observed.

Gregory took the cards. His hands were beginning to shake. He gave his opponent a four. He himself threw down a ten.

“One each,” he exclaimed, trying his best to keep his tone level.

He shuffled and passed the cards across once more. Wu Ling sat for a moment toying with them, almost as though in silent prayer. Then he threw a card to Gregory.

“A king!” the latter cried exultantly.

“And the firm has an ace,” Mr. Endacott pointed out, as Wu Ling’s card fell upon the table.

Gregory sat staring at it, motionless and rigid, the light of triumph fading from his face. There had been gamblers in his family, though, and heredity asserted itself. He rose calmly to his feet.

“I’ll go down and pack the Image,” he said.

Wu Ling clapped his hands. His expression had never varied. He showed no signs, even of content.

“There will be porters who attend you,” he announced. “They will follow your ’rickshaw and bring back the Image.”

Gregory held out his hand, even then scarcely realising the position. All this risk and privation for nothing, his friend’s life for nothing, all gone on the turn of a card. For a moment the place with its strange atmosphere seemed unreal, his adventure a nightmare. Then he heard Wu Ling giving orders to the foreman and saw him point to the harbour. He choked down his feelings.

“I shall not sympathise with you,” Mr. Endacott said, as he shook hands. “Your enterprise has never commended itself to me, and your possession of the Body without the Soul was never a thing to be envied.”

Gregory could not trust himself to reply. He held out his hand to Wu Ling, who took it gravely.

“At least, Wu Ling,” he said, “if you have spoilt my trip out here, you saved my life. I don’t think it’s worth much, but I thank you. Send the porters along.”

He turned and left the place; a tall, slim figure, graceful and trim in his well-fitting clothes, the strangest contrast to the blue-smocked coolies and one or two native traders through whom he had almost to push his way. He walked out into the broiling sun and disappeared.

Mr. Endacott glanced at Wu Ling, and Wu Ling, with the cards in his hand, smiled back at him.

The morning wore on, the afternoon came and passed. Mr. Endacott, who had spent a pleasant few hours with his Chinese friend, returned to find repose reigning throughout the rambling premises of Messrs. Johnson and Company. A fierce sun had suddenly blazed once more through the drifting masses of mist—gone now, as breath from a looking-glass. The water in the harbour was indigo blue, the junks and dhows and native fishing craft were all becalmed, like painted ships upon a still ocean. The sirens blew no more. All who could were at rest. The porters in the warehouse had crept into the dark shady corners and lay there motionless. Half a dozen clerks, young men of superior station who wore European clothes and babbled a little English, had retired to the shelter of an adjoining tea house. Only Wu Ling sat still in his place, waiting. Mr. Endacott took in the situation at a glance.

“They have not returned, our porters?” he enquired.

“Not yet.”

“And the ship sails?”

“It is past due.”

Endacott smiled.

“The truth is as old as life,” he said. “The things which are written here are written behind the veil. That young man came from what, from a Western point of view, we used to think good stock. His father was under me at Oxford. His grandfather and generations before him were men of good repute. Still, that counts for nothing, and we know why. He has the Body. Why wait, Wu Ling?”

“You think that his word it is broken,” the latter asked, “broken to us who scorned even to watch him to the ship?”

Mr. Endacott shook his head.

“He has the Body,” he repeated.

There was a pattering of feet outside; feet that passed swiftly across the pavement of blistered heat. A little troop of porters entered and sought shelter. The foreman advanced and stood silent before Wu Ling’s desk.

“Speak,” Wu Ling directed.

“We waited on the dock,” the man recounted. “We waited in the heat. Hours went by. Then, as the ship moved away, the Englishman leaned over the rail. He called out to us, ‘There is nothing to send back.’ Then he disappeared.”

“So you returned,” Wu Ling murmured.

“So we returned,” the man assented.

Wu Ling rose to his feet and stood at the window. There was a clamour of sirens blowing through the sultry, stagnant air, a waving of handkerchiefs from a distant dock. A great steamer was drifting out, her bows set westward. Wu Ling watched her gathering speed through the lazy sea, leaving behind her a wake like a rope of snow in the deep blue of the waters which she parted. The smoke belched from her funnels. Somewhere on board her was Gregory Ballaston and his booty. Endacott laid his hand upon the arm of Wu Ling whom he loved.

“The young man has done ill,” he said, “but the Soul is ours.”

CHAPTER V

“Steward,” Gregory asked him, standing up in the centre of his stateroom, his hands behind his back, “do I look drunk?”

The steward was used to eccentric passengers and answered as though the question were an entirely reasonable one.

“For a young gentleman as hasn’t moved out of his stateroom for two days, and ’as had a good deal more to drink than to eat,” he pronounced, “you look wonderful, sir.”

“Fetch me a whisky and soda, then.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The man withdrew, closing the door behind him. Gregory drew back the curtain of his upper bunk and again, with tireless eyes, he stared at the treasure which had cost him his friend’s life, and, as it seemed to him sometimes now, especially in those horrible watches of the night, his own honour. Always there was the same fascination. Every time he looked, he fancied that he discovered some fresh horror in that grim yet superbly bestial face.

“You are ugly,” he said softly, as he dropped the curtain. “You are damnably ugly! I wish you were at the bottom of the sea, and yet I can’t part with you.”

The steward brought him the whisky and soda. He paused for a moment before drinking it.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Perkins, sir.”

“Well then, Perkins,” he directed, “please see the second steward for me. Try to get me a small table in the saloon, alone in a corner, and I will go in to dinner to-night.”

“Very good, sir,” the man replied, as he made his exit. “There will be plenty of room to sit just where you please until we get to Bombay.”

Once more Gregory pushed aside the curtain, raised his glass and drained its contents, his eyes fixed all the time upon the Image. He set down the empty tumbler.

“That’s what you like; to see me drink, isn’t it?” he murmured softly. “You’d like the whole world to be as foul as the things some devil has carved into your face. Yet I suppose I would forgive you if only you would give up your secret.”

For the hundredth time he passed his fingers over the carved head; fingers which were long and slim and sensitive of touch. Nowhere, however, could they discover the slightest sign of any join or any possible aperture, however cunningly concealed. The wood had become as smooth and hard as marble, black as jet, shining as though with generations of polish. Gregory drew the curtain and turned away, baffled once more. With his back turned to the Image he made a long and deliberate toilet. Afterwards he lit a cigarette and for the first time since he had boarded the steamer, ventured on deck to find only a few people promenading, a dozen or so drinking cocktails in the smoking room. There was no sign of the person he longed yet dreaded to see. The heat was great but it was not unusually oppressive. In the west, a blood-red sun, pencils of black cloud surrounding it, seemed almost to be falling into the ocean. Gregory loitered about until long after the bugle had sounded, and then, summoning up all his courage, descended to take his place in the saloon. The second steward hurried forward to meet him and showed him his table. He breathed a sigh of relief as he realised its isolation.

“I have given you a table to yourself, sir, as Perkins seemed to think you wanted it,” he announced, “but if you would care for a seat at the captain’s table—that was where we had intended to put you—it could be arranged now, if you preferred it.”

“Not on any account,” Gregory begged earnestly. “I’ve been laid up. Must be quiet. This exactly suits me.”

He continued a conversation for some minutes, accepted the wine list, studied the menu, gave his orders, and finally ventured to look around. She was there, seated on the right hand of the captain, her inevitable place under the circumstances. Their eyes met. Without hesitation she smiled a greeting. Gregory half rose in his place and bowed. When he sat down he realised that both his hands were clenched, the white of the knuckles showing through the skin. His breath was coming a little quickly. It was an absurd thing but he had a feeling that he had passed through one of the crises of his life. There had been no message then from her uncle—no wireless. She knew nothing.

Afterwards he came across her on deck, talking to an elderly woman whom he realised must be the Mrs. Hichens of whom she had spoken as a possible chaperone. She turned round at once and welcomed him smilingly. There was a shade of reproach in her tone.

“I was beginning to wonder what had become of you, Mr. Ballaston,” she said. “Let me present you to my chaperone, Mrs. Hichens.”

Gregory acknowledged the introduction and spent the next few minutes searching for and arranging their chairs.

“I suppose I have been outrageously lazy,” he confessed, when at last he had installed them. “That trip of mine into the interior, which you heard me speaking of with your uncle, was rather an exhausting affair.”

“Some day you must tell me the whole story,” she begged. “The snatches I heard of it were most romantic. You came back in Wu Ling’s trading schooner, didn’t you?”

“Wu Ling,” Gregory confided, “saved my life, and brought me back to the city. I got into trouble. I was certainly somewhere where I had no right to be, and I was handed over to Wu Abst, the famous pirate, by a couple of fanatical priests, with instructions that I was to become nourishment for the alligators. Wu Ling heard about it at one of the villages where he was trading and released me. It sounds like a page from somebody’s novel, doesn’t it? It was all very real at the time, though.”

They both looked at him curiously, but the older woman had lived for some time in a country where few questions were asked, and Claire was more concerned with the shadow of either pain or sleeplessness which seemed to darken his face.

“I can quite understand your feeling like a rest,” she said sympathetically. “I thought you looked terribly ill the day we met in the warehouse.”

She picked up a book, merely with the idea of giving him an opportunity to pass on if he cared to, but after strolling about the deck aimlessly for a quarter of an hour, he returned to find her with her book still unopened, her mind, as a matter of fact, occupied with him and his story. She accepted immediately his invitation to walk. They went on to the upper deck and looked down together at the oily water with its streak of phosphorescence. They talked of the ship, of such of their fellow passengers as they had observed, and of the route home, with a certain obvious attempt at casualness; conversation of little import, yet almost a necessary stepping-stone to more intimate understanding. Claire’s perceptions were keen enough for her to realise that this young man was scarcely in a normal condition.

“You have had no wireless from your uncle or from the firm since you left?” he asked, a little abruptly.

She shook her head.

“You asked me that before,” she reminded him. “Why on earth should I? We said good-by early in the morning after the night you dined with us. Uncle would never dream of coming to see me off. He hates steamers and he hates what he calls ‘looking westwards.’ How he will survive life in England I am sure I can’t imagine, except that he does sometimes still admit that English country life is wonderful.”

“He really means to come then?”

“Why, surely.”

“And you? Shall you like it?”

She assented a little doubtfully.

“I think I would rather live in New York,” she confessed, “but I can’t fancy Uncle there. I think that would be expecting a little too much of him. He still has friends and a few relatives in England.”

“Pretty sporting of him to break away at all,” Gregory observed, “after all these years.”

“I think it is marvellous,” she agreed. “I am sure if I hadn’t come, he’d rather go on living in that strange, smelly little house of his and read Chinese manuscripts and interpret Chinese hieroglyphics round old ornaments, and talk Chinese literature with some of the quaintest-looking people you ever saw up at the University, than do anything else in the world.”

“All the same,” Gregory remarked, “they say that a man should always return to the country of his birth to end his days. Besides, China is no place for an Englishman after a certain number of years. He’d become nothing but an old fossil without the society of his own kind.”

“What a nice, consoling person you are,” she declared. “Sometimes I’ve had it on my conscience a little that I’m taking him away from the things he likes best in life.”

“I shouldn’t worry about that,” he told her. “He’ll be better at home amongst some of his old cronies, and for you—well, of course, China would be utterly impossible.”

“I am very happy to be going to England,” she assured him. “I am looking forward to the country life immensely.”

“Fond of games?” he asked her.

“Riding and tennis are the extent of my accomplishments,” she replied. “I like those. And then, after a year or so, I shall hope to travel on the Continent. My aunt still has a great many friends in Paris.”

“One meets so many American women and girls in France and Italy,” he observed, “and so few men. Why are they such stay at homes?”

“They aren’t,” she explained. “They travel, but they want something out of it. They either prospect for mines, or look for markets, or something of that sort.”

“In a way then, they too have the adventurer’s instinct. I haven’t any head for business. When the war ended—I had been wounded twice and transferred into the Intelligence Department—it chanced that I was in Palestine, and I went on from there to Abyssinia. From there I visited some friends in Bombay, and when I got home my father and I planned my little adventure in China.”

“You certainly are some traveller,” she admitted smilingly.

“So was my father before me,” he confided. “He was in the Diplomatic Service for some time, and lived in Pekin during the days of the Monarchy.”

She suddenly looked around and saw the rising moon, a blood-red circle emerging with incredible swiftness from the edge of a black sea. She crossed the deck swiftly, waving to him to follow her. Halfway there he paused. She was standing full in the light shining through the uncurtained window of the Marconi room; tall, slim and white in the windless night—a curiously and wonderfully desirable vision. She turned and waved to him impatiently, a smile of invitation upon her lips, her eyes full of eager delight.

“Hurry!” she cried. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

He came slowly across the deck, and a little puzzled frown took the place of her smile as he drew near.

“Why do you look at me as though you had never seen me before?” she asked, as he took his place by her side.

“I never have, with the same eyes,” he answered uneasily.

“Idiot!” she laughed. “Well, you’ll have to put up with me for at least six weeks like this. Don’t you love the stillness with just the throb of the engine?”

“I’d like it better without the engine,” he observed. “It is beautiful enough here to make one believe that we are on our way to paradise, and that wretched throb keeps on reminding us that our next stop is Bombay.”

“Aren’t you just a little inclined to be cynical to-night?” she asked.

“I don’t know quite what’s the matter with me,” he answered restlessly. “I think that terrible country behind has broken my nerve, or——”

His thoughts flashed back to his stateroom. She was suddenly intent upon listening. From away upon the lower deck they could hear the sound of the orchestra. Her face lit up with pure joy.

“Dancing!” she cried. “I believe they’re dancing. Why, I haven’t even heard the music since I left New York! Come along!”

She had reached the companion ladder before he could catch her up. Already her feet were moving to the music.

“Look here,” he confided doubtfully, “remember I’ve been out of England for a very long time. I’m not at all sure that I can manage these new steps.”

She slipped her arm through his in friendly fashion.

“You’re the only man on board I know, and you’ve got to,” she declared imperiously.

CHAPTER VI

“Perkins,” Gregory demanded, as he struggled into his dinner coat a few nights later, “what should you think if I told you to drop that grinning piece of wooden monstrosity there into the sea?”

The steward glanced doubtfully over his shoulder at the Image.

“It’s a damned ugly piece of goods, sir,” he admitted, “but I shouldn’t make away with it like that. It’s very likely valuable. They give no end of money sometimes for genuine bits of stuff from China way.”

Gregory straightened his tie and looked at his treasure fixedly.

“Perkins,” he confided, “that Image is either worth a few hundred, or perhaps a thousand pounds as an antique, or it may be worth—listen to me—a million.” The steward coughed. He was inclined to think that this passenger of his, on whom the slackness of the season had enabled him to bestow more than his normal share of attention, was a trifle cracked.

“If it is worth as much money as that, sir,” he remarked, “it would be a sin to think of getting rid of it.”

“You’re quite right,” Gregory assented, “it would be a sin. We’ll let it stay where it is.”

At his table in the dining saloon he trifled with his dinner and covertly watched the girl seated by the captain’s side, who, on his entrance, had sent him a little wave of welcome. He had worshipped more or less casually at the shrine of girls and women of all ages, but never with quite the same restless and fitful confusion of feeling as had swept over him occasionally during the last few days in her near presence, or at the thought of her in his sleepless hours. She was, he tried to tell himself, as he studied her with eyes that attempted to be critical, an ordinary, pleasant-looking, good-looking, attractive girl, like hundreds of others of her age, too young and too lacking in experience to justify a great passion. Her yellow hair, her one real beauty, was brushed backwards with a touch almost of severity; a fashion, however, which the vivacity of her face justified. Her eyes, he had to admit, were unusual; grave and tender sometimes, full of the sparkle of humour when, as now, she was engaged in light-hearted conversation. Her mouth was perhaps almost too sensitive, but it was beautifully shaped, and not over-small. He watched her rise and walk out of the saloon; a girl’s figure still, but with just a suggestion of coming power in her easy, flowing movements.

He had known more beautiful women. There were more beautiful women to be seen every day in Bond Street, he told himself, with an almost fierce desire to deny her attractiveness, but she possessed a gift which baffled him. He only knew that the idea of that message, which without a doubt she must at some time or other receive from her uncle, was like a nightmare to him. He felt instinctively how meanness of any sort, dishonour and falsehood, would appeal to her, with her youthful, uncompromising standards, her lack of experience. She would belie that sensitive mouth and the kindliness of her eyes. Where an older woman might have sympathised she would have no pity. And with it all his mind was in a state of turmoil about her. Unaccustomed sensations tortured him. The flash of her welcoming glance had set his pulses tingling.

He finished his wine, leaving most of his dinner untasted, and, instead of going on deck, returned to his stateroom, thrust aside the curtain, and looked fiercely, almost challengingly, at his treasure. As he looked he felt once more a certain change in himself and his impulses, suddenly felt the torture of a sacrilegious thought, an instinct, horrible at one moment, alluring the next. He suddenly threw the cigarette case which he was holding at the face which mocked him.

“Blast you!” he cried.

The case, truly enough thrown, recoiled from the unchanging hardness of that lowering forehead, and fell, spilling its contents upon the bunk. He recovered it with trembling fingers, listening all the time to the music of the distant orchestra. He had a sudden impulse to lock the door and stay where he was; an impulse swept away a moment later by an unconquerable desire to be moving to the music with Claire in his arms. From the door he ventured upon one last unwilling glance upwards. He could have sworn that for the fiftieth time that expression had changed. There was a light almost of suggestion in those sightless orbs, a curl of sardonic contempt in the thick lips. He hurried up on to the deck and leaned for a moment over the rail, his eyes looking across the sea.

“Nerves!” he told himself slowly. “Nerves!”

The doctor passed him with a cheery good evening. Gregory called out to him.

“Just a moment, Doctor.”

“You’ll be in disgrace,” the latter remarked. “They’re dancing already. Come and have a liqueur in my room first.”

“Thank you,” Gregory replied.

They made their way to the lower deck and into the doctor’s quarters. The latter excused himself for a moment whilst he prepared some medicine. Afterwards he opened his cupboard, produced a bottle of brandy and two liqueur glasses and pushed a box of cigarettes across the table.

“What’s wrong with you, young fellow?” he asked a little abruptly.

“Nerves,” Gregory answered. “Do you believe in them?”

“To some extent,” was the cautious reply. “How are they getting at you?”

“I’m haunted by an evil spirit,” Gregory declared, lighting a cigarette. “It’s there, a wooden Image behind a curtain, down in my stateroom. Now get ready to laugh. I assure you, Doctor, every moment I spend with that damned thing makes me feel more of a rotter.”

“Where did you get it?” the doctor enquired curiously.

Gregory glanced towards the closed door.

“I am not sure whether it is wise to tell you,” he replied, “but, as a matter of fact, it is a small statue of a famous Chinese god. It is meant to represent all the gross side of a man’s life. It is meant to depict every evil that can haunt the sinner.”

The doctor suddenly leaned forward in his chair.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you were mixed up in the Nilkaya affair?” he exclaimed. “You’re not one of the Englishmen who looted the place?”

“I’ve got one of the Images here, anyway,” Gregory admitted.

“There was a report that you were both dead.”

“My pal is, although he was taking on what we thought the simplest part of the job. They got me, a dozen of those priests. Fought like furies, the fellows did! I was to have been food for the alligators but I was rescued on the river by a trader from the coast.”

The doctor looked at his companion with amazement.

“No wonder you’ve got nerves,” he observed. “You’ve been through something.”

“I’ve been through hell,” Gregory admitted. “The fight wasn’t so bad, but I was two days strapped up on that pirate ship with not a mouthful to eat, in a foul atmosphere, and expecting to be thrown overboard at any moment. I had a certain amount of luck. I got clear, as you see, and I’ve got one of the Images. It is supposed to be chock full of jewels, and yet I’m half inclined to chuck the damned thing overboard.”

The doctor smiled reassuringly.

“I won’t say anything of the morality of the enterprise,” he declared, “but you had a fine, plucky adventure, and when you talk about throwing the Image overboard, you’re talking like an ass. Set your heel upon all this superstitious nonsense, Ballaston, and go on as usual. Believe me, you’ll be none the worse for possessing that piece of wood. You create the evil in yourself when you allow yourself to believe that the thing’s likely to do you harm. The world’s old enough for us to realise the nature of most of its organic forces. The malice of nine hundred years ago may have been carved into that Image, but it can’t come out again.”

Gregory drew a little sigh of relief.

“Of course you’re right,” he acquiesced, “and yet——”

“Cut out the ‘and yets’,” the doctor interrupted. “Get up on deck now and dance. That’s what’s good for you. Be normal and don’t harbour any thought that hasn’t a definite and reasonable origin. See you later. I may come up and have a turn myself.”

Gregory hurried on deck to be greeted a little reproachfully by Claire.

“How dare you keep me waiting,” she complained. “The orchestra have never played better and I’ve been nearly crazy sitting here by myself. Don’t let’s waste a minute now you have come.”

They were out of the region of storms. The awning had been rolled away and they danced on the outside deck with the orchestra half concealed in a little lounge. The minutes passed by in a sort of enchantment. From fox trots they passed to waltzes, both utterly unconscious that sometimes they were the only two dancing. Suddenly Claire drew back and looked at her companion.

“Why, I believe you’re tired!” she exclaimed. “Do let’s stop.”

“No, we’ll go on,” he answered quickly.

The music seemed to have gained a new and more passionate throb. The starlit night seemed to be leaning down, to close them in. There was a breath of magic in the languid air, in the perfume from her hair and clothes, swimming out into the stillness. Her eyes for a moment had half closed in faint response to the joy of it all. His arm suddenly tightened around her—tightened!

“Stop!” she ordered quickly.

He obeyed at once. She looked at him with an expression of amazement, in which was almost a gleam of terror. Then she turned away.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I want to speak to Mrs. Hichens. Please don’t come.”

He knew better than to follow her, to protest, to attempt any explanation. He made his way to the smoking room and drank two whiskies and sodas. The steward looked at him curiously.

“Hot work dancing to-night, sir,” he observed.

“Hot as hell,” Gregory answered. “Give me another drink.”

He was served immediately. Afterwards he stepped back on to the deck. Claire had disappeared. He went up to a woman whom he had previously avoided with sedulous care—a grass widow, good-looking still in a way, but overanxious, overobvious, overperfumed. She rose to her feet with astonishing alacrity at his unexpected invitation. A moment later they danced off into the darkness.

The smoking-room steward took Gregory to his stateroom that night, and the faithful Perkins, summoned from his own repose, undressed him. He went to sleep with a chuckle upon his distorted lips.

“I’m with you, old fellow,” he muttered, waving his hand feebly to his unseen companion. “You’re the chap for us Ballastons. Glad I got you—and not the other.”

CHAPTER VII

The doctor, a few days later, paused in his morning promenade and took a vacant place by Claire’s side. He made a few commonplace remarks about the voyage, and then leaned confidentially towards her.

“Miss Endacott, I want to speak to you for a moment, if I may, about young Ballaston.”

The sensitive lips quivered a little. Nevertheless she had self-control.

“Well, Doctor?”

“I don’t exactly know what has happened, of course,” he went on, “but you two were such pals at first, and now one can’t help noticing that you scarcely speak. Ballaston hasn’t said a word to me. This is all on my own, but I imagine that somehow or other, he has succeeded in offending you.”

“He has,” she acquiesced coldly.

“I don’t hold any brief for the young man,” the doctor proceeded, “but I can’t help wondering whether you know what he’s been through just lately. He’s had a wonderful adventure and played his part like a man. I won’t say a word about the morality of it, or the object of it, or anything else. I’ll only say that it was a jolly plucky thing to attempt and he only escaped with his life by a miracle.”

“I have heard all this,” Claire admitted.

“It is always after an exploit of this sort that one runs a danger of suffering from nerves. That’s precisely what’s happened to young Ballaston. In his stateroom down below he has that Image which he risked his life for, and he’s adopted the legend about it in a way I should never have dreamed a young fellow with his strength of character could have done. You know the legend?”

“I have heard it.”

“Well, Ballaston honestly believes that every hour he spends with this Image is doing him harm morally and that very belief is apt to make him behave at odd times impossibly. The thing won’t last, of course. He’ll get used to it, and the idea will pass out of his brain. It is there just now, and I tell you frankly that I believe it is likely to influence his actions.”

There was more and more interest in Claire’s face, a little tinge of returning colour. She leaned forward. The icy note had gone from her tone.

“How extraordinary!” she exclaimed. “I—well, to tell you the truth, Doctor, the other night when we were dancing, when I was offended, I thought that he had had too much to drink.”

The doctor shook his head.

“It wasn’t that at all,” he assured her gravely. “Now, mind you, Miss Endacott, I’m not defending Ballaston. I don’t even know what the cause of offence was—certainly I’m not trying to interfere in any way—but he is suffering, and suffering terribly, and it isn’t doing him any good to be cut off from you. If you could just remember that, you might be able to help him, perhaps more than any one else.”

“I will remember,” she promised. “Thank you very much indeed.”

The doctor took his leave and Claire sat gazing out to sea with a kindlier expression in her face. A few minutes later, Gregory left the smoking room, and, seeing her, was turning the other way. She called to him softly.

“Mr. Ballaston.”

He glanced around in surprise.

“Mr. Ballaston, please come here for a moment.”

He approached slowly and stood before her, bareheaded. As she looked at him her pity increased. His eyes were very brilliant but they seemed to have sunken, and he was certainly thinner in the face.

“Will you sit down and talk to me for a little time, please,” she invited.

“If you wish me to,” he replied diffidently.

“I think that perhaps I was silly about the other night,” she went on. “I perhaps—misunderstood.”

“You didn’t,” he groaned.

“Please don’t say that,” she begged. “I want to believe that I did, and I want you to please be nice to me again and be different.”

“Has any one been talking to you?” he asked.

“The doctor spoke a few words,” she admitted.

“It is sweet of you,” he declared dejectedly, “but you mustn’t believe the doctor altogether. It isn’t exactly nerves. I was never much good and you’re such a child. I’m not good enough now to talk and dance with you on equal terms. I feel this all the time. For two days I have hated you because it is through you I know what I am. And I don’t mind telling you that I hate you,” he went on, “because——”

“Because?” she questioned.

“Because I care for you more than any one else in the world,” he concluded.

She laughed, but very kindly. Her eyes were softer than he had ever seen them, and there was a new flush in her cheeks.

“It is just as silly for you to say that as the other,” she declared, “considering that I have known you exactly—what is it?—eleven, twelve days. Now, could we talk nonsense, please, or go for a walk. We start again, and you see—I trust you.”

“I shouldn’t,” he warned her gloomily. “I’m not trustworthy, and you’ll find it out before long.”

“I’ll wait until I do,” she decided. “Come along. This morning I need movement. It isn’t nearly so hot, and there hasn’t been any one to do things with the last few days. We’ll play deck tennis on the upper deck, and then go for a swim.”

They passed the whole morning together. The doctor, seeing them, waved his hand cordially. The captain stopped and exchanged a few good-humoured words. Everything seemed to be once more as it should be. Gregory was quite as distinctly the best-looking and most attractive young man on board as Claire was the most charming girl, and nearly every one seemed pleased that the little misunderstanding which had kept them apart was apparently removed. Gossip, not ill-natured, but natural enough, recommenced. Gregory, heir to a baronetcy, poor, perhaps, but with a romantic career for a young man, and Claire, whose uncle was a partner in the great firm of Johnson and Company—a most suitable affair. Late in the afternoon they found a cool corner in the bows, and Gregory read poetry. His voice, naturally a beautiful one, with its slight Oxford peculiarities, fascinated Claire. She listened with joy as he passed from Shelley to Keats and wound up with Swinburne. Afterwards the captain took them into his room for tea and they sat talking until it was almost time to change. They descended from the bridge together.

“To-night,” Claire exclaimed happily, “we dance.”

Gregory made no reply. For a single moment a little shiver seemed to pass through him. She turned and smiled reassuringly.

“I am looking forward to it so much,” she murmured. “I’m sure we are both going to love it.”

The doctor swung by as Gregory was changing for dinner. Gregory hailed him.

“Just one moment,” he called out.

The doctor paused and put his head in the stateroom—a large one on the upper promenade deck and easily accessible.

“I want to thank you,” Gregory said earnestly, “for speaking to Miss Endacott.”

“Everything all right again?” the other asked, smiling.

“Quite, thanks to you,” was the well-satisfied reply. “I hope to God I don’t give myself away again! Come in and have a look at my evil genius.”

The doctor came a little farther into the room and examined the Image through his eyeglasses.

“Jove, it’s amazing,” he exclaimed; “amazingly powerful!”

“Diabolically!” Gregory muttered.

The doctor was clearly fascinated by the Image. His fingers passed over it with the soft touch of a connoisseur. He stood back and viewed it from another angle.

“Ballaston,” he said, “there isn’t a sculptor in the West to-day who could produce a piece of work like that. It’s stupendous!”

“I think I shall tell my steward to send it down below into safe keeping, somewhere,” Gregory suggested, turning away and lighting a cigarette. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea?”

The doctor shook his head.

“I think it would be a damned bad idea,” he answered. “Now, look here, young fellow,” he went on, putting his hand on Gregory’s shoulder, “how old are you?”

“Thirty-one.”

“If at your time of life,” the doctor continued, “you once begin to give way to what your brain and real consciousness tell you is an idea, you’ll be a victim to what they call ‘nerves’ all your life. You’ve never been affected before like this, have you?”

“Never,” Gregory declared earnestly. “One doesn’t want to talk about oneself, but I got my medals in France, and a jolly close shave of the big thing. I’ve shot big game and I’ve come out of tight corners once or twice without turning a hair. That’s why I don’t understand this.”

“Good!” the doctor exclaimed. “That confirms me in what I was saying. Square up to it, man! Don’t be all the time flinching away, like you are now. Look at it. Look at it with me, arm in arm. It is just a damned but wonderful representation of wickedness. There is nothing alive about it, except its art. It isn’t going to do you any harm, and it isn’t going to do me any harm. Let it stay where it is.”

Ballaston fastened his tie slowly, considering the advice thoughtfully.

“You mean that, Doctor?” he demanded. “You see, when I’m sane, I have the utmost respect and—I can say it to you—affection for Miss Endacott. She’s only a child, of course, but she’s wonderful. It’s such a horrible thought that I might——”

“Chuck it!” the doctor interrupted tersely. “You won’t. Remember, if you give way now you will give way all your life. Come in and have a last drink with me before you turn in to-night and I bet you’ll be jolly glad you’ve stuck it out.—I must get along now. Got a patient expecting me before dinner.”

He swung off, large, buoyant, diffusing an atmosphere of confidence. Gregory finished his dressing, strolled along the deck, and found Mrs. Hichens and Claire. He took them all into the little lounge where they drank cocktails together. Gregory was suddenly in joyous spirits, and Claire thoroughly responsive. They made plans for the next few days and ended up with a race round the deck, the course being kept clear by a little handful of amused passengers. The captain, coming upon them, breathless, just as the bugle sounded, invited Gregory to his table for dinner, and Gregory, his unsociability altogether dispersed, proved a most attractive guest. Of his own exploits he tried to talk as little as possible, but the Ballastons had been a family well known in sporting and political circles for generations, and there were plenty of anecdotes to be told of English life for Claire’s amusement. A general engaged him in kindly reminiscences of France, and he found an old Etonian, and a junior diplomat on his way home from Japan. They sat at table until long after the others had left, and the music had already commenced when they trooped up the gangway.

“What a wonderful evening!” Claire exclaimed delightedly. “And now we are going to dance!”

The orchestra welcomed them back again with kindly smiles. The lanterns which enclosed the little space of deck were like fairy lights. The music streamed out to them, even its ordinary melodies somehow beautified by their own sense of well-being and the glamour of their surroundings. Claire danced from pure love of graceful movement, from that age-long impulse of rhythm which passes behind history into legend; Gregory, a born athlete and light-footed as an Indian, suffering nothing from his ignorance of the more modern steps. Once or twice they rested, but always impatiently, always with their senses tingling with the joy of rhythmical motion. It was not until the end of the programme that Claire realised suddenly that her companion had been dancing during the last few minutes with unusual stiffness. He was pale and breathing more quickly than usual.

“How selfish of me!” she exclaimed. “Of course you are tired! Let us sit out for a few minutes—somewhere where the music doesn’t haunt us.”

They found two chairs in a retired corner. Gregory seemed to have thrown off his reserves, to have become once more fluent and discoursive. His voice, lowered because of occasional promenaders, had developed an almost passionate timbre. There was a light in his eyes which half puzzled, half thrilled her. His hands sought her fingers underneath the rug which they shared. She suffered him to hold them for a moment before she drew them gently away.

“I have never forgotten,” he told her, “how I saw you first. You came into that crazy old warehouse with its piles of silks and rugs and carpets, and shelves of jade and china, and its quaint odour, the perfume of China and the East. You threaded your way through that group of Chinamen in that spotless white dress of yours, in the hat with the yellow flowers, like something fresh and sweet from a new world—from a world where the sun didn’t bake and shrivel everything to dust, or those dank, humid mists make slime of the ground underneath.”

She laughed softly.

“I think the poetry of this afternoon is lingering in your brain,” she said. “Still, I dare say it was strange to see an American girl with a New York frock amongst all that medley. You must have thought our little house stranger yet. Can you imagine my uncle, surrounded with all those beautiful things, living between bare walls and with oil-cloth upon the floor, and—am I very greedy—with such a terrible cook? Are you shocked at me for my materialism? You know I never pretended to be anything else. I love life as it comes to me day by day, with just the things it brings.”

“And I love life as I find it now,” he whispered. “It seems too wonderful to think that you too are on your way to England, and that we’re going to be almost neighbours.”

“But you are never at home,” she reminded him, with a smile.

“I’ve had nothing to keep me at home,” he rejoined. “In the future it may be different. Already I begin to feel that my love of wandering is finished.”

“Perhaps,” she suggested softly, “we had better dance.”

She rose to her feet and he acquiesced at once. As he leaned towards her, his face as white as marble in the moonlight, he was undoubtedly handsome, yet once again she caught a glimpse of something in his eyes which filled her with a vague uneasiness.

“Yes, we’ll dance,” he assented. “You’re teaching me to understand what dancing means. The last time—when was it?—Alexandria, I believe——”

He stopped abruptly, confused by a turbulent flood of memory. They moved away to the music, in and out of the string of lights, rocking now in an unexpected night breeze. Claire danced still with the joy of her youthful strength and gracious temperament. Once or twice, when Gregory’s arm seemed to be drawing her a little closer, she freed herself slightly. Once she caught a flash of that disturbing glint in his eyes, but she only laughed at her own uneasiness.

“Please don’t look so terribly in earnest,” she begged him. “Dancing is one of the happiest things in the world. We must keep that feeling always with us.”

The music came to an abrupt finish. Claire looked across at the leader of the orchestra in dismay, but it was too late for intervention. Already the first notes of “God Save the King” had been struck.

“Well, it has been lovely,” she declared. “I suppose I must go and look for Mrs. Hichens.”

“Come and have a lemon squash first,” he begged.

The steward served them out on deck. Gregory drank a whisky and soda as though it had been water.

“Let’s sit out for a time,” he suggested. “It is too warm to sleep down below. I’ll fetch some more rugs.”

She shook her head and rose regretfully to her feet.

“It has been delightful,” she admitted, “but after all it is eleven o’clock.”

They strolled along the deck. Suddenly he gripped her by the arm. They were passing his stateroom. Perkins was moving about and the light was lit. He pointed in through the wide-open door, only a few feet away.

“Let me show you my evil genius,” he begged.

She hesitated for a moment. Then, with the steward smilingly standing on one side for her to enter, her hesitation seemed ridiculous. She crossed the threshold as Perkins disappeared with a suave good night. Gregory stood by her side and pointed to the Image. She gave a little gasp. For several moments neither of them spoke. They both gazed at it intently; Claire with wondering horror; Gregory fighting against some sympathetic suggestion in the cynical brutality of the thick mocking lips.

“What a ghastly thing to own,” she cried.

The hand which had been holding her arm was suddenly round her waist.

“Look at it by moonlight,” he whispered in her ear.

The forefinger of his other hand touched the switch. They were almost in darkness. His eyes suddenly seemed to be blazing into hers. She felt the burning of his lips even as they drew near. There was something sweet but vaguely evil in his tone.

“Claire, you are adorable!”

She wrenched herself free—free from arms which had seemed to be closing like a vice round her, away from lips whose very proximity seemed to scorch. She staggered through the door. As she stood there on the deck, the light flashed out again, and Gregory, suddenly, it seemed, almost calm, stood upon the threshold, a courteous but sardonic farewell upon his lips.

“Good night,” he said. “You realise now, perhaps, what it is for a man to live with so evil a thing.”

She swayed as she neared the companionway and steadied herself in her descent by the banisters. When she reached her room she locked the door behind her and threw herself upon the bed.—Gregory had moved back into his stateroom. His fist, hard and clenched, was within a few inches of the leering mouth.

“You damned swine!” he exclaimed, with all his calmness gone, a hoarse fury breaking his voice. “You—you accursed spirit!”

His voice suddenly failed. An overpowering impulse seized him. He took the Image into his arms, rushed through the open door across the deck, and leaned over the rail.

“Find your own hell!” he shouted, and dashed it downwards.

CHAPTER VIII

In the morning Gregory awoke after a wonderfully sound sleep. It was still very early. There was a delightful pearly light in the sky, visible through his open porthole. The glitter of the barely risen sun lay faint upon the ocean. He remained for a few minutes, breathing quietly, trying to recall the events of the night before. They came back to him with a shock, followed by an immense sense of relief. He remembered what he had done without a thought of regret. He had cast away the fruits of his enterprise, the possibility of wealth, and he was full of rejoicing. In those few seconds of glad thought, the world seemed a different place, wealth, after all, but a trifling part of its joys, youth and love suddenly great and wonderful things. A clearer light seemed to be pouring in upon some possible future, a new atmosphere of happiness encircling him. He sprang out of bed. He would have an early bath and send a note round to Claire. She must forgive. She must understand. She must realise the sacrifice he had made. Then, as he reached for his dressing gown, he felt as though he were turned to stone. Up on its accustomed place, its eyes meeting his, its lips mocking him, was the Image. He stood looking at it, for once genuinely terrified. Then he pressed the bell feverishly, and stood there with his thumb upon the knob until Perkins came running in.

“Where the hell did that come from?” he demanded, pointing to the Image.

Perkins smiled with the air of one who imparts good tidings.

“The bos’un sent it up early this morning, sir,” he explained. “It was in one of the lower boats, swung out from the main deck—gone right through the canvas but there isn’t a scratch on it.”

Gregory drew on his dressing gown and staggered out on to the deck. He walked up and down for an hour and a half, fighting a distinct and definite battle, and with every step he took it seemed to him that he became saner. His waking idea took shape, gave him encouragement and life. With his craving for what it might have to give abandoned, the power of the Image, too, for evil, must decline. He wanted those jewels no longer. He was ready to face life and all its possibilities from a new standard. He went down to his bath, visited the barber, and dressed before any of the passengers were astir. Then he made his way into the writing room and drew paper and ink towards him. He wrote fluently, and without hesitation. All that he wished to say seemed so clear:

These few lines, dear, bring my prayer to you for pardon. The doctor talks of nerves. Well, I never suffered from them, and I would as soon believe in the supernatural. I believe that there is evil in my treasure. Last night, in a fit of self-disgust, I tried to throw it overboard, but it was caught by one of the canvas-covered boats on the lower deck and when I awoke this morning it was back in its accustomed place. If your answer to this note is what I pray for, it will be overboard before we meet, and overboard in such a place that it will sink to the bottom of the sea.

Will you marry me, Claire, as soon as we reach England, and my father and your uncle can meet and give their consent? I don’t pretend that I am a particularly desirable person, but I am, at any rate, not too bad to realise that you are the dearest and sweetest thing I have ever met, or to fail in keeping my word when I promise that you shall never regret it if you say “yes.” I haven’t a great deal to offer you, beyond my love, but that I offer to you, not in the spirit of last night in the shadow of that accursed Image, but earnestly, and faithfully, and eternally.

Please send me just a line. The black Buddha waits to know his fate, and I mine.

Gregory.

Perkins took the note, and after his departure Gregory climbed to the upper deck and stood there leaning over the rail, forgetting even to smoke, watching the sun mount a little higher and spread its gleams a little farther across the ocean, watching the blue haze of coming heat blot out the clearness of the horizon, waiting with an eagerness utterly unfamiliar, with a sense of having suddenly changed personalities with some simpler and stronger being. At last the head and shoulders of Perkins appeared, coming up the ladder.

“Your breakfast is in your room, sir,” he announced, as he handed over the note he was carrying.

Gregory made no reply. He was looking at the handwriting upon the envelope; rather faint and delicate, not too legible. For a moment or two he turned the note over. He absolutely feared to open it. A wave of pessimism had seized him. Then he suddenly tore the envelope across and read:

Dear Mr. Ballaston,

I am so sorry but I cannot say “yes.” I appreciate your letter and I try to sympathise with what lies behind it, but, to be quite honest, I cannot just now believe in you. I do not myself believe in the supernatural, nor can I bring myself to believe in the superstition of which you speak. I can, therefore, only think of you as one whom I was beginning to like very much indeed, but who has disappointed me bitterly.

I am sorry, but that is how I feel, and it is useless for me to pretend otherwise. If you wish to be kind, please keep away. It is foolish, of course, but you see I am a little lonely here, and, after what has happened, I shall feel so much happier not to find myself alone with you again.

Claire Endacott.

Gregory read the letter twice, then sent it fluttering away in little white fragments, watching them fall like snowflakes upon the sea. Afterwards he descended to his stateroom. He sat on his camp stool, stirred his coffee, and looked across at the Image. Then, with his left hand, he kissed his fingers to it.

“I give you best, my friend,” he groaned. “Count me your disciple.”

Gregory was on deck even before his accustomed time. He showed unusual interest in the ship’s run and greeted Claire, when she appeared very late and looking pale and tired, with the casualness of a steamer acquaintance. He talked lightly with Mrs. Hichens, exchanged remarks with his other fellow passengers, and, notwithstanding the slight air of aloofness which was habitual to him, he took a prominent part in the sports of the day. He conducted an auction pool with success and he refused no man’s invitation to drink. At night, though, when the dancing started, he obstinately refused to leave the smoking room, pleaded a weak ankle and confessed to an inordinate thirst. The doctor came in and sat beside him.

“More trouble?” he asked quietly.

Gregory shrugged his shoulders.

“No particular trouble,” he replied. “I’m rather fed up with dancing, besides which I have worn through the soles of my only pair of patent shoes.”

“Is Miss Endacott in a similar predicament?” the doctor enquired. “I see that she is not on deck.”

“Miss Endacott is probably reading one of Paley’s sermons to Mrs. Hichens,” he answered a little sarcastically. “I wonder why the devil some one doesn’t look after your libraries on board ship, Doctor. There are no less than eleven different volumes of sermons there. No doubt you got them cheap, but who wants them, especially on a voyage where one is supposed to send one’s morals overland.”

The doctor rose to his feet.

“There is nothing I can do for you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Gregory replied. “Have a drink.”

The doctor shook his head.

“I am in earnest,” he persisted. “I am still at your disposal. If you want a sleeping draught, I’m your man, or an ambassador—well, I’m here. Otherwise——”

“It happens to be otherwise,” Gregory declared, a little brutally.

“Perkins,” Gregory Ballaston asked, sitting up in his bunk a few mornings later, and gazing distastefully at his tea, “was I very drunk last night?”

“No more than usual, sir,” was the man’s somewhat gloomy answer. “The chief steward in the second class sent for me and I brought you up myself.”

Gregory sighed.

“Bad, Perkins—bad!” he admitted. “I ought not to have gone there at all. Was I—er—misbehaving more than usual?”

“You seemed to be making a little free with the young women down there, if I might say so, sir,” Perkins replied.

Gregory poured himself out some tea.

“Well, it was the last night, anyhow,” he said, with an air of relief. “I am landing at Marseilles.”

“I have packed most of your things, sir,” the man announced. “I expect they’ll bustle the overland passengers off the ship as quickly as possible. We’re a good many hours late as it is, and the train will be waiting.”

“I am going the other way,” Gregory confided. “I have a strange feeling, Perkins, that I am likely to win at Monte Carlo. I have been there twice before and lost pretty well all I possessed at the moment. This time I feel like winning. Anyway, I am going to try my luck.”

“When shall I be able to finish your packing, sir?”

“Whenever you like and as soon as you like. I don’t care for this ship, Perkins. You’re a good fellow and you’ve looked after me very well, but I don’t like the rest of them any more than they like me. You wouldn’t say that I was a popular person on board, would you, Perkins?”

The man made no reply for a moment. He was occupied thrusting the trees into some evening slippers.

“If I might make so bold, sir,” he said at last, “you have only yourself to thank for what people think. You have acted queerly more than once, sir.”

“A fact,” Gregory murmured; “a damnable fact!”

“And I don’t hold,” the man went on, “with this sitting in the smoking room, taking a drink with anybody who comes along, and going down to the second class, when there’s plenty of your own sort on board, sir.”

“You’re a sound fellow, Perkins,” Gregory admitted, as he swung out of his bunk. “Is my bath ready?”

“Waiting, sir.”

“And, Perkins,” Gregory continued, as he struggled into his dressing gown, “some time this morning I want you to bring me some packing cloth and get the carpenter to find you a box. I can’t take my Image about like that. I’m going to send it home to my father—a little souvenir of my visit to China. I think it might brighten up the household.”

“I’ll fetch you the packing cloth and box, sir, with pleasure,” Perkins assented, looking up at the Image dubiously, “but if it belonged to me I know what I should do with it.”

Gregory paused enquiringly. The steward was still looking over the rail of the bunk with an expression of disgust.

“I should chuck it overboard and have done with it, sir.”

“But it is valuable,” Gregory expostulated, swinging his towel; “worth a lot of money, Perkins. No one knows quite how much but it’s worth a great deal of money.”

“’Tain’t for its looks, anyway,” the man muttered.

Gregory went through his usual morning routine—his bath, the swim, the gymnasium and the coiffeur. Afterwards he made a leisurely toilet in his stateroom, slipped out on to the deck at a moment when it was almost deserted, and walked across to the smoking room with swift footsteps, lithe and graceful, notwithstanding the debauch of the night before, carefully dressed as usual, his eyes as bright as ever, no sign of evil living in his clear complexion. Yet, for all his presentability, no one knew better than he that he had gradually become the most unpopular person upon the ship. The captain had taken to looking the other way when he passed. The doctor’s nod was of the curtest. Mrs. Hichens never pretended not to cut him. Claire alone, on the few occasions when they passed or met face to face, bowed gravely, sometimes even exchanged a word of greeting. She still spent the time on deck as usual, but always with Mrs. Hichens by her side. One or two of the women with whom he had exchanged a few civilities still looked wistfully for him when the dancing began—his grass widow had indeed boldly attempted to waylay him one evening on his return from the dining saloon. Gregory, however, lied with cynical impudence, declared that he had sprained his ankle and would not dance again for the rest of the voyage, and then promptly walked alone for an hour through the summer darkness on the upper deck. On another occasion an enterprising young woman, whose courage was greater than her discretion, sought him out in the smoking room and tried to gain his confidence. She rejoined her friends after a very brief absence, a little ruffled. Gregory’s politeness was icy, but on one point he seemed to have made up his mind: He was ready to gamble with any one, to drink with any one, but so far as the women were concerned—the women of his own quarter of the ship—he avoided them with a finality which admitted of no advances. He played cards all through the long summer days and moonlit, Mediterranean nights, for stakes much higher than the ship’s officers approved of, but he never approached the dancing spaces or entered the music room where the ladies congregated. Rumour went about that he had been sent to Coventry, and, as was natural, on an Eastern liner, there were no end of scandalous stories. One of them, and a name, he happened to overhear, and he gave the smoking room something to gossip about for the rest of the day. He rose from his seat and approached the little group.

“May I ask your name, sir?” he enquired of the man who had told the story; a large man, well under medium age, but puffy and loud-voiced.

“Why, you surely may,” was the prompt reply. “Richard Thomson. We’ve played cards together more than once.”

“Well, Mr. Thomson,” Gregory said, “I have to tell you that I dislike the mention of ladies’ names in a smoking room. I dislike it so much, especially when allied with scandalous fiction, that I am going to throw you out on to the deck.”

The man tried bluster, but he fared the worse for it. He picked himself up, sprawling, from somewhere near the rails, and spent his morning trying to interview various officers of the ship. The purser at last was commissioned to approach Gregory.

“I have a complaint, Mr. Ballaston,” he announced, a little stiffly, “from Mr. Thomson. He asserts that you used violence to him in the smoking room.”

“Quite correct,” was the deliberate reply. “I don’t like him. I shall probably throw him out again if he comes in.”

“An affair of this sort is not to be treated so lightly, sir,” the purser declared. “I must request some sort of an explanation or else that you apologise to Mr. Thomson.”

Gregory considered for a moment.

“Very well,” he said, “I will offer you this much of an explanation. I heard Mr. Thomson make use of the name of a young lady in the smoking room. He coupled her name with a story, which, although it may not have reflected any positive discredit upon her, was yet untrue. I object to the use of ladies’ names in a smoking room, and I did what I should have done at any time in my life, and what I should do again this afternoon and again to-morrow if necessary—I threw him out. As to apologising to him—I will fight him with one hand or standing on one leg, or I will shoot at him and let him shoot at me from any mark he likes, or give him what is termed ‘satisfaction’, in any such manner as he can suggest, but sooner than apologise I would throw him overboard first and spend the rest of the voyage in irons myself if necessary.”

The purser’s face relaxed.

“I will report your explanation to the captain, Mr. Ballaston,” he promised.

Nothing more was heard of the matter. Thomson somewhat ostentatiously played bridge out on deck with his friends, and Gregory, suddenly sick of his smoking-room companions, invaded the ship’s library and abjured cards. He drew a great sigh of relief when at last, amidst the screaming of tugs and a strange silence in the engine room, they were brought in to Marseilles docks. He lingered about for an hour after the gangways were down, hoping to be the last to leave the ship. In the customs shed, however, when he made his belated appearance there, he came face to face with Claire and Mrs. Hichens. The latter ignored him; Claire held out her hand.

“Good-by, Mr. Ballaston,” she said.

Gregory was taken aback. He could not refuse her hand, but he could find no words. Mrs. Hichens walked on. They were for a moment alone together.

“I am very sorry,” she continued, “that I had to answer your letter as I felt. I am trying to forget all that is disagreeable in our friendship, and remember only how thoroughly we enjoyed the first part of the voyage. Will you please do the same—and good-by!”

She was gone with a friendly little nod before he could gasp out any more than a muttered monosyllable. For a moment he almost followed her. Then he realised a certain finality about that gesture and turned away. Before he had finished with the customs the Paris train had left. He stood for a while at the barrier, looking after it almost wistfully, his thoughts travelling homeward. It was late spring now. There would be a scent of violets in the air, cowslips coming up in the meadows, honeysuckle in the hedges, and sweeter than anything, the wild roses making their faint appearance. He thought of the rambling, stately gardens at the Hall, the odour of the late hyacinths, the warmth of the sun on the day when the gardeners opened the potting sheds and brought out the geraniums. He could hear the lazy humming of the mowing machines, the soft splash of water from the fountain on one of the terraced lawns. It was a very beautiful home there, waiting for him; poverty-stricken, perhaps, a little silent, a long way aloof from the throb and thrill of life, the will-o’-the-wisp of happiness which he had pursued so tirelessly, which he was in quest of again, even now. Then he had a sudden vision of Claire, and of showing her the house, the gardens, the park, the woods beyond, the peace of it, the softly flowing waters of the trout stream, the hum of insects. He had a vision of Claire too, seated at the carriage window, looking out, perhaps herself not wholly happy, perhaps even at that moment with a tear in those still tender eyes. The sweetness of her, the sweetness which he had terrified, the childishness which that accursed Image would have had him disturb! It was like a black cloud upon his mind and thoughts. Then a raucous voice in his ear:

“Il faut vous dépêcher d’enregistrer vos bagages pour Monte Carlo, monsieur. Le Rapide arrive.”

His fit of dreaming passed, and he came back to the world of small everyday things, went through the tiresome formality of registering his luggage, found a place in an empty compartment, dozed and dreamed a little more, and finally was dragged behind a screaming locomotive into the curiously unimpressive station of Monte Carlo, the hills behind glittering with lights, the long sea front curving away into Italy. He shook himself and, descending, made his way to the hotel, bathed and changed and sat down to write a few momentous lines home:

Hotel de Paris,

Monte Carlo.

My dear father,

I have come here from Marseilles for a few days, perhaps longer—it depends upon the luck. Meanwhile you will receive from Tilbury, soon after the ship docks, the Image we got away with. You won’t like it. If I were to tell you how I loathed it you would think I was mad, but from the practical point of view everything that I heard in China confirms your story. In either this Image or the other one, which, alas, fell into the hands of a firm called Johnson and Company who have branches nearly everywhere in the East, are packed the whole of the treasures of the Yun-Tse Temple. Have an expert examine it, but don’t do anything about breaking it up until I return. There are reasons against this.

I suppose everything is as usual—no money, heavier taxation, plenty of debts, and Uncle Henry denying himself even a new suit of clothes. I hope Madame progresses, and that her new doctor will be able to work the great miracle. Here is an amazing coincidence, of which you will hear more before you see me. In the last letter I wrote you I told you about my adventure on the Yun-Tse River and Wu Ling, the Chinese trader who rescued me. Well, Wu Ling is a member of the firm of Johnson and Company, the great Eastern merchants, and one of his partners is Ralph Endacott, who used to have a Chair at Oxford, a great Oriental scholar, and—as you perhaps know—Madame’s brother. He has a very delightful niece whom I saw something of on the voyage home. He himself is winding up his affairs and coming to England shortly. They have some idea, I believe, of taking a house in Norfolk. Endacott himself is a somewhat austere person who looked upon my enterprise with a good deal of disfavour, and myself, I am afraid, with more. The niece, however, is perfectly charming.

Well, I shall be home for the summer. I got through all right without a scratch, as you know, but for the first time in my life I think I have a touch of nerves. The shadow of our elms ought to help. I’ll write again as soon as I have decided when to come home.

Thanks for your last letter. I don’t think you need send any money. If I want it I’ll wire.

Ever yours,

Gregory.

Gregory dined alone, receiving the warm welcome of the maîtres d'hôtel with whom he was acquainted, and the other supernumeraries of the great hotel. Afterwards he went across and took out his cards of admission to the Casino, flung a few counters on one of the outside tables in the “Kitchen” and, losing them, came out, called in at the office of the Sporting Club for his ticket and presently mounted the front stairs, prepared for such serious gambling as he could afford. There was something almost allegorical in the wide opening of the doors as he entered. He seemed engulfed once more into the world of pleasurable adventure. Only for the first time the whole thrill of it was wanting. The tables themselves he eyed with all his old appetite, as he counted his money and planned his campaign. His inherited love of gambling was undeniable. The green cloth, the patter of the cards, the call of the croupiers, the rattling of the roulette ball, each had their fascination. It was the other things of which he seemed to have suddenly tired, which somehow, in a moment of presentiment as he looked through one of the great windows towards the moon, hanging down over the harbour, he knew would never appeal to him in quite the same way again. The following morning he supplemented his letter home by a telegram:

To Sir Bertram Ballaston, Baronet, Ballaston Hall,

Norfolk, England.

Don’t send any money have won hundred milles very bored going Rome with Carruthers to-night shall return within a month.

Gregory.

END OF BOOK ONE

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I

It was in a sense a dinner of celebration at Ballaston Hall in which these four men were concerned, although, with the exception of one guest, it was a family party. At the head of the table sat Sir Bertram; thin, long and hard-jawed, with brilliant dark eyes, almost black, lips and mouth sometimes cruel, sometimes humorous, a famous spendthrift, an occasional libertine, but without a doubt a great sportsman. On his left, Gregory, an almost startling reproduction of his father, but with uncertainties in his face and expression which time as yet had not moulded. Next to him, his uncle, Henry Ballaston; a smaller man, stiff, cold, courtly and formal in speech and manner, with greater capacities for kindliness but entirely devoid of that humorous twitch to the mouth. He wore old-fashioned side whiskers. His dress waistcoat showed less than the usual amount of shirt front, and his tie was almost a stock. On the opposite side of the table sat Mr. Borroughes, the agent to the estates; a mixture of sportsman, man of affairs and sycophant, never altogether at ease with his host and, in consequence, rather overdoing the assumption of such a state. Below the little party was a vast expanse of polished but empty mahogany, for dinner had been served in the great banquetting hall where places had often been laid in the past for as many as sixty guests.

Rawson, the butler, ponderous yet light-footed, emerged from the shadows of the apartment, carrying a second decanter of the port which they had been drinking. He placed it reverently before Sir Bertram, who lifted it first to the light, poured a little into his glass, sipped it and then passed the decanter on to his son.

“Excellent!” he pronounced. “Almost as good a bottle as the first. A wonderful bin! Henry—my dear Henry!”

His brother handed the decanter across the table to Borroughes.

“You are aware, Bertram,” he said, “that two glasses of wine after dinner are all I care for.”

His speech was rather like that of an old-fashioned lawyer—prim, a little clipped, extraordinarily precise. Sir Bertram sighed.

“I wonder whether there is anything in the world,” he murmured, “which would ever induce Henry to diverge from a habit?”

“It is less prejudice than a partiality,” the latter pronounced. “Two glasses I enjoy. More, so far as I am concerned, bring me no pleasure. I agree with you, Bertram, that it is an excellent bin. I always enjoy this wine, and I have been happier than usual in drinking it this evening, on account of our pleasure in welcoming Gregory home again.”

“Tell me about our new tenants at the Great House,” Gregory enquired presently, addressing Borroughes.

“Very desirable—very desirable indeed,” the latter replied, delighted at the chance of entering into the conversation. “Mr. Endacott, curiously enough——”

“Endacott!” Gregory interrupted. “Did you say Endacott?”

Gregory, whose first enquiry had been a casual one, had set down the glass which he had been in the act of raising to his lips and was staring at Borroughes incredulously; staring at him and yet through him, convinced in his heart, suddenly realising what had happened.

“Yes, Ralph Endacott,” Borroughes continued. “Curiously enough, he belongs to an old Norfolk family, although he has lived all his life in China. Madame de Fourgenet, whom every one round here calls ‘Madame’, is his sister. He is a great Oriental scholar, I believe. A famous man at Oxford, in his day. Then there’s his niece—Miss Claire Endacott—very good-looking girl. That’s all the family. They have taken the place just as it stands, furniture and all, for three years.”

“And paying the full rent, too, thank God!” Sir Bertram added. “I meant to have told you, Gregory, but we’ve scarcely had a minute together yet. You met the old chap in China, didn’t you, and of course you travelled home as far as Marseilles with the girl.”

“Mr. Endacott was a partner in the great Eastern firm of Johnson and Company, with branches at Alexandria, Tokio, and at several places in China,” Mr. Borroughes went on. “I made use of his banker’s references, and was given to understand that he was a man of great wealth.”

“He knew to whom the property belonged before he took the house, I suppose?” Gregory enquired.

“Naturally,” the agent replied. “It was his sister who wrote to him about it.”

“Quite a remarkable coincidence your having come across him in China,” Sir Bertram observed, moving the decanter once more towards his son. “I wonder if he knows anything about your new possession, Gregory?”

“He knows more about it,” was the somewhat grim response, “than any other man breathing. His firm, as a matter of fact, bought the twin Image from one of the robbers who held up and looted the train from Pekin.”

“A small world indeed,” Sir Bertram murmured. “Tell us more about your coming into touch with these people Johnson and Company. I am interested.”

Gregory glanced into the shadows. Rawson was out of sight at a huge sideboard only dimly visible at the other end of the room, and the footmen had already departed.

“Well, I’ve told you, haven’t I, the story of my rescue on the river by Wu Ling?” Gregory proceeded. “It seems this fellow is one of the firm and does all the native trading for Johnson and Company. Naturally I called upon him before I sailed and found him in their warehouse—the most astonishing place! I told him of what had happened to poor Hammonde and that only one of the Images had turned up. He listened to my story without a smile or a single word. Then he took me into a sort of holy of holies the firm had—a secret treasure house at the back of the warehouse, filled with a marvellous collection of curios—turned on the electric light—what an amazing anachronism it seemed!—and there, smiling at me, was the other Image we looted from the temple, and which had been stolen from the train—the one they called the Soul.”

“My ethical sense,” Sir Bertram observed, “in the question of ‘meum and tuum’, has always been a little elastic, but did you possibly suggest that he was a buyer of stolen goods?”

“My previous acquaintance with Wu Ling saved me from wasting my breath,” Gregory replied drily. “From what he said, however, I gathered that he did not immediately, at any rate, intend to dispose of the Image.”

“Mr. Endacott mentioned in the course of conversation,” Borroughes put in, “that the business, although it had been immensely prosperous, was being wound up. The Image that you are speaking of, therefore, is certain some time or other to come upon the market.”

Sir Bertram rose to his feet.

“We will have our coffee served in the library,” he suggested. “Then we can pass into Henry’s sanctum and examine our new possession. You haven’t seen it yet, Borroughes, have you?”

“Not yet, Sir Bertram.”

They left the room, crossed a fine tapestry-hung hall, and entered the great library with its arched roof and famous stained-glass window; a room of magnificent proportions. There were bookshelves reaching to the ceiling, and opposite the fireplace a wonderfully carved Jacobean sideboard on which coffee and liqueurs were already arranged. They lingered here for a few minutes. Then, with a brief word of invitation, Sir Bertram led the way to an inner door.

“You don’t mind our invading your sanctum for a minute or two, Henry?” he asked, looking round towards his brother.

“By no means,” was the slightly formal reply. “I was expecting your visit.”

They passed through into a much smaller apartment, furnished with the most complete and unexpected severity. There was a touch even of monasticism in the bare, white stone walls, the high oriel windows and the furniture of austere shape and design. Here, again, were bookcases, containing, however, works of a different order from the calf-bound volumes in the library. There were books on heraldry, on china, on silver, on ancient furniture, books on all the various forms of art, starting from the Renaissance, to the most modern period, and one entire shelf was taken up by manuscript records, each stamped on the outside with the arms of Ballaston. On a pedestal of black oak, standing in the farther corner of the apartment, was the Image of the Body. Henry held a lamp above his head and the four men looked at this new family possession in silence.

“As a specimen of allegorical carving,” Sir Bertram mused, “it is a marvellous piece of work. One could conceive that this might be the countenance of a man, even of a god, from whom every element of spirituality was entirely absent.”

“A piece of work of great constructive merit, I have no doubt,” Henry Ballaston observed. “As a subject for daily contemplation, I find it displeasing.”

“Most people would, I think, agree with you, Henry,” his brother conceded. “All the same we must not forget, the family fortunes being what they are, that, although the expert whom we have had down rather scoffs at the idea of there being jewels concealed inside, he expressed his opinion that the Image as it stands, with as much of its history as one would like to make known, is probably exceedingly valuable.”

“A specimen of your purchases in China, Mr. Gregory?” Borroughes enquired.

“I didn’t buy it; I stole it,” was the young man’s cool reply. “One does that sort of thing over there. I stole two of them. My friend and accomplice had his throat cut, however, and only one of the Images got through to the coast—the wrong one, I am afraid.”

The agent looked doubtfully at his young host. It was a continual source of discomfiture to him that he never knew when a Ballaston was in earnest.

“I give you all warning,” Gregory continued, “that this Image when separated from its companion is a pretty dangerous possession. According to the legend it is supposed to have a debasing and malevolent effect upon its owners.”

“Well, there’s only Henry in this house to be corrupted,” Sir Bertram observed, stirring his coffee thoughtfully. “Nothing could make my reputation in the County worse than it is, could it, Borroughes?”

The agent looked uncomfortable. He was a person who laughed a great deal but who was utterly devoid of a sense of humour. Henry Ballaston frowned in troubled fashion.

“Your life is not a careful one, Bertram,” he said, “and you are not exactly a pattern to your neighbours. Actual wrong-doing, however, is a different thing. No man yet has ever found opportunity to say a word against the honour of a Ballaston.”

“That may come,” his brother predicted, stretching out his hand towards the cigarette box. “We can’t go on much longer without money, can we, Borroughes?”

“It is a difficult proposition, Sir Bertram,” the agent replied gravely.

“Swindling to a city millionaire is second nature,” Sir Bertram sighed; “financial acumen, I believe it is called. A county squire, however, finds few opportunities.—Off already, Borroughes?” he added, as the latter approached with outstretched hand.

“If you will excuse me, Sir Bertram. It’s a darkish ride home and I have a sale in Norwich to-morrow and some accounts to look through to-night. Glad to see you back again, Mr. Gregory. Good night, Mr. Ballaston.”

“I will accompany you to the door,” Henry Ballaston announced, rising to his feet. “I may possibly not return,” he added, turning to his brother. “You will naturally have a great deal to say to Gregory.”

The two men left the room together. Gregory took an easy-chair with his back to the Image. His father refilled his glass with liqueur brandy, drew a box of cigarettes to his side and seated himself opposite his son. These were almost their first few minutes alone.

“Well, Gregory, old man, you couldn’t quite bring it off then?” he observed.

“Not quite, sir,” his son acknowledged. “We did our best.”

“No doubt about that. You had a narrow shave of it, as it was.”

“And all for nothing, I am afraid.”

Sir Bertram rose to his feet.

“I’m not so sure about that,” he rejoined. “The man they sent down from Christie’s spent over an hour examining that Image. I’ve never seen a fellow so interested in my life. He had to give it up in the end, but he wasn’t any more satisfied than I am.”

Sir Bertram had wandered off into the other room, lifted the Image from its pedestal and, bringing it back, placed it upon his knee. The lamplight flashed upon its black, polished surface. To Gregory, its expression seemed, if possible, even more vicious than ever.

“Gregory,” his father continued thoughtfully, “you know who told me the story. He was a man absolutely incapable of falsehood, and he knew what he was talking about. He was the greatest man in China in those days. I am as certain as I sit here that either this Image or the other one contains the whole of the treasure of the temple.”

“Why not have this one broken up?” Gregory suggested.

“And risk getting blown to pieces?”

The young man shook his head.

“A bit too thick, that,” he protested. “I have a wonderful amount of faith in the story, but I should think any explosive that was ever put inside there would be a little mouldy by this time.”

“I’m not so sure,” Sir Bertram reflected. “Those priests were always devils at protecting themselves against marauders. Besides, in any case, the thing as it stands is worth something.”

“Let’s sell it then?” Gregory proposed eagerly.

His father’s eyebrows were slightly uplifted.

“Has the old gentleman been exercising his malevolent influence upon you?” he enquired, with a faintly sardonic smile. “Is that why you sent it me home in such a hurry?”

Gregory frowned gloomily.

“I simply know that I detest it,” he declared vigorously.

Sir Bertram’s expression, cynical only at first, suddenly developed humorous qualities.

“One might almost imagine you terrified by the superstition, my ingénu son,” he murmured, turning the Image around and gazing into its features. “Gad, you’re ugly, though! Different style, of course. Our vices are, after all, the vices of gentle people. Here we have an eloquent personification of brutality and bestiality. In real life I doubt whether this fellow would even be able to conduct an orgy with distinction.”

“Put the damned thing down, Father,” Gregory begged suddenly. “I lived with it for three weeks and I hate it like hell.”

Sir Bertram strolled into the inner room and replaced the Image upon the pedestal. Then he came back to his son and laid his hand for a moment upon his shoulder.

“Gregory,” he said, “you’re not going to tell me in cold blood that you actually believe in the superstition.”

“Of course I don’t believe, but listen. I wanted the other Image. Johnson and Company wanted mine. I wouldn’t sell—not likely, after all we’d been through. It was no good their naming a price for theirs, because we had no money. Do you know what Wu Ling, the Chinaman who rescued me and who apparently is one of the principals in the firm, suggested?”

“Well?”

“He offered to gamble with me—the winner to have both statues.”

“How like a Chinaman,” Sir Bertram murmured. “It was a good sporting offer, anyway.”

“He got a pack of cards,” Gregory continued. “Well—he won! I was to send this Image back from the steamer. I swear that when I left the warehouse I meant to do so. I had lost fairly, I suppose, and it seemed to me from the first like a debt of honour. I returned on board the ship. Then I looked at the Image and looked at it, and somehow the thing didn’t seem so clear to me, and—damn it, I sent the coolies away and kept it!”

“Anything else?” Sir Bertram asked, after a moment’s pause.

“Yes. You know that this man Endacott’s niece was on board on her way back to England—Madame’s niece, too, I suppose, by-the-by. Lord, what a mess-up!—Dad, we talk about most things pretty nakedly to one another, but we don’t often talk about women.”

“One doesn’t,” his father murmured.

“Listen then,” Gregory went on. “She is young, entirely innocent, entirely adorable. I like her better than any girl I have ever come across in my life. We became great friends. Then we danced at night. You know what that means when you get near the Red Sea, and the Canal, and all the rest of it. Of course you do. We danced every evening, and all the time, down in my stateroom, that Image was leering at me. I began to feel that I was losing control of myself. I tried to keep away from her. She wouldn’t have it. I made an ass of myself once and she forgave me. She thought that she herself had perhaps misunderstood. I was so ashamed of myself that, fortune or no fortune, I tried to throw the damned thing overboard.”

“And what happened?”

“It pitched in an outslung boat and was brought back to me,” Gregory explained grimly. “Afterwards—well, I offended again.”

Sir Bertram sighed.

“I suppose God gave us the instincts,” he murmured, “but the devil has toyed with them since.”

“She scarcely spoke to me again,” Gregory concluded, “except out of her sweetness when we met face to face on the dock at Marseilles. It was because of her I went on to Monte Carlo, instead of coming straight home, and of course I won. I played baccarat at Rome and won again. I brought home more pocket money than I ever had before in my life. But I hate that Image like hell. Now you know everything.”

Sir Bertram moved to the sideboard, helped himself to a whisky and soda, and returned to his place.

“Confidence for confidence,” he said, stretching himself out comfortably. “I’m not going to even comment upon your little confession, Gregory, because I don’t know what sort of a fellow your friend Wu Ling was and I’ve never seen a Chinaman yet I’d trust for five seconds with a pack of cards. I’ve bad news for you, though, I’m afraid. We are pretty nearly broke. We can’t go on more than a few more months.”

“As bad as that!”

“I don’t know how it is,” Sir Bertram continued, “but luck always seems against the gambler who takes the big chances—especially when it really matters. If any man knows the points of a horse, I do. If there’s any amateur understands racing, I do. I bought my yearlings right. I trained with Sam Roscoe, and there’s none better, and the luck of old Harry’s pursued me this year, just as it did last. Up to three days before the race Little June—you remember her—was favourite for the Derby. When you left England you know what I was doing. I wasn’t waiting for starting price. I put on all I could at long odds. I got forty, thirty, twenty, and at eighteen I left off. Then, without any rhyme or reason in the thing, she went lame. She’s done for. She’ll never race again. It isn’t worth telling you the whole story. I’ve finished—haven’t a horse left. And I still owe Roscoe a thousand or two. You know old Mason, the bookmaker—well, I owe him seven thousand. ‘Pay me when you can, Sir Bertram,’ he said, ‘and shake hands on it.’ And I shook hands with him, but, Gregory—God forgive me—I’ve never paid him. The lands bring us in about thirteen thousand, taxes five thousand, interest on the mortgages a little more than the rest. Query—how do we live? God knows!”

There was a short silence. Gregory had thrown away his cigarette and his hands were clenching the arms of his chair. His face was set. The ghost of this threatened horror had risen up between them.

“It means breaking the entail, I suppose?” he muttered at last. “You and I can do it.”

Sir Bertram rose to his feet, fidgeted for a moment upon the hearth-rug, then stooped down and laid his hand upon his son’s shoulder. So far as it was possible for him to show emotion, he was showing it then.

“My lad,” he said, “I am the sixteenth baronet. You would be the seventeenth. Sentiment, but hell all the same, isn’t it? And, mark you, before we can sign the papers, I swear that Henry will shoot us. He’s living in a panic. I feel his eyes upon me wherever I go.”

“Is there any other way out at all?” Gregory asked despairingly.

His father once more disappeared into the inner room and returned carrying the Image.

“Gregory,” he confided, “I believe in the legend. If the jewels aren’t in this one they are in the other.”

There was something in Sir Bertram’s eyes which spoke of enterprise—something definite to be attempted. Gregory responded to it at once.

“I’ll go back to China and have another try if you say so,” he declared.

Sir Bertram glanced round the room as though he feared a listener. His voice, which was always low, became a whisper.

“You needn’t,” he confided. “The Soul is up at the Great House.”

CHAPTER II

Ralph Endacott, erstwhile professor of Oxford University and partner in the great Oriental house of Johnson and Company, now an English country gentleman, sat before wide-flung French windows leading out on to the lawn, sunken gardens and miniature park of the Great House at Market Ballaston. In front of him was an oak writing table upon which were pen and ink and a steel-clamped coffer, apparently of great age but attached to which was a modern Bramah lock. Upon the blotting paper were a few sheets of yellow, unfamiliar-looking, thick paper, covered with weird hieroglyphics; in his left hand a pair of magnifying glasses. The scent of the roses from outside had disturbed him in the midst of his labour. He rang a silver bell which stood upon the edge of the table—rang it a second time. Claire, a flutter of cool white, swung herself out of a hammock close at hand and approached lazily.

“What is it, Nunks dear?” she enquired. “You know very well that none of the servants can hear that bell, only me.”

“It was you I wanted,” her uncle declared. “Tell me, child, in what devil-sent spirit of idiocy did I waste all those years in a musty, God-forsaken country, whose only charm is that no one can understand it and no one ever will. Was I a fool or am I a fool now?”

She laughed softly, leaning against the side of the open window.

“You were a fool,” she decided. “I was a fool too, because I didn’t believe in England. I didn’t believe in the green, or the trees, the flowers, the softness, the rest of it all.”

“You were too young to be foolish,” he said. “It is only the old who can find the way to folly. Do you know that during the last few days I have discovered some manuscripts which, if I had been seated in that musk-scented den in the corner of the warehouse, with the smell of the East in my nostrils and the soft, purring call of mystery all the time in the atmosphere, would have sent me into a state of wild excitement. Here, to-day, I am gently and pleasantly interested. I have learned values.”

“Tell me about the manuscripts,” she begged, passing finally through the window and throwing herself into an easy-chair close at hand.

“There is a love poem here,” he confided, “written in his own handwriting by an emperor to a singing girl. I shall lock it away. It was not meant to be read by barbarians. Here are the details of the first plot to overcome the monarchy, and here,” he went on, “is a document more interesting than any I have yet come across—more difficult to decipher, because there are priestly words in it and phrases not used in modern Chinese. However, I have mastered it so far as to know what it is about. In this atmosphere it is strange even to dream of it.”

He paused for a moment. It was a lazy hour in a July afternoon. Even the birds had ceased to sing, but there were bees humming amongst the flowers and the sound of a reaping machine in a meadow on the other side of the red brick wall. Every now and then the roses bent their heads in a flutter of the light west breeze and lent wafts of perfume to an air already sweet with the odour of verbena and heliotrope.

“What about that last manuscript?” she asked.

He tapped the strange piece of thick, stained paper beneath his fingers, yellow in places, drooping at the edges, covered with what seemed to her to be meaningless hieroglyphics in the faintest of pink-coloured ink.

“This,” he said, “is the letter of the High Priest of the Temple of Yun-Tse, addressed to the Emperor, and telling him what means he had adopted for guarding the secret jewels.”

“Yun-Tse,” she murmured, “the home of the Body and the Soul?”

He nodded.

“These few lines,” he continued, smoothing out the paper thoughtfully with his long, bony forefinger, “to any one who can understand them, might easily be worth one of the great fortunes of the world.”

“What are you going to do with it?” she enquired curiously.

He made no immediate reply, first folding up the letter and replacing it in the coffer, which he carefully locked. Then he rose to his feet and led the way out into the gardens.

“Tell me about that letter,” she begged once more, as they seated themselves under the cedar tree.

“Part of the old story, at any rate, seems to be true,” he confided. “Those two Images have always contained a secret hiding place, and somewhere inside them are stored the jewels of the temple. On the back of the document are instructions in the cipher of the priests, which as yet I have not been able to translate. I am not sure that I shall ever attempt to.”

“But why not?” she asked wonderingly.

“If I did,” he murmured, “I should know how to appropriate the jewels.”

“But don’t you want them?” she persisted. “Wouldn’t that be very wonderful?”

He looked up through the boughs of the tree; a worn, tired-looking man, over whose high cheek bones the skin seemed tightly drawn. In ordinary European costume he appeared somehow to have shrunken, to have lost flesh and a certain amount of presence.

“It is nothing,” he said. “Since I arrived in England it has cost me many a weary hour to invest my money. Yesterday I heard from the accountants who are winding up the affairs of Johnson and Company, and it seems that there are still great sums to come.”

“All made in that strange warehouse!” she exclaimed.

“There and in Alexandria,” he replied. “I went out to China, Claire, as your father may have told you, giving up a Chair worth eight hundred a year at Oxford, and owning, perhaps, a couple of thousand pounds. I became sort of unofficial adviser to Johnson and Company simply because there were things about China which no other European knew. I was very useful to them without a doubt, and in the end they made me a partner. Now that we are winding up the business, it seems that my share is worth something between three and four hundred thousand pounds.”

“Amazing!” the girl gasped.

“Here,” he continued, “in these few sentences may lie another fortune. I am an old man, and I ask myself what good could it do to me to place those secret jewels in the markets of the world, to hang them round the necks and the shoulders of American millionairesses and the world’s courtesanes? We cannot breathe sweeter air than this, or more delicious perfumes. We cannot look upon fairer scenes. We could not eat more, drink more or sleep more. For your clothes and such pleasures as you may care to indulge in you have already carte blanche. You are not one of those who will need money to buy herself a husband. So tell me, child, what could we do with more money?”

“I can think of nothing,” she acknowledged.

“Then, for the moment, at any rate, we will let the fortune remain where it is,” he decided, “and keep our fingers unstained from sacrilege. Is this a fairy prince, Claire, or a very handsome young man in grey tweeds?”

She drew a little, fluttering breath. Her fingers closed over his.

“Nunks,” she said, “it is Gregory Ballaston.”

“That is a young man,” her uncle observed, “with whom I might have something to say. Wave to him, Claire. He need not tug at that bell.”

Gregory Ballaston, hat in hand, and probably less at his ease than on any previous occasion in his life, crossed the lawn towards them. Claire, leaning forward, watched him intently; her uncle with subdued and somewhat sardonic amusement. His attitude towards them both was entirely tentative. Claire offered her hand which he took gratefully.

“I have come,” he announced, “to welcome you to Ballaston.”

“Your obvious duty as our landlord,” Endacott remarked, also offering his hand. “Pray sit down.”

Gregory dragged up a wicker chair, with an air of relief.

“When you spoke of settling down in Norfolk,” he observed, turning to Claire, “I had no idea that we might possibly become such near neighbours.”

“Nor I, at the time,” she answered. “How beautiful your house is. I spent quite half an hour this morning looking at it from the other side of the garden.”

“I hope,” he said, a little anxiously, “that you are going to give us the pleasure of seeing you there this evening.”

“Your father has been kind enough to ask us to dine,” Mr. Endacott rejoined. “I have just despatched a note, accepting with much pleasure.”

“I think you are very generous,” Gregory declared, with a certain contriteness in his tone.

“The adjective seems to me to demand explanation,” Mr. Endacott ruminated.

“You know very well, sir,” Gregory continued, “that there are circumstances which would have justified you in refusing this invitation and refusing to meet me anywhere.”

“Ah!” Mr. Endacott murmured. “That affair of the Image, of course.”

Claire rose to her feet. Gregory waved her back again.

“Please listen, Miss Endacott,” he begged. “I want you to hear what I have to say. You know what happened?”

She assented gravely.

“My uncle has told me,” she admitted.

“I can assure you, sir,” Gregory went on, “that when I left those extraordinary premises of yours, I meant to send you the thing straight back. I had one last look at it, however, and the longer I looked, the more uncertain I felt about the whole business. I kept telling myself that it was a debt of honour. Then I kept on finding poisonous ideas in my brain—ideas which I honestly believe I have never had before. I was parting with perhaps a great treasure just on the turn of a card—a Chinaman’s turn of the card, too.”

“You don’t suggest,” Mr. Endacott began——

“I suggest nothing,” Gregory interrupted. “All I know is that my moral self—if I may use rather a grandiloquent term—was completely upset. I locked myself into my cabin with the Image. Soon after the ship sailed. Of course I know,” he went on, “this must all sound stupidly inadequate, but there it is. Superstition or no superstition, I swear that that Image has an evil influence. I have proved it.”

Claire looked thoughtfully up into the trees; her uncle stroked his chin with an air of profound meditation.

“Well,” he enquired, “have you found the fortune yet?”

“Not yet,” Gregory admitted. “My father has had an expert down and he can discover no trace of any hiding place in it.”

Mr. Endacott smiled very faintly.

“You must find that disappointing,” he observed, “after all your efforts.”

“If the jewels are not in this one,” Gregory said, “they are probably in the other.”

“Ah!” Mr. Endacott murmured.

“If it is not an impertinent question, sir,” he proceeded, “is it true that Johnson and Company are relinquishing the business?”

“Quite true.”

“Then the other Image——?”

“The other Image is not for sale,” Mr. Endacott said calmly.

“Who has it?” Gregory ventured.

“Well,” Mr. Endacott confided, “the members of the firm were Wu Ling, a nebulous Mr. Johnson and myself. When I consider,” he continued, “the extreme measures which you and your friend took to possess yourselves of these Images—measures, by the way, which may be justified by precedent but hardly by morality—I can scarcely, do you know, bring myself to reveal whether it is the domicile of Wu Ling, the possible mansion of Mr. Johnson in Alexandria, or my very conveniently near abode here, which might be indicated as the scene of your future adventures.”

Gregory was already sunburnt, but he felt his cheeks grow hotter.

“Well, I suppose I asked for that,” he admitted grimly. “What about the Image, which is at present in our possession? To whom do you consider that it belongs?”

“The firm being now dissolved,” Mr. Endacott mused, “the matter perhaps requires reflection. I will answer you later on. In the meantime, I shall leave you and my niece to better your acquaintance. My Eastern habits prevail. I desire to sleep.”

He made his way towards the house; a lank, shambling figure, yet not without a certain dignity in his abstracted movements. Gregory glanced anxiously towards his companion. She remained seated in her chair, munching some chocolates from a box.

“Have one?” she invited, holding it out towards him.

He declined, but was conscious of a poignant sense of relief. With the airy tact of her sex she had demonstrated her position. It was to be peace, not war; oblivion, if not forgiveness.

“What an extraordinary stroke of fortune it is,” he declared, “that you should have chosen this particular corner of Norfolk to settle down in.”

“It makes the world seem a small place, doesn’t it?” she remarked, frankly licking her delicately manicured fingers and placing the lid upon the box with a great air of determination. “It was my aunt living here, of course, which decided us.”

“Madame,” he confided, “has been the one picturesque figure in this neighbourhood for years. She was always beautiful, and she is always on the point of being cured. I believe that my father looks upon her as his greatest friend.”

“She is very attractive,” Claire admitted. “She wears the most beautiful clothes I have ever seen. I wonder whether it is a proof of vanity or of an immense sense of self-respect which leads a woman who spends her whole life upon a couch to take such pains with her appearance.”

“If it be vanity, there is a leaven of philanthropy in it,” he observed, “because every one loves looking at her. Besides, I believe now she really is going to get well. This new doctor who comes over from Norwich has performed some wonderful cures. It isn’t as though the weakness had been born with her. It was all the result of that motor accident, you know.”

“It would be wonderful if she got well,” Claire murmured.

They talked for a while of trifles; the absence of other neighbours, the country around.

“When one gets over the spell of this lotuslike existence,” she asked him, “what is there to do here—in the way of exercise, I mean?”

He looked down at the sunken lawn.

“Your tennis court used to be good,” he said. “One of ours is quite playable and there are plenty of golf links a few miles away.”

“Where does one buy horses?”

“At Norwich. Dad will tell you all about that. The hunting isn’t bad. My father is master of one of the packs that hunt near here. They begin cubbing at the end of next month. The shooting parties will give you plenty of exercise too, if you are fond of walking.”

“I like all these things,” she admitted, a little more earnestly, “and I love this garden. The peace of it is almost stupefying. I feel somehow or other that I should like to grow old in this atmosphere.”

“You never would,” he rejoined.

She laughed at him. Suddenly she was serious. She leaned forward in her chair.

“In a few minutes,” she said, “I must go in to see Madame. Before you leave, though, I want to ask you just one thing. What was the chief reason which made you in the first instance come over to China on that mad adventure?”

“Money,” he answered bluntly.

“But why do you need money? You have the most beautiful home I ever saw.”

He laughed with a bitterness which he took no pains to conceal.

“It is to keep that home,” he explained, “that we need money. Perhaps you scarcely understand the troubles that a certain class of English people have had to face lately, especially people who come of extravagant stock, like my father and me. It wasn’t pure love of adventure that took me out to China. It was the hope of saving Ballaston if I succeeded.”

“Is it really as bad as that?” she asked sympathetically.

“Worse,” he rejoined. “I believe that my father has finally made up his mind that there is no chance of saving the place.”

She was thoughtful for several moments, affected even perhaps more than she realised by the note of dejection in his tone. His enterprise, which had presented itself before to her imagination as a sort of buccaneering feat, not exactly reprehensible but faintly tinged with sordidness, suddenly showed itself in a new light. She realised alike the chivalry of it and the pathos, and how near he had been to success.

“Unless, after all, you discover the jewels,” she observed, a little abruptly.

“I am afraid there isn’t much chance of that,” he sighed. “Somehow, over here it seems absurd to take these superstitions seriously, but I can’t get away from the feeling that if the jewels are in existence they will never be discovered so long as the Images are separated.”

She leaned a little towards him.

“The jewels do exist,” she assured him softly.

A touch of the old frenzied earnestness came back to him. His eyes glistened, not altogether with cupidity, but with the adventurer’s pride in success.

“How do you know that?” he demanded.

She hesitated for a few moments. Yet, after all, why should there be any secrecy? The adventure, such as it had been, was finished. Here in this quiet backwater of life there seemed something grotesque about it all. Nevertheless she spoke uneasily, almost reluctantly.

“My uncle has discovered a manuscript,” she confided. “The jewels are there.”

“In which Image?” he enquired breathlessly.

She shook her head.

“I cannot tell you any more,” she said. “In fact, I do not know any more. Everything rests with Uncle. If you can persuade him to let you have a copy of the manuscript or to tell you what is in it, perhaps, after all, you will find yourself rich again. If I can help I will.”

“If one only knew in which Image!” he muttered.

“Why, what difference could that make?” she asked, smiling. “If they are in yours, well, some day or other I am sure you will be able to secure them. If they are in his, then I am afraid your adventure will have been in vain.”

The sunlight caught her hair as she leaned once more back against the cushions. Gregory suddenly forgot the jewels. He was uneasy, unsure of himself, curiously stirred by an unexpected wave of feeling. His sense of proportion diminished. There had been a cataclysm and nothing remained on earth but this old-world garden with its elm trees and its odorous cedar, and Claire!

“It will never have been in vain,” he declared, with a curious little break in his tone.