The red dragon : a China story of to-day

Front matter

THE RED DRAGON By Lewis Stanton Palen

STEPHEN BROOKS, a young attaché at the American Consulate in Canton, learns of a strange and powerful society, the Taian or League of Peace. Through a daring expedition to its most secret of councils, he learns that back of the Taian stand the Reds of Russia. Unfortunately, Brooks has fallen in love with a young Russian girl, whom he later discovers to be his principal political enemy. The story of Brooks’s battle against hidden forces and of his love makes a book which holds its reader fascinated.

Its Oriental atmosphere, its understanding of the Chinese, and its authentic rendering of the crises through which China > is passing, at once put it out of the class of the commonplace novel and into that of the adventure story par excellence.

Chapter I Into The Unknown

THE fingers of Consul-General Whitehead beat a nervous tattoo on the edge of his desk as he essayed the precarious passage of a cigar from the right to the left corner of his mouth. His eyes were staring far out across the muddle of tiny sampans and junks which crowded the water-front of Canton below Shameen. But his thoughts were fixed upon the beautifully inscribed Chinese characters in three letters which a younger man, also an American, who was opposite him at the desk, held in his hand. The younger man sat quietly, also deep in thought, waiting for his chief to speak. Finally he was rewarded.

‘I don’t like it, Brooke, my boy; I don’t like it,’ muttered Whitehead without altering his gaze. ‘I’ve felt a real revolution coming on in China ever since old Yuan Shih-kai passed out of the picture. It’s in the air. These constant river piracies aren’t all chance affairs, you know. They mean something — something serious. And these letters from your friend Li Hang-po urging you to come to Kueilin may give us a lead to work on. What is it he says? ‘‘Something unusually important to you and to China.”’ That means only one thing, Brooke, that the counter-revolutionary crowd have some big plan on foot that we don’t want to miss.’

‘Then you would really like to see me go to Kueilin, sir?’ questioned Brooke, leaning forward, a trace of eagerness in his tone.

‘Yes, I should,’ said Whitehead, turning to face his young subaltern. ‘Damn it, Brooke, I hate — to send you into danger. Lord knows, you get into enough of it on your own account; but this seems important. Who knows? It may give us the key to this whole TAIAN movement which I’ll bet a hat is connected with the river piracies in some way or other. ‘“‘Taian’’ — “‘ the Great Peace’’— you say the word means. Do you know what I think it means?’ Whitehead raised his fist to emphasize the revelation:

‘It means, Brooke, that the Russians are mixed up in this business somehow or other, and that they want to paint the poor old Chinese dragon red.’ The fist descended upon the desk with such force that the ink-wells rattled.

Stephen Brooke gazed thoughtfully at his chief. ‘If your guess is correct,’ he said slowly, ‘then any investigating we do must be handled with the greatest care. If Russia is mixed up in the game, there are bound to be international complications, and we’ll have to keep Washington out of it.’ He rose slowly, his mind rapidly playing with his plan of campaign.

‘There’s a boat to Wuchow in the morning, sir,’ he said. ‘I'll catch that and find a junk to

INTO THE UNKNOWN 3 carry me up the Fu to Kueilin. That will land me there in plenty of time.’

‘H’m,’ said Whitehead. ‘When did Li Hang-po say he wanted you?’

‘By the fifteenth day of the fifth moon,’ Brooke replied.

‘Oh, confound the Chinese calendar!’ broke in Whitehead. ‘When is that in English? I never can keep track of the days in this country by their silly system of reckoning.’ |

Brooke smiled. ‘It happens to be June 5th this year, he said. ‘I’ve plenty of time, but there’s no use taking achance. I'll leave to-morrow.’

Whitehead was silent, his gaze occupied again with the junks off Shameen, and Brooke, surmising that the interview was at an end, crossed the hall to his own quarters, his mind already busy with the new adventure, which seemed to assume such an important aspect. Queer, he thought, as he sat down at his desk, how the young Chinese, whose life he had saved months before, should have come back into his world again. He remembered their parting well— Li Hang-po, standing so gravely before him and reciting grimly but with the customary mysteriousness of the Chinese:

‘Clouds gather silently behind hidden clouds. China hears now but the rumblings of the great storm that may soon break forth in all its fury. Some of us have pledged ourselves to resist the storm. You, Your Excellency, might some day be of great import in this struggle.’

‘I?’ Brooke had queried. ‘Tell me what it’s all about. You speak in riddles.’

‘Boats are held up on the river, some here, some there, but always by the same hand —a hand which is but the symbol of many hands. And this hand of many hands will stretch out one day, until all China shall feel it at its throat. Do you follow me, Your Excellency?’

“You mean the secret societies?’ Brooke questioned. The Chinese held up a finger for silence.

‘Some day you may know, if you care to. You like China?’ .

‘Of course I do,’ Brooke replied enthusiastically. ‘I love China, and have a kindly feeling for all your people, Li Hsien-shéng.’

‘Then you shall one day know,’ the Chinese promised as he turned away, leaving the young American to ponder the import of their curious conversation, whose significance was just now beginning to dawn upon him. China and the secret societies! Vague rumors of the machinations of these bodies had crept about Canton for the past year, Brooke recalled, and even if they were too vague to admit of any definite impression, they were still too persistent to be discarded. Yes, it must be the secret societies about which Li Hang-po warned him. The American smiled grimly. Here might be the beginnings of something which would stretch out across the vast reaches of China into Europe. And he was to be let into the secret of it — perhaps to have a hand in stopping that revolution which Whitehead felt sure would come. He put the thought of his adventure out of his mind with something like a sigh and turned to the papers on his desk. Better

INTO THE UNKNOWN 5 have everything in order, he mused. No telling when he would return.

‘You are His Excellency Brooke?’ The note of certainty in the challenge, which might have been natural enough in Canton, where the tall young interpreter of the American Consulate was a familiar figure, was sufficiently unexpected in Wuchow to bring him round with a start to face his Chinese interlocutor. They stood almost alone, save for the sweating coolies who were unloading the steamer which had just brought the American up the West River from Canton. The crowd that came out of the gang-port had rapidly melted into the early morning bustle of Wuchow’s busy river-front during the few moments Brooke stood uncertainly trying to remember which was the road leading to Consulate Hill.

A glance into the inscrutable face of the middle-aged Chinese, assisted by the intuition which Brooke had gained during his five odd years in China, reassured him.

‘Yes, Iam Brooke,’ he answered briefly, ‘but I have not yet received your honorable name.’

‘Li Hang-po sent word to me to arrange for your journey up the Fu to Kueilin,’ the Chinese replied, after giving his name. ‘I have a boat and crew waiting. Is Your Excellency ready to start immediately?’

The American smiled. The matter-of-fact manner in which the Chinese had carried out his mission was quite equal to the best brand of the mysterious in the Oriental which had always fascinated him. Half a dozen foreigners had debarked from the Canton steamer, he reflected, yet this Chinese, with unfailing accuracy, had picked him from the others as his man. An American or an Englishman would have remarked upon it. To the Chinese it was the most natural thing in the world. Brooke, understanding this, realized that any comment upon the matter would be entirely lost upon the emissary of Li Hang-po. He picked up the suit-case which contained his scanty traveling equipment for this unusual voyage and asked simply: ‘Where is the boat?’

The man only turned and led the way. It would take a Chinese to do the thing so gracefully in silence, Brooke mused, as he followed his guide. If there be no need for speech, then why make the effort? seemed to be the philosophy of this inscrutable race. The silence lent, however, only an added gravity to the conduct of his companion. Something was evidently awaiting him at Kueilin, whose full significance he had not yet caught. He only knew that it was certainly some really serious business which was the underlying motive of this arduous trip to the home of the man whose life he had saved.

‘Did Li Hang-po send any message for me?’ he questioned, as they trudged along together.

‘None,’ replied the Chinese laconically. ‘He ordered me to secure a boat and a trustworthy crew. That was all.’

“You know Li Hang-po?’ Brooke pursued.

‘I have never had that honor. I am but a lowly servant in the Cause.’

INTO THE UNKNOWN »

‘Cause?’ repeated Brooke curiously. ‘There is an organization, then?’

The Chinese merely pressed his lips together. Brooke, watching his face closely, realized that he had said more than he intended. But the question seemed to require an answer.

‘You will learn at Kueilin,’ he said. ‘I cannot tell you more. I had understood that you already knew. Since you do not, then Li Hang-po will tell you; otherwise he would not have summoned you for the fifteenth day of the fifth moon.’

Brooke started slightly at the phrase. It was one which each of Li Hang-po’s letters had contained — an adjuration that he should be in Kueilin before that day of the old-fashioned Chinese calendar. That his companion would not tell him more, he felt sure; yet curiosity almost got the better of him. Stifling further questions as useless, he walked along in silence until the Chinese suddenly turned sharply down to the water-front again, where a comfortable, two-cabin boat lay moored. An ancient Kueilinese, whose discolored and broken teeth were the distinguishing marks of a grizzled, weather-beaten countenance, was introduced to the American as the /aodah of the clumsy craft. Brooke hesitated for just a moment, as a member of the crew seized his bag and carried it into one of the cabins. In this time of uncertainty, when piracies on the rivers were the rule rather than the exception, he felt that he was taking no more precaution than he might in boarding the Hudson River night boat. But the momentary doubt vanished with the last word of earnest counsel from the Chinese, who seemed to understand his thought.

‘You need have no fear of your boat and its crew, he said. ‘They have been tried, and we know them to be trustworthy. They will carry you to Kueilin in perfect ease and comfort.’ And with that the strange guide made a low bow to the foreign guest, backed away a few steps, turned swiftly up the bund, and disappeared out of Brooke’s life as abruptly as he had come into it, leaving the young American strangely alone, to watch the crew cast off and head out upon the long journey up the Fu to Kueilin.

CHAPTER IT UNUSUAL TRAVELING COMPANIONS

THREE days later Brooke stood leaning against the cabin of his junk, watching, with the keen admiration of one who knows the black waters, the craftsmanship of the old Kueilinese, whose clever handling of the boat, aided by the almost superhuman efforts of his willing crew, was slowly but surely winning headway against the turbulent current of the stream. The going had been easy enough until they passed the prosperous, forestgirt village of Tao Shui, above which the stream became more and more boisterous, with a rapid every /2 or two, until finally they entered the first long, unbroken succession of nasty, swirling water at Hsin Tsai T’an, through which the junk had to be dragged and guided with consummate care and skill.

Brooke smiled as the captain told him that here he should have the first sight of what his fokz could really do, and watched with interest as the crew, responding with alacrity to the orders of their grizzled captain, took up their stations in preparation for the combat with such a worthy enemy as old Hsin Tsai T’an. The young American’s eyes were riveted on the converging walls and the broad reef of boulders in the stream along the right bank, which narrowed the channel to little more than twice the width of the seemingly flimsy craft that stood alone between him and that raging torrent. Out on the narrow trekking path along the face of the cliff half of the crew were leaning almost prone against the wooden strips that crossed their breasts and carried the individual ropes by which each was attached to the main tow-line that ran out from the top of the mast. The other half of the men had taken their places on the poling planks along the gunwale.

Brooke could not but marvel at the strength which these light-framed men were able to exert against the mighty current. Over it all their incessant trekking chant flung an overtone as wild and rugged as the rocky walls above them. But if the men on the poling planks were toiling, those on the shore seemed to be carrying a giant’s task. Brooke caught his breath when his fascinated glance finally turned from the bronzed bodies of the polers up to their companions at the end of the straining line. The trekking path was ridiculously narrow and ran along at a giddy height, where one false step, one slip of the foot, might mean instant death, not only to the careless one, but to all his mates. He watched ever in the same spell of fascination as the men toiled on without a second’s relaxation. Making the mast bow slightly in recognition of their prowess, they were winning their way literally inch by inch, like their comrades on board, while their own weird chant joined with that from below to phrase a strange, symphonic melody which made the gorge and the forests on the ledges above it seem pregnant with sound.

Toiling, fighting, shouting, the crew finally won its way through the last reach of the rapids and, with the conquered monster behind them, halted to rest from their labors. Brooke spoke enthusiastically to the captain of the magnificent spectacle he had witnessed and then, filling his pipe, went forward to the bow and fell to musing over the strange concatenation of events that had brought him into this eery, fable-ridden region. His mind turned again to the scene in the gambling den that evening when he had been out looking for some of the underlying color of the characteristic life of Canton. The game itself was monotonous and failed entirely to hold his interest, though he never wearied of studying the expressions of the motley group of sedan-chair coolies, porters, sailors, house-boys, and clerks that was regularly lured into the fantan-den by the insatiable penchant of the Chinese for gambling.

As he watched the eager faces, he noticed one young man whose clothes and manners clearly marked him as of unquestionably better class. At first fortune favored him, so that small coins and even dollars accumulated before him. Then came the gambler’s usual tragic reversal of luck. When the pile of silver coins had dwindled to a few coppers and then to nothing, the young aristocrat of this clientéle slipped away from the table without a sign of emotion expressed on his face and disappeared into the street. This would naturally have marked the end of the episode for his observer were it not that, in a very short time, he was back, but without the rich over-garment which had first attracted Brooke’s attention.

The interlude failed to change his luck. Watch, rings, and all the superfluous trinkets which the young Chinese happened to have disappeared down the same road to the pawnshop which the silk coat had taken. When everything had been staked and lost, the youth rose quietly from his place, with the same inscrutable expression, and made for the door. But this time something in his hand caught Brooke’s eye and drew him after the boy into the street, just in time to see the lad swallow the contents of a small vial. Snatching him up without ceremony, he forced him into a rickshaw and hurried him off to his quarters at the Consulate in time to administer a powerful emetic that robbed the dose of opium of its prey. Then followed the redemption of his pawned articles and the dispatch home to the parent whom Li Hang-po had felt he would not be able to face after his gaming losses.

Although the boy and his father had both at once written to return to him the funds he had expended on the lad’s rehabilitation and to thank him with all the grace and sincerity of the Chinese language, it was months later that the first of the three letters urging his trip to Kueilin had come to him.

‘Strange,’ Brooke muttered as he put his pipe back into his pocket and rose, ‘what unexpected results can come from so trivial an incident.’

With all his absorption in the customs and ways of men, the beauties of nature exerted an almost mystic spell over Stephen Brooke. His interest had never been a scientific one, so far from it, in fact, that he was constantly at a loss to recall the names of even some of the most familiar wild and garden flowers; yet the majestic silence of a forest or the swiftness of a rushing stream never failed to set in vibration chords of admiration and enthusiasm.

The scenery along the Fu offered constant incentive for the imagination to plunge itself deep into the beauties of ever-changing, wild, and romantic nature pictures. Half from a desire to touch the reality of his unusual background, and half to relieve the monotony of the journey, Brooke slipped over the side and made his way upon jutting rocks to the shore. Free from all thoughts save those inspired by the welcome surroundings, he trudged happily along the rocky tow-path until he emerged from the shelter of a forest toa high promontory, round which the river wound in a sharp curve, and slipped lazily down upon a bed of soft moss, where he drew from his pocket a copy of the ‘Liao Chai’ and was soon absorbed in one of its ghost stories which seemed peculiarly well adapted to the wild, romantic region about him.

He had not progressed very far with his reading when his attention was distracted by faint sounds in the distance. At first he paid no heed to them, merely thinking that his own crew had resumed its march. Then, as he turned a page and stopped to listen for a moment, he realized that the cries came from the opposite direction. Stories of river pirates, thrown into higher relief by the fiction in which his mind had been engrossed, flashed through his thoughts as he jumped to his feet. He thrust the book back into his pocket and, stopping only long enough to inspect the automatic which Whitehead’s warnings had induced him to carry, started off at a trot, making as fast time as the narrowness of the tow-path and the bad footing would permit.

The shouting grew more distinct as he progressed, until, when he rounded another of the rocky promontories, he burst full upon the cause of it all. Just where the river swirled in a fierce rapid around the foot of a rocky cliff he saw a house-boat, listing badly, with some of the crew screaming and gesticulating on the bank, toward which they were attempting to drag the apparently wrecked craft.

Taking in the situation at a glance, Brooke hurried forward. A sailor explained briefly what had happened. The rudder had broken in the rapids, allowing the boat to drift helplessly against a rock, which stove a hole in her planks and let the water pour in. In answer to Brooke's inquiry as to who the passengers were, the sailor explained in a flood of Chinese that there were two foreigners, an old man and a lady, besides a Chinese gentleman.

Brooke had already stripped off his coat and now threw his weight on the line. If it were in general a humanitarian duty to save, it was doubly so in the foreigner’s code in China if there were others of his kind in danger. A swift survey showed him that the passengers were in no immediate peril of their lives, as the boat had passed through the vicious rapids which had been her ' undoing and was now grounded in the shallow water in a much less turbulent eddy. Once the junk was hauled out of danger, the problem seemed simply to be the transfer of the passengers with their luggage to the shore as speedily as possible. While he had been directing the stillexcited members of the crew in their effort to handle the tow-lines in such a way that they would exert the greatest force, he had been surprised by the appearance of a girl at the companionway of the wrecked craft. Perhaps it was the unusual setting for the picture, perhaps it was something in the subject itself; in any case Brooke was surprised and a bit irritated to have waked to the fact that he had stopped in the middle of a sentence to the crew and was standing gazing at her. Again, perhaps it was the irritation, perhaps it was the dramatic appeal of the situation that had spurred him on to redouble the efforts of the men on the lines to bring the boat beyond the greedy fingers of the swirling current.

* After the girl had turned back into the cabin, ten minutes of further tugging brought the badly listed boat to a somewhat more upright position and to a point from which the passengers might easily be brought ashore. This done, Brooke made his way aboard. Apparently the girl had been watching his approach, for, as he climbed up on the narrow deck, she opened the door and stepped out.

‘I hardly know how to thank you,’ she said in perfect English, with the slightest suggestion of an accent whose origin puzzled Brooke until she introduced herself. ‘Our crew lost their heads and were so excited that I feared we should never reach the shore, and the whole affair has frightened my poor father terribly.’

‘I’m extremely sorry,’ murmured Brooke, slightly embarrassed by the perfect composure and poise of the girl before him, whom he had already judged, in his first glance at her, to be not more than twenty.

‘But it is all safely over now, thanks to your miraculous appearance,’ she replied; then added almost abruptly: ‘I am Alexandra Goluboff.’

‘My name is Stephen Brooke,’ returned the American, bowing and cursing inwardly the perfect simplicity of the girl, which made him feel so ill at ease. However, if she noticed it, she gave ne sign and, holding the door open for him, said:

‘Please come inside.’

Brooke followed her into the cabin and was shocked at the first sight of the object to which the girl introduced him. With the daughter so pleasing, he was unprepared for this grinning idiot whom she presented as her father. He had an over-large head with a face pitted by smallpox, and with a skin of a pallid, yellow hue. Hollow cheeks, a flat nose and a big mouth, set in a bristly mustache and beard, went to make up the revolting countenance that surmounted a lean, short, twisted body. But it was left for his eyes to contribute the most unpleasant element of his whole appearance. As Brooke stepped forward to acknowledge the introduction, the man giggled in such a stupid way that he caught himself involuntarily jerking back his outstretched hand with an instinctive feeling of loathing; for the expression of the eyes suggested to him a horse about to bite. With an effort, Brooke forced a smile of greeting and, finding that old Goluboff spoke no more English than he did Russian, reflected with a feeling of relief that there would be no direct conversation between them.

With this unpleasant presentation hardly over, the girl turned to make known the third member of their party, Dr. Ma, who briefly explained, as he shook hands in the European fashion, that he was from Singapore, and who seemed much more urbane than Brooke himself. But for certain slightly distinctive elements in his finely featured face, one might have taken him for a European of some indeterminate ancestry. Yet to Brooke, who was thoroughly acquainted with the local characteristics of the different provinces, his build, delicate, yet strong, together with the lines of his face, announced him as being from Kwangtung. He spoke perfect English and later admitted, in answer to Brooke’s queries regarding his speech, that he had taken his degree at Cambridge.

With the introductions over, the next step was the transport of passengers and luggage to the shore.

‘Fortunately,’ explained Alexandra Goluboff, who appeared to be the real leader of the party,

‘we have brought little with us, so that the moying of our belongings will cause no great trouble.’

The real difficulty arose in persuading the girl’s father to attempt the passage over the slippery rocks to the shore. With the party all out on deck, the old man finally balked, shaking his big head and muttering in a sort of gibberish, which the girl nevertheless seemed to understand, his refusal to leave the boat.

‘I’m afraid there is no other way but for you to carry him, Mr. Brooke,’ the girl said anxiously. ‘He doesn’t think he can keep his footing on the rocks and he is deathly afraid of water. He is not very strong, you see, and is quite uncertain in his steps.’

‘No trouble at all,’ Brooke replied, with a reassuring smile; ‘that is, if you think he will trust himself to me.’

While the girl spoke a few words to her father, the American watched rather pityingly her efforts to persuade the mentally deficient man to overcome his fear. The interlude gave him an excellent opportunity to observe the girl’s singular beauty. He decided again that she could hardly be over twenty and he found himself watching the high lights of the sun playing in the lustrous, dark hair that bound her well-shaped head in a heavy plait. Clear, deep-blue eyes gave wonderful life and spirit to the well-bred face with the straight, fine nose and clear-cut, energetic chin, and her whole expression breathed youthful freshness and a spirit of enterprise. She was buta girl, there was no mistaking it; but about the lines of her mouth there were traces of a determination which only sadness could have furrowed.

They made an extraordinary picture, standing there on the deck of the house-boat — this girl, so apparently born for beauty and laughter, into whose life sadness had crept, and the distorted, cringing old man who was her father. Brooke shook his head in pity at the sight.

‘Cause enough in such a parent,’ he reflected, ‘to bring ineffable sorrow into the life of the daughter.’

Dr. Ma had taken the opportunity afforded by the consultation to arrange his effects and shortly appeared to announce that he had taken the liberty of packing old Goluboff’s as well. The girl thanked him briefly and then turned to Brooke to report to him that her father had finally consented to being carried ashore. Before he had time to change his mind, the tall American picked him up and bore him, as though he were a child, over the treacherous, slippery rocks to the bank, where he deposited him on a grassy slope with a feeling of sincere relief at having him out of hisarms. Turning back to assist the daughter over the tortuous way, he discovered her already stepping with agile grace from rock to rock and watched her come safely ashore to hurry to the old man and assure herself that he was all right. Brooke then turned his attention to the crew and arranged for the transport of the few pieces of luggage.

When everything had been deposited beside the stranded party on the bank, the American decided to make one more survey of the wrecked house-boat to be sure that nothing had been forgotten. Miss Goluboff and Dr. Ma were apparently orderly persons; for the place was clear, and they had left nothing. In one corner of the cabin, however, Brooke noticed a slip of red paper on which some Chinese characters were written. Absent-mindedly he tucked it into his pocket and made his way back to the shore.

On the bank he found the travelers just awakening to the evident seriousness of their position. Dr. Ma and the girl were conversing earnestly and, when he approached, they placed their predicament before him.

‘We cannot thank you enough for all you have done for us, Mr. Brooke,’ said the girl. ‘Without your assistance, our stupid crew might have let the boat break away from the shallow water and drift back into the current, when we should all have been lost. We are deeply grateful to you for saving our lives. Almost miraculously,’ she went on, overriding Brooke’s attempt to protest, ‘you have rescued us — but what next? We are set down in a country of which none of us, not even Dr. Ma, though he is a Chinese, knows anything. What are we to do?’