Marching Sands. Harold Lamb

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СКАЧАТЬ the silk attentively, and his lips parted. “The first ideograph combines the attribute or adjective ‘clever’ or ‘shrewd’ with the indicator ‘man.’ A shrewd man—hua jen.”

      “Perhaps Wu Fang: perhaps you. Go on.”

      “The second character is very ancient, almost a picture-drawing of warning streamers. It is an emphatic ‘do not!’ ”

      “Then it’s you—and me.”

      “The third character is prefixed by mu, a tree, and signifies a wooden board, or a wall. The fourth means ‘the West.’ ”

      “A riddle, but not so hard to guess,” grinned Gray, taking up his maps from the table and filling his pipe preparatory to work. “A wise guy doesn’t climb the western wall.”

      “You forget,” pointed out Delabar sharply, “the negative. It is the strongest kind of a warning. Do not, if you are wise, approach the western wall. My friend, this is a plain warning—even a threat. To-day Wu Fang Chien hinted we should not go to Liangchowfu. Now he threatens——”

      “I gathered as much.” Gray took the slip of fine silk and scanned it quizzically. “Delabar, do you know the ideograph for ‘to make’ or ‘build?’ ”

      The scientist nodded.

      “Then write it, where it seems to fit in here.”

      Delabar did so, with a glance at his companion. Whereupon the soldier folded the missive and replaced it in the jar. He clapped his hands loudly. Almost at once a boy appeared in the door.

      To him Gray handed the vase with instructions to carry it to His Excellency, the official Wu Fang Chien. He reënforced his order with a piece of silver cash. To the curious scientist he explained briefly.

      “Wu Fang is a scholar. He will read our reply as: A wise man will not build a wall in the west. It will give him food for thought, and it may keep His Excellency’s men from overhauling our belongings a second time during our absence.”

      Delabar started. “May?”

      “Yes. Remember I left that message of Wu’s on top of these maps. I find it underneath them. The maps are all here. We locked our door, carefully. Some one has evidently given our papers the once over and forgotten to replace them in the order he found them. I say it may have been at Wu’s orders. I think it probably was.”

      “Why?” Delabar licked his thin lips nervously.

      “Because nothing has been taken. A Chinese official has the right to be curious about strangers in his district. Likewise, his men wouldn’t have much trouble in entering the room—with the landlord’s assistance. The ordinary run of thieves would have taken something valuable—my field glasses, for instance.”

      Delabar strode nervously the length of the room and peered from the shutters.

      “Captain Gray!” he swung around, “do you know there are maps of the Gobi, of Sungan, in your case. The person who broke into our room must have seen them.”

      “I reckon so.”

      “Then Wu Fang Chien may know we are going to the Gobi! I have not forgotten what he said about the last American hunter. What hunter has been as far as the Gobi? None. So——”

      “You think he meant——”

      “Dr. Brent.”

      Gray shook his head slowly. “Far fetched, Delabar,” he meditated. “You’re putting two and two together to make ten. All we know is that Wu has sent us a polite motto. No use in worrying ourselves.”

      But it was clear to him that Delabar was worried, and more. Gray had been observing his companion closely. Now for the first time he read covert fear in the professor’s thin face.

      Fear, Gray reflected to himself, was hard to deal with, in a man of weak vitality and high-strung nerves. He felt that Delabar was alarmed needlessly; that he dreaded what lay before them.

      For that reason he regretted the event of that night which gave shape to Delabar’s apprehensions.

      At the scientist’s urging, they did not leave the room before turning in. Gray adjusted Delabar’s walking stick against the door, placing a string of Chinese money on the head of the stick, and balancing the combination so a movement of the door would send the coins crashing to the floor.

      “Just in case our second-story men pay us another visit,” he explained. “Now that we know they can open the door, we’ll act accordingly.”

      CHAPTER V

      INTRUDERS

      IT was a hot night.

      Gray, naked except for shirt and socks, lay under the mosquito netting and wished that he had brought double the amount of insect powder he had. Across the room Delabar had subsided into fitful snores. The night was not quiet.

      In the courtyard of the hotel some Chinese servants were at their perpetual gambling, their shrill voices coming up through the shutters. On the further side of the street a guitar twanged monotonously. Somewhere, a dog yelped.

      The warm odors of the place assaulted Gray’s nostrils unpleasantly. They were strange, potent odors, a mingling of dirt, refuse, horses, the remnants of cooking. Gray sighed, longing for the clean air of the plains toward which they were headed.

      They were still far from the Gobi’s edge. The distance seemed to stretch out interminably. It is not easy to cross the broad bosom of China.

      He wondered what success they would have. What was the city of Sungan? How had it escaped observation? How did a city happen to be m the desert, anyway?

      What was the pale sickness Brent had spoken of? Brent had died. From natural causes, of course. Gray gave little heed to Delabar’s wild surmises. But the conduct of Wu Fang Chien afforded him food for thought.

      Had the vice-governor actually known of their mission? His words might have had a double meaning. And they might not. The silk scroll meant little. Delabar had read warning into it; but was not that a result of his imagination?

      Gray turned uncomfortably on his bed and considered the matter. How could Wu Fang Chien have known they were bound for Sungan? Their mission had been carefully kept from publicity. Only Van Schaick and his three associates knew of it. Men like Van Schaick and Balch could keep their mouths shut. And Delabar was certainly cautious enough.

      Gray cursed the heat under his breath, with added measure for the dog which seemed bound to make a night of it. The chatter at the hotel door had subsided with midnight. But the guitar still struck its melancholy note, accompanied by the intermittent wail of the sorrowing dog.

      No, Gray thought sleepily, Wu Fang Chien could not have known of their mission. He had let Delabar’s nerves prey on his own—that was all. Delabar was full of this Asia stuff, especially concerning the priests——

      Gray’s mind drifted away into vague visions of ancient and forgotten temples. The guitar note became the strum of temple drums, echoing over the waste of the desert. The dog’s plaint took СКАЧАТЬ