Stolen Idols. E. Phillips Oppenheim

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ