Marching Sands. Harold Lamb

Gray. I esteem your welfare as my own. My sorrow would greaten if injury happen to you.”

      “Your kindness does honor to your heart.”

      “I suggest,” Wu Fang Chien looked mildly at the uneasy Delabar, “that you have me vise your passports so that you may travel safely this side of Liangchowfu. Then I will give you a military escort who will be protection against any outlaws you meet on the road. In this way I will feel that I am doing my full duty to my honored guests.”

      “The offer is worthy,” said Gray, who realized that the sense of duty of a town official was a serious thing, but did not wish an escort, “of one whose hospitality is a pleasure to his guests.”

      Wu Fang Chien shook hands with himself. “But we have little money to pay an escort——”

      “I will attend to that.”

      “Unfortunately, an escort of soldiers would spoil my chances at big game. We shall pick up some native hunters.”

      Wu Fang Chien bowed, with a faint flicker of green eyes.

      “It shall be as you wish, Captain Gray. But I am distressed at the thought you may suffer harm. The last American who went beyond the Western Gate, died.”

      Gray frowned. He had not known that one of his countrymen had penetrated so far into the interior.

      “Without doubt,” pursued the mandarin, stroking his fan gently across his face, “you have a good supply of rifles. I have heard much of these excellent weapons of your country. Would you oblige me showing them to me before you leave Honan?”

      “I should be glad to do so,” said Gray, “if they were not packed in our luggage which will not be here before we set out. But I have two small presents——”

      The gift of the clock and electric light turned the thread of conversation and seemed to satisfy Wu Fang Chien, who bowed them out with the utmost courtesy to the waiting sedan chairs. Then, as the bearers picked up the poles, he drew a small and exquisite vase from under his robe and pressed it upon Gray as a token, he said, to keep fresh the memory of their visit.

      At their room in the hotel Gray showed the vase to Delabar. It was a valuable object, of enamel wrought on gold leaves, and inscribed with some Chinese characters.

      “What do you make of our worthy Wu Fang—hullo!” he broke off. Delabar had seized the vase and taken off the top.

      “It is what the Chinese call a message jar,” explained the scientist, feeling within the vase. He removed a slim roll of silk, wound about an ebony stick. On the silk four Chinese characters were delicately painted.

      “What do they mean?” asked Gray, looking over his shoulder.

      The Syrian glanced at him appraisingly, under knitted brows. His companion’s face was expressionless, save for a slight tinge of curiosity. Delabar judged that the soldier knew nothing of written Chinese, which was the truth.

      “Anything or nothing, my friend. It reads like a proverb. The oriental soul takes pleasure in maxims. Yet everything they do or say has a meaning—very often a double meaning.”

      “Such as Wu Fang’s table talk,” smiled Gray. “Granted. Is this any particular dialect?”

      “Written Chinese is much the same everywhere. Just as the Arabic numerals throughout Europe.” He scanned 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