Stolen Idols. E. Phillips Oppenheim

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

       Table of Contents

      “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