Li Shoon's Nine Lives/Chapter 4

E'RE in the open water now," announced Carrick, filling his pipe as he glanced through the cabin window. "It will be a long chase, my friend. You didn't hear my instructions to the police lieutenant, did you?"

"It was needless," replied the chemist, with a wave of his hand. "I knew that you knew what you were doing, and you didn't need my help."

"Do you believe that this fourteen-knot boat can overtake the Budzibu, with her best speed of twenty-eight knots?"

"It can if you say so and plan it," replied Fleming, with easy confidence.

"I'm not quite such a fool," replied Carrick. "The yacht Vulcan, with a best speed of twenty-nine knots, is two hundred miles up the coast, and on her way south. I ordered her, four days ago, to be fitted and sent to a little bay twenty miles north of San Diego, that I might have her at need. I gave Lieutenant Allen a message that the Vulcan's master will understand. He will chase this tug, which has wireless of an amateur order. Some time to-morrow the Vulcan will overtake us, and we'll transfer to the right boat. After that—the real chase."

"But why didn't you wait for the arrival of the Vulcan?" Fleming asked wonderingly.

"Because no one can tell what will happen to, or on, the Budzibu before to-morrow," replied Carrick gravely.

"But if you overhaul the strange yacht at sea, what then?" Fleming asked. "You have no authority to board her, and can do so only by courtesy. If Li Shoon is on board, and in charge, surely you wouldn't trust much to his courtesy."

"Events will have to provide for themselves," was the enigmatic answer, which caused the listening Chinaman, English educated though he was, to hold his breath and wonder.

It was in the wainscoting that the Chinaman stood hidden. Not only was his place of secrecy secure, but he had easy means of leaving that hiding place to go to any part of the tug. Li Shoon, knowing that Donald Carrick could always be counted upon to dog his steps, had surely left the Master Hound and his chemist comrade well watched in New York. So cleverly had the trailing work been done that, though Carrick had not once detected any sign of shadowing, their whole course since leaving New York had been closely watched.

And this Chinese member of Li Shoon's fraternity of evildoers had succeeded in secreting himself aboard the Terence because he knew when to expect the strange Budzibu in port, and also because the Terence was the fastest tug at that port. Li Shoon meant to know whether Carrick was really trailing him. In the event that Carrick tried to follow in the Terence, plans had already been laid for sending that tug to the bottom of the ocean!

As he listened, the stolid young Chinaman—he did not appear to be past thirty, and was dressed in white man's attire of a rough, seagoing sort, looked puzzled, but soon a wicked grin overspread his face.

"It will be rough on me," he mused. "If this tug transfers her passengers to the Vulcan, I could not hope to smuggle myself into the transfer. But Doctor Li Shoon's orders provide for the alternative of destroying the tug before help for Carrick can arrive. This tug will have to go to the bottom, with all on board, including myself, unless I can manage to provide myself, unseen, with a life preserver. No matter! My life does not count as much for the Ui Kwoon Ah-how as Carrick's does against it. I can die with our enemies."

The stolid shrug with which that was said was quite worthy of the traditions of murderous unselfishness belonging to the dreaded body, the Ui Kwoon. Many yellow members, and some brown— and Malays—had already sacrificed themselves in other treasure-amassing adventures.

"As I may have to be up a good deal to-night," Carrick presently proceeded, "I shall turn in now for forty-one or forty-two winks. And you, Fleming?"

"I am not sleepy now," returned the chemist. "I shall take the air on deck."

Doctor John Fleming passed out on deck, using his sea legs as the Terence plowed southward against the considerable swell on the water. The Master Hound was soon asleep. The watching Chinaman in the wainscoting softly opened a hitherto invisible panel that he had constructed three days before. Through the narrow slit thus made the Mongol eyes studied the sleeping face of Carrick.

"Shall I slip into the cabin and stab him?" pondered the member of the Ui Kwoon. "But Carrick has the name of being a light sleeper. I might shoot him, but the boat is rocking. If I only wounded him, and could not make good with a second shot, then my mission would be defeated. I must not lose my chance through haste. A few hours' patience, and then I can condemn all these Americans to death!"

So the panel closed as noiselessly as it had opened. Carrick slept on dreamlessly.

Five minutes later, the panel again opened. Ling Cheng, devotee of the sporting chance, had been unable to resist the temptation to bewilder and perhaps warn his enemies—the enemies of Ui Kwoon.

In his hand he held a tiny atomizer. Noiselessly he sent sprays in two or three directions into the little cabin. As the panel closed, a subtle, pleasing odor filled the room—one compounded of llang-llang and sandalwood.

And now Donald Carrick really dreamed. Some unanalyzable influence of that long-unsmelled but not-to-be-forgotten odor caused him to dream of that hidden Chinese rendezvous in the Philippines in which he had, years before, first come face to face with that prince of deadly plotters, Doctor Li Shoon.

But the dream passed, though for a few seconds the gentleman adventurer stirred uneasily in his berth. Half an hour later, the door opened to admit Doctor John Fleming. The Hound opened his eyes.

"I say, Carrick, what is this strange, baffling odor?" demanded the chemist. "It smells like—let me see! Sandalwood, or llang-llang, or—hang it!—both of them!"

"I do catch some odor," assented Donald Carrick, sniffing. "And now it is plainer."

The next instant his features displayed a singular gravity. It was the nearest thing to terror that any man had ever seen on the Hound's face.

"I smelled that odor first on a terrible night," he went on. "It was then the dominant scent in Li's headquarters, many thousands of miles from here. But it must be imagination—here, at sea, on the Terence."

"If it is," declared Fleming seriously, "then it is odd, isn't it, that your imagination equally affects me, and I never smelled this combined, compounded odor before?"

"Yes, the scent is quite unmistakable," agreed the Hound, sitting up and drawing on his shoes. "I cannot account for it."

"Is it possible that some of that Chinese crowd can be on board this boat?" cried Fleming.

Donald Carrick surveyed his friend with a queerly quizzical smile.