Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/67

 fragile porcelain. The source of his income was a mystery though no more of a mystery than Yuan Shi Kai himself.

In appearance he was a polished gentleman. Well-dressed, refined, courteous. His handsome yellow face always bore a bland, affable expression. He was a close friend to nobody. Nor were there any who numbered him as an enemy. He was an enigma. He wandered but little throughout the crowded alleys of Canton. Content was he to remain sequestered in his peculiar house which burrowed into the ground like a great mole.

It was at the tea-house of Wong Foo in one of the narrowest alleys of Canton that Ras Orla, the renowned explorer, first heard of the odd house of Yuan Shi Kai. Wong Foo told him of it in a casual way and Ras Orla was sufficiently acquainted with Chinese ways not to show too much interest. Nevertheless he decided that he would visit the Inverted House. For years he had roamed about the world. He had traveled much in Persia, in India, in Tibet and no country interested him as much as old China, China whose origin is lost in the mist of the ages, China from whence came banknotes, block-printing, the compass, gunpowder and porcelain.

Ras Orla was not interested greatly in the things that interested most explorers. The source of a river, the height of a mountain-peak or the average rainfall in the Gobi Desert mattered little to him. His interest