Page:Oriental Stories Volume 01 Number 04 (Spring 1931).djvu/29

 the open had not stimulated his wits to the point of solving the puzzle.

In the 'rickisha Tado wriggled excitedly within his passive arm.

"Danna-san! Danna-san!" he whispered. "We are followed once more! I do not know if it is the cow-faced one or not. That follower of ame-no-Kagase, the scarecrow god, must have known that we were talking of him; therefore he vanished."

Absent-mindedly Tado drew forth a packet of silky Japanese tobacco cigarettes, lit one and inhaled deeply. A sudden swooping reach of the big seiyo-jin's arm and Carruthers held the packet in his huge paw.

"What? Again?" he questioned. "Must I beat you for your supper?"

"I forgot, danna-san," Tado returned unabashed. "It will not happen again."

"See that it doesn't," Carruthers snapped.

"Indeed, it will not," Tado repeated. "Two only I smoked and now the package is gone," he continued in an undertone.

"The 'rickisha follows us yet, danna-san," he went on, raising his voice once more, as he peered past the other's bulk.

"Faster!" Carruthers exhorted the 'rickisha coolie. Obediently the bare-legged steed quickened his pace. The 'rickisha behind came on at the faster gait, as Tado swiftly informed him.

"Perhaps you were right, worm," Carruthers admitted.

The twinkling lights of the city rose to meet them. Carruthers ordered the 'rickisha coolie to double and turn through the crowded streets, but Tado, peering slyly past his form, announced that their pursuer still hung on their track. Carruthers' left hand slipped into his coat pocket and felt the comforting bulk of the automatic reposing therein.

Tado's lean hand slid inside his kimono and touched the keen-bladed knife secreted there. Only the knowledge that were he to do so he would incur a beating more severe than any he had ever yet received and lose the knife besides, kept him from bringing it forth and patting it.

The 'rickisha drew away from the better-lighted part of the city, the streets grew quieter. Drearier grew the prospect, the houses degenerated to mere hovels, the few pedestrians abroad slunk furtively close beside the matting walls.

Tado thrilled with a tingling apprehension. In the blackness he could no longer distinguish their pursuer. Curtly Carruthers dismissed the 'rickisha at an intersection and proceeded on foot after tossing their panting steed a gold piece and ignoring the handful of silver the coolie proffered in change.

Tado kept Close to Carruthers' side, his breath coming unevenly. He kept looking behind him as Carruthers went swiftly forward. Tado's breath hissed sharply through his teeth.

From either side a dark figure had hurtled out of the shadows as the seiyo-jin came abreast of a feeble flickering glow that proceeded from a doorway, together with the smell of bad sake and worse fish. Tado heard the hiss of the boiling pans, the slap of slabs of fish against rusty frying-pans; he glimpsed maid servants, ugly of face, in rusty, disheveled kimonos, rushing about, bearing bottles of the same squat shape as themselves; heard them laughing and chattering with the eaters.

cry of warning stuck in Tado's throat as Carruthers swung to meet the foremost. The seiyo-jin's left hand swung upward in a choppy uppercut that smashed soddenly upon the other's jaw, yet too far back for a knockout. The Japanese stopped in midstride under the impact, his head flew back and he sprawled on his shoulders in the dusty street.