The Chinese Jewel/Chapter 5

LICE BLAKE had told Steele that she would not crook her little finger to bring back a sweetheart's fancies; she had declared that it was no business of hers if Stephen Carrington allowed other and wiser men than himself to rob him. But one thing she had not told him: the moment that she sensed the battle between Billy Steele and the might of King Tom Reagan, seeing Steele on the one side handicapped and Reagan on the other waxing triumphant, her ready sympathies were enlisted. The thing aroused all of that restless blood in her which she had inherited from her father, Dick Blake, a dead-game sport.

Before Steele had walked away half a block, the girl had run through the house and had rapped at a door, calling softly, “Uncle Abner! Oh, uncle Abner!”

A queer little man in shirt sleeves, with peering, squinting eyes gleaming brightly above the smoke of his short-stemmed pipe, opened the door. He might have been almost any age from forty-five to sixty-five, but years did not seem to matter much with him, He looked brown and tough and gnarled, and had a quick way about him, his gestures jerky but like lightning.

“Eh, Alice, girl?” he said sharply. “Somethin's up. Eh? Eh?”

For her cheeks were flushed with excitement, her eyes were dancing.

“Bring the car around in a hurry, will you, uncle Abner?” she asked. “I'll be right out. You're to drive—drive right by the Carrington home. And, when we're right in front, the car's got to stall. Understand? Anything; run out of gasoline; that will do. Oh, I'm terribly in earnest, uncle Abner, and I am in a terrible hurry.”

He squinted at her a moment. Then with a grunt and asking no questions, he whirled about, rid himself of his pipe, and wriggled into his coat. While Alice was getting on her own wraps and going to the front door uncle Abner was bringing out the car. As he helped her in, she said:

“And nobody, uncle Abner—nobody—is to know anything about this.”

He climbed into his own seat, and before they had reached the first corner was already exceeding the speed limit.

Meanwhile, Billy Steele, reluctantly forcing his thoughts away from Miss Alice Blake, turned them elsewhere. He could do nothing further here until to-morrow morning, when he would telephone her; he could not break into the house where Reagan and Marvella were. And yet he had no desire for an idle evening. It was still reasonably early, and there was one more person whom he wanted to see. If, later on, he had to do with Marvella it would be just as well now to seek to get in touch with Kwang-kung, whose prized jewel she was suspected of having stolen. Since Marvella had left San Francisco so hurriedly, without her luggage, it was reasonable to suppose that she had a good healthy fear of the Chinese duke. And, since Kwang-kung had made this long journey in her wake, it seemed likely that he would not be averse to an ally. At any rate, it would do no harm to look the Oriental gentleman up. Provided, of course, he could be found at any on of the hotels.

So Steele made a bee line to the nearest telephone booth. From here he called in turn five of the biggest New York hotels, asking at each to speak with a Chinese gentleman who had recently arrived, the Duke of Kwang, registered as plain Mr. Kwang. At the fifth hotel a foreign voice in excellent English said:

“Hello? Who is it, please?”

“Is this Kwang-kung?” asked Steele eagerly.

There was a brief pause. Then the same voice replied:

“No. This is his secretary. Mr. Kwang is not in. Is there any message?”

“I'll bet that's the old sport himself,” thought Steele. And to make sure: “I wanted to speak with him concerning a particular lady and a lost jewel.”

Again a brief pause. Then the foreign voice said smoothly:

“What name, please? Yours?”

“Steele. William Steele.”

“And this particular lady? Her name, please?”

Steele laughed at him pleasantly enough, but in a manner to make clear that he had not planned to content himself with a telephone conversation.

“And this jewel?” continued the smooth voice. “What of it?”

“My plans are always very apt to be altered without notice,” Steele told him. “That is, I often make unexpected trips out of town for varying lengths of time. Should I make such a trip without seeing Mr. Kwang, don't you think he might be disappointed?”

The third pause. Then:

“Could you call at Mr. Kwang's rooms now, Mr. Steele? He should be back in a few minutes.”

Steele grinned as he admitted that he could, and hung up the receiver. That he had been talking with Kwang-kung himself he did not doubt.

Twenty minutes later, sending his card on ahead of him, he was admitted to Kwang-kung's suite. Kwang-kung himself, a large, powerful-looking man dressed in the loose-fitting, lounging robes of his own people, ablaze from head to foot in gaudy silken brocades, admitted him. Steele noted the abnormally large head on its massive yellow throat, the slender hands studded with red and green jewels, and the long, narrow, cruel eyes. Also he noticed that on a wide ash tray were a number of cigarettes and two cigar ends; on the table at hand were several glasses. Beyond Kwang-kung was a door leading into a second room of the suite; Steele was confident that Kwang-kung's friends, who had been visiting him, were in there waiting. And listening, no doubt.

The Chinese merely inclined his large head slightly by way of greeting, his evil eyes driving at Steele like thin knife blades. He closed the door when Steele had entered, sat down, and motioned a chair to his guest.

“The matter is something of a private one,” began Steele.

Kwang-kung glanced at the ash tray and glasses, then back to Steele, and lifted his hands loosely.

“My friends are in the next room. But they do not listen. And they do not understand your tongue.”

Steele smiled at him, knowing that he lied and that he knew Steele knew that he lied.

“It's your affair, Kwang-kung,” he said carelessly. “I came to speak to you of Marvella Nevil.”

The Chinaman's brows were hairless, being mere thick and pendulous fleshy growths above his slant eyes. He lifted them in innocent interrogation.

“And who is Marvella Nevil, please?” he asked politely.

“She is a lady who, I believe, you know better than I do. She was for some time at your palace, was she not? She sailed from China just before you did; she left San Francisco just before you, departing so hastily that she forgot to have her baggage checked with her.”

Kwang-kung appeared only casually interested; he had the expression of accepting Steele's words in the light of fresh but not very important information. Now, one slim hand laid loosely over the other in his lap, he waited for further knowledge, making no remark himself.

“Being an utter stranger to you,” went on Steele equably, “you of course are wondering just where I come in; only your great politeness, I am sure, restrains you from asking what the devil I am driving at. And, naturally, you won't open up until you have got me straight. That so?”

Still Kwang-kung's expression was childlike.

“You speak mysteries to me, Mr. Steele,” he said gently.

“Marvella Nevil,” continued Steele, “has long been a diamond smuggler and an extremely capable and clever one; she is—though one should not speak hard words of a lady!—a thief. As, again, you should know. She has done many things which would put her in the grip of the law—if the law could only once get the goods on her! She is not above making fools of young rich men; she is, I believe, rather fond of the sport. The year before she made this last trip to your beautiful land she persuaded young Phil Wentworth to blow his brains out and leave her the insurance money. So, you see, Marvella Nevil goes a long way on any road to get what she wants. She would even make the trip as far as the ducal palace of Kwang-kung to make sure of the most highly valued ducal jewel.” He paused a moment and smiled somewhat banteringly into the slant black eyes. “A very clever woman to get the best of you, my friend Kwang-kung!”

Even under the taunt the Chinaman's expression did not alter; the lax muscles of his hands did not stir.

“So much for Marvella Nevil for the present,” Steele said. “Now for my part. I happen to be engaged in seeking to frustrate a fresh scheme of the lady—and don't care a hang who gets the ducal jewel!”

And there he stopped with an air of finality, having said all that he intended to say. If Kwang-kung didn't show a sign of opening up now Steele would take up his hat and go. But the Chinaman understood, and was not ready to end the interview.

“You think,” said Kwang-kung at last, “that this—this Marvella Nevil has a Chinese jewel of great price? That she has brought it from China to New York? That she has it now?”

The words, on the face of them, were as casual and indifferent as any he had spoken. But under them Steele read a vital interest—and a dread. Kwang-kung was not certain that Marvella had not already rid herself of the jewel.

“It is in my mind,” rejoined Steele, “that she still has the thing. And that, even now, she is preparing the way to shunt it off into other hands, For Marvella, with all of her cool nerve, has a sense that Kwang-kung is not like other men whom she has robbed, and she knows what terror is.”

“If she succeeded in selling the jewel,” mused Kwang-kung, “it would be to some very rich man, oh, my friend. You see,” he added, his whole expression swiftly altering from indifference to one of animation, “that I call you my friend—and admit that there is a jewel.”

“It's time,” said Steele shortly. “So it would be sold to a very rich man, then?”

“What man, who is not many a millionaire, would pay the price of the 'Pride of Burma'?”

He rose abruptly, staring down at Steele, his eyes veiled again, his voice as smooth as a great will, dominating passion, could make it.

“I, too, am a rich man, Mr. Steele,” he said evenly. “Put that jewel back into my two hands and you will walk out of my presence with no need to worry about money the rest of your life. Or—put Marvella Nevil into these hands,” and he lifted them before him, and Steele saw that under their silken beauty they were all whipcord and steel, “and there will be an end of talk!”