The Dragon's Claw/Chapter 3

FTER nine years of wanderings in interior China, prospecting, engineering, adventuring, Neill McNeill, with his knowledge of customs and dialects, was comparatively at home in Peking. He changed his filthy rags for Occidental raiment at a native tailor's who was to him more of a friend than a mere tradesman and, thus rehabilitated, hurried to the Imperial Hotel.

On the trip of the cargo-boat he had found no trouble in picking up the trail of the eccentric American and his daughter. Remsden, with a smattering of Chinese, was no fool and, once free from immediate pursuit, he had got together an escort and traveled with speed and comfort.

McNeill's connection with him would soon be over, the latter thought regretfully. He meant to take no bonus, for, however much he admired the stepdaughter, he had a very whittled-down estimation of Remsden and his selfishness that would deliberately expose the girl to frightful risk through his own rash actions. But McNeill meant to see them both safely out of the country.

The cult of the Hoang Lung, the guardians of the holiest of all shrines, was powerful and Remsden's offense, which must have been a serious one, would not be lightly condoned. Remsden was apt to consider himself safe in the foreign quarter and become careless. Trouble could easily happen, even on the train to Shanghai whence they would embark for the States, and it would be trouble of a kind that could not be remedied.

A fanatic follower of the Hoang Lung would think nothing of giving up his own life and risking torture if he achieved his object. Even the arm of the American government would be hard put to it to protect the travelers, and McNeill shrewdly surmised that the American minister would not be appealed to by Remsden too hurriedly, as the latter knew that confession of an attempt on his part to interfere with Chinese religious institutions would be met with disfavor. It was with relief that McNeill passed through the arch into the hotel compound and entered the office of the Imperial. Miss Remsden was out, the clerk declared, but Remsden was in his room. A package had just been delivered for Mr. Remsden, and the Chinese boy who ushered McNeill to the suite carried this parcel with him. McNeill was frowning when he entered the room. Remsden should not have allowed his stepdaughter on the streets unescorted, he thought, though of course he was not certain that this was the case. Remsden greeted him cordially enough.

"I'm glad to see you back, Neill, my boy," he said. "We were both anxious over your safety but I assured Helen that you would win through. We ourselves had a"

"Where is Miss Helen?" broke in McNeill.

Remsden frowned at the interruption. He was looking curiously at the package the boy had brought, a box some eight inches square, wrapped in rice-paper on which was inscribed in good English Remsden's name and address.

"She wanted to buy some souvenirs for her friends at home," he said. "I believe she has gone to the Rising Sun Bazaar."

"Good, man!" cried McNeill. "You don't mean to say you let her go out alone?"

"The Rising Sun Bazaar is only two blocks away," replied Remsden. "It is in the foreign quarter. Have you lost your nerve, Neill?"

"You have taken leave of your senses!" said McNeill angrily, taking up his hat. He was going to the Bazaar without delay. "How long has she been gone?"

"Why, I hardly know," said Remsden leisurely, setting down his cigar and devoting both hands to the unwrapping of the package. "A little over an hour, I should say. I"

His voice died away in an inarticulate choking that made McNeill, half-way to the door, turn and regard him sharply. Remsden's face was blotched, his jaw sagged, his pop-eyes seemed actually starting from their sockets and they were lit with a horror that showed in his mottled, shaking jowls and the trembling hands which were still suspended above the box that he had opened.

McNeill crossed to him, picked up the box and shook out the objects it contained on a newspaper that Remsden had been reading. A scrap of paper closely covered with small, beautifully written Chinese script fluttered after them. Remsden stared, still incapable of action, fascinated by the grisly things before him.

These were the half-desiccated lips, ears and eyelids of a man, the black lashes, gummy with dried blood, still clung to the latter.

"What—what?" he muttered as McNeill rapidly translated the script.

"Fung-Ti?" muttered Remsden and looked up at McNeill who towered over him menacingly, the scrap of paper in his hands quivering.

"Do you know what the rest of this says?" demanded McNeill. "Listen!

was the look with which McNeill regarded Remsden that the latter threw up his shaking hands in a semblance of defense.

"For the love of God, Neill!" he whimpered.

"Stop your blasphemy," said the Irishman. "Do you know what the Brazen Serpent means, Remsden? They twine copper tubes about your legs and arms and waist and then they fill the tubes with boiling water. That is what they threaten to do to"

He struck the heavy table such a smash with his doubled fist that the panel split and the horrible bits of Fung Ti danced on the paper. "Out with that relic, Remsden! Out with it!" he demanded. "They have got Helen! Give it to me so I can go after her!"

"Ten days, they said—ten days. The shrine is only five days' journey."

McNeill gripped Remsden by the shoulders and, heavy as he was, shook him as a terrier would shake a rat.

"You would temporize with the girl's safety?" he cried. "I'll tell you this, Remsden. If one hair of her head has been harmed when I return—and I shall return—I will make you wish you had been Fung-Ti. Where is this relic?"

"Wait," said Remsden, shrinking into his chair on his release but with his face sullen with the piggish obstinacy he could assume. I can not give it to you. I haven't got it. I can't get it again before forty-eight hours. There will be plenty of time."

"Remsden, you lied to me before in the cave. You are lying now."

"I did not lie to you. I said that you might search me. I did not have it with me. Helen had it then, though she did not know it. It was in my wallet. I told her it bothered me in riding, and she carried it." McNeill's utter loathing pierced even Remsden's armor.

"I am not lying now," he asserted doggedly. "I may be able to get it back a little sooner than forty-eight hours. But I haven't it and that's the flat truth."

McNeill, his eyes burning within a few inches of the other's, told himself that Remsden was telling the truth.

"I am going to give you just twenty-four hours to produce it," he said. "During that time I am going to make preparations that will insure the safety of Miss Helen. If you haven't got it back by then you are going to be a very unhappy man for the rest of your life. You are not my employer in this matter; you couldn't hire me with your money to go back. I am going on my own account. You can pay me what you do owe me, however, as I shall need immediate cash."

Remsden detached certain travellers' checks from their sheaf and passed them over to McNeill.

"It is no use threatening me," he said. "I will get it as soon as I can—not later than forty-eight hours. That gives us a margin of three days. They will not injure her."

"What is this relic?" demanded the younger man.

Remsden's eyes glowed. He seemed to recover his self-assurance. The man was a trifle mad, with the frenzy of a collector, McNeill decided, as Remsden poured himself some whisky and tossed it down with a hand not yet steady.

"What do you know about Chinese mythology, Neill?" he asked.

"Not very much."

McNeill resented the smug manner of Remsden's speech but he was anxious to learn what he could about the relic.

"Ah! Perhaps you know that they believe that originally the land was ruled by the dragon kings, lords of air, land and sea?"

McNeill nodded.

"Well, in the holy shrine of Hoang Lung is supposed to be kept an actual claw of the last of the dragon kings—a claw set in gray jade carved to represent the sheath of the claw and also inscribed with runes that even the great Lao T'se could not interpret. This claw is probably that of a great cave-bear; it is of non-retractile type. It is evidently very old. It might even have come from some monster of prehistoric times. The point is that it is believed indubitably to be the claw of the dragon, and the temple of the Hoang Lung is worshiped as its repository."

"And you got it? How?"

Remsden almost beamed with self-satisfaction.

"I got up the expedition to the temple. I am not a Mason but I have knowledge of the ancient universal rituals and symbols from which modern Masonry has borrowed. They have been long known to the older dynasties of ancient nations, China included. Through their use I was received by the priests, as you know, and observed their ritual, something but one other white man has ever done. I noted that the claw was not a myth. Fung-Ti did the rest for a very large sum of money that was packed in the box carried by the smaller camel, the box you, with all the rest, thought carried cartridges."

"I thought some one had stolen that," said McNeill under his breath.

"Just how Fung-Ti accomplished the theft I do not know. I left the particulars to him. He has been frightfully punished, but he knew his risk. Under ordinary circumstances nothing would have been discovered for a full month, by which time Fung Ti would have been far away, had it not been for that shower of shooting stars the night after we left the temple. The priests of Hoang Lung imagine such phenomena the golden scales shaken from the dragon gods in anger, and I suppose they investigated. It was an unfortunate coincidence.

"The claw was without doubt the most wonderful curio in the world. It would have brought me fortune. I preferred fame. Now I have lost both," he sighed. McNeill regarded him keenly. The sigh hardly seemed genuine, but he was determined that Remsden should not leave his sight until the relic reappeared from wherever it had been deposited. That Remsden should have let it leave him for a moment seemed incredible, but he was certain that in that matter the collector had not lied. For the rest he was an incipient lunatic so far as curios were concerned.

"I want you to go out with me for a while," said McNeill. "And I shall take the connecting room to this suite."

"Where are we going?"

"To pass the word to certain men that I know," said McNeill. "I am going on this return trip with an escort of he-men, Mr. Remsden. I take it you would prefer to stay in Peking. I should recommend the embassy after we have gone, if they will shelter you. Come on!" His tone was that of sheriff to his prisoner. For a half moment Remsden rebelled.

"Very well," he said at last. "Anymore funds that are necessary?"

"If I run short I'll borrow some from you," snapped McNeill. "Come on!"

hours later McNeill seated in his room next to that of Remsden whom he could hear impatiently padding up and down, listened to a knock on Remsden's door and to Remsden opening it. Some one who talked in a voice of high pitch that was almost instantaneously hushed to a whisper, was admitted. McNeill rose and softly opened his own door to the corridor. Presently he heard the chink of gold and Remsden's door reopening.

He gilded to where his own entrance stood ajar, the light out in his room, and saw, gliding along the passage, the bowed form of an old Chinaman who was stowing away something in his capacious blouse. The face of wrinkled yellow skin, drawn tight as a drumhead over the skull, showed little, but the eyes, looking furtively from left to right, held the look of one who gloats over greed satisfied and is yet possessed with deadly fear.

Moreover, McNeill recognized the man as the master-craftsman of all Peking's artificers in precious metals and gems, in pearl and ivory—Ling Yuan, the greatest connoisseur of all the Orient in such works of art.

It seemed evident to him where the claw had been. For some reason Remsden had consulted Ling Yuan as to the authenticity of the claw, fearing perhaps that Fung-Ti had played him false, though the awful mementoes of that false priest had since furnished mute proof of his having really obtained the actual relic. Wondering a little what enormous sum Remsden must have demanded from Ling Yuan as pledge for the return of the claw, McNeill turned on his light and closed the barely opened door without noise. The next instant Remsden appeared in the entrance between the rooms.

"I have the claw," he said. "Take it, Neill, and save Helen." McNeill took it—a little thing to represent the burning, mystical faith of the most mysterious nation of the world. The claw itself was black with age, and far longer than that of any animal that Neill had ever seen, sharply curved, set in gray translucent jade which was scaled where it gripped the claw and, above that, deep cut with hieroglyphs. He opened his belt and shirt and put the thing away in a pocket of his money belt.

"I shall find a better place for it presently," he said.

Remsden sighed as he saw it disappear.

"It was a costly experiment," he said. "How early do you start?"

"Immediately," said McNeill. "There is not a moment to lose. We shall travel fast, but there may be delays. My men are waiting for me now."