The Dragon's Claw/Chapter 4

HE temple of the Hoang Lung, the Shrine of the Dragon's Claw, lies in a natural amphitheater, the buildings of stone and sun-dried brick standing in a horseshoe of steep hills that are honeycombed with caves and fissures, some of which are used as dwellings for the priests. The entrance to the horseshoe is winged across with stone walls that connect with high arches, also of stone and carved with weird representations of the dragon gods and their lesser attendant divinities.

There are three of these arches and they were undoubtedly built to serve as defenses against, marauders from the north. They were built, many hundreds of years ago, perhaps thousands, and their carvings are smudged with the rasp of wind and rain and desert sands, and there are deep interstices where once the stone blocks met with exact precision.

A modern field gun would knock one to pieces in two shots; yet, inasmuch as field guns have never neared the shrine, they are still considered, in the light of legend and dim history, impregnable when the wooden gates, reinforced heavily with metal, are closed.

At nightfall of the fifth day after their start from Peking, the seventh since the ultimatum of the priests had been delivered to Remsden, a party-of white men were camped in the hills some three miles from the town and temple of Hoang Lung. By the light of the fire about which they sat at a war-council with their pipes or cigarets going, they were a hard-bitten, lean and capable looking crowd, eighteen of them in all—volunteers under McNeill to get a white girl out of Hoang Lung.

Engineers, prospectors, adventurers of sorts they were and all were known to McNeill personally. They represented every loose and available white man in Peking or its vicinity who could get away for such a trip. Their ages varied from twenty-two to fifty, and they were all as hard as nails. Every one of them knew how to handle a gun and was not afraid to do so. Better, they knew when not to do so.

McNeill stood apart in talk with a bearded man who had built many miles of railroad in interior China only to see his work undone by fanatic hordes, urged on by the priests. Neill's field-glasses were slung at his sides, and he unbuckled the case and took them out.

"The moon'll be up in a few minutes, Wilson," he said. "It's lightening over the eastern ridge now. Canfield and I are going in alone on foot as soon as it rises. After we've fixed things at the first arch we'll camp in one of the caves. I'll go in soon after dawn—alone."

"It seems foolhardy to do that, Neill," said Wilson. "Wouldn't at least a display of force help out? Of course you're running this show."

"I've gone over it very carefully," said McNeill. "I've got to make the play single-handed. At eight o'clock, if they are not coming through, you know what to expect. If I don't show up here by nine, or you don't see me coming, then you take command and do whatever you think best, not forgetting that it is more than probable that Miss Remsden and myself will be past doing for.

"Here comes the moon. Now then, take the glasses and look about sou'-west-by-sou'. There are parallel ridges leading in that general direction and Canfield and I will keep the valleys, though I don't think there is much fear of a lookout. They are expecting us, no doubt, but it is our move and they are not likely to be worrying about it. We are three days to the good. You can use the ridges for cover tomorrow if things go wrong with me."

Wilson, the glasses to his eyes, only grunted. The arches, particularly the first one, were plain to see, their stones silvered by the moon, now clear of the ridge.

S up to you," said Wilson at last, "till eight o'clock tomorrow. Then it's up to me. Goin' to take horses?"

"No. Less noise, less risk. We can pack all we need easily enough. A good deal depends on getting our work done absolutely unobserved."

"If you don't come back," said Wilson gruffly, "or if they've done anything to that girl, I'm telling you one thing, McNeill, before noon tomorrow the inhabitants of Hoang Lung are going to think hell, or whatever their heathen equivalent for Gehenna is, has opened under their feet. We've got the stuff to do it with and we've got the boys who know how to use it."

They walked back to the rest of the expedition in silence. McNeill had deliberately shut off from his mental vision all thoughts of what might have happened to Helen Remsden. Suggestions of bronze tubes filled with boiling water and twisted around her dainty limbs, thoughts of all the fantastic refinements of devilish torture that might be practised upon her, he deliberately dismissed as unnerving and destructive to the job in hand.

He did not trust the priests. Once they had obtained the claw, they would be likely to endeavor to get revenge on those who had had any hand in the defilement of the sacred relic. He had laid plans accordingly.

Canfield came forward to meet them, the youngest of the troop, a man absolutely reckless, once given his head, but possessing the rare quality of being able to take orders from a man he acknowledged capable of giving them.

"Ready to go, McNeill?" he asked.

"If you are."

"Righto," returned Canfield, Britisher and younger son. "Got all my little duds packed for the picnic."

"Then we're off," announced McNeill.

The talk stopped, pipes and cigarets were taken briefly from mouths that quietly wished "good night" and "good luck," and the two started on their hike.

and a half later two figures glided away from the dark shadow of the first arch and, blending in the inequalities of the cliff face, after they had passed the length of the stone wall in a low crouch, carefully paying out a thin thread as they went, disappeared in a niche where the face of the precipice had warped apart. There they compared watches carefully.

"We'll check again in the morning, Canfield," said McNeill. "I want to pull this thing off to the second, if possible. It's three o'clock now. These priests are a lazy crowd. I won't start until seven and even then they won't be stirring. That gives us four hours—two apiece for sleep. I'll take the first watch."

"You're on," said Canfield and curled up in the crevice like a tired dog.

At seven o'clock McNeill left the little fissure and descended unnoticed to the flat ground in front of the first arch. There was no sound of gong, no sign of life within the enclosure. The gates were shut, and he knew the frowsy sentinel slept inside. The holy priests of Hoang Lung were not ascetics. So far as they could obtain it, they lived upon the fat of the land and denied themselves nothing, and, by virtue of the claw, their tribute was universal and munificent.

At fifteen minutes after seven McNeill took a whistle from his pocket and blew on it shrilly. A wicket in the upper leaf of one gate was drawn back, and the sleepy eyes of a watchman peered out, widened as they saw the solitary white devil, and suddenly disappeared.

It was fifteen minutes more before the gates were opened and a group of yellow-robed and shaven priests appeared, escorted by a score of so-called soldiery, armed with a nondescript array of swords, wide-bladed spears, muskets and rifles of all vintages. In their midst McNeill walked through to the inner courtyard.

A short, fat priest advanced. He was ancient. His avoirdupois spoke eloquently of self-indulgence, and his face, projecting from the draped hood that puffed about his full neck, held no more expression than that of a turtle. The small eyes showed merely life, no more emotion than if they had been insets of jet.

"Tao Chan?" asked McNeill.

This had been the name of the writer of the letter to Remsden, the name of the head priest of Hoang Lung.

Tao Chan acknowledged the dignity.

"You have brought back the claw?" he demanded.

"Is the hostage safe?" parried McNeill.

"To talk in questions is to waste time," replied the priest. "First answer me."

"I can make delivery of the claw."

"The girl is unharmed."

"Then show her to me."

"Show me the claw."

McNeill laughed, and a red light came into the jetty eyes of Tao Chan.

"It is not wise to make a mock of the guardian of the claw," he said.

"It is not wise to take a white man for a fool, O guardian that has no claw to guard," answered McNeill. "Show me the girl!"

There had been no apparent sign, but the priests fell back and the guards edged in toward the Irishman.

"Touch me and I destroy your temple," he said confidently.

It was Tao Chan's turn to laugh, but a grin was the nearest he could come to it.

"You speak boldly," he sneered.

McNeill was gaging his time, looking covertly at the hands of his wrist-watch. "The bargain was to exchange the girl for the claw," he said. "You know I must be able to produce the claw or I would not. have traveled so far. I must know that you can produce the girl."

Tao Chan's immutable face gave no sign, and McNeill's heart sank, then rose again. If they had injured her? To them the life of a white maiden, save as they could use it for torture, was nothing. He tried a lead on this line.

"Also there are many thousands of white maidens, O Tao Chan, and but one claw."

"There is but one maiden for thee, white man."

"And yet there are thousands, aye millions, who hold thee responsible for the claw," challenged McNeill. "If I return not with the girl in safety, all China will know how. Tao Chan has been outwitted by the foreign devils, and I do not think what is left of thy life will be happy. Show me the girl."

Still no visible sign, but the guards inched in. It seemed clear to McNeill that the whole thing had been planned before the gate was opened. They meant to get the claw and wreak their vengeance on McNeill and the girl, if she was not already sacrificed. He looked at his watch. It was five minutes of the hour.

"I have warned you," he said. "Do you think I was fool enough to come here alone with the claw upon me? There are yet three days within which to deliver it. It is not far from here but in a place where you can never find it. First I must know whether you can keep your side of the bargain. Show me the girl."

"I think you can be made to tell where the claw is," said Tao Chan softly. "I do not know where it is," said McNeill. "So I can not tell you."

He spoke with such utter conviction that Tao Chan's face twitched. He believed that the foreign devil might be telling the truth. He gave an order. It was repeated back to where guards lounged on the steps of the quaintly-roofed temple. The lacquered doors opened, and the figure of Helen Remsden appeared between two priests, who stepped back a little from her. She gave a little cry, and McNeill, whimsically conscious of the incongruity of the action, took off his helmet. Then the doors closed again.

"We shall not torture you the first," said Tao Chan very quietly. "First you shall watch us work with the girl. After that you may not care to live. But we shall give you certain chances from time to time to bring in the claw. You foreign devil," he continued almost in a monotone that threatened the more with its repression, "did you think you could ravish the shrine of the dragon god and go unscathed? Fung-Ti has been punished. So shall all the rest of you be punished. Your prayers for pity shall lack lips to utter them."

"Touch me," said McNeill, "and I shall shoot you through the belly, Tao Chan. Just one tiny touch—I have you covered now from my pocket—and you will be explaining to your gods why you could not keep their claw. I give you one chance. Tell your men to fall back, bring out the girl in a palanquin borne by four priests. You and four more shall accompany me to the spot where the claw will be turned over to you. Will you do this?"

For the last few seconds marked by the march of the hands on McNeill's watch, the two men, Occidental and Oriental, held a duel of glances.

fissure Canfield stooped above a little instrument of polished wood and brass. For fifteen minutes he had been expecting to hear McNeill's whistle. Now he knew that the little lesson they had arranged was to be given, and he glanced at his own watch and looked over his adjustments with nerveless thoroughness.

"No," bluffed the high-priest.

Back of them there was a muffled roar, a swift suggestion of exploding gases, a cloud of smoke that mushroomed, in which fragments of masonry lofted and rushed down again while the outer arch crumbled and dissolved before the eyes of Hoang Lung.

McNeill had not moved a muscle. Now he put the question again.

"Will you do this? Or shall I destroy the shrine?"

Tao Chan thought rapidly. He guessed somewhat of the means employed to level the arch. But it had been done very cleverly, and he could not offset the terror of his ignorant underlings by a talk on dynamite. To them it was all magic. McNeill seemed very confident, and Tao Chan felt that the white man might use more of this magic wisdom to carry out his threat. True, the girl was in the Temple, but He looked at his panic-stricken guards, at the uneasiness of his priests, trained as they were to avoid emotion, and he looked at McNeill, jaunty, nonchalant, all save his eyes, which were bits of steel. The white devil might sacrifice the girl. They did such things when they were desperate, to save them from torture. The claw must come back. He metaphorically tossed in his cards. He was still qualmish in the stomach that McNeill had threatened.

Once more he gave an order, whereupon McNeill whipped out his whistle and sounded it twice.

Canfield picked up his battery and connections and strolled out of his cave.

"Worked like a charm," he said to the lizards that flickered before him. "A little bit of all right, that."

mob clustered about the ruins of the outer arch and sullenly watched the palanquin borne by the priests depart under the command of the two white devils.

McNeill and Canfield walked one on either side of the chair and talked through the drawn curtains of elaborately embroidered silk to the rescued Helen Remsden. McNeill and Helen did most of the talking, Canfield noticed, and, being a goods [sic] sport, he filled in the time smoking cigarets.

So they came to the camp in the hills, traveling the crest of the ridge, despite the sun, for McNeill wanted to make sure they were not followed. Amid the ring of men the priests set down the palanquin.

"Now," demanded Tao Chan as the girl stepped out, "I have kept faith. Where is the claw?"

"What did you do with it, Wilson?" asked McNeill. "I told our bloated friend here that I did not know where it was, but he would not believe me."

Tao Chan, not knowing the language of the foreign devils, glowered at them suspiciously.

"The white men also keep faith, Tao Chan," said McNeill. "Give it to him, Wilson."

The bearded man solemnly uttered a jargon of meaningless syllables. He was in his rolled-up shirt-sleeves and he exposed his open hands back and front to Tao Chan and the priests.

"Can ye not see it?" he asked, speaking fluently the vernacular. "It was hidden in the air. Lord of air and land and water and of fire was the dragon king. He did but return the claw to its own and now, in promise kept, we bring it back again. Behold!"

He pointed to a spot just above the level of the wondering eyes of the priests. Then, between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand, suddenly appeared, by clever legerdemain, the claw.

A cry came simultaneously from the priests and all, save Tao Chan, dropped on hands and knees in obeisance. But Tao Chan,, who could do some pretty conjuring himself upon occasion, frowned and took the relic. From his robe he produced a case of carven jade lined with golden silk, and reverently placed the claw within.

As the priests rose to his order they found themselves covered by the pistols of the expedition.

"You are going to take a little walk with us as far as the bamboo bridge across the Wu-liang chasm," announced McNeill. "To the other side of it, in fact. Then we'll say good-by and leave you with the claw—after we have destroyed the bridge. Doubtless you will find some roundabout way to get back to Hoang Lung. Do you want to ride in the palanquin, Miss Helen, or would you rather have a horse? We brought a spare one for you."

"A horse, please," said the girl. "I haven't been treated at all badly, Mr. McNeill, but the sooner I can get away from everything Chinese the better I shall be suited."

McNeill translated to Tao Chan, into whose face came the suggestion of satisfaction. He appropriated the abandoned palanquin to his own uses, and from there to the bridge the priests spelled each other in carrying his redundancy. It did not take the little corps of experts long to destroy utterly the bridge of heavy bamboos, ingeniously cantilevered by the Chinese across the deep split, and then they left the discomfited Tao Chan to lead his men back to Hoang Lung as best he could. Straight for Peking they headed, well mounted, exuberant, losing no time.

Helen Remsden told them the details of her carrying off. As McNeill had suspected—had practically known—there were members of the Hoang Lung affiliated with practically every bazaar in Peking, and, when she had walked into the Rising Sun Bazaar, she had walked into a trap that was promptly sprung, a trap that was only one of a long line set for her throughout the city.

"I wanted a mandarin coat or two," she said, "to take home for gifts. I thought the Rising Sun, with almost always an American or European customer at every counter, was safe. Mr. Remsden said nothing to the contrary. But, when I left the hotel, I fancied a Chinaman who was loafing about the compound noticed me particularly and when I was in the Bazaar I was almost certain that this same man came in and spoke to one of the clerks. This clerk spoke to the man serving me.

"I fancy I showed some suspicion, or surprize, and it only shows how clever they were, for the man who was waiting on me, one of the principals of the Bazaar, I fancy, who talked beautiful English, asked me almost instantly if I knew the man. I told him that I did not know him but thought I had seen him before at the hotel.

"He appeared to get very angry and told me that the man wanted a commission on anything I bought, claiming he had recommended me to the Rising Sun. He rated the man, who slunk out. I knew, of course, that such a thing was very likely to happen, and that almost every tourist purchase has a squeeze or two behind the price. It sounded a natural explanation and I thought no more of it.

"I had especially asked for a pomegranate-colored mandarin coat and they had nothing of that shade, or near it, in the lot brought me. Doubtless they took care there was not. At all events, the man seemed disturbed that he did not have one to suit me and called out in Chinese. After the answer he smiled and said that a consignment from Sze-Chuan province had just arrived and was being unpacked and priced. Would I come and see them as they came out of the bale, and take my pick?

"I went into a room at the back of the place. As I passed through the door something was clapped to my face, a cloth saturated in some pungent drug, and that was all I knew until I found myself inside a stuffy palanquin on camel-back, crossing the desert.

"The rest you may imagine. I was fairly well treated and I knew that Mr. Remsden would arrange for my release. I thought—I hoped," she added, a little shyly, "that he would send you, Mr. McNeill."

McNeill, remembering how he had handled Remsden in the matter, smiled a bit grimly.

were traversing a little rocky defile that led down to the Chang Li stream when a horseman approached them. The diminutive pony was being pushed to its top speed by a Chinaman who swayed in his saddle from weariness. When they came up to him, for he could not avoid them in the rocky pass, they saw he was an old man, far too ancient to be attempting such a ride without escort.

He rode his pony to one side along the slant of the piled-up talus of the ravine, staring at the party half curiously, half furtively. The sight of the girl on the horse seemed to fascinate him. Then McNeill, who, with Wilson, had been playing rear-guard from a possible pursuit and surprize, came galloping up and the Chinaman shrank on his saddle to a mere bundle of clothes, hiding his mummy face by pulling down the folds of the turban-like head-gear he wore against the sun.

But McNeill had recognized him, though he did not seek to detain him. It was Ling Yuan, the connoisseur, the master-craftsman, the man he had seen in the corridor of the Imperial, to whom Remsden had so mysteriously entrusted the claw. In the Chinaman's face was the same mixture of satisfied greed and furtive alarm.

"He'll be a bit late with his news," thought McNeill and dismissed him from his thoughts.

Next nightfall they rode through the outskirts of Peking, the cavalcade gradually breaking up as they reached the foreign quarter, only Wilson and Canfield riding with McNeill and the girl through the archway of the hotel courtyard.

McNeill dismounted, went in and came out with the news. Remsden had, doubtless by cabled influence, obtained lodging at the legation. His daughter was to join him there and tomorrow they would start by rail for Shanghai.

"That is bully," said McNeill. "If I remember right, you'll just catch the Cathay. We'll see you to the legation."

"Aren't you going to stay there?" asked the girl. "It's just as dangerous for you."

"I haven't got the drag of Mr. Remsden," smiled back McNeill. "I shall be safe enough. The bunch of us will celebrate our little expedition together. I shall see you on the train tomorrow."

"Then you are coming to Shanghai?"

Wilson in his wisdom had drawn Canfield aside.

"I am going across to the States," said McNeill, "if I can get a spare plank to bunk on. Bookings are heavy this time of year. You—you have no objection to my making the trip with you, Miss Helen?"

"What have I to do with it?" she challenged in sprightly fashion. Then her lashes fell before something in his gaze. "I owe everything to you, Mr. McNeill," she went on seriously. "My life—more than that. I do not know how I can repay you."

"I do," said McNeill. "I'll tell you how on the trip, perhaps."

But the girl, however grateful, was not to have her maidenly defenses overrun in the first assault.

"It will be nice to have some one to talk to," she said. "But I thought that your profession kept you in China, though I can imagine that father's folly may have jeopardized your usefulness."

"I am not a professional guide and interpreter, if that is what you mean," said McNeill. "Only upon occasion. I have made certain discoveries. I am going back to San Francisco to exploit them. Personally, I shall lie low in their development, but I hold a main interest in several projects that promise well." "But you—Mr. Remsden thought that you—" She broke off in charming confusion as she sensed his reasons for acting as guide to her stepfather.

"There were unusual reasons for my attachment to your stepfather—and yourself," said McNeill. "Here is the legation and there is Mr. Remsden. Good-by until tomorrow."

He raised his helmet as the girl turned from greeting her father and waved her hand to him. Then he joined Wilson and Canfield, still discreetly in the background.

"I happen to know that old Chu Lee has got some Pommery still stowed away," he said. "Let's get the gang together and celebrate."

"Celebrate or congratulate?" drawled Canfield.

"You pay for the champagne, Canfield," said McNeill imperturbably, "and you can take your choice."