The Ragged Edge, Harold MacGrath [great books of all time txt] 📗

don't know."

"Because he said he was a Yale man?"

"That might be it."

"Treated you like a white man there, did they?"

"Like a gentleman."

"All right. I had that coming. I didn't think. But, holy smoke!-the Yale spirit in...."

"A Chinaman. I wonder. I spent many happy days there. Perhaps it was the recollection of those happy days. You are a detective?"

"Yes. I have come thirteen thousand miles for this young fellow; I'm ready to go galloping thirteen thousand more."

"You have extradition papers?"

"What sort of a detective do you think I am?" countered O'Higgins.

"Then his case is hopeless."

"Absolutely."

"I'm sorry. He does not look the criminal."

"That's the way it goes. You never can tell." There was a pause. "They tell me over here that the average Chinaman is honest."

Ah Cum shrugged. "Yes?"

"And that when they give their word, they never break it." O'Higgins had an idea in regard to Ah Cum.

"Your tone suggests something marvellous in the fact," replied Ah Cum, ironically. "Why shouldn't a Chinaman be honest? Ah, yes; I know. Most of you Americans pattern all Chinese upon those who fill a little corner in New York. In fiction you make the Chinese secretive, criminal, and terrible-or comic. I am an educated Chinese, and I resent the imputations against my race. You Americans laugh at our custom of honouring our ancestors, our many-times great grandfathers. On the other hand, you seldom revere your immediate grandfather, unless he has promised to leave you some money."

"Bull's eye!" piped O'Higgins.

"Of course, there is a criminal element, but the percentage is no larger than that in America or Europe. Why don't you try to find out how the every-day Chinese lives, how he treats his family, what his normal habits are, his hopes, his ambitions? Why don't you come to China as I went to America-with an open mind?"

"You're on," said O'Higgins, briskly. "I'll engage you for four days. To-day is for the sights; the other three days-lessons. How's that strike you?"

"Very well, sir. At least I can give you a glimmer." A smile broke the set of Ah Cum's lips. "I'll take you into a Chinese home. We are very poor, but manage to squeeze a little happiness out of each day."

"And I promise that all you tell me and show me will sink in," replied O'Higgins, frankly interested. "I'm a detective; my ears and eyes have been trained to absorb all I see and all I hear. When I absorb a fact, my brain weighs the fact carefully and stores it away. You fooled me this morning; but I overheard two old maids talking about you and the young man."

"What has he done?"

"What did he have to drink over here last night?"

"Not even water. No doubt he has been drinking for days without eating substantially, and his heart gave out."

"What happened?"

Ah Cum recounted the story of the sing-song girl. "I had to give in to him. You know how stubborn they get."

"Surest thing you know. Bought the freedom of a sing-song girl; and all the while you knew you'd have to tote the girl back. But the Yale spirit!"

Ah Cum laughed.

"I've got a proposition to make," said O'Higgins.

"So long as it is open and above board."

"It's that, but it interferes with the college spirit stuff. Would a hundred dollars interest you?"

"Very much, if I can earn it without offending my conscience."

"It won't. Here goes. I've come all these miles for this young fellow; but I don't cotton to the idea of lallygagging four weeks in this burg. I've an idea it'll be that long before the chap gets up. My proposition is for you to keep an eye on him, and the moment he puts on his clothes to send me a telegram, care of the Hong-Kong Hotel. Understand me. Double-crossing wouldn't do any good. For all you might know, I might have someone watching you. This time he couldn't get far. He will have to return to Hong-Kong."

"Not necessarily. There is a railroad."

"He won't be taking that. The only safe place for him is at sea; and if he had kept to the sea, I shouldn't have found him so easily. Well, what about it?"

"I accept."

"As an honest Chinaman?"-taking out the offensiveness of the query by smiling.

"As an honest Chinaman."

O'Higgins produced his wallet. "Fifty now and fifty when I return."

"Agreed. Here are the jade carvers. Would you like to see them at work?"

"Lead on, Macduff!"

Ah Cum raised the skirt of his fluttering blue silk robe and stored the bill away in a trouser wallet. It was the beginning and the end of the transaction. When he finally telegraphed his startling information to Hong-Kong, it was too late for O'Higgins to act. The quarry had passed out into the open sea.

* * * * *

From the comatose state, Spurlock passed into that of the babbling fever; but that guarding instinct which is called subconsciousness held a stout leash on his secret. He uttered one word over and over, monotonously:

"Fool! ... Fool!"

But invariably the touch of Ruth's hand quieted him, and his head would cease to roll from side to side. He hung precariously on the ragged edge, but he hung there. Three times he uttered a phrase:

"A djinn in a blue-serge coat!"

And each time he would follow it with a chuckle-the chuckle of a soul in damnation.

Neither the American Express nor Cook's had received mail for Howard Taber; he was not on either list. This was irregular. A man might be without relatives, but certainly he would not be without friends, that is to say, without letters. The affair was thick with sinister suggestions. And yet, the doctor recalled an expression of the girl's: that it was not a dissipated face, only troubled.

The whole affair interested him deeply. That was one of the compensations for having consigned himself to this part of the world. Over here, there was generally some unusual twist to a case. He would pull this young fellow back; but later he knew that he would have to fight the boy's lack of will to live. When he recovered his mental faculties, he would lie there, neutral; they could save him or let him die, as they pleased; and the doctor knew that he would wear himself out forcing his own will to live into this neutrality. And probably the girl would wear herself out, too.

To fight inertia on the one hand and to study this queer girl on the other. Any financial return was inconsiderable against the promise of this psychological treat. The girl was like some north-country woodland pool, penetrated by a single shaft of sunlight-beautifully clear in one spot and mysteriously obscured elsewhere. She would be elemental; there would be in her somewhere the sleeping tigress. The elemental woman was always close to the cat: as the elemental man was always but a point removed from the wolf.

It was so arranged that Ruth went on duty after breakfast and remained until noon. The afternoon was her own; but from eight until midnight she sat beside the patient. At no time did she feel bodily or mental fatigue. Frequently she would doze in her chair; but the slightest movement on the bed aroused her.

At luncheon, on the third day, a thick-set man with a blue jaw smiled across his table at her. She recognized him as the man who had blundered into the wrong room.

"How is the patient?" he asked.

"He will live," answered Ruth.

"That's fine," said O'Higgins. "I suppose he'll be on his feet any day now."

"No. It will take at least three weeks."

"Well, so long as he gets on his feet in the end. You're a friend of the young man?"

"If you mean did I know him before he became ill, no."

"Ah." O'Higgins revolved this information about, but no angle emitted light. Basically a kindly man but made cynical and derisive by sordid contacts, O'Higgins had almost forgotten that there was such a thing as unselfishness. The man or woman who did something for nothing always excited his suspicions; they were playing some kind of a game. "You mean you were just sorry for him?"

"As I would be for any human being in pain."

"Uh-huh." For the life of him, O'Higgins could not think of anything else to say. Just because she was sorry for that young fool! "Uh-huh," he repeated, rising and bowing as he passed Ruth's table. He wished he had the time to solve this riddle, for it was a riddle, and four-square besides. Back in the States young women did not offer to play the Good Samaritan to strange young fools whom Jawn D. Barleycorn had sent to the mat for the count of nine: unless the young fool's daddy had a bundle of coin. Maybe the girl was telling the truth, and then again, maybe she wasn't.

The situation bothered him considerably. Things happened frequently over here that wouldn't happen in the States once in a hundred years. Who could say that the two weren't in collusion? When a chap like Spurlock jumped the traces, cherchez la femme , every time. He hadn't gambled or played the horses or hit the booze back there in little old New York....

"Aw, piffle!" he said, half aloud and rather disgustedly, as he stepped out into the sunshine. "My old coco is disintegrating. I've bumped into so much of the underside that I can't see clean any more. No girl with a face like that.... And yet, dang it! I've seen 'em just as innocent looking that were prime vipers. Let's get to Hong-Kong, James, and hit the high spots while there is time."

He signalled to Ah Cum; and the two of them crossed on foot into the city.

It was not until the morning of the fifth day that the constant vigil was broken. The patient fell into a natural and refreshing sleep. So Ruth found that for a while her eyes were free. She tiptoed to the stand and gathered up the manuscripts which she carried to a chair by the window. Since the discovery of them, she had been madly eager to read these typewritten tales. Treasure caves to explore!

All through these trying days she had recurrently wondered what this strange young man would have to say that Dickens and Hugo had not already said. That was the true marvel of it. No matter how many books one read, each was different, as each human being was different. Some had the dignity and the aloofness of a rock in the sea; and others were as the polished pebbles on the sands-one saw the difference of pebble from pebble only by close scrutiny. Ruth, without suspecting it, had fallen upon a fundamental truth: that each and every book fitted into the scheme of human moods and intelligence.

Ruth was at that stage where the absorption of facts is great, but where the mental digestion is not quite equal to the task. She was acquiring truths, but in a series of shocks rather than by the process of analysis.

There were seven