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Pagan Madonna, The

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<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2></div> Jane had gone to meet his father. How to secrete this note without being observed by either the manager or the Chinaman? An accident came to his aid. Someone in the corridor banged a door violently, and as the manager’s head and Ling Foo’s jerked about, Dennison stuffed the note into a pocket. A trap! Dennison wasn’t alarmed—he was only furious. Jane had walked into a trap. She had worn those accursed beads when his father had approached her by the bookstall that afternoon. The note had attacked her curiosity from a perfectly normal angle. Dennison had absorbed enough of the note’s contents to understand how readily Jane had walked into the trap. Very well. He would wait in the lobby until one; then if Jane had not returned he would lay the plans of a counter-attack, and it would be a rough one. Of course no bodily harm would befall Jane, but she would probably be harried and bullied out of those beads. But would she? It was not unlikely that she would become a pretty handful, once she learned she had been tricked. 80 If she balked him, how would the father act? The old boy was ruthless when he particularly wanted something. If anything should happen to her—an event unlooked for, accidental, over which his father would have no control—this note would bring the old boy into a peck of trouble; and Dennison was loyal enough not to wish this to happen. And yet it would be only just to make the father pay once for his high-handedness. That would be droll—to see his father in the dock, himself as a witness against him! Here was the germ of a tiptop drama. But all this worry was doubtless being wasted upon mere supposition. Jane might turn over the beads without bargaining, provided the father had any legal right to them, which Dennison strongly doubted. He approached Ling Foo and seized him roughly by the arm. “What do you know about these glass beads?” Ling Foo elevated a shoulder and let it fall. “Nothing, except that the man who owns them demands that I recover them.” “And who is this man?” “I don’t know his name.” “That won’t pass. You tell me who he is or I’ll turn you over to the police.” 81 “I am an honest man,” replied Ling Foo with dignity. He appealed to the manager. “I have known Ling Foo a long time, sir. He is perfectly honest.” Ling Foo nodded. He knew that this recommendation, honest as it was, would have weight with the American. “But you have some appointment with this man. Where is that to be? I demand to know that.” Ling Foo saw his jade vanish along with his rainbow gold. His early suppositions had been correct. Those were devil beads, and evil befell any who touched them. Silently he cursed the soldier’s ancestors half a thousand years back. If the white fool hadn’t meddled in the parlour that afternoon! “Come with me,” he said, finally. The game was played out; the counters had gone back to the basket. He had no desire to come into contact with police officials. Only it was as bitter as the gall of chicken, and he purposed to lessen his own discomfort by making the lame man share it. Oriental humour. Dennison and the hotel manager followed him curiously. At the end of the corridor Ling Foo stopped and knocked on a door. It was opened immediately. 82 “Ah! Oh!” The inflections touched Dennison’s sense of humour, and he smiled. A greeting with a snap-back of dismay. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I had a suspicion I’d find you in this somewhere.” “Find me in what?” asked Cunningham, his poise recovered. He, too, began to smile. “Won’t you come in?” “What about these glass beads?” “Glass beads? Oh, yes. But why?” “I fancy you’d better come out into the clear, Cunningham,” said Dennison, grimly. “You wish to know about those beads? Very well, I’ll explain, because something has happened—I know not what. You all look so infernally serious. Those beads are a key to a code. The British Government is keenly anxious to recover this key. In the hands of certain Hindus those beads would constitute bad medicine.” Ling Foo spread his hands relievedly. “That is the story. I was to receive five hundred gold for their recovery.” “A code key,” said Dennison, musing. He knew Cunningham was lying. Anthony Cleigh wasn’t the man to run across half the world for a British code key. On the other hand, perhaps it would be wise to let the hotel manager and 83 the Chinaman continue in the belief that the affair concerned a British code. “If I did not know you tolerably well——” “My dear captain, you don’t know me at all,” interrupted Cunningham. “Have you got the beads?” “I have not. I doubt if you will ever lay eyes on them again.” Something flashed across the handsome face. Ling Foo alone recognized it. He had glimpsed it, this expression, outside his window the night before. He recalled the dark stain on the floor of his shop, and he also recollected a saying of Confucius relative to greed. He wished he was back in his shop, well out of this muddle. The jade could go, valuable as it was. With his hands tucked in his sleeves he waited. Dennison turned upon the manager. He wanted to be alone with Cunningham. “Go down and make inquiries, and take this Chinaman with you. I’ll be with you shortly.” As soon as the two were out of the way Dennison said: “Cunningham, the lady who wore those beads at dinner to-night has gone out alone, wearing them. If I find that you are anywhere back of this venture—if she does not return shortly—I will break you as I would a churchwarden pipe.” Cunningham appeared genuinely taken aback. 84 “She went out alone?” “Yes.” “Have you notified the police?” “Not yet. I’m giving her until one; then I shall start something.” “Something tells me,” said Cunningham, easily, “that Miss Norman is in no danger. But she would never have gone out if I had been in the lobby. If she has not returned by one call me. Any assistance I can give will be given gladly. Women ought never to be mixed up in affairs such as this one, on this side of the world. Tell your father that he ought to know by this time that he is no match for me.” “What do you mean by that?” “Innocent! You know very well what I mean. If you hadn’t a suspicion of what has happened you would be roaring up and down the corridors with the police. You run true to the breed. It’s a good one, I’ll admit. But your father will regret this night’s work.” “Perhaps. Here, read this.” Dennison extended the note. Cunningham, his brows bent, ran through the missive. <div class='blockquot'> Miss Norman: Will you do me the honour to meet me at the bridgehead at half-past nine—practically at once? My son and I are not on friendly terms. Still, I am his father, and I’d like to hear what he has been doing over here. 85 I will have a limousine, and we can ride out on the Bubbling Well Road while we talk. <div class='ra'> Anthony Cleigh. </div> </div> “Didn’t know,” said Cunningham, returning the note, “that you two were at odds. But this is a devil of a mix-up, if it’s what I think.” “What do you think?” “That he’s abducted her—carried her off to the yacht.” “He’s no fool,” was the son’s defense. “He isn’t, eh? Lord love you, sonny, your father and I are the two biggest fools on all God’s earth!” The door closed sharply in Dennison’s face and the key rasped in the lock. For a space Dennison did not stir. Why should he wish to protect his father? Between his father and this handsome rogue there was small choice. The old boy made such rogues possible. But supposing Cleigh had wished really to quiz Jane? To find out something about these seven years, lean and hard, with stretches of idleness and stretches of furious labour, loneliness? Well, the father would learn that in all these seven years the son had never faltered from the high level he had set for his conduct. That was a stout staff to lean on—he had the right to look all men squarely in the eye. 86 He had been educated to inherit millions; he had not been educated to support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven years been a jeweller’s clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the end of his resources. One fact the thought of which never failed to buck him up—he had never traded on his father’s name. Then had come the war. He had returned to America, trained, and they had assigned him to Russia. But that had not been without its reward—he had met Jane. In a New York bank, to his credit, was the sum of twenty thousand dollars, at compound interest for seven years, ready to answer to the scratch of a pen, but he had sworn he would never touch a dollar of it. Never before had the thought of it risen so strongly to tempt him. His for the mere scratch of a pen! In the lobby he found the manager pacing nervously, while Ling Foo sat patiently and inscrutably. “Why do you wait?” inquired Dennison, irritably. “The lady has some jade of mine,” returned Ling Foo, placidly. “It was a grave mistake.” 87 “What was?” “That you interfered this afternoon. The lady would be in her room at this hour. The devil beads would not be casting a spell on us.” “Devil beads, eh?” Ling Foo shrugged and ran his hands into his sleeves. Somewhere along the banks of the Whangpoo or the Yang-tse would be the body of an unknown, but Ling Foo’s lips were locked quite as securely as the dead man’s. Devil beads they were. “When did the man upstairs leave the beads with you?” “Last night.” “For what reason?” “He will tell you. It is none of my affair now.” And that was all Dennison could dig out of Ling Foo. Jane Norman did not return at one o’clock; in fact, she never returned to the Astor House. Dennison waited until three; then he went back to the Palace, and Ling Foo to his shop and oblivion. Dennison decided that he did not want the police in the affair. In that event there would be a lot of publicity, followed by the kind of talk that stuck. He was confident that he could handle the affair alone. So he invented a white lie, and 88 nobody questioned it because of his uniform. Miss Norman had found friends, and shortly she would send for her effects; but until that time she desired the consulate to take charge. Under the eyes of the relieved hotel manager and an indifferent clerk from the consulate the following morning Dennison packed Jane’s belongings and conveyed them to the consulate, which was hard by. Next he proceeded to the water front and engaged a motor boat. At eleven o’clock he drew up alongside the Wanderer II. “Hey, there!” shouted a seaman. “Sheer off! Orders to receive no visitors!” Dennison began to mount, ignoring the order. It was a confusing situation for the sailor. If he threw this officer into the yellow water—as certainly he would have thrown a civilian—Uncle Sam might jump on his back and ride him to clink. Against this was the old man, the very devil for obedience to his orders. If he pushed this lad over, the clink; if he let him by, the old man’s foot. And while the worried seaman was reaching for water with one hand and wind with the other, as the saying goes, Dennison thrust him roughly aside, crossed the deck to the main companionway, and thundered down into the salon. <hr class='major' /> <div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> 89 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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