“Well – you know who he is, don’t you? Who they are?”
Doane bowed again.
“Better use a little tact.”
Doane walked back along the deck to cabin sixteen. A fresh breeze blew sharply here; the chairs had all been moved across to the other side where the sunlight lay warm on the planking. Within the social hall the second engineer – a wistful, shy young Scot – had brought his battered talking machine to the dining table and was grinding out a comic song. Two or three of the men were in there, listening, smoking, and sipping highballs; Doane saw them as he passed the door. Through the open but shuttered window of cabin number twelve came the clicking of a typewriter and men’s voices, that would be Mr. Kane, discussing his “autobiography” with its author.
Before number sixteen, Doane paused; sniffed the air. A curious odor was floating out through these shutters, an odor that he knew. He sniffed again; then abruptly knocked at the door.
A drowsy voice answered! “What is it? What do you want?”
“I must see you at once,” said Doane.
There was a silence; then odd sounds – a faint rattling of glass, a scraping, cupboard doors opening and closing. Finally the door opened a few inches. There was Rocky Kane, hair tousled, coat, collar and tie removed, and shirt open at the neck. Doane looked sharply at his eyes; the pupils were abnormally small. And the odor was stronger now and of a slightly choking tendency.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” cried young Kane, shrinking back a little way.
“I think,” said Doane, “you had better let me come in and talk with you.”
“What right have you got saying things like that? What do you mean?”
“I have really said nothing as yet.”
Kane, seeming bewildered, allowed the door to swing inward and himself stepped back. The big mate came stooping within.
“Your note has been returned,” he said shortly; and gave him the paper.
Kane accepted it, stared down at it, then sank back on the couch.
“What’s this to you!” he managed to cry. “What right… what do you mean, saying I wrote this?”
“Because you did. You sent it back by the little girl.”
“Well, what if I did! What right – ”
“I am here at the request of his excellency, the viceroy of Nanking. You have been annoying his daughter. The fact that she chooses, while in her father’s household, to wear the Manchu dress, does not justify you in treating her otherwise than as a lady. Perhaps I can’t expect you to understand that his exellency is one of the greatest statesmen alive to-day. Nor that this young lady was educated in America, knows the capitals of Europe better, doubtless, than yourself, and is a princess by birth. She went to school in England and to college in Massachusetts. Take my advice, and try no more of this sort of thing.”
The boy was staring at him now, wholly bewildered. “Well,” he began stumblingly, “perhaps I have been a little on the loose. But what of it! A fellow has to have some fun, doesn’t he?”
The mate’s eyes were taking in keenly the crowded little room.
“Well,” cried Kane petulantly, “that’s all, isn’t it? I understand! I’ll let her alone!”
“You don’t feel that an apology might be due?”
“Apologize? To that girl?”
“To her father.”
“Apologize – to a Chink?”
The word grated strangely on Doane’s nerves. Suddenly the boy cried out: “Well – that’s all? There’s nothing more you want to say? What are you – what are you looking like that for?”
The sober deep-set eyes of the mate were resting on the high dresser at the head of the berths. There, tucked away behind the water caraffe, was a small lamp with a base of cloisonné work in blue and gold and a small, half globular chimney of soot-blackened glass.
“What are you looking at? What do you mean?”
The boy writhed under the steady gaze of this huge man, who rested a big hand on the upper berth and gazed gravely down at him; writhed, tossed out a protesting arm, got to his feet and stood with a weak effort at defiance.
“Now I suppose you’ll go to my father!” he cried. “Well, go ahead! Do it! I don’t care. I’m of age – my money’s my own. He can’t hurt me. And he knows I’m on to him. Don’t think I don’t know some of the things he’s done – he and his crowd. Ah, we’re not saints, we Kanes! We’re good fellows – we’ve got pep, we succeed – but we’re not saints.”
“How long have you been smoking opium?” asked the mate.
“I don’t smoke it! I mean I never did. Not until Shanghai. And you needn’t think the pater hasn’t hit the pipe a bit himself. I never saw a lamp until he took me to the big Hong dinner at Shanghai last month. They had ‘em there. And it wasn’t all they had, either – ”
“If you are telling me the truth,” said the mate.
– “I am. I tell you I am.”
“ – Then you should have no difficulty in stopping. It would take a few weeks to form the habit. You can’t smoke another pipe on this boat.”
“But what right – good lord, if the pater would drag me out here, away from all my friends… you think I’m a rotter, don’t you!”
“My opinion is not in question. I must ask you to give me, now, whatever opium you have.”
Slowly, moodily, evidently dwelling in a confusion of sulky resentful thoughts, the boy knelt at the cupboard and got out a small card-board box.
The mate opened it, and found several shells of opium within. He promptly pitched it out over the rail.
“This is all?” he asked.
“Well – look in there yourself!”
But the mate was looking at the suit-case, and at the trunk beneath the lower berth.
“You give me your word that you have no more?”
“That’s – all,” said the boy.
The mate considered this answer; decided to accept it; turned to go. But the boy caught at his sleeve.
“You do think I’m a rotter!” he cried. “Well, maybe I am. Maybe I’m spoiled. But what’s a fellow to do? My father’s a machine – that’s what he is – a ruthless machine. My mother divorced him ten years ago. She married that English captain – got the money out of father for them to live on, and now she’s divorced him. Where do I get off? I know I’m overstrung, nervous. I’ve always had everything I want. Do you wonder that I’ve begun to look for something new? Perhaps I’m going to hell. I know you think so. I can see it in your eyes. But who cares!”
Doane stood a long time at the rail, thinking. The ship’s clock in the social hall struck eight bells. Faintly his outer ear caught it. It was time to join his excellency.
CHAPTER III – MISS HUI FEI
THE luncheon table of his excellency was simply set, with two chairs of carven blackwood, behind a high painted screen of six panels. It was at this screen that the first mate (left by a smiling attendant) gazed with a frown of incredulity. Cap in hand, he stepped back and studied the painting, a landscape representing a range of mountains rising above mist in great rock-masses, chasms where tortured trees clung, towering, lagged peaks, all partly obscured by the softly luminous vapor – a scene of power and beauty. Much of the brighter color had faded into the prevailing tones of old ivory yellow shading into some thing near Rembrandt brown; though the original, reds and blues still held vividly in the lower right foreground, where were pictured very small, exquisite in