OUTPOST IN CHINA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 June 1940, Page 10

OUTPOST IN CHINA

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

VAL GIELGUD.

Author of “Africa Flight” and Part Author of “Death at Broadcasting House.”

CHAPTER V. (Continued.) Patrick James watched uneasily. The boy’s tone had been light enough; and he seemed to keep his temper pretty well in the face of Dale's obvious antagonism. But hadn't there been an uncomfortable degree of bitterness behind his last sentence? How far, and how last had things gone between those two, while he had been away, James wondered, and consoled himself inadequately with the remainder that at any rate it could go no farther.

The ensuing awkward silence was resolved suddenly and even more awkwardly. Sheila Havelock appeared in her bedroom doorway, wearing a kimono over pyjamas, nad apparently supremely unconscious of the presence of anyone in the room except her husband. She looked, so Patrick James observed, excessively pretty, and also excessively angry.

“For heaven’s sake, Gerald!” she said furiously, .“tell that boy to get me some really hot water! It’s a tepid as it was yesterday!” Gerald smiled lopsidcdly at the missionary, and he wife saw him. “I'm sorry,” she went on, "1 know I oughtn't to be seeing visitors in this sort of undress—but Gerald's so hopeless as an employer of labour! Hurry up, Gerald!” Gerald Havelock moved uneasily towards the door leading to the servants' quarters, and the next moment Sheila's door had slammed behind her.

The frown deepened on Patrick James’s forehead as he turned to see Gerald browbeating an impassive Chinese houseboy, who faced him with bent shoulders, hands enveloped in voluminous sleeves, and a face as blank as a mask carved out of faintly discoloured ivory.

“Missy .want hot water—quickly! Why not bring hot before?” demanded Gerald Havelock. “All light.” “I spoke to you about this yesterday!” . “All light.” “It’s not all right! You’re dashed lazy.” “All light.”

Leslie Dale’s mouth twitched, but the missionary, like Queen Victoria, was not amused. Gerald Havelock’s fingers were tightening round the handle of his crop.

“I suppose,” said he thickly, “you find this amusing, Ping-Pong, or whatever your name is! I don’t, you know. Get it —and get it quick!” The Chinaman bobbed his head, grotesquely puppet-like. “Can do,” he said, in his thin sapless voice, and shuffled out of the room.

“I’ll be seeing you tomorrow. Havelock.” said Patrick James uncertainly.

He received no reply, and went out on the verandah. Inside the room Gerald Havelock and Leslie Dale faced one another, the former flushed and savage, the latter cold and contemptuous. It was as though a curtain, until that moment invisible and unacknowledged, had been torn down between the two men, impelling the recognition of something mutually and altogether intolerable. Yet, when Leslie spoke, his voice wore its usual quietly impassive tone. “You know, Gerald,” ho said, “as I’ve told you before, you’ll never get results from your boys till you can talk to them in the vernacular.” A close observer might have seen a tiny pulse beating in Gerald Havelock’s right temple. “I can manage thanks.” “It doesn’t look to me as if you can!" Gerald jerked up his chin. “Well after today you won’t have to look on at my incompetence, Dale, so you needn't worry!" “Why, demanded Leslie, “be quite so offensive?” “I don't mean to be offensive. But I can't help being a bit raw! I know you mean well—but you do rub it in whenever you get the chance, don't you?” Leslie Dale put his hands in his pockets, and sat down on the corner of the big desk. “I don’t care about how raw you are,” he observed quietly. “I’m only thinking of your comfort, and your wife’s, after I've gone."

"That," said Gerald, "is extremely kind of you. But I came to Tan Fu to get out of leading-strings. I want to run my own show. I always have wanted to —and this is my first chance.”

Leslie Dale’s temper snapped suddenly. “Then why the deuce don’t you begin to take your chance?” he retorted.

"You don’t even take the trouble to be punctual at the office, nor to learn how to handle your servants." "That," said Gerald savagely, "is almost a good joke. As if you haven't dene every mortal think to keep me under your thlimb ever since I turned up here. What's the good of my trying to do anything, when I've got you to tell me how to do it belter —or how I’m doing it wrong. I've simply been your —your subordinate these last weeks."

There was enough justice in that remark to' make Leslie Dale the least bit in the world ashamed of himself.

"I had to show you the ropes," he said.

"Taking every care to keep my hands off them, eh?” Leslie opened a drawer in the desk, and slammed it to again.

"Did you expect me to let the station go to blazes, while you experimented with responsibility. Havelock?” Rather to his surprise, Gerald avoided the challenge direct. “Look here, Dale," he said. “I don't want to have a row with you—especially just now when you're going. You’ve been no end helpful, and I know it. I'm not such an ungrateful brute as all that. But you are going—-

so do chuck advice for today. Will you?”

Leslie shrugged his shoulders. “As you please. But there’s one piece of information I must give you before you go.”

“What?” asked Gerald sulkily. “Ever heard me speak of General Wu-Tso-Ling?” “I think so. Why?”

"Because he's back in the hills, my dear Havelock. Because he's left Tan Fu alone hitherto because he chooses to consider himself a friend of mine. Because I took the trouble to encourage him in that belief. It wasn’t awfully difficult. He’s a . genial blackguard in his way, with a fine taste in drinks! talks English fluently if inaccurately; and is almost certainly an Eurasian.” “Well?”

“I’m only advising you to keep a weather eye lifting towards the hills —like the psalmist in the proverb. He may take my departure as a heavensent opportunity, and try to get fresh. And you can’t fight him, you know. He has about a couple of hundred men —and most of ’em can shoot more than a bit.”

Gerald walked up and down the room uneasily, biting his lips. “It never struck you that it was a bit late in the day to tell me this?" he said at last.

“I only knew that he was back from his expedition to the east three days ago,” sadi Leslie. “And till today—" “Till today,” Gerald repeated, "-it was your private business! I suppose you wanted your last ounce of authority!”

But Leslie by now had his temper well in hand. “I'm used to it,” he said coolly. “How amusing,” said Gerald Havelock.

Leslie’s eyebrows went up. “Amusing? I don’t see how particularly.” “Don’t you? You’re going to. I find it extremely entertaining—that you should have thought yourself the almighty boss of this station all these weeks.”

“I think” said Leslie, “that you'd better explain what you mean.” “I will, with pleasure,” Gerald Havelock pulled out his pocket book, and. took from it a rather dirtied envelope, which Dale recognised as official Harwood and Greer stationery. “This letter tells you that I am and have been officially in charge of the station at Tan Fu from the moment of my arrival.” "What!”

“I didn’t mean to tell you. It struck me that it might give you rather a shock, and I was grateful to you. But you’ve been overdoing the heavy father act, so you may as well know the truth. I’m afraid head office must have thought that you were overdoing your precious authority.” “So that was it," muttered Leslie.

“It was,” agreed Gerald cheerfully. “Here’s your letter.” He held it out. Leslie Dale took it, turned it over two or three times between his fingers. Then with a single violent movement ripped it across, and let the pieces fall to the floor.

“I imagine," he said quietly, “that I owe you an official apology. You won’t get it. I'll keep what I have to say till I get down to Shanghai.” CHAPTER VII. For a moment or two Gerald Havelock stared uncertainly at the torn scraps of paper littering the floor about Dale’s riding boots. In his mind was a queer mixture of feelings: an almost schoolboyish exultation in having exploded his bomb; a quite childish pleasure in the realisation of just how deeply hurt were the feelings of the man whom he had come so to dislike; and a most irritating yet irresistible sense of shame for his own behaviour. For Gerald Havelock, however much of a weakling, was not in the very least a villain. Nor did he share the essentially modern vice of ingratitude. And he admitted to himself that but for Leslie Dale those last weeks in Tan Fu would have been quite intolerable both for himself and for Sheila.

Sheila! What was she going to say when she found cut what had happened? He didn’t believe that she liked Leslie Dale any better than he did himself—but she was very practical. She would point out that to quarrel openly with Leslie Dale was not very sensible for a newcomer to the firm and the country; that once back at head office a man of Dale’s experience and record wouldn’t have much difficulty in turning the tables on a greenhorn . . .

“I’m sorry,” he said impulsively. “I’m afraid I lost my temper. I ought to have held my tongue.” Leslie Dale's glance—composed as it was of scorn, and an anger as rare as it was genuine—shrivelled him. “You ought to have given mo that letter the moment you arrived, as you very well know. Then I should have known what to do." "I was told to act on my own discretion.” answered Gerald in a low voice.

“And how can you act on what you haven't got?" snapped Dale. Gerald winced. This was getting down to the bone with a vengeance . . "I can only say I'm sorry." he muttered weakly.

“O dry up. Havelock, and run away! You’re hours late at the office as it is —and I've my packing to finish."

And Leslie Dale swept up an armful of books and papers, strode across into his bedroom, and slammed the door behind him.

Gerald Havelock stared gloomily at the blankly unresponsive surface of that door, and gnawed nervously at a scrap of dried skin on his right thumb. His wife’s voice interrupted his gloomy reverie. "I thought I heard you go out, Gerry." (To be Continued).