OUTPOST IN CHINA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 July 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.”

CHAFTER XIX. (Continued.) Patrick James flung out an authoritative hand. "Don't talk melodramatic nonsense!” he said. "Give me that pistol, Gerald!” "You mind your own business!” “Gerald!” protested Sheila. “This has gone far enough,” said the missionary angrily. "I quite agree,” said Gerald, speaking more calmly. “I don’t want to hurt you, padre, if only for your wife's sake. She’s always been pretty decent to me. But you get along and look after her, or I may have to rehearse on your carcase!” He levelled the pistol straight at Patrick James's chest. Sheila saw the missionary's eyes glow, and his big fists clench. But, for once, whether owing to an influx of unexpected courage, alcoholic or otherwise, Gerald Havelock seemed to know his own mind. His finger tightened on the trigger, and Sheila uttered a little • :cream.

“Get along, padre! Quick march!’’ “Please go, Mr James,” said Sheila urgently. "This isn’t your responsibility, you know. I shall be quite all right " “Get out!” Gerald interrupted savI ngely. Patrick James shrugged his shoulders. There was no question of his being afraid, lie was one of those fortunate men. whose record was such that :io one could conceivably question his courage. Bui. though his instinct might rebel at the thought of leaving Sheila Havelock alone with Gerald as he was, every atom of commonsense revolted at the absurdity of getting timself shot by a drunken boy in a fit ;f self-pity. There was Janet, and his Mission to be thought of. He bowed slightly to Sheila, and walked slowly out. Gerald watched him go, and grinned unpleasantly. He had savoured victory over a stronger personality, and the novelty of the sensation was sweet in his nostrils. He followed the missionary out on to the verandah, and watched him down the steps. Then he re-entered the room where his wife was standing, with one arm held tightly across her breasts, her eyes very wide open,'hex - lips lightly shut. Almost as if sleep-walking, in his complete disregard of her, Gerald pro - ceeded to shut the french windows, closing and barring the heavy bulletproof wooden shutters. With the same uncanny deliberation he then locked the three doors leading respectively to the two bedrooms and the servants’ quarters, pushed one of the long chairs out into the middle of the room, and a second with its back against the door of his own bedroom. "Now, Sheila,” he said, “go and sit down in that chair!” "And what do you think you're playing at now?” whispered Sheila. "We're just going to sit up together, and wait for Mr Leslie Dale," said Gerald quietly. Then his voice shrilled suddenly, in a passion of mingled fury, pain, and injured vanity: “Curse him!" Sheila sat down in the chair. There was nothing else she could do for the moment. Gerald was as good as irresponsible. And something was bound to turn up. Nor indeed was she particularly anxious on Dale's account. He could look after himself. She looked at Gerald —and suddenly she did not feel so sure. He sat, leaning a little forward. There was a cruel smile on his lips, and the eyes above the muzzle of the pistol were hard and merciless. She began to stammer something, but he would not reply. He merely sat quite still, his eyes moving at intervals from Sheila’s face to the shuttered window, and back again. Somewhere out in the night, over the hills, there sounded a rumble of distant thunder. CHAPTER XX. During the first hours of his long ride into the hills, Leslie Dale was conscious of little but a weariness of the flesh, so acute, so overwhelming, that nothing else could find a place in his brain where it might register.' His principal fear was not of the darkness, of an ambush, of Wu’s riflemen —but of falling asleep in his saddle, and rolling off his pony. As the rough track serpentined its way further and further into the heart of the hills, it grew steeper and stonier, so that no pony could be expected to go at more than a scrambling walk. And Leslie rocked along, feeling every instant more and more numb in mind less and less substantial in body. His eyes felt sticky. His lips, and the inside of his thighs were sore. His hands —in spite of being gloved—were stiff with cold. For those hours before the dawn in the high places of the hills were sufficiently bitter. He jabbed his knees well home from time to time, smoked cigarettes, which burned vilely against his cracked lips and fouled his palate; took an occasional sip of whisky from his flask' even quoted what poetry he could remember from his nursery and school-: days to help him keep awake —and probably for the first time realised that it is possible for poetry to be practically useful! And all the time, like two weevils gnawing busily in the core of his mind, two thoughts criss-crossed, vanished, and returned remorselessly: Could he possibly hope to get to Wu’s headquarters before the bandit started on his expedition? And what on earth had happened to Sheila Havelock. He knew quite well that he ought Io be worrying solely on the first count. In practice it was the second question which nagged him so mad- I deningly. And perhaps this was not j so surprising. F6r the first question was, after all.) a practical one: a matter of simple, 1 fact, of the number of miles an hour he| could get his jaded pony to go, versus Wu’s ability to gel his men started un-

der cover of darkness. If he failed —if Wu had left first. Tan Fu was probably doomed. Even if Dale could catch him up, the bandit could never put up with the loss of "face” involved in calling oil' an. enterprise once obviously begun. In which case Leslie Dale’s other problems would almost certainly be settled for him. decisively and disagreeably.

But Sheila's attitude —that was another matter. Leslie Dale was in no sense of the word a meek person. He knew his own mind, and knew that he knew it without humbug. But he knew too that as far as women were concerned he suffered from all the weaknesses of inexperience. He believed them to be definitely the weaker sex; to need protection; to appreciate service and affection. Of the rest he knew as little as a schoolboy. And then Dale saw something which Irove speculations, profitable and unprofitable together, out of his mind: he thing he had been hoping to see now for nearly an hour; the thing he had dreaded not seeing; the leaping .fare of a great fire among the rocks.

That last half hour of his ride was a grim eerie business. Leslie now had to lead the pony. The fire seemed at one moment not more than a hundred yards away, and then receded in the most exasperating manner as though it were a will-o’-the-wisp, almost compelling belief that it might bo as insubstantial as a mirage. And as he and the pony stumbled blindly forward over small rocks and loose stones. Leslie became aware that all about him in the darkness were men in hiring.

Now it was the shadow of a head and shoulders against the sky. Now it was the clink of metal against stone. Now it was the soft pad of shadowing feet. At any moment he felt the quiet might be violated by shots. And he hoped, that if it were his fate to die on that barren hillside, it might at least be by a clean bullet-wound through head or heart, and not in some ugly scuffle with knives. From time to time he thought he heard . muttered guttural speech almost witliin arm’s length. But as the gorge curled on towards the fire, it narrowed into a sword-slash through the hills, and darkened proportionately. Leslie Dale was a brave man, but he came to know the meaning of fear in that dark half-an-hour before the dawn. Telling the story afterwards, he always insisted that had there been anywhere to run to, he would have turned tail. But there was not. And at least where the fire blazed there would be warmth, and the hope of food. So he set his teeth and plodded doggedly on. dragging rather than leading his reluctant pony. At long last the gorge broadened out again into a small valley, and Leslie knew and thanked God that he was in time. Wu’s tent was still pitched, his men’s mounts still picketed. The General himself lay according to his quaint custom in his pirated deckchair, reading a book by the light of the great fire, and sipping at a tumbler filled with creme-de-menthe, which happened to be his favourite English beverage. At intervals he held the tumbler up against the firelight, to appreciate the colour.

As Leslie Dale came staggering up, Wu put down tumbler and book — which proved surprisingly to be a Manual of American Education —and held out his hand. "I am always happy to see you, Mr Dale," he said. “I was expecting a visit from you. when I heard of your return to Tan Fu.” A soldier brought forward a second chair, and Dale slumped into it wearily. "I do not wish to give you the trouble of paying a visit to Tan Fu yourself on my account,” he said. “So you come here.” said Wu smoothly. "I appreciate your courtesy.” And he waited with pursed lips for Dale's next move. More than anything else in the world. Leslie Dale wanted food. Normally Wu would have offered it as a matter of course and hospitality. On this occasion he did not. And Dale knew he must not lose “face” by asking for it, nor by such a request humiliate his host. He did his best, therefore. to sit reasonably straight in his chair, and forget his various acute physical discomforts.

Actually, he thought, the situation for all its seriousness, was pretty laughable: one grimy, ragged, exhausted Briton, practically weaponless, sitting out in the open trying to persuade a Chinese bandit with perhaps a thousand armed men at his back, not to pursue his unlawful occasions, while the said bandit drank creme-de-menthe —of all drinks —and talked as though Dale were paying him a Sunday afternoon call! "1 am the happier to see you. Mr Dale." pursued the General politely, "because I fear I have been unable to discover in Mr Havelock those virtues which made your friendship the most agreeable of possessions." "That seems a pity," said Leslie Dale shortly. He did not like leaving the lead in the game in Wu’s hand, but it seemed to him essential to find out exactly what game the bandit waS playing. "It is a great misfortune indeed," Wu went on. "It has led to some misunderstanding—even, 1 fear, to the suspicion of ill-feeling. That such a thing should arise between myself and English gentlemen is of course ridiculous. Misunderstanding and suspicion are alike detestable to the man of virtue.” "Mr Havelock of course is a young man. without great experience of the! world," said Dale. "If you would explain the difficulty which has arisen." He broke off. for Wu was smiling broadly: a thin cruel cat's smile. He! linked blandly up at the sky, which, was dawn. j (To be Continued).