LITMIR.BIZ

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of the house. You see?”

      She nodded, watching me with eager absorption.

      “Well,” I pursued, “this John Talkso found out about it. He came after your brother in a rage and there was a fight on the spot, in which Talkso got worsted. Then he set to work to drive your brother off.

      “He invented some very clever stage stuff, such as the pterodactyl tracks and the red glass in the skull-sockets; he also had some other tricks in his basket, and all of them clever. He had managed to make everyone believe that this house was haunted. He had once or twice attempted your brother’s life—”

      “But why?” broke in the girl, astounded. “Whatever made the man act so? Was he mad?”

      “Not a bit of it! He was sane. He was also well educated. But—mark this—he was not a white man; he was a halfbreed Indian, and he was the last of the Indian chiefs in this particular valley. He had all the Indian’s sense of outrage at seeing the skulls of his forefathers ornamenting this house. So, naturally, he tried to drive out the desecraters—your brother and me.

      “He did not go in for murder in cold blood. Yesterday he merely entered the room behind you and gave you a shove, for example. In general, he contented himself with such things. But when I met him at McGray’s Tavern and beat him up, he lost his head. He hiked over another road from McGray’s, a shorter road east of the river, and got here ahead of me. But the sheriff and another man were hunting, and they saw Talkso deliberately ambush my car. It was assault with intent to kill, right enough, and it meant the coop for Mr. Talkso.”

      “But that wall you were building!” exclaimed Martha Balliol.

      “That’s the sheriff’s idea; our sheriff is a bright man,” I returned laughing. “The skulls, you note, are now buried completely, yet the foundation of the house is not damaged. Thus the feelings of John Talkso have been smoothed over, particularly as he faced the penitentiary if they were not smoothed over! He and his family are rich ranchers across the lake, and beyond having him bonded to keep the peace, I’ll not punish him further.”

      “Then you think—”

      “Sure! Everything’s all right!”

      * * * *

      A little later that day, Martha Balliol was bidding me farewell. There was nothing to keep her here further, she said; at least, she knew of nothing. Nor did I, unhappily. She would go back East and take up the broken threads again.

      “But,” I proffered, “will you not let me take you as far as Lakeport?”

      “It will be very kind, Mr. Desmond. Of course!”

      “It’s a promise?” I anxiously inquired. “Word of honor?”

      “Eh?” The blue eyes inspected me with surprise. “Why, of course it is!”

      “Good!” I lighted my pipe and puffed contentedly. “To tell the truth, the car is useless—I failed to fix my tires efficiently. There’s no gas to run the launch on; I forgot to fill up when we left Lakeport, I was so excited over your arrival! Naturally, we do not want to walk; so, Miss Balliol, we must go by canoe.”

      “By canoe?” she echoed. “Why—Lakeport is miles and miles away! And I can’t paddle a stroke. We’d never get there!”

      “Well?” I said inquiringly.

      She met my eyes. Slowly a rosy glow crept into her cheeks; then she turned—and passed toward the canoe.

      WRITTEN IN RED

      Kohler greeted me with a cigar and a document bearing red ideographs. At the end was a seal, in the usual Chinese fashion, but not a usual seal. To my eye it looked more like a pair of crossed compasses than anything else; it might have been a square and compass.

      “Sit down, Breck,” he said. “That’s a letter of credit which will be honored for any sum by any Shansi banker in China. Stick it in your pocket and listen to me.”

      I obeyed. The old-style native banks, named from the fact that every last man in them is a Shansi man, cover China like a network. I knew Kohler was hand in glove with them.

      James Sze Kohler was one of the wealthiest men in China, and certainly was the most extraordinary. Only twenty-five, he was the son of a Manchu princess and an American legation guard. Enormously wealthy, he had done some curious and interesting things.

      He brought me from Manila to be managing editor of his Tientsin paper, the Republican. He owned a string of papers up and down the coast, and often shifted his men from paper to paper. I had built up the Tientsin property in good shape, so when he called me over to his office in Bristow road, with the curt message that I was fired, I was not greatly concerned about it. I hoped he would send me to Shanghai.

      He was alone in his office when I arrived. To all appearance, Kohler was as American as I was. We had both been through Dartmouth, except that he came out top honor man and I did not. He was slender, wide of shoulder, firm of neck, with not a sign of the Eurasian about him except a high arched eyebrow. Even his nails and eyes were clear. Perhaps Manchus are Caucasian after all—I don’t know.

      His face was at first glance effeminate, as was his voice. Unless one knew him well, it was extremely hard to credit that this slim young chap controlled great financial and industrial enterprises and was rumored to have at his fingers’ ends a remarkable secret-service system which covered half China.

      Kohler leaned back in his chair, took a cigar and lighted it, and surveyed me.

      “George, do you believe in luck?”

      “As a wild, harum-scarum goddess of chance, no,” I said. “As a combination of circumstances, yes!”

      He chuckled at that.

      “Combination of circumstances is right. They do combine in mighty queer ways for some people. Just now they have combined to offer you a job, Breck. I’m going to let everyone know that you’re on that job in my behalf. That means that you’ll run a risk of getting bumped off. It’s more than a risk; it’s a probability, in fact! Naturally, high risk implies high pay. If you pull it off, there’s a fee of fifty thousand, gold, and a ten-thousand-dollar job on my private staff for you.”

      He was silent for a moment, studying his cigar. I said nothing.

      It was characteristic of Kohler that he took for granted my acceptance of the job, and he was right. The Big Chance had come my way; the thing of which every white man in the East dreams, although not one dream in ten thousand ever comes true.

      Stories were afloat, however; I knew with whom I was dealing. Blair, away over in Shensi, had pulled off a deal for Kohler and had gone home rich. Jim Hancy, down in Yunnan, owned a silver mine. Herb Moore tackled a Kweilin mountainside at the risk of his life, and operated a huge inland coal industry for Kohler. George Breck was not going to pass up a good thing because of the danger involved!

      But why was he going to let everybody know that I was working for him? This was a new wrinkle. Usually, nobody knew just who was working for Kohler and who was not. That was one of the secrets of his amazing success, I believe.

      “Know anything about the lacquer industry down south, in Fuchow?” he asked suddenly.

      “Something. It was started a couple of years ago to buck the Japanese monopoly, a revival of the old Chinese lacquer work. I hear they went at it right, too; turned out high-grade stuff, sent a commercial traveler to America, and made a strong effort to establish lacquer as a commercial art product. Couldn’t be done, from what I hear; the cheap ten-cent-store Jap product forced ’em to slow down and quit.”

      “Not altogether,” said Kohler quietly, but with a gleam in his eye. “Japanese influence in Fukien province was one thing that made ’em quit. Well, Breck, I’ve bought out the works. Inside the next year, if you don’t come a cropper, I’ll be shipping lacquer ware to America that’ll make the market sit up and take notice.

      “Anybody can imitate lacquer,”

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