LITMIR.BIZ

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a priest, rifle in hand, watching us. At a little distance, Wan Shih and two other priests were giving first aid to Rosoff.

      “Damn those boats!” said Alan Groot energetically. “If I’d seen the things—”

      “Hello!” I contrived to grin. “Sounds as though you’d wakened up, Alan? Where did you get that bump on the jaw?”

      Waked up? I’ll say he had! Mary informed me that he had been drawn aboard fighting and had fought until they downed him. Wan Shih, I was glad to observe, had a black eye.

      “And I’m afraid,” she said steadily, while she pinned up my sleeve again, “that I shot somebody—”

      “Don’t worry,” I told her. “We’ve played a good game, and we’ve lost. Did they get your gun?”

      She nodded, unable to speak. She had caught the gun knocked out of my hand when the sail bore me down.

      I reflected that things were not so bad after all. Groot and I would be out of the way, of course, and it would probably be done without any great loss of time. Mary, however, had gained quite a reprieve.

      It would be some time before Baron Rosoff would be in any shape to molest her, and by then, I trusted, the worthy baron would be translated to another sphere. Somebody in Cheng-tu was certain to recognize the body of John Li. Besides, I had sent word where I was going. When I failed to show up, the Heart-resting-place was due for an investigation. If I knew the military governor, and I knew him pretty well, he would have started some action by this time.

      I said as much to Alan.

      “Now that you’ve got on your fighting clothes,” I said, “keep wearing them and we’ll go down game! Mary’s all right. In two or three days, at the outside, there’ll be a sound of revelry by night, and the Heart-resting-place will be raided.”

      “Oh!” Alan blinked at me. “All I’m sorry for is that I shan’t be there to see it!”

      “Well,” I said reflectively, “maybe we’ll be sticking around. If there’s anything to this table-tipping stuff, you and I may be floating around to twang a harp when they string up the baron. If we can hunt up a slate in Cheng-tu, maybe we can jot down a message about hanging him instead of shooting him. That was my idea all along. The main thing will be to get hold of a good honest medium who can get the message proper—”

      “Stop it—stop it!” cried out Mary, so suddenly that the guardian priest jumped and threw up his gun in alarm. Tears were blending with the rain on the girl’s face. “Oh, how can you talk that way when—”

      “What do you want us to do?” growled Alan. “Hold a lodge of sorrow?”

      “Don’t use slang, Alan,” I reproved him. “What would they say in Berkeley if they heard such language on your chaste lips?”

      “Shut your blamed mouth!” snapped Groot. “If I could get this confounded cord off my feet, I’d make ’em sorry yet that they picked on me!”

      “If that’s all you want, it’s easy,” I responded. “You twist over so you’re facing me, with your feet conveniently near. Mary, be so kind as to get that swagger stick out of the small of my back. It’s made of steel, so unfortunately it isn’t broken. My back is. Now, Alan, are you game to go down fighting?”

      “You give me a show!” he said.

      Mary put the swagger stick in my hand, and I tossed it in the air and caught it. The guard stepped forward, but Wan Shih was striding over and the priest left matters to his boss. Wan Shih looked down at us severely. I tossed up the stick, caught it, and smiled at him. The point of that stick was carefully out of sight under my leg.

      “More of a trick to that than you’d think,” I said lightly.

      He did not respond. He just gave us one long, steady look that took in everything. Then he turned his back and walked back to Rosoff. The priest looked after him—and I set the point of that swagger stick to the cord about Alan’s feet. I pressed twice. Those razor edges of steel went through the water-rotted straw rope like paper.

      “Take it easy, now,” I said. “I’m in on this deal.”

      He nodded and sat motionless. It was no simple matter to pick at my own leg-rope under the eyes of the guard, but he suspected nothing in that swagger stick, and presently I was able to move my legs slightly.

      At this moment Rosoff, pulled to his feet by two priests, came staggering over to us. He was an unpleasant sight, with a smear of rainy blood over one side of his head, and both his arms in pawn. He came to us and planted a hearty kick in my side.

      “Hang me, will you?” he said. “You damned American rat! I’ll teach you something.”

      Mary started forward. Rosoff turned on her with a gesture—except for his hurt hand, he would have struck her where she stood.

      “Be quiet, girl!” he snarled. “Keep your place until I want you.”

      “That’s what they call Hun blood, Alan,” I observed to Groot. “Pleasant chap, eh?”

      Rosoff went purple. “Throw him into the river!” he ordered the priest who stood over us. I gave Alan a warning frown, and he relaxed.

      I did not blame Mary for fainting. It was rather a brutal affair—all of us there in the whirling rain, Rosoff standing over us with demoniac fury in his handsome face, and those impassive yellow brutes ready to do anything at his word. Neither Alan nor I had any illusions. We knew that the end was here and now.

      My only desire was to do as much damage as I could before going under. The priest put down his rifle, grinned, and called one of his two comrades. Wan Shih and the third stood watching.

      The two stooped to pick me up.

      I was just as glad that Mary had gone out, as the theosophist chaps say. The point of that little stick took the man above me square in the throat—just a peck, no more and no less. The other was stooping over to pick up my legs; I could see the three scars in his scalp where the sacred punk had burned into him at his initiation. As the first man grunted and fell, he straightened up in surprise, and I gave him the stick in the stomach. I think it went clear through him.

      Groot and I came to our feet at the same instant. Rosoff was already backing away, cursing us luridly.

      Wan Shih jerked out an automatic and fired. The third priest banged away with his rifle. The boatmen were coming on the jump, Groot and I went for the crowd, knowing that we would go down but meaning to go down hard.

      I saw Alan stagger, and flung my little stick. That was the last trick in my bag, and the best. The point caught Wan Shih in his open mouth. Then—the third priest fired at me point blank, and I laughed as I went down.

      CHAPTER IX

      “For They’re Hangin’ Danny Deever—”

      The same scene—the same place on the river shore, the same driving rain, the same fringe of boats. I opened my eyes, rather astonished that hell was like this. Then I coughed and clutched at the flask which my friend Lieutenant Ch’en, of the yamen guard, was holding to my lips.

      “Do it again,” I said. “Do it again, and don’t waste it! I’m partial to Scotch.”

      Ch’en grinned happily and obeyed my command like a dutiful man.

      “Why didn’t that chap hit me?” I inquired.

      “I hit him first,” said Ch’en, “Look around, sir!”

      He helped me to my feet. The first thing that I saw was one of the river patrol launches nosing in close to the shore. Wan Shih’s boatmen were being tied up by our soldiers.

      Wan Shih himself, pretty well bled but still ripe for hanging, was being trussed up, and Baron Rosoff was marching to the shore three inches ahead of a bayonet.

      “Look here, don’t hurt the baron!”

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