Peter the Brazen Part 63

"I was only wondering," said Peter, as if suddenly tired, "when that pistol is to explode at my back."

"There is yet time," muttered his host. "No man has yet left this room in contempt of me! Can you believe I have lied?" he snarled. "Why, you fool!" he croaked. "I will teach you! What do you suppose has become of that other one whom you met at the _weng_ into the hills? Do you imagine my men were not in his camp? Every inch of the way you two were watched.

"And what has become of your prudence? You who defied me, who escaped me--undone by a woman! She is why you are here. Because you are such a fool you shall die. I might have relented. I thought you were proof against love. Is any one? Is any one proof against it but me? Ah----"

He looked eagerly beyond Peter, and Peter heard a frightened sob, then a little cry, as the door closed heavily.

CHAPTER XV

She flew across the room to him, and pressed her hands to his cheeks.

Her eyes were sparkling with tears, and her face was very pale. Only her lips, which were everlastingly bright, gave color to that distressed young face.

"Peter!" she moaned. "Oh, I was so afraid!" She lowered her voice.

"What is to become of us?"

He looked down at her and forced a smile to his lips.

"We who are about to die----" he began grimly.

She gave him a twisted smile as his arms tightened about her. He loved her for that courage.

With his arm at her waist he turned. He had observed that the Gray Dragon had spoken truly as regarded the armed coolie at his back.

Their captor bent forward and fixed upon them the most curious of glances. His merciless, green eyes ran from Eileen's tumbled chestnut hair to her small, tan boots--then he regarded Peter with the same intensity, and thereupon he seemed to be weighing the doomed lovers as a unit, or as an idea.

A devilish smile cracked his lips.

"So this is love?" he cackled. "This is the young woman to whom you have thrown your life away--after most splendid resistance--you, Peter the Brazen! Do you still love her?" He pointed a crooked forefinger at Eileen. "Tell me, would you desert him, in this first flush of your maiden love, for a handsomer man--and steal his gold, after he laid the earth at your feet? Would you do that?"

Methodically the talons stroked the sea-weed mustache.

"You are too anxious for death. You are romantic. Youth does have such ideas. Even I, _Chuh-seng_, have such notions. Death? Why does your little mind single out such simple punishment--you--lovers?

Romantically you long for death, because in the next world you would come together again--in the lover's eternity of heaven.

"But I have a far more imaginative scheme. Separation! How does that appeal to you?" He leaned forward and watched them. "I have an excellent plan. One of you shall work until the end of his life in this mine, as beautiful captives in the past quarter century have slaved and died; the other shall labor until the end of life in my quarries, not more than one hundred miles from Len Yang.

"Then you will not speak of death. You will struggle and you will grow old long before your time, as the others have done, hoping that vain hope of again meeting. And I shall grant your wis.h.!.+ Years from now, when youth and the divine pa.s.sion of youth have flown--when only the bitter dregs of that rapturous love remain--then you shall be reunited." He cackled humorously in his treble.

"O Buddha! How long have I waited for such an opportunity? How long?

How long? Is it twenty years--or forty--or a thousand--since that night in the bazaar at Mangalore?" His green eyes rolled to the green ceiling. And his mood underwent another vast change, this creature of monster moods.

"Are you grateful to me, you two? You should be! It was I who brought you together--I, the cruelest man in all Asia! It must have been a divine night, that night on the great river, Peter Moore, when she came into your arms. Love blazed in your hearts that night; and this gray-eyed witch said, with downcast eyes: 'I like you, Peter Moore!'

What difference what she said? Any words would have dripped as much with love!"

He sprang to his feet, groaning, his evil countenance undergoing convulsions, as of terrific inner spasms.

"You shall not have that!" he shouted. "You shall not have love! What I have done, I shall undo! You shall live apart. Love has been refused me; love is refused all who come within my reach! That is my decision. Nor shall you have death. One of you to the quarry--the other to the mines. I shall be generous. You may make your choice.

And _that_ is my decision!"

The lovers stared at him. The vicious plan had gripped Peter's imagination. Gone was all thought of the pistol, which lay even now in the palm of his hand. One shot would have silenced the beast forever; but he had forgotten such things as bullets and pistols.

He could realize only that, even before their first kiss had been exchanged, they would be torn apart.

The color had receded from Peter's skin and eyes; he looked very much nearer forty than thirty. And Eileen was reflecting that despairing att.i.tude. She could think only of him toiling wretchedly in the mines or quarries, striving against a fate as unfriendly, as unyielding, as a wall of cold granite.

The Gray Dragon sank back, with his chest heaving. His features were working. The spasm had exhausted him; and the green brilliance gave his gray skin a ghastly pallor. He lifted a small silver hammer and brought it down upon the belly of a large bronze gong.

There was a stir behind them.

With the same cold hate in his expression as he addressed himself again to the lovers, who clung together like small children, pitiful objects indeed in this hall of pitiless green.

"The others are coming; their fate will be yours--you lovers!"

He turned to address words in dialect to the Mongolian on his right, and in the s.p.a.ce Eileen's breath came warmly upon Peter's ear.

"Are you armed?" she whispered.

His nod was hardly perceptible. He dropped his hand into his pocket, and at that instant his arms were pinioned. The revolver was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his fingers.

The malicious green eyes were staring beyond them.

Peter heard a low sob, instantly stifled. Naradia, with bloodshot eyes, was searching his face in distress. Her black hair had been arranged in a heavy braid, which ran down her back in a glistening rope.

Kahn Meng's sad eyes lingered on Peter's for a moment, sparkling with guilt, and his face was crestfallen. Plainer than any words could have said, his expression cried out: "I have failed! I am sorry."

Then he advanced to the throne, taking his stand at the Gray Dragon's side, a maneuver which was thoroughly mystifying to Peter.

The Gray Dragon seemed to ignore his presence. To Peter he said: "You recognize your companion of last night? The man with a legion of a thousand loyal men at his back?"

Peter nodded, muttering.

The Gray Dragon waved Kahn Meng to one side. "He is my son. He is my son by my faithful wife! Do you understand that, Peter Moore?"

"Your son? And he will carry on your work?"

"Precisely that! You have expressed it neatly, Peter Moore. The Gray Dragon will carry on the work of the Gray Dragon!"

The mystery of Kahn Meng was cleared aside. Fury directed at his treachery swelled in Peter's breast and burst. It was as though a torch had been applied. The flame of an ancient ancestral fire, when men fought for their lives and their loves with clubs, and nails, and teeth, burst into his brain and into his breast. The muscles under his tunic-sleeve, which clung to his arm from the moisture of perspiration, rippled and flexed and hardened.

His face--the clean, handsome face of well-lived youth--was quite dreadful to look upon--flushed to a fiery red and distorted. His lips were skinned back over his white teeth.

The thunder of his roar fairly shook the green quartz pillars, between which the smug, green Buddha smiled complacently, impervious to the rages of foolish mankind.

Peter sprang upon the heels of that roar like a ma.s.s of wonderfully controlled steel at the crouching figure, a figure whose countenance was suddenly wet and white.

He tore the carbine from the fingers of the nearest guard before that one could collect his wits.