Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 7, 1922 — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

180 cion of what was passing in their minds must have come to Hendriks. They were too ingenuous, too kind-hearted and simple- natured not to have their faces reveal pretty clearly their thoughts. He hastened to correct them. ‘There was nothing wrong about it, nothing shady in the transaction.” He noted a distinct reaction of relief. ‘‘ The manner of doing the business was a little out of the ordinary, a bit mysterious; no more so, I imagine, than in all such cases. I have never handled one before myself. “Taken as it stands, stripped of all the peculiar circumstances that have recently happened aboard here, the matter is ab- surdly simple. There’s nothing to it at all. But in the light of what has happened, what is happening, it becomes enormous, grotesque, a thing out of a dream-book, a dream-book dealing in unpleasant dreams, nightmares. You see ’’—he leaned closer to them—‘ the box contains a coffin, and the coffin contains a corpse—as I have been led to believe.’ ee ‘“The men must never know that!” Rut- ledge looked from one to the other for con- firmation. ‘ They’d want it chucked over the side—blame all the things that are hap- pening to it. There’d be the very devil of a row.” Hendriks’s implication still failed to strike them. “But, don’t you see,” he said, “ that’s just the point. It is at the bottom of it— of everything. Gentlemen, that corpse isn’t dead!” Hopper recovered first. “ Well, yank him out and let’s have a look at him.”’ Hopper glanced at the oth- ers. “ Why not?” ‘There are several reasons, Mr. Hop- per, that make it difficult, that would cer- tainly make it impossible but for to-day’s occurrences.” “Who’is he, the dead one, do you know?” Hopper asked. “Ves. He is a certain Chinaman of great importance and rank. You will see the difficulty I am in—” ‘““He’s the man with the scarred hand!” Rutledge asserted with conviction. ‘“Couldn’t be, Pete,” Sparks said. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. sm “* More like he’s some guy the scarred mitt’s keepin’ as a prisoner. Otherwise, why the call for help on that piece of paper?”’ ‘“‘That is reasonable,” Hendriks con- ceded. ‘I will tell you all I know about it, all that White told me up at the office the afternoon I went to get the papers. He seemed particularly impressed about the whole things. White did his best to make me feel impressed about it, too. He didn’t. It seemed quite ordinary. * Besides, I had other things to attend to, small, personal things, tremendously important to me of course, such as all of us have to rush around doing the last min- utes before departure. There was the worry about stores closing before I could get to them, and all that. The sum of the whole matter to me was just one dead Chinaman in a box which was to be deliv- ered at Hongkong. “Even though I was half thinking of other things while White talked the details of what he said are quite clear to me now. He must have been more impressive than I realized at the time. As I say, this man isn’t an ordinary Chinaman, a plain John Chink, not by any means. He’s some high muck-a-muck in one of their secret soci- eties, tongs, or whatever they are. “White even hinted a bit at matters of a political nature, high politics in China; what the Germans speak about in hushed voices as realpolitiks. White wasn’t very definite as to that, the political aspect of it, but he did emphasize the importance of handling and taking care of the box with extreme care; gave me a tremendous rig- marofe about the reverence of the Chinese for their dead. “‘ Lord knows where he picked his knowl- edge up! I couldn’t see what he was driv- ing at. I know I asked him point blank if he imagined for a single instant that I’d be such a fool as to tamper with the box. He assured me that wasn’t his point at all. If I had seriously imagined that it had been his point I’d have thrown the job up in his face on the spot and told him to get another skipper. Those office people ashore get entirely too cocky sometimes. I’m perpetually being astonished at their ignorance, their silly bumbledom. comiclbooolx C©