“And to think,” said he eagerly, “that it has always been like this, and always will be. It was just so in the days of Abraham and Isaac. The one people in the world that doesn’t change. It’s their whole philosophy – passive non-resistance, peace. And-do you know, I’m beginning to wonder if they aren’t right about it. For here they are, you know. Greece is dead. Rome’s dead. And Assyria, and Egypt. But here they are. It’s their philosophy that’s done it, I suppose. Almost be worth while to come out here and live a while, when our part of the world gets too upset. Just for a sense of stability – somewhere.”

These two young persons, dreaming of stability while the earth prepared to rock beneath their feet!

Rocky Kane and the slim girl had dropped out of sight, lingering at this shop and that. The party later found them at a silversmith’s counter. They had bought a heap of the silver dragon-boxes and cigarette cases; and then devised a fresh little idea in gambling, weighing ten Chinese dollars against other ten in the balanced scales, the heavier lot winning.

Young Kane had got through his clothing, somehow, there in the street, to his money belt, for he held it now carelessly rolled in one hand. He was flushed, laughing softly. He and the thin girl were getting on.

“Come along, you two,” remarked the customs man. “We stop only two hours here.”

The young couple, gathering up their purchases and the heaps of silver dollars, slowly followed.

“That was great!” exclaimed Rocky Kane. The thin girl, he had decided, was a good fellow. She was always quiet, discreet, attractive. In her curiously unobtrusive way she seemed to know everything. The face was cold in appearance. Yet she was distinctly friendly. Made you feel that nothing you might say could disturb or shock her. He wondered what could be going on behind those pale quiet eyes, behind the thin lips. The men had remarked on the fact that she was traveling alone. She was a provocative person – the curiously youthful costume; the black hair gathered at the neck and tied, girlishly, with a bow – really an exciting person. The way she had taken that little scene out on deck with the gorgeous Chinese girl – Rocky knew nothing of the distinctions between the Asiatic peoples – who spoke English; quite as a matter of course. Though she took everything that way. This little gambling, for instance. She loved it – was quick at it.

“I’m wondering about you,” he said, as they wandered along. “Wondering – you know – why you’re traveling this way. Have you got folks up the river?”

“Oh, no,” she replied – never in his life had he known such self-control; there wasn’t even color in her voice, just that easy quiet way, that sense of giving out no vitality whatever. “Oh, no. I have some business at Hankow and Peking.”

That was all she said. The subject was closed. And yet, she hadn’t minded his asking. She was still friendly; he felt that. His feelings rose. He giggled softly.

“Lord!” he said, “if only the pater wasn’t along!”

“Does he hold you down?”

“Does he? Brought me out here to discipline me. Trying to make me go back to college – make a grind of me… I was just thinking – here’s a nice girl to play with, and plenty of fun around, and not a thing to drink. He gave me fits at Shanghai because I took a few drinks.”

“You have the other stuff,” said she. He turned nervously; stared at her. But she remained as calmly unresponsive as ever. Merely explained: “I smelt it, outside your cabin. You ought to be careful – shut your window tight when you smoke it.”

He held his breath a moment; then realized, with an uprush of feeling warmer than any he had felt before, that he had her sympathy. She would never tell, never in the world. That big mate might, but she wouldn’t.

She added this: “I can give you a drink. Wait until things settle down on the boat and come to my cabin – number four. Just be sure there’s no one in the corridor. And don’t knock. The door will be ajar. Step right in. Do you like saké?”

“Do I – say, you’re great! You’re wonderful. I never knew a girl like you!”

She took this little outbreak, as she had taken all his others, without even a smile. It was, he felt, as if they had always known each other. They understood – perfectly.

If he had been told, then, that this girl had been during two or three vivid years one of the most conspicuous underworld characters along the coast – that coast where the underworld was still, at the time of our narrative, openly part of what small white world there was out here – a gambler and blackmailer of what would very nearly have to be called attainment – he would have found belief impossible, would have defended her with the blind impulsiveness of youth.

It was said that the steamer would not proceed at the scheduled hour, might be delayed until night. Disgruntled white passengers settled down, in berth and deck chair, to make the best of it. There was, it came vaguely to light, a little trouble up the river, an outbreak of some sort.

Rocky Kane, a flush below his temples, slipped stealthily along the corridor. At number four he paused; glanced nervously about; then, grinning, pushed open the door and softly closed it behind him.

The strange thin Miss Carmichael was combing out her black hair. With a confused little laugh he extended his arms. But she shook her head.

“Sit down and be sensible,” she said. “Here’s the saké.”

She produced a bottle and poured a small drink into a large glass. He gulped it down.

“Aren’t you drinking with me?” he asked.

“I never take anything.”

“You’re a funny girl. How’d you come to have this?”

“It was given to me. You’d better slip along. I can’t ask you to stay.”

“But when am I going to see you, for a good visit?”

“Oh, there’ll be chances enough. Here we are.”

“That’s so. Looks as if we’d stay here a while, too. There’s a battle on, you know, up at Wu Chang and Hankow. Big row. We get all the news from Kato. He’s that Japanese that father has with him. The revolutionists have captured Wu Chang, and are getting ready to cross over. The imperial army’s being rushed down to defend Hankow. Regular doings. Shells were falling in the foreign concessions this morning. Kato’s got all the news there is. It’s a question whether we’ll go on at all. You see the Manchus own this boat, and the republicans would certainly get after us. There are enough foreign warships up there to protect us, of course… How about another drink?”

“Better not. Your father will notice it.”

“He won’t know where I got it.” Rocky chuckled. He felt himself an adventurous and quite manly old devil – here in the mysterious girl’s cabin, watching her as she smoothed and tied her flowing hair, and sipping the potent liquor from Japan. “It’s funny nothing seems to surprise you. Did you know they were fighting up there?”

“No.”

“Wouldn’t you be a little frightened if we were to steam right into a battle?”

“I shouldn’t enjoy it particularly.”

“Aren’t you even interested? Is there anything you’re interested in?”

“Certainly – I have my interests. You must go – really… No, be quiet! Some one will hear! We can visit to-night – out on deck.”

“But you’re – I don’t understand! Here we are – like this – and you shoo me out. I don’t even know your first name.”

“My name is Dixie – but I don’t want you to call me that.”

“Why not? We’re friends, aren’t we – ”

“Of course, but they’d hear you.”

“Oh!”

“Wait – I’ll look before you go… It’s all clear now.”

They visited long after dinner. He was brimming with later advices from the center of trouble up the river. Mostly she listened, studying him with a mind that was keener and quicker and shrewder in its sordid wisdom than he would perhaps ever understand.

Everything that Kato had told his father and himself he passed eagerly on to her. He was a man indeed now; making an enormous impression; possessor of inside information of a vital sort – the viceroy’s priceless collection of jewels, jades, porcelains and historic paintings, which Kato was advising his father to pick up for a song while red revolution raged about the old Manchu, the dramatic plans of the republicans, their emblems and a pass-word (Kato knew everything) – “Shui-li” – “union is strength”; the small meeting below decks ending in the death of two soldiers. He dramatized this last as he related it.

The girl, lying still in her chair, listened as if but casually interested, while her mind gathered and related to one another the probable facts beneath his words. She was considering his dominant quality of ungoverned hot-blooded youth. Of discretion he clearly enough had none; which fact, viewed from her standpoint, was both important and dangerous. For the information he so volubly conveyed she had immediate use. That was settled, however cloudy the details. But this further question as to the advisability of holding the boy personally to herself she was still weighing. Two courses of action lay before her, each leading to a possible rich prize. If the two could be combined, well and good; she would pursue both. But it was not easy to sense out a possible combination. The obvious first thought was to go whole-heartedly after the larger of the prizes and as whole-heartedly forget the other. As usual in all such choices, however, the lesser prize was the easier to secure. Perhaps, even, by working – the word “working” was her own – with great rapidity she might make – again her word – a killing with this wild youth in time to discard him and pursue the still richer prize.

Because he was, at least, the bird in hand, she submitted passively when his fingers found hers under the steamer rug. Twilight was thickening into night now on the river. And they were in a dim corner. He was, she saw, at the point of almost utter disorganization. He was sensitive, emotional, quite spoiled. It was almost too easy to do what she might choose with him. It would be amusing to tantalize him, if there were time; watch him struggle in the net of his own nervously unripe emotions, perhaps shake him down (we are yet again dropping into her phraseology) without the surrender of a quid pro quo. That would please her sense of cool sharp power. But he might in that event, like the young naval officer down at Hong Kong, shoot himself; which wouldn’t do. No, nothing in that!

This other larger matter, now, was a problem indeed; really, as yet, only a haze in her sensitive, strangely gifted mind. It put to the test at once her imagination, her instinct for dangerous enterprise, her skill at organizing the sluggish minds of others. It would mean dangerous and intense activity.

She asked, in a careless manner, where the viceroy kept his treasures; and fixed in her mind the place he named – Huang Chau.

The fool was squeezing her fingers now; unquestionably building in his ungoverned brain an extravagant image of herself; an image wrapped in veils of somewhat tarnished but certainly boyish innocence, sentimentalized, curiously less interesting than the complicated wickedness and intrigue of actual human life as it presented itself to her.

When he tried to kiss her she left him. But lingered to listen to his proposal that she should follow him to his own cabin; smiled enigmatically in the dusk beneath the deck light; humming lightly, pleasingly, she moved away; turned to watch him bolting for his room.

She strolled around the deck then. Apparently none other was sitting out. The teachers and the young men were spending the evening, she knew, with Dawley Kane at the consulate. Rocky had got out of that. Tex Connor was in his cabin; reading, doubtless, with his one good eye. For rough as he might be, this gambler and promoter of boxing and wrestling reveled secretly in love stories. He read them by the hundred, the old-fashioned paper-covered romances and tales of adventure. A pretty able man. Tex; useful in certain sorts of undertakings; certainly useful now; but with that curious romantic strain – a weakness, she felt. And a difficult man, strong, arrogant, leaning on crude power and threats where she leaned on delicately adjusted intrigue. Had Tex known better how to cover his various trails he would be in New York or London now, not out here on the coast picking up small change. Approaching him would be a bit of a problem; for a year or so their ways, hers and his, had lain far apart. It was not known, here on the boat, that they were so much as casually acquainted. They bowed at the dining table; nothing more.

The Manila Kid was in the social hall, rummaging through the shelf of battered and scratched records above the taking machine. A quaint spirit, the Kid; weak, oddly useless, gloomily devoted to music of a simple sort, quite without enterprise. But… by this time the delicate steel machinery of her mind was functioning clearly… he would serve now, if only as a means of solving that first little problem of interesting Tex.

She paused in the doorway; caught his furtive eye, and with a slight beckoning movement of her head, moved back into the comparative darkness. Slowly – thick-headedly of course – he came out.

“Jim,” she said, “I’m wondering if you and Tex wouldn’t like to pick up a little money.”

“What do you think we are?” he replied in a guarded sulky voice. “Tex dropped three thousand at that fight. There’s no talking to him. He’s rough – that’s what he is.”

“Jim – ” she considered the man before her deliberately; his lank spineless figure, his characterless, hatchet face: “Jim, send Tex to me.”

“Why should I, Dix? Answer me that.”

“Don’t act up, Jim. I’ve never handed you anything that wasn’t more than coming to you. I know all about you, Jim. Everything! I’m not talking – but I know. This is a big proposition I’ve got in mind, and you’ll get your share, if you come in and stick with me? How about half a million in jewels?”

“I don’t know’s Tex would care to go in for anything like that. If it’s a yegg job – ”

“I’m not a yegg,” she replied crisply. “Ask Tex to slip around here. I don’t want to talk on that side of the deck.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t like young Kane to know what you are – er?”

“That sort of talk won’t get you anywhere, Jim.”

“Well – I’ve got eyes, you know.”

“Better learn how to use them. You hurry around to Tex’s cabin. We may have to move quickly.” Sulkily the Kid went; and shortly returned.

“Well” – this after a silence – “what did he say? Is he coming?”

“He wants you to go around there – to his stateroom.”

“I won’t do that. He’s got to come here.”

This decision lightened somewhat the gloom on the Kid’s saturnine countenance. He went again, more briskly.

The girl slipped into her own cabin and consulted a folding map of China she had there. Huang Chau – she measured roughly from the scale with her thumb – would be seventy or eighty miles up-stream from Kiu Kiang here, perhaps thirty-five down-stream from Hankow.

Tex was chewing a cigar by the rail At her step his round impassive face turned toward her.

She said, “Hello, Tex!”

He replied, his one eye fixed on her: “Well, what is this job?”

“Listen, Tex – are you game for a big one?”

“What is it?”

“The revolution’s broken out at Hankow – or across at Wu Chang – ”

“Yes, I know!”

“There’s going to be another big battle near Hankow. The republicans are moving over. Sure to be a mix-up.”

“Oh. yes!”

“There’ll be loot – ”

“Oh, that!”

“Wait! I know where there’s a collection of jewels – diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds – all kinds.”

“Do you know how to get it?”

“Yes. It’s a big thing. We’d be selling stones for years in America and Europe, Will you go in with me, fifty-fifty?”

“What’s the risk?”

“Not much – with things so confused. Looks to me like one of those chances that just happens once in a hundred years. Take some imagination and nerve.”