GREGORY, nearly exasperated by the other’s coolness, made a threatening gesture. And then came the sudden blazing out of ferocious rage that smolders always under the quietest Oriental seeming, and that, enkindled instantly by the tiniest spark, transforms a peaceful, obliging native into a spitting, hissing human volcano.
“You fool! You white-eyed dodderer, you green-hatted goat-man!” Wu Li Chang barked, “do you think I care for your shiny barrel? You English idiot! The slightest signal from me”—he pointed to the window—“and those coolies would swarm in here like so many devils.”
“Yes, but you’d have gone to blazes first,” Gregory said grimly, the revolver still well aimed, “to join those damned ancestors of yours.”
Something as terrible as the death-rattle in a mad dog’s throat tangled and gurgled in Wu’s and a fiendish look leapt into his eyes—they narrowed until they were mere slits. But he recontrolled himself almost instantly—angry still, but coldly so, and imperturbable again. “I would have gone to blazes first?” There were snarl and sneer in the low-pitched voice. “Then we should have been able to resume this interesting conversation elsewhere! Come, come! Put your toy back into your pocket. If you insist upon playing the play out on these lines (but I think you will not), believe me, this is not204 the stage for it. And you know where I live. You also, I understand, broke and honored my unworthy bread the other day. And I am an easy man to find.”
Robert Gregory deliberately pointed his revolver at Wu Li Chang’s heart, and said as pointedly, “Pray be seated, Mr. Wu.”
Wu bent his head politely to the pointed pistol, as if to thank it for the invitation. “With pleasure,” he said, moving leisurely back to his chair. Gregory, eyeing Wu stormily, passed too to his own chair. For just a fraction of a second his back was turned to Wu; but that thin shred of time sufficed the Chinese to whip a revolver from his pocket, concealing it in his hand and in the loose sleeve of his tussore coat. Gregory banged down his chair, and, covered by the ill-humored noise, Wu clicked his revolver open.
They sat and faced each other in ugly silence, dislike and defiance very differently expressed, but expressed, on each face. Even wider apart by caste and by breeding than by race, Wu’s tranquillity was terrible, his quiet at once a menace and a taunt, while Gregory’s growing nervousness would have been a little comical if its primary cause had not been so pitiful.
“I perceive, Mr. Gregory,” Wu Li Chang said pleasantly, “that you still keep your toy in your hand; kindly cease holding it. I do not fear it, but the implication of its presence is somewhat aggressive and offensive. Let us pretend, at least,” he added lazily, “that we are gentlemen.”
That taunt got through. Gregory winced, and after a moment of sulky hesitation put the revolver on his knee under the desk.
“Now then, Mr. Wu——” he began.
“One moment,” Wu interrupted him. “Excuse my205 seeming so exacting, but I believe that revolver is loaded.”
“It is—in every chamber,” the other snapped.
“Well,” the mandarin spoke so indifferently that he almost drawled, but his voice was honeyed, “if we are to arrive at an amicable understanding, I think I should prefer, as a matter of politeness—we Chinese lay such foolish stress on politeness—not to feel that I was discussing matters at the cannon’s mouth, so to speak. Retain the weapon, by all means, but be so good as to remove the cartridges.”
Gregory fidgeted, hesitating nervously.
“Merely as a matter of good faith,” Wu urged conciliatorily. “That weapon might go off, you know—by pure accident.” He stretched his hand, palm up, across the desk.
Gregory looked at the open palm oddly, embarrassed, and then looked round anxiously at the window. Then, shrugging his shoulders and trying to speak indifferently, “Why not?” he said, and lifting the pistol, jerked it, and the cartridges fell out onto the desk.
“Thank you,” Wu said genially. “That makes the interesting conversation much more possible.” He began playing with them lightly, throwing and catching them as nimble-fingered boys do jackstones; and Gregory watched the deft, sinewy yellow hand, fascinated. “One—two—three—four—five—beautifully made little things, are they not?” Wu’s voice was dove-like. “Now we can start fair. Pray continue, Mr. Gregory, from the point where you left off.” One yellow hand dropped nonchalantly on to Wu’s knee below the table, two cartridges in the subtle fingers. “But please omit to make any further disrespectful allusion to my ancestors.” He was leaning forward on the desk, both hands beneath it206 now, and the revolver had slipped from his sleeve. “I do not misunderstand your having made the offensive remark—it was a mere mark of difference of caste and education. But do not repeat it,” he added smilingly, “or in any way allude to my ancestors”—the bullets were in his pistol, and Gregory was putting his emptied weapon irritably into a drawer. “You were asking me, I think, what I knew about the disappearance of your son and of certain commercial catastrophes which, I regret to hear, have lately overtaken you. Well, I will be perfectly frank with you—perfectly frank, Mr. Gregory, perfectly frank. I will conceal nothing.” The yellow hands slipped up quietly on to the desk. “And the first thing I have to say is”—the barrel of the pistol thrust forward—“look at this!”
Robert Gregory sprang up with a smothered oath, and his hand went convulsively towards the bell on the desk, “Ah, no!” Wu said, “don’t move, or it might go off by pure accident.” Gregory shifted out of Wu’s aim and made a foolish furtive attempt to ring. Wu covered him instantly, smiling still. “Don’t move, I say! Sit down! Sit down, Gregory!”
And Robert Gregory very slowly sat down—obedient partly in fear, partly in defeat, and a little in a somewhat hypnotized subjection to a bigger, more skillful man. Then suddenly he pulled the drawer open to look at his own revolver.
“No,” Wu told him, “not sleight of hand. This is not your revolver, but it’s identical——”
“That’s my son’s revolver. I know. I gave it to him myself. Now, damn you, I have got something to go on!”
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