The Desert Driver. Harold Lamb
Chinks is up to date. They don’t have no tong wars, or ancestor worship, or opium—maybe they do sell that to the dope dealers in the States. No, these fellows are out for the jack and Chicago-made clothes.”
For the past minute Warner had been extracting a folded Pekin newspaper from a pile on the table. It was printed in English, and he handed it to McMahon, pointing out a marked paragraph. “Read that.”
MOTOR ACCIDENT
On Donkey Meat Street near the British mission yesterday a large gray limousine ran into and seriously injured a smaller car belonging, it is alleged, to the Cheng Curio Company. The driver of the damaged car was thrown out and escaped death only by a fortunate chance. The police of Pekin are trying to trace the ownership of the sedan which sped away after the accident, with its cut-out open.
“I said it,” grunted McMahon. “Why that jam might have happened at Forty-Second and Fift’ Avenoo—only there wasn’t no traffic cop.”
Warner’s quiet eyes blinked. “No, there are no traffic cops. No one interferes. And accidents don’t happen, in this part of the world. They are made to happen.”
“You can’t tell me!” McMahon thought of his recent escape. But his companion, who had been observing Tiim closely, noticed how husky his voice was and how weakly his hand moved. He judged that McMahon had not had a square meal for some time.
“Look here,” he said. “You can help me out. Are you handy with machinery?”
“You said it, Mr. Warner.”
“I know you can scrap, and keep your mouth shut. But can you—or rather, will you—obey an order, McMahon?”
The mechanic thought this over seriously. The qualifications Warner had enumerated were not those of a typewriter salesman’s assistant. “If I’m minded to, Ican that, Mr. Warner.”
“Well, consider yourself hired—if you’re willing to bunk in with me and willing to run the chance of the ghost never walking—no pay day. And, my name’s Bob, to my friends. And the first thing on our program is tiffin.”
“What’s that?”
“Eats.”
But before the two white men could wash and go down for a late luncheon there was a knock on the door, and McMahon sat down on the cot again with a sigh as a black-suited Chinese appeared in the entrance with a succession of bows. “Mlister War-ner?” he asked, smiling.
“Yes,” said Warner, and took the note the man—who might have been either servant or clerk—held out. He read it through carefully and nodded. “Very well.”
“All light—you come plitty soon?” The messenger bowed himself out, and Warner sprang up, whistling cheerfully as he plied comb and brush on his sparse hair, considering the result critically in the cracked mirror.
“Looks as if we’re going to make a sale, McMahon. Letter from Cheng, the merchant I called on, asking me to come around again this afternoon on a matter of business. On the strength of that we’ll have chicken.”
McMahon extinguished his cigarette promptly. “Nothing could be fairer than that. Say, Mr. Bob, my name’s Mac, to my business partners. D’ye get me?”
“All light, Mac.”
CHAPTER II
Cheng Makes an Offer
THE curio store of Fu Cheng resembled from the street a junk shop. In fact, there was nothing but odds and ends of junk in the shop entrance; in the second room were common articles presided over by a tattered and wrinkled guardian who ushered the two white men into the third room, filled with a fine stock of curios. Here the English speaking clerk took charge of them and conducted them up a flight of steps to a chamber where the daylight did not penetrate and Fu Cheng sat under a large yellow lantern amid the sheen of silks, the glimmer of strange jewels and the glint of splendid, ancient china.
Fu Cheng rose and bowed courteously. He was a man, unusually handsome, clad in a mandarin robe. Warner noticed that his mouth was firm, and his muscular hands well kept—a successful merchant, who had sold out his business in San Francisco at a profit.
For a half-hour, as custom prescribed, they talked, in English, about everything but Cheng’s summons. Then the mandarin glanced gravely about the room, listened for a moment for sounds from the shop below, and observed, “I venture to ask, Mr. Warner, if you will be able to undertake a commission for me, involving some time and great care?”
As the American did not reply, he went on..
“You may be able to make some sales for yourself at the same time. Unfortunately, as I said yesterday, I have all the typewriters that I need. What I desire is that you should deliver for me a certain piece of goods to a business friend who is not in Pekin. At present I can not spare any of my men. I have taken the liberty of looking up you. It is your intention, you said, to leave Pekin for the interior?”
Warner nodded assent.
“By extending your journey somewhat you could deliver my package, and you would find yourself in a locality where”— he smiled politely—“typewriters are not in such supply as in Pekin.”
“Where, Mr. Cheng, is this place?”
“Chagan, outside the great wall.”
“In the Gobi desert?” Warner’s brows went up.
“The Gobi desert, Mr. Warner, covers a great deal of ground. It is made up of mountains and plains as well as sand stretches. Between the great wall and Chagan—a distance of about four hundred miles west by northwest—it is a high Prairie, treeless and flat as a table top. It is like your Wyoming, or Kansas, but perfectly level, and the climate is—”
“The best in the world!”
“Like California,” nodded Fu Cheng, who had a sense of humor, “according to Californians. A highway runs from the wall through the Great Kinghan Mountains, and beyond there you can strike across the plain along the route I will give you, outlined on a map. You should be In Chagan in five days after leaving the wall.”
The two white men looked up in surprise. Four hundred miles in five days, even by a fast camel, was impossible—if there were mountains to cross.
“I would advise,” explained the merchant, “hiring a light car in Peking. The rent of the car will be paid by me; you can leave the money I give you as preliminary payment on deposit with the automobile company as security for the return of the car. I will give you a hundred dollars in American currency now, and as much again when you bring me the signed receipt of the friend to whom I am sending the box, in Chagan.”
“Better say a hundred now and three hundred later,” suggested Warner. “I will have to take Mr. McMahon with me to drive the car and make repairs.”
To this Fu Cheng assented after a moment’s thought, and Mac had much ado to restrain a whistle of delight. He wanted to whisper to Warner not to say anything more, lest Cheng change his mind. But his friend looked thoughtful.
“I take it there will be some danger in it, for us?” he observed.
Fu Cheng nodded promptly, and asked if either of the white men were married—whether they had close friends or dependants in China, or were known to the American consuls. To all of these questions Warner responded in the negative. Then the Chinese admitted frankly that the mission was dangerous, because the article they would take was valuable, and his enemies in Pekin would know that he had sent it. Attempts would be made to harrass the messengers, and to steal the box.
“Then why do you trust us with it?” demanded Warner quickly.
Fu Cheng spread out his hands and smiled. Two Americans, bound presumably on their own business, would be allowed to go, especially in a car, where Chinese might be—killed by Fu Cheng’s enemies. “You have weapons, I assume,” he concluded, “and once out on the