They rode along in twin rickshaws through the rough streets, pit-patting toward the business center of Tsingtau. The chief was busy with his own thoughts. From time to time he would take his unlighted cigar from his mouth and look sideways at Rowland. But Rowland was so very young that even in the thick gray gloom of a Tsingtau night his youthfulness glowed from him like a torch.
Rowland was looking at the town through which they were passing. All thought of sin and crooked dice was momentarily still. Here he was in China and all the houses were built on the pattern of a German storybook. Or maybe slightly English manor style. It looked very odd to see the yellow fronts of the homes painted with Chinese characters. It looked funnier to see Chinese and Japanese going in and out of the doors of these strictly occidental dwellings.
Of course he had heard that before the Japanese took the town, the Germans had built it into German lines. It looked funny just the same.
McGoggle looked at Rowland again as the coolies slowed their trot to pull the rickshaws up a hill. McGoggle was beginning to approve of his idea. It would cost very little to get Rowland drunk—especially on Rowland’s money, which lay securely in the chief’s pocket. McGoggle was so pleased with himself that he even considered—for a moment—putting a ten-spot in Rowland’s pocket when he finally laid the youth out in some dive. But when he remembered that the Chinese always looted the drunks, he abandoned the idea.
The chief’s conscience was as calloused as his hands. It did not occur to him—and would not have worried him if it had—that a penniless Yankee in Tsingtau was as good as a dead man. There were no ships out of this port and no berths aboard them if there were. There were no jobs to be had and the American consul—well, you know how consuls are, especially American.
The chief felt very relieved. The thing was as good as done. After that lecture today, Holy Hardy wouldn’t even think twice about the third’s being gone.
The rickshaw boys were trained. They knew where to go when Americans came ashore. If they had been asked to go to the best hotel, they would still have gone where they were going.
The coolies slip-slapped around a busy corner downtown and jogged more slowly up a long hill. There were many vending establishments here and all things were sold.
Strains of a tired orchestra filtered through the night, mingled with the rolling clang of rickshaw bells. The street looked very gay to Bob Rowland—but then he was very young.
The coolies stopped without order before a dance hall.
“This is where we start,” said the chief, meaning this was where Bob Rowland would finish once and for all.
They got out and the chief fought with the coolies over the bill. “If you pay them too much it’s worse than paying them too little,” reasoned the chief.
With the coolies howling vengeance behind him, McGoggle shoved Rowland in through the swinging doors.
A sailor came out, skirting the blurred vision of gold on a seagoing cap, pushed through the doors in the opposite way. It had evidently hurt the sailor’s pride to have to sidestep anything that night.
When he got on the sidewalk McGoggle’s coolie was in his road. The sailor unexpectedly swung. The ninety-pound coolie went into the filthy gutter and the two-hundred-pound sailor stepped proudly over the senseless body on his way to a livelier shop.
Rowland saw this before he let the doors go. Normally there would have been a two-hundred-pound sailor senseless beside the coolie, but tonight was different. Bob Rowland found himself in a strange world and he was very young.
A horde of girls seemed to appear out of nowhere. They were all in evening dress. Behind them the orchestra was wearily playing the St. Louis Blues, but, the orchestra being Chinese, the song was suffering from a certain oriental flavor.
The girls formed a flying wedge. McGoggle had paid the coolies. McGoggle was the target. Besides, there was more tarnished braid on his sleeve.
Rowland was shoved sideways toward the bar. In a big crowd of sailors and girls and Chinese, he was suddenly all alone.
He looked dazedly around him, feeling out of place. The lights hurt his eyes and the roar hurt his ears. He bucked up. He must not look so very young. He had to appear used to this. But he felt youthful and small and useless.
A girl across the room had been sitting all alone at a table. She slowly came to her feet now, staring across the room. She saw a man with a clear complexion, high cheekbones, alert eyes. She saw a man who wore his cap over one eye, disclosing a shock of pale-gold hair. She saw a man with something besides whiskey in his veins.
Gingerly she picked her way through the surging, lurching dancers. She arrived near the bar and looked contemptuously back across the floor she had just crossed. She turned and looked at Bob Rowland.
Bob Rowland looked at her. She was a White Russian but he did not know that. She spoke six languages and had been educated in a conservatory of mighty name. Rowland did not know that.
All Bob Rowland knew was that he found himself looking down, down, down into the bluest pair of eyes he had ever seen. They were kind eyes. A moment ago they had been hard but he had not seen that.
He rocked back on his heels a little and turned his face away for an instant. He had been brought up not to stare. He looked back and this time he saw her face.
She was beautiful.
She was wearing a white, gauzy gown which floated around her.
She was graceful.
Awkwardly he tipped his cap.
“Good evening,” said Rowland. But he said it so faintly it was lost in the clamor of the never-ending St. Louis Blues from Memphis, ten thousand miles away. He said it again, louder. “Good evening.”
She smiled at him and came closer.
“You are an American?”
He liked the throatiness of her voice but it scared him.
“Yes. Sure. An American.”
“From the ships?”
“Yes. Sure. From the ships.”
“Your friend is beckoning to you.”
Rowland ripped his eyes away from her and turned. McGoggle was only half visible beyond a hedge of girls and sailors. McGoggle was waving to him.
With a glance of apology at the girl, Rowland started away. She caught his arm and drew him back and with her other hand beckoned for McGoggle to do the crossing.
McGoggle did not like this. He scowled and practically refused. Then he seemed to have an idea and brightened up a bit. He roughly waded through, a small blonde clinging desperately to his sleeve. He towed the girl to where Rowland stood.
“Some fun, huh?” said McGoggle.
Rowland suddenly did not like the way McGoggle looked at the girl in white. He did not like the emphasis on fun. But he was very young and McGoggle was a man of the world.
Weakly, Rowland said, “Sure. Some fun.” Suddenly he knew it was the hardest thing he had ever said in his life.
“Let’s have a drink,” said McGoggle.
The chief marched straight ahead and nothing could be done but avoid him by going to the bar.
Rowland put his foot on the rail and put his left arm on the stained mahogany. The girl in white was next. Then McGoggle and then the blonde.
“Make ’em rye,” said McGoggle to the Chinese over the bar.
“A little wine,” said the girl in white.
“A little wine,” said the blonde.
They would get their rake-off later. The wine was mostly water and vegetable coloring.
Rowland looked into the drink as it was shoved at him. He saw the gold braid on his cap reflected in it.
He was very bold. “What’s your name?”
The girl in white smiled up at him. He hadn’t realized she was such a tiny thing. She didn’t come to his shoulder, not to his top button.
“Varinka,” said the girl.
She had very white teeth and her voice was nice.
“Mine’s Bob,” said Rowland abruptly. He almost buried the name in his drink he grabbed it so fast.
“Bob. That is very nice,” she decided.
Rowland was drained dry of conversation. He felt all alone again. He was thinking about Des Moines. You didn’t tell a girl your name that way in Des Moines.
A sailor on Bob Rowland’s left jostled his arm accidentally and turned. “Well!” hiccuped the sailor. “It’s the third!”
Bob tried not to recognize his bosun.
“You enjoying yourself, sir?” said the sailor. He peered around Bob Rowland at the girl in white and lifted his brows. He answered his own question loudly. “I’ll say!”
Rowland, aboard ship, would have answered that with a straight left. But he was in the bosun’s world now. He was in the mysterious realm of sin, and he found himself an outlander. And so, instead of poking the bosun’s jaw, he grinned and nodded—almost breaking his neck by the effort the nod cost him.
The bosun enlarged verbally upon his own evening. Rowland was humble because he was so very young. He listened.
McGoggle saw Rowland’s attention diverted for an instant and McGoggle’s grin faded back into his ears. He looked quickly at the girl in white, saw that Rowland was still turned the other way.
McGoggle took the girl’s arm roughly and turned her toward him. “Listen, sister. You want to make some jack?”
Varinka looked steadily up at McGoggle.
The chief took it for an answer. “Okay. Ten Mex for you if you slip a Finn into that kid’s drink.”
“Yes?” said the impassive girl in white. Her eyes were hard now. Calculating.
“Sure. A little later in the evening, you slip him the Finn and as soon as he goes under, dump him in your room and forget about him. Then I give you the ten Mex.”
“Yes?” said Varinka.
“Sure. Say, listen, what the hell’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to make ten Mex?”
“I am to put him to sleep?” said Varinka, glancing sidewise and seeing Rowland still engaged with the bibulous bosun.
“Sure. We sail in the morning. He’s not to be aboard. Get it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I knew you would,” said McGoggle, chuckling.
“For thirty-five gold,” said Varinka.
“What?”
“For thirty-five gold!”
“It’s a steal,” said McGoggle tensely. “Listen. I don’t know the ropes here or I’d do it. Ten Mex . . .”
“Thirty-five gold.”
“Nuts,” said McGoggle.
“All right, engineer. Fifty gold or I tell the kid.”
McGoggle swelled up until he was certain to explode all over the room. But Rowland’s back was toward him and under the serge rippled well-developed muscles. McGoggle recalled his tender mouth in time. The kid could hit.
“Fifty and you’ll slip him the Finn?” said McGoggle.
“I slip him the Finn.”
“Okay. When you do it.”
“Now. You may beat it without paying.” McGoggle looked around helplessly. The girl had only to call and he’d be soundly whipped. She had only to tell the kid and the kid would kill him with his bare hands.
“All right,” said McGoggle.
To be continued
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