the young man continued. “I had only a few minutes in the temple and there was danger all around, yet for a moment they took my breath away. I could scarcely move. Why, the man who fashioned them might have been an oriental Phidias.”
“Proceed,” Wu Ling begged.
“Well, the point of the story is this. Generations ago there was a great rising amongst the people, an invasion from the north, and robbers seem to have overrun the whole place. They sacked even the temples, and the priests—those who had warning of their coming—stripped their robes and their temples of all the precious stones which they possessed, and hid them.”
“Hid them,” Wu Ling repeated. “Ah!”
“Some of this story, you have, of course, heard,” the young man went on, “because your trade brings you, I suppose, within a hundred miles of Nilkaya. The temples were rich in jewels—the emperors of China had sent them gifts for centuries—and the legend is that all the most valuable were concealed within these two Images—the Body and the Soul.”
“That,” Wu Ling commented, “is a strange story.”
“As I told you,” the young man continued, “I heard it from one who lived in Pekin and I believe that it is the truth. For centuries the priests have possessed a manuscript which has been handed down from one High Priest to the other, and this manuscript tells how these Images have been fashioned, so that there is within them a hollow place. There are directions for finding it, and for opening the Images, and they say that without these directions no man in the world could guess how to do it. I have spoken with one who has visited the temple, and who was not quite so much pressed for time as I was, who has seen these Images only a few feet away, and who insists upon it that there is not a sign of any possible aperture or any break in the wood.”
“A simple thing,” Wu Ling suggested blandly, “would be to break with choppers.”
The young man raised his eyebrows.
“It is strange to hear you, a Chinaman, propose such a thing,” he remarked. “I suppose any one who attempted it in this country would sooner or later be cut into small pieces, for these Images are blessed just as the larger one. But there is another reason against attempting such a thing. You are a very wonderful race, you Chinese, and you were more wonderful still, generations ago.”
“Ah!” Wu Ling murmured.
“There are plenty of people,” the young man proceeded, “who say that there is scarcely a discovery in the world which you have not anticipated and then declined to use because the central tenet of your religion and your philosophy was to leave things that are. Well, they say that you discovered gunpowder and all manner of explosives about the time these Images were fashioned. They must always, from the first, have been intended for a possible hiding place, for the old legend concerning them—I know this from the only European who has ever visited the temple—declared that if these are subjected to violence in any way, then the earthquake follows. The priests all believe this implicitly, and, although it sounds a far-fetched idea, the man who first told me the story is convinced that when the jewels were stored away inside, they were imbedded in some sort of explosive.”
“It becomes more than ever a strange story,” Wu Ling said didactically.
The young man looked searchingly for a moment at his host. Was it his fancy, he wondered, or was there a faint note of sardonic disbelief in his even tone?
“Of course,” he went on, “it must sound to you, as it does to me, although you would scarcely understand the word, like rot, but the man from whom I heard it was a great person in Pekin, a friend even of the Emperor, and not only of the Emperor, but of the Emperor’s great adviser whom some people think the greatest Chinaman who ever lived. He had privileges which had never before been extended to any European.”
Wu Ling nodded gravely.
“So,” he said, with the painstaking air of one trying to solve a problem, “you were seeking to take Images from temple, away from priests to whom belong, that you might possess jewels.”
The young man coughed. Somehow or other Wu Ling’s eyes were very penetrating.
“Well,” he admitted, “I suppose in a way it was robbery, but robbery on a legitimate scale. I don’t suppose you’ve read much European history, have you?”
“Read never,” Wu Ling replied.
“That makes it difficult to explain,” his companion regretted, pausing for a moment to breathe in, with great satisfaction, a gulp of the cool night air. “However, most of the territories in different parts of the world which England possesses and a great deal of her inherited wealth, have come because centuries ago Englishmen went across the seas to every country in the world and helped themselves to pretty well what they wanted.”
“That,” Wu Ling remarked, “sounds like Wu Abst, the pirate.”
Gregory Ballaston smiled.
“Well,” he continued, “the invasion of a foreign country for purposes of aggrandisement is robbery, I suppose, only, you see, it is robbery on a big scale. We looked at this present affair in the same way. If it is true that there are a million pounds’ worth of jewels in these images, what good can they possibly do to any one hidden there for centuries? No one could see them. No one could derive any good from them. Their very beauty is lost to the world. Robbery, if you like, Wu Ling, but not petty larceny.”
Wu Ling shook his head with an uncomprehending smile.
“Of course you won’t understand that,” the other observed. “Still, what I mean to say is, that the very danger of the exploit, the fact that you risk your life—look how near I came to losing mine!—makes the enterprise almost worth while. Nothing mean about it, anyway.”
“Ah!” Wu Ling murmured meditatively. “And now please tell, where Images?”
The young man was silent.
“That’s a long story, Wu Ling,” he sighed. “There were two of us in this. The other got away. He didn’t desert me exactly. It was according to plan, but he had to leave first, and he left damned quick.”
“And the Images?” Wu Ling persisted softly.
Gregory Ballaston leaned back. The night had become a thing of splendour, the water, no longer yellow, but glittering with the reflection of the moon. They were passing through a narrow strip of country which might have been the garden of some great nobleman’s palace. There were flowering shrubs down to the river’s edge, a faint perfume of almond blossom, in the distance a stronger scent of something like eucalyptus, and all the time a divine silence. After his terrible quarters in the pirate ship this was a dream of luxury. The young man was full of gratitude to his benefactor, and yet he hesitated. Could one trust any Chinaman, even though he has saved one’s life, with a secret like this?
“The Images no longer stand in the Temple, Wu Ling,” he said, “but just where they are now I do not know. It was my part of the affair—if you understand military language—to fight a rearguard action. I did, but there were too many of them for me. They fought like furies, those priests. I might have killed them, but I hadn’t the heart to do it. I shot one or two in the limbs, and then chucked it when I saw it was no use. Whether my friend succeeded in getting away with the Images or not, I shall not know for many days.”
They passed a tiny village. From
