Derrick could get there, he heard a slithering noise and then a series of bumps.
‘There,’ cried the Professor, wringing his hands, ‘the pack has slipped. Oh, you clumsy fellow.’ With these strong words the Professor sped nimbly down the gully after his bronzes.
The strong cases and the careful packing had saved them from injury, but the cuckoo-clock and the brass Buddhas were lying all abroad. The clock gave a last strangled crow as they reached it, and then became dumb for ever. The Buddhas, being heavier, had reached the very bottom of the ravine, and one of them had broken against a spur of rock.
‘Look,’ cried Derrick, scrambling down, ‘there is something inside.’
He knelt by the fragments of the image and picked up several objects, each wrapped over and over again with silk: it was obvious that they had been hidden in the hollow brass.
The others gathered round, and the Professor unwrapped one of the silken envelopes: it came off in a long ribbon. ‘They took good care of it, whatever it is,’ he said, unwinding steadily. Under the silk there was a piece of cotton wadding. He removed it, and there in his hand was a small tablet of mutton-fat jade covered with an inscription. The Professor gazed at it for a full minute without saying a word.
‘What is it, Professor?’ asked Sullivan. ‘It looks pretty good to a layman.’
‘Pretty good! Why, my dear sir, this is the finest piece of jade of the Chou dynasty that I have ever set my eyes upon.’ He gasped, incapable of expressing his emotion, and hurriedly began to unwrap the next package on the ground. The others joined in, and presently a triple line of superb pieces of jade stood before him. Sullivan lugged one of the other Buddhas over on to its side: underneath there was a cunningly hidden panel; he prised it open, and from the cavity slid dozens of heavily padded bundles. The third Buddha contained as many more. Soon the ravine was littered with silk wrappings and pieces of wadding, and the ranks of jade in front of the Professor had swollen threefold.
‘It is the Wu Ti collection,’ said the Professor, in an incredulous voice, ‘or else I am dreaming.’ He sat on a rock and wiped his spectacles. ‘How dull of me!’ he exclaimed, after a pause during which he carefully dusted each piece with his handkerchief. ‘How blind I was. When that most excellent Hsien Lu gave me those hideous brass images, had said that I would find that they had a certain inner worth – those were his very words – and I never … Well, well. Of course, he knew that I would refuse them as a present, so he chose this ingenious way of making me take them.’
‘It certainly was very handsome of him,’ remarked Sullivan.
‘And I insulted his taste by thinking that he admired those horrible images. How glad I am that I shall be able to take photographs and detailed notes upon them before I give them back.’
‘If you give them back you will hurt his feelings beyond all measure,’ said Ross, decidedly.
‘You could not possibly do that,’ said Sullivan. ‘It would be like grinding his face in the mud. He gave you this collection because you were a scholar, and could appreciate it, as well as because you had done him a great service.’
‘And he knows very well,’ said Ross, ‘that a valuable collection like that is in great danger of being lost, broken or dispersed in times like these. He would certainly like them to be in a place of safety – after all they have been looted twice already.’
‘Do you really think so?’ asked the Professor, his face lighting up.
‘Don’t you agree with me, Sullivan?’ asked Ross, and Derrick could have sworn that he saw a wink pass between them, although their faces were very grave.
‘Of course I do,’ replied Sullivan. ‘I would have mentioned that point about the collection being in safety now, only I thought it was obvious.’
‘Well,’ said the Professor, with an uncontrollable smile creasing his wrinkled face, ‘that is a very sound argument, a very good argument indeed. I do not know that I have ever heard a better argument – so well expressed, so forcible.’ But he still seemed to be wavering, and Derrick said, ‘Do you remember how they chucked things into that lorry, sir? And how nearly Shun Chi blew the whole thing up when he dispersed himself all over the landscape? That might happen again.’
‘Good heavens, yes,’ cried the Professor, clutching at the nearest piece with a protective hand. ‘What an appalling thought. The collection must certainly be guarded from such barbarous mishandling in the future. You are a very intelligent fellow, Derrick, probably the most intelligent boy of your age I have ever seen. I am very much afraid that it begins to look as if I shall be obliged to accept this princely – nay, more than princely – this imperial gift. Li Han, my good friend, be so good as to pass me the silk and cotton wrappings. And to think,’ he said, carefully enveloping a small jade toad, ‘that I so grossly injured the worthy Hsien Lu by considering him, in the recesses of my mind, as a speechless clock.’
‘Speechless clock,’ cried Li Han, ‘is most poetical and philosophical image.’
‘What does it mean?’ asked Derrick.
‘My poor boy,’ said the Professor kindly, ‘before you visit your mother’s country you really must remind me to give you a little course in Americanisms. You will be quite lost if you do not understand widely accepted figures of speech of this nature. Speechless clock is a term on the lips of every free-born star or stripe: it is the most current of usages. Am I not correct, Sullivan?’
‘Well, Professor, I rather believe that it is a little more usual to say dumb cluck.’
‘Oh, come,’ said the Professor, ‘are we not making a distinction without a difference. Speechless and dumb are synonymous, are they not? And of the two speechless is to be preferred, seeing that it more nearly approaches the Greek – and the locution is obviously a play on the Greek alogos, with its double meaning of speechless and without reason. As for your suggestion of cluck, I am afraid that it must be rejected out of hand. We use the onomatopoeic word cluck for the noise made by the domestic hen when she is pleased: at this moment I would cluck myself, were I a domestic hen. But if we qualify cluck by an adjective that implies soundlessness, we fall into an absurdity. No: clock is the word, Sullivan. Early clocks, as no doubt you are aware, told the time solely by the ringing of a bell – indeed, you have retained the custom on board ship – and the very word itself is derived from the late Latin cloca, meaning a little bell. Now a clock, therefore, that is speechless, is the very type and example of a useless, stupid thing, and thus we have the exceptional force and bite of this valuable expression. I am sure, my dear sir,’ he said, looking benevolently at Sullivan over his spectacles, ‘that after a moment’s reflection you will discard your meaningless corruption – the perversion of an untutored Redskin, no doubt, that you must have heard in your impressionable childhood – and that in future, if ever you have occasion to reprove your shipmates, you will refer to them as speechless clocks.’
‘If the latitude were marked as clearly on the earth as it is on the map,’ said Sullivan, ‘this would be an easy journey. We would just have put our noses down on the fortieth parallel at Peking, and we would never have lifted them until we reached the neighbourhood of Samarcand. But as it is – well, can you see the fortieth parallel anywhere, Derrick?’
‘No, sir,’ said Derrick, ‘I rather think the Mongols must have stolen it.’
They
