Hour of Enchantment

  CHAPTER XI FROM CHINA'S ANCIENT TREASURE

  While Jeanne was making the rather disturbing discovery that when youtake over a double's labors you take over her friends as well, Florencewas listening to words that, now thrilling her to the very depths of hersoul, and now slowing up her heart until her very blood ran cold, lefther at last full of half-formed hopes and well established fears.

  Every afternoon from four o'clock to six, she was given a rest from herduties on the Enchanted Island. During these periods of leisure shewandered through the grounds. The wonders of science and invention thatwere spread out before her never failed to hold her interest. For allthis, she took pleasure at times in visiting the more bizarreattractions. To watch the Seminole Indians dive beneath a great alligatorwith his snapping jaws and thrashing tail, to watch the little brownman's conquest of the scaly monster, gave her a thrill. To study thequaint customs of men from the heart of Africa; to don a bathing suit andtake a long, long slide into the blue waters, all these things held acharm for this sturdy, adventure-loving girl.

  This day she had entered the Golden Temple of Jehol to study its variedtreasures from the heart of China. These things charmed and fascinatedher.

  The place was crowded. With such a throng pushing through its narrowaisles, the temple had lost much of its charm. She was about to wanderonce more into the open air, when her attention was caught and held by aface.

  To her own astonishment, she stood there and stared at the man until heturned and smiled at her. Then she felt ashamed.

  "Want a book?"

  It was the white man who had been born in China and had lived all hislife there; the one who had so held Jeanne's attention and had all butdrawn from her the secret of the three-bladed dagger and the chest ofOriental embroideries. Surely here was some one it was hard to overlook.The tone in which he spoke was matter-of-fact. Yet a strange light shonefrom his eyes.

  There are meetings that appear to have been ordered by some power outsideourselves. The instant the thing has happened we know it. With a simpleflash of an eye one soul says to the other: "We are kindred spirits. Wewere born to be friends."

  "Where--where did all this come from?" she asked rather breathlessly.

  "All this stuff, the idols, the trumpets, the tapestries?"

  "Yes."

  "From China. Much of it from far back in the interior, even in Mongolia.I--I had a hand in gathering it. All came from temples, ancienttemples--hard to get at times."

  The man, who was quite young, spoke with a curious accent.

  "You are not American?"

  "I belong to China."

  "But you are not Chinese," she laughed.

  "Not Mongolian; but if you are born in China, live there always, what areyou then?" He showed his fine white teeth in a grin.

  Looking her up and down, taking in her costume that told she was "one ofthem," he said in a tone quite low and aside:

  "I'll be free in half an hour. What about a cup of coffee? I'll tell youabout these things."

  "All--all right."

  "See you then?"

  "Sure."

  As she wandered out into the sunlight, something told her she had startedone more friendship that would end in adventure. What she did not knowwas that she was about to be given one more chapter in the history of themysterious Oriental chest and its temple treasures.

  An hour after leaving the temple, she found herself seated at a narrowtable in a dark little corner of a nearby coffee house, drinking blackcoffee and following every word of this most astonishing young man. Hisname, she had discovered, was Erik Nord. He had lived all his life inChina and, as he expressed it, had "adventured all over the place."

  "We'd gone into Mongolia, that cold, barren land where no one is wanted,"he was saying. "The man I was with--I shall not tell you his name--hadbeen commissioned to gather up a lot of this art treasure that is sorapidly disappearing from the decaying temples.

  "There was a long-eared Chinaman who came near doing me in! Big knife andall that."

  "A--a long-eared Chinaman!" Florence exclaimed.

  "Longest ears I ever saw. Looked as if some plastic surgeon had splicedpieces on from some other fellow's ears--might have, too.

  "It happened like this," he went on, taking no notice of her stare.

  "We'd picked up some things, jolly unusual they were, too; gold andsilver embroidery, rare old stuff, a bell and a knife--three-bladedaffair--some rare old pieces of embroidery--"

  "A knife!" Florence was staring again. "Three-bladed!

  "But of course," she added hurriedly, "they are common, I suppose. Thereis one over in the temple, isn't there?"

  "I must not betray secrets," she was saying to herself. "Not to a man Ihave known for only an hour."

  "This one was not common," Erik Nord said quietly. "The hilt was allstudded with jewels, diamonds and rubies."

  Once again Florence opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it.

  "We found these things," Erik Nord went on, after a moment, "in a ratherextraordinary manner. It seems some American, a curious sort of fellow,but very real in his devotion to these people, had somehow talked thewhole little city out of their temple worship. He'd turned the templeinto a hospital for children, Chinese children." His voice trailed offinto silence.

  "Ever see any?" he asked a moment later.

  "See what?" Florence asked, startled.

  "Beg pardon. Ever see any Chinese children? No, of course not. Well,they're the cutest ever.

  "Look!"

  Drawing a thin metal case from his pocket, he shook a handful of cardsfrom it, then spread them out on the table.

  Florence stared in astonishment. Each card was a photograph, the pictureof a Chinese child. Children asleep, children crying, laughing, romping.In their quaint costumes they were indeed fascinating.

  "Little children." His voice dropped to a husky whisper. "The hospitalwas for them. The people had agreed that all the treasures of the templeshould be sold and the money spent in equipping their hospital forchildren, the quaint little children of China.

  "And then," his voice changed abruptly, "the treasures were all lost. Ifear the money may never be paid. And it was entirely my own fault! Canyou imagine what that means to me?"

  Florence did not answer. She was thinking hard. And in her thoughts themental image of a long-eared Chinaman was blended with flashes of athree-bladed knife and the pictures of a host of cute Chinese children.

  When at last she broke the silence she was surprised to find that hervoice, too, had taken on a suspicious hoarseness.

  "You--you said there was a long-eared Chinaman?"

  "Yes, that long-eared fellow. It--it was queer." He took a long pull athis black coffee. "He looked like some sort of monk, or priest. ABuddhist, I mean. He nearly got the chest of treasure from us.

  "You see, it was entrusted to our care. It was sold all right, butwouldn't be paid for until delivered to the purchaser in America.

  "He tried to knife the man I was with, this long-eared fellow did.Entered our tent at night. Fortunately, I was awake. I smashed him onejust in time; nearly killed him. Thought I had, until he showed up inTientsin and made a second attempt to rob us."

  "But the treasure?" Florence tried to still her wildly beating heart, toseem calm, unconcerned. "The treasure? What happened?"

  "That's just the question!" Erik Nord shrugged his broad shoulders. "Itwas entrusted to me. I sent the chest that contained it all--worth a lotof dollars I can tell you--to San Francisco in care of a friend. Itarrived in due time. The friend paid the duty and re-shipped it toChicago. As far as I know, it never arrived." He sat back and stared atthe ceiling. "I trusted the wrong man. He bungled it somehow.

  "That," he added in a whisper, "is one of the reasons I'm here. Somehowthat long-eared Chinaman has beaten us. We've got to catch up with him.In time we'll get him, too."

  "That man--"

  Florence did not fi
nish. What should she tell? All or nothing?

  "Might not be the man," she assured herself. "Might not have been thesame chest. Anyway, the chest is all I have left. That's worthless.What's the good of getting mixed up in an Oriental intrigue? Anyway, I'lltalk it over with Jeanne."

  Thus her mind ran, and all this time Erik Nord was studying her face.

  "That man," she finished rather lamely, "must have been clever."

  "Clever no end!

  "Well, time to wander back." He rose. "It's been a pleasure to be withyou. I'd like to know about America, the best of America."

  "Do you think I belong to the best?" she laughed.

  "You seem rather real." His smile was frank. "I don't like all thisface-paint and jazz, pretty girls smoking cigarets, and all that. Well,I'm old-fashioned, I suppose. In China we put paint on the temples andburn incense in ancient copper dragons, not between young ladies' lips."He laughed good-naturedly, then ushered her into the twilight of thepassing day.