The gray god

CHEUNG'S PLAN.

Cheung Li's restaurant did not cater to the social element of Suva, but it was neat and clean, the food savory, wholesome and cheap, so that he did a good waterfront business with white skippers, mates and supercargoes.

He lived above the place, a placid, stout, sphinx-faced Chinaman with a dignity all his own, getting together his fortune. Some said the restaurant was a blind for his other affairs, but no one seemed to definitely know what they might be. He extended credit from time to time and seemed to find it profitable in the long run. It was he himself who had suggested to Stanton that he need not worry about his bill.

"Some time soon, something come along," he told him. "You 'Melican. You make good bimeby."

He presided over the restaurant at rush hours, leaving its conduct the rest of the time to two assistants. One of these, Moy, long, sallow, cadaverous and chary of any speech but his own, set before Stanton his meal. There was real turtle soup, excellent fish, turtle steak with boiled taro-root and greens, fresh coconut pudding with caramel sauce, and coffee the Ritz patrons might have envied. All for fifty cents; a dollar and twenty cents for three daily meals, seven dollars a week.

When Moy brought the pudding he had a message.

"Cheung Li like speak along of you topside when you finish up," he said.

It spoiled the dessert for Stanton. It must mean that his credit was over. It had to come. Cheung had been mighty decent. But it looked like the beach. He couldn't stay at Panakaloa's and not eat. He couldn't honestly stay there any longer and pile up a debt he saw no means of paying off. Panakaloa could always rent her rooms. He saw himself for a moment roaming the beach with Tiki at his heels, adventuring in the bush with a cannibal. Tiki would know more about making a living there than he did.

He shrugged his shoulders, his hands steady as he rolled his second cigarette. There was not enough left for a third, so he made this fat and smoked it slowly with long inhalations before he got up, unable to tip Moy. An outside staircase led to a balcony that ran all round the house, covered and awninged. At the rear it looked over a compound garden behind a high plank wall where Cheung took his ease with his family.

Stanton had never mounted before. He was surprised at the signs of comfort, of taste, even of luxury. There were easy chairs of bamboo, stands of teak that held flowering plants, big vases of porcelain with foliage shrubs and ferns in them, rugs, cushions, two Java thrushes singing in cages, a gorgeous blue macaw in a ring, statuesque, disdainful.

The front veranda, where Stanton thought the entrance must be, looked over the harbor and the shipping, and across Kadavu Passage to the distant isles of Ono and Kadavu, almost sixty miles away. The lure of the horizon, of the unknown tropics, savage but fascinating, gripped him hard. Then sliding glass doors opened and Cheung asked him inside.

He had never before seen Cheung except in white clothes, and he was surprised at the quiet richness of his brocades, the assurance of his manner, polite, unostentatious. He might have been greeting a distinguished official rather than a man whose clothing proclaimed his poverty.

He offered Stanton a deep and cosy seat and a cheroot faintly smelling of tea, gratifying of flavor. Then he poured out two tiny goblets of amber fluid that scented the whole room as if with orange groves and tasted like sublimated Chartreuse.

His English was not perfect, but he spoke without hesitation, straight to the purpose. It was as if he guessed Stanton's interpretation of the request for the visit, and wished to relieve him promptly. The shady chamber had an atmosphere of courtesy. From the interior Stanton heard the tinkle of a stringed instrument, the sudden laughter of a child. The Java thrushes were singing madly.

"I tell you some time, soon, something come along," said Cheung in his mellow tones. "I not know then this come. One time, some one tell me about one place where there are plenty pearl, on island where nobody go. No landing there, no loadstead, no lagoon. Leef come up close, evely place. Native not live that place now. Name Motutabu. Plenty magic along that place. Bad magic. Maybe you not believe that?"

"I don't know," said Stanton simply. "I've heard a lot of curious things."

Cheung grunted as if satisfied with the answer.

"This black man's magic," he said. "Not evil to white man, yellow man unless they too much meddle. You savvy?"

"I savvy," said Stanton. His pulses were quickening, his blood beginning to tingle. He felt that he was on the threshold of adventure, mysterious, dangerous.

"On that island one big image," Cheung went on. "Not idol, all same symbol. Symbol of evil spilits native men speak velley soft along, make gift so he leave alone. Some one meddle along that god, not savvy how, die velly quick. Suppose you go this place, you leave god alone. I send white man I know along this Motutabu—that mean fo'bidden island. He is good man, I tlust him plenty. I send Kanaka with him to dive. No one come back. Long time now they should come back. Something happen. Maybe he meddle too much along that god, maybe all get sick, maybe schooner get on leef. I not know.

"I am li'l' aflaid some one else speak along the Kanaka who tell me about that place. Li'l' while since he speak with me, they find him dead along beach. Maybe because he talk, maybe because he no talk. Nobody savvy who kill him. I no savvy. I think maybe one man, half Chinaman, he savvy something. Maybe he go along Motutabu, but suppose he did he not find pearl. If he find pearl he not come back to Suva. He go to Sigapo'. Belong that place. But I like find out."

Singapore! Stanton had the flash, half intuition, half reasoning, that is called a hunch. Singapore meant the Malay Peninsula. In his mind's eye he saw the lithe figure of the Malay-Manchu, swaggering but furtive, like a stalking panther, trailing the girl. He did not know then how illuminating his hunch had been. But the name came to his lips. "Loo Fong!"

Cheung grunted again.

"I always think you smaht," he said. "Li'l' bad luck, maybe, jus' now. Loo Fong come back. I think he been along that island. Maybe he kill. But I think he no find pearl. I like send you."

"I'm no sailor," Stanton disclaimed. "I've knocked about in a pleasure boat or two, yachting, but I'm no navigator."

"I give you ship," Cheung purred on. "Captain and clew all same, they lun ship. Chinamen. On island you boss. You find out what happen. Man I send to island is 'Melican, all same you 'Melican. Suppose I send Chinamen, suppose Loo Fong been that place, my man no tlust any one but white man. His name Haines. I pay you good. Suppose you bling back pearls, I give you plenty."

"You don't know anything about me," said Stanton. He was not demurring to the proposition, but it had taken him off his feet a bit. It sounded like a large order.

He did not lack confidence in himself, but this was a strange situation he was asked to take command of. He could not immediately see himself on a boat manned by Chinese, going to an island where some god, some symbol of evil, was supposed to reign with malign influence; where murder might have been done. He wanted to think it over, though he wanted to go, aside from obliging Cheung.

"I savvy plenty," Cheung went on suavely. "You have bad luck; you live cheap, not dlink, not lun up big bill at big hotel. You tly all time find any kind of job. Not easy fo' 'Melican along this place. Li'l' time ago you fight mate of Lehua. I like 'Melican who not blag, not dlink, can fight. I like you velly much to go this tlip."

Stanton wondered a little at the other's knowledge of the fight, but it was not surprising. Such news traveled fast. The restaurant was a sort of club, in some ways. He was to wonder more how closely Cheung had studied him.

"To-day steameh come," Cheung went on. "Haines, he had bad luck too, long time. He tlade in copla, have bad luck. He go fo' shell an' pearl, have bad luck. Lose schooneh, find shell eaten by oyster worm. His wife die in United States. Then he catch job with me. He lite back to his daughteh, pletty soon he make money. She no heah flom him long time befo'. Now velly glad. She come to Suva. Come to-day. She nice gel. I tell about her fatheh. She wollied, but she keep up chin all same you, 'Melican fashion. She want to go look fo' him. I say she can go along with you."

Stanton gasped. Things were developing fast. He knew who the girl was. She would recognize him when she saw him. He guessed why Loo Fong had trailed her. Loo Fong knew of the island if he had not been there. It was likely he had tried to pump the native who had first given Cheung the information, and killed the poor devil. Why the latter had chosen to confide in Cheung did not matter now. It was Cheung's affair. Probably the man was indebted to him.

"I saw Loo Fong following a girl who came in on the Austral, I think," he said. Again Cheung gave one of his soft grunts of comprehension.

"Loo Fong plenty slick," he said. "I think he savvy gel ask fo' me. She go along hotel now she come my place. Mo' betteh she stay this place. Loo Fong savvy that, savvy you come see me, maybe savvy why. Maskee! I think maybe you have to kill Loo Fong some time."

He spoke placidly enough, but, to Stanton, the room seemed suddenly filled with a mist in which vague, battling figures moved, while in the background there loomed the statue of a great, gray god and the suggestion of fantastic cliffs and jungle.

He was looking on, now, but he was about to be involved in this. Pearls, magic, murder. Mystery and sudden death. Romance. The girl's face with the big eyes that had changed when they saw him, as if there had been between them some affinity, was plain before him. He heard Cheung clap his hands, and then the girl herself was in the room, in the flesh, gazing at him as he rose.

"Missy Haines," Cheung was saying. "This Misteh Stanton. I think he go along Motutabu fo' me."

Her hand was in his, cool and firm, her gaze was searching him, frank, friendly.

"You don't mind if I go along?" she said. "I want to know what has happened to my father, I want to see him again. He left me in school, six years ago."

"Mind?" Stanton was filled with an idiotic desire to say the things that crowded his brain, to give utterance to the impulses that thrilled him. To acknowledge the joy that surged through him at the prospect of being her knight-errant, her champion. There was no question now of his not going. If Cheung had reserved this argument for the last, he had chosen wisely. Stanton's actual answer was stiff, awkward.

"I shall be glad to serve you, if I can, to help your father, to be of use to Cheung Li, who has befriended me."

"As he did my father," said the girl. Stanton thought he heard Cheung chuckle, but his face was immobile.

"That settled," he said. "Now Stanton, talk business along with me. Much to fix, quick as possible. To-mollow, maybe nex' day, you go."

The girl left and Cheung talked business. His schooner, with the Chinese skipper and crew, were at Levuka on the island of Ovalau, former capital of Fiji. It was not far away, less than fifty miles, and he had sent word to them, expecting them to-morrow. He gave Stanton money to buy necessary personal things, promising to furnish him weapons. Motutabu was not on the regulation charts. It lay far to the south and west, below the Kermadec Islands. Cheung showed its position on a chart. At the end of the interview he gave certain grave warnings.

"I think Loo Fong go that place," he said. "Not find pearl. If he savvy I send you I think he go back. Follow you, make plenty tlouble. Much betteh he stay along that place."

There was a grim note in his voice that more than hinted his meaning. Cheung had not attempted to dodge the fact that the trip was dangerous. He seemed at once to value life and consider it of little value, like the money changer who promptly throws out spurious coin. The crew of his schooner would be armed. He had not sent Chinese in the first place because natives were better divers; his own men were unused to pearling, he used them for inter-island trading. But they were fighters. They were his men.

Stanton was convinced that those who worked for Cheung were loyal, bound by a fealty that went beyond pay. He saw depths to this man who was running a lowly restaurant and living in something close to luxury. He realized that the restaurant was a clearing house for gossip, valuable to such a person as Cheung; shrewd, daring, efficient, he bent his energies toward fortune, but was endowed with philosophy, a mode of thought and life that raised him far above the ordinary.

"You not meddle along that god," Cheung said, the last thing. "And you look out along of Loo Fong. You look out along that mate you fight. Suppose you want take along that Tiki, can do. Maybe he can be useful along in bush. That mate name Johnson. Schooneh Lehua. Captain Fenwick, he sick, he stay in Suva. Cook quit too. Loo Fong he hold share in Lehua. You look out. Take this now."

He took from a drawer in a lacquered cabinet a flat automatic of German make, a vicious-looking thing of heavy caliber. As it lay cold in Stanton's palm it seemed like some sort of fetish that was a tangible link connecting him with the adventure, making it real. Cheung gave him extra clips.

"Knife betteh," he said. "Make no noise. Suppose you have to shoot, may make tlouble. But knife need plactice. You take. Johnson got no use fo' you. Loo Fong may think you savvy where to find pearl. I no savvy that. I think Haines hide all time, but I not know what place. Suppose he dead, you tly find pearl. I see you this time to-mollow."

Stanton slid the automatic away into his hip pocket, and Cheung shook his head.

"Pocket no good," he said. "Wait, I find."

He opened a chest and produced a spring clip-holder and leather shoulder-harness which Stanton fitted then and there, taking off his coat. The flat weapon lay close to his chest, snug and handy. There would be other revolvers on board, with belts and holsters for open use, but this manner was best, when one wore a coat, in Suva.

The police did not like foreigners to swank about with visible weapons. It was an orderly and peaceful town, but many strange things went on near by. There was the Rewa River, up which there was said to be a hidden headquarters for fugitives and outlaws of all kinds and races, waiting for secret transportation beyond extradition. Back of that, in the mountains, drums sounded on certain moonlit midnights, and the natives were still said to practice ancient and horrible rites of cannibalism and sacrifice.

Suva was civilized. Fiji was pacified. But savagery lurked on every hand.

Stanton made his purchases unostentatiously. He held the notion that he was shadowed. He saw nothing of Loo Fong, but that crafty individual had his following, who might be trailing Stanton for him. Stanton was barbered, reclothed, reshod, his own man again. His account with Cheung's restaurant was wiped out. He paid Panakaloa, together with a present of a vivid scarf which she draped proudly across her ample bosom, tears in her eyes as she thanked him and applauded his turn of fortune.

He had native tobacco and a new pipe for Tiki, with cloth for a sulu kilt with which to replace his inadequate G-string. The old pipe had been smashed on the wharf, he had not tasted the flavor of tobacco or its smoke for weeks, and his gratitude was inordinate. It was dark by then, and Stanton left him curled up on his mats, smoking blissfully.

Stanton stayed close that night, sitting in Panakaloa's little garden, smoking and thinking over the swift changes of chance. He had turned a sudden corner and he did not know what lay ahead, save that it was a man's work, savored with excitement and peril, heightened by the entrance of the girl.

He slept with the automatic on his chest, over his pyjama top. It was heavy but handy, and he did not take Cheung's warnings lightly. Loo Fong might well believe, as Cheung had suggested, that Stanton was going to Motutabu and knew where to find the pearls Cheung was sure Haines had gathered.

In such a case they might decide to try to force that information out of him, kidnap and torture him, rather than risk losing a race to the island.

So Loo Fong had a share in the Lehua. The mate was in actual charge of the schooner, to all intents and purposes its skipper. Loo Fong and the mate would almost certainly get together. Johnson had his own grudge against Stanton, which might materialize on its own account or join forces with Loo Fong in his plans.

It seemed very likely indeed to Stanton that the Lehua might have been to Motutabu on the trip from which she had just returned, with Loo Fong in her. The cargo was more or less of a blind, picked up after the trail for the pearls had failed.

If Tiki had been able to talk anything but his uncouth dialect Stanton might have been able to find out from him. The cook would know; he was probably leaving for some more definite reason than Johnson's slurs on his cooking. If anything serious had happened on Motutabu the cook might have decided to draw the line at piracy and quit while his neck was still unstretched, in which case it was not likely that he would talk. He had not been very prepossessing, as Stanton recollected. It was a rough outfit.

Cheung would undoubtedly find out all that it was possible to gather. Stanton felt that Cheung had not fully divulged himself in their talk, that he knew or suspected far more than he had mentioned. And Stanton was convinced that there had been grim doings on Motutabu and would be more. It seemed doubtful if the girl's father was still alive. If he were not, it would be no easy task to find the pearls. There would be the girl to comfort and protect. If Loo Fong followed and was again frustrated of the gems, he might consider the girl a secondary prize, so much loot for his personal gratification and disposal.

Small doubt of that, Stanton fancied, remembering the way in which the half-caste had trailed her. This mission was not the sort in which a girl should be involved, but he knew that she was fully committed to it, that Cheung was either willing she should go, or had tried to dissuade her and failed. Tonight she was safe enough at Cheung's. Cheung's measure of precaution would baffle even Loo Fong, Stanton felt certain, and took comfort from it.

Panakaloa's house was far from a fortress, built in flimsy, tropic fashion. It held no treasures, the window fastenings were light, the doors had no bolts. The one to the back garden did not even have a key, and the garden fence was easily scaled.

Stanton was a light sleeper. He held a hunch that the night was breeding some sort of attempt, and he hoped to be ready for it when it appeared. He dozed in cat-naps, waking intermittently, dropping off again. Then, a little after midnight, he was roused by some unusual sound that brought him standing to the floor, gun in hand, listening, watching. Whatever had wakened him was veiled by sleep, but his consciousness insisted there had been something.

There was no moon. The garden lay in mellow, tropic starlight, filled with deep, soft shadows that shifted shape as the land wind moved fronds and leafage. He saw nothing else; he stole to the door and listened, opening it suddenly, finger on trigger.

It looked as if a great dog were lying down on the threshold. In the vague light from the window he saw the faint glint of uprolled eyes. It was Tiki. From gratitude or fidelity, prompted perhaps by some sense developed in his savage subconsciousness of impending peril, he had come in from his shed to get as close to his protector as he could.

"All right, Tiki," Stanton said quietly. "Good boy." It was like talking to a dog, using tone to convey meaning. Tiki clucked something in his throat as Stanton closed the door.

It was not easy to doze again after the thorough rousing. The actions of the day, filmed in his brain, were automatically projected on the mental screen.

He was no longer a derelict. No one would venture to call him or describe him as a beach bum now. He had decent clothes, money in his pocket, had fought and won, acquired a cannibal Man Friday, met a girl who stirred feelings within him that he had never before experienced, and he was embarked upon a wild enterprise in a savage setting. At last the flickering flash-backs died out, and his mind became a blank.

The next thing he knew was a faint draft of air. The door was open, a dark space where its paint had shown gray. The windows, opening lengthwise, were apart. He could smell the night blossoms, ylang-ylang, frangipani. As he swung off the bed something touched his arm. It was Tiki, crouching low, hardly visible, pointing an arm, vaguely silhouetted, at the window. Then he darted off, merging with the gloom, back toward the open door.

The tops of croton bushes came above the sill. The wind moved them, or was it something else? Stanton sat on the edge of the bed, his gun ready to cover any intruder, remembering Cheung's caution that shooting would bring trouble, wondering if he could be plainly seen. He felt eyes watching him from the shrubbery, thought he could make out some solid bulk amid the leaves. It was so still, so charged with suspense, that he could hear the ticking of his watch.

Then there came a scuffle in the passage. Tiki had attacked, or been attacked. At any rate, fed, and fortified by having a friendly master, Tiki was fighting fiercely. Two struggling figures, locked in desperate battle, rolled into the room.

Stanton caught the gleam of steel. Tiki had no weapon. He launched himself from the edge of the bed, smashing at the hand that held the blade with the muzzle of his gun, trying to locate the intruder's head. It was an impossible task in the darkness and the fury of the combat. He could tell only that the man was far bigger than Tiki, and at that, like Tiki, he was practically naked. He could smell the rank sweat of him.

For the moment he had forgotten the window, been forced to leave it unguarded, suddenly aware of forms rising, writhing over the sill as he whirled.

One of them was clothed and burly, the other a stinking savage, rancid with palm oil, slippery as an eel. A sleeved arm was flung in front of Stanton, thrust hard against his throat to cut off his wind. He broke into tumultuous action, grasping the thick wrist with both hands, turning, stooping, putting all he had into a heaving pull of his back and shoulders. The weight of his adversary bore him down to one knee, but Stanton flung him heels over head, crashing into the flimsy bureau; then Stanton dived for the legs of the third man, and brought him down across the bed, close to the foot of it, bounding on the springs beneath the mattress.

Stanton leaped on him before he could get up or free the knife he surely carried in his loin-cloth. The native's hands clawed for Stanton's throat, lacerating the flesh. Stanton gripped one arm, bent it backward on the iron railing of the bed, bent it until it cracked. The savage yelled, leaping convulsively in his pain, and rolled to the floor.

Tiki and his man were in the doorway again. Stanton heard their panting grunts, and marveled at Tiki's resistance. The big man he had thrown was getting up. There was electricity in Suva, and Panakaloa had bulbs in her house. Stanton had no chance to get at his switch, but suddenly the passage was illumined and an Amazonian voice angrily demanded what was going on.

Panakaloa appeared, a shawl over her voluminous nightgown. She was brandishing a club that had been part of her skipper husband's collection of island weapons. The man had Tiki by the throat, squeezing him until his eyes bulged from their sockets, his tongue protruding. Panakaloa's club thudded down, and the seeming victor collapsed. Stanton saw the other native scramble over the sill dangling his broken arm. The clothed man rose from the ruins of the bureau and flung a chair at Stanton before he followed. It came legs first, hard enough to check Stanton's leap.

The two were gone, smashing through the shrubbery, up to the roof of Tiki's shed by means of the rain-barrel Panakaloa used for watering her garden, and over the fence.

Panakaloa and the light had routed them, aside from her by no means to be despised club. They had no desire for the publicity her indignant voice and arm might evoke. Stanton did not get a clear look at the face of the man who had thrown the chair, the room was still in partial shadow, but he was almost certain it had been Johnson, mate of the Lehua, and the other two were Solomon Islanders, members of the crew.

The one still lay senseless from the blow of the hardwood club. He was as black as Tiki, but bigger; his sharp filed teeth showing in the relaxed jaw. For a moment Stanton thought Panakaloa had killed him, and said so. She shook her head.

"Too much thick, that skull," she answered. "Maybe I crack it li'l. Serve him right. You want I call police, Sanatoni?" she asked shrewdly.

"I'd rather not," he answered; and she nodded.

"We take that trash outside, then," she said. "A fine cheek they got to come along my house."

"It's my fault," he told her. "They were after me."

Whether the mate had been bent on private reprisal or was in league with Loo Fong to knock him senseless and take him prisoner was uncertain, and not pertinent now they were foiled. Tiki had balked their attempt in the beginning; Panakaloa, with her unexpected sortie, had completed the rout.

Tiki was massaging his throat, but he grinned. The fight had not exhausted him. Now that he had become attached to some one, he had shed much of his misery like an old garment. He helped the two of them bear the sagging body of the still unconscious man out into the deserted street and set it down in the lee of a cereus hedge that topped a stone wall. There was no one in sight, no sound of the other two, and they left him there.

"I owe you a bureau, Panakaloa," said Stanton. "I owe you more than that. You came just in time."

"Ugh!" grunted Panakaloa contemptuously. "That bureau not much good. I pay four dollar for that along of junkman." She sat down and began to laugh, her stout body shaking like a jelly, her eyes rolling upward while Tiki surveyed her in awe and amazement. "Too much I fool that kaikanaka. My old man, the kapitani, one time he hit me with that club. This time I get even. When that black trash wake up he think the house fall in on him."

Tiki did not understand what she said, but he grinned widely at her tone. She insisted upon opening beer for herself and Stanton, and she gave Tiki a glass, which he tasted suspiciously and then swallowed it with a comical grimace of surprised delight as he rubbed his stomach. Native fashion, Panakaloa had strengthened the brew with a slug of Hollands gin.

It was beginning to get light when she left them, still chuckling over her prowess, vastly pleased with herself. Tiki was too proud at what Stanton said to him, patting his shoulder the while. It was Greek to the islander, but he knew it for praise.