<h2 id="c7">VII</h2>
<p>It was by wireless that Blake made what efforts
he could to confirm his suspicions that
Binhart had not dropped off at any port of
call between San Francisco and Hong Kong.
In due time the reply came back to “Bishop
MacKishnie,” on board the westbound <i>Empress
of China</i> that the Reverend Caleb Simpson
had safely landed from the <i>Manchuria</i> at
Hong Kong, and was about to leave for the
mission field in the interior.</p>
<p>The so-called bishop, sitting in the wireless-room
of the <i>Empress of China</i>, with a lacerated
black cigar between his teeth, received this
much relayed message with mixed feelings.
He proceeded to send out three Secret Service
code-despatches to Shanghai, Amoy and Hong
Kong, which, being picked up by a German
cruiser, were worried over and argued over and
finally referred back to an intelligence bureau
for explanation.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_103">[103]</div>
<p>But at Yokohama, Blake hurried ashore in
a <i>sampan</i>, met an agent who seemed to be
awaiting him, and caught a train for Kobe.
He hurried on, indifferent to the beauties of
the country through which he wound, unimpressed
by the oddities of the civilization with
which he found himself confronted. His
mind, intent on one thing, seemed unable to
react to the stimuli of side-issues. From
Kobe he caught a <i>Toyo Kisen Kaisha</i> steamer
for Nagasaki and Shanghai. This steamer,
he found, lay over at the former port for thirteen
hours, so he shifted again to an outbound
boat headed for Woosung.</p>
<p>It was not until he was on the tender, making
the hour-long run from Woosung up the
Whangpoo to Shanghai itself, that he seemed
to emerge from his half-cataleptic indifference
to his environment. He began to realize
that he was at last in the Orient.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_104">[104]</div>
<p>As they wound up the river past sharp-nosed
and round-hooded sampans, and archaic
Chinese battle-ships and sea-going junks and
gunboats flying their unknown foreign flags,
Blake at last began to realize that he was in
a new world. The very air smelt exotic; the
very colors, the tints of the sails, the hues of
clothing, the forms of things, land and sky
itself—all were different. This depressed
him only vaguely. He was too intent on the
future, on the task before him, to give his
surroundings much thought.</p>
<p>Blake had entirely shaken off this vague
uneasiness, in fact, when twenty minutes after
landing he found himself in a red-brick hotel
known as The Astor, and guardedly shaking
hands with an incredulously thin and sallow-faced
man of about forty. Although this
man spoke with an English accent and exile
seemed to have foreigneered him in both appearance
and outlook, his knowledge of
America was active and intimate. He passed
over to the detective two despatches in cipher,
handed him a confidential list of Hong Kong
addresses, gave him certain information as to
Macao, and an hour later conducted him down
the river to the steamer which started that
night for Hong Kong.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_105">[105]</div>
<p>As Blake trod that steamer’s deck and
plowed on through strange seas, surrounded
by strange faces, intent on his strange chase,
no sense of vast adventure entered his soul.
No appreciation of a great hazard bewildered
his emotions. The kingdom of romance
dwells in the heart, in the heart roomy enough
to house it. And Blake’s heart was taken up
with more material things. He was preoccupied
with his new list of addresses, with his
new lines of procedure, with the men he must
interview and the dives and clubs and bazars
he must visit. He had his day’s work to do,
and he intended to do it.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_106">[106]</div>
<p>The result was that of Hong Kong he carried
away no immediate personal impression,
beyond a vague jumble, in the background of
consciousness, of Buddhist temples and British
red-jackets, of stately parks and granite
buildings, of mixed nationalities and native
theaters, of anchored warships and a floating
city of houseboats. For it was the same hour
that he landed in this orderly and strangely
English city that the discovery he was drawing
close to Binhart again swept clean the slate
of his emotions. The response had come
from a consulate secretary. One wire in all
his sentinel network had proved a live one.
Binhart was not in Hong Kong, but he had
been seen in Macao; he was known to be still
there. And beyond that there was little that
Never-Fail Blake cared to know.</p>
<p>His one side-movement in Hong Kong was
to purchase an American revolver, for it began
to percolate even through his indurated
sensibilities that he was at last in a land where
his name might not be sufficiently respected
and his office sufficiently honored. For the
first time in seven long years he packed a gun,
he condescended to go heeled. Yet no minutest
tingle of excitement spread through his
lethargic body as he examined this gun, carefully
loaded it, and stowed it away in his
wallet-pocket. It meant no more to him than
the stowing away of a sandwich against the
emergency of a possible lost meal.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_107">[107]</div>
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