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The Golden Cat: The Adventures of Peter the Brazen, Volume 3
by Loring Brent and George F. Worts
Ratings:
351 pages4 hours
Summary
Peter the Brazen is back! In this next story in the series, Jonathan Driggs, journeying in search of his love, Gloria Dale, has learned that she was become the mistress of Fong-Chi-Ah, fiend of all Asia. At the same time, the Golden Cat—a symbol of the long-absent Queen Shari—has been stolen. Elsewhere in China, wireless operator Peter Moore receives a message from a "Gloria Dale:" a mysterious woman seemingly kidnapped, and wearing a Golden Cat around her neck.... Written by long-time Argosy author George F. Worts under his primary pen-name, Peter the Brazen made a marked impression on Argosy reader Lester Dent when he co-created Doc Savage. The saga of Peter the Brazen is amongst the best adventure series in the history of pulp fiction.
Publisher: Altus PressReleased: Dec 4, 2018ISBN: 9788829567010Format: book
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The Golden Cat - Loring Brent
The Golden Cat
The Adventures of Peter the Brazen, Volume 3
by
Loring Brent
Altus Press • 2018
Copyright Information
© 2018 Altus Press
Publication History:
The Cat of Gold
originally appeared as The Golden Cat
in the November 22, 29, and December 6, 13, 20, and 27, 1919 issues of Argosy magazine (Vol. 114, No. 4–Vol. 116, No. 1). Copyright © 1919 by The Frank A. Munsey Company.
About the Author
originally appeared in the August 2, 1941 issue of Argosy magazine (Vol. 309, No. 5). Copyright © 1941 by The Frank A. Munsey Company. Copyright renewed © 1968 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Special Thanks to Gerd Pircher
CHAPTER I
THE WAYFARER
The Sphinx must solve her own riddle.
—Emerson.
AT the summit of the rise he drew rein with an exclamatory outgiving of breath. The surprise was thorough, as if a brown curtain had been unexpectedly snatched aside. Momentarily all of his impulses were numbed. And yet the man on the mule was inured to the astonishments of this life; experience was bitten into his weathered countenance—the hard, seasoned lines told you that.
There was, to be sure, an appalling grandeur in the prospect from the mountain brow. This firm, dark road drooped, ribbon-like, from the granite shoulders of the pass to the coiling blue river which was impressed like a python between banks green as the emerald.
A half mile from the blue river on the opposite shore an ancient city was established, and this was a city that might have been spilled from a jewel casket. It was a hand-painted poem of a city, with tiny houses peeping like bright toys from a brilliant rainbow garden, all held within walls ivory in their virginal whiteness.
A mist grew in the traveller’s eyes. He had been thoroughly unprepared, and surely the richness of its coloring and the ripe greenness of the plain on which centuries ago it had been erected were enough of themselves to pluck the breath from any unsuspecting wanderer.
That was a reasonable explanation. Unpreparedness added to contrast. The man had been pressing onward for hours through gulleys and ravines chopped into fruitless rock. Since dawn, since noon of yesterday, he had been following the unfamiliar trail through a sinister land of browns and grays.
Once in a while he had paused reluctantly for food or a few minutes’ relaxation under an unhappy cembra pine, or, in the lower reaches, where water bubbled at its thoughtless will, a starving date-palm bearing no fruit. On the whole the country through which he had journeyed most recently was a wrack of parched mountains, a harsh, lonely wilderness. Browns and grays were relieved only by the blue of the heaven, and even this at times oppressed him with its unbroken smoothness.
Since dawn of the new morning he had proceeded more rapidly along the treacherous road, urged onward by the delicious scent of the river which crept more sweetly into the crumbling hills as the miles were unrolled. Without warning he had approached the last of the ridges which barred him from the surprise. His mind was saturated with the hateful grays and browns when he reached the final rise in the road.
It was like peeping through the gate into a forbidden Oriental paradise.
The green-satin valley, the python that was a blue river, the miraculous city flung themselves at him and into him. He was no worshipper of scenery; too much of it had been spread under his sage young eyes. His immediate burst of laughter was only an expression of ecstatic relief, and the few intermingling tears were only an indication that the torture endured in the horrible country behind was taking its leave.
The nostrils of the mule he rode and of his smaller pack-mule quivered ardently at the touch of the river’s breath. A breeze was flowing up the mountain side flavored intoxicatingly with valley odors. The sweetness of rose blossoms, of flowery cinnamon, of water lilies, in contrast with the arid, deathly atmosphere of an hour ago, could almost be tasted.
Weary and hungry, Jonathan Driggs sat in his saddle and devoured the tropical city. Ly-Chang was brought all but within reach of his tired fingers by the clearness of the drowsy, sunlit morning. Yet he was unaware of the soft flood of odor carried up with the breeze, unaware of the tender and aged voice of a far-away temple bell.
And while he stoutly professed to dislike scenery, yet his youthful imagination was ravished by all of it. He could not express his thoughts, even to himself, or to the sympathetic and understanding mule, who had mournfully accepted his confidences during the hundreds of terrible miles from the Goblin Gobi.
The mind of Jonathan Driggs was in a roseate uproar. He was miserable; he was filled with the happiness of blissful anticipation—divided between the possibilities of the bitter disappointment and the joyful discovery which that fragrant city had in its power to give him.
It is said by the philosophically wise that a man madly in love is a fool, and in that respect Jonathan Driggs was a noteworthy one. He had been riding furiously for more than a month from the northern borders of Thibet to reach Ly-Chang and the girl who held his happiness in the palm of her hand.
She had been a child the last time he saw her. From Afghanistan to the Sungaria, from the Shamo into China proper, he had killed one mule after another by hard riding—to lay his heart and a diamond trinket at the exquisite feet of the child matured.
Can you imagine any man displaying foolishness so consistently? If you have wandered into the remote corners, you have probably glimpsed such a man, for each is typical of the other. Somewhere along the bund of Shanghai when the green lights are coming on, he steps ashore from a battered sampan; you are given a startling glimpse of murky eyes, of powerful chin, of bizarre garments—a disciple of Romance.
At the Metropole, in Panama, you see him again—boiled to furious redness by the Chagres sun and swollen pitifully with bites administered by the man-loving chigger, yet competent to adorn the bar rail and down some favorite and exotic liquor of amazing power.
You hear the whistle of his footsteps in the lonely singing sands at Rio, the wails produced by his fevered brains as coolies carry him limp from the jungles into Zanzibar, or Singapore. You admire him, you envy him, you disapprove of him, and sometimes you understand him. He toils not, neither does he spin. He is all that your youthful and romantic twenties urged you to be.
And only in your rapturous twenties can you properly understand and sympathize with his impulsiveness, such as the rare impulsiveness which sent Jonathan Driggs from an Italian convalescent hospital at the termination of the war into the festering heart of China, via Afghanistan and the Desert of Gobi and other unspeakable places, to lay his gift and his heart at the feet of a somewhat unattainable angel.
Centuries ago the untainted white walls of Ly-Chang were erected on the western slope of the Si-Kiang, a river which flows into the Bogue, at Canton, becomes the Pearl at that point, and ventures into the China Sea not far from where Hong Kong the beautiful endeavors to rule the morals and the commerce of this portion of the Eastern world.
Ly-Chang was Jonathan Driggs’s goal, but not his destination, for his destination might prove to be any of the places I have mentioned, where adventurous youth may be glimpsed madly pursuing grails and girls of exciting and frequently unadvertised character.
As a matter of fact, Driggs had made a detour some thousands of miles in extent in the hope that Gloria Dale might have continued her one-time residence in Ly-Chang with her adoring father. If Gloria Dale had taken herself to Shanghai or elsewhere, thither Jonathan Driggs intended promptly to take himself and his offering. He harbored no doubts of the outcome in any case.
The theatrical vision of the city and the winding blue river forced new vigor into him. Days and days ago he had lost the enormous yellow fiber hat he had picked up in a Sungarian village; he had, indeed, joyfully witnessed its mad flight over a mountain of black glass, where a furnace-like blast roared and ripped through that particular valley. The loss was negligible. His shapely head upheld a mass of curly brown and the deep brown eyes were sheltered by the strong and prominent forehead of the reasoner.
Days of pitiless tropical sunshine, unhampered by the diamond-clear lower Himalayan atmosphere, had roasted his firm skin to a ripe and pleasing tan. There was a rare, hungering quality in the smile he addressed to the ancient city when he began his descent.
The mule he was riding and the smaller animal that supported his provisions and sleeping roll might not have sensed the glorious promise of the city that came out of a jewel casket. If the flame-like pagoda and the groves of kanaros and banyans did not inspire them, certainly the fragrance of the Si-Kiang made up the loss fully, for they trotted eagerly down the brown ribbon-road to an obvious fording place and drank until their foolish sides were swelled.
Jonathan Driggs, while he indulged them, devoted himself to pointed questioning. Would Gloria Dale comprehend and approve the kind of love that had burned in his soul for years, that had propelled him recklessly across seas, and deserts, and mountains filled with snow, toward a city which had exerted some curious fascination upon her?
He had written to her careful, gently questioning letters, none of the score of them having evoked a reply. Did she frown upon the love of a man for a girl in her teens, a love founded on no stronger foundations than his resolute hopes?
He had often wondered, and he fell to wondering again as he urged the mules up the other bank, just what hold the city of Ly-Chang had upon the beautiful, grown-up daughter of Horace Dale. He knew that Gloria and her father made frequent visits to the home of Prince Chu. She had often mentioned the venerable prince and his remarkable city, yet she had never taken the trouble to explain the visits, and Driggs was too brimful of worship to ask her to explain.
He remembered from random remarks she had made that Ly-Chang differed strikingly from the ordinary Chinese city. He recalled that it was an exceptionally clean city filled with extraordinary people—extraordinary because they were at all times smilingly happy. The traditions of Ly-Chang had come to him from other mouths. It was a hospitable place; they went so far as to let down the drawbridge at night to welcome tired and hungry travellers. They regaled the wanderer with excellent food, rare wines, and happy songs accompanied by the lute. Ly-Chang was an Oriental shrine of good will and happiness.
So it was with a feeling of immense surprise and concern that Jonathan Driggs entered Ly-Chang by the drawbridge. There were no indications of happiness in the city he entered. Groups of men gathered conspicuously about the red-paved streets, in the doorways of the pastel houses, under the splendid southern trees, were whisperingly discussing some stern matter.
Two young girls glanced in his direction with only fugitive curiosity, and turned away with eyes swollen by tears. Other than the unobtrusive glances of these sorrowing ones, his entrance was ungreeted for a time.
Dreadful calamity must indeed be abroad in Ly-Chang.
CHAPTER II
THE GOLDEN CAT
ORDINARILY the arrival of a white foreigner is the signal for confusion in the interior towns of China. Jonathan Driggs had had amusing and strenuous experiences in villages along the trail. He had been, by turn, worshiped and attacked. The buttons had been plucked from his tunic; in the Tarim Basin he had been accepted as a divinity; in Ala Shan he had been stoned.
Ly-Chang did not recognize his existence; it was evident that some terrible distraction prevailed in all the minds of Ly-Chang’s prosperous, well-dressed inhabitants.
A boy of nineteen with features as delicate and eyes as beautiful as those of a girl was making his way toward the dusty newcomer. A round hat of bright green silk was fitted tightly about his ears.
Jonathan Driggs’s brown eyes opened with wonder when the boy addressed him in English, tinted with the gutturals and resonance not of western China, but of Indo-China.
You come from afar, my friend?
From Afghanistan,
the adventurer replied.
The boy nodded sadly. We always welcome the stranger to our gates,
he said with a deep sigh. It is a regret that we cannot give the heaven-sent our usual greeting. As you see, we are in great confusion. Will you forgive our weakness? I will find a place for you to sleep and fetch you food and drink myself.
What has happened?
Driggs asked bluntly. He dismounted and darted a concerned glance from the bright face of the unknown host to a girl who was braiding her hair and weeping in the shade of a royal palm nearby.
The prince would be infuriated if I annoyed any guest with our trouble,
the boy replied rather stiffly.
No annoyance, my lad,
Driggs took him up with a sympathetic air. What’s wrong?
The boy hesitated. He studied the countenance of the weary stranger who professed to have travelled all the way from Afghanistan, and the inspection seemed to remove all of his doubts. The face of Jonathan Driggs was indeed that of a trustworthy man.
A jewel we value more highly than all of our lives combined was stolen yesterday from the green shrine by men sent from a great thief!
the boy said breathlessly.
A jewel—a shrine—a thief—
Driggs muttered, as if incredulous.
The Oriental eyes glowed, and the slender lips twitched a little.
Would the heaven-born care to see—
He paused. My name is Belubar.
"Hsing-la! Lead the way!" Driggs urged him cheerily.
We are a helpless people, sir,
the boy explained apologetically as they proceeded up the street of red tile and made their way into a vast garden of white roses whose scent lay heavily on the morning air. Prince Chu does not approve of war, so we are at the mercy of our friends, such as you, master.
Jonathan Driggs was too impressed with the beauty of the rose garden, which spread out in white-and-green folds on all sides of him, to make comment. Ly-Chang from the mountain brow had promised complete fulfilment of the traditions which had come to his ears; the air of sorrow ruling within the ivory walls was as unexpected and confusing as his first dramatic glimpse of the valley.
A sudden turn in the dirt path brought into view a tiny round building of worn green stone nestling in the shade provided by an arch burdened with white blossoms. The path led to a doorway cut in the shape of an oval, only large enough for a man of Jonathan Driggs’s heroic proportions to squeeze through.
He found himself in a tiny room paved with white marble. Light sifted into the curious little temple through a dome of crystalline green. Shoulder high at equal distances carved brass sockets were fixed in the glazed wall. These were empty. Several of them were twisted, and small heaps of powdered plaster on the marble floor underneath them indicated that the disturbance had been recent.
Growing out of the pavement in its precise center, a square column of lapislazulæ reached to Jonathan’s waist. A fragment of the dense blue stone had been cracked from the corner nearest the oval door. The cuplike summit of the blue pedestal was empty.
Belubar turned on the adventurer with impulsive ferocity.
Why should the great thief have sent his wolves to Ly-Chang yesterday?
he demanded.
Why?
Driggs murmured softly.
The boy continued, in a low, powerful voice:
In those brackets were gold cups which we filled every day with lotus buds from the river. They wrenched the cups away and stole them, too. Oh, but the gold cups were of no value. They were old, very old, but they can be replaced a thousand times!
What did they steal from the pedestal?
Driggs was curious to know.
Belubar seemed not to have heard. He went on excitedly:
Why should the pig of the north prey upon our master? He will say nothing. He is alone now, sir, with his grief. He has sent out word that he will wait until his son comes home from the war of many nations.
Driggs lifted his dark brows, but said nothing.
We welcomed these men yesterday, a dozen of them, sir. They came to Ly-Chang as friends on a black junk from Canton way. We welcomed them, gave them food and gifts, and last night they came to this temple and stole the golden cat and the chain of sapphires!
The golden—what?
Driggs demanded.
Belubar looked wildly into the eyes of his listener; and the points of his mouth began twitching again.
We are a pagan people, sir!
he burst out with his former ferocity. We love those who befriend us, and the golden cat was the symbol of our dearest one, the Queen Shari. She was the one who taught us to live and to smile. The golden cat was all we had. She went away from Ly-Chang before she died—no one knows where.
He blinked tears out of his dark eyes.
For centuries the shrine of Shari has been undisturbed. Not even the pilgrims to Ly-Chang have been allowed to enter this place. Only the people of Ly-Chang. Those who were in trouble came here, to touch it with their fingers. Where will we go now when we are in trouble? We are Buddhists, Taoists—yes! But above all gods we worshipped the golden cat of Shari.
Belubar drew his hands over his face and trembled. Driggs watched him narrowly, and his fine mouth was a hard red line.
Who is this great thief?
The boy blinked at him uneasily. His name is Fong-Chi-Ah, master.
Fong, of Shanghai?
Driggs snapped.
Belubar nodded. Yes, Fong-Chi-Ah, of Shanghai. But you must not be bothered. You are hungry and tired.
Jonathan Driggs brushed the implication aside with a gesture of impatience.
Why did Fong steal your golden cat? Is its gold so valuable?
Prince Chu’s secrets are his own,
the boy replied. It is some old enmity, we think. The gold was not heavy. It was once a charm at Queen Shari’s throat. Let us go. You are hungry. And your eyes are tired.
Gently the boy urged him out of the miniature temple and into the presence of three maidens who scampered down the path at sight of them.
Jonathan Driggs was meditatively silent for a dozen steps. In the unexpected problems of Ly-Chang his own had been momentarily forgotten. His eyes softened.
In a studiously casual manner he broke the silence.
"What has become of the jen Dale, from Shanghai, and his daughter? They sometimes spent—"
He stopped abruptly. Belubar’s solicitous expression had been engulfed by a shocking grimace. His full red lips were pressed apart like bow-strings: his thin eyebrows seemed to have skipped to concealment under the bright green hat.
Driggs watched this display of ferocity with amazement.
What is it, Belubar?
he demanded anxiously.
The boy expelled a harsh laugh. The goddaughter of Prince Chu is no longer here, master!
Where is she? What has happened to her?
I—do not know, master!
Belubar whimpered.
Driggs seized him by the arm and thrust his eyes close to those of the emotional youth.
We are forbidden to speak her name!
he burst out, flinging himself away. I—I cannot—
Jonathan Driggs followed him grimly across the path, with lower lip thrust out, head down, shoulders pushed forward.
Belubar regarded the raging expression without dismay or fear. In the presence of the other man’s danger, his own had fled, a phenomenon not uncommonly witnessed in the lands where yellow meets white.
Where is Gloria Dale?
Driggs exploded.
The boy’s expression was inscrutable. He looked at his inquisitor steadily.
She was a traitor to us, master,
he replied in a cool, smooth voice. "We believed she loved Ly-Chang. But she loved the great fat pig all the while! Chen pu-ts’o! She came up the river to insult our master less than a month ago! She has gone to live with Fong-Chi-Ah. Shih!"
CHAPTER III
THE BITTER CUP
JONATHAN DRIGGS struck once with his great right fist, while his lips worked over a moan, and the color fled out of his cheeks. Redness burned again instantly.
He plucked Belubar out of the thorns of the low rose bush and dangled him in front of him. His glare was met by a meek expression, dazed and pained.
You dam’ lyin’ little rat!
he roared. Spit out the truth, or, so help me—I’ll brain you!
Yes! Yes! Oh master, I am so sorry!
Belubar gasped.
Be careful!
the pitiless giant warned him. Out with the truth you mongoose! I know when yellow men lie. Quick! Has—she—gone—to—live—with—that—pig?
Yes, master; by Budha, yes!
Driggs lowered him to the path. He swallowed an enormous breath before removing his eyes from the pained ones. Belubar looked back unflinchingly; there was, indeed, an aspect of tender sympathy in the sturdy glance.
Beyond question the boy was telling the truth as it was known to him. Certainly he had no reasons for lying. But the uttered truth was absolutely unbelievable. He could believe that Gloria Dale might be dead, but that golden-haired, blue-eyed girl—gone to live with Fong-Chi-Ah? Never!
Where are they?
he snapped.
Belubar shook his green hat sadly, and rubbed the spot on his broad-jacketed chest where the fist had landed.
None of us knows, master. She went to him in Shanghai. All China will tell you the same, for he is so wicked and she is so beautiful. Perhaps they are in Canton now; the river thieves came up the Si-Kiang from the Gate of the Tiger. Listen. I start for Hong Kong to-night to take the daughter of Prince Chu the Princess Shari, to meet her brother, Jan Sing, who is returning from the war of many nations. Will you go with us?
Driggs shook away the pleading hand impatiently.
I go to Shanghai. First I must see Prince Chu.
But he will receive no one, master,
Belubar reminded him gently. He has retired to the room of meditation with his grief. Wherever you go, you must have food and drink before starting. At any other time but this terrible one Prince Chu himself would have welcomed you at the drawbridge. Let me prepare your tiffin with my own hands!
It was necessary for Belubar to run while he delivered the latter suggestion, for the amazing and gigantic visitor from Afghanistan-way was taking himself along the worn red pavement with enormous strides.
Jonathan Driggs was no longer aware of the flowery flavors: the gem-like beauty had all gone out of Ly-Chang; the jewel casket was an empty one. The city of happiness had been reduced in an hour to a hideous symbol of Orientalism; they mourned the loss of a lump of metal which a woman centuries dead had worn at her throat. It was chaff to the golden grain in comparison with his loss.
His eyes were wet; this heart was thumping tragically. The sorrowful voice of Belubar, the weeping of a cluster of women near his mules, stopped at his eardrums. For years he had worshiped Gloria Dale; thousands of dreary miles he had endured, to offer her his heart.
Was it all forever over?
You will have a clearer conception of Jonathan Driggs when his resolutions are mentioned. Love is sometimes said to be an expression of selfishness. The wanderer reached his mules with his mind made up. He would take pains to verify the statement that Gloria Dale had ceased being a good woman, or he would hear the contradiction from her own lips. If the former proved to be the case, he would reach her somehow. Somewhere in her good existed.
He would bring forth that good. Perhaps she had succumbed to weakness. No matter what the cause, no matter how slight the extenuation, he would give her his love unreservedly. His love was not bounded by selfish worldly morals or hypocritical conventions; it was a superb, selfish power.
The dusty traveller did not wait for tiffin. He mounted his mule and struck off down the trail through the blue hills toward Shanghai, with the intention of
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