Halfhyde on the Yangtze Read online

  “Do get on with it!” Watkiss snapped.

  “Ar, zur, I be doing that.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  The conversation continued, and after what seemed like an immense time, Bodmin looked up at Watkiss and reverted to English. “She do say, zur, that she’s seen Mr Bloementhal afore—”

  “Yes, yes, you’ve told me that, also that she doesn’t trust him. I want to know why.”

  “Ar, zur, so ee do, so ee do.” Bodmin paused, touched the girl’s cheek again, then went on, “She says she’s seen ’im, zur, some while back it were, in the company of some of they local mandarins from the country districts like—”

  “In Szechwan province?”

  “Ar, zur, that be right. In Szechwan province.”

  “All right, Mr Bodmin, go on.”

  “Ar, zur. They mandarins…they be the enemy like, zur, the opposition.”

  “Yes, yes. But to what in particular?”

  “Why, zur, to us. And to the Yanks, zur.”

  “I see. That’s interesting. Do you mean Mr Bloementhal’s playing a double game, Mr Bodmin, double-crossing his own countrymen as well as us?”

  Bodmin pursed his lips. “Why, zur, I dunno as to that. She didn’t say that, but—”

  “Understandable,” Watkiss said, nodding vigorously. “She wasn’t to know the ins and outs of diplomacy I don’t suppose. It would be beyond her class, naturally. However, a wink’s as good as a nod to a blind horse, and I am well able to make my own deductions.” Suddenly he remembered something. “Mr Bodmin, did you not tell me earlier that Bloementhal was not an American according to your—er—to your woman? If he’s not, then he can’t be accused of traitorous atrocities exactly, can he? At any rate in regard to the Americans?”

  “That be true enough, zur.”

  “Then who is he, for God’s sake?”

  “She don’t know ’is name like, zur, but she do reckon ’e’s a German.”

  “A Hun? A Hun, in the American Legation at Peking, which is where he came from according to both Admiral Hackenticker and Mr Carstairs, isn’t that so, Mr Halfhyde? And that missionary, who was quite drunk.” Watkiss pondered. “If a Hun managed to make himself persons grata in the American Legation, it doesn’t say much for the Americans, does it, but I’m certainly not in the least surprised I must admit. They’re a woolly lot, and they don’t understand diplomacy or foreign countries, never really had the experience, of course—I suppose you can’t blame them. There’s another point too, is there not?”

  “What point, sir?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, my dear Halfhyde? If he was vouched for by Hackenticker, does not that fact implicate Hackenticker in the jiggery-pokery?”

  “Possibly, sir, but I don’t believe so.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “Because Admiral Hackenticker strikes me as a very genuine American naval officer, sir.”

  “I take your diplomatic experience with a grain of salt, Mr Halfhyde, I doubt if you’d know a spy when you saw one.”

  “He fought with us, sir, on the way from the Consulate.”

  “So did that Hun von Furstenberg! All Huns together if you ask me!”

  Halfhyde gave a cough. “Perhaps it would be as well to ask Mrs Bodmin-Song Tso-P’eng—how she deduced that Bloementhal was a German?”

  Watkiss scratched his jaw. “Bloementhal could be a Hun name as much as American…clever of him in a way; I suppose he’d have claimed German ancestry if anyone had got suspicious, and thus disarmed them. Don’t you think? However, I take your point—all that wouldn’t have occurred to a Chinee woman.” He turned to Mr Bodmin. “Kindly ask her, if you please, unless she’s already told you.”

  “Ar, she ’as that, zur. She were told like. One o’ they ninety-seven relations, zur, is butler to one o’ they mandarin fellows in Szechwan province. And—”

  “And she saw Bloementhal when she was visiting this relation?” Watkiss asked perspicaciously.

  “Ar, zur. And ’e did tell her that Mr Bloementhal spoke German all the time, zur, and Germans was there as well, suppin’ and dinin’ and winin’ with that there mandarin, zur.”

  Watkiss nodded. “I see. He could, of course, speak German even as an American citizen, I imagine, but what you tell me sounds pretty conclusive—the Hun guests, you see. I’m most grateful, my dear Bodmin, most grateful. I shall see to it that your services are reported in Hong Kong. Now, Mr Halfhyde, we must ponder the facts we’ve learned.” An ungallant thought sprang into his mind: Song Tso-P’eng had done her talking and could now be removed from the comfort of his cabin, but that would be churlish, and it was un-British to go back on one’s word. “We shall go to the wardroom, Mr Halfhyde,” he said. “All right, Mr Bodmin, that’ll be all, thank you.”

  Bodmin looked peeved and disappointed. “If I might ask a favour, zur, she do be awful lonely like, and I—”

  “No, Mr Bodmin, I’m sorry.”

  “But, zur—”

  Watkiss snapped, “I said no and I mean no. How many times have I to tell you, she’s not your wife!”

  BEFORE SEEKING Halfhyde’s views, Captain Watkiss conferred within himself so as to clear his mind towards decision. Seated at the tiny wardroom table, he tapped his fingers on the wood whilst he pondered, a sound that soon began to drive Halfhyde to the verge of insanity. Watkiss’ mental processes were, in fact, simple: he resented Hackenticker’s presence and was half inclined to see him as a wicked intriguer who could now be clapped in irons, but he felt a need to be cautious all the same. And then there was the damn parson: surely he was now shown to be an evil man? Had not Bloementhal been sent to meet him? Watkiss mentioned this to Halfhyde.

  “He’s not necessarily evil, sir, in my view—”

  “Why not?”

  “Clergymen are seldom intriguers—”

  “Oh, balls and bang me arse, of course they are!” Watkiss sounded indignant. “Look at parish work, it’s all intrigue, and as for bishops—how do they obtain their dioceses in the first place?”

  “It’s outside my province, sir. But considering the information Erskine parted with, I scarcely see him as working against us.” Halfhyde frowned. “On the other hand…”

  “Yes, Mr Halfhyde?” The tapping, which had thankfully ceased, started again. “What other hand?”

  “It’s possible Erskine’s information about the Kaiser’s intentions was false—”

  “False? How, false? And why?”

  “False simply in the sense that it wasn’t true,” Halfhyde answered patiently. “And for the reason that Bloementhal and Erskine could have been working together with a view to discrediting von Furstenberg.”

  “Oh, nonsense, von Furstenberg’s a Hun and you’re obscuring the issue. I don’t know what you’re talking about, frankly. It’s the very fact that Bloementhal hob-nobs with Huns that has made us suspicious, isn’t it, except that I was always suspicious of him from the start, if you remember.” Watkiss sniffed. “A rascally face, don’t you know.”

  “Perhaps, sir. But von Furstenberg, at any rate, was of much assistance in saving your neck.”

  “My neck, yes, that’s true, certainly.” As if instinctively, Watkiss felt the folds of his short, bull-like neck, so recently adjacent to the executioner’s sword. “Well, I really don’t know, all this is most tiresome for simple sailors, Mr Halfhyde, who are happiest when upon the clean sea. Good, clean winds and—” Suddenly he broke off. “I think we had better have words with Hackenticker—you’re probably right that he’s honest; I feel I must take the chance. Send for him, if you please, Mr Halfhyde.”

  “If you remember, sir, you placed him in arrest.”

  “Of course I remember, and it was open arrest, not close arrest. In any case I’ve changed my mind, and I’m taking him out again.” Watkiss paused. “Better get the parson, too, I think. Missionaries! That’s another thing about parsons, or missionaries anyway—all missionaries are unctuous, and unctuous people are generally
blasted liars, so there may be something in what you say.”

  MR ERSKINE was, in fact, thoroughly drunk. He was found in the stoker’s mess deck wrapped in a blanket inside a hammock, where a kindly stoker had placed him when he had been discovered beneath the mess table. The fumes of John Haig were immensely strong, and the clergyman could not be woken, so Halfhyde left him where he was. Rear-Admiral Hackenticker was easily found, being positioned beneath the lee of the bridge overhang where he was to some extent sheltered from the rain. He preferred the upper deck, he said, since the fug below was terrible in the overcrowded conditions. Some of the traders and their womenfolk had even managed to be seasick, or anyway river sick, and it was true that the progress of the Cockroach was somewhat wild as she sheered from side to side under the torrent’s thrust.

  Halfhyde said, “My Captain is taking you out of arrest, sir, and wishes words with you in the wardroom.” He kept his face straight, but the American burst out into laughter.

  “Arrest is Watkiss’ panacea, I think,” he said. “Not to be taken too seriously, Lieutenant?”

  “Not always, sir.” Halfhyde smiled. “When it becomes awkward…”

  “He backs down?”

  “I prefer to say he puts the safety of his ship first, sir.”

  Hackenticker chuckled. “Loyally said!” He clapped Halfhyde on the shoulder. “I guess I’ve been humouring your Captain Watkiss, but the time could have come to stop.”

  “I don’t quite follow, sir?”

  “Why, he seems to me to be kind of whacky—no offence intended, but that’s the way I see him. I’ve heard it said, Captains in your Royal Navy get like that because there’s no one dares say boo to them except Admirals…and they often don’t see too much of Admirals when they’re away on detached service.” Hackenticker paused. “Tell me, Lieutenant, has Captain Watkiss done a lot of detached service in his time?”

  “Mostly detached, sir. Possibly the Admirals preferred it that way…but my Captain is all right at heart and has an uncanny knack of achieving a kind of success.” Halfhyde, not wishing to elaborate on that, suggested that the Rear Admiral might accompany him below. Hackenticker assented, and down they went for the wardroom, passing on the way a somewhat furtive Mr Bodmin making his way forward below decks. As Hackenticker and Halfhyde went through the curtained doorway of the wardroom, Mr Bodmin vanished into the mess decks. He was looking for the Reverend Marchwood Erskine who was reputed to be somewhere in the fore end of the gunboat. Mr Bodmin picked his way past civilians sitting upon the decks, past marines from Commodore Marriot-Lee’s squadron, past off-watch seamen in their hammocks. Enquiring after the parson, he was told he could be found billeted with the stokers; and thence Mr Bodmin continued zealously, and at length found his quarry. Mr Bodmin gently rocked the hammock to and fro. He said, “Parson?”

  There was an indistinct sound, and Mr Bodmin repeated, “Parson?” before realizing that the missionary had entered the hammock in an unseamanlike fashion and was the wrong way round in it. He had been addressing the feet. Shifting to the head end, he tried again, but now got the full bouquet of the John Haig and made the appropriate deductions. Mr Bodmin shook his head sadly and went back the way he had come, muttering to himself. A fat lot of good it would be to ask the forgiveness of the Lord from a drunk parson even when he became sober again. Two sinners never could make a repentant, ’twasn’t within nature, and Mr Bodmin rated drunkenness a longish way more sinful than going with women of easy virtue, or co-habiting. That was no more than answering the call of a nature given to mankind by the Lord Himself; the Lord had never made it natural to imbibe the wicked potions distilled in the world’s dens of yeast and alcohol.

  FULL INFORMATION now imparted as to Bloementhal, Captain Watkiss sat back at full arm’s-stretch from the wardroom table, so that the tail of his tattooed snake emerged colourfully from the screen of his uniform cuff. “Now, Admiral Hackenticker, what’s your view of all that?”

  Hackenticker shook his head and looked baffled. “That’s hard to answer, Captain. I’ve no reason to doubt Bloementhal’s loyalty myself, that’s for sure, but then I don’t know the man, I only knew of him, if you follow, until you brought him up to Chungking.”

  “But you had orders to contact him, had you not?”

  “Yes, I had—”

  “From your Peking Legation?”

  “Yes. I signed his authority to—”

  “To request passage up river aboard my ship—I know. But do I take it you didn’t know him in Peking?”

  “No, I didn’t, that’s correct, the passage chit was signed in his absence and on-forwarded.” Hackenticker leaned across the table. “I’d not been long in Peking, I was hoicked away from a US squadron off Weihaiwei and told to report. Much against my will, I can tell you. All the time I was there, this Bloementhal was kind of out on field work—he had a sort of roving commission to keep contact with the American business community all over. And that’s all I know about him.”

  “From what you’ve seen of him, do you trust him?”

  “I say again; I have no reason not to. I don’t like him, let’s be honest—but that’s different.”

  Watkiss sniffed. “It’s evidence of a sort, Admiral. Traitors are never likeable people.”

  “Sure, but something more tangible is called for, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Now then: Bloementhal told me, not long after he embarked off Tsingkiang, that there’s a question of a treaty, though in my view everything has gone a long way beyond treaties now. Anyway, this treaty was a bone of contention between America, Germany and Russia—their trading interest, you know. None of the three wished the other two to conclude an agreement with the Empress-Dowager. And, I suppose in all fairness I might add, nor would Great Britain.”

  Hackenticker looked faintly puzzled. “So what are you driving at, Captain?”

  Watkiss snapped, “My new information suggests to me that Bloementhal could be in negotiation with the blasted Huns, don’t you see! We must stop his little game, sir, you and I between us, and perhaps at the same time show up that bloated von Furstenberg before the world…show him up for an intriguer and a potential traitor to his blasted Kaiser! Do you not agree?”

  “Why, I can’t yet say, Captain—”

  “Why not?”

  “I suggest we send first for Bloementhal, and carry out a probe. If he’s playing a double game, I think we between us all can break him down, gentlemen. Then we’ll have something more concrete to face von Furstenberg with.”

  “Yes, that sounds reasonable. Mr Halfhyde?”

  “Very reasonable, sir.”

  “Yes. Then I shall see to it at once, or rather you will, Mr Halfhyde. Send a messenger—” Watkiss broke off as the voice-pipe from the bridge whistled eerily at him. He seized the flexible tube and placed the end of it against his ear. “This is the Captain. Yes, Mr Pumphrey, what is it?” Listening, his face grew red, then redder. Wordlessly, he hurled the tube back towards its hook, which it missed and thereafter dangled like a serpent. Halfhyde got to his feet and replaced it.

  “What was that, sir?” he asked.

  Watkiss waved his telescope in the air, and his spare monocle flew from his eye. “That bloody fool Pumphrey…it’s as bad as having Beauchamp back on the bridge! He has a feeling he’s lost his way, and we’re off course!” The telescope was waved again, vigorously. “I damn nearly said, how do even you manage to lose your way in a blasted river…then I remembered the flooding. By God, I’ll give him off course!”

  Watkiss, with Halfhyde, went at once to the bridge; Hackenticker, exercising tact, remained blind. Emerging from the head of the ladder, Captain Watkiss attacked the wretched sub-lieutenant.

  “Mr Pumphrey, may your Captain enquire what makes you think you may have lost your way?”

  “Yes, sir.” Pumphrey pointed over the side: Watkiss and Halfhyde stared down to see a highly curious sight. The Cockroach was sailing past the tops of small trees and close upon the starboa
rd bow was seen what looked like the roof of a cottage with a goat perched upon it the better to avoid the deluge; on the port bow the upper reaches of a pagoda thrust through the waters of the flood, a flood upon which Captain Watkiss was certainly most mightily adrift.

  He brandished his telescope at Pumphrey. “Get away from the binnacle, you fool; you’re utterly useless. Mr Halfhyde, get my ship back on her course immediately, if you please. I do not propose to turn the Cockroach into a blasted Ark, nor to assume the role of Noah.”

  Chapter 13

  TRUANT, AS it were, in a watery wilderness, Watkiss seethed from side to side of his bridge. Obediently behind Cockroach came Bee and Wasp, who had followed in the leader’s wake throughout. “Like damn sheep!” Watkiss said vengefully. “Did it occur to no one to question Mr Pumphrey’s course into the blasted countryside?”

  “It would have been taken as your course, sir,” Halfhyde said, pouring oil on troubled waters.

  “Well?”

  “No one would care to question your course, sir. It would smack of insubordination…would it not?”

  “Possibly, yes.” Watkiss gave a sage nod. “Nevertheless, each Commanding Officer is responsible for the safe handling and navigation of his own ship. Yeoman!”

  Barefoot despite the wet, the yeoman of signals hastened to his side. “Yessir?”

  “Make to Bee and Wasp, you are to report the name of your Officer of the Watch by alphabetical flag hoist.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” The signals made, the unfortunate officers saw their names spelled out in full by the coloured bunting, draggled beneath the rain. Watkiss stared down over his ship’s side: the floodwater was not especially deep in his view—any blasted idiot should have been able to pick up shoaling water. He stared down again and fancied he saw waving grass, or possibly it was a paddy field, or even wheat beneath him, just visible through the disturbed silt. He had no wish to ground upon a farm gate or some religious shrine, and he said as much to Halfhyde.

  “We shall soon be back in the stream, sir.”