Brown of Moukden

Ivan Ivanovitch Brown

Scenes in Moukden—Beyond the Walls—Lieutenant Borisoff—The Cangue—Anton Sowinski—Criminal Procedure—Mr. Brown Senior—Schlagintwert's Representative—The Automatic Principle

The midsummer sun had spent its force, and as it reddened towards its setting Moukden began to breathe again. The gildings on palace, temple, and pagoda shone with a ruddy glow, but the eye was no longer dazzled; garish in full sunlight, the city was now merely brilliant, the reds and greens, blues and yellows, of its house-fronts toned to a rich and charming beauty. The shops—almost every house is a shop—were open, displaying here poultry, dried fish, and articles of common use; there piles of Oriental merchandise: silks and embroideries, parasols and screens, ornaments of silver and copper, priceless porcelain and lacquered ware. Monsters with vermilioned faces grinned from the poles—hung with branches and surmounted by peacocks with spread tail—that bore the signs and legends of the merchants and shopkeepers before whose doors they were erected: all different, yet all alike in gorgeousness of colouring and fantasy of design.

Two main thoroughfares traverse Moukden at right angles. Along these flowed in each direction a full tide of people, gathering up cross currents at every side street and alley. It was a picturesque throng, the light costumes showing in brilliant relief against the darker colours of the houses and the brown dust of the roadway. There were folk of many nations: Manchus, Mongols, Tartars, Greeks and Montenegrins, soldiers Chinese and Russian, here and there a European war-correspondent escaping from the boredom of his inn. Pedestrians and horsemen jostled vehicles of all descriptions. Workmen staggered along under enormous loads; labourers of both sexes trudged homewards from the fields, their implements on their shoulders. A drove of fat pigs in charge of a blue-coated swineherd scampered and squealed beneath the wheels of a Russian transport wagon. Here was a rickshaw drawn with shrill cries by its human steeds; there a rough springless two-wheeled mule-cart, painted in yellow ochre, hauled by three mules tandem, and jolting over the ruts with its load of passengers, some on the backs of the mules, some on the shafts, some packed beneath the low tilt of blue cotton. Not far behind, a trolley, pushed by perspiring coolies and carrying seven men standing in unstable equilibrium, had halted to make way for a magnificent blue sedan chair, wadded with fur and silk, borne by four stalwart servants. Through the trellised window of the chair the curious might catch a glimpse of a bespectacled mandarin, his mushroom hat decked with the button indicative of his rank. With shouts and blows a detachment of Chinese soldiers, red-jacketed infantry, carrying halberts, javelins, and sickles swathed to poles, forced a passage for his excellency through the crowd.

The heavy air quivered with noise: the mingled cries of street merchants and children, the clatter of hoofs, the din of gongs at the doors of the theatres, weird strains of song accompanied by the twanging of inharmonious guitars, and, dominating all, the insistent strident squeak of a huge wheelbarrow, trundled by a grave old Chinaman, unconscious of the pain his greaseless wheels inflicted on untutored sensibilities. A Russian lady passing in a droshky grimaced and put her fingers to her ears, and a wayfarer near her smiled and addressed a word to the torturer, who looked at him aslant out of his little eyes and went on his way placid and unabashed.

The pedestrian who had spoken was one by himself in all that vast throng. That he was European was shown by his garments; a western observer, however little travelled, would have known him at a glance as an English lad. His garb was light, fitting a slim, tall figure; a broad-brimmed cotton hat was slanted over his nose to keep the glowing rays from his eyes; he walked with the springy tread and free swinging gait never acquired by an Oriental. He wormed his way through the jostling crowd, passed through the bastioned gate of the lofty inner ramparts, crossed the suburbs, where the gardens were in gorgeous bloom, and, leaving the external wall of mud behind him, came into the brown, rough, dusty road, lined on both sides with booths, leading to the railway-station. Rich fields of maize and beans and millet covered the vast plain beyond, and upon the sky-line lay a range of wooded hills.

By and by the walker came to the new street that had sprung up beside the railway-station since the Russian occupation: a settlement tenanted by traders—Greek, Caucasian, and Hebrew—dealing in every product of the two civilizations, eastern and western, here so incongruously in contact. Nothing that could be sold or bartered came amiss to these polyglot traders; they kept everything from champagne to saké (the rice beer of Japan), from boots to smoked fish. Hurrying through this oven of odours, he passed the line of ugly brick cottages run up for the Russian officials, and arrived at the station. It was quiet at the moment; there was a pause in the stream of traffic which had for some time been steadily flowing southward. Save for the railway servants, the riflemen who guard the line, and a few officers desperately bored in their effort to kill time, the platform was deserted. The Russian lieutenant on duty accosted the new-comer.

"Well, Ivan Ivanovitch, what can we do for you to-day?"

"The same old thing," replied the lad slowly in Russian. "Can you send a wire to Vladivostok for my father?"

"Very sorry; it is impossible to-day as it was yesterday. None but military messages are going through."

"Well, I just came up on the chance."

"When are you leaving? We shall miss you."

"Thanks! In a few days, I hope. Father has just about settled up everything. In fact, that consignment of flour is the only thing left to trouble about now. I hope it will get through safely, but the Japanese appear to be scouting the seas pretty thoroughly. As soon as we hear from our agent at Vladivostok we shall be off."

"Come and have a glass of tea in the buffet. It may be the last time."

Jack Brown—known to his Russian friends as Ivan Ivanovitch, "John the son of John"—accepted the invitation. After a chat and a glass of tea from the large steaming samovar, always a conspicuous object in a Russian buffet, he left the station as the dusk was falling and a haze spread over the ground, covering up the many unlovely evidences of the Russian occupation. For variety's sake he changed his course and took a path to the left that skirted the native graveyard, intending to enter the city by one of the northern gates. A line of heavy native carts, with their long teams of mules and ponies, was slowly wending northwards; women, their hair decorated with flowers, were taking their children for an airing before the sun set and the gates were closed; a beggar stood by the roadside cleverly imitating a bird's cry by blowing through a curled-up leaf. Jack came to the great mandarin road and turned towards the city; such evening scenes were now a matter of course to him. But he was still at some distance from the outer wall when he came upon a sight which, common as it was in Moukden, he never beheld without pity and indignation. A big muscular Chinaman of some thirty to forty years was seated on the ground, his neck locked in the square wooden collar known as the cangue, an oriental variant of the old English pillory. So devised that the head and the upper part of the body are held rigid, the cangue as an instrument of punishment is worthy of Chinese ingenuity. The victim, as Jack knew, must have sat throughout the long sweltering day tortured by innumerable insects which his fixed hands were powerless to beat off. At nightfall a constable would come and release him, conveying him to the gaol attached to a yamen within the city, where he would be locked up until the morning. Then the cangue would be replaced and the criminal taken back to the same spot on the wayside.

Jack hurried his step as he approached, eager to leave the unpleasant sight behind him. But on drawing nearer he was surprised to find that he knew the man,—surprised, because he was one of the last who could have been expected to fall into such a plight. The recognition was mutual; and as Jack came up, the parched lips of the victim uttered a woeful exclamation of greeting.

"How came you here, Mr. Wang?" asked Jack in Chinese.

The crime was indicated on the upper board of the cangue, but Jack, though he had more than a smattering of colloquial Chinese, knew almost nothing of the written language. The poor wretch could hardly articulate; but with difficulty he at length managed, in the short high-pitched monosyllables of his native tongue, to explain. He had been accused of fraud; the charge was totally without foundation; but at the trial before the magistrates witness after witness had appeared against him: it is easy to suborn evidence in a Chinese court: and he had been condemned to the cangue, a first step in the system of torture by which a prisoner, innocent or guilty, is forced to confess.

To one who knew the Chinese as Jack did, there was nothing surprising in this explanation, except the fact that Wang Shih was the victim. He was a respectable man, the son of an old farmer some fifteen miles east of Moukden, and practically the owner of the farm, his father being past work. Hard-working and honest, he was the last man to be suspected of trickery or base dealing. Mr. Brown had done much business with him, and only recently had had a proof of his good faith. The Chinaman had contracted to supply him with a large quantity of fodder. A few days before the date of delivery he had been visited by a business rival of Mr. Brown's, a Pole, who had come to Moukden some four or five years before, and from small beginnings had worked up a considerable business. Almost from the first he had come into competition with Mr. Brown. The methods of the two men were diametrically opposed,—the Pole relying on bribery, the corruption of the official class with which he had to deal; the Englishman sternly resolute to lend himself to no transaction in Manchuria of which he would be ashamed at home. Anton Sowinski, as the Pole was called, offered Wang Shih the strongest inducements to break his contract with Mr. Brown; but finding his native honesty proof against temptation, he had lost his temper, abused him, and finally struck him with his whip. The Chinaman was a peaceable fellow; but beneath his stolidity slumbered the fierce temper of his race. Under the Pole's provocation and assault his self-restraint gave way. He seized Sowinski with the grip of a giant, rapped his head soundly against the fence, and then threw him bodily into the road. The contract with Mr. Brown had been duly fulfilled; and it was, to say the least, unlikely that a man who had thus kept faith to his own disadvantage should have descended to vulgar fraud.

"Who was your accuser?" asked Jack.

"Loo Sen."

"He's a neighbour of yours, isn't he?"

"Yes, and has long borne us ill-will. But it was not he really. As I left the yamen where I was tried, a friend whispered me that Loo Sen was in the pay of Sowinski."

"Ah! that throws a light on it. Sowinski is having his revenge. It is a bad business, Mr. Wang."

Jack knew the ways of Moukden magistrates too well to hope that the conviction and sentence could be quashed. On the contrary, if the cangue proved ineffectual in extorting a confession, there were various grades of torture that could be applied in turn. But prisoners often escaped; their friends, it is true, afterwards suffered. Wang Shih was so big and strong that he might easily have overpowered his gaoler some night when the cangue was removed; it was, perhaps, only consideration for his family that had restrained him. Jack questioned him on this point.

"Yes. That is the reason. The constable—wah! I could kill him easily; but what then? I could not remain in Moukden; I am too well known. And my father would not be safe. They would behead him, and rob my family of all they possess."

"Yes, I understand. I wish I could do something for you; but I see no way. My father might have done something at one time—possibly through the Russians, although they are unwilling to mix themselves up in Chinese quarrels; but in any case his influence is gone since the war began."

"You can do one thing for me, sir, if you will; that is, send a message to my father. Tell him to gather all his things together and leave the district. I will never confess to a crime which I did not commit, and there will be time for him, before I am beheaded, to get away."

"I will do that. I would do anything I could to help you, but——"

"Here comes the constable, sir."

Jack looked along the road and saw, slouching up, a typical specimen of the Chinese constable. In China the constable is universally and deservedly detested. Sheltered by the mandarins of the yamen, he preys upon the rich and oppresses the poor. The prisoner in his keeping is starved, beaten, tortured until he yields his last copper cash; if he escapes, the constable pounces upon his unhappy relatives, and their fate is the same. This man scowled fiercely upon Jack, and the latter, seeing that no good could come of remaining longer, spoke a final word of sympathy to Wang Shih, and went on amid the thinning stream of people to the city.

"Well, Jack," said his father, as the lad entered the neat one-story house which served both as dwelling and office; "any news?"

"None, Father. The wires are still monopolized."

"That's a nuisance. You'll have to pack off to Vladivostok yourself, I'm afraid. Ten chances to one, Captain Fraser will not get through safely; still, one can never tell. I heard a rumour to-day that the Russian fleet has made a raid from Vladivostok; and if it keeps the Japanese employed, Fraser may make a safe run. You've been a long time."

"Yes. I had a chat with Lieutenant Borisoff; but I was detained on the way back. What do you think? Sowinski has got Loo Sen to bring a charge against Wang Shih, and the poor fellow is in the cangue."

"Whew! That's bad. It means decapitation in the end."

"I suppose you can do nothing for him?"

"Nothing, I fear. I'm sorry for the poor chap, especially as I'm afraid it's partly through his holding to his bargain with me. But I've no influence now, and even if I had, it would be useless to interfere in a purely Chinese matter. We could never prove that Sowinski had a hand in it."

Mr. Brown reflected for some moments, Jack studying his features.

"No," he said at last, "there's absolutely nothing we can do. This only proves that I am right in winding things up and cutting sticks. That fellow Sowinski is a blackguard; if I stayed here he'd find some means of doing me an injury next."

"But, Father, the Chinese are good friends of ours, and you've never been on bad terms with the Russians."

"Not till lately, it is true. But this war has brought a new set of men here, and you know perfectly well that I've offended some of them; General Bekovitch, for one, has a grudge against me. They don't understand a man who won't bribe or be bribed; I really think they believe there must be something fishy about him! However, we'll be off as soon as you get back from Vladivostok, and leave the field to Sowinski. I wish the Russians joy of him."

"When shall I go to Vladivostok?"

"The day after to-morrow; that gives Orloff another chance. And I've several little things still to settle up. By the way, here's a queer letter I got just now; it was brought by a Chinese runner from Newchang."

He handed the letter to Jack, who read:

"Respected Sir,—The undersigned does himself the honour to introduce himself to your esteemed notice, as per instructions received per American Cable Company from my principals, Messrs. Schlagintwert Co. of Düsseldorf, namely, 'Apply assistance Brown of Moukden'. I presume from aforesaid cable my Co. may already have had relations with your esteemed Firma. My arrival in Moukden may be expected within a few days of receipt. Believe me, with high esteem and compliments,

"Your obedient servant,

"HlLDEBRAND SCHWAB.

"Postscriptum
.—Also representative of the
Illustrirte Vaterland u. Colonien
."

"Tear it up, Jack. No doubt we shall be away when he comes."

"Who are Schlagintwert, Father?"

"You remember those automatic couplings we tried on the Harbin section three or four years ago——"

"The ones that took two men to fasten and four to release?" said Jack, laughing.

"Exactly. Well, they were Schlagintwert's."

At this moment the clang of a gong, followed by the thud of a drum, sounded through the streets.

"They're closing the gates," said Jack. "I think I'll go to bed, Father; I'm pretty tired."

"Good-night, then! I shan't be long after you. I've a little more writing to do. Send Hi Lo in with some lemonade."