Amid the Gilded Splendor of the China Coast an American Girl Seeks
HE man's smoothly calculated insult seemed to pass almost unheard by Joan Thurston. For a long moment she did not even return her gaze to him. Her face showed none of the swift, intolerable anger that leaped into her brain. Her regard remained fixed on the long sweep of the bay, the little steamer from Hongkong with its one funnel and absurdly long trail of smoke, the fishing junks with nets like spider webs spread to dry across their yellow sails, the glittering splendor of afternoon sunlight on the sea.
She had received the man on the hotel veranda, and his first words had driven a flame through her—yet she did not show it. Now she turned to him, her eyes cool as the blue bay under the sweep of the Penha heights, her voice quiet and imperturbable.
“Am I to understand, Mr. Gorgonza, that you threaten me?”
Gorgonza smiled his oily, deprecating smile. His turgid eyes the eyes of a half-blood Eurasian—of a true , smoldered upon her loveliness.
“Dear madame, you misunderstand!” he purred. “I merely advise.”
Joan's face flashed into a smile. It was an elusive and charming smile, which quite altered her rather austere beauty into a thing of warmly pulsing power. Gorgonza, being what he was, read in that smile a stirring of sex, thought that she was about to exert her beauty to conquer him—and the thought shone in his eyes.
“Suppose we sit down,” she said pleasantly. “I should like to understand you more clearly, Mr. Gorgonza.”
She accepted the chair that he placed for her, ignoring his bow. As she sank into it her eyes swept from the sea to the marvelous vista below and beyond, along the hillside—all Macao lay there outspread in its afternoon glory; white houses reaching back to the cliff, trees lining the perfect sickle-sweep of shore, and in the center the two slim flag poles, like straight geometrical lines. Here and there, from this vantage point, showed iridescent, shimmering lines that ran in graceful curves among the buildings; the tops of garden walls—these, with their green-glass spikes glistening in the white sunlight. Macao was beautiful, both in ensemble and in detail, and it was almost with an effort that the girl's eyes came back to this fatly smirking caller. Gorgonza produced a cigarette.
“With your permission, madame? Thank you. Now, let me state my position more clearly.”
IRILY, Gorgonza lighted the cigarette. By dint of long habit, he concealed his muddy finger ends. Then he spoke softly, persuasively.
“I know, dear madame, that you have come to China to deal in antiques—real and beautiful works of art such as millionaires buy in America. You are an exceptional woman. Up north, they have conferred upon you the name of 'The Angel Buyer.' This, I assure you, is a compliment, a great compliment, and nothing else! It is my privilege to say that the name is deserved. Me, I have never before this understood that angels were of your charming sex—you perceive that I read my Bible, madame. However, I have learned something to-day.”
Joan smiled again. Some of the dealers and agents in the northern cities had changed their opinion of her since that nickname had been bestowed. An angel is not so easily rooked as some folk imagine. Now her eyes widened upon Gorgonza, fascinated him.
“You know so much about me!” she exclaimed.
“I am well served.” He smiled into her eyes, tenderly; brushed his mustache with his thumb; puffed at his cigarette. “Now you have come to Macao, and in Macao—behold! It is I, Joao de Gorgonza, of the blood of the great Albuquerque, who am the one dealer here in real antiques. That is, you understand, the one who controls! I know what you have come here to find. It is the bird cage of the Viceroy P'ao.”
Joan Thurston assented with a birdlike nod of her poised head. Gorgonza might have read peril in her eyes, but he only smirked again and went on suavely.
“Dear lady, this business of ours is not one for so beautiful a person as yourself! Believe me, it brings one into contact with unclean things—things too ugly for your sweet hands. It”
Joan's manner changed abruptly. She came to her feet, with a sudden gesture of bored distaste. Her eyes glanced down at him in contempt.
“Enough of this,” she said. “I thought you might prove somewhat original. You are not.”
Gorgonza was so shocked by this that for an instant he was deprived of speech. He could only stare up at her, his mouth agape. Under the scorn of her eyes, he reddened slowly.
“I understand you perfectly,” went on Joan. “You want to force me out of here—make me go away. Well, I have just one thing to say to you.”