The Adventures of a Special Correspondent Among the Various Races and Countries Part 43

"Yes--but--you understand--he is very tired after so long a journey--"

"Tired?"

"Oh! do not be alarmed--"

"Is he ill?"

"Yes--rather--rather ill--"

"Then I will go--I must see him--I pray you, sir, come with me to the station--"

"No; that would be an imprudence--remain here--remain--"

Zinca Klork looked at me fixedly.

"The truth, monsieur, the truth! Hide nothing from me--Kinko--"

"Yes--I have sad news--to give you." She is fainting. Her lips tremble.

She can hardly speak.

"He has been discovered!" she says. "His fraud is known--they have arrested him--"

"Would to heaven it was no worse. We have had accidents on the road.

The train was nearly annihilated--a frightful catastrophe--"

"He is dead! Kinko is dead!"

The unhappy Zinca falls on to a chair--and to employ the imaginative phraseology of the Chinese--her tears roll down like rain on an autumn night. Never have I seen anything so lamentable. But it will not do to leave her in this state, poor girl! She is becoming unconscious. I do not know where I am. I take her hands. I repeat:

"Mademoiselle Zinca! Mademoiselle Zinca!"

Suddenly there is a great noise in front of the house. Shouts are heard. There is a tremendous to do, and amid the tumult I hear a voice.

Good Heavens! I cannot be mistaken. That is Kinko's voice!

I recognize it. Am I in my right senses?

Zinca jumps up, springs to the window, opens it, and we look out.

There is a cart at the door. There is the case, with all its inscriptions: _This side up, this side down, fragile, gla.s.s, beware of damp_, etc., etc. It is there--half smashed. There has been a collision. The cart has been run into by a carriage, as the case was being got down. The case has slipped on to the ground. It has been knocked in. And Kinko has jumped out like a jack-in-the-box--but alive, very much alive!

I can hardly believe my eyes! What, my young Roumanian did not perish in the explosion? No! As I shall soon hear from his own mouth, he was thrown on to the line when the boiler went up, remained there inert for a time, found himself uninjured--miraculously--kept away till he could slip into the van unperceived. I had just left the van after looking for him in vain, and supposing that he had been the first victim of the catastrophe.

Then--oh! the irony of fate!--after accomplis.h.i.+ng a journey of six thousand kilometres on the Grand Transasiatic, shut up in a box among the baggage, after escaping so many dangers, attack by bandits, explosion of engine, he was here, by the mere colliding of a cart and a carriage in a Pekin Street, deprived of all the good of his journey--fraudulent it may be--but really if--I know of no epithet worthy of this climax.

The carter gave a yell at the sight of a human being who had just appeared. In an instant the crowd had gathered, the fraud was discovered, the police had run up. And what could this young Roumanian do who did not know a word of Chinese, but explain matters in the sign language? And if he could not be understood, what explanation could he give?

Zinca and I ran down to him.

"My Zinca--my dear Zinca!" he exclaims, pressing the girl to his heart.

"My Kinko--my dear Kinko!" she replies, while her tears mingle with his.

"Monsieur Bombarnac!" says the poor fellow, appealing for my intervention.

"Kinko," I reply, "take it coolly, and depend on me. You are alive, and we thought you were dead."

"But I am not much better off!" he murmurs.

Mistake! Anything is better than being dead--even when one is menaced by prison, be it a Chinese prison. And that is what happens, in spite of the girl's supplications and my entreaties. And Kinko is dragged off by the police, amid the laughter and howls of the crowd.

But I will not abandon him! No, if I move heaven and earth, I will not abandon him.

CHAPTER XXVII.

If ever the expression, "sinking in sight of port," could be used in its precise meaning, it evidently can in this case. And I must beg you to excuse me. But although a s.h.i.+p may sink by the side of the jetty, we must not conclude that she is lost. That Kinko's liberty is in danger, providing the intervention of myself and fellow pa.s.sengers is of no avail, agreed. But he is alive, and that is the essential point.

But we must not waste an hour, for if the police is not perfect in China, it is at least prompt and expeditious. Soon caught, soon hanged--and it will not do for them to hang Kinko, even metaphorically.

I offer my arm to Mademoiselle Zinca, and I lead her to my carriage, and we return rapidly towards the _Hotel of the Ten Thousand Dreams_.

There I find Major Nolt.i.tz and the Caternas, and by a lucky chance young Pan-Chao, without Dr. Tio-King. Pan-Chao would like nothing better than to be our interpreter before the Chinese authorities.

And then, before the weeping Zinca, I told my companions all about Kinko, how he had traveled, how I had made his acquaintance on the journey. I told them that if he had defrauded the Transasiatic Company it was thanks to this fraud that he was able to get on to the train at Uzun Ada. And if he had not been in the train we should all have been engulfed in the abyss of the Tjon valley.

And I enlarged on the facts which I alone knew. I had surprised Faruskiar at the very moment he was about to accomplish his crime, but it was Kinko who, at the peril of his life, with coolness and courage superhuman, had thrown on the coals, hung on to the lever of the safety valves, and stopped the train by blowing up the engine.

What an explosion there was of exclamatory ohs and ahs when I had finished my recital, and in a burst of grat.i.tude, somewhat of the theatrical sort, our actor shouted:

"Hurrah for Kinko! He ought to have a medal!"

Until the Son of Heaven accorded this hero a green dragon of some sort, Madame Caterna took Zinca's hand, drew her to her heart and embraced her--embraced her without being able to restrain her tears. Just think of a love story interrupted at the last chapter!

But we must hasten, and as Caterna says, "all on the scene for the fifth"--the fifth act, in which dramas generally clear themselves up.

"We must not let this brave fellow suffer!" said Major Nolt.i.tz; "we must see the Grand Transasiatic people, and when they learn the facts they will be the first to stop the prosecution."

"Doubtless," I said, "for it cannot be denied that Kinko saved the train and its pa.s.sengers."

"To say nothing of the imperial treasure," added Caterna, "the millions of his majesty!"

"Nothing could be truer," said Pan-Chao. "Unfortunately Kinko has fallen into the hands of the police, and they have taken him to prison, and it is not easy to get out of a Chinese prison."

"Let us be off," I replied, "and see the company."