Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 231, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1920 — Yellow Men Sleep [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Yellow Men Sleep

By JEREMY LANE

CHAPTER Vlll—Continued. The princess was startled. and her face seemed rather pale as she stared St him. It was apparent that she cherished the plan of the empire of the tallow San. perhaps because she was bora to be an American. Levington wondered if she knew what the Asiatic interpretation of this idea might require, from herself in particular. In caliphate and khanate, there raw be no plan of priest, warrior or stag that is not discussed behind the lattices of the female courts, and no girt is too young to know her place tn the scheme. Indeed, the statecraft of the Orient often originates within these fragrant sanctuaries. Tau Kuan imprisoned much of beauty. Helen had been broadly educated. Levington was tossed unhappily between the girlish purity of the princess and the probable depths of her sophistication. Something, perhaps a masculine pride, hinted to him that she was amusing herself with two credulous white men. Something reminded him that she had Irish blood, the spring, of snhlety and grave humor. The same faculty tn Con reminded him also how nicely she, had concealed a surprise that would have been natural upon meeting two Americans for the first time In her Ufa, and particularly one of them her own father. Yet this might be nothing more than a result of Chinese training, the selfcontrol that nothing can disturb. “Yes," she said slowly, “I have heard 3f the Melting Pot. but Chee Ming says there is no fire under it" “He knows better than that, for he has been scorched by it,” said Con. “But a race does not rise to greatness hy fear and force," Andrew March was saying ardently. “A city cannot become perfect against its will. There is no love in Tau Kuan.” Helen was pensive. “That is what mother used to tell me," she said. March sighed brokenly. Even Besur halted his self-inspection, and turned sad small eyes upon his mistress. “Levington has told you the truth about our country," March continued. “The fire that Chee Ming has overlooked is freedom. It is not in his philosophy. Under his guidance Tau Kuan might one day be a unified nation, but It would be a race of —Besurs.” “Does Besur trouble you?" she asked, of Con, not hesitating to wreck her father's conversation. “Not at all.” said Levington, as he removed the ape from his neck for the fifth time. Nor did Con intend to grow serious, but he felt suddenly that this was the penalty for bls wasted life —to come into her presence only In time to find that she was being drawn into an inevitable gray sacri-

Ure. He did not observe the glance March gave him. a look of trust and appeal. Helen did not comprehend the new intensity in Bevington's grayblue eyes; she knew nothing of the fin she started in the heart of this wanderer. Then her father humbly asked: ' ■' ■ "Are you—are you fond of Prince She glanced at him quickly and; smiled. f - •'You are like mother. She asked that question many times, when the prince and I were small, very young ' - z > '• "And what reply did you give ypur ■n "' r - forgotten. The prince can ride and Shoot. Ha recites all the songs of U

If this were wanton torture, she delivered it with perfect calm. Bevington caught his breath, and ’storm threatened within him. It was both a relief and an agony to know that she did not love the prince. Levtngton’s personal state was sunk deeper when he recalled that he was himself a prisoner, and would doubtless be out of the way in a short while. And then he caught the sentence from her lips, a casual mention: “Our nuptials begin at the new moon." Andrew March leapt to the center of the rug, and his eyes were ablaze. “Little girl, you do not know life! You speak of things unbearable. This is criminal. You are white, as your mother tried to impress upon you, and they have made you forget it You cannot be handed about In the oriental fashion. They are crazy out here. Yes. they are devils!” Now the withered and doublescarred Chinese servant entered the room, and at his heels came four of the huge soldiers, the same who had ridden down the white men in the ravine, and who also had appeared against them before the prince. Their swords dangled and chinked. Their boots were free from dust and the cloaks upon their high shoulders were of heavy raw siik, a golden yellow. Their hairy countenances were a fourfold replica of hate and cruelty. They had come to remove the prisoners. Con Levington had to be urged.

CHAPTER IX. Below the' Walla. On his roof again. Con noted that an awning of green silk had % been stretched over his doorway, and a couch placed beneath it In the open air, for his added comfort A silver pitcher of wine stood on a taboret, and he, found that the wine was acceptable, having been cooled in springwater. But all was secondary, even the silent departure of the guards, for he was thinking in a whirl of Helen March. Her innocence was amazing, like her wisdom —an American personality with strange diagonals of the Orient. Con loved the tang of desert sunlight upon her face, her throat and arms. Her shoulders were neither wide nor narrow, and she was not tall. He remembered everything she had said, and was unable to evade her final utterance, which became more and more a sublimated poison to him. He turned back to yesterday, recalled how she had ridden, how her pony had galloped from the top of the ravine after her word had saved them, how her brown hair had streamed out from the soft gray cloak. No Chinese princess could ever have ridden at such a pace. But, again, there was the gentle, almost lifeless movement of her hands, and the low fullness of her voice when she talked of Tau Kuan.

She was a delightful sorrow to Levington, as if all his days, too, had foretold her. She did not know herself. She was eighteen. The ways of these putland people were familiar to hen and it was natural she should Tove their national Interests, strangely like America's, bitterly different The reddish palace was home. Her mother was gone. The grand vizir had brought her American gowns, street suits, and other articles the models had displayed at Sperman’s in the city terribly far distant There was no estimating the pains the old Chinese had taken to secure such things for her. Con knew at least of his connection with the Wedger house, which must have been arranged by secret means, and it was clear that Chee Ming had taken many a point from Cecil Wedges incipient queens of the cinema. The vizir >had been content to cook for a young snob, merely to garner some Information as to bow a young American girl should be dressed, how she must talk and think, and what, if anything, might please her. Con appreciated the genius that had made the exclusive Wedgers a part of Chee Ming’s plan for the completion of Tau Kuan, empire of the Yellow Sun.

The tangle of East and West troubled Levington more and more. Helen had almost lost her mother's counsel regarding Prince YekutoL It was too easy to feel the dead Eithna’s horror of the young Mongol, and of the plan she had foreseen, his marriage with her little white daughter. The mother must have strived to develop American Instincts—the riding of ponies, love of oak trees, independence, and natural frankness. . Levington saw more vividly how March must have loved Eithna. how the loss of her had nearly broken down his sanity, and. at last,* bow he had kept secret his Innermost Intention for another journey into the perilous Gobi. It had meant too much for him to put bls hope in words. He had planned to run down the International beast, koresh: all that ride of the story was Just as he had confided it to Levington. Butthen there had been much more. March’s interests did not begin or end in a federal commission. Con realized now the deep and double Joy of his friend when be had first found

Chee Ming in Dory street, marketing the drug, only to find that the tracings led to the Gobi desert. The affair of the present morning recurred to mind —the monzoul in bis enchanted garden. Despite seeming leisure, events In the palace went too swiftly for a final valuation. Con was puzzled to find that the more closely he tried to recall the garden, the appearance of the fat lord, the singing bird, the dancer, and the magician, the less he knew about them. Had the juggler poured his wine into the fourth dimension, or was the watcher merely transported by a breath of the drug? Levington went now to the outer corners of his prison, enduring the hostile eyes of a double guard, to look for vine-covered bower of royal entertainment, but could see nothing of it. He must have turned into a courtyard of the palace Itself. One grim assurance clung to him—the sinister fragrance of koresh. Through mid-afternoon, as often as his active mind abandoned some new and equally futile plan of escape, his thought circled around to Helen. He reclined under the green silken awning and repeated her name. He was awakened to the center of his being, and was scarcely aware that every new plan for escape included two others besides himself, and one a princess. Mentally she remained with him —In the throne room, her glance toward the. prisoner she had spared, her boredom with the proceedings, her beautiful feet, a Western woman as he must have guessed had it not been for the slight tilt of her trows and this he had seen, more closely, to be but the cunning work of her maid-servants; In her own apartment, surrounded by things American, the transformation that was not complete because of her Chinese training, personal qualities that tantalized him, the first words that had thrilled him so unaccountably and the last bringing a clutch of terror; the clear young beauty of her face, her lips, the soft brown of her hair, the curve of girlish shoulders, the grave pleasure at meeting that stranger, her father, and the unemotional view she held of her own future as queen of this fantastic state. These fragmentary thoughts possessed Levington, brought him life as it had never come before, hurt him savagely, so that he sighed and tossed about- on the green cushions.

Then he remembered once again that they would not permit him to live. This fact had a totally new aspect, and the novelty of it now brought him to his feet. His gray slave started up in surprise, and the pair of hig-sword-ed soldiers made themselves felt at the stair-head. For the first time in his career Con rebelled against death. It seemed no longer a part of the game. Instant or slow, death did not interest him now; it was a stupid rule of the play. He wanted mightily to live. There was something both sweet and very bitter In dwelling in the same desert city with Helen March. There were so many things he had to tell her, so much he longed to ask; also an additional urgency for a talk with herfather.

Late in the afternoon, he retreated to his inner chamber, hot and impatient. In the smaller of two rooms, which were barely furnished, the walls a creamy white, he flung himself upon the soft couch, but Its touch was oddly unpleasant, like a caress from the wrong person. He arose in disgust, and stared at the brass lamp with its fragrant green oil. The gray boy also had come in out of the sun, and was now a-squlnt beside the divan. Slowly he pulled the cord that set the long curtains swaying overhead. From time to time he sprinkled water upon these curtains, then resumed the fanning. But physical comfort only heightened Con’s uneasiness. He felt the power of the fact that they were bestowing these elaborate attentions upon him only to make him a better white sire in the history of Tau Kuan. No one came. The sun laid a golden path across the rug of the outer room. Levlngton's repeated requests, invitations and demands for Chee Ming resulted in nothing. The day seemed interminable. At the hour of sunset his two warriors appeared at the door, with two others. They were always the same sort of tall, muscular riders, and seemed to represent a certain blend of large-boned races, especially designed for war. They led Con to the baths, and March was already there, prone* upon the mat. suffering the barber. The familiar key-shaped blade was poised and darting about his face. •They brought me a Kurdish woman,” said March, with a tinge of disgust “What is our move?" asked Levington, as they unwound his costume, and the masseur appeared at his side. “I can’t bear it," said March. - “We’ve got to find a way. Have you figured out anything?" ~ “I haven’t forgotten that we are at least five weeks’ Journey from anywhere, and every hour of those weeks in impossibility to us.” The irony hurt the younger man. who saw that his friend was broken. The odds dismayed March. His beloved was dead. His quest had ended

tn this weird defeat. “And It la toe late to atop their marriage,” he concluded. His despair was very hard for Con. The baths were accomplished without another opportunity for words, and Con was taken under guard to his two rooms and the roof. He had seen no more ofthe palace than before—the same dim scented corridors, the spray of three fountains, the broad shadow crescents that Its roofs cast down upon the houses clustered under the eastern wait He could not guess 'how many human beings were contained here. He saw nothing of the stunted and erooked men of the mines, for they did not dwell within the city. The soldiery was In evidence, mostly upon steeds that were more sturdy than symmetrical. On the return across the palace lawn Con had noted a small party of women, closely veiled, moving toward the fountains. Their robes were of figured stuffs, the ends of their head-veils drifting white. Two coffee-colored giants had walked behind them. Food was served as before. Attendance was servile and silent. The dinner was worth eating, for It Included

roast lamb, a salad of small orangecolored leaves, spicy and each as round as a penny, and vegetables which were in flavor like potato crossed dßth celery. The wine was an evening breath from fruitful places. Again he sent for the vizir and no one came. The mists of day’s end lifted from the western fields, and once again the flocks were herded, away for the night Just over the western fortification four camels were unhitched from their plows and driven to the rushy spring near the sheds. The little monkey visited the white man again in time to share cumquats and green tea. Levlngton began all over, pacing the roof, searching mentally for escape. He wanted to talk with March. Final rays of sunlight touched the high apartments of the palace, but left his own in blue twilight. The curving tiles jutted down closely over every window, like clinging, watchful shadows. The walls felt cruel to the white man. He began to imagine the marriages and matings in those upper chambers, the deaths and births and sullen hearts, cold lust, endless lassitude. With the darkness came the Arabian girl. One of her guards remained jvith the two at the stairway. The maid faced again the man who puzzled and terrified her. Con could not read the warm depths of her eyes, but fancied many things. She attempted a few words in her own language, then smiled faintly as he failed to comprehend. He would never know what she had wished to tell him. Again he gave her the inner chamber and drew the curtains after her. again he went circuiting about his inclosure. The , monkey whimpered, then climbed over the wall the way he had come, quite distressed that hisnew friend should not notice him. Night hours deepened about the palace. Some time toward midnight a mumble of words reached the prisoner from a space below. This was unusual, for the voices of the city were too far distant to carry to the roof and the shelving palace was mute. The sound continued, indistinctly. Levlngton wilted at the edge of the wall, but could not hear clearly. Evidently It was a prayer, very earnestly presented. More and more it sounded like the voice of Andrew March. (TO BE CONTINUED.) h— ,

Their Hairy Countenances Were a Fourfold Replica of Hate. Cruelty.

The Maid Faced Again the Man Who Puzzled, and Terrifled Her.