The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge by Robert J. Pearsall

cast at us from every passing junk.
    “Well, it’s considerable story,” I said. “Admitting it’s all fact, then this is the situation, eh? Somewhere up-river, where that image has lain on the bottom for nineteen years, are pearls worth several fortunes. But wait a minute; the image was found floating. If it’s lighter than water—”
    “Why did it stay on the bottom?” Hazard anticipated my question. “Well, to begin with, we know it did by the rust pits that cover it. Obviously, then, it was attached to something heavier that held it down. Why not the pearls? The image barely floats. Why, it’s plain,” he cried eagerly. “It was part of the loot, and it and the pearls were tied together in a sack of some sort. With the passing of years the sack rotted, the image floated away, the pearls remained behind.”
    I THOUGHT it time to tell him what I knew.
    “What keeps that from sounding too extravagant,” I said, “is the fact that the Boxers of 1900 were really an offshoot of the more ancient Ko Lao Hui and that this troublesome image was sacred with them. It’s a combination of the fabled face of Koshinga, the Coming One of the Ko Lao Hui, and the iron body which was the Boxers’ symbol of the invulnerability they claimed to possess. I happen to know these facts.
    “Well, it’s a matter of history that the Empress Dowager half believed in the Boxers and encouraged them until bullets ended their pretensions. So it’s quite plain why this image might have remained in her palace when she fled to the hills before the relief expedition. And it’s quite plain, too, why looters intending to flee to the sea might take it, figuring that its possession would save them from injury at the hands of the fanatical Boxers.”
    “Now, that’s good,” said Hazard. “Mu Ting, do you hear that?”
    He tried to tell her, but muddled it up so that I took the matter out of his hands.
    “Ko Lao Hui and Boxers are all the same men,” corroborated Mu Ting.
    “Now,” questioned Hazard, eyeing me intently, “in the light of all the facts, just how close can you come to the location of those pearls?”
    It was, of course, a problem I’d been considering for several minutes and one of the sort I like to try to untangle.
    “The image was found floating about twenty li above Kucheng,” I repeated his statement. “Which means about thirty li below this point.”
    “Yes. In the early morning.”
    “Of course. Ten minutes of daylight would have discovered it to some one. For that very reason, it couldn’t have floated down-stream more than a night’s journey. Then, too, the Chinese drag the stream continually; so it couldn’t have been lying in the bed of it. It would have been found long ago. Everything’s dragged, in fact, but the bottom of an occasional cave. That’s probably the answer.”
    “Good!” cried Hazard. “Now, as to placing that cave—”
    “Why,” I replied, “I’ve noticed you’ve been watching both banks of the river; so I’ll assume it’s not below here. And it can’t be very far above. The image couldn’t have traveled more than fifty li in a night. Thirty from fifty——”
    “Leaves twenty li, or about seven English miles,” completed Hazard, “which is the extreme distance up-stream that we should have to look for the cave. It took me somewhat longer to reason all that out.”
    Of course, I wasn’t at all certain that he had reasoned it out. Perhaps he’d only played me for my conclusions. In other words, my first doubt concerning him was still in my mind; only to the possibility that he was a conceited fool was added the suspicion that he might be a liar. But, to do him justice, he looked like neither. And he’d come far!
    ALL this talk had taken no more than half an hour, and we were just approaching the next village above Sz-Chuen. Our trackers abandoned the dike for the shallow water and extended the line in order to swing our junk around the collection of sampans, which