The Cat and the King

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Ripping!” said Bethell, with a little intake of his breath. And she was. Tall and willowy; her head sat on her shoulders with an air of quiet assurance that was good to see; she had a great coil of auburn hair piled high above her forehead. None of your soft and melting beauty in her face. No, sir! Her features were irregular-eyes very wide apart and mouth too large, maybe, to get a certificate from a beauty specialist. But there was a stamp of—how shall I put it?—independence; yes, and glorious self-reliance and fine reserve on that face. They combined to make it handsome—striking. I saw her the next morning. Strange chance dictated the meeting, and a stranger fortune put me in the way of a delicious comedy.

Ah, Mr. Hagiwara, your friend Mitono of the consulate in Shanghai commended you to me before I left for Seoul.” The Girl’s velvety voice was purring and soft. “He told me that you were a man of influence in the court here, but that you were so impervious to feminine appeal that I must be an unusual woman to win your favor.” Prince Min Yung listened to the end. His hand was trembling as he reached out to tamp the bowl of his long pipe. I am not going to let you become involved any more than I have to,” she continued. “Should you ever have to defend yourself before a secret court—and with death waiting behind the judge’s chair—you will know only this and that; but not all. You are satisfied that it should be thus, are you not, my friend?” All this almost under the nose of Hagiwara, who was dodging in and out of the retiring room, where his majesty sat for his portrait, until that very day, when he was strangely absent. The poisoning of the two mutang by meat meant for the emperor’s mouth had driven the poor old monarch into a spasm of fear, the prince said, and he had decided that it was better to be killed in flight than to sit supinely on a a tottering throne.You know,” she continued, “that the old emperor would rather cut off his topknot than agree to the signing away of his sovereignty. You know that he fears just such pressure as Marquis Ito is coming over here to apply. He has already rushed Hulbert to Washington to intercede with Roosevelt. But here is the point: if the emperor’s seal is not set on that protocol of a protectorate that Ito is coming here to obtain, Japan will not dare to steal Korea. Furthermore, poor old Bugs believes that if he does not sign away his rights the Japanese will assassinate him. “Well?” the Girl asked with an odd light in her eyes. “What’s the answer?” I will arrange for the horses,” the prince assured us; “you cannot do that yourselves without danger. All that we depend upon you to do is to form a fitting escort for his majesty on the ride from the city walls to the yacht. He will be in terror of the Japanese every foot of the way. Your presence will reassure him. Now, keep yourself in readiness for the word from the masterful woman who holds the destinies of all of us in her hand.” He did not beg my pardon for setting his unfortunate spy to work on me,” the Girl mused. “But he will—oh, yes, he will—before I am through with him.” Why did you send a spy to search my trunk the first night I was in Seoul?” There was a pitiful catch and quaver in the putting of that question; outraged dignity called for reparation.

I chortled exultingly as she unfolded this detail of the carefully designed plot. As a matter of fact, it had not occurred to me how we were going to bundle a fussy old emperor out of his realm, even if he did consent to skip. It was Prince Min Yung, a right decent sort, and unswerving in his loyalty to the emperor during all the whirlwind of intrigue, who acted as interpreter. The emperor extended himself in pretty phrases. He wanted to know by what kindness of the gods his poor court had been honored by the presence of so fair a stranger. He heard, right away, that the Girl, who was a humble painter person from America, and who had enjoyed the honor of putting on canvas the sacred features of the dowager of China, could not feel that life was complete until she had done similarly by his augustness, of whose greatness and glory she had heard wondrous tales in far—away America. But the scream of the cat was nothing to the curdling yell which followed on the instant. It was the voice of the emperor.

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The empire of Japan, you see, triumphant over the Russians, was appropriating Korea, which it had promised to protect, as a legitimate spoil of war, but it was accomplishing its purpose of absorption in a characteristically Oriental method of indirection. The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cat and the Mouse, by Hartwell James The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Cat and the Mouse, Edited by Hartwell The emperor seemed ready for the flight, he said in the first breath, but we must make haste while he was in a favorable mood. The old codger had at first been terrified out of his stuffed boots at the thought of attempting to escape the all—seeing eye of the Japanese; had sworn that they would catch him and cut his heart out. But the Girl had played on his fears as on a stringed instrument, Prince Min Yung declared. She had painted for him with words, even as she wielded her brush on canvas, the picture of the impending rape of the empire by Ito; he, the emperor, in chains and transferred to some Japanese prison; the country drenched in blood, and his subjects enslaved.

And now I’ve seen Bethell, and Bethell allows me to see you, Mr. Billy, and—and the fat’s in the fire.” She made a winsome gesture of lifting a glass to her lips. “So here’s to Ito Horibumi, Marquis of Japan, and may he take our dust.”Mr, Billy,” she said, “we’ve got to play the game apart for the next few days. I cannot afford to see Bethell or be seen with him. I am not so sure that you are on the list of the ‘unco guid’ with little Hagiwara, either. But Prince Min Yung will provide a way for me to pass messages to both of you without being detected.” Looie came running into the bar from his little office, where he had been nodding away his regular nightly potations. There was a sound of pattering feet in the servants’ quarters behind the hotel. The watchman at the gate set up an infernal shaking of his iron staff, cluttered with tinkling rings. The Girl, for her part, was doubly eager to make the change. To be officially adopted into the legation family was to remove the last possible suspicion as to the object of her mission from the cunning mind of Hagiwara and his crew. We went out of the palace to the wildwood behind; but the chapfallen chamberlain did not have a chance to show any of the quaint beauties of tilted gable and carven lions. Hagiwara did that. The little Japanese strutted by the Girl’s side as if he were stepping on rose leaves. I, who kept at a distance behind with the chamberlain, could hear the patter of his syncopated English, broken by occasional gusts of the Girl’s full-throated laughter. Hagiwara was completely by the ears. When he handed the Girl into the carriage after our tour of the deer park, he insisted that she must accept his invitation to the garden party that was to be given the following week at the Japanese legation. It was in celebration of the birthday of the emperor of Japan. Run along now, Billy,” she urged, “and be prepared to jump out of Korea itself if worse comes to worst. They’ll strike in the dark, you know, if they get desperate, and—and nobody wants to be a ‘damp, demnition body’!”