THE WET season was over, but the floods were still far from the dry season level. The vast inland water traffic of Indo-China was at its culmination for the year. Steamers were making their final trips. Everything was booming along the waterways, with government launches and private tourist craft darting officiously about. The tourist business was, in fact, running unusually high this year.
When Smith, on his way to the highland country, encountered two outfits, he took one of them—the Wemyss party—for tourists. He never suspected anything amiss—how should he? It was different with the dark man, of course.
Smith overtook the Armenian just above Haipenh. They camped together, and spent much of the night talking. This long, lean, dark man with the burning eyes fascinated Smith strangely. The two men took to each other on sight, as men sometimes will in the jungle country. The Armenian, naturally, did not dream that Smith was other than he appeared.
Ardzrouni was his name. He spoke all languages fluently, had been everywhere in the world, and knew everything. Such, at least, was the impression he conveyed, and Smith was not the person to be easily impressed. Even the jade fish interested Smith but slightly.
The dark man hauled the fish out of his belongings and displayed it. The thing was like a double fish in shape, of very pure white jade, incised with ideographs which Smith could not read. It was Chinese. Ardzrouni surveyed it with huge pride.
"It is a great relic," he said. "Under the T'ang dynasty of China this was an imperial symbol, worn by the emperor himself; also under the Sung and Ming dynasties. The Turks took this royal sign from the Chinese Mongols and carried it to Egypt, where it became the crest of the seventy-eighth cohort of Janizaries. Sultan Kalouan himself bore it as a crest, likewise. A wonderful thing, a wonderful thing! But not so wonderful as the eagle."
The dark man put away his jade fish and began to puff at a cigarette. Smith was mildly amused by all this.
"Why is the eagle so wonderful, then?" he inquired.
"Because I am of the eagle's blood," said Ardzrouni.
In the Armenian's air there was a singular power. There was no doubt about his learning, his scholarship; and in his giant, bony frame was evidence of tremendous strength. An indescribable air of mystery overhung the man. Smith wondered, as he sat beside the fire and watched the whirling brown river below, and the boatmen squatting at their meal.
"The name of Ardzrouni is not common," he remarked.
The dark features of the Armenian were aglow.
"That is true. You will find it famous, none the less, in the annals of many lands. On the walls of the citadel of Cairo, on the west façade, is sculptured a great eagle. It was cut there by order of Saladin's vizier, whose name was Ardzrouni."
"I beg your pardon," intervened Smith gently. "I happened to be reading about that sculptured eagle not long ago. The vizier's name was Karakouch; he was an Armenian."
The other made a lordly gesture.
"To be sure! Karakouch is the Turkish form of the name, which means 'eagle bearer.' In the time of the ancient Armenian kings, my ancestor bore the royal gold eagle on its staff; hence the name Since those days it has spread far. It was an Ardzrouni who slew the Emir Toftji in the year 698 of the hegira—a famous deed, of which you may read in the pages of Makruzi. An Ardzrouni"—here the speaker waved his hand toward the north—"was with Shems-ed-Din Omar, the Arab who conquered Yunnan for the Mongols. The eagle crest warred through all these lands; it was an Ardzrouni who led a Chinese army against Cochin China."
Smith began to be interested.
"I suppose," he said, "that your eagle is the same with the two-headed bird of Austria and Russia?"
Ardzrouni showed his flashing white teeth in a laugh.
"Come, my friend! For a horn hunter, you do not badly. No, that two-headed bird was the ancient eagle of the Hittites. The eagle of Ardzrouni has but one head. An Ardzrouni bore this eagle under the banner of Cortez; another, under Duarte de Meneses, journeyed with it to the tomb of St. Thomas; and I, the last Ardzrouni, bear it into the mountains of this land!"
With an impulsive gesture the man opened his shirt and gave Smith a glimpse of a feathered eagle tattooed upon his chest in red and blue. It was a gorgeous thing, in heraldic style, with outspread wings. Smith smiled at this. He found himself liking the man strangely.
"Great names do not last long in this country," he said, not without a note of subtle warning. "A man who claimed to be the last Paléologue was killed only last year, near Hue."
"My family was ancient before the Paléologues were heard of," said Ardzrouni, a proud flash in his eye.
"I should be sorry to hear that you had died of jungle fever," was Smith's response.
"As to that, what matter?" The darkman shrugged. "All men die. If death were the end of life, then we might fear it; but it is only the beginning. The tortoise, that crawls, is the Chinese emblem of longevity. I am an eagle, and I do not choose to crawl!"
"Then fly high!" said Smith whimsically. "People in this part of the world have buried many kings."
The other laughed.
"You are a true American—no respect for royal blood, eh? Well, neither have I, except for my own. I shall not die in a jungle; my fate lies higher. I go to seek a city of which I have read in a book, and of which men have told me curious things. I think my fortune lies there."
"Mine lies in the hill country," said Smith, and chuckled. "Rhinoceros horn is my fortune. I have a concession from the government, and there is money in the business. The Chinese buy the horn eagerly for medicinal purposes. By the way, what's the name of your city? You're off the track of cities here, I'm afraid."
"It's somewhere along the border—Ngongfu is the name."
"Oh!" said Smith, and his face changed.
Ardzrouni shot him a quick look,
"You have heard of the place?"
"I have been there," said Smith, with an air of abstraction.
At this the Armenian started, and stared hard at Smith. Then he flung himself down on his back, lighted a fresh cigarette, and began to puff furiously.
"Good! Good!" he exclaimed energetically. "Tell me about this city."
Smith found himself laughing at the man's impulsive camaraderie.
"A couple of years ago," he explained, "I was in that country after horn, and visited the place. It dates from the Sung dynasty, I think. When the Manchus conquered China, one of the Ming mandarins settled down there as ruler, and later his descendants were confirmed in their power by Kien Lung. When I was there, the mandarin was an old chap named Wang Ling."
He did not consider the whole truth necessary. He did not say that he had opened Ngongfu to a French resident. When Smith went hunting rhino horn south of the Yunnan border, he usually had other errands to carry out. Even in the jungles, a secret government agent can make himself very useful.
"These people," went on Smith, "speak the old language, akin to the present Cantonese, and retain the old customs. My friend Bryce made an extended study of the place for the École de l'Extréme Orient at Hanoi, but it has not yet been published. It's a small walled town, and the mandarin had some good rifles. There was also a college of shamans, or wizards, allied to the fang shi of the ancient Chinese; but probably the French resident has repressed those gentlemen."
"Good!" exclaimed Ardzrouni. "That fits in excellently!"
"With what?" asked Smith, in prompt curiosity.
"With my fate," said the other, and abruptly changed the subject.
They parted in the morning. The more Smith saw of the Armenian, the more he was puzzled. Aside from his learning, aside from his boundless physical virility, the man was reckless and impulsive, carried away by high dreams—yet Smith liked him. Ardzrouni might be foolish, but never sordid.
So the dark man passed on to the northward, waving his hand in farewell and shouting something about the eagle and Ngongfu.
Smith worked on west into the hill country, leisurely and without hurry. His six boys, headed by Ninh Bang, had served him at intervals for some years. With them, he was equal to anything. Those six constituted an army.
Then came the meeting with Wemyss. Major Arthur Wemyss was a long-jawed Scotsman, dried up and yellowed, with a sinister lift to his eyebrows which was oddly suggestive of Mephistopheles. He had a mining concession in the hills, and had been up there off and on for years—somewhere between Burma and Yunnan and Annam, in the Shan states. He was curtly vague in all that he said, and Smith would not have tried to be polite, except for the daughter.
Florence Wemyss had been teaching school in Rangoon, and was now accompanying her father back into the hills. She was a young woman of perhaps six and twenty; quiet, a bit prim, in her manner a hint of fright or timidity. Smith felt rather sorry for her. He did not altogether like Major Wemyss.
Since they were considerably out of their direct way in this part of the country, he took for granted that they were touring a bit. It did not occur to him until long afterward that Wemyss might have been telling him lies about the mining concession and so forth. It was plain enough that the man had been up country for a long time. Smith suspected that he was more than a little tainted with the poppy, and was glad to see the last of him.
These were mere passers-by; but, in the fortnight that followed, the memory of Ardzrouni lingered much with Smith. That dark man captured the imagination, and Smith wondered if he had ever achieved his purpose. At the best of times, Ngongfu was a hard place to reach. Because of the wizards and the Chinese folk, the brown hill people refused to go near there. Just what Ardzrouni meant to do after getting to the city was a mystery.
It was a good fortnight after his meeting with the Wemyss party when Smith was overtaken by a government launch which had been following him. The launch bore a pompous colonial official, and the official carried a confidential letter from the governor general in person to Smith.
The latter was instructed to abandon his present business and to reach Ngongfu in all haste. The missive continued:
Native reports say that our resident there is dead, but we can learn nothing definite. No couriers can get through. The hill tribes are in commotion; there are rumors of grave troubles in Ngong City itself.
I beg your help in this emergency. I am inclosing your appointment as temporary resident, and beg that you will advise me at once as to the situation. I am confident that your ability and knowledge of the language will avail you well.
You have full authority to act as you deem best. Any requisition that you make for troops or other help will be honored immediately. Orders to this effect have been issued to all stations. I would advise that you should spare no effort to impress these people and render us secure in this corner of the land.
Then, as he was refolding the letter, he observed a scrawled and initialed line hurriedly written as a postscript. He perused this with amazement in his eyes.
I have just learned that a Turk or Armenian named Ardzrouni is smuggling cartridges to the natives and stirring up trouble. Arrest or otherwise dispose of him.
Smith whistled over this. Ardzrouni a smuggler of cartridges? Impossible! The dark man had almost no outfit or baggage.
"Where are the nearest troops?" he asked the official. "And what force have they?"
The other told him. Smith tore a margin from the letter and borrowed a pencil. He wrote a brief note and handed it to the official.