It was neatly written in a hand like
copper plate and dated from Buenos Aires:
_Dear Colonel Walker_: When I discovered that you were planting an agent
on every ship I had to abandon the plates and try for the reward. Thank
you for the five thousand; it covered expenses. Very sincerely yours,
D. MULEHAUS.
THE BLOOD OF THE DRAGON
BY THOMAS GRANT SPRINGER
From _Live Stories_
Kan Wong, the sampan boatman, sat in the bow of his tiny craft, looking
with dream-misted eyes upon the oily, yellow flood of the Yangtze River.
Far across on the opposite shore, blurred by the mist that the alchemy
of the setting sun transmuted from miasmic vapour to a veil of gold,
rose the purple-shadowed, stone-tumbled ruins of Hang Gow, ruins that
had been a proud, walled city in the days before the Tai-ping Rebellion.
Viewing its slowly dimming powers as they sank into the fading gold of
the mist that the coming night thickened and darkened as it wiped out
the light with a damp hand, Kan Wong dreamed over the stories that his
father's father--now revered dust somewhere off toward the hills that
dimly met the melting sky line--had told him of that ruined city,
wherein he, Kan Wong, had not Fate made men mad, would now be ruling a
lordly household, even wearing the peacock feather and embroidered
jacket that were his by right of the Dragon's blood, that blood now
hidden under the sun-browned skin of a river coolie. Kan Wong stuffed
fine-cut into his brass-bowled pipe and struck a spark from his tinder
box.
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