The Same Death

By Avram B. Cross

On the borders of the Gobi, an American looks into a war lord's treasure chest

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mystery & Thriller Publishing
• Release date: Sep 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223619604

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On the borders of the Gobi, an American looks into a war lord’s treasure chest

I

JOHN WEEKES reined in so sharply and suddenly that with his great weight and strength he all but hurled the little rat-like pony back upon her haunches. And indeed he had some excuse for handling so roughly the hardy little Mongolian steed who had so often been his sole companion across many miles of trackless southern China.

All that morning he had been following a mule-track across a low-lying plain in northwestern Yunnan that the Chinese called a marsh. It was, as a matter of fact, nothing more than an area of several square miles that in the rainy season was flooded by the overflow from the swollen waters of the Ching Chang, one of the larger tributaries of the Upper Yang-tse.

Though, but a few days before, the water had been pouring over the rocks on the southern river bank that formed a kind of natural dam, hot sunshine combined with the porous soil had now reduced the flood to a series of pools; and it was upon a mudbank in the middle of one of these pools that Weekes now beheld the lifeless body of a man whom he had always counted as one of his best and most trusted friends.

A talented and cultured Chinese; a man with the national virtues of unimpeachable honor, innate courtesy, and above all a fierce, unquenchable love of country that had earned him an important position on the staff of General Chiang kai-shek. And there he now lay—supine, lifeless, fully dressed in his uniform, with arms and legs outstretched. It was not impossible that Tsung-men had been murdered by the invading Japanese who had some reason to hate him; but Weekes seemed to remember that he had heard that, a few days before, the dead man had been sent up the Ching Chang to interview some Chinese official who was suspected of double-crossing the central government at Chungking, at the head of the Yang-tse rapids.

However that might be, Weekes, who was nothing if not practical, had already realized that as yet he had no certain proof that the man was dead. Wading into the water, that was nowhere much above his knees, he reached the body, lifted it in his arms, and carried it back to dry land.

After a brief examination his medical knowledge assured him that there was no hope of resuscitation, for the simple reason that life had not been extinguished by drowning. The body was not swollen, nor was there any water in the lungs. Yet Weekes had not yet observed any visible scar.

Knowing the country as he did, he at once jumped at what seemed to him the most probable conclusion—poison; only to change his mind a moment later, when he found himself confronted by something in the way of a mystery. For he had suddenly observed a slight bruise in the immediate center of the dead man’s forehead, less a contusion than a mere breaking of the skin. Also, and even more extraordinary, the skin had been taken off the knuckles of both hands.

This was a circumstance that puzzled John Weekes more than anything else, for he had never heard of a Chinese using his fists in self-defense on any occasion whatever, and*he was quite certain that Tsungmen had been quite incapable of doing so. The question therefore of how death had been incurred was unanswerable. It might or might not be explained by autopsy.

All he could do was to take the body back to Chinese headquarters at Yunnan-fu, where there were several native surgeons capable of conducting an efficient post-mortem. For the moment only one or two facts were clear: since Tsung-men had not met his death by drowning, he must have been done to death somewhere up the river into which his corpse had been thrown, to be washed downstream over the rapids on to the marsh. It was also plain that he had been lying out on the mudbank for several hours, since his clothes were wholly dry. Yet how had he been killed, since it was obvious that neither knife, bludgeon, nor bullet, had done the work?

So far as he could see, there was nothing Weekes could do, but