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Meeting the Enemy






 

ESCAPE was now impossible.

“Our only chance is to hide until the dog is taken away, ” Nancy said to Mr. Soong. “Ask your friends if there’s a place where we can wait without too much risk of being detected.”

Eng Moy led them to a small room at the extreme rear corner of the building. He pointed to a battered old brick wall.

Walking to the end of it, Eng Moy pulled open a rusty iron door. As it creaked back on rusty hinges, he stepped into a dank, dark cavern and lighted a candle. Then, turning, he motioned to the others to follow.

Nancy exclaimed in surprise. They were standing in a large, dome-shaped area about eight feet high at the center. The circular brick wall was dilapidated and battered, and the rough stone flooring cracked. Nancy noticed that the roof of the oven funneled into the leaning chimney.

“This must have been the smelter of the old iron mine! ” she told Mr. Soong excitedly.

The elderly gentleman spoke a few words to Eng Moy.

“You are right, my dear, ” he reported. “When Eng Moy came to the enclosure, this old smelter was used as a kiln to fire pottery. But it seemed as if the chimney might topple over, so a modem kiln was constructed across the garden.”

Lei went off to stand watch at the far door, to give notice the instant anyone might come along the corridor. Nancy, Eng Moy, and Mr. Soong sat down on the floor to await a favorable time to escape. As they marked time, the pottery maker haltingly told his friend all that had happened to him and his daughter since they had arrived in San Francisco five years before.

Eng Moy said that the man known to him as David Carr had been a business acquaintance in China. He had tricked the Engs into coming to America by making the father promises of an important position in one of the country’s modern pottery plants. As the final stop in their tour of United States factories, Carr had lured them to the enclosure in the woods, and there made them prisoners.

The Engs had lived in captivity four and a half years. During that time they had been forced to make fake Chinese porcelains, using as their models genuine, rare old Oriental pieces that Carr had stolen.

“But didn’t the Engs ever try to escape? ” Nancy asked.

Mr. Soong translated her question, then turned back to the girl.

“Yes, many times, ” he told Nancy. “Twice they even reached the woods outside the board fence before their absence was discovered. But the dog soon found them, and their poor bodies still bear the marks of the whip Carr used to punish them.”

Nancy’s ire was aroused anew. Poor Lei and her father had been the victims of extreme cruelty.

“Then it was Lei I heard scream for help? ” Nancy asked. “The cry that sounded like bong?

“Yes, ” Mr. Soong answered. “The two Phang characters you saw attached to the chimney also were appeals for help. Eng Moy put them there, hoping to attract someone’s attention. He shaped the characters out of old scraps of iron he found.”

“That, of course, is why Eng took down the old ornament, ” Nancy observed. “But who removed the new one? ”

“My friend was compelled to remove it the day he put it up, ” Mr. Soong said. “One of the Lavender Sisters saw it and punished him.”

Nancy’s conscience pricked her. She had told the woman about it and no doubt caused this punishment! Quickly Nancy had Mr. Soong explain this and offered her regrets.

“Eng Moy says he is so glad you saw it, the offense does not matter, ” Mr. Soong translated. “The clue of the leaning chimney is the means of your finding him and Lei.”

Nancy was told that Eng Moy’s signature, cunningly worked into the designs of various pieces of pottery, had also been intended by him as an appeal for aid.

Carr had made sure his prisoners were given no opportunity to learn English. Knowing that government authorities would be trying to locate him for illegally remaining in the United States, Eng Moy hoped one of the signatures would come to the attention of Federal officers and lead them to the enclosure.

“Are the other people, ” Nancy said suddenly, “those men and women we saw working in the pit and in the shop, prisoners too? ”

Mr. Soong put the question to Eng Moy.

“The men are foreigners, ” Mr. Soong translated the answer. “The women are their wives. Carr and his brother smuggled them into the United States by plane. He promised them wonderful things, then he made them prisoners. Finally he threatened if they did not dig the clay and operate the machines, he would expose them and have them put in jail for life! ”

At that moment they heard the iron door squeak open. Lei slipped into the candlelit smelter. She spoke breathlessly to her father and from the sudden fear that flitted across his face Nancy knew something had gone wrong.

“The Engs’ absence has been discovered! ” Mr. Soong told her with alarm. “Carr and the woman are out in the corridor! ”

Motioning to the others to wait, Nancy stole from the old smelter into the shadowy room outside and listened.

“You fool! ” cried a man’s voice. “If you’d paid more attention to the Engs, they couldn’t have disappeared! ”

“They can’t have gone far! ” the Lavender Sister replied.

“Get the dog, ” Carr said shortly. “She and that father of hers are probably in the smelter room. My mastiff will attend to them! ”

Nancy turned and ran softly back to the smelter. “They’re coming! ” she whispered.

Eng Moy blew out the candle, and the four waited with mounting suspense in the dark. Then, after an interval that seemed to be years, a voice spoke sharply in Chinese outside the iron door.

“It is Carr! ” Mr. Soong whispered fearfully to Nancy. “He demands that the Engs come out! What shall we do? ” he asked in panic.

Before she could reply that it would be best for them to slip out without betraying her and Mr. Soong’s presence, the door was pulled open.

Carr stepped into the doorway and shone a flashlight about. When he saw Nancy and Mr. Soong, his thin lips spread in a slow, mocking smile.

“So! I have caught you at last! ” he said sarcastically.

The Lavender Sister, who arrived with the mastiff, gave a dry, harsh chuckle when she saw Nancy.

“Take the Engs away and make sure they do not try to escape again, ” her husband ordered.

The woman beckoned sharply. With a despairing glance at Nancy and Mr. Soong, the Engs followed Carr’s wife through the doorway.

Nancy watched them go with a heavy heart. How happy they had been when freedom seemed so near, she reflected. And how utterly defeated they now appeared.

Carr studied Nancy and her companion silently, then spoke again in a cold, sharp voice. “I intend to do away with you two before any of your friends can get here to help you! ”


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