Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/196

with a brass crucible and a handful of pink crystals, could hear: "Japan—the situation in the Far East—Kiauchau—"

Baron von Eschingen, usually punctual to the minute, did not make an appearance at the laboratory that morning.

"Getting ready for the wholesale butchery," the professor explained to Takagawa in an undertone. "Sharpening his cleaver and putting a few extra teeth in his meat saw, I've no doubt."

Takagawa felt disappointed. He would have liked to say good-by to his friend, ceremoniously. For he remembered how his father had gone forth at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. He had only been a small child at the time, but he recollected everything: how his mother and grandmother had bowed low and had spoken unctuously of naijo, of inner help; how the little girls of the household had brought their kai-ken dirks to be blessed by the departing warrior; how Komoto had quoted long passages from the Po-ro-po-lo-mi, reënforcing them with even lengthier quotations from the Fuh-ko; how his father had taken him to his arms with the true bushi no nasaké, the true tenderness of a warrior, and how immediately after his father had left the women had put on plain white linen robes, without hems, as the ancient rites prescribe for widows.

"You—you don't think he'll come back here before he leaves for the front?" he asked the professor.

"Certainly," laughed the other. "He isn't through yet with these!" indicating a wizardly array of tubes and pipes whence acrid, sulphurous fumes were rising to be caught, yellow, cloudy, whirling, in a bulb-shaped retort which hung from the ceiling.