The Lady and the Panda by Vicki Croke Read Free Book Online Page B

vivifying ooze. The place reeked of it, and the smell was noted by every writer who passed through. It was thick and heavy, according to one, mixing the scents of “open-air cooking, offal, pissoirs, the fumes of opium, and decaying food.” Shanghai possessed what the Chinese called
rinao,
a dizzying assault of the senses that could choke—or resuscitate—a person. At the moment of her arrival, Ruth Harkness wasn't so sure which it would be for her. It was a test of character—even the mighty generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek, had said the city was “a furnace for the making of men.” And Harkness herself would soon feel that heat facing some of the toughest trials of her journey.
    As the
Tancred
slowed and came to a stop, the heavy air draped itself over the passengers. At least Harkness could be grateful that she had tanned herself while out at sea precisely so she could forgo silk stockings on days like this. Swarming the railings, the passengers now squinted through this fevered, hazy blur for a closer look at the famous city.
    Thousands stood along the water, carrying flowers, waving hats, and craning their necks to catch sight of a fiancée, a brother, a classmate. There were men in business suits, women in kimonos. Clamoring for work were half-starved coolies in blue, loose-cut trousers, Japanese cabdrivers in white. Missionaries jostled with millionaires. With Americans, Chinese, Russians, English, Japanese, French, and German Jewish refugees—fifty nationalities—it looked as though half the world's population had turned out carrying the entire world's expectations. Shanghai might have been known for its vice, but high hope was truly its chief commodity. Nowhere was that feeling more raw than down on the waterfront where the waiting crowds sweltered.
    Pressed among the colorful and expectant crowd that day, fresh from his debacle in Chengdu, was the gaunt and sallow Floyd Tangier Smith, with his beautiful half-Scottish, half-Japanese wife, Elizabeth. Known as “Ajax” to his friends, and “Buster” to his family, Smith was a man with more than his share of expectation. The tall, bespectacled banker-turnedadventurer, now fifty-four, had still not landed his one big fortune. He wasn't averse to accepting handouts from his family back in the States, however abashedly. For Smith, there was always tomorrow. Over theyears, his letters home had been filled with optimism about his next big break and future expeditions that would surely bring “honest to goodness money.” While he had been hoping to find just that the year before with the Bill Harkness partnership, that enterprise, like many of Smith's previous ones, hadn't panned out.
    Now, as sweat trickled down the backs of those standing by at the waterfront, the hunter patiently lay in wait for the one person who could get the expedition's finances back on track, who might even, if everything went just so, change his fortunes for good.
    If God lets Shanghai endure,
He owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.
    — A CHRISTIAN EVANGELIST IN THE EARLY 1920S
    It took a small international caravan—Smith, his wife, and several coolies, with a few Russians thrown in—to transport Harkness and her belongings to the hotel. They squeezed through the crowd, navigating the fantastic chaos of the Shanghai streets. There were rickshaws, automobiles, buses, trams, wheelbarrows, bicycles, and carriages; streetside market stalls were piled high with melons and onions; children shouted themselves hoarse, hawking English-language newspapers such as the
Shanghai Times.
    Harkness's group negotiated the short but tumultuous length of the waterfront up to the calm of an American favorite, the Palace Hotel. The conservative old Palace, white with red trim, was handsome and more than respectable, though its day as the best hotel in the ever-changing Shanghai had come and gone. The Palace was now dwarfed in stature and style by others, particularly its neighbor across Nanking Road,