These reports had at the time greatly concerned Yuan Shih-kai who heard it stated by all who knew him that the Yunnan leader was a genius in his own way.  In conformity with his policy of bringing to Peking all who might challenge his authority, he had induced General Tsao-ao, since the latter had played no part in the rebellion of 1913, to lay down his office of Yunnan Governor-General and join him in the capital at the beginning of 1914—­another high provincial appointment being held out to him as a bait.

Once in Peking, however, General Tsao-ao had been merely placed in charge of an office concerned with the reorganization of the land-tax, nominally a very important piece of work long advocated by foreign critics.  But as there were no funds available, and as the purpose was plainly merely to keep him under observation, he fretted at the restraint, and became engaged in secret political correspondence with men who had been exiled abroad.  As he was soon an open suspect, in order to avoid arrest he had taken the bold step at the very inception of the monarchy movement of heading the list of Generals in residence in Peking who petitioned the Senate to institute a Monarchy, this act securing him against summary treatment.  But owing to his secret connection with the scholar Liang Chi-chao, who had thrown up his post of Minister of Justice and left the capital in order to oppose the new movement, he was watched more and more carefully—­his death being even hinted at.

He was clever enough to meet this ugly development with a masterly piece of trickery conceived in the Eastern vein.  One day a carefully arranged dispute took place between him and his wife, and the police were angrily called in to see that his family and all their belongings were taken away to Tientsin as he refused any longer to share the same roof with them.  Being now alone in the capital, he apparently abandoned himself to a life of shameless debauch, going nightly to the haunts of pleasure and becoming a notorious figure in the great district in the Outer City of Peking which is filled with adventure and adventuresses and which is the locality from which Haroun al-Raschid obtained through the medium of Arab travellers his great story of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.”  When governmental suspicions were thoroughly lulled, he arranged with a singing-girl to let him out by the backdoor of her house at dawn from whence he escaped to the railway-station, rapidly reaching Tientsin entirely unobserved.

The morning was well-advanced before the detectives who nightly watched his movements became suspicious.  Then finding that his whereabouts were unknown to the coachman dozing on the box of his carriage, they roughly entered the house where he had passed the night only to find that the bird had flown.  Hasty telegrams were dispatched in every direction, particularly to Tientsin—­the great centre for political refugees—­and his summary arrest ordered.  But fortune favoured him.  A bare quarter-of-an-hour before the police began their search he had embarked with his family on a Japanese steamer lying in the Tientsin river and could snap his fingers at Yuan Shih-kai.