The Apple of Discord. Earle Ashley Walcott

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СКАЧАТЬ got it out of the overcoat that the fellow left in my hands."

      "Ah-ha!" said Kendrick. "And you don't see what one of Bolton's men would be doing with a Chinese letter in his pocket?"

      "That was just my idea–in part, at least. The letter was a clue, anyhow, and I took it to a Chinese firm I have done some law business for and know pretty well. I showed it to the boss partner. He talks English like a native, and chatters like a magpie. But when he saw that slip of paper he shut up like a clam, and all I could get out of him was 'No sabby.' You know the look of stolid ignorance they can put on when there's anything they don't want to tell."

      "It's the most exasperating thing you can run against."

      "Well, when my merchant failed me, I went to another I knew slightly, then to an interpreter, then to the boss of the Chinese guides. The same 'No sabby,' and the same stolid look everywhere."

      "Why didn't you go to the Chinese interpreter at the City Hall? He's a white man, and wouldn't be afraid to give away secrets."

      "I tried him, but he said it was nonsense. It's evidently a cipher, though it's one pretty well known in Chinatown."

      "I'll tell you what to do then, Hampden,"–and he took out his pencil and wrote a few words on a card. "Take this to Big Sam at his Chinatown office to-morrow. Show him the paper, and he'll give you the reading. He is under some obligations to me, and he can hardly refuse."

      "Just the thing! As Big Sam comes pretty near being the King of Chinatown, he will have no one to fear."

      "Now about the Council of Nine. What did you get?"

      "Well, I saw two members of the Council and a few of their followers. I tried to pump them, and I dare say I shall become as good a convert to their propaganda as old Bolton himself. They have some crack-brained notions of an uprising of the people, but they don't appear to have anything definite in view at present." And I gave my employer an account of my visit to the House of Blazes.

      He stroked his red whiskers meditatively, and then said:

      "Well, that doesn't sound as though they could amount to much, but as long as P. Bolton is backing them, you'd better keep a close eye on them."

      CHAPTER IV

      MACHIAVELLI IN BRONZE

      Waverly Place was in the full tide of business. The little brown man in his blue blouse and clattering shoes was seen in his endless variety, chattering, bargaining, working, lounging, moving; and the short street, with its American architecture half orientalized, was gay with colors and foul with odors.

      Patient coolies trotted past, bending between the heavily laden baskets that swung upon the poles passed over the shoulder. On the corner an itinerant merchant sat under an improvised awning with a rude bench before him on which to display his wares, and a big Chinese basket beside him from which his stock might be renewed as it was sold. Here was a store with a window display of fine porcelains, silks, padded coats and gowns covered with grotesque figures, everything about it denoting neatness and order. Next it was a barber shop where two Chinese customers were undergoing the ordeal of a shave.

      Beyond the barber shop was a stairway leading to the depths, from which the odors of opium and a sickening compound of indescribable smells floated on the morning air. Brown men could be seen through the smoke and darkness, moving silently as though in dreams, or listlessly gazing at nothing. Here was a shop of many goods, with fish and fruits exposed to tempt the palates and purses of the passer: Chinese nut-fruits, dried and smoked to please the Chinese taste, candied cocoanut chips that form the most popular of Chinese confections, with roots and nuts and preserves in variety, appealing temptingly to the eyes of the Chinese who passed. Behind, were boxes and bales and cans, big chests and little chests, bright chests and dingy chests, in endless confusion. The blackened walls and ceilings gave such an air of age that the shop seemed as though it might have come out of the ancient Chinese cities as a relic of the days of Kublai Khan. Shoe factories, clothing factories, and cigar factories, were scattered along the street, with wares made and displayed in the American fashion, and here and there, as if in mockery, hung signs that bore the legend "White Labor Goods."

      The little brown men sewed and hammered and smoothed and polished and smoked and chaffered and traded–the great hive of Chinatown was astir; and over all rose the murmur of the strange sing-song tongue that finds its home on the banks of the Yellow River. Here and there a white face showed. But where it belonged to a dweller in Waverly Place it was sodden, brutal, depraved. Waverly Place got only the dregs and seepage of the white race, and such as dwelt there boasted of an intimate knowledge and possession of the vices of three continents.

      Half-way up the block from Clay Street I paused before a dingy doorway. The building had been one of the substantial structures of early San Francisco, but the coolie occupation had orientalized it with a coating of dirt and a mask of decay.

      "This is an unpromising place to look for the richest Chinaman in San Francisco," was my mental comment. "But it is surely the number given me."

      As I moved to enter the door, a stout, well-fed Chinaman, with a pockmarked face, his hands hidden in the sleeves of his thick blue blouse, put his body in the way.

      "What you wan'?" he asked, with a trace of aggression in his voice.

      "I want see Big Sam," I said.

      The Chinaman's face took on the blank, stolid look of utter ignorance.

      "No sabby Big Sam. No Big Sam heah."

      "Nonsense! You know Big Sam. Every Chinaman in San Francisco knows Big Sam. This is where I'm told he lives. I've got to see him."

      "No sabby Big Sam heah. One Big Sam he live Stockton St'eet, one Big Sam he live Oakyland. You go Stockton St'eet, you go Oakyland. No Big Sam heah."

      "See here, John," I said, "I've got to see Big Sam, and I know he's here, and I'm going to see him. So get out of the way."

      The Chinaman straightened up in offended dignity. "John" was a term of insult, or at least of derogation in the Chinese mind. Then he called back into the darkness and two other Chinese appeared. They were better dressed than the ordinary, and were evidently some grades above the Chinese laborers who thronged the street.

      There was a minute or two of conversation in the high-pitched singsong tongue that is so well adapted to the purpose of concealing thought–from the white race, at least–and then one of the others stepped forward.

      "I must see Big Sam," I said in a determined tone. "You can tell him first, or I'll go in without it, just as you please."

      Before he could speak there was a shout and a scream behind me, and I turned to see a Chinese girl running out of the fruit and variety store across the way. She was probably fifteen years old and had that clear, brilliant, creamy complexion that is sometimes seen in Chinese women. Though her round flat face was not beautiful to the western eye, it represented one of the highest types of oriental attractiveness. Even the clumsy garments in which the Chinese dress their women, with their long sleeves and armless coat and baggy trousers, were not able to conceal the fact that she was graceful and well formed. I noted these details more in memory than in the moment when she clattered into view, her clumsy Chinese shoes beating a tattoo on the boards. She had hardly reached the sidewalk when a half-dozen blue-bloused heathen surrounded her. She gave a scream, but she was seized by two of the band, a cloth was thrown over her head, and her cries were silenced. If I had taken time for thought, I should have sought the police instead of the center of disturbance, for I understood how little СКАЧАТЬ