IN THE CLUTCH OF THE TONGS
The next day there was still no word of Basil, and at the Steamship
Company’s hong the tangle was steadily tightening.
Holman sat glowering at a telegram he was reading for the third or
fourth time, but looked up impatiently as a Chinese clerk came in and
stood waiting to speak.
“What now?”
“Coolie men talkee muchee. No plenty money, no can do plenty work.”
“Fetch the compradore here,” Holman snapped, thrusting the telegram
into his waistcoat.
“Can do,” the clerk said, and went out.
Tom Carruthers stood by the window, doing nothing in particular, but
watching with a rueful, puzzled face the seething, jabbering coolies
outside. He swung round as the clerk went. “I say, Holman, what is all
this? A third demand to-day for more wages!”
Holman pushed a ledger aside abruptly. “That’s what I am trying to find
out, young man,” he said--“just exactly what it all means.”
The compradore came in a moment--a middle-aged Chinese, as capable
looking in his way as Holman was in his. He stood waiting stolidly for
the manager to speak, but Holman delayed a little, measuring the Mongol
with his shrewd blue eyes before he said: “Look here, compradore, what
the devil is the matter with your coolies now? Why have they struck
work again, and why the blue blazes have you let them, when you know
how late we’re with the loading of the _Fee Chow_ already, that
she’ll miss the tide if there’s more delay, and that she _must not
miss_ the tide? Eh?”
“Coolie men talkee muchee”--the compradore said it sadly. “They talkee
stlikee.”
“Strike!” Tom Carruthers cried. “Strike! That’s the limit! A strike
halfway through loading. You damn well tell them----”
But Holman interrupted sharply, “Hush, Mr. Carruthers, please. Leave
this to me. Now, compradore, what’s the grievance? Come, out with it,
chop, chop!”
“Coolie man likee work,” the compradore replied gently, “no likee
money. No plenty money, no can catchee plenty Chow-chow. They talkee me
they wantee more money.”
“All right, then----” Holman began crisply.
“What?” Carruthers broke in excitedly. Holman paid no attention to
that, but continued to the Chinese, “Tell them double pay if she’s
loaded up to time.”
“Can do,” the other answered, and went slowly out.
“Well, I’m blowed!” Tom gasped.
Holman went wearily to the window, and stood watching moodily the human
yellow kaleidoscope. The compradore was among them now, and gradually
the trouble cooled and slacked, and the men began to slouch off to
work, but reluctantly, the manager thought. Things looked ugly to
him--very ugly.
“I say, Holman,” Carruthers persisted impatiently, “isn’t that playing
rather into those chaps’ hands?”
Holman was furious--he had been furious for days now--and he welcomed
some human thing upon which he dared to vent his rage. He was “about
fed up” with the frets and troubles of the last week. He fixed
Tom Carruthers with a vindictive eye. “See here, Mr. Carruthers,”
he spat out, “if I have any further interference I’ll resign
instantly--understand? I managed this branch for years, until the
governor took a notion to come out. Well--he’s a genius at business,
and I’m proud to take my orders from him. But somehow, the very devil’s
in it these last two weeks, and we’re up against a bigger proposition
than you--or the governor either--have any idea of. I’m doing my best
to cope with it, and, by heaven----”
“Sorry to upset you, old chap,” the other interrupted regretfully,
“but, believe me, this succession of disasters has just about whacked
me.”
“Oh! all right,” the older man said, relieved by his own explosion,
and easily mollified after having let slip the snappy little dogs of
his badly over-tried temper, “I haven’t the heart to show this to Mr.
Gregory,” he said, taking the wire from his pocket into which he had
thrust it, “damned if I have.” He spread the flimsy paper out on the
desk, and sent Tom a glance that was an invitation. He wanted sympathy,
even that of the “somebody’s son sent out to learn the business,”
as he contemptuously said of Carruthers when he did not call him “a
flannelled fool.” The latter gibe was not quite fair. Tom usually wore
ducks, as Holman himself did--you had to in Hong Kong--and though the
younger man did squander (if it were squandering) a good deal of time
with Hilda Gregory, he only gave a reasonable, wholesome amount to
rackets, cricket, and Happy Valley racecourse.
“On top of all else,” Holman continued, “look here!”
Tom came and stood at Holman’s chair, and read over his shoulder. “Good
God, Holman!” he cried, “the _Feima_ sent to the bottom!”
“The biggest and finest ship in our fleet,” the other said bitterly.
“Mutiny of the coolies--they scuttle the ship and bolt with the boats
two days out!”
“This will about kill him!”
Holman nodded. “And look here”--he struck the ledger near him with an
angry fist--“I say, do you know anything about safes?”
“Not much.”
“Well, ours is the finest made. And the one make that _is_ ‘safe.’
There probably aren’t a dozen artists that could pick it--all told,
Sing Sing, Portland, Joliet--that could pick it in a week. Well, look
here; this ledger was taken from the safe--I suppose one night a week
or more ago--the page referring to the dock negotiation torn out--and
so prettily you can’t see that it was ever in, except for the missing
number--and the ledger returned to its place and the safe relocked
without so much as a scratch being left to show how it was done.”
“No wonder we were outbid for the site--_somebody_ knew our price!”
“Knew our price!”--he closed the ledger with a bang, and slapped it.
“Why, damn it, man, somebody’s got us tied in a knot, and it’s being
drawn tighter every day--every hour.”
“It’s beyond me, Holman!”
Holman rose and laid his hands on Tom Carruthers’ shoulders. “Mr.
Carruthers, you don’t for one moment believe this awful--simply
awful--sequence of disasters to be due to accident, do you? Sunken
ships, docks burnt to the water’s edge, strikes on shore, mutinies
afloat, and--and above all--the disappearance of Mr. Basil?”
“I don’t know what to believe--I simply don’t. What does it all mean,
Holman? I say it looks like some curse, don’t you know, come home to
roost!”
“You are in the confidence, quite outside of business, of Mr. Gregory,”
the manager said, sitting down again heavily--“of Mr. Gregory and his
family. I want to ask you a straight question.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know of any one thing, however slight, that Mr. Gregory may
have done to upset Wu Li Chang?”
“Wu Li Chang?”
“Yes, or ‘Mr. Wu,’ as he’s mostly called by the Europeans.”
“No,” Tom said decidedly, seating himself on the table--that was one of
his ways that ruffled Holman--“no, absolutely no. Why, only the other
day--Thursday, wasn’t it?--we visited at his place--it was there, you
know, that the last was seen of Basil, except for his having been seen
here, on the island, with two other Europeans later that same evening.”
Holman smiled sourly. “Who saw him?”
“Why, those Chinese johnnies who brought the information to Government
House.”
Holman grunted. “Volunteered the information, didn’t they? Went direct
to the Governor instead of lodging information with the police in the
usual way?”
“Yes.”
“Basil Gregory was no more seen by those Chinamen than I possess the
Koh-i-noor.”
“What?” Carruthers stood up in his surprise.
“Take it from me,” the other said emphatically, “in some manner Mr.
Gregory has stung Wu Li Chang, and, by Jove, that wound will want some
healing.”
Tom Carruthers was hopelessly puzzled. “Well,” he said slowly, “just
who is this chap, Wu Li Chang? And what’s his strength?”
“I’ve been here for twenty years,” Holman told him, “and in all that
time there’s been just one man I’ve made it a point to steer clear of,
in business and out of it--a strong personality, possessed of unlimited
wealth, mixed up in every big deal in Hong Kong, swaying a sinister
power that we Europeans cannot understand. Mr. Wu is hardly the man
to cross swords with. No European can afford to; and there’s only one
of his own race who ever got the better of him, and that was only
momentary, for he was never seen again.”
“You mean----”
“The inevitable where Wu is concerned!”
“But how on earth,” Carruthers said, “could Mr. Gregory have offended
such a man?”
Holman gestured his inability to answer that, but persisted, “There’s
no doubt about it. To you all Chinamen look alike, but they don’t
to me. And I’ve seen men, whom I know to be in Wu’s employ, mixing
with our coolies for days now. There are two of them down there
now--to my knowledge--and probably more. And I know for a fact that
several such shipped in the _Feima_; every man jack of ’em is a
Highbinder--member of one or other of the rival tongs.”
“Tongs?” Tom queried. “That means secret societies, doesn’t it?”
“You bet your life it does: secret societies that _are_ secret,
guilds that are a monster-power--the greatest power in China, the
only power that Tze-Shi is afraid of. There are two or three in every
province--a heap more in some. And our friend Wu is Past Master of the
whole bally lot of ’em. Most of the mandarins hate the tongs, and
are in deadly fear of them. But Wu knows a game worth ten of that: he
handles them--the ‘White Lily’ (about the dirtiest of them all), the
Triad (that bunch made the T’aiping Rebellion), the Shangti Hui (the
Association of the Almighty, if you please), and that prize band of
villains, the Hunsing Tzu, and the devil knows how many more. I tell
you, Mr. Carruthers, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing, and
get there quick, or there won’t be a stick left in China belonging to
the Company, or a vessel on the high seas flying its flag.”
“Well, old chap,” the junior said cheerfully, “Mr. Gregory is no
schoolboy. He’ll give this cursed gentleman of tongs and mystery a run
for his money--a damned fine run--I’ll have a bet with you, any odds
you like--and we’ll have a damned lot of fun watching him do it. But, I
say, we don’t know that you are barking up the right tree; but if you
are--and admitting for argument’s sake that Mr. Gregory has offended
this top-dog Chink or whatever he is--I say, why the deuce should Lord
High Pigtail want to take it out of Basil?”
Holman--his mother had been a Scotchwoman--had a tingling suspicion
why, but he shrugged his shoulders and evaded, saying didactically,
“When you’ve been in China as long as I have, you’ll know as much about
their ways and their motives as I do, and that’s--_nothing_!”