McTURPIN TURNS INFORMER
Benito stared, bewildered, at the Chinaman. "McTurpin dying? Wants to
see me?"
Po Lun nodded. "He send-um China boy you' house. He wait outside."
Benito rose. Alice laid detaining fingers on his arm. "Don't go ... it's
just a ruse. You know McTurpin."
"The time is past when he can injure me," he answered gravely.
"Something tells me it is right--to go." He kissed her, disengaged her
arms about him gently, and went out. Adrian signaled to the Chinese.
"Follow him...."
Po Lun nodded understandingly.
A shuffling figure, face concealed beneath a broad-brimmed hat, hands
tucked each within the opposite sleeve, awaited Windham just outside the
door. He set out immediately in an easterly direction, glancing over his
shoulder now and again to make certain that Benito followed. Down the
steep slope of Washington street he went past moss-grown retaining
walls; over slippery brick pavements, through which the grass-blades
sprouted, to plunge at length into the eddying alien mass of Chinatown's
main artery, Dupont street. Here rushing human counter-currents ebbed
and flowed ceaslessly. Burdens of all sizes and of infinite variety
swept by on swaying shoulder yokes.
Benito's guide paused momentarily on the farther side of Dupont street.
Then, with a beckoning gesture, he dived into a narrow alley. Benito,
following, found himself before the entrance of a cellarway. As he
halted, iron trapdoors opened toward him, revealing a short flight of
steps. The Chinese motioned him to descend, but the lawyer hesitated
with a sudden sense of trepidation. Beneath the pavement in this
cul-de-sac of Chinatown, he would be hidden from the world, from friends
or rescue, as securely as though he were at the bottom of the bay.
But he squared his shoulders and went down. A door opened noiselessly
and closed, leaving him in total darkness. A lantern glimmered and he
followed it along a narrow passage that had many unexpected turns. An
odor, pungent, acrid, semi-aromatic troubled his nostrils. It increased
until the lantern-bearing Chinese ushered him into a large square room,
lined with bunks, three-deep, like the forecastle of a ship. In each lay
two Chinese, face to face. They drew at intervals deep inhalations from
a thick bamboo pipe, relaxing, thereupon into a sort of stupored dream.
The place reeked with the fumes that had assailed Benito in the passage.
Intuitively he knew that it was opium.
A voice in English, faint and dreamy, reached him. "This way ... Mr.
Windham.... Please."
A white almost-skeleton hand stretched toward him from a lower bunk. A
bearded face, cadaverously sunken, in which gleamed bright fevered eyes,
was now discernible.
"McTurpin!" he spoke incredulously.
"What's left of me," the tone was hollow, grim. "Please sit down here,
close to me.... I've something to tell you.... Something that will--"
He sank back weakly, but his eyes implored. Benito took a seat beside
the bunk. For a moment he thought the man was dead. He lay so limp,
so silent!
Then McTurpin whispered. "Bend closer. I will tell you how to serve your
country.... There's a schooner called the 'J.M. Chapman.' Do you know
where it lies?"
"No," Benito answered, "but that's easily discovered. If you've anything
to say--go on."
McTurpin's bony fingers clutched Benito's sleeve. "Listen," he said.
"Bend nearer."
His voice droned on, at times imperceptible, again hoarse with
excitement. Benito sat moveless, absorbed.
Above the iron-trap doors Po Lun waited patiently.
* * * * *
In an unlighted alley back of the American Exchange Hotel two figures
waited, as if by appointment on the night of March 14. One was Ashbury
Harpending, a young Southerner, and one of the Committee of Thirty
which, several years before, had hatched an unsuccessful plot to capture
California for the hosts of slavery. The other was an English boy named
Alfred Rubery, large, good-looking, adventurous, nephew of the great
London publicist, John Bright. It was he who spoke first in a guarded
undertone:
"Is everything ready--safe?"
"Far as I can tell," responded Harpending.
"How many men d'you get?" asked Rubery.
"Twenty ... that's enough. We'll pick up more at Manzanillo. There we'll
dress the Chapman into fighting trim, set up our guns aboard and capture
the first Pacific Mail liner with gold out of California."
"You're a clever fellow, Harpending. How'd you get those guns aboard
without suspicion?"
"Through a Mexican friend," replied Harpending. "He said he needed them
to protect his mine in South America. Besides, we've a large assortment
of rifles, revolvers, cutlasses. They're boxed and marked 'machinery.'"
Further talk was interrupted by a group of men who approached, saluted,
gave a whispered countersign. Others came, still others till the quota
of a full score had arrived. At Harpending's command they separated to
avoid attention. Silently they slipped through dimly-lighted streets,
past roaring saloons and sailors' boarding houses to an unfrequented
portion of the waterfront. There the trim black silhouetted shape of
the schooner Chapman loomed against a cloudy sky.
At the rail stood Ridgely Greathouse, big, florid, his burnside whiskers
twitching.
"Where the devil's Law?" he bellowed. "Lord Almighty! Here it's nearly
midnight and no captain."
"He's not with us," said Harpending quietly. But his face paled.
Navigator William Law was the only one of whom he had a doubt. But the
men must not suspect. "Law will be along soon," he added. "Let us all
get aboard and make ready to sail."
The men followed him and went below. Harpending, Greathouse and Rubery
paced the deck. "He's drunk probably," commented Greathouse savagely.
"Tut! Tut!" cried Rubery, "let us have no croaking." But at two o'clock,
the navigator had not shown his face. They could not sail without a
captain. Wearily they went below and left a sentinel on watch. He was a
young man who had eaten heavily and drunk to even more excess. For a
time he paced the deck conscientiously. Then he sat down, leaned against
a spar and smoked. After a while the pipe fell from his
listless fingers.
* * * * *
"Ahoy, schooner Chapman!"
The sleeping sentinel stirred languidly. He stretched himself, yawned,
rose in splendid leisure. Then a shout broke from him. Like a frightened
rabbit he dived through the hatchway, yelling at the top of his lungs.
"The police! The police!"
Harpending was up first. Pell mell, Rubery and Greathouse followed. A
couple of hundred yards away they looked into the trained guns of the
Federal warship Cyane. Several boatloads of officers and marines were
leaving her side. From the San Francisco waterfront a police tug bore
down on the Chapman.
Greathouse stumbled back into the cabin. "Quick, destroy the evidence,"
he shouted.