THE BLACK CRUISER
Martin was disappointed. The Black Cruiser—delectable name, of which
he had expected much—was, it appeared, housed in a commonplace and
very ugly two-story wooden building, a building with many dark and
shuttered windows on the upper floor.
From where he stood upon the corner, Martin could see that the building
was of considerable depth, and that the saloon appeared to occupy only
the front downstairs portion. The upstairs, with its many shuttered
windows, had the aspect of a deserted rooming-house. Just before him,
over the closed door to the saloon, was the inscription Smatt had
spoken of, in plain black letters, “Black Cruiser Saloon, Diego
Spulvedo, Prop.” It was a sordid and unprepossessing exterior; Martin
felt that the Black Cruiser would prove the anti-climax to his
evening’s adventures.
The second-hand of his watch climbed toward the hour. He knew old
Smatt’s passion for exact punctuality; not a second before the
appointed time must he enter the place. The hand touched the required
point. Martin felt of the paper in his pocket and opened the door.
He stepped into a low-ceilinged bare and dingy room. The place reeked
of stale drink. A battered bar filled one side, and before it stood
five men in a row, attended upon by a heavily paunched and aproned
fellow. Martin accosted this last, as he approached the bar.
“Mr. Spulvedo?” asked Martin. “I wish to see Mr. Spulvedo.”
The aproned man regarded him with a stare from heavy lidded and nearly
closed eyes. He had a swarthy, greasy, fat face, this officer of the
Black Cruiser, and moist, thick lips. Martin recalled Little Billy’s
reminiscence concerning the “slithering about of fat and greasy
varlets.” Was this the varlet? The name fitted.
“Spulvedo!” repeated Martin. “Are you Mr. Spulvedo?”
“Yais,” drawled the man.
Martin dropped his voice to a whisper.
“I would like to speak with you alone,” he commenced.
He shot a glance out of the corners of his eyes toward the five
patrons. Smatt had said to take care not to be overheard. He caught
his breath with surprise. The glance revealed five stolid,
yellow-brown faces turned toward him, five pairs of black, oblique-set
eyes regarding him intently. Five Japanese! They were interested in
him, there was the thrill. Martin sensed some connection between
himself and the five. That envelope in his inner pocket!
“You weesh to speak weeth me, yais?”
The drawling voice compelled his attention.
“Yes—alone,” said Martin.
Spulvedo nodded. He turned and waddled fatly around the farther end of
the bar, and Martin rejoined him at the other end of the room.
“You are the messenger we expect, yais?” purred Spulvedo.
“I wish to see Captain Carew,” stated Martin. “I was told to see you
and ask for him; told you would conduct me to him. Is he here?”
“Yais, you see heem,” answered Spulvedo.
He turned to a door in the wall behind him and unlocked it. He opened
it a crack and held whispered parley with some one within. Then he
turned to Martin.
“Thees way—come!” he bade.
Martin brushed through the door, opened just wide enough to admit his
body. He expected the greasy saloonkeeper to follow, but instead that
worthy slammed the door upon him and turned the lock. Martin was left
alone in pitch darkness.
He stood still, nonplused by that cavalier desertion and disturbed by
the darkness. He stretched out both arms and touched two walls. He
was in a hallway. Alone? The air about him seemed to be filled with
rustlings. He fancied he heard breathing. He took a tentative step
forward, arm outstretched. A cold, clammy hand grasped his wrist and
drew from him a startled yelp.
“Have no afraid,” soothed a soft voice. “I make show he way to he
hon’ble.”
There was, it seemed, more than one fashion in spoken English at the
Sign of the Black Cruiser; this fellow did not talk like Spulvedo.
Martin’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, and he made out
the vague outlines of a short figure before him. The figure moved, and
the clutch on his wrist urged him to follow.
They moved forward some twenty paces, passed through a door, and
encountered a stairway leading upstairs at right angles to the passage
they had just traversed. It was not so dark here; a gas light burned
somewhere in the hall upstairs, and a moiety of its glow found its way
below.
His conductor released his wrist, and commenced to ascend the stairs.
Martin, as he started to follow, noticed there was a second door at the
foot of the stairs. He guessed it let upon the street.
They gained the upstairs landing and paused. Martin saw before him a
long hall with at least a dozen doors opening upon it. A gas light
burned at the farther end. As he had suspected from without, this
place was, or had been, a cheap lodging-house. Nothing save that light
seemed to speak of occupancy now.
Martin took his first good look at his guide. He was, as he had noted
on the stairs, a Japanese; a chunky little man with an apologetic
manner, and a muscular and bow-legged figure. If he had been a white
man, Martin would have listed him a sailor.
The Japanese smiled. His teeth flashed startlingly white in his dark
face.
“He, hon’ble, catch it Captain down there,” he stated.
He waved a hand toward the gas light at the other end of the hall.
Then he opened the door of the room nearest to hand.
“He, hon’ble, stop by here,” he invited. “I go make prepare.”
Martin shrugged his shoulders. There seemed to be many preliminaries
to an audience with this Captain Carew. Through the door the Jap held
open he saw the outlines of a bed, and a rag of carpet. When he
stepped through the door, the musty, sour air of the room smote his
nostrils like a blow.
The Japanese closed the door, and the retreating echo of his footsteps
sounded from the hall. Martin had not expected to be thus shut in
darkness, but after all it was a small matter. He felt his way to the
bed and sat down on its edge.
After a moment he struck a match. The flare revealed, as he expected,
the meanly appointed bedroom of a tenth rate hostelry. The single
window was shuttered.
He composed himself to patience. This business was getting on his
nerves. This visit to the Black Cruiser was not proving the evening’s
anti-climax, as he had feared, but he was not enjoying himself. The
loose face of the Cruiser’s commander, the mysterious Japanese, the
disturbing secrecy, the foul air—he would be glad when his errand was
completed, and he was once again outdoors in the clean, fresh air.
There was an alien taint in that poisonous room. With the Japanese in
mind he placed it—it was that indefinable odor the man of the Orient
leaves about his abiding place, the smell one gets during a walk
through Chinatown. Was this Spulvedo conducting this rookery as a
Japanese lodging-house?
A strange place for a sea-captain to lodge. This Carew—this “Wild
Bob” Carew, as the boatswain had termed him—must be a man very
indifferent to his surroundings, or else mightily anxious to remain
under cover. The captains Martin had met were particular men; one
would not find them in such a noisome hole. This Carew must be some
rough renegade. Perhaps he was not even white; perhaps he was a
half-caste. That would explain his choice of lodgings. One would
think from all the secret mummery with which he surrounded himself that
he was the Mikado, himself. He certainly was not very popular with the
boatswain.
Thus far had Martin got with his musings, when his attention was
attracted by noises that suddenly disturbed the unearthly quiet of the
house. They reached him quite plainly through the thin walls.
A door slammed, below stairs. He heard sounds of a scuffle. The
sounds drew nearer—grunts, exclamations, footsteps. They were coming
up the stairs. In the hall outside a door was noisily opened. Some
one ran past his door, and sentences were, spoken in a harsh, clicking,
alien tongue.
Martin sat tensely on the edge of the bed. What was about, there in
the hall? The scuffling had reached the head of the stairs; now it was
opposite his door. Several pairs of feet were making that noise.
Martin heard a voice exclaim chokingly, and in English——
“Let go—let go of me!”
It was a strange voice, a rich and thrilling voice, and it carried an
appeal. A man’s voice?
Martin felt his way to the door. This affair without was none of his
business, but he must see what was being done to the owner of that
voice. He must confirm or dispel that vague suspicion.
He turned the knob and pulled, and the door came a few inches. There
was an exclamation from some one who stood in front of the door. An
arm shot through the opening, a clenched hand impacted against the pit
of his stomach, and Martin went reeling backward. The door slammed
shut and the lock clicked.
Martin fetched up against the bed and sat down heavily, experiencing
that sharp agony that follows upon a plexus punch. In that brief
instant he had held the door ajar, however, he had witnessed a sight
that caused him to ignore the pain. He had seen what was transpiring
in the hall. He had seen the group of little yellow men clustered
about and urging along a single figure that slightly overtopped them; a
figure clad in a gray overcoat.
At the very second Martin had looked, a gray cap had fallen from the
head in the scuffle, and a wonderful mass of dark hair had tumbled down
about the gray-clad shoulders. An excited, protesting face had turned
toward him. It was a woman those chunky aliens were urging along the
hallway, a woman clad in a man’s gray overcoat. A white woman—a young
and beautiful woman!
Martin crouched on the bed’s edge and panted to recover his breath.
The scuffling without grew faint, a door slammed, and the house was
again quiet.
Martin’s mind was awhirl, but uppermost in the confusing chaos was that
startling picture, photographic in its clearness, of the squat
outlanders surrounding the protesting figure. A woman—a white
woman—in the hands of these yellow men!
Surely he had seen aright. It was an ill light in the hall, but he had
looked from a dense darkness, and had seen clearly. And had he not
heard her voice? And seen the feminine tresses tumble about the
gray-clad shoulders as the cap came off? There was some faint stirring
of memory in connection with the thought of that gray, mannish apparel,
but Martin was too excited to notice it. He was possessed by the
event. He had caught a glimpse of the angry, vivid face. Angry, that
was it—not fear, but anger, in her bearing. They had not wanted him
to observe the incident, the outrage. They had offered him violence.
They had slammed and locked the door. He was prisoner.
By this time, Martin, a thoroughly aroused young man, was again at the
door. He, Martin Blake, would not submit to maltreatment and
imprisonment! He would find out what this yellow crew was doing with
that girl.
In the back of his excited mind danced grim shadows of the tales every
San Franciscan knows; stories of white slaves, of white women being
seen entering Oriental dens, and being lost forever to the world that
knew them; of horrible relics of womanhood being discovered years after
in some underground cave of Chinatown. Sickening thoughts!
Martin yanked at the door and pounded upon the panel. His blows echoed
without, but brought no other response. He lifted his foot and drove
his boot against the door. It shivered and splintered.
Before he could kick a second time, there came a cry from the hall, a
hurried footfall, and the door was unlocked. Martin jerked it open.
Confronting him was the Japanese who had been his guide, who had gone
to “make prepare” Captain Carew.
“You come now,” announced the little man, bowing courteously.
“What does all this mean?” demanded Martin angrily. “Who struck me
through the door? How dare you lock me in? Who——”
“He Captain speak you come,” said the other, smiling blandly. He shed
Martin’s rain of words as if he were some yellow oilskin. “I make him
way—hon’ble fellow my show.”
“What is going on in this house?” demanded Martin. “Who was that white
woman? What was that gang doing with her?”
The other backed away before Martin’s excited questioning. “No
understand,” he said. “No woman—no gang. No savvy.”
“No savvy—big lie!” cried Martin, and he pounced down upon the gray
cap which was lying on the hallway floor. He held it up for the
other’s inspection. “You savvy this?” he demanded.
The Jap shook his head. His smile was gone, and there was a hostile
gleam in his eyes.
“That—no understand,” he said crisply. “You come for he Captain—you
catch business he Captain!”
Martin saw he could get nothing from this fellow. He was being told
very plainly to mind his own business. Very well, this Captain Carew
was perhaps a white man.
Without further words, Martin followed the Japanese. They went the
length of the hall and paused before the last door, the one before
which the light burned. The guide rapped. A deep voice rumbled orders
within, chairs scraped, a door slammed, and the door before which they
stood was opened.