"Highbinders," said the policeman. "I thought it was time they was
breakin' out again. Oh, murther, but there'll be killin' over this
before the day's at an end. Hullo! what's this?"
An old Chinaman came forward at this moment, wringing his hands and
chattering like a monkey. His face was stricken with signs of
heart-breaking woe.
"He says it was his daughter," said the other policeman.
"Yes--all same daughtah--my gell--you sabby?" wailed the old man. "She
go down store one minute all 'long boy--all same my boy--you sabby? One
man come, say 'you come 'long me.' She heap cly. Boy heap cly. Two men
come 'long--catch gell--so. One man hit boy 'long side head. Tlee, fo'
men thlow cloth over gell's head--she no cly no mo'. Tlee, fo', fi' men
take gell. Boy lun home. All same I sabby no mo'. Gell all steal."
And the old man wrung his hands with mournful cries.
"H-m! the old girl-stealing trick of the highbinders," said the first
policeman, whom I took to be a sergeant of the force.
"Does he suspect anybody?" I asked.
The old man caught the idea.
"Maybe--I no know," he cried. "One day two men come. All same they say
heap like my gell. I say no got gell. One man say all same give me
t'ousand dolla'. I say I no want t'ousand dolla'. Othe' man he say
twel' hund' dolla'. I say all same I no want twel' hund' dolla'. Two
men say bad word, all same Clistian, you sabby?"
"What men were they?" asked the sergeant.
"You sabby Suey Sing men?" said the old man. "Two men all same Suey
Sing."
"The Suey Sing Tong--I'll bet he's lying," said the sergeant. "It's
more like the Sare Bo Tong. Well, go along with him and get the boy's
story. Maybe the kid can't lie so fast. I'll go down to the hall and
send up a squad. There's like to be trouble over this."
"Do you think there will be a fight?" I asked.
"There was a lot of the Hop Sings about as we came up," said the
officer, "and I reckon the old man belongs to 'em. The others was
mostly Sare Bos. There's bad blood between 'em, anyhow, and I look for
some killing out of it. Are you walking down?"
"No, I've a bit of business here." And I turned back to the door that
had barred the way to the rooms of Big Sam.
As I reached the threshold I drew back before the advance of a party of
Chinese, who filed out of the shop one by one to the number of a dozen
or more. Their stolid faces showed no interest in me or anything else,
and half of them turned to the south, half to the north, and they
followed the uncompanionable Chinese habit of straggling in single file.
A tall stout Chinaman, dressed in baggy trousers and a padded Chinese
coat of fine blue cloth, stood just inside the door and watched them
narrowly as they went out. As the last coolie passed I stepped forward
and into the doorway.
The tall Chinaman looked at me blandly.
"Were you not a little indiscreet to think of interfering in one of our
family quarrels?" he said, with a ghost of a smile on his full smooth
face. He spoke English fluently, with just a trace of the Chinese
intonation. The "r" that is the despair of the Chinese tongue rolled
full and clear from his lips. I had been on the point of addressing him
in the "pidgin English" considered necessary in communicating with the
heathen intelligence, and was stricken with surprise.
"I--I didn't think of interfering," I replied.
"One would not have suspected you of so much discretion to see you
running across the street," he said, with the same bland look. "The
next time you think of taking part in such an entertainment, I beg of
you to reflect that half the men in the crowd carried something like
this." And with a smile he drew back the Chinese jacket and touched the
handle of a big navy six-shooter. The weapon was eighteen inches long
and would carry a forty-four caliber bullet for a hundred yards. "If he
didn't have that he probably had something of this sort about him." He
gave his voluminous sleeve a shake, and a big knife with a ten-inch
blade was in his hand. "These pleasant little parties are not always
what they seem," he continued, "and it is just as well to watch them
from a distance."
"Thank you," I said. "I'd prefer not to be on close acquaintance with
anything of the kind you are hinting at. That wasn't what I came for."
"I understand that you were looking for me, Mr.--"
"Hampden," I supplied the name. "I believe I am speaking to--" Then I
hesitated. I really did not know his name, and it struck me as
something of an absurdity to call the dignified and forceful man before
me by the nickname that was on the tip of my tongue.
He smiled.
"Sometimes I am known as Kwan Sam Suey," he said, "but your people call
me 'Big Sam.' Won't you step this way?"
He turned back into the dingy shop, passed into a dingy hallway, and led
to a dingy stairway beyond. It was something worse than shabby. I
reflected with wonder that one of the richest of the Chinese, and by
report the most powerful man in Chinatown, should be content to dwell in
such a barn. On the third floor Big Sam opened a door and stood aside
bowing me to enter.
"My office," said he.
As I passed the threshold I was overwhelmed with amazement. Instead of
the bare walls and dingy cobwebbed den the entrance had led me to
expect, I was ushered into a room fitted up with a wealth of decoration
and discomfort that was thoroughly oriental. The walls were covered
with woven tapestry, grotesque in figures and bright with colors. Dark
cabinets, rich with carving, stood about the room; the desk and chairs
showed the patient handicraft of the Ancient Empire; the floor was
inlaid with varied woods, and beaten brass and copper were freely used
for decorative effect. To the western mind the colors and the
ornamentation were garish, yet I could see that the fittings were costly
and a striking example of Chinese artistic taste.
Big Sam waved me to a seat and took his place at the desk.
"I assume, Mr. Hampden, that you did not come here out of idle
curiosity?"
"That depends," said I, repressing with difficulty the instinct to
address him in the "pidgin" dialect. "You might call it curiosity, and
idle at that; but it is of some concern to me."
"I can believe it," he said politely.
"But before I enter on the errand that brings me here, I should present
you with my credentials." And I handed him the card from Kendrick.
He scarcely glanced at it.
"Any friend of Mr. Kendrick's is welcome to any service in my power to
give," he said, with a bow.
"I have a paper written in your tongue that I should like explained to
me," I said, bringing forth the sheet and unfolding it.
Big Sam leaned across the desk to receive it. I put it in his hand and
kept one eye on his face, the other on the sheet of paper.
There was no trace of surprise on the bronze mask of the Oriental. For
an instant I thought I could detect a shadow of the stolid "no-sabby"
look of the coolie, but it was gone with the dropping of an eyelid.
There was before me only the grave, impassive face of the Chinese
merchant.
"What is the difficulty?" he asked with a polite smile, after he had
glanced over the paper.
"The difficulty is that none of your countrymen seems to be able to
translate it."
"I can not believe it."
"I have asked a dozen."
"They were very busy." The voice was a combination of assertion and
inquiry, but my ear warned me of something mocking in it, too.
"They concealed it most successfully, if they were," I retorted.
Big Sam smiled again, and took up the paper. It slipped from his hand
and fluttered to the floor.
"Excuse my clumsiness," he said, diving after it.
I sprang around the corner of the desk to assist in recovering it, and
dropped to one knee.
"I beg your pardon," I said, catching at the paper that Big Sam was
stowing away in his capacious sleeve. "I believe this is the document."
And I held it up.
"I think not," said Big Sam, straightening up and looking me blandly in
the eye. "I believe this is it." And he handed me another paper with a
bewildering maze of Chinese characters straggling across it.
I was puzzled and rose, looking first at the sheets of paper and then at
Big Sam. There was a flash of triumph in his eye that made me suspect
that neither sheet was mine, after all. I cursed my ill-luck in not
knowing something of Chinese writing.
"Allow me to assist you," said Big Sam politely. "This is your paper."
And he indicated one of the two in my hand with his long brown finger.
I saw that I was beaten. The clever Oriental had been one too many for
me. I raged inwardly as I looked at that bland, courteous, impassive
face before me, and for an instant thought of attempting to search him
by force. The thought was gone as soon as it came. Even with a fair
field the result of a personal encounter between us would have been in
doubt. Big Sam was a well-built, powerful man, able to give a good
account of himself in a rough-and-tumble fight. But in that den it
would have been madness to raise a finger against him. I should but add
another to the long list of mysterious disappearances. I swallowed my
discomfiture and said as blandly as Big Sam himself:
"If you have no objections I'll take a translation of both documents."
Big Sam paid my request the tribute of a smile. I read in the turn of
his lips a confirmation of my suspicion that neither paper was the one I
had brought.
"Certainly," he said. "I will read them both to you. After that you
can say more wisely which is yours."
He reached out his hand to take one of the papers, when a triple rap
sounded at one of the panels. He straightened up and looked at me
gravely.
"If you have no objections, Mr. Hampden, I shall do a little business.
Can you spare the time for the interruption?"
"Certainly. When shall I come back?" said I, rising.
"Don't move," said the Oriental courteously. "It will be but a few
minutes, and it may interest you." He rapped on the desk before him,
the door swung open, and in filed a dozen or more Chinese.
In the midst of the band were two men whose coarse dark faces stirred a
ripple of memory. Where had I seen them? For a moment I could not
recall them, searching too far back in time to cross their trail. Then
it came to me that these were the two villains who had seized the
Chinese girl across the way but a few minutes before. Their stolid
faces were hardly more expressive than a mask, yet under the "no-sabby"
look there was an indefinable trace of fear. In the rear of the band
was the old man whose girl had been stolen. None of them paid the
slightest attention to my presence, yet I felt well assured that not a
detail of my appearance was lost to them, as they huddled about the desk
before Big Sam.
The face of Big Sam had changed. In place of the bland and courteous
diplomat was the stern judge and ruler. In his eye was the anger that
he could not wholly conceal. His voice gave no sign of emotion. He
spoke in even tones, yet there was a force behind them that made every
word a threat.
It might all have been in dumb show for the understanding I got of it.
On the one side was accusation and reproach. On the other was sullen
excuse and defense. I could see that the anger of Big Sam grew as he
spoke. Then at some denial or evasion of the men before him he clapped
his hands, a door opened and the young girl whose abduction I had
witnessed stepped in. She gave a cry as she saw the two men who had
seized her, and would have shrunk back.
The old man, who had been standing in dejection in the rear of the
crowd, made an inarticulate sound of satisfaction and started toward
her.
Big Sam jumped to his feet; the rage in his eyes overflowed into his
face, and his voice rang out sharply. The girl ran to Big Sam and
clasped her hands, then threw herself on the floor before him.
[Illustration: The girl threw herself on the floor]
At the sound of Big Sam's words the old man stepped back mumbling. Big
Sam waved his hand, the abductors and the old man were led away, and the
girl, with hands clasped, lay bowed to the floor beside me.
The rage slowly faded out of the face of Big Sam. With a word he raised
the girl to her feet, motioned her to a chair and seated himself.
"Of what use is it to hold the power of life and death over men, when
folly and greed are more powerful than your will?"
Big Sam spoke with a smile, but there was a bitterness in his tone.
"Neither money nor fear can put brains into the head of a fool," he
continued, with the same acrid savor to his words. "I suppose you have
hardly understood what has gone on, Mr. Hampden."
"I confess I am much in the dark."
"Necessarily, as you do not understand our language. You saw the
beginning of the trouble. You have seen what followed. I wish you
could tell me the end."
"I'm sorry," I answered, "that I'm not a prophet--"
"It would be worth something to me--to both of us--if you were."
He paused a moment and turned to his charge before he continued: "This
girl, as you may suppose, is a valuable piece of property."
"I had not looked at her in that light."
"A defect of your western training, Mr. Hampden. She belongs to one of
our tongs--or to the leading men of that tong, which amounts to the same
thing. Another tong has been most anxious to secure her, and has
offered as high as three thousand dollars for her possession. It was
refused and four thousand demanded. I interfered so far as to order
that the girl should be reserved until some man offered to make her his
wife. She is pretty--very pretty, to our notions--and I have interested
myself so much in her welfare as to think that she would grace a home.
I suppose I do not need to tell you that the leaders of the two tongs
have no such destiny in view for her."
"Well, no, if rumor does them no injustice," I assented.
"It was promised that I should be obeyed. I have been obeyed for many
months. Yet just at this moment, when it is of the utmost importance
that we should be a peaceful, united body, these dogs of the gutter
start a war between the tongs."
"You have shown your power to end it," I said.
"You are too flattering, I fear," said the King of Chinatown. "Fire in
flax, you say. It is so much easier to keep fire out of flax than to
stamp it out after it starts. It is in my power to punish these men,
but I fear that it is beyond my power to smother their enmity. In the
code of the tongs blood or blood-money must pay for this." He mused for
a little and seemed to be speaking to himself as much as to me. "That
this should happen at such a time, when everything depends on our
self-control! It is shameful--shameful--a reproach to our race."
"At such a time? I do not understand you," I ventured. The hint in his
words was too plain to miss.
He looked at me sharply.
"You do not know what is going on in your own city, Mr. Hampden," he
said politely.
"I confess to a lack of information on the point you mention."
"It will be brought to your attention later," said Big Sam dryly. "But
I am detaining you with matters of no interest. You wished a
translation of these papers?"
His face was bland and impassive, yet I had the impression that he felt
he had said too much.
"It has been deeply interesting," I said. "But I am imposing on your
good nature." It was of no use to seek to learn from Big Sam anything
that he thought fit to conceal, and I placed the slips before him.
He read them off gravely. One was a polite note of invitation to
dinner. The other a memorandum of goods bought, or to be bought.