"Well," she continued, "what I wanted to ask you was this: Do you think
there is any danger to this house from having the Chinese girl here?"
"Why, no; I hardly think so. Big Sam assured me that there was not."
Then, after a moment's hesitation, I added: "While I don't doubt Big
Sam's good faith in the matter, I have taken the precaution to have the
place well guarded. There are four watchmen outside at the present
moment--unless I underestimate the attractions of the corner grocery;
and the highbinder who tries to get in will have the warmest five
minutes of his life."
"How kind of you to attend to that!" said Miss Fillmore. "But I wasn't
thinking of the highbinders. What set me to asking you was a meeting I
had with Mr. Parks to-day."
"Parks!" I exclaimed in surprise. "You know him?"
"Oh, yes, indeed. We were children together, and I count him as a good
friend." A blush that tinted her cheeks suggested that the friendship
was a little nearer than she would have me believe.
"Then I wish you would get him to cut his hair! I think it would save
him from getting hanged."
"How absurd you are!"
"Merely an application of the theory of clothes--_Sartor Resartus_, and
all that, you know. Dress to a part, and you get the spirit of it."
"You are joking," said Miss Fillmore, with the seriousness of one to
whom the sense of humor is beyond understanding.
"Not at all," I returned. "If Parks came down to the normal supply of
hair he might get rid of some abnormal ideas that are going to bring him
into trouble."
Miss Fillmore looked at me doubtfully a moment, and again expressed her
opinion that I was joking. Then she put aside the subject as one beyond
her comprehension, and continued:
"But never mind. I met him this afternoon when I was out taking the
air, and he said that there was going to be trouble in the city, and
asked if we kept any Chinese servants."
"Yes? And if you did--?"
"Well, we don't, and I told him so, and he said if we did we had better
turn them away in a hurry. Then he went on to tell me that there was
going to be an uprising of the people, and that the unemployed might
make an attack on the Chinese and those who hire them. Now, do you
think that the presence of our poor little Moon Ying will bring the mob
here?"
"Mr. Parks could answer that question much better than I."
"I asked him, and he said 'Oh, no'--that his people were not warring on
women or the sick; but I feared he was too hopeful."
"I do not think there is the slightest danger," I replied. "If Mr.
Parks' friends get to be too obstreperous, the police will make short
work of them. But I don't think they are enterprising enough to get so
far away from Tar Flat." I spoke with a confidence that was more
assumed than real.
"Oh, indeed they are. There was some one here to-day about the matter.
Laura, my dear," she said, raising her voice and earning a frown from
Mr. Baldwin by breaking into his monopoly; "Laura, my dear, didn't you
say there was some one here to-day inquiring about Chinese?"
"Indeed there was," said Miss Laura, emphasizing the statement with an
indignant nod. "He was a very disagreeable man, and insisted on seeing
the lady of the house, so at last I went to the door. I found him
horribly impolite. I had to tell him three times that I was the lady
before he would believe me."
"What sort of looking man was he? And what did he say?" I asked.
"Oh, he was well-looking enough--a man of good size, about thirty, with
a black mustache and an insolent way. What he said was that he hoped we
didn't employ any Chinese. I just told him that I was much obliged to
him for his interest in us, but as I couldn't see that it concerned him
I would ask to be excused. Then he got saucy, and said that if I
wouldn't listen to him I would have to listen to a mob--that wasn't what
he called it, but that's what he meant. He said he was a delegate from
some anti-coolie club or convention, or something of the sort, with a
hundred thousand members, and they were going to see that the Chinese
were discharged and white men put in their places."
"That's rather a large contract," said Mr. Baldwin. "I hope you shut the
door in his face. I should like to have given employment to one white
man to boot him off the place."
"Well," continued Miss Kendrick, "I was too mad to tell him that uncle
is so opposed to the Chinese that he's never allowed one about the
house. I just said that we hadn't any Chinese now, but if he would come
around in about two weeks we would try to accommodate him."
"A soft answer," I said. "I hope it turned away wrath."
"Well, he got saucier, and I told him to go, and he went. I'm afraid I
wasn't polite. But I'm as sorry as sorry can be now, for he told me he
had been out of work for six months because the Chinese had taken the
factory that had employed him, and I'm sure it is a very unpleasant
thing to be turned out of the place where you make your living." Miss
Kendrick's voice had softened with her last words, and the light of
womanly sympathy shone in her eyes.
"You are right, my dear," said Miss Fillmore. "It has been a hard year
for many. We have been appealed to by scores of men who have been
turned out of one place and could find no other."
"Serves 'em right," said Mr. Baldwin shortly. "If they can't keep their
jobs, they ought to lose them. This talk about Chinese competition is
absolute nonsense. A competent man can find work any time. The
anti-Chinese howl comes from the fellows who don't want to work, and
wouldn't work if there wasn't a Chinaman within eight thousand miles."
"I hope you are right," said Miss Kendrick. "It isn't good for the
spirits to think of men going hungry when they are willing to labor."
"You needn't distress yourself, Miss Laura," said Mr. Baldwin, with an
air of contempt for the difficulties of the unemployed. "You couldn't
drive those fellows to work with a Gatling gun. This talk about Chinese
taking away their jobs is just an excuse for them to get out on street
corners and howl about their wrongs, in the hope that somebody like you
and Mercy will set up a soup-house for them."
"I am afraid you haven't looked into the matter," said Miss Fillmore.
"Our Helping Hand Society has found much real distress from want of
employment. You don't agree with Mr. Baldwin, do you, Mr. Hampden?"
"Certainly not," said I, with some irritation at Mr. Baldwin's scornful
airs. "The anti-Chinese cry may have been taken up by those who had
rather talk than work, but there is plenty of foundation for the
statement that the Chinese are driving white men out of employment."
"I have found nothing of the sort in my experience," said Mr. Baldwin
contemptuously.
"Well, your experience is not that of men in business," I returned
warmly. "You will find that class for class the Chinaman can run the
white man out of any line he enters. The Chinese laborer can work and
live on less wages than the white laborer; the Chinese merchant can grow
wealthy in a market that would throw the white merchant into bankruptcy,
and the Chinese manufacturer thrives under conditions that drive his
white competitor to the wall."
"What do you mean by talking that way, Hampden?" cried Mr. Baldwin with
irritation. "You know well enough that you're not serious. It's
impossible."
A sharp answer was on the tip of my tongue when Miss Kendrick
interposed.
"That will do for a very stupid debate," she said. "You can put the rest
of it in the papers. I think I hear the doctor, and I want Mr. Hampden
to come and see him." And with a peremptory wave of her hand she rose,
and I followed her out into the hall. As the door closed she dropped her
commanding manner. "Do you know it is ten o'clock?" she said, "and
uncle hasn't come in yet." Her tone was troubled.
"Is it anything unusual?" I asked.
"I suppose you think it's a case of nerves," she said, "and maybe it is.
But I shouldn't worry if he hadn't sent word to me that he would be here
by nine. I'm afraid something has happened, and I want you to see about
it."
"Have you any idea where he went?"
"He spoke of going to Mr. Coleman's."
"William T. Coleman's?"
"Yes."
"Well, that will be a good place to start a search, then." And I
secured my hat.
"It's good of you to go," said Miss Kendrick.
"Am I forgiven?" I asked, taking the small hand that lay so temptingly
near my own, and bending over it.
"There, that will do," she said, snatching her hand away and retreating
in some confusion. "Your pardon for being an obstinate man-creature is
signed, and you'd better not imperil it by any Louis Quatorze manners.
And I'm sure you'd better not waste any more time."
Once out of the house my fears for Wharton Kendrick became more lively,
and I hastened to the Coleman residence.
"Take my card to Colonel Kendrick," I said briskly to the man who opened
the door.
He looked at it doubtfully a moment. But my assured air, and the
"Attorney at law" that announced my business in unmistakable type
impressed him, and he called a fellow servant to his side, gave him the
card with a word of instruction, and advised me to be seated.
After a few minutes of waiting I wondered whether I would not have done
better, after all, to ask speech with the master of the house, and I was
just on the point of requesting the Cerberus to take my name to Mr.
Coleman, when my dubitations were cut short by the opening of a door,
and a sudden outburst of voices, which softened to an indistinguishable
murmur as it closed again, and Colonel Kendrick came walking down the
hall.
"Ah, Hampden," he said gravely, stroking his flame-tinted whiskers, "I'm
not sure whether I am glad to see you or not. What has happened?
Anything?"
"Well, I'm in no doubt about being glad to see you," I returned. "I've
been suspecting you were knocked on the head."
"Pooh!" said Wharton Kendrick. "I'm in no danger. Don't worry about me.
What you want to do is to find out what the other fellow is doing. Can
you tell me that?"
"Certainly. He left his office at six o'clock, went directly to his
house, and hasn't stirred out of it since."
"Very good. Now, I believe you had something to tell me." And his eye
wandered uneasily to the door from behind which the confused murmur
swelled with tantalizing indistinctness.
"Yes: I have been hunting you all day to tell you that I received word
this morning that the Council of Nine had bought a thousand rifles."
This bit of news brought no answering sign of surprise on the face of my
client.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I wasn't much behind you in getting the
information. I heard about it this afternoon on the street."
"On the street!" I exclaimed. "It was told to me as a profound secret."
It seemed an altogether perplexing thing that the information that Clark
had considered it death to reveal should be the talk of commercial San
Francisco.
"Well," said Wharton Kendrick with a smile, "if it's a secret it's one
that needs a good deal of help in keeping it. I heard it from a dozen
different directions."
"There will be some astonished men in the Council if they hear of this
report," I said.
A grim smile wrinkled Wharton Kendrick's ruddy cheeks, and drove for a
moment the thoughtful look from his eyes. He put his hands in his
pockets and threw himself back in his chair.
"Well," he said, "you can expect them to have an attack of heart disease
at the breakfast-table then. It will all be in the papers in the
morning. But, to tell the truth, I got the impression that the nine
members of the Council and all their friends were giving their afternoon
to circulating the report."