to yours we this day instructed to remind you that your presence is more
than agreeable. Having placed to your credit a money sum drawn
according to ticket, should be your worshipful servant to have presented
for payment.
As ever your faithful,
KWAN LUEY & Co.
This missive, written in a beautiful Spencerian hand, was for some
minutes a puzzle. I read over its tangle-worded lines two or three
times before it dawned upon me that it must concern the lottery ticket
that I had purchased in Peter Bolton's office. The ticket had been
handed to me with the promise that I should have "heap big money," and I
drew from the letter's flowery but uncertain language the inference that
the promise had been fulfilled. If confirmation had been necessary, the
letter confirmed the testimony of my eyes when they had assured me that
the seller of the ticket was Big Sam. It was impossible that any other
Chinese would have known that I was the holder of the paper, or would
have procured the sending of the derangement of words that had come over
the name of Kwan Luey. As nothing more important called for my
attention I indulged my curiosity by setting put at once for Kwan Luey's
store.
Kwan Luey showed himself superior to any narrow prejudices in regard to
the objects in which it was fitting for a merchant to trade. In one
window he exhibited a fine collection of silks, ebony carvings,
sandal-wood ornaments, and figured Chinese coats. In the other he had
piled all manner of fine porcelain, ivory and lacquered ware. The
counters in the front part of the store showed a similar division of
salable goods. Farther back could be seen mats of rice, boxes of tea,
bags of Chinese roots, and piles of mysterious and uncanny Chinese
edibles. In his office clerks were counting Mexican dollars and packing
them in stout boxes for shipping to China, the earnings of his
countrymen. The closed rear rooms, I surmised, were devoted to the
operation of the two or three lotteries he was reputed to control.
Kwan Luey himself stood just outside his office, a short, well-fed,
well-dressed Chinaman, whose rounded, dark-brown face denoted a cheerful
mind. I called him by name.
"What you wan'?" he asked suspiciously, prepared to deny his identity if
my errand were not to his liking.
I introduced myself, and as my name brought no sign of enlightenment to
his face, I presented his letter as a card of identification.
He gravely read it with all the pride of authorship kindling in his eye,
and as gravely handed it back to me.
"How you like him, eh? Plitty good letteh, eh?"