"And I've got a little legal business to attend to," he continued, "and
I want to know what you'd consider a fair fee."
"Why," I said, "it depends, for one thing, on the work to be done, and
for another on the amount of money we think the fellow has."
Peter Bolton looked at me in alarm.
"Oh, I have very little money, very little money," he said quickly.
"Except for such little items as five hundred thousand in Kendrick's
notes, that you were just mentioning."
"Oh, them. Well, I'm expecting to lose that money, and a man who loses
five hundred thousand feels pretty tight pinched."
"Now, as for the work to be done, if it were overlooking the Council of
Nine and the anti-coolie agitation--"
"Anti-coolie agitation!" he exclaimed angrily. "I don't know anything
about an anti-coolie agitation."
"Oh," said I apologetically, "I supposed you knew what Waldorf and Parks
and Kearney were doing with the money you gave them. Didn't they tell
you about it when they were here last night?"
"I don't know what you are talking about!" he cried angrily, but I read
in his eyes anxiety and surprise at the accuracy of my information.
"Now if it were looking after them, I should want a larger fee than for
looking after your plans with Big Sam."
A shade of gray passed over his face, and he held up one hand and gave
me a malevolent look.
"Young Men talk a Good Deal of Nonsense," he said. "Now if you're
through with your joke, we'll go back to talking Business." His
sardonic voice showed that he was again thoroughly in command of
himself, but I felt convinced that he was more eager than ever to secure
my services. "Now what's your figure?"
"You haven't told me yet what you expect me to do."
He looked about cautiously, and then studied my face for a little before
he replied.
"I'll tell you what it is," he said slowly. "You are in charge of
Kendrick's campaign. I want you to stay in charge of it, but to run it
according to My orders instead of according to His orders."
"How long do you think I could keep the job on those terms?" I asked.
"You've known Mr. Kendrick forty or fifty years. You must have got the
impression in that time that he isn't altogether a fool. How long do you
think he would stand it? About long enough to kick me out of his
office, wouldn't he?"
"He'll stand it long enough to suit My purpose," replied Peter Bolton,
his sardonic smile tightening the corners of his mouth. "My orders will
be His orders until the day comes that I am ready to put my hand on
him." He reached out his long, bony fingers cautiously, and then
brought his palm down on his desk with a thump as though he were
catching a luckless fly. "When the time comes, an hour will be enough,"
he continued. "All I want you to do is to bring His orders to Me,
before you carry them out. Then do as I tell you." His jaws closed
with a snap, as though they were a trap, and Wharton Kendrick were
between them.
"That sort of legal advice is worth a good deal of money," I said. "You
can afford to pay well for it, for you'll make a big clean-up. I'll
have to be paid well for it, for if it were to be found out, I could
never do any more business in this town."
Peter Bolton gave me a shrewd look, as though he thought he was sure of
me.
"I offered you Ten Thousand Dollars," he said, trying to make the sum
sound very large, "but I won't stick at a thousand or two more. I'm not
a close man with those I like--"
"It's worth a good deal more," I interrupted. He looked disappointed.
Then he studied the desk, and appeared to be making up his mind to some
great sacrifice.
"Well," he said slowly and grudgingly, "name your figure."
"I should think fifty thousand dollars was about right."
Peter Bolton gave a shudder, and pondered for a little. Then the shrewd
look came again into his eyes, and he said:
"I'll be liberal, and give you more than it's worth. I'll pay you One
Thousand Dollars a week for the next four weeks, and on the day that
Wharton Kendrick makes his assignment, I'll give you Twenty-Five
Thousand Dollars. I wouldn't do it for any one else, but I want to see
that you don't lose anything."
I understood from this outburst of verbal generosity how much he
overestimated my share in Wharton Kendrick's affairs.
"Well, I'll think it over and let you know," I said, rising to escape.
The pressure of my indignation had reached the danger point, and I felt
that if I sat there another minute my honest opinion would burst forth
in words that would put an end to further hopes of getting any
revelations out of him.
"You'd better take it now," he urged, with a shadow of disappointment on
his face. "It's a good offer, and I might find some one else to take it
up by to-morrow."
"Oh, I'll take the risk," I returned. "I have a monopoly on this
business, and you know it, and I can take what time I please."
"Just as you like, young man, just as you like," he said in his
sarcastic drawl. "But look out for your own interests. If you don't, I
can tell you that Wharton Kendrick won't."
Before he could deliver another homily on the folly of honesty and the
importance of pursuing the interests of Number One, I hastened out of
the office, with the thought that I had penetrated far into the evil
designs of Peter Bolton at the cost of a good deal of self-respect.
I soothed my indignant spirit with a walk that gave me time to assure
myself that no spy was following me, and then bent my steps to Wharton
Kendrick's offices to lay the case before my client. The accumulation of
five hundred thousand dollars' worth of his notes in Peter Bolton's
hands seemed to be a matter that might call for very serious
consideration.
I found Wharton Kendrick in his private room in converse with General
Wilson, and the discussion appeared to have become heated. General
Wilson's face gleamed like a great carbuncle, and Wharton Kendrick's
ruddy cheeks were ruddier than ever with signs of temper.
"You can't do it, Kendrick," General Wilson was saying, with a wave of
the hand. "I've been over every foot of that land that isn't too soft
to stand on, and I'll tell you that you can't put in any such works."
"I've had two first-class engineers go over it," replied Wharton
Kendrick with equal positiveness, "and they say it can be done."
"Engineers--engineers! What are they worth?" snorted General Wilson
scornfully. "I've got two eyes, and they are good enough engineers for
me."
"You'll find 'em mighty expensive ones if you try to do business on
their estimates," said Wharton Kendrick grimly. "Experts come high, but
they are cheaper than your own guesswork. You can count it liberal of
me to give you that information for nothing, for it cost me over two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
"It's no use talking, Kendrick," said General Wilson positively. "When
I'm right I know it, and all creation can't move me. That land of yours
is no good to us unless we can get Bolton's piece with it. The two have
got to be improved together or not at all. I'll tell you right now that
the company won't pay any such price for your piece unless it can get
the other, and Bolton won't sell just because he knows we've got to have
it to make it a success."
"What's that?" exclaimed Kendrick, looking grave. "Bolton won't sell?"
General Wilson repeated his statement with characteristic vehemence.
"Did Bolton tell you that?"
"He couldn't have made it plainer if he had said it right out in so many
words. He raised his price at the rate of a hundred thousand dollars a
minute as soon as he heard that we wanted your land."
"Ah, yes. I remember now that Hampden was telling me something of the
sort." Wharton Kendrick shook his head over the information, and then
turned to me. "Was there something you wanted?"
"Well," I said, hesitating in some embarrassment at General Wilson's
presence, "I had an interview with a friend of yours this afternoon."
The intonation in my voice was enough to give a hint of the identity of
the friend, and he nodded his head in comprehension.
"Well, come up to the house to-night, and give me the whole story.
It'll keep till then, won't it? By the way, what was that hullaballoo
around the place last night? It waked me up, but I was too lazy to turn
out and take a hand in it."
"Perhaps you heard my men when they caught three fellows climbing over
the back fence, along in the early hours this morning. I don't think of
anything else that happened."
"Well, upon my soul," gasped General Wilson, "isn't that enough? Good
heavens, young man, you speak as though it was something a gentleman
might expect as a common attention from his neighbors!"
"It's a first experience," said Wharton Kendrick with a jovial laugh.
"But why didn't you tell me about it? If I'm an attraction to burglars,
I think I'm entitled to know it."
"I didn't intend to make a secret of it; but you weren't in when I
called this morning. Besides, I haven't run the thing down to its
source and origin."
General Wilson's red face flamed with wonder and he stared at me from
under his bushy brows.
"Are you trying to tell us that they weren't burglars?" He fired the
question at me very much as if it were a revolver, with the professional
air of a lawyer who has caught a witness trying to deceive.
"To be truthful, I was trying not to tell you," I replied. "But if you
put it to me direct, I should say they were not."
"Fire away," said Kendrick, as I paused. "There's nothing about it that
Wilson shouldn't hear."
"Well," I continued, "two of them got away, but the boys held on to the
third, and hauled me out of bed at three o'clock this morning to find
out what was to be done with him. He protested that he was an innocent
citizen on his way home from an over-convivial evening. But as he
couldn't explain what he was doing in your back yard at that time of
night, we took him down to the police station. Instead of finding him
in the jailbird class, he turned out to be a small politician out of a
job. Just now he figures as sergeant-at-arms of the Twelfth Ward
Anti-Coolie Club."
"The Anti-Coolie Club?" said Wharton Kendrick, wrinkling his brows. "I
don't see what an anti-coolie club could want to do to me. I'm pretty
well qualified for membership myself."
General Wilson's face flamed redder than before, in the frame of his
aggressive side-whiskers, and he smote the desk with his fist.
"Good Lord, Kendrick! You don't mean to tell me that you take any stock
in such riotous nonsense as these anti-coolie fellows here are getting
off! Why, I was listening to one of them last night, and he roared like
a bull-calf about the Chinese taking the bread out of the hands of the
workmen, and split his lungs telling that the heathen must be driven
into the sea. Why, sir, he made my blood boil, and if I was made
provost-marshal of this town for one day, I'd bundle him and his crew
down to the docks, and have them sailing over sea before night came."
Wharton Kendrick gave a good-humored laugh.
"My dear Wilson, I don't take much stock in the loud-mouthed orators,
but I say, with them, that if we are to have the choice of a white or a
yellow civilization in California, my vote goes to the white."
"Stuff and nonsense!" cried General Wilson, thumping the desk once more.
"Why, my dear sir, you challenge the fundamental principles of this
government when you say we must shut out these men merely because their
skins are yellow. Why, sir, it is to our advantage, not to our
detriment, that they work for small wages. The lower their wages, the
less money they take out of the country, and when they go home they
leave behind them the great works they have accomplished. God has given
you illimitable resources, and you are crying out for hands to develop
them, and here you are, ready to shut out the most plentiful and
cheapest supply of labor that exists on the face of the green earth.
It's against business principles and it's against the principles of
humanity, and you can never do it, sir--never."
"Oh, fudge, Wilson, you don't know anything about the problem, and yet
you come here telling us old Californians what we ought to think about
it. I'll admit anything you say in favor of the coolies. They're
industrious and faithful and cheap; but they're more than that. The
Chinese can drive us out of any line they want to take up. I've seen
that done too many times to doubt it any longer."
"Well, if they can do it, why shouldn't they?" cried General Wilson.
"Survival of the fittest--isn't that the law of nature? If the white
race can't stand the competition, let it perish. But it won't perish.
It'll manufacture things to sell to the Chinese, and trade will go on
whether the white or the yellow man settles this coast."
"That may be all right for you fellows in the East; but even there
you'll be hit. Just ask yourself which would be more profitable as
customers, a million Chinese who spend ten cents a day on their
supplies, or a million whites who spend a dollar?"
"Sophistry, sophistry, Kendrick!" puffed the general, apparently
impressed by the illustration. "But why go after the Chinese alone? I
was in Castle Garden a month ago, and the fellows they let through there
are every whit as un-American as the Chinese. Why don't you holler
about them?"
"Why," said Kendrick, "we're hollering about the pigs in our corn.
You're the fellows to look out for the other side of the continent."
"Why don't we try to keep them out?" cried General Wilson. "Why, it's
because we've got to have cheap labor for our mines and mills and
railroads. We need it just as we need machinery, and we've got to take
the disadvantages with the benefits, and no loud-mouthed agitator can
deprive us of the right to get our workmen in the cheapest market. It's
the law of trade, the fundamental principle at the bottom of political
economy--the science on which the development of civilization must
depend--"
General Wilson's oration was suddenly cut short by an outburst of sound
from the street below, and with common instinct we hastened to the
window to view the cause of the hubbub. On the pavement was a crowd of
five or six hundred men, moving slowly up California Street, circling
with cries of anger or derision about some indistinguishable center of
attraction. The outer fringe of the crowd was constantly breaking into
sprays of individuals who ran forward to secure a position in front,
while those behind tried to leap on the shoulders of those before them,
and the center was an effervescent mass of arms, heads and clubs.
The nucleus of disturbance, I was at last able to make out, was composed
of two policemen dragging a hatless man between them.
"Oh," said Wharton Kendrick, "it's nothing worse than an attempt to
lynch some fellow who's been caught at his crime. I suppose he's killed
a woman, or something of the sort. But the police will get him to
prison easily enough. There's never nerve enough in one of these crowds
to take such a fellow and hang him."
"They ought to string 'em up on the spot," snapped General Wilson. Then
repenting suddenly of this unprofessional exclamation, he added: "But
the majesty of the law must be upheld. It is the shield of the innocent
and the sword of the righteous."
"Um-m, yes, I suppose so," said Kendrick doubtingly. "But all this
doesn't settle that matter of the tule tract. I'll see you to-night,
Hampden. The general and I must talk business now."
*CHAPTER XV*
*A RIPPLE OF TROUBLE*
The brawling of many voices filled the air as I ran down the stairs,
spurred by curiosity and by a vague, subconscious misgiving that the
event was of more than impersonal interest. When I reached the entrance
the circling crowd was halted in a mass of struggling men, and the
hoarse roar that issued from it vibrated with the indefinable yet
definite thrill of savage anger. Police whistles were blowing, men were
running from all directions to get sight of the struggle, blows given
and taken could be heard amid sounds of curses and exclamations of pain,
and the centers of disturbance became pyramids of squirming, struggling
mankind.
As I reached the street, Parks burst out of the crowd, his hat gone, his
long hair tumbled in aggressive disorder, his face flushed, and his
clothing bearing evidences of his violent passage through the mob.
Behind him came Seabert, whom I knew for a member of the Council of
Nine. Between them they dragged and pushed an old man, white-faced,
frightened, who looked in helpless amazement on the turbulence about
him. The old man's face stirred vague reminiscence of the familiar, but
for the moment I could not trace these promptings of memory to their
source.
"Here!" cried Parks, as they burst out of the struggling circle and
flung their burden into the hands of a knot of men who stood by an
express-wagon near at hand, "get him down to Number Two."
As the old man was sent staggering forward, helpless, trembling,
perplexed, the men circled around him, lifted him in their arms, and in
a moment had climbed into the wagon and were going on a gallop down
California Street.
It had all been done in the time I had taken to pass from the door of
the office building to the edge of the sidewalk. I pushed into the
roadway and hailed Parks by name. He had snatched a hat from one of the
men who climbed into the wagon, and was hastily removing the signs of
conflict from his dress.
"What's the matter here?" I cried, when I saw that he recognized me.
"Matter!" he cried. "Matter enough! There has been an interference
with the natural right of a man to present his grievance to his
fellow-man. It has been properly resented."
"I don't understand you," I said. "Who was the old man you rescued from
the mob?"
Parks looked at me in surprise. "Rescued from the mob!" he exclaimed.
"Why, the mob--but wait a minute, and I'll tell you about it."
He turned as he spoke.
"Stop that fighting!" he shouted. And at his word a score of men lent
their efforts to the task of separating the struggling, wrestling
groups, raising the prostrate and quieting the violent.
The efforts of the peacemakers were signally assisted by the sudden
appearance of a squad of police coming on the run around the corner from
Montgomery Street. As the guardians of order were strong of limb, and
were armed with heavy clubs, they had exemplary success in quieting the
refractory, and satisfying those whose appetite for fighting was still
unsated.
At the sight of the police, Parks took me by the arm and drew me quietly
down the block and around the corner into Sansome Street.
"What was the trouble about, and who was the old man?" I asked.
"Why, that was Merwin," said Parks in a tone of surprise. "You ought to
recollect him."
At the name I remembered the quiet, dreamy old man of my visit to the
House of Blazes, and recalled the history of his life-wreck which was
wrapped up in the volumes of legal lore that went under the title of
Merwin versus Bolton.
"What had Merwin been doing to get the mob after him?" I asked.
"To get the mob after him!" exclaimed Parks in great indignation. "To
get the police after him, you mean."
"The police!" I exclaimed in my turn. "Oh, he was the man under arrest,
then?"
"It was an outrage of arbitrary power," said Parks, flushing angrily,
"and the people have shown what they think of it. He has been taken out
of the hands of those petty tyrants, and it will be a long time before
he falls into them again."
"What was the charge?" I asked, at a loss to imagine what crime could
have been committed by this inoffensive wreck of a man.
"He was arrested," said Parks indignantly, "for exercising the right of
free speech."
"Free speech is rather an elastic term," I said. "What was he talking
about?"
"The only thing he knows anything about," said Parks. "That's his
case."
"Well, it is a subject that might call out rather strong language, but I
don't see just how that could bring him afoul of the police."
"Sir," cried Parks, "it could happen only through the exercise of
arbitrary power. The point of the thing is that the Supreme Court this
afternoon handed down its sixth decision in his suit against Bolton.
The judgment against Bolton is reversed, and the case sent back for a
new trial."
"What a shame!" I said, remembering the justice of Merwin's claim, the
ruin of his life, and his long fight against the wealth and malignity of
Peter Bolton.
"It is outrageous!" exclaimed Parks vehemently; "as scandalous as the
open sale of justice to the highest bidder. Those men should be dragged
from the bench, and driven through the streets in a cart, with their
price for rendering such a judgment placarded on their backs. The
judges were bought and justice was sold."
"No, no," I protested. "The men on the bench may be wrong-headed,
small-minded, pettifogging, but not corrupt--believe me, not corrupt."
Parks looked at me with a pitying shake of his head.
"You are welcome to your opinion," he said, "but it isn't mine.
However, it doesn't matter. The court has driven another nail in the
coffin of the present social order."
"But how did this decision get Merwin into the hands of the police? Did
he go around to the courtrooms and tell the justices what he thought of
them?"
"No, indeed!" said Parks indignantly, "though I shouldn't have blamed
him if he had. He got up at our water-front meeting and, for the first
time since I've known him, made a speech. It came hot from his tongue,
too, telling the plain story of his case to his fellow-citizens. And
what did the police do? Why, they arrested him for trying to incite a
riot!"
Parks paused as though waiting for my opinion on this exercise of police
power.
"Well," I admitted, "the plain story of the case of Merwin against
Bolton might very well sound like an attempt to stir the mob to
violence."
"It makes my blood boil, Hampden," cried Parks. "It's the stuff that
revolutions are made of. The hirelings of Nob Hill know it, and that is
why they trampled on the liberties of speech in the attempt to shut the
mouth of the injured man."
"Go on with your story. What happened after he was arrested?"
"Why, I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly how it was. But when
Merwin was dragged off the cart, one of the boys ran over to
headquarters with the news. As soon as I heard what was being done, I
hurried over here with such men as I could get together. We found a big
crowd following the two policemen who were dragging Merwin between them,
but the men didn't know how to do anything but holler and ba-a. So I
passed around the word that Merwin was to be taken out of the hands of
the police. The crowd was ready to follow if any one would take the
lead; so when I gave the signal the police were tumbled over in just one
minute by the clock, we hustled our man to the wagon, and now I've had
Merwin taken to a safe place."
"My sympathies are with Merwin," I said, "but this rescue is a more
serious matter than the arrest. It is resistance to the constituted
authority of the law."
"The constituted authority of the law!" said Parks contemptuously.
"That's not the last resistance that will be roused against its tyranny
and injustice. The day is at hand, sir, when this constituted authority
of the law, as you call it, will be overthrown and scattered as easily
as it was overturned a few minutes ago in the persons of its petty
tyrants. Then a new and better authority will rise, founded on the will
of the people, responsive to the people's needs, and protecting the
people's interests."
Parks had begun in a low tone of voice, as befitted one who had reasons
for avoiding notice; but with his closing words he was once more the
orator and prophet of the agitators, and I gave him a word of caution to
save his breath for a less dangerous occasion. I saw nothing to be
gained by arguing with him the folly of his plans of revolution. I
could not hope to turn him from his purposes, and would only shut myself
out from the chance of getting further information from him. Therefore
I suppressed the remonstrance and advice that rose to my lips, and asked
instead how the movement was progressing.
"Splendidly," replied Parks, with an enthusiastic shake of his head.
"The cause of the people is advancing by leaps and bounds. Men are
awakening to their rights, and responding to the efforts for their
betterment. Our organization has gone into every district in the city.
By to-morrow we shall be five thousand strong. Next week we extend our
propaganda outside of San Francisco, and shall proceed to establish
branches in every town in the state. To-night we invade the stronghold
of aristocracy. At eight o'clock we hold a meeting on Nob Hill, at the
corner of California and Mason Streets, to tell the nabobs what we think
of them."
We had reached the corner of Market and Sansome Streets and had halted
for a little, when a hot and breathless man overtook us, and tapped
Parks on the shoulder. For an instant the enthusiast thought that he
was under arrest, for he whirled about with a fierce and determined
look. If the man had been a policeman he would have had a difficult
prisoner to handle. But there was no hostile intent in his face, and a
look of recognition relaxed the tense lines of determination about
Parks' mouth and eyes as he caught sight of him.
"Egbert and Baumgartner are arrested," whispered the man in gasps; and
he drew Parks aside.
There was a hurried conversation of which I caught but a word now and
then, and I had time to wonder whether Parks would not presently share
the fate of the two men he was now called upon to aid. It was not
unlikely that a man of such conspicuous appearance had been recognized
by the officers when Merwin had been snatched from their grasp. After a
minute of whispered conversation, Parks turned to me, his face lighted
with decision and excitement.
"I must leave you, Hampden," he said. "Let me see you at the meeting on
Nob Hill to-night. The contest between plutocracy and the people may
begin earlier than we have expected."
And with these significant words he set off briskly in the direction of
the House of Blazes.
I digested Parks' hints with my dinner, and, getting no light from them,
I took my way to Wharton Kendrick's house to deliver the postponed
budget of information gained from my visit to Peter Bolton.
The sun had just set upon the long July day, and the bright afterglow
still forbade the use of lamps. And in the misgiving that I should come
upon my client before he had finished his dinner, I was about to
continue my stroll past the house when I saw the door open and some one
walk in. As the door remained hospitably ajar, I changed my intention
and climbed the steps. Before I reached the landing I heard an inner
door close, and a moment later the voice of Miss Kendrick asked:
"Well, what do you want?"
"You Miss Kenlick?" came the reply, with an unmistakable Chinese
intonation.
"Yes, I am Miss Kendrick. What do you want of me?"
"You sabby China gell--nice li'l China gell?" The voice of the Chinaman
was pitched in a fawning tone, offensive in the obsequiousness of its
effort to win the confidence of the hearer.
At the words I was startled with the thought that Big Sam had come to
survey for himself the situation of Moon Ying with a possible view to
her recapture. I was in two minds about my duty in the matter. Had I
obeyed my first impulse I should have walked in and expressed my opinion
of the attempt in unceremonious terms. But second thought suggested
that Miss Kendrick might prefer to manage the affair without
interference. A sudden wish to hear her match her wits against the
diplomacy of the Oriental proved irresistible, and I determined to await
an apparent need for intervention. Her first words reassured me of her
ability to handle the situation.
"No," she replied calmly, with just the suspicion of a tremble in her
voice, "we don't want any Chinese girl."
"No--you sabby gell?" insisted the Chinese voice, with its fawning
emphasis. "Nice li'l China gell?"
If this was Big Sam, I should be compelled to compliment him on a
marvelous control of his vocalization; and in curiosity to see if his
bodily disguise was as complete as that of his voice, I peeped about the
edge of the door till I caught sight of the oriental figure. My first
glimpse of the man assured me that he was not Big Sam. He was small and
bent, and gave an inimitable appearance of age. Whatever his capacity
for masquerade, Big Sam could not have reduced his bulky form to this
figure. The man turned his head a little, and I saw a wizened face,
embellished with a mustache of coarse white hair, and scant
chin-whiskers that might have belonged to an anemic billy-goat.
Miss Kendrick's face was pale, but its firm expression was an index to
her resolve to save Moon Ying from this creature at any cost.
"No," she repeated sharply, "we don't want a Chinese girl--or boy
either. We never hire them. You go now." And with a gesture to the
man-servant who stood beside her, she turned and was gone without a
glance in my direction.
The man-servant, in eager obedience to Miss Kendrick's hint, took the
Chinaman by the shoulders, and amid protesting exclamations of "Wha'
fo'? Wha' fo'?" ran him out of the hall, and started him down the steps,
his speeding word to the departing guest taking the form of: "Get out of
here, John, and if you come back I'll kick you out."
Then suddenly catching sight of me, he recovered his breath and his
dignity with a sudden effort.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hampden," he gasped. "I didn't know you was
here. Mr. Kendrick is just done dinner. He's gone to his smoking-room.
He said if you came I was to show you right in." And with a glance to
see that the Chinaman had reached the sidewalk, he shut the door and led
the way to the master of the house.
I followed him mechanically, but my thoughts were far from the errand of
Peter Bolton's schemes that had brought me hither. An insistent
question ran through my mind in endless variations, but when reduced to
words it took this form: "Where have I seen the face of the old Chinaman
before?"
*CHAPTER XVI*
*LAYING DOWN THE LAW*
Wharton Kendrick sat at his ease in smoking-jacket and slippers, but his
brow was wrinkled with thought. The cigar that he held between his
teeth gave evidence of his discomposure of mind, for it was unlighted,
and one end of it had been reduced to the semblance of a cud. I had
just delivered to him a conscientious account of my interview with Peter
Bolton, and now observed the perturbant reflections that it had stirred.
"Was that all you could get out of the old rascal?" he said after an
interval of silence.
"Why, yes," I replied. "I thought it was a pretty good afternoon's
work; and indeed I am surprised that he told me so much."
"Oh, thunder, Hampden, you're as easily taken in as the rest of 'em.
Didn't I tell you that Peter Bolton is never in the place you're looking
for him?"
"Why," I argued, somewhat piqued at this reception of my budget of
information, "I thought he told a good deal about his plans--in fact,
showed himself a garrulous old foozle instead of the shrewd fox you'd
told me about."
"My dear boy," said Wharton Kendrick with a pitying smile, "I'm grateful
for your zeal, but the only thing he exposed was his desire to get you
to betray me, and I might have guessed that without his telling it."
"But that half-million of notes--"
"Doesn't it strike you, Hampden, that, as a business man, I might be
expected to know something about the notes outstanding against me?
You're right about one thing: I didn't know they had fallen into
Bolton's hands, and I'll have a score to settle with the men who sold
'em to him. But I've got every piece of my paper recorded up here," and
he tapped his forehead, "and I'll be prepared to take care of it as it
falls due."
"Well," I said ruefully, "I'm just one more victim of misplaced
confidence in Peter Bolton."
"Oh, you needn't feel ashamed of that, my boy," said Kendrick kindly.
"Your time wasn't wasted. It's worth while to know that those notes are
in the hands of an enemy. But that's a mere detail. Now if he had told
you how he expects to keep me from meeting them when due--"
Wharton Kendrick left his sentence suspended in the air, while he chewed
his cigar for a minute or two.
"After all, Hampden," he continued, "I suspect he has pushed those notes
forward to draw away attention from his real point of attack. He's
figured on the possibility that you would bring me every word, and has
found something to gain out of it, whether your final decision is to
stand by me or to take up his offer. Now, about that offer? Are you
prepared to accept his twenty-nine thousand for that trifling service he
wants?"
"If I get it, I'll go halves with you when you're broke," I replied with
an attempt at lightness that was far from a success. "But to tell you
the truth, I don't like to discuss the thing, even in joke. It makes my
gorge rise to hear a hint that I could take money for betraying you."
"That's Dick Hampden's son," he returned, his face softening into a
smile. "I could hear your father speaking then. But if you think I am
worrying about your loyalty, just set your mind at rest."