"Remember the number he has been calling out for the last two nights."
"Five-sixteen," I replied confidently.
The guardians of the treasure-house bowed, led me to the vaults and at
my demand unlocked the box.
At the top of the miscellaneous papers that the box contained were two
book-like packages, both marked with the inspiring figures "$500,000."
I tore off the wrapping of the larger package. It was filled with gold
notes of large denominations, and the slip that bound them was indorsed
"For the Syndicate." The other package proved to be filled with United
States bonds. It was all clear now. Wharton Kendrick had deposited his
contribution to the syndicate's fund in this box instead of in the
special account in the Golconda Bank, and had provided here his reserve
of securities with which to meet the outstanding notes.
Laura Kendrick exclaimed with delight at the sight of this wealth.
"Is it all there?" she cried.
"Yes. Here is the full million he has been talking about, and there
seem to be more securities in the box. You have saved the day for us.
We should have gone to wreck without you," I replied.
"Well, I've been fuming and fretting all these days because I was so
useless, but now if you'll take me to the carriage I'll go home with my
self-respect quite restored."
"It was you that made the battle worth while," I murmured.
My return to the office brought an outburst of joy. At my announcement
of the result, Brown jumped up with an enthusiastic whoop, and lumbered
about the room with awkward capers. Then he checked himself suddenly,
and very shamefacedly begged my pardon.
"I haven't done that since I was a boy, sir," he said. And I believed
him.
With the business once more on a solid basis, I walked over to
Partridge's office to relieve his anxiety on the subject of Wharton
Kendrick's solvency. He had gone to the Exchange, and I followed him
thither.
Pine Street was still thrilling with the energy of a steam-engine
working at high pressure. Waves of excitement agitated the crowds that
hung about the entrance of the Stock Exchange, and there was the
familiar succession of roars and barks with which the traders in stocks
find it necessary to transact their business. Yet I thought I saw a
weakening of interest among the speculators--a lessening of the tension
among the excited men who were following the course of the market. I
leaped to the hope that the crisis was passing.
As I reached the steps of the Exchange the confused roar of the crowd
was interrupted. Three short, sharp explosions crackled upon the air
with staccato distinctness and the clamor hushed for a moment with a
suddenness as startling as the shots themselves. A dozen yards down
Pine Street a thin cloud of blueish smoke rose and drifted away on the
morning breeze.
For a moment the crowd surged back as though in fear, and I saw a bent,
white-bearded man standing with a revolver in his hand, looking down at
a prostrate something on the pavement. A few trailing threads of smoke
floated up from the revolver's muzzle. Then there was a forward rush,
and the crowd closed in; but in that momentary glimpse I had recognized
the bent form and dreamy face of Merwin.
The hush gave way to shouts. Men were running from all directions. The
crowd pushed closer. Windows overlooking the place were suddenly filled
with excited observers, questions were eagerly exchanged, and the cry
rose:
"Peter Bolton has been shot!"
At the name of Bolton the blood bounded through my arteries with
suffocating force, and I pushed my way through the throng with feverish
energy. When I broke through the ring that surrounded the prostrate
form, a policeman was just laying his hands on Merwin, and raising his
dub as if to strike him. The old man handed his revolver to the officer,
and cried:
"I am Merwin. He has robbed me of my money for twenty years, and he
said I should die a beggar. And I shot him!"
On the pavement lay Peter Bolton. His hands were pressed to a reddening
circle on his coat, and his face was drawn into an expression of anxious
fear. As I bent over him, a look of recognition flashed into his eyes.
And even in the pangs of dissolution a sardonic smile drew down the
corners of his mouth, while has sarcastic voice, reduced in volume till
it was scarcely more than a whisper, drawled painfully:
"You've missed your chance, Hampden. You'll never get rich now. I
fought--you all--and I've beat--you all."
He paused in weakness, and the murmur of voices about me filled my ears.
There was scarce a sympathetic tone to be heard, and thrice the words
floated to me:
"It's a wonder he didn't get it before."
Peter Bolton had lived without good will to man, and he was dying
without man's regret. He summoned up his failing energies and
continued:
"If I had another day, your--man--Kendrick--would--be--smashed!" The
last word was spoken almost as a hiss. Then the blood welled up in his
throat, and with a convulsive effort to rise he fell back and was still.
The Bolton-Kendrick Feud was over.
*CHAPTER XXXI*
*THE BROKEN WEB*
With the death of Peter Bolton there was an immediate slackening of the
tension in the commercial exchanges. The shock of his sudden end turned
men's minds for a little from the market-place, and when they turned
back it was not the same. The enginery of evil that he had set in
motion to crush Wharton Kendrick ran slower and slower, and at last came
to a stop.
"The El Dorado Bank has thrown up the sponge," said Partridge when I met
him at noon. "They were acting for Bolton more than for themselves in
this deal. Now that the old fox has gone, they have lost stomach for
the fight."
And with this assurance, I walked the street with the buoyancy of heart
that follows a hard-won victory.
I was still in exultant frame of mind when I came a few minutes later
upon the personification of Gloom. It was Parks. His mouth was drawn
down into an expression of somber weariness of the world. A piece of
court-plaster ornamented his cheek; and his right eye was swollen and
discolored until it resembled nothing so much as an overripe tomato.
"Why, what's the matter?" I asked with exuberant spirit. "You look like
the day after the fight."
He looked resentfully at me, with a sad shake of the head.
"Sir," he exclaimed, "it is unfair to jest. I have suffered the burial
of my hopes. I am done with the affairs of life."
"What!" I cried. "Have you given up the revolution? Have you abandoned
the battle for the rights of the people?"
"The people be damned!" responded Parks angrily. "Why should I give my
life to fight for those who won't fight for themselves? Why should I
scheme for the slaves who have not the sense to follow the leaders who
point the way to emancipation? We perfect our plans to free them from
the oppressions of a capitalistic government, and when we call on them
to take arms and follow us they fall to robbing Chinamen. When I appeal
to them to follow me to the City Hall instead of the wash-house, the
response I get is a black eye. That's my reward for devotion to the
rights of the people."
"It must have been a most demonstrative meeting," I replied without a
trace of sympathy, "and it did one good thing, for it knocked some sense
into you."
"Hampden," said Parks, with a lofty air that made a comic contrast with
his flaming eye, "I forgive you the expression. But I assure you I
retract nothing of my views. What I have learned is that the great era
for which I have worked can not be brought about by men who understand
neither their wrongs nor their rights. We must educate them until they
see the truth."
"Oh, then I suppose you are on your way to the City Hall to get your
leather-lunged orator out of jail to resume his teachings?"
Parks flushed angrily.
"Kearney?" he cried. "He can rot in his cell for anything I will do to
get him out. I refuse, sir, to voice the suspicions that I have been
forced to entertain, but he is a hindrance, not an aid to the cause of
the people. They must be taught the large truths, not the little
truths, if they are to act wisely. Let us not mention his name."
I left Parks at the corner of Kearny and Merchant Streets, and walking
down to the door of the City Prison, applied for permission to see the
prisoner I had captured in the final riot above the Mail docks. The
death of Peter Bolton made it likely that I could induce him to answer
the questions he had flouted the previous night.
I was admitted without difficulty, and found the cages filled with
scores of men herded together into brutal contiguousness.
It was impossible to examine the prisoner before these cell-mates, but
by the exercise of diplomacy I secured the privilege of talking with him
in the comparative quiet of the Receiving Hospital. The man was brought
shambling in, cast an impudent glance at me, and then looked sullenly at
the floor. His pale face and sunken eyes and cheeks betrayed the opium
smoker, and his manner was that of the hoodlum.
"You had better make a clean breast of it," I exhorted him. "I suppose
you know that Bolton is dead."
"Yep," he said uneasily. "The old rooster that done for him was in
here. He didn't look like he'd nerve enough to kill a cat."
"Well, I warn you that you have no one to protect you now, and your only
chance of getting off with a light punishment is to answer my questions
and tell the truth."
"Ask what you like, cully," he replied with an impudent leer. "You can
bet I'm too fly to give up anything I ain't wanting you to know. I
ain't a-goin' to split on the man that paid me, even if he has gone to
the morgue. I'm game, I am." And he straightened himself with a
pitiful exhibition of the criminal's pride.
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of giving away Bolton's secrets," I said. "I
know more about them than you do." And I mentioned several incidents of
his employment that made his eyes open and his face pale with the fear
that he was caught beyond escape. "What I want you to tell me is what
Bolton was doing with Big Sam?"
The spy looked sullenly at the floor, and shook his head. And it was
not until I had threatened to put a charge of attempt to murder against
him that he replied:
"Well, I don't see as there's any harm in tipping it off to youse on
that. The old rat's game was to get Big Sam to put up money for them
crazy bunko-men on the Council of Nine. He done it, too. I'll bet he
got the coolie to put up as much as he gave himself."
"Did you take the money from Big Sam to Bolton?"
"Me? Not much! They was too fly to let me get my nippers on it. I was
plain messenger-boy--that's what I was--and I carried a lot of talk
about what the Council was going to do. You knows all that game. If
youse want it, I can give youse a yard of it now."
I could well believe that this creature was not trusted with any of the
purposes that these men had in their alliance. So I turned to the
question:
"What was that Chinese paper in the pocket of the overcoat you left with
me that night you tried to kill me when I chased you out of Mr.
Kendrick's yard?"
"Oh, youse is the feller that got that coat, are you? Well, that paper
was just an order or ticket that would let me into Big Sam's tong house
when the tong was meeting--so as I could see him without losing time.
It wasn't no use to me; but Big Sam let on he was giving me first cousin
to the Mint when he passed it over."
Nothing more was to be got out of this man, so I left the fetid prison,
and followed up the line of inquiry by seeking Big Sam.
I found him just entering the store that led to his dwelling. He
received me with courtesy, but there was a trace of suspicion in his
eyes as he invited me to follow him to his office.
"I suppose I do not bring news in telling you that our mutual
acquaintance, Mr. Peter Bolton, is no more," I said, as we entered the
oriental hall. In that room with its intricate ornamentation, its
grotesque carvings and garish hangings, Peter Bolton and the troubled
city of San Francisco seemed thousands of miles away, and I felt like a
traveler in Cathay, who had come overseas bearing news of distant
countries.
"You are not the first to tell me," said Big Sam. "I had the regret of
hearing it some hours ago."
"It was a sad loss to the Council of Nine," I said, watching narrowly if
the name brought any change of expression to his face. But no shadow
crossed the yellow mask with which he concealed his thoughts.
"I am not familiar with Mr. Bolton's relations with society," said Big
Sam blandly. "But I'm sorry to have lost a good customer."
It was hopeless to study that changeless mask--hopeless to seek to match
the Oriental in guile. So I abandoned the task and asked bluntly:
"Now that Peter Bolton is dead, and the Council of Nine is in jail, and
the conspiracy is smashed beyond repair, would you mind telling me why
you contributed money to such a harebrained scheme?"
"Your question makes an unwarranted assumption," said Big Sam dryly. "I
know nothing about contributing money to Councils of Nine, or other
harebrained revolutionists."
"Oh," I said, "you need not fear that I am asking this in the character
of a public prosecutor. It is merely a feeling of private curiosity.
In protecting Mr. Kendrick's affairs I have learned most of the inside
history of the movement. And I should really like to know what led a
man of your intelligence to further a cause that was apparently so
opposed to his interests."
Big Sam looked at me in silence with calm and unflinching gaze for two
or three minutes, and I suspected that the expediency of my mysterious
disappearance was canvassed behind the inscrutable veil of his eyes.
Then a sarcastic smile stole about the corners of his mouth, and he
said:
"I am sorry to disappoint you. I must plead ignorance of the
circumstances you mention. If Mr. Bolton was the representative of
criminal or treasonable designs, I do not know it. But if it will be of
any assistance or satisfaction to you, I will describe a hypothetical
case. Let us suppose that an harassed race had found an insecure
footing--say in Sumatra. Suppose that the head man of this harassed
race had been approached by the leader of a revolutionary party, with
whom he had been in business relations. This leader, or backer, or
whatever you wish to call him, we may suppose, insists on the prospects
of success of the revolutionary movement--enlarges on the certainty of
disturbances to come among the classes of the people most opposed to
this alien race, and urges its head man to raise up friends in the
revolutionary party by a contribution of money. I put it to you, Mr.
Hampden, would it be worth this man's while--in Sumatra, you
understand--to pay enough to secure toleration for his race, in case its
enemies came into possession of the government?"
"Candidly--since you ask my opinion--it was the most unpromising
investment I could have suggested."
Big Sam was so far nettled by my judgment on his hypothetical case that
he dropped his diplomatic pretense, and said:
"A judgment after the fact, Mr. Hampden, when it is easy to be wise.
Yet even now it is not difficult to see that bitterness and division
have been sown among the enemies of my race. Action against us has been
postponed for years--perhaps for all time. The mass of your
people--especially beyond the mountains--are shocked at the excesses of
the past week, and will oppose the demands made by your disorderly
classes. Like all the weak, we must conquer by the division of those
who could harm us. The division has come."
"I think you mistake its extent," I said. "The riots may have roused a
prejudice in the Eastern States against the demand for the exclusion of
your race. But it is only a temporary check. It will not be five years
before there is a law on the statute books forbidding the coming of your
people."
Big Sam looked over my head, with the far-away gaze of one who was
looking to the distant future. Then he sighed and spoke:
"Perhaps you are right. You must understand the temper of your people
much better than I. But it will be as it will. If we are permitted to
come unchecked, we shall build up on this coast a great Chinese State
that will change the face of the world. We are adaptable, as you know.
We are arming ourselves with the methods and machinery of western
progress. Put a state of ten million of Chinese on this coast, and from
this vantage point we shall break down the barriers between Orient and
Occident, put the productive forces of the West into the hands of my
people in China, add what is best in your life to the superior qualities
of our institutions, and make China the leader instead of the hermit of
the world."
Big Sam's face was calm with the self-possession of his race, as he
described this vision, but his eyes glowed with magnetic fire, and his
voice thrilled with enthusiasm as he spoke.
"A magnificent plan--but there are difficulties," I said.
"Difficulties, yes--but only such as the intellect and energy of man may
overcome. The old order in China is tottering to its fall. The dynasty
of usurpers is held in place only by the arm of the foreigner. Its
strength is typified by its head--a child and a woman!" Big Sam spoke
thus of the baby Emperor and the Empress Dowager, with an infinite
scorn. "It needs but the man with the resources behind him to rouse
China to herself--to show to the nations a new and magnificent
civilization--more splendid and solid than the world has ever seen."