CHAPTER IV
MACHIAVELLI IN BRONZE
Waverly Place was in the full tide of business. The little brown man in his blue blouse and clattering shoes was seen in his endless variety, chattering, bargaining, working, lounging, moving; and the short street, with its American architecture half orientalized, was gay with colors and foul with odors.
Patient coolies trotted past, bending between the heavily laden baskets that swung upon the poles passed over the shoulder. On the corner an itinerant merchant sat under an improvised awning with a rude bench before him on which to display his wares, and a big Chinese basket beside him from which his stock might be renewed as it was sold. Here was a store with a window display of fine porcelains, silks, padded coats and gowns covered with grotesque figures, everything about it denoting neatness and order. Next it was a barber shop where two Chinese customers were undergoing the ordeal of a shave.
Beyond the barber shop was a stairway leading to the depths, from which the odors of opium and a sickening compound of indescribable smells floated on the morning air. Brown men could be seen through the smoke and darkness, moving silently as though in dreams, or listlessly gazing at nothing. Here was a shop of many goods, with fish and fruits exposed to tempt the palates and purses of the passer: Chinese nut-fruits, dried and smoked to please the Chinese taste, candied cocoanut chips that form the most popular of Chinese confections, with roots and nuts and preserves in variety, appealing temptingly to the eyes of the Chinese who passed. Behind, were boxes and bales and cans, big chests and little chests, bright chests and dingy chests, in endless confusion. The blackened walls and ceilings gave such an air of age that the shop seemed as though it might have come out of the ancient Chinese cities as a relic of the days of Kublai Khan. Shoe factories, clothing factories, and cigar factories, were scattered along the street, with wares made and displayed in the American fashion, and here and there, as if in mockery, hung signs that bore the legend "White Labor Goods."
The little brown men sewed and hammered and smoothed and polished and smoked and chaffered and traded–the great hive of Chinatown was astir; and over all rose the murmur of the strange sing-song tongue that finds its home on the banks of the Yellow River. Here and there a white face showed. But where it belonged to a dweller in Waverly Place it was sodden, brutal, depraved. Waverly Place got only the dregs and seepage of the white race, and such as dwelt there boasted of an intimate knowledge and possession of the vices of three continents.
Half-way up the block from Clay Street I paused before a dingy doorway. The building had been one of the substantial structures of early San Francisco, but the coolie occupation had orientalized it with a coating of dirt and a mask of decay.
"This is an unpromising place to look for the richest Chinaman in San Francisco," was my mental comment. "But it is surely the number given me."
As I moved to enter the door, a stout, well-fed Chinaman, with a pockmarked face, his hands hidden in the sleeves of his thick blue blouse, put his body in the way.
"What you wan'?" he asked, with a trace of aggression in his voice.
"I want see Big Sam," I said.
The Chinaman's face took on the blank, stolid look of utter ignorance.
"No sabby Big Sam. No Big Sam heah."
"Nonsense! You know Big Sam. Every Chinaman in San Francisco knows Big Sam. This is where I'm told he lives. I've got to see him."
"No sabby Big Sam heah. One Big Sam he live Stockton St'eet, one Big Sam he live Oakyland. You go Stockton St'eet, you go Oakyland. No Big Sam heah."
"See here, John," I said, "I've got to see Big Sam, and I know he's here, and I'm going to see him. So get out of the way."
The Chinaman straightened up in offended dignity. "John" was a term of insult, or at least of derogation in the Chinese mind. Then he called back into the darkness and two other Chinese appeared. They were better dressed than the ordinary, and were evidently some grades above the Chinese laborers who thronged the street.
There was a minute or two of conversation in the high-pitched singsong tongue that is so well adapted to the purpose of concealing thought–from the white race, at least–and then one of the others stepped forward.
"I must see Big Sam," I said in a determined tone. "You can tell him first, or I'll go in without it, just as you please."
Before he could speak there was a shout and a scream behind me, and I turned to see a Chinese girl running out of the fruit and variety store across the way. She was probably fifteen years old and had that clear, brilliant, creamy complexion that is sometimes seen in Chinese women. Though her round flat face was not beautiful to the western eye, it represented one of the highest types of oriental attractiveness. Even the clumsy garments in which the Chinese dress their women, with their long sleeves and armless coat and baggy trousers, were not able to conceal the fact that she was graceful and well formed. I noted these details more in memory than in the moment when she clattered into view, her clumsy Chinese shoes beating a tattoo on the boards. She had hardly reached the sidewalk when a half-dozen blue-bloused heathen surrounded her. She gave a scream, but she was seized by two of the band, a cloth was thrown over her head, and her cries were silenced. If I had taken time for thought, I should have sought the police instead of the center of disturbance, for I understood how little chance I should have in a contest with a band of highbinders. But I could not see murder or kidnapping done before my eyes without lifting a hand, and I raised a cry and started across the way.
The street suddenly became alive with shouts and screams, and a hundred Chinamen came running, all with hands under their blouses, chattering ferociously as they pressed toward the struggling group. Before I could reach the other side of the way the girl and her captors had mysteriously disappeared, whisked through some of the doors that looked blankly upon the street, and in their place was a mob of Chinamen, shouting, gesticulating, and blowing police whistles, while threats of slaughter flashed from their ugly faces. Two policemen appeared on the run and there was a sudden melting away of the crowd. Hands came out from under the blouses and from inside the long roomy sleeves. Threats and hatred faded out of the faces of the quarreling men, and in their place came the stolid mask of the "no sabby."
"What's the matter here?" panted one of the policemen, while the other hustled the Chinese from one side of the walk to the other with gruff orders to "move on."
I told of what I had seen.
"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.
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.
I thanked him and raged inwardly that I should have been outwitted.
Big Sam smiled blandly. "It is nothing in the way of treason, whichever paper you may choose."
"Quite innocent," I said, looking in his half veiled eyes. I read that he was under no delusion that he had deceived me. I rose to go.
"One moment, Mr. Hampden," he said. "You have asked a trifling favor of me. May I ask a much greater one of you?"
"Certainly."
"This girl–I am perplexed to know what to do with her."
"Is there a more proper custodian than her father?"
"Father?"
"The old man–you know."
Big Sam laughed–a most unpleasant laugh, too.
"Quite as near a relation as yourself, Mr. Hampden. He is merely the custodian for his tong."
"Then his pitiful tale to the police–"
"Oh, we do not want for the inventive faculty."
"Then what better guardian could you suggest than yourself," I said, "or what better place than in your own home–or one of your homes?" Big Sam was reported to have one white wife and two Chinese wives, and it seemed to me that he might provide for her safety with one of the three, in case he did not wish to add to his matrimonial blessings.
"I have thought of that, but there are difficulties," he said, as a man considering. "I shall excite less enmity if I can provide for her safety in another way."
"The Mission–" I suggested.
"I should have both tongs at my throat at once," he laughed. "She must be where she can be returned at my will. And it is best that she should be with some good white woman."
"I'm afraid that the good white woman you have in mind would not care to take her in charge on those terms," I said.
Big Sam looked at the girl thoughtfully.
"Well, then, I must let my benevolent plans for her welfare go. It is a pity, too. I do not often indulge in such a luxury. But there are more important matters at stake than the life of a girl."
I looked at the girl and remembered a painted face that had grinned at me from behind a wicket a little while before. At the thought of what it meant to her, I took a sudden resolve.
"If I can be of service, I shall be happy."
"I don't think you will regret it," said Big Sam. "Can you arrange it by this evening?"
"I can not promise. The conditions make a difficulty."
"True. But they are imperative. I must trust to your honor to carry them out. But I hope that you will remember that I stake my life on it."
I looked my surprise.
"It is quite true," he said simply. "My people are not troubled with scruples in the matter, and I must be security that the girl will be returned when the conditions I make are complied with."
"And these are–"
"That a worthy man of her race wishes to make her his wife, and is willing to settle the claims of the two tongs."
"The two tongs?"
"Yes. He must pay the price demanded by the one, and the–the–"
"Blackmail," I suggested, as Big Sam hesitated for a word.
"Well, yes–not a pleasant word, I believe, but accurate–the blackmail demanded by the other."
"I will do my best to find a guardian who will meet your conditions."
"Can you make it convenient to bring your word this evening?"
"That is short notice."
"It is important. I shall be here from nine to twelve."
"I shall do my best."
"I shall be deeply in your debt," he said.
I looked at him closely.
"You can cancel it readily."
"I shall be most happy. How?"
I hesitated a moment and rose.
"By telling me what is the business of your communications with Mr. Peter Bolton."
We had come to such confidential terms on the matter of the maiden that Big Sam allowed himself to be surprised. His discomposure flashed in his eyes for but an instant, and was gone.
"I do not understand you," he said politely, rising in his turn.
"The memorandum that I brought might remind you," I said dryly.
I could see that I had risen a notch in Big Sam's estimation; and he was uncertain how much more I knew than was on the surface.
"You have the advantage of me," he said. "I furnished Mr. Bolton a thousand men three months ago, but we have had no transactions since. I wish you good morning. I shall expect you to-night between nine o'clock and midnight."
And he bowed me out.