"She is hurt," I explained as we laid our charge down upon a hall seat. "There was a row over her, and she got one of the bullets that was meant for us."
Miss Kendrick grew white, and I looked to see her follow the Chinese girl by falling in a faint. But her small figure straightened as though in rebound from a physical shock, and in a moment she was directing servants to carry the girl to the room that had been prepared for her, ordering hot water, hot blankets, lint and bandages, and sending me on the run for the nearest doctor.
CHAPTER VII
IN THE CURRENT
The Chinese girl's wound proved a desperate matter, and for days she hung between life and death, dependent for the flickering vital spark upon the ceaseless ministrations of her self-appointed nurses. Mercy Fillmore was brought to the house by Mr. Baldwin at an early hour of the morning that followed the rescue, and took her place as naturally and unostentatiously as though she had always been one of the family.
"She's a thousand times lovelier than I had expected," confessed Laura Kendrick, "and when you see her you're to be very nice to her. I'm sure you owe her that much, after making her all this trouble."
I promised to use all gentleness and courtesy toward Miss Fillmore, but the full significance of my debt to the young lady did not appear to me till later. Eventually I found that by some inexplicable freak of logic I was supposed to be chiefly in fault for the Chinese girl's wound. I had bungled the enterprise, it seemed; otherwise she must have been brought safely off. The sense of my delinquency was finally stirred within me by overhearing the comment of two indignant servants, which ran something like this:
"Those two big men without ever a scratch on them, and that poor heathen creature bleeding to death between 'em–that's what I call a shame."
Below stairs, it thus appeared that I shared equally with Mr. Baldwin in the discredit of the outcome. In my lady's chamber it was different. I learned that in those sacred realms I had all the blame for my very own. Mr. Baldwin appeared to be regarded, like the gallant army of Bazaine or Mack, as merely the unfortunate victim of an incompetent leader. Nothing of this judgment came to me directly. But it was conveyed delicately, imperceptibly, intangibly, through the days when the girl's life hung in suspense, mingled with an unspoken assurance that as I didn't appear to know any better I should ultimately be forgiven.
All this was galling enough, but it was nothing compared to the afflictions I suffered from the sight of Mr. Baldwin's airs. He was possessed of a cold and haughty nature, but the situation roused in him something approaching an enthusiasm. For my sorrow he was endowed with an odious gift of competency, and no false modesty restrained him from exhibiting it to the fullest measure. Whenever I offered to perform a service, I found that he had already performed it, or was then engaged upon it, or was just about to perform it, until I was consumed with regret that the highbinder bullet had not found its billet with Mr. Baldwin, instead of with the Chinese girl.
I should not go so far as to assert that any one of the self-sufficiency of Mr. Baldwin would be at a loss for an excuse for following his own inclinations; yet it struck me that he carried the pretense of devotion to the interests of the Chinese girl to an extent altogether indecorous. The prosperity of the firm of Hunter, Fessenden and Baldwin had never before appealed to my fears or my sympathies, but I was at this period distressed to observe that its law business appeared to be at a low ebb. Either that, or the junior partner was grossly neglecting his duties. Whatever time of day or night I called at the Kendrick house to seek news of the Chinese girl, and incidentally to enjoy the society of the ladies, I was sure to find Mr. Baldwin there, or to learn that he had just gone or was presently expected, until I grew to resent the sound of his name. Furthermore, his air of proprietorship in Laura Kendrick and her affairs, which had disturbed me on our first meeting, appeared to grow more marked. If Miss Kendrick, her uncle, and all things beneath the roof had been turned over to him in fee simple, the sense of ownership could not have been shown more clearly in his manner. And, worst of all, I could not see that his attitude roused resentment in any breast but my own. Miss Kendrick smiled on him, called him by his first name, and discussed the theory and practice of surgery with him in a manner most confidential.
At this day I can confess with freedom that my dislike of Mr. Baldwin found its root in the fertile soil of jealousy and envy. At the time, however, I stoutly maintained to myself that I hated him for his faults alone. In the light of later experience, I am willing to concede that men are not hated for their faults, or even for their virtues. Had Mr. Baldwin been an angel of light, instead of a cold and supercilious young attorney who was receiving an undeserved amount of favor, I should have disliked him none the less heartily.
Mr. Baldwin returned my dislike with acridity. Whenever possible, he affected to have forgotten me, had to be assisted to my name when compelled to speak to me; and when he did decide to remember me, was so patronizing in his condescensions that I longed to throw him through the window.
Miss Kendrick was not long in discovering this suppressed hostility; and at first alarmed by it, she presently found it a source of amusement. Then she appeared to derive a certain pleasure in blowing the smoldering coals into a blaze; for she would, with the most innocent air imaginable, bring forward topics of discussion that served to range us in hostile argument. As we held opposite views on almost every question of politics, law, sociology, and the arts, she had usually more difficulty to close the argument than to inspire it. Yet she handled the situation with a skill that would have been the admiration of a diplomat, and had a tact in diversion that enabled us both to retire from the heat of battle in good order with the conviction that we had each won a substantial victory.
In the anxious days through which the Chinese girl's life hung by a thread, I learned that Laura Kendrick's characterization of Mercy Fillmore was no example of feminine exaggeration. Miss Fillmore proved to be a young woman of about twenty-five, a little above the average height, a little fuller in outline than was demanded by the rules of proportion, a little slow in her movements. Her face was round, and though lacking in color gave a distinct impression of prettiness. But her chief characteristic was a certain calm sweetness in expression and manner, a certain gentle tact that made her presence as soothing as a strain of sweet music. It was on the evening following the rescue that Miss Kendrick introduced us.
"I am glad to meet you," she said in a voice that was low and melodious. "I am glad to find a man who is not afraid to do the right thing because somebody is going to laugh at him."
Miss Fillmore gave me her hand, and I found that her touch had the same soothing quality that was manifest in her voice and presence.
I professed myself gratified at her approval, and murmured that any one would have done the same in the circumstances.
"No, indeed," said Miss Fillmore earnestly. "It isn't every one who would have followed Mr. Baldwin to that den and risked his life to rescue a poor Chinese slave girl."
Mr. Baldwin's part in the affair had evidently lost nothing in Mr. Baldwin's telling of it, and Miss Fillmore's imagination had filled out the blanks in his narrative in a way to make him the promoter of the enterprise.
He was quick to see the peril of his situation, and said stiffly:
"Oh, if there's any credit to the affair, it belongs to Mr. Hampden alone. He discovered the distressed damsel, and is entitled to all the rewards."
Laura Kendrick gave him a pleased look and a gracious nod, which afflicted me with a pang of unwarranted resentment.
"I claim all the credit myself," she said, with a little air of importance. "I seem to remember two rather reluctant knights who were anything but pleased to be sent out to storm the ogre's castle at the call of beauty in distress."
"It was well done, whoever was responsible for it," said Miss Fillmore gently. "It is a noble thing to have rescued Moon Ying."
"Moon Ying!" cried Mr. Baldwin. "Is that the creature's name?"
"I never thought to ask it," I said.
"So like a man!" sighed Miss Kendrick.
"I want you to tell me," said Mercy Fillmore, "how you came to find Moon Ying, and be interested in her. How long have you known her?"
"She's a very recent acquaintance. I first saw her yesterday morning." And then I gave in detail the story of my visit to Chinatown, and the adventures that came of it.
"And that is all you know about her?" asked Miss Fillmore, in a voice that imported disappointment. "I had hoped that you knew more. She is so much above the type of Chinese girls that we meet at the Mission that she has interested me particularly."
"Big Sam gave me the idea that except for her beauty, which I understand to be of a sort highly considered among her countrymen, she is not above the girls you find at the Mission."
"Well, then, it's only another romance spoiled," said Miss Fillmore.
"Oh, you needn't despair. Big Sam appeared to be dealing frankly with me, but that proves nothing. Big Sam is an accomplished diplomat and would tell any story that suited his purpose, and tell it so neatly that you couldn't distinguish it from the truth. For all I know, she may be the daughter of the Empress of China."
"Nothing so interesting, I fear," said Miss Fillmore, with a sober shake of the head.
"Well, then, let's make believe. She shall be a princess of the blood royal, and shall have a story suited to her dignity."
Miss Fillmore smiled dubiously, as though she were not quite certain whether I was in jest or earnest.
"It isn't necessary," she said, her practical mind refusing to descend to frivolity. "Whatever her origin, we must see that she has a better fate than the one that threatens her."
"Yes, so far as it can be done within the conditions laid down by Big Sam."
Miss Fillmore's forehead drew into a knot of lines in which could be read a mingling of disapproval and anxiety.
"I have been thinking," she said, with an apologetic reproach in her voice, "that you didn't do quite right to make those conditions. Can't they be–" she was going to say "evaded" but after a moment's debate with a feminine conscience changed it to "modified."
"I'm afraid I didn't make myself clear," I said. "Those were the only conditions on which the girl could have the opportunity to escape. Unless Big Sam can arrange better terms with the tongs, we have no choice but to live up to them."
Miss Fillmore was silent at this, and I wondered whether I had not, on my side, given too strong an emphasis to the reminder that we were discussing a question of good faith.
"Well," said Miss Kendrick with decision, "we'll leave all that till Moon Ying is quite well, and then I'll see Big Sam and the highbinders myself, if Mr. Hampden can't get them to listen to decency and reason."
"Good heavens!" cried Mr. Baldwin, with chilling protest in his tone. "You surely can't mean to do anything of that sort. You don't suppose that those creatures are open to reason and decency, do you?"
"Oh, indeed," said Miss Kendrick, straightening her small figure and tip-tilting her small nose, "I consider Big Sam an interesting man, and I'm sure I should like to talk with him. And as for reason, I have no doubt he's quite as open to conviction as the rest of his sex. I shan't have the slightest hesitation in appealing to him, or even to those explosive highbinders, if it's necessary to Moon Ying's interests."
"Why, my dear young lady," protested Mr. Baldwin in his most superior manner, "you surely can't be thinking of going down to Chinatown and talking to those fellows. It's altogether absurd."
"Well, if you consider it absurd to try to save a girl's life or happiness, I don't," said Miss Kendrick tartly. And for the rest of the evening Mr. Baldwin sat under a cloud, and I enjoyed a brief period of sunshine.
CHAPTER VIII
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CAUSE
I confess that, despite all discouragements, I spent as much time as I could spare from my duties in haunting the Kendrick house; yet I found the pursuit of Peter Bolton, and the oversight of the Council of Nine, a more exacting task than I had expected.
On Peter Bolton's ultimate purposes I could secure no direct light whatever. For the time he appeared to have suspended relations with the Council of Nine, yet his activities in conferring with bankers, brokers, merchants, lawyers, and men of no classification, were so various and bewildering that I was compelled to keep watch in many directions. Twice Parks and Waldorf, the president of the Council of Nine, visited his office, and were turned away without seeing him, though on at least one of these visits he was within. His plans appeared to have taken another direction than the schemes of the Council, yet there was nothing in his movements that revealed whatever designs he might have against Wharton Kendrick's property or life.
Nevertheless I took the precaution to station a number of watchmen about Wharton Kendrick's house, masqueraded as gardeners and stable-men. The episode of the spy had shown plainly that Peter Bolton's emissaries had no scruples about invading the premises. Furthermore, Big Sam's assurance that the highbinders would never dare to attack the white man's place, confirmed as it was by the history of San Francisco's Chinese population, did not justify me in neglecting precautions. Even a highbinder might have an exception to his rules, especially when more than one tong was interested in the recovery of Moon Ying. Therefore I kept two men on guard in the daytime and four at night.
One effect of Peter Bolton's activities was easy to discover. His contribution to the cause had inspired a marvelous activity among the agents of the Council of Nine. Clubs were organized, a few for the propagation of radical ideas, but most of them for the ostensible purpose of driving the Chinese from the city. The intent of the Council was to make the revolutionary clubs the main strength of their organization, but it soon became evident that the anti-Chinese movement had outrun their plans. "The Chinese Must Go," was so popular a cry that it was taken up by elements over which the Council had no control. But outwardly the Council was prospering, and the meetings inaugurated by Parks and Kearney down by the Old City Hall soon attracted such crowds that they were encouraged to seek a larger forum on the sand-lots by the New City Hall. The plans for driving out the Chinese were seized upon eagerly by the thousands of unemployed workmen, as well as by the disorderly elements of the city's population. Multitudes attended the meetings that were held nightly and on Sundays, and sporadic outbreaks of hoodlums, who beat Chinamen and plundered wash-houses, were frequently reported. The newspapers began to pay attention to the meetings, and as a genuine interest was shown in them by the working-men of the city, there was soon a hot rivalry to see which paper should attract the largest sales by the fullest accounts of the speeches and the most extended reports of the growth of the anti-Chinese propaganda. Under the stimulus of publicity the movement spread with startling rapidity, the politicians began to count upon it as a force to be reckoned with, and serious-minded citizens were shaking their heads over the possibilities of disorder that it covered.
These possibilities were increased by the threatening condition of affairs in the eastern States. There was a rapidly increasing tension in the relations between capital and labor, and a railroad strike was organizing that would paralyze industry from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. It was felt that the spark of Eastern example might furnish the torch for San Francisco.
With matters in this state, Clark came to me one day with every mark of perturbation and alarm.
"The Council of Nine is in funds," he gasped.
"That's an enviable situation," I replied. "Where did they get them, and what are they going to do with them? Hold a smoker at the House of Blazes?"
Clark looked a little vexed at the bantering tone.
"They've bought guns with them, sir."
"Bought guns?" I said. "How many? A dozen?"
"Guess again," said Clark, with an aggrieved air at my declination to take his information seriously. "If you'd say a thousand you'd come nearer to it."
"A thousand!" I cried, rousing at last to the gravity of his information. "How could they do that?"
"Easy enough," said Clark. "They got thirty thousand dollars night before last, and yesterday they cleaned out all the gun stores in town."
"Thirty thousand dollars!" I exclaimed. "Whew! Is this old Bolton's second contribution?"
"I reckon he's the one that give it," said Clark, "but I can't be sure. There ain't any one else with that much money that's interested in the cause. Habernicht was trying to tell me that it came from the International Treasury, but I'm willing to bet my boots that the International Treasury never had thirty thousand cents in it, let alone thirty thousand dollars."
It was Peter Bolton, beyond doubt, who had taken the role of fairy godfather for the Council of Nine, and I raked my imagination in vain to conceive the purpose that had inspired this amazing generosity.
"I reckon," continued Clark, "that they've got a corner on everything that'll shoot, except what's in the arsenals, and they're counting on getting those when the time comes to rise."
"Well," said I, "I don't see just how this affects Colonel Kendrick, for they could get him with one rifle just as well as with a thousand. But whatever the game is, we can block it right now. Just give me the number of the building where they have stored those guns, and I'll see the Chief of Police."
"Good God!" cried Clark, seizing my arm. "Do you want to get me killed?"
"Why," I argued, "you aren't the only man who knows about them. There must be dozens if not hundreds of men in the scheme, and there would be no more reason to put the blame on you than on the others."
Clark shook his head, and his white face showed the fierce grip of terror.
"I'm a dead man if you go to the police," he said huskily, gulping down the lump that rose in his dry throat. And no repetition or variation of my argument could move him. So at last I promised to keep the information from the police, and sought Wharton Kendrick's office to lay this perplexing information before my client.
Kendrick was not at his desk.
"He went out some time ago, Mr. Hampden," said a clerk.
"Where would I be likely to find him? It's quite important."
"He didn't say, and I got the idea that he wasn't likely to be back to-day."
I wrote a note giving information of the armament, and leaving it on his desk, turned to go, when the door opened and General Wilson bustled in. His round red face glowed in the frame of his short, yellow-gray side-whiskers even more fiercely by day than by night, and his self-importance was even more scintillant than when he had bustled into Kendrick's library.
"What! Kendrick not in?" he cried explosively. "Why, I don't see how you San Franciscans do any business. I haven't found a man in his office this morning. Why, God bless me, is this you, Ham–Hamfer–"
"Hampden," I said, assisting him to the name. "I'm glad to see you, General Wilson."
"Exactly–Hampden–Hampden," said the general, shaking hands. "I never forget a name or a face. It's a trick you ought to cultivate, my boy. You'll find it of more importance than half your legal learning, when it comes to the practical business of the law. There's nothing better in managing clients and jurors and court officials. It's likely to be worth anything to you to come on a man you haven't met for twenty years and call him by his name. The beggar always beams with satisfaction–thinks you've been doing nothing all those years but carry his name and face in your mind, and is ready to do you a good turn if it comes his way."
"Very true," I said, as General Wilson paused for breath.
"Now I remember," he continued, with a wave of his arm, "that I won one of my hardest fought cases by that little talent of being able to call a man's name after I have once heard it. 'Twas when the Rockland and Western was suing the R. D. & G. about the right of way into St. Louis. The matter was worth a trifle of two or three million dollars, and we had a jury trial, and it was a damned ticklish business. 'It's two to one on the other side,' said the president of the Rockland and Western, 'and if you pull us out, Wilson, you're a wonder.' 'God knows what a jury will do,' I told him, 'but if it's in the power of mortal man I'll get you out with honors.' I talked to cheer him up, but I didn't feel half as hopeful as I let on to be. My unprofessional opinion was that we were in for a licking. I'll bet you the price of this building, Hampden, that we would have had to take our medicine if it hadn't been for an old acquaintance of mine. I used to know him when we were young fellows in Ohio. He was clerking in a grocery store while I was dusting the books in Lawyer Boker's office. Now, what was his name? Oh,–ah–yes, I remember–Westlake, or something like that. Well, as he came into the court, I saw him, and by the look on his face I was sure he was called in the case. I knew him in an instant and I hurried up to him, shook him by the hand, and said 'Westburn'–yes, it was Westburn, not Westlake–I said 'Westburn, God bless you, it's thirty-five years since the night we dropped that watermelon, and I haven't got over mourning the loss of it yet.' By Jove, Hampden, you ought to have seen the fellow beam to think that the big lawyer from Chicago had remembered him all that time, and we had a five-minute chat that turned out to be worth everything to my clients. He got on the jury, and there wasn't a point or an argument I made that was lost on him. He told me afterward that he never heard a speech to beat the one I delivered in closing for my side. Well, the jury was out nearly two days, but on the strength of that speech my old friend talked the last of them over and we got judgment. So there, my boy, you see what it's worth to call up names. It's one of the tricks of trade that we share with statesmen and kings."
"And hotel clerks," I added irreverently, with something of envy for the general's talent at finding cause for self-congratulation.
General Wilson flushed a little deeper red, and looked at me doubtingly. I hastened to add an expression of complete agreement with the conclusions he had announced.
"Well, God bless us," he cried, "I can't be waiting here all day for Kendrick. I want to talk over that tule land proposition with him, but as he isn't here I'm going over to talk on the same business with a miserly old curmudgeon named Bolton. As it concerns Kendrick, in a way, maybe you'd like to come along as his representative." And with a commanding gesture General Wilson intimated his desire for my company, and linked arms with me in the affectation of deepest confidence.
I had for several days been meditating on the problem of an interview with Peter Bolton, and, accepting General Wilson's offer of a convoy as a gift of benignant chance, was soon climbing the stair to the curmudgeon's office to the boom-boom of General Wilson's gasconades, and wondering how I might surprise the secret of Peter Bolton's plans.