Part 6

She was far past a regard for the ordinary reticences of every-day life, but the humiliation of her admission was in her face. “My husband--he’s there, with only one old servant. He thinks I’m in the country with my mother. So I was till this afternoon. If I come home unexpectedly with no money to pay the _cocher_, he will be surprised. He will be angry. He will want to know all about it--I can’t explain it or tell more lies. I was mad when I said I’d go. I didn’t realize--Oh, good heavens!” with a sudden burst of agonized incoherence, “here he is! He’s coming and that will be the end of me.”

Celia turned. Against the bright background of the depot entrance she saw the Frenchman’s thick-set figure coming rapidly down the steps. He had got rid of the valises, and was almost running.

“Quick,” she said, and turning to the waiting carriage wrenched open the door.

“Get in,” she commanded. The terrified creature did so. She was ready to be dominated by any imperious will. Celia stretched her arm through the window, and into the little gloved hand pressed the two-franc piece, then cried:

“You can tell the _cocher_ the address when you get started. Don’t stop him till you get some way off. Go,” she cried to the man, “down by the Rue Auber--don’t waste a minute. Fly!”

The _cocher_ flicked his horse with the whip, and it started. At the window a pale face appeared, and Celia heard the cry: “But your name, your address? I must send the money back.”

“Never mind that,” cried Celia, “it isn’t mine. It’s conscience money.”

The fiacre rolled down the street, and, plunging into the mêlée of vehicles, wound its way through the press to the Rue Auber. A man standing on the sidewalk drew the stares of the passers-by as he gazed blankly this way and that. A woman quietly picked her way across the _carrefour_, toward the station where one takes the Vaugirard omnibus.

THE JACK-POT

By Charles Dwight Willard

There were five of us in the party--six, counting Long Tom, the guide. After two days’ hard climbing, which the _burros_ endured with exemplary fortitude, we arrived at the little valley high up in the mountains, through which threaded the trout-stream.

“Jest you all go over into the cabin there and make yourself comf’ble, while I ’tend to gettin’ this stuff unpacked,” said Long Tom; “there ain’t no one there. My pardner, he’s down below.”

“The cabin appears to be two cabins,” said the colonel, as we approached it.

“That is for economy in ridge-poles,” said the doctor; “sleeping apartments on one side and kitchen on the other. In the space between, you keep your fishing-tackle and worms.”

We entered the right-hand section of the twin cabin, which proved to be the kitchen side. There was not much furniture--a table of hewn logs, a chair of bent saplings, and a rough bench.

However, we did not notice such furniture as there was, for each member of the party, as he stepped over the high threshold, had his attention instantly attracted by the stove, and a brief roundelay of ejaculations went along the group.

“Well, that staggers me,” said the stock-broker.

“H’m,” said the professor, in a mysterious tone, and rubbed his chin.

The stove was a plain, small cooking-range, rather old and rusty. The strange thing about it was its position. Its abbreviated legs stood upon large cedar posts, which were planted in the floor and were over four feet in height. This brought the stove away up in mid-air, so that the top was about on a level with the face of the colonel, and he was a six-footer.

We formed in a circle about the stove and stared at it as solemnly as a group of priests around a sacrificial tripod. We felt of the posts--they were firm and solid, showing that the mysterious arrangement was a permanent, not a temporary, one. Then we all bent our necks and opened our mouths to look up at the hole in the roof, through which the stove-pipe vanished.

Suddenly the stock-broker burst out into a laugh.

“Oh, I understand it now,” said he.

“Understand what?” asked the colonel, sharply.

“Why Long Tom has his stove hoisted up so high from the floor.”

“So do I,” said the doctor; “but I suspect that my explanation is not the same that any one else would offer.”

“Well, I will bet that I am right,” said the stock-broker, “and put up the money.”

“I am in this,” said the judge; “I have a clear idea about that stove and will back it.”

“Make it a jack-pot,” said the colonel; “I want to take a hand.”

The stock-broker drew a small yellow coin out of his pocket and dropped it on the table.

“He has the stove up there,” he said, “to get a better draught. In this rarefied mountain air there is only a small amount of oxygen to the cubic inch, and combustion is more difficult to secure than in the lower latitudes. I have heard that if you get high enough up, you can’t cook an egg--that is, I mean, water won’t boil--or something like that,” he continued, thrown into sudden confusion by the discovery that the professor’s eye was fixed upon him with a sarcastic gaze.

“Is that supposed to be science?” demanded the professor.

“Well,” said the stock-broker, doggedly, “never mind the reasons. Experience is probably good enough for Long Tom. He finds that he gets a better draught for his stove by having it up in mid-air, so he has it there.”

“The right explanation,” began the professor, “is the simplest. My idea is that----”

“Excuse me,” interrupted the stock-broker, tapping the table; “are you in this pot?”

The professor made a deposit, and proceeded:

“Have you noticed that our host is a very tall man? Like most men of his height, he hates to bend over. If the stove were near the floor, he would have to stoop down low when he whirled a flap-jack or speared a rasher of bacon. Now he can stand up and do it with ease. Your draught theory is no good; the longer the pipe, if it is straight, the better the fire will burn.”

“Professor,” remarked the colonel, “I regret to have to tell you that your money is gone. Long Tom told me, on the way up, that his partner did all the cooking, and he is a man of rather short stature.” The colonel then paid his compliments to the jack-pot, and continued: “Now, my idea is that the stove heats the room better there than on the floor. It is only a cooking-stove, to be sure, but when the winter is cold it makes this room comfortable. Being up in the middle of the space, it heats it all equally well, which it could not do if it were down below.”

The doctor greeted this theory with a loud laugh. “Colonel,” he said, “you are wild--way off the mark. Hot air rises, of course, and the only way to disseminate it is to have your stove as low as possible. According to your idea, it would be a good plan to put the furnace in the attic of a house instead of in the basement.”

“I think,” said the colonel, “that I could appreciate your argument better if you would ante.”

“The pot is mine,” said the doctor, as he deposited his coin; “you will all adopt my idea the moment you hear it, and Long Tom, who will be here in a minute, will bear me out. This room is very small; it has but little floor-space, and none of it goes to waste. Now, if he had put the stove down where we expected to find it, Long Tom could not have made use of the area underneath, as you see he has done. On all sides of the supporting posts, you will notice there are hooks, on which he hangs his pans and skillets. Underneath, there is a kitchen-closet for pots and cooking-utensils of various sorts. What could be more convenient? Under your ordinary stove there is room only for a poker and a few cockroaches.”

The judge, who had been listening to the opinions offered by the others with the same grim smile that occasionally ornamented his face when he announced that an objection was overruled, now stepped forward and dropped a coin on the table. He then rendered his decision as follows:

“It appears that none of you have noticed the forest of hooks in the roof just over the stove. They are not in use at present, but they are there for some purpose. I imagine that during the winter huge pieces of venison and bear’s-meat dangle over the stove, and are dried for use later. Now, if the stove were on the floor, it would be too far from the roof to be of service in this way.”

“Here comes old Tom,” shouted the colonel, who had stepped to the open door while the judge was speaking.

The old trapper put down the various articles of baggage with which his arms were loaded and came into the kitchen-cabin where we all stood. He glanced at the group and then at the stilted stove in our midst.

“I see you air all admirin’ my stove,” said he, “and I’ll bet you’ve been a-wonderin’ why it is up so high.”

“Yes, we have,” said the professor; “how did you know it?”

“People most allus generally jest as soon as they come into the place begin to ask me about it--that’s how I knowed.”

“Well, why is it up so high?” demanded the stock-broker impatiently, with a side glance at the well-developed jack-pot on the table.

“The reason’s simple enough,” said Long Tom, with a grin that showed his bicuspids; “you see we had to pack all this stuff up here from down below on _burros_. Originally there was four j’ints of that stove-pipe, but the cinch wasn’t drawed tight enough on the _burro_ that was carryin’’em, and two of’em slipped out and rolled down the mountain. When we got here and found that there wasn’t but two pieces left, I reckoned that I would have to kinder h’ist the stove to make it fit the pipe--so I jest in an’ h’isted her. And thar she is yet. Say, what’s all this here money on the table for?”

There was a deep silence which lasted so long that Tom ventured to repeat his question about the money.

“It is a jack-pot,” said the doctor, sadly, “and as near as I can make out, it belongs to you.”

THE SEATS OF JUDGMENT

By C. W. Doyle

I. That Two Eyes are Better than One in the Dark.

“Thou hast the writings of Le Toy, Wau Shun?” asked Sam Lee of his brother-highbinder, as the latter issued from the receiving hospital of San Francisco.

“Verily, or thou hadst heard my dogs bark within,” replied Wau Shun.

“And Lee Toy?”

“Lee Toy died babbling of wings, and of the white babe whose life he saved from fire this day at the price of his own, and whose father stood beside him weeping like a woman.”

“Was ever the like seen before!” exclaimed Sam Lee. “That Lee Toy, the bravest of the brave, the keenest hatchet of our ‘tong,’ should fail his brethren, and break his oaths, and worship the white babe whose abduction he had undertaken--and that the babe’s father should weep for one of our people!”

“Ay, and, what is of more importance, that Lee Toy should have given me the writings that would have hanged us, who compassed his passing! Eh, Sam Lee?”

“Yea, Wau Shun; and compassed also the hanging of Quong Lung--nay, turn not so suddenly in a narrow lane, my brother, for I have but one eye, as thou knowest, and that can not abide swift movement in the dark on the part of a man whose life is forfeit”; and Sam Lee drew a darkling revolver from his blouse.

With a deft movement, Wau Shun, who had the advantage of two eyes--though they looked in different directions and were hard to meet--threw Sam Lee’s hand up, and snatched the pistol from him.

“’Twere easy to slay thee now, Sam Lee; and ’twere profitable, too--if only Quong Lung were out of the way.”

“Ay, if Quong Lung were only out of the way; but Quong Lung lives and waxes fat, and Wau Shun is his slave!”

No more was said. They turned into a narrow alley near the top of Jackson Street, Wau Shun walking in the rear. As soon as they had entered the shadow produced by the narrowness of the lane and by its angle to the lighted main street, there was a sharp report, and Sam Lee fell on his face, and coughed like one who is stricken through the lungs.

The swarms that inhabit Chinatown began to buzz. In a few minutes the alley was crowded with curious coolies jabbering excitedly, and in the fifth or sixth row of those who stood round Sam Lee was Wau Shun, watching the blood that welled from the mouth of the dying man and prevented speech.

After Wau Shun had seen the corpse of his brother-highbinder laid out on a slab at the morgue, he treated himself to a couple of jorums of “hot-Scotch,” and sought his den in Cum Cook Alley.

Lighting a dim candle, he proceeded to barricade himself, and to conceal his light, by means of a coverlet that was held in its place, on his side of the door, by iron bars that crossed and recrossed each other.

When all was snug, he drew from an inner pocket the roll of papers given to him by Lee Toy, which set forth the names of the several highbinders who belonged to his “tong,” the various loppings accomplished by their “hatchets,” and, in a special supplement, the instigations to certain notorious crimes by their master-mind, Quong Lung.

Lighting a brazier, he tore out his own record from the writing, and committed it to the flames. But that which related to Quong Lung he placed in a receptacle cunningly concealed in the threshold of the door.

Then, extinguishing his light, he sallied forth with the rest of Lee Toy’s confessions in his pocket, to speak with Quong Lung, who had awaited him these many hours with patience--and wrath.

II. The Lesser Discipline.

The dawn of Christmas Day was rosy when Wau Shun reached Quong Lung’s store. The bells throughout the city of San Francisco were once more frantically announcing the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem, as Wau Shun gave the signal of “The Brethren” on Quong Lung’s electric bell. It was answered by a deep voice that came through a speaking-tube, the end of which was so cleverly hidden that none but the initiated could find it: “Peace attend thy feet! What brother needs succor?”

“Thy servant, Wau Shun.”

“Enter, Wau Shun,” and the door was opened by some mechanical contrivance, and closed, as soon as Wau Shun had crossed the threshold, with a snap suggestive of a steel trap. Pressing a concealed button, Wau Shun lit an incandescent lamp that showed him how to avoid the thread, the breaking of which would have precipitated a hundred-weight of iron on the head of an intruder. At the end of the passage thus illuminated was a door, to which he applied his pass-key and entered an apartment that was a reflex of its occupant, in whom East and West were met. The room was decorated and furnished in accordance with the tastes of a Chinese gentleman of high culture; but the illumination was supplied by electricity, and a long-distance telephone, of the latest pattern, stood at the elbow of the stout, spectacled Chinese merchant, who sat on a great ebony chair, gravely smoking a cigar.

This was Quong Lung, the famous head of the high-binders of the See Yups--the most powerful “tong” in San Francisco--and who owed his bad preëminence to the fact that he was absolutely unscrupulous, using even his devoted friends as stepping-stones to his ambitions. Then, too, he was a “Native Son of the Golden West,” and used the idioms and swore with the ease of a born Californian. He had friends--old school-fellows and college chums--among the executive of San Francisco, and, by means of his more intimate knowledge of what was happening, he was enabled to humiliate his rivals and punish his enemies.

“Thou hast done well, Wau Shun,” he began, “and deservest well--but dry tongues can not speak.”

Pouring out some whisky for himself, he pushed the bottle across to Wau Shun, who had now seated himself on the other side of the table.

“Thy servant is enriched by thy approbation, Most Powerful,” replied Wau Shun, draining his glass after Quong Lung had drunk.

“The passing of Lee Toy by way of fire was excellently done, Wau Shun--most excellently done. And where is Sam Lee?”

“He is aweary and sleepeth, Great Master,” answered Wau Shun, whose squinting was suddenly accentuated.

“May his sleep refresh him! But the end of Lee Toy, as I have already said, was surpassingly excellent, Wau Shun. I learnt by this”--and Quong Lung pointed with his cigar to the telephone--“I learnt by this of the firing of the house of the white devil, whose babe Lee Toy guarded, and how Lee Toy died to save the devilkin.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” interrupted Wau Shun, chuckling softly, and helping himself again from the bottle.

“And the writings of Lee Toy?” asked Quong Lung, after a while.

Without a word Wau Shun laid a packet on the table.

“But these pertain to Sam Lee only,” exclaimed Quong Lung, after he had examined the roll of papers; and his nostrils dilated slightly. “Thou hast, doubtless, others that relate to thee and to me.”

“Now, nay, All-Seeing; the packet is as Lee Toy gave it to me--so Sam Lee will tell thee.”

“If the dead may speak,” said Quong Lung, deliberately.

The other turned toward him with amazement and horror in his looks. It was admirably done, but it did not even attract the attention of Quong Lung, who quietly flicked the ash from his cigar, and went on: “And thou wast seen by two of our brethren in the crowd that witnessed the end of Sam Lee; and ’twere easy, too, to find witnesses who saw thee slay Sam Lee.” Then, after a pause, he went on: “Moreover, only fools tell lies to such as me. None may sit on that chair and lie to me--only lift not thy voice at the proof of it, lest death come to thee suddenly!”

The next moment the horror-stricken highbinder was writhing under the spell of an electric current, strong enough to prevent him from relaxing his hold on the arms of his chair, which he had grasped as he tried to spring to his feet.

After Quong Lung had disarmed his victim, he said: “Thou wilt be here two days hence, and at the same hour, with the other writings of Lee Toy! Two of thy brethren await thee on the street, and will see to thy punctuality. Drink once more, Wau Shun, thou hast need. Ho, ho!”

III. Sweet Counsel and “Black Smoke.”

“Roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mince pies, plum pudding, cheese-straws, a choice between beer and champagne! Well, Quong Lung, and what do you want of me, you prince of plotters?”

The speaker had all the outward and visible signs of one who was a slave to opium; but under the influence of Quong Lung’s Christmas dinner his eyes sparkled and his spirits rose to a high pitch.

“Nothing, nothing, Jim--at least nothing to speak of; and we won’t speak of it until we have had a small black coffee, and--a small black pipe. By the way,” he went on, “Miss Ah Moy and Miss Shun Sen will come in presently with the coffee and pipes.”

Quong Lung’s guest, James Ray, was lank, and sallow, and of uncertain age, because of his terrible vice, and his hair was prematurely gray. He had been an electrical engineer of high promise until he became an opium-fiend. Even his clothes betrayed his failing, no less than his scanty and feeble beard and mustache and his leaden complexion. He had attended the same Eastern college as Quong Lung, and had imbued the latter with a taste for Shakespeare and Byron and the Psalms of David; together they had graduated from Yale; and then Quong Lung, recognizing the ability of his friend and the possibilities of electricity in the career of a highbinder, had introduced Ray to the fascination of opium-smoking; and so--through the uses of adversity--he held the latter in pawn for his own nefarious ends.

“Why all this magnificence, Quong Lung?” inquired Ray, after Ah Moy and her colleague had brought in the coffee and the implements pertaining to “black smoke.” “You have but to say the word, old man, and, like Ariel, ‘I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’”

Now the hiring of Ah Moy and Shun Sen to twang their _samyens_ for the delectation of white devils, and hand them coffee and sing to them, “came high,” for the damsels were famous in their way and in great demand.

“This is too small a thing for you to notice, Jim,” replied Quong Lung; “nothing is too good for my friend.”

“Why didn’t you add, ‘the earth is my lord’s and the fullness thereof,’ and crush me with your compliments? As though I were a damned coolie!”

There was some petulance in Ray’s voice, as he gave way to the feeble irritability that attends the constant use of narcotics and stimulants by all except Orientals. He rose to his elbow from the mat on which he was smoking, and threw the pipe on its tray, like a spoiled child. But Quong Lung took no notice of the little outbreak, and Ah Moy put the pipe to his lips with her own fair hands and soon coaxed him into complacency. When a look of contentment had once more settled on his face, Ray said, deprecatingly: “It was the ‘dope’ that spoke, Quong Lung, and not I; forgive me, old man! And now, what do you want?”

Quong Lung motioned to the girls to withdraw, and when he was alone with Ray he said: “Jim, I shall hang unless you help me.”

“You must be in a bad fix, indeed, Quong Lung, if you depend on my small arts to help you. Explain.”

“Certain papers implicating me are in the possession of one of my blood-hounds, who has shown himself recalcitrant and ungrateful--the damned dog! By means of the battery yonder, which you rigged up for me, I frightened the brute considerably this morning, and he will be here again two nights hence with such of the papers as his fears may compel him to part with; but if his courage should revive, as it may, and if he should come without the documents, I want to put him under the stress of telling me where they are to be found, and then I desire that he should never speak again!”

Quong Lung darted a look full of dangerous meaning at Ray.

“Why don’t you employ your regular bull-dogs to attend to this unpleasant affair, Quong Lung?”

“Because their methods are coarse and their weapons clumsy.”

“But it is deuced risky to be an accessory before the fact in a murder case, my friend.”

“No, no, Jim, not murder! Call it, rather, ‘the sudden death of an unknown coolie, from unknown causes.’”

“And the consideration for me?”

“Two hundred dollars now,” said Quong Lung, laying a pile of notes on the platform on which they were smoking, “and two hundred more after the thing is over.”

“And if I refuse?”

Quong Lung shrugged his shoulders, and said, in an indifferent tone of voice: “Life without opium, and without means of obtaining it, were hell, as you know. Besides, so many accidents are constantly happening in Chinatown.”

“Very well,” replied the other, rising languidly to his feet and thrusting the notes into his pocket; “very well. You must let me have entire possession of this room for the next two days, and provide such assistance and implements as I may require.”

As he was leaving the room he stopped to smell a tuberose that stood on a bamboo flower-stand. The passing act seemed to give him an idea, for he turned suddenly to Quong Lung, saying: “See to it, Quong Lung, that you provide plenty of punk-sticks for the eventful night. You will need them, I am thinking. And be good to this green brother,” pointing to the tuberose.

IV. Concerning Cherries and Tuberoses.

An hour before the time set for the arrival of Wau Shun, Ray called Quong Lung into the room wherein he had labored almost incessantly during the past two days.

“All’s done,” he said, “save only the payment of my dues.”

“Proceed,” returned Quong Lung, laying ten double eagles on the table and seating himself on his favorite ebony chair.

Ray eyed him curiously while he pocketed the money, and the Chinaman, who seemed to notice everything, rose quickly from the chair and said, with a smile:

“‘How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds, Makes ill deeds done!’

Eh Jim? Now show me your trick.”