Chapter 8

As they walked on the man next to Robertson told him why the troops had been compelled to interfere. The excited mob which had tasted blood, as it were, in the Chinese quarter and become more and more frantic, had continued plundering in some of the downtown streets without any discrimination--simply yielding to an uncontrollable desire for destruction. As a result a regular battle ensued between this mob, which consisted chiefly of Russian and Italian rabble, on one hand, and Irish workingmen who were defending their homes, on the other. The Russian contingent seemed to consist largely of the riff-raff which had found such a ready refuge in New York during the Russian Revolution, and some of these undesirable citizens now had recourse to dynamite. Some of the bombs caused great loss of life among the Irish people living in that part of town, and several policemen had also been killed in the performance of their duty. It was at this point that the authorities deemed it advisable to call out the troops, with whose arrival affairs immediately began to take on a different turn.

The soldiers did not hesitate to use their bayonets against the rabble. At several corners they encountered barricades, but they hesitated resorting to their firearms until several bombs were thrown among the troops while they were storming a barricade defended by Russian Terrorists. That was the last straw. With several volleys the soldiers drove the gang of foreign looters up Broadway, where a volley discharged near the spot where Gerald Hanbury had been murdered, dispersed the last compact mass of plunderers.

In the meantime the men had reached Mr. Hanbury's house and Robertson rang the bell. Not until they had rung loudly several times did the butler appear, and then only to announce gruffly that there was no one at home. A policeman ordered him to open the door at once, so that Mr. Hanbury's dead body might be brought in.

"But Mr. Hanbury is at home, you can't possibly have his dead body there!"

"Tell Mr. Hanbury right away!" interrupted the policeman. "It's young Mr. Hanbury, and he's been murdered. Open the door, do you hear!"

Silently the heavy bronze door turned on its hinges and, with the policeman in the lead, the men were ushered into the high marble entrance-hall of the Hanbury palace. They carried the stretcher on which lay the murdered body of the son of the house up the broad staircase, the thick carpets deadening the sound of their steps. At the top of the stairs they lowered their burden and waited in silence. Doors opened and shut in the distance; from one of them a bright stream of light fell on the shining onyx pillars and on the gilt frames of the paintings, which in the light from strange swinging lamps looked like huge black patches. Then the light from the door disappeared, a bell rang somewhere and figures hurried to and fro. A fantastically dressed East Indian next appeared and made signs to the ambulance-men to carry the stretcher into a room which, in its fabulous, Oriental splendor represented one of the most beautiful of the Indian mosques. The men carried their burden carefully into the middle of the room and then set it down and looked at one another in embarrassment. The policeman assumed a dignified posture and cleared his throat. Suddenly the heavy gold-embroidered curtain before one of the doors was pushed aside by a brown hand and fell back in heavy folds; an old white-haired man stood for a moment in the doorway and then advanced towards the officer with a firm step.

The latter cleared his throat again and then began in a dry and business-like tone to give his report of Gerald Hanbury's murder, ending with the words "--and these gentlemen picked him up and brought him here."

"I thank you, gentlemen," said the old man, and taking out his pocket-book he handed each of them, including Robertson, a twenty-dollar bill. Then he sat down wearily on the edge of the stretcher and rested his head in his hands. He seemed to be oblivious of his surroundings. The men stood round for a few moments not knowing what to do, until finally the policeman led the ambulance-men and Robertson to the door, which opened automatically.

As the Indian closed the door behind them the officer said to Robertson: "This is like the last act in a Third Avenue melodrama."

"Life has a liking for such plays," answered Robertson. As they left the Hanbury mansion the clock of Grace Church struck midnight. Robertson glanced down Broadway once more and saw that the long thoroughfare was almost deserted; only here and there the bluish-white light from the electric lamps shone on the bayonets of the sentinels patrolling up and down at long intervals. Then he repaired to the _Daily Telegraph_ offices to dictate his notes, so that the huge rolls of printed paper might announce to the world to-morrow that the first victims of the terrible war had fallen on the streets of New York.

The factory of Horace Hanbury & Son was not shut down.

_Chapter VII_

THE RED SUN OVER THE GOLDEN GATE

Too-oo-ot, bellowed the whistle of a big steamer that was proceeding gingerly through the fog which enveloped the broad Bay of San Francisco early on the morning of May seventh. The soft, white mist crept through the Golden Gate among the masts and funnels of the ships made fast to the docks, enveloped the yellow flame of the lanterns on the foremast in a misty veil, descended from the rigging again, and threatened to extinguish the long series of lights along the endless row of docks. The glistening bands of light on the Oakland shore tried their best to pierce the fog, but became fainter and fainter in the damp, penetrating, constantly moving masses of mist. Even the bright eye on Angel Island was shut out at last. Too-oo-ot, again sounded the sullen cry of warning from the steamer in the Golden Gate--Too-oo-ot. And then from Tiburon opposite the shrill whistle of the ferry-boat was heard announcing its departure to the passengers on the early train from San Rafael. The flickering misty atmosphere seemed like a boundless aquarium, an aquarium in which gigantic prehistoric, fabulous creatures stretched their limbs and glared at one another with fiery eyes. Trembling beams of light hovered between the dancing lights on and between the ships, rising and falling like transparent bars when the shivering sentries on deck moved their lanterns, and threw into relief now some dripping bits of rigging, and again the black outline of a deck-house as the sailor hurried below for a drink to refresh his torpid spirits.

The cold wind blew the damp fog into Market Street, forced it uphill and then let it roll down again, filling every street with its gray substance.

Too-oo-ot, came the whistle from the Golden Gate again and further off still another whistle could be heard. Over in Tiburon the ferry-boat had calmed down, as it found itself unable to budge in the fog. One after the other, the tower-clocks struck half-past four, the strokes sounding loud and unnatural in the fog. From Telegraph Hill at the northern end of San Francisco a splendid view could be obtained of this undulating sea of mist. A few of the isolated houses situated in the higher parts of the town looked like islands floating on the ever-moving glossy gray billows, while the top stories of several sky-scrapers rose up here and there like solemn black cliffs. A faint light in the east heralded the approach of day. Too-oo-ot, sounded the whistle of the approaching steamer once again; then its voice broke and died out in a discordant sob, which was drowned in the nervous gang, gang, gang of the ship's bell. The steamer had been obliged to anchor on account of the fog. Too-oo-ot, came from the other steamer further out. Then life in the bay came to a stand-still: nothing could be done till the sun rose and brought warmth in its train.

"This damned fog," said Tom Hallock, a telegraph boy, to his colleague, Johnny Kirkby, as he jumped off his bicycle in front of the Post Office, "this damned fog is enough to make one choke."

Johnny muttered some unintelligible words, for he was still half asleep; the effect of last night's eighteen drinks had not yet quite worn off. "You can't see the nearest lamp-post," he blurted out after a while. "I nearly ran into a company of infantry just now that suddenly popped up in front of me out of the fog. What's going on this morning, anyhow? What are they marching out to Golden Gate for?"

"Oh, you jay," said Tom, "naval maneuvers, of course! Are you blind? Haven't you read the _Evening Standard_? There are to be naval maneuvers this morning, and Admiral Perry is going to attack San Francisco."

"This war-game is a crazy scheme," grumbled Johnny. They both left their bicycles downstairs in a room in the Post Office and then went up to their quarters on the first story.

"Naval maneuvers?" began Johnny again. "I really don't know anything about them. It was in last night's _Evening Standard_. It said that the orders had been changed quite unexpectedly, and that the maneuvers would take place outside the bay to-day."

"It looks as though we'd have a long wait before daylight appears," said Tom impatiently, pointing out of the windows, while Johnny tackled the dilapidated tea-kettle in an effort to make himself an early morning drink. Tom stamped up and down the room to warm himself, remarking: "Thank the Lord it's Sunday and there isn't much going on, otherwise we'd all get sick chasing around with telegrams in this beastly fog."

Boom! The roar of a distant cannon suddenly made the windows rattle; boom again! It sounded as though it came from the Fort. "There you are," said Tom, "there's your naval maneuvers. Perry won't stand any nonsense. He's not afraid of the fog; in fact, it gives him a fine chance for an attack."

Johnny didn't answer, for he had meanwhile dozed off. As soon as he had with considerable trouble got his tea-kettle into working order, he had fallen fast asleep, and now began to snore with his nose pressed flat on the table, as if he meant to saw it through before his tea was ready.

Tom shrugged his shoulders in disgust, and said: "Those blamed drinks."

Another boom! from outside. The door opened behind Tom and a telegraph official looked in. "One, two," he counted, "two are there," and then he closed the door again.

Downstairs in the street a motor-cycle hurried past puffing and rattling, the rider's figure looking like a gigantic elusive shadow through the fog.

Tom started to walk up and down again as the clock in the hall struck a quarter to five. A bell rung in the next room. Steps were heard coming up the stairs and a colleague of the other two came in, swearing at the fog. He passed Johnny, poured out some of the latter's tea for himself and drank it, meanwhile looking at the sleeper inquiringly.

"It's the drinks," said Tom, grinning.

"H'm," growled the other. Another motor-cycle went by on the street below, and then another.

Later on a group of ten motor-cycles rode past.

"Did you see that, Harry?" asked Tom, who was standing at the window.

"What?"

"Didn't they have guns?"

"They probably have something to do with the naval maneuvers."

At this moment another group of ten men passed, and there was no doubt of the fact that they carried guns.

"I guess it is the naval maneuvers," asserted Tom.

Boom! came the sound of another shot.

"That's queer," said Tom. "What do you suppose it is?" He opened the window and listened. "Do you hear it?" he asked Harry, who admitted that he could also hear a rattling, scraping noise as though drums were being beaten far away or as though a handful of peas had been thrown against a pane of glass.

Tom leaned further out of the window in time to see a bicycle rider stop in front of the Post Office, take a big sheet of paper, moisten it with a large brush, and stick it on the wall near the entrance; then he rode off. Tom shut the window, for the fog seemed to be getting thicker and thicker, and now, in the pale light of approaching dawn, it was almost impossible to recognize the yellow spots of light on the lamp-posts. By this time Johnny had awakened and they all had some tea together.

They were interrupted by a fourth messenger boy, who entered the room at this moment and exclaimed:

"That's a great scheme of Admiral Perry's, and the fog seems to have helped him a lot. What do you think? He has surprised San Francisco. There's a notice posted downstairs stating that the Japanese have taken possession of San Francisco and that the Japanese military governor of San Francisco asks the citizens to remain quiet or the city will be bombarded from the harbor by the Japanese fleet."

"Perry is a great fellow, there's no use trying to fool with him," said Tom. "San Francisco surprised by the Japs--that's a mighty fine scheme."

Outside some one was tearing up the stairs two at a time, doors banged noisily, and several bells rang. "Somebody's in a h--- of a hurry," said Harry; "we'll have something to do in a minute."

A telegraph operator hurriedly opened the door and with great beads of perspiration rolling down his face, shouted at the top of his lungs: "Boys, the Japanese have surprised San Francisco."

A roar of laughter greeted this piece of information.

"Stung!" cried Harry. "Stung! Perry is the Jap."

"Perry?" inquired the newcomer, staring at the other four. "Who's Perry?"

"Don't you know, Mr. Allen, that there are naval maneuvers going on to-day and that Admiral Perry is to surprise San Francisco with the fleet?"

"But there are notices at all the street-corners saying that the Japanese governor of San Francisco begs the citizens----"

"Yes, that's where the joke comes in. Perry is going to attack the town as a Jap--that's his scheme."

"You haven't had enough sleep," cried Tom. "If all the Japs looked like Admiral Perry, then----"

Tom broke off short and dropped his tea-cup on the floor, staring blankly at the door as if he saw a ghost. Just behind Mr. Allen stood a Jap, with a friendly grin on his face, but a Jap all the same, most certainly and without the slightest doubt a Jap. He looked around the bare office and said in fluent English: "I must ask you to remain in this room for the present." With these words he raised his revolver and kept a sharp eye on the five occupants.

Johnny jumped up and felt instinctively for the revolver in his hip pocket, but in a flash the muzzle of the Jap's gun was pointed straight at him and mechanically he obeyed the order "Hands up!"

"Hand that thing over here," said the Jap; "you might take it into your head to use it," and he took Johnny's revolver and put it in his pocket. Several Japanese soldiers passed by outside. Mr. Allen sank down on a chair; not one of them could make head or tail of the situation.

They were kept waiting for half an hour. Down below in the street, where the wagons were beginning to rattle over the pavement, could be heard the steady march of bodies of soldiers, frequently interrupted by the noise of motor-cycles. There could no longer be any doubt--the affair was getting serious.

The lamps were extinguished and the gray light of dawn filled the rooms as the head Postmaster made his rounds, guarded by a Japanese officer.

The official was perspiring profusely from sheer nervousness. He begged the employees to keep calm, and assured them that it was no joke, but that San Francisco was really in the hands of the Japanese. It was the duty of the employees and the citizens, he said, to refrain from all resistance, so that a worse misfortune--a bombardment, he added in a whisper--might not befall the city.

The men were obliged to give up any weapons they had in their possession, and these were collected by the Japanese. At seven o'clock, when these details had been attended to, and the few telegraph instruments which were kept in commission were being used by Japanese operators--all the others had been rendered useless by the removal of some parts of the mechanism--one of the regular operators asked to be allowed to speak to the Postmaster. Permission having been granted by the Japanese guard, he told his chief, in a low voice, that the moment the Japanese soldiers had taken possession of the telegraph room he had hurriedly dispatched a message to Sacramento, telling them that San Francisco had been surprised by the Japanese fleet and that the whole city was occupied by Japanese troops.

"I thank you in the name of our poor country," said the Postmaster, shaking the operator's hand, "I thank you with all my heart; you have done a brave deed."

Just at the time when the operator sent off his telegram to Sacramento, a little, yellow, narrow-eyed fellow, lying in a ditch many miles inland, far to the east of San Francisco, connected his Morse apparatus with the San Francisco-Sacramento telegraph-wire, and intercepted the following message: "Chief of Police, Sacramento.--San Francisco attacked by Japanese fleet this morning; whole city in hands of Japanese army. Resistance impossible, as attack took place in thick fog before dawn. Help imperative."

The little yellow man smiled contentedly, tore off the strip, and handed it to the officer standing near him. The latter drew a deep breath and said: "Thank Heaven, that's settled."

At the time of the occupation of the Post Office building, the Japanese outposts had already spun their fine, almost invisible silver threads around all the telegraph-wires far inland and thus cut off all telegraphic communication with the east. The telegram just quoted therefore served only to tell the Japanese outposts of the overwhelming success of the Japanese arms at the Golden Gate.

But how had all this been accomplished? The enemy could not possibly have depended on the fog from the outset. Nevertheless an unusual barometrical depression had brought in its train several days of disagreeable, stormy weather. The Japanese had been fully prepared for a battle with the San Francisco forts and with the few warships stationed in the harbor. The fact that they found such a strong ally in the fog was beyond all their hopes and strategical calculations.

When the sun sank in the waves of the Pacific on the sixth of May, every Japanese had his orders for the next few hours, and the five thousand men whose part it was to attend to the work to be accomplished in San Francisco on the morning of the seventh, disappeared silently into the subterranean caves and cellars of the Chinese quarter, to fetch their weapons and be ready for action soon after midnight.

_Chapter VIII_

IN THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH

It was thought that the earthquake had done away forever with the underground labyrinth of the Chinese quarter--those thousands of pens inhabited by creatures that shunned the light of day, those mole-holes which served as headquarters for a subterranean agitation, the mysterious methods of which have never been revealed to the eye of the white man. When had the old Chinatown been laid out; when had those hidden warehouses, those opium dens and hiding-places of the Mongolian proletariat been erected, those dens in which all manner of criminals celebrated their indescribable orgies and which silently hid all these evil-doers from the far-reaching arm of the police? When had the new Chinatown sprung up? When had the new quarter been provided with an endless network of subterranean passages, so that soon all was just as it had been before the earthquake? No one had paid any attention to these things. The Mongolian secret societies never paused for a moment in their invisible conspiracy against the ruling whites, and succeeded in creating a new underground world, over which the street traffic rolled on obliviously.

A narrow cellar entrance and greasy, slippery steps led into Hung Wapu's store, behind which there was a chop-house, which in turn led into an opium-den. The rooms behind the latter, from which daylight was forever excluded, were reserved for still worse things. No policeman would ever have succeeded in raiding these dens of iniquity; he would have found nothing but empty rooms or bunks filled with snoring Chinese; the abominable stench would soon have driven him out again, but if, by any chance, he had attempted to penetrate further and to explore the walls for the purpose of discovering hidden openings, the only result would have been a story in the next day's papers about a "missing" policeman.

Hung Wapu, whose plump face, with its enormous spectacles, resembled that of an old fat boarding-house keeper, was standing at the entrance to his cellar-shop late on the evening of May sixth. A disgusting odor and the murmur of many voices reached the street from the cellar. The policeman had just made his rounds, and Hung Wapu looked after him with a cunning grin as his heavy steps died away in the distance.

The coast was clear for two hours. Hung Wapu went in and locked the door, above which a green paper-lantern swung gently to and fro in the soft night wind. Hung Wapu passed through the store to the chop-house, where several dozen Chinese were squatting on the ground dining on unmentionable Chinese delicacies, which consisted of anything and everything soft enough to be chewed. No one watching the vacant expression of these people would have dreamed for a moment that anything was wrong; no one observing these chattering, shouting sons of the Celestial Kingdom would have guessed that anything out of the ordinary was on foot. They kept on eating, and did not even look up when several Japs stole, one by one, through their midst and disappeared through a door at the back. The Japs apparently attracted no attention whatsoever, but a keen observer would have noticed that Hung Wapu placed a little saki-bowl on a low table for every Japanese visitor that had entered his shop.

The Japs all went through a side-door of the opium-den into a large room, where they took off their outer clothing and put on uniforms instead. Then they lay down to sleep either on the mats on the floor or on the bundles of clothing which were stacked on the floor along the walls of the room.

Hung Wapu now accompanied one of his Chinese guests up the cellar-steps to the street, and sitting down on the top step began to chat in a low voice with his apparently half-intoxicated countryman. At the same time he polished about two dozen little saki-bowls with an old rag, afterwards arranging them in long rows on the pavement.

The animated traffic in the narrow alley gradually died down. One by one most of the gas-lamps closed their tired eyes, and only the green paper-lantern above Hung Wapu's door continued to swing to and fro in the night-wind, while similar spots of colored light were visible in front of a few of the neighboring houses. Far away a clock struck the hour of midnight, and somewhere else, high up in the air, a bell rang out twelve strokes with a metallic sound. A cool current of air coming from the harbor swept through the hot, ill-smelling alley.

Hung Wapu went on whispering with his companion, and all the time he continued to polish his little saki-bowls. After a while the visitor fell asleep against the door-post and snored with all his might. Misty shadows began to fall slowly and the lights of the street lamps took on a red glow. Suddenly the figure of a drunken man appeared a little distance away; he was carefully feeling his way along the houses, but as soon as he came in sight of Hung Wapu's cellar, he suddenly seemed to sober up for a minute and made directly for it. "Saki!" he stammered, planting himself in front of Hung Wapu, whereupon the latter made a sign. The drunken man, a Japanese, whose face looked ghastly pale in the green light from the lantern, stared stupidly at the saki-bowls, which Hung Wapu was trying to shield from the tottering wretch with his arm.

"Twenty-eight bowls," he stammered to himself, "twenty-eight saki-bowls----"