Part 5

“Don’t you bother your head about this; just give me the money; I know what I want; I have the list all made out. I’ll buy them and fix them up and when everything is ready I’ll have you come up and look at them and tell me what you think. I know my taste is not as good as yours, but I’ll do the best I can.”

Please bear in mind that he was only a boy--just twenty-one years old--then you will understand perhaps why it was he fell for so old a story.

At this point you’ve got it all figured out. In your opinion she took the coin and simply faded away.

Nothing of the kind.

He saw her once every twenty-four hours at least and she reported progress, and then one day he got a note telling him to come up and see the new place.

She received him at the door herself and if the little flat had been a palace she couldn’t have been more delighted. It was so very fine that when she told him she had gone into debt just a little bit he promptly asked how much and paid up without even so much as a murmur. It was so easy that she ought to have given it back to him a little while just to hold.

When he went away he had a latch key and was about as proud a fellow as it was possible to be and walk straight.

As in a play so in a story--the finish is everything.

It must be good and it must be quick.

The earlier parts of the story or the scenes may lag, but nothing like that will do at the end.

Blanche had been on the stage, and consequently she knew the value of “finis.”

He was to go on a hunting trip for a week, and in her opinion the critical moment had about arrived. She intuitively divined the end of the string. One night at a little dinner in the flat she talked to him about money matters, and such was the charm of her manner that presently he was telling her all about himself, and the romance of the ten thousand dollar bill.

“And how much have you left of all this?” she asked softly.

“Oh, I don’t know, about seven or eight hundred.”

“Well, I think you’ve been very, very foolish. You’re going away on a week’s trip and a hundred really ought to do you. Just give the rest to me and I will take good care of it until you come back, and then you will have it. You want to be careful of what you have now; you are altogether too liberal, and you do too much for people.”

That was the reason when he went away on that trip that he was a trifle shy financially, and so far to the bad that he had to borrow to get back in good shape.

From the Grand Central station he took a cab to the flat. It seemed as though he couldn’t get there quick enough. He went up the stairs two at a time. He came to the door.

There was a light, dim, but still a light, shining feebly over the transom. He put the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door and went in. He took four steps in the private hall. Then a man’s arm went around his neck and a voice asked:

“What are you doing here?”

He had nerve and he wasn’t the least bit flustered.

“If you’ll let go that strangle I’ll tell you,” he said. “Where’s Blanche?”

That was the opening for the story, which he told very well under the circumstances.

“She never owned this furniture,” spoke up the man, when the tale had been concluded. “This flat is rented furnished. She left here about a week ago, and I live here now.”

Now we get the curtain.

He has finished his dinner, and he’s going home. That’s the best place anyhow. What right has a boy like that to be on Broadway with ten thousand dollars?

AN ORIENTAL NOCTURNE

It’s just one little step--in New York, anyhow--from the Caucasian to the Oriental. As a matter of fact it’s only across the street, and that doesn’t count for any distance at all. The Chinese have settled down on that little part of the city which is split into wedge-shaped blocks by Mott, Pell and Doyers streets, very much like a flock of birds alight on some tree, and with apparently as little reason. They have brought with them their manners, their customs, their habits and their traditions. They have imported their own gods, and even the furniture for the joss houses. They have introduced to American men and women the choices of their Oriental vices, that of opium smoking, and they have provided places where their patrons may enjoy the drug. They wash your shirts and iron your collars; they take your money and smile at you; they go to your Sunday schools and sing hymns in queer cracked voices that would be worth big money to a comedian, and they profess to be converted to your way of thinking, but they are smooth and wise.

They are never weaned from the worship of Confucius or Tao, or Buddha, as the case may be, but don’t you see when a Chinese wants to learn the language of the people with whom he lives, it is very nice to have as a teacher a nice looking girl, and the English of the Bible is no different than any other English. So, by saying he has foresworn the gods and the faith of his fathers, he gets his education directly from the red lips of a daughter of the white devils, and sometimes he puts on the finishing touches by marrying her.

Can you beat it?

Much he thinks of women, for in that Empire from whence he comes a woman is a chattel, a bit of merchandise, worth so much in money or goods, as the case may be, and he buys her as a white man buys a horse. She is his wife, his mistress, or his servant, and the price fluctuates accordingly.

When Yen Gow, the slickest Oriental that ever cooked a pill, hit Mott street for the first time, he noticed that there were very few women of his race in the colony, and being a man who made money, no matter by what means, he considered it was an evil that he was in duty bound to remedy. He had a varied career, and among other things being an expert, he had taught American women how to smoke “hop.”

Incidentally, it is pat to say here that Yen Gow represents a man and not a dummy, and that this story is absolutely true in every detail and is very far removed from fiction.

If you haven’t what you want, get it, is a maxim practiced by a certain class of people in all countries in the world whose methods, both from a moral as well as a legal standpoint, are not considered to be exactly right. So being shy one female of his own blood and color, Yen took a 3,000 mile ride to ’Frisco to remedy the defect. No one knows just how deep he had to dig for that slant-eyed lady, dressed in the clothes of a boy, whom he smuggled into the top floor of a Mott street tenement one night. But it was his investment, and he spent his money like another man would buy ground or buildings.

He fitted the room up with couches and curtains and furniture, but first of all he fitted a good, strong lock to the door that couldn’t be tampered with either from the inside or outside unless one had the key. There was only one key and he had it. When you buy property that has feet you are not inclined to take chances.

Having attended to all of the details that he considered necessary, and frightened the lady by telling her that the people of New York were cannibals who liked nothing better than Mongolian flesh, he began to do business.

He first lounged into the fan-tan joint of Hop Lee on Pell street.

“Have you ever heard of Moy Sen?” he asked.

“Moy Sen; who is she?”

“Who is she? Were you born yesterday? There are three hundred and twenty girls in ’Frisco, and they are as little like Moy Sen as the earth is like the sun. Why, the viceroy of the Shang-tuan province heard of her and sent an envoy with nothing to do but look at her and if she was what they said she was, to bring her back even if it cost him ten thousand taels.”

“Did he get her?”

“Can a child get a rainbow? She heard he was coming, so she dressed in the clothes of a working boy and ran away to New York.” He stepped a little closer and whispered: “She is here now.”

Then he cunningly told his story, and when he had finished he had made it clearly understood for what purpose she was here, and added further that being an utter stranger she had placed herself under his care.

“Now, if you care to see her I will take you.”

Nothing could be simpler--nor plainer.

In figuring up his profits--which were large--Yen Gow got into the habit of multiplying them by two, and then mentally cursing himself because he had not bought two slaves instead of one. With no conscience and no morals, he was a thing of stone whose only thought was the easy acquirement of money. If, by cutting off a finger or an ear from his chattel he could have increased her value, he would have done it with as little compunction as lopping off a chicken’s head.

When the money didn’t come in fast enough he took to beating her, and it wasn’t long before the slim, brown body of the girl began to take on bluish spots where the knots in the rope had struck and left their imprint. She had never known there was such a thing in the world as love, but she began to hate with a fierceness and vindictiveness that any woman is capable of when she has been wronged, no matter of what race or nationality she may be.

Revenge follows closely on the heels of a woman’s hate, and it is always deadly. One woman can hate another woman and still smile on her as if she was the dearest and best friend in the world, while she is waiting to let go her poisoned shaft. But she has no smiles for the man she hates any more than a cat will purr when it has just had an encounter with a dog.

Many a night when the sightseeing crowds were going through Chinatown’s streets the girl looked at her captor, and let her tapering hand slip inside the loose fold of her silk blouse until it caressed the jade handle of a long, thin and keen-edged blade. If he had known how near death he was he would have put his back against the wall and pulled out that big American revolver he always carried in his sash. But not knowing he went along with his head up in the clouds.

Because her heart was the heart of a woman she stopped feeling for the knife and set her mind on other things, such as any caged animal would under the circumstances. It was finally concentrated on the key--that slim piece of metal which he never let out of his keeping day or night. It gave her courage to live the life she was leading, and the thought spurred her on, for at last she had an object.

The long, lean, gray wolf of the prairies will follow its prey for days. Hungry and thirsty and tired it will trail like a shadow, never once deviating from the heels of its victim. Through snow, and rain, and sleet, and wind, surmounting all obstacles it will stay until the end, and the end to the wolf always means the feast.

Somewhere in the veins of this Chinese girl there must have been one drop of wolf blood, for once she set her mind upon the possession of that key she never wavered. It was before her night and day. She planned a thousand ways to get it, but never one was right. She watched him with furtive eyes, but for all the good it did, she might just as well have been looking out of the window of the dreary brick wall of the other building.

Once when he was sleeping she crept silently to his side and felt for the inner pocket of his blouse. Slight as was her touch he must have felt it, for he moved uneasily and she fluttered to the floor like a leaf from a falling tree. She tried again, but with the same result.

But out of what seems certain failure often comes success.

“I am hungry; get me something to eat quick,” he demanded when he awoke in the morning.

She started up and set about her work while he walked over to the table to get his water pipe. As she passed back and forth from cupboard to stove her glance fell upon the couch where he had slept, and for one brief moment it seemed as though she was going to fall. A sudden weakness came into her knees and it was with a great effort that she kept from crying out, for there in plain view was the key. In an instant she had it, and she had taken the first and easiest step to freedom.

He smoked, then ate, then smoked again, but this last time it wasn’t tobacco that soothed him--it was opium, and when at last his drowsy eyes closed she was by the door pushing the key into the socket. It turned the lock. Then she opened the door, passed out and locked it on the outside. She ran down the steps as if she was pursued; out on the street, when the thought of those white devils--those eaters of human flesh--halted her in terror. But no one spoke to her and she was reassured. Across the way she saw the sign of a temple, and she made for it as a shipwrecked sailor makes for land. She went up one flight of very dark and very dirty stairs and then saw a half-opened door. She peeped in. The room was empty, but at the back were the images of the gods she knew in China; before them was the shrine, and back of them was the sacred place where no one dared go.

But nothing is sacred where terror is, and before ten seconds of time had been ticked off by the clock on the wall she was nestling at the heels of Kwon Guet, the God of Might, the safest spot in all the quarter.

If you will notice when you visit a Chinese joss house you will observe that there is nothing thin nor weak about the keeper. He looks like a man who loves the good things of life and gets them, too. His life is one of ease and he feasts like a nabob. When a Chinese wants a favor from a joss he first sends offerings of food. These are put in fine dishes and placed on the altar. Then he prays, and begs that this feast be accepted in the same spirit in which it is sent. He may believe or he may not believe that that thing of wood eats what he has left, but the keeper knows and waxes fat. Many a time has he smacked his lips over a sucking pig, roasted to a turn, and chickens are on his daily bill of fare.

Two hours after the girl had gone through the open door the keeper awoke. He yawned and then stretched himself, leisurely. He was in no hurry, for he knew there was a breakfast awaiting for him on the altar, and it was such a breakfast as a man of his distinction was entitled to. He knew to a grain of rice what had been put there the night before just as he had known it for years.

Presently he was ready and he sauntered out of his little room with no unseemly haste. The wick in the vessel of olive oil was burning with a steady glow and the faces of the gods were as placid and emotionless as the day they left the carver’s shop in Pekin.

“Ai yei.”

He rubbed his eyes and stepped back a pace in alarm.

One of the dishes was empty. It was as bare and clean as the palm of his hand. He ran back to the room in the rear and roughly woke his assistant.

“You have eaten before me, you swine,” he shouted.

“Eaten?” queried the other. “I have not eaten since yesterday.”

“Come and look then.” Together they both went, and when they arrived at the altar another dish had been taken.

The keeper looked up at the stolid countenance of Kwon Guet, saw a shred of the white meat of a chicken and a grain of rice on his lower lip, and then dropped face downward on the floor as if he had been shot.

He grovelled in abject terror while the assistant gazed at him with wondering eyes, until he, too, looked up, saw the same sight, and then he went down beside his master. There they both lay until combining their courage, they crept fearfully backward beyond the range of the vision of those green jade eyes.

“It is a curse,” whispered the keeper, and the other nodded his head, too frightened to speak.

That was only the beginning, for as fast as the offerings were brought they disappeared, and nothing was left but empty dishes. For eight days this continued, and then, on the night of that day, the keeper, grown bold, found the desire to see a god eat growing in his heart. So when the lights in the shops had gone out and the noises in the street had died down to whispers, he went out into the darkened temple and sat in a corner with his back against the wall. The flickering lamps burned dimly and cast long shadows across the bare floor and with solitude came fear. He looked at the heaped-up dishes hungrily and then at the joss, but the religion of his ancestors held him fast, and what might have been nothing more nor less than a block of wood to another man of another race was something to him that was endowed with the power to pardon and punish or even cause instant death.

Suddenly there came to him a noise like a sigh, long-drawn out and deep, and as he shrunk back still further in his corner he felt the blood in his veins run cold. A dish moved and his lower jaw dropped as though he had been stricken with death. Something seemed to wind itself about that bit of crockery and drag it slowly in until it disappeared, but there was no sound. His breath came in gasps and he felt as if he would choke. Then he saw the dish replaced with the food gone. Those same unseen hands took another one and still another, but he didn’t see, for he had sagged down in a lifeless heap and terror had numbed his senses. As he went over he groaned aloud, and there was a sudden movement back of the altar which almost caused Kwon Guet to topple over.

At three o’clock in the morning Chuck Connors, with his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, was walking along Mott street, homeward bound, when a Chinese girl came running out of the joss house door. So great was her speed that she almost collided with him.

“Ha, there, git onto yerself,” said Chuck, putting up his hands to fend off an imaginary blow: “wot are yer tryin’ ter do--shoot de shoots?”

“Velly much aflaid,” said the girl, looking behind her.

“Well, wot de yer t’ink uv dat,” said Chuck, “Who’s chasin’ yer, anyhow?” and he took a step toward the doorway.

But she wouldn’t have it that way, and taking hold of his arm she almost dragged him away from the place. Chuck knows a little Chinese and a lot of pidgin-English, and he managed to get some kind of a story out of the girl, and then he took her home and put her in the care of Mrs. Chuck until the morning. The next day she was taken to a mission house in Brooklyn, where she stayed until one night when a sporty laundryman smuggled her away to Savannah, Ga.

The joss-house keeper buys his grub now, and he’s looking a bit thin. Incidentally he pays more attention to the temple than ever before.

So, you see, good comes out of everything.

A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION

The turn of a street corner, the going this way instead of that, the casual introduction to a certain woman, and a thousand other things often prove the turning point in life, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. To every man opportunity comes once at least. The successful ones are those who have recognized their chance and taken prompt advantage of it. But anyone can preach a sermon, and money doesn’t always follow in the footsteps of education.

That will do for a starter to this story of a woman, a dinner and two men. You will notice that the woman comes first, the dinner next, and the men last, which is as it should be. Women should always be in the lead, which fact will be more fully recognized when their ability and genius become more generally understood and appreciated.

The dinner in this story changed the current of three lives so abruptly that it almost became a tragedy, and if you like you can take this as a moral, and beware of dinners, unless, of course, you are looking for a change, in which event you can take this as a tip and dine with the crowd early and often and see what happens.

The son of a wealthy Eastern brewer, born with a gold spoon in his mouth, and taught to believe that the world was made for his especial benefit, after blazing his way along the White Light thoroughfare for a few years, and making a name for himself as a spender of rare ability, took it suddenly into his head to reform. A good many hard nights had brought out a crop of fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and high living had added several inches to his waist line. But he was still good looking and ruddy cheeked, and there were a number of charming ladies living on certain side streets who knew him well enough to call him by his first name, and who were always glad to see him whether he did the sucker trick of opening bad wine at $5 a throw or not. In his mind the first step toward reformation meant marriage with some nice respectable young woman who had been correctly brought up, and whose family tree would bear investigation, and as his income was somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 it wasn’t hard to find what he wanted, for ninety-nine women out of a hundred would cheerfully fasten themselves to a monstrosity if there was a bank book in the inside pocket.

He picked out the girl he proposed to turn from a Miss into a Mrs., paid attention to her for thirty days without a break, then he proposed and was accepted, and the date of the marriage was set for two months later. It was a case of thirty and sixty days, with no discounts off.

It is usual in a case of this kind to give a farewell dinner to the bunch, to have one last good drunk and then a laborious climb aboard the water wagon until after the honeymoon. So he hunted up one of his best friends and told him the glad news.

“Never again for me,” he said, “and all the Dotties and Lotties and Totties can strike my name off their lists, for I’m going to marry, old man, and settle down to business. But I’m going to have one big blaze before I go, and I want you to get it up, for you can lay out a dinner better than anyone I know, and besides, I’m going to have you for my best man when I get hitched. Now go as far as you like and damn the expense. Have a stag with all the good fellows there that we know, and we’ll set off a few fireworks that will give them something to talk about.”

The banquet room of a big hotel was engaged, and the French chef got an order to lay out a spread that would make an old Roman feast look like a Bowery beef stew. Then the enterprising best man, who was something of a high roller himself, set his wits to work to devise a novelty that would top anything in the banquet line ever seen in New York after the lights were turned on. About fifty invitations went out, and in response to them on one eventful Saturday night, half a hundred dyed-in-the-wool sports, of the kind who buy diamond rings for little ladies who dance well, settled themselves in very comfortable chairs, and prepared to have the time of their lives and wish good luck to the man who was going to become respectable. The dinner was only a side issue, for it was to be nothing more nor less than one great drunk, and that was understood from the start. So the wine flowed as freely as water in the spring when the melting snows flood the brooks and swell the rivers, and for every five men there was one waiter to see that no one went thirsty. From ten until twelve the black-jacketed servitors drew corks and filled glasses, and then the best man pulled himself to his feet, propped himself between the arm of his chair and the table and commanded order that he might be heard.

“There is a pudding coming,” he began, “and in view of the fact that I invented it myself I would like to have you fellows sit up and take notice.”

Then he motioned to the head waiter and sank back in his chair. Five men, each one holding up his end of a platform about four feet square on which was a monstrous concoction of pastry, staggered in. A vacant place had been cleared on the table, and when it was placed in position a yell went up from the crowd.

“I’ll take a slice off the top,” sang the bridegroom, as he waved a glass of wine aloft.