Miss Minerva had gone in the big car to call on friends, and the house was quiet as the tomb. John Quincy wandered aimlessly about the rooms, gloomy and bereft. Down at the Moana an Hawaiian orchestra was playing and Lieutenant Booth, of Richmond, was holding Carlota close in the intimate manner affected these days by the young. Bah! If he hadn’t been ordered to leave Hawaii, by gad, he’d go tomorrow.
The telephone rang. None of the servants appeared to answer it, so John Quincy went himself.
“Charlie Chan speaking,” said a voice. “That is you, Mr. Winterslip? Good. Big events will come to pass very quick. Meet me drug and grocery emporium of Liu Yin, number 927 River Street, soon as you can do so. You savvy locality?”
“I’ll find it,” cried John Quincy, delighted.
“By bank of stream. I will await. Goodbye.”
Action—action at last! John Quincy’s heart beat fast. Action was what he wanted tonight. As usually happens in a crisis, there was no automobile available; the roadster was at a garage undergoing repairs, and the other car was in use. He hastened over to Kalakaua Avenue intending to rent a machine, but a trolley approaching at the moment altered his plans and he swung aboard.
Never had a trolley moved at so reluctant a pace. When they reached the corner of Fort Street in the center of the city, he left it and proceeded on foot. The hour was still fairly early, but the scene was one of somnolent calm. A couple of tourists drifted aimlessly by. About the bright doorway of a shooting gallery loitered a group of soldiers from the fort, with a sprinkling of enlisted navy men. John Quincy hurried on down King Street, past Chinese noodle cafés and pawn shops, and turned presently off into River Street.
On his left was the river, on his right an array of shabby stores. He paused at the door of number 927, the establishment of Liu Yin. Inside, seated behind a screen that revealed only their heads, a number of Chinese were engrossed in a friendly little game. John Quincy opened the door; a bell tinkled, and he stepped into an odor of must and decay. Curious sights met his quick eye, dried roots and herbs, jars of seahorse skeletons, dejected ducks flattened out and varnished to tempt the palate, gobbets of pork. An old Chinaman rose and came forward.
“I’m looking for Mr. Charlie Chan,” said John Quincy.
The old man nodded and led the way to a red curtain across the rear of the shop. He lifted it, and indicated that John Quincy was to pass. The boy did so, and came into a bare room furnished with a cot, a table on which an oil lamp burned dimly behind a smoky chimney, and a couple of chairs. A man who had been sitting on one of the chairs rose suddenly; a huge red-haired man with the smell of the sea about him.
“Hello,” he said.
“Is Mr. Chan here?” John Quincy inquired.
“Not yet. He’ll be along in a minute. What say to a drink while we’re waiting. Hey, Liu, a coupla glasses that rotten rice wine!”
The Chinaman withdrew. “Sit down,” said the man. John Quincy obeyed; the sailor sat too. One of his eyelids drooped wickedly; he rested his hands on the table—enormous hairy hands. “Charlie’ll be here pretty quick,” he said. “Then I got a little story to tell the two of you.”
“Yes?” John Quincy replied. He glanced about the little vile-smelling room. There was a door, a closed door, at the back. He looked again at the red-haired man. He wondered how he was going to get out of there.
For he knew now that Charlie Chan had not called him on the telephone. It came to him belatedly that the voice was never Charlie’s. “You savvy locality?” the voice had said. A clumsy attempt at Chan’s style, but Chan was a student of English; he dragged his words painfully from the poets; he was careful to use nothing that savored of “pidgin.” No, the detective had not telephoned; he was no doubt at home now bending over his chessboard, and here was John Quincy shut up in a little room on the fringe of the River District with a husky sailorman who leered at him knowingly.
The old Chinaman returned with two small glasses into which the liquor had already been poured. He set them on the table. The red-haired man lifted one of them. “Your health, sir,” he said.
John Quincy took up the other glass and raised it to his lips. There was a suspicious eagerness in the sailor’s one good eye. John Quincy put the glass back on the table. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want a drink, thank you.”
The great face with its stubble of red beard leaned close to his. “Y’ mean you won’t drink with me?” said the red-haired man belligerently.
“That’s just what I mean,” John Quincy answered. Might as well get it over with, he felt; anything was better than this suspense. He stood up. “I’ll be going along,” he announced.
He took a step toward the red curtain. The sailor, evidently a fellow of few words, rose and got in his way. John Quincy, himself feeling the futility of talk, said nothing, but struck the man in the face. The sailor struck back with efficiency and promptness. In another second the room was full of battle, and John Quincy saw red everywhere, red curtain, red hair, red lamp flame, great red hairy hands cunningly seeking his face. What was it Roger had said? “Ever fought with a ship’s officer—the old-fashioned kind with fists like flying hams?” No, he hadn’t up to then, but that sweet experience was his now, and it came to John Quincy pleasantly that he was doing rather well at his new trade.
This was better than the attic; here he was
