“Whoever does it could phone Fong Yick tomorrow morning, and say he’d be in Thursday morning to look the applicants over. This is Monday—that’ll be long enough. Our helper gets at the employment office at ten Thursday morning. Miss Shan and I arrive in a taxicab ten minutes later, when he’ll be in the middle of questioning the applicants. I’ll slide out of the taxi into Fong Yick’s, grab anybody that looks like one of our missing servants. Miss Shan will come in a minute or two behind me and check me up—so there won’t be any false-arrest mixups.”
The Old Man nodded approval.
“Very well,” he said. “I think I can arrange it. I will let you know tomorrow.”
I went home to bed. Thus ended the first day.
III
At nine the next morning, Tuesday, I was talking to Cipriano in the lobby of the apartment building that employs him. His eyes were black drops of ink in white saucers. He thought he had got something.
“Yes, sir! Strange Chinaboys are in town, some of them. They sleep in a house on Waverly Place—on the western side, four houses from the house of Jair Quon, where I sometimes play dice. And there is more—I talk to a white man who knows they are hatchet-men from Portland and Eureka and Sacramento. They are Hip Sing men—a tong war starts—pretty soon, maybe.”
“Do these birds look like gunmen to you?”
Cipriano scratched his head.
“No, sir, maybe not. But a fellow can shoot sometimes if he don’t look like it. This man tells me they are Hip Sing men.”
“Who was this white man?”
“I don’t know the name, but he lives there. A short man—snowbird.”
“Grey hair, yellowish eyes?”
“Yes, sir.”
That, as likely as not, would be Dummy Uhl. One of my men was stringing the other. The tong stuff hadn’t sounded right to me anyhow. Once in a while they mix things, but usually they are blamed for somebody else’s crimes. Most wholesale killings in Chinatown are the result of family or clan feuds—such as the ones the “Four Brothers” used to stage.
“This house where you think the strangers are living—know anything about it?”
“No, sir. But maybe you could go through there to the house of Chang Li Ching on other street—Spofford Alley.”
“So? And who is this Chang Li Ching?”
“I don’t know, sir. But he is there. Nobody sees him, but all Chinaboys say he is great man.”
“So? And his house is in Spofford Alley?”
“Yes, sir, a house with red door and red steps. You find it easy, but better not fool with Chang Li Ching.”
I didn’t know whether that was advice or just a general remark.
“A big gun, huh?” I probed.
But my Filipino didn’t really know anything about this Chang Li Ching. He was basing his opinion of the Chinese’s greatness on the attitude of his fellow countrymen when they mentioned him.
“Learn anything about the two Chinese men?” I asked after I had fixed this point.
“No, sir, but I will—you bet!”
I praised him for what he had done, told him to try it again that night, and went back to my rooms to wait for Dummy Uhl, who had promised to come there at ten-thirty. It was not quite ten when I got there, so I used some of my spare time to call up the office. The Old Man said Dick Foley—our shadow ace—was idle, so I borrowed him. Then I fixed my gun and sat down to wait for my stool-pigeon.
He rang the bell at eleven o’clock. He came in frowning tremendously.
“I don’t know what t’ hell to make of it, kid,” he spoke importantly over the cigarette he was rolling. “There’s sumpin’ makin’ down there, an’ that’s a fact. Things ain’t been anyways quiet since the Japs began buyin’ stores in the Chink streets, an’ maybe that’s got sumpin’ to do with it. But there ain’t no strange Chinks in town—not a damn one! I got a hunch your men have gone down to L.A., but I expec’ t’ know f’r certain tonight. I got a Chink ribbed up t’ get the dope; ’f I was you, I’d put a watch on the boats at San Pedro. Maybe those fellas’ll swap papers wit’ a coupla Chink sailors that’d like t’ stay here.”
“And there are no strangers in town?”
“Not any.”
“Dummy,” I said bitterly, “you’re a liar, and you’re a boob, and I’ve been playing you for a sucker. You were in on that killing, and so were your friends, and I’m going to throw you in the can, and your friends on top of you!”
I put my gun in sight, close to his scared-grey face.
“Keep yourself still while I do my phoning!”
Reaching for the telephone with my free hand, I kept one eye on the Dummy.
It wasn’t enough. My gun was too close to him.
He yanked it out of my hand. I jumped for him.
The gun turned in his fingers. I grabbed it—too late. It went off, its muzzle less than a foot from where I’m thickest. Fire stung my body.
Clutching the gun with both hands I folded down to the floor. Dummy went away from there, leaving the door open behind him.
One hand on my burning belly, I crossed to the window and waved an arm at Dick Foley, stalling on a corner down the street. Then I went to the bathroom and looked to my wound. A blank cartridge does hurt if you catch it close up!
My vest and shirt and union suit were ruined, and I had a nasty scorch on my body. I greased it, taped a cushion over it, changed my clothes, loaded the gun again, and went down to the office to wait for word from Dick. The first trick in the game looked like mine. Heroin or no heroin, Dummy Uhl would not have jumped me if my guess—based on the
