INDEED the latter\u2014whose American odyssey was destined to be quite as hard as that of Foh Wong, decades earlier\u2014needed every cent of the fifteen hundred dollars. To enumerate all those whom he had to bribe would be to give an ethnographical survey of many of the Far East\u2019s more gaudy rogues.
\nBut let us pick out a few.
\nThere was, in Shanghai, a Kansuh ruffian on whose shaven poll had been a blood-price ever since the Boxer affair, and who met the former warlord and thirty other prospective emigrants in a first-chop chandoo place west of the To Kao Tien Temple. There was, furthermore, a squint-eyed Lithuanian skipper, wanted for murder in Riga and for piracy in Pernambuco, who took them to Vladivostok and into the tranquil presence of a Nanking compradore with gold-encased fingernails and a charming taste in early Ming porcelain. This gentleman passed the adventurers through yet two more middlemen to a Japanese captain who flaunted British naturalization papers and called himself O\u2019Duffy Ichiban.
\nHe was supposed to clear directly for Seattle. But he managed to cruise off the British Columbia coast\u2014\u201ccontrary head winds, half a gale,\u201d he wrote in his log, and lied\u2014until a narrow-flanked clipper shot out from the fogs of Queen Charlotte Sound and took away the living freight, drowning no more than seven. The remainder had an interview, next morning, with a government inspector who\u2014hating himself for it\u2014drowned his conscience in his greed.
\nThen a stormy night. A motorboat chugging recklessly across the Straits of San Juan de Fuca. A dumping overboard into the swirling, greasy sea half a mile from land. A screaming wave that swallowed all the merry band of Mongol rovers with the exception of the former warlord. . . . His swim ashore. And at last, his strong hand reaching out from the water and gripping the slippery piles at the foot of Yeslerway, in the city of Seattle. . . .
\nSeattle in spring.
\nSpring, too, in New York.
\nSpring brushing into Pell Street on gauzy pinions. Hovering birdlike over sordid, tarred rooftops. Dropping liquid silver over the toil of the streets, adding music to the strident calls of pavement and gutter.
\nSpring in the heart of Foh Wong\u2014to whom, that morning, the editor had said that he had received a telegram from the hatchetman. The latter would be here on Saturday\u2014would seek out the merchant immediately upon his arrival, at nine in the evening.
\nSo, on Saturday afternoon, Foh Wong entered the joss temple. There he attended to his religious duties more thoroughly and unctuously than usual. Not only did he make kowtow to the Buddha of the Paradise of the West. He also kowtowed seven times to the Buddha of the Light Without Measure, and nine times to the purple-faced Goddess of Mercy. He heaped the bowls in front of the idols with dry rice. He burned twenty-seven incense sticks. He made the rounds of the temple, bowing right and left, beating gongs, ringing a small silver bell. He paid the priest a handsome sum to exorcise whatever evil spirits might be about.
\nFINALLY, his soul at rest, he went home. He presented his wife with gifts, thinking shrewdly that Si-Si would enjoy them after Na Liu\u2019s demise\u2014an expensive radio set, a robe of purple satin embroidered with tiny butterflies, a pair of coral-and-jade earrings and a precious Suen-tih vase.
\nNa Liu smiled. She said:
\n\u201cYou have made me very happy these last few months.\u201d
\n\u201cHave I?\u201d
\n\u201cYes,\u201d she agreed; \u201cby forgetting your anger against me, your just and righteous anger. For, you see, I have been a bad wife. I have never loved you. I have grown old and ugly. And I have borne you no children.\u201d
\n\u201cThree things which only fate can help,\u201d he replied quite gently.
\n\u201cFate is bitter.\u201d
\n\u201cFate, at times\u201d\u2014as he thought of Si-Si\u2014\u201cis sweet. Let us not blame fate.\u201d He interrupted himself as there was a loud knocking at the street door below. \u201cA friend whom I expect,\u201d he explained, and hurried out.
\nHe reached the shop, crossed it, threw open the door. A man stood there\u2014tall, broad, a black handkerchief concealing all his features but the hard, staring eyes.
\n\u201cUpstairs,\u201d whispered Foh Wong. \u201cThe first room to the left.\u201d
\nThe stranger inclined his head without speaking. Noiselessly he mounted. He disappeared.
\nThere was a pall of heavy, oppressive silence\u2014 suddenly broken by a sob that quickly gurgled out. And Foh Wong trembled a little, felt a cold shiver along his spine\u2014saw, a minute or two later, the man return.
\nHe asked:
\n\u201cIs it\u2014finished, O hatchetman?\u201d
\n\u201cYes. It is finished, O mud-turtle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it\u2014finished, O hatchetman?\u201d Foh Wong asked; and the stranger replied: \u201cIt is finished, O mud-
\nturtle.\u201d Then the merchant gave a shriek of fear.
\nThat voice!
\nTHEN the merchant gave a shriek of surprise and fear. Why\u2014that nasal, metallic voice so well remembered! The voice of Yang Shen-Li! And as the other tore off the black handkerchief\u2014 the face of Yang Shen-Li! Older, much older. But still the bold, aquiline nose, the high cheekbones that seemed to give beneath the pressure of the leathery, copper-red skin, the compressed, sardonic lips brushed by the drooping mandarin mustache, the combative chin. . . .
\n\u201cBut you,\u201d Foh Wong stammered ludicrously, \u201c\u2014you died\u2014in Ninguta!\u201d
\n\u201cAnd I came to life again,\u201d was the drawling answer, \u201cas Kang Kee, the warlord. Kang Kee, who last year forged a chain of strong and exquisite friendship with one Yung Tang, who was visiting China. Kang Kee\u2014no longer a warlord, but a hatchetman come here for the sake of a small
\nkilling.\u201d
\n\u201cA killing,\u201d cried Foh Wong, rapidly collecting his wits, \u201cfor which you will lose your head.\u201d
\nHe had decided what he was going to do. Outside somewhere, on Pell Street or Mott, his friend Bill, detective of Second Branch, would be walking his beat. He would call him, would tell him that his wife had been murdered. He was about to run out\u2014stopped as he heard the other\u2019s drawling words:
\n\u201cNot so fast, mud-turtle! You spoke of my losing my head. And what of your own head?\u201d
\n\u201cYou killed, not I.\u201d
\n\u201cYou hired me.\u201d
\n\u201cProve it!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INDEED the latter\u2014whose American odyssey was destined to be quite as hard as that of Foh Wong, decades earlier\u2014needed every cent of the fifteen hundred dollars. To enumerate all those whom he had to bribe would be to give an ethnographical survey of many of the Far East\u2019s more gaudy rogues. But let us pick…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-achmed-abdullah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}