Bunch Grass Part 35

I was of the same opinion; so The Babe departed, and for a season we saw his chubby face no more. Then one day, like a bolt from the blue, came an unstamped letter from San Francisco. The Babe wrote to ask for money. Such letters, as a rule, may be left unanswered, but not always. Ajax and I read The Babe's ill-written lines, and filled in the gaps in the text. Connoted and collated, it became a ma.n.u.script of extraordinary interest and significance. We inferred that if the sum demanded were not sent, the writer might be constrained to cast himself as rubbish to the void. Now The Babe had his little failings, but cowardice was not one of them. Indeed, his physical courage redeemed in a sense his moral and intellectual weakness.

"There is only one thing to do," said Ajax; "we must rescue The Babe.

We'll spin a dollar to determine who goes to the city to-morrow morning."

I nodded, for I was smelling the letter; the taint of opium was on it.

"Awful--isn't it?" murmured Ajax. "Do you remember those loathsome dens in Chinatown? And the creatures on the mats, and in the bunks!

And that missionary chap, who said how hard it was to reclaim them.

Poor Babe!"

Then we filled our pipes and smoked them slowly. We had plenty to think about, for rescuing an opium-fiend is no easy job, and reclaiming him afterwards is as hard again. But The Babe's blue eyes and his pink skin--what did they look like now?--were pleading on his behalf, and we remembered that he had played in his school eleven, and could run a quarter-mile in fifty-eight seconds, and was always cheery and good-tempered. The woods of the Colonies and the West are full of such Babes; and they all like to play with edged tools.

Next day we both went north. Ajax said that two heads were better than one, and that it was not wise to trust oneself alone in the stews of San Francisco. The police will not tell you how many white men are annually lost in those festering alleys that lie north of Kearney Street, but if you are interested in such matters, I can refer you to a certain grim-faced guide, who has spent nearly twenty years in Chinatown, and you can implicitly believe one quarter of what he says: that quarter will strain your credulity not a little.

We walked to the address given in the letter--a low dive--not a stone's-throw from one of the biggest hotels west of the Rocky Mountains. The man behind the bar said that he knew The Babe well, that he was a perfect gentleman, and a personal friend of his. The fellow's gla.s.sy eyes and his grey-green skin told their own story. A more villainous or crafty-looking scoundrel it has been my good fortune not to see.

"Where is your friend?" said Ajax.

The man behind the bar protested ignorance. Then my brother laid a five-dollar gold piece upon the country, and repeated the question.

The man's yellow fingers began to tremble. Gold to him was opium, and opium held all his world and the glory thereof.

"I can't take you to him--now," he muttered sullenly.

"You can," replied Ajax, "and you must."

The man glared at us. Doubtless he guessed the nature of our errand, and wished to protect his friend from the interference of Philistines, Then he smiled evilly, and laughed.

"All right; come on. I ain't goin' to take yer to the Palace Hotel."

He opened the till and slipped some money into his pocket. Then he put on a ragged overcoat, and a hat which he drew down over his eyes with a furtive jerk of his yellow fingers. Then he went behind the bar and swallowed something; it was not whisky, but it brought a faint tinge of colour into his cheek, and seemed to stiffen his knees.

"Shall we walk, boys, or shall I send for my carriage?"

"Your carriage," repeated Ajax. "Are you speaking of the patrol- waggon? It is just round the corner."

This allusion to the police was not wasted upon The Babe's friend, who scowled and retorted glibly--

"There's better men than you, mister, who ride in that."

After this exchange of pleasantries we took the road, and followed our guide across a great thorough-fare and into Kearney Street. Thence into the labyrinth of Chinatown.

"Think ye could find yer way out of this?" asked our guide presently.

We had pa.s.sed through an abominable rookery, and were walking down a narrow alley, seemingly deserted. Yet I was sensible that eyes were furtively watching us from behind barred windows, and I fancied that I heard whispers--mere guttural sounds, that conveyed nothing to the ear, save, perhaps, a warning that we were on unholy ground. The path we trod was foul with refuse; the stench was sickening; the most forlorn cur would surely have slunk from such a kennel; and here, _here_, to this lazar-house of all that was unclean and infamous, came of his own free-will--The Babe!

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed Ajax, in reply. "How can any man find his way _into_ it? And, hark ye, my friend, for reasons that we won't trouble you with, we have not asked the police to accompany us, but if we are not back at our hotel in two hours' time, the clerk has instructions to send a constable to your saloon."

"Here we air," said our guide. "Duck yer heads."

We stooped beneath a low arch, and entered a dark pa.s.sage. At the end was a rickety staircase; and already we could smell the pungent fumes of the opium, and taste its bitterness. As I groped my way down the stairs I was conscious of an uncanny silence, a silence eloquent of a sleep that is as death, a sleep that always ends in death. It was easy to conceive death as a hideous personality lurking at the bottom of those rotten stairs, waiting patiently for his victims; not constrained to go abroad for them, knowing that they were creeping to him, creeping and crawling, una.s.soiled by priest, hindered by no physician, unredeemed by love, deaf, and blind, and dumb!

At the foot of the stairs was another pa.s.sage, darker and filthier than the one above; the walls were streaming with moisture, and the atmosphere almost unendurable. At that time the traffic in opium was receiving the serious attention of the authorities. Certain scandalous cases of bribery at the Custom House had stirred the public mind, and the police were instructed to raid all opium dens, and arrest whomsoever might be found in them. The devotees of the "pipe" were accordingly compelled to lie snug in places without the pale of police supervision: and this awful den was one of them.

It was now so dark that I could barely distinguish the outlines of our guide, who walked ahead of me. Suddenly he stopped and asked me if I had any matches. I handed him my box, which he dropped, and the matches were scattered about in the mud at our feet. He gave me back my box, and asked Ajax for his matches. I dare say older and wiser men would have apprehended mischief, but we were still in our salad days.

Ajax gave up his box without a protest; the man struck a match, after some fumbling lit a piece of candle, and returned to my brother his box. It was empty--for he had cleverly transferred the matches to his own pocket--but we did not know that then. By the light of the candle I was able to take stock of my surroundings. We were facing a stout door: a door that without doubt had been constructed for purposes of defence, and upon the centre of this our guide tapped softly--three times. It opened at once, revealing the big body of a Celestial, evidently the Cerberus of the establishment. Upon his fat impa.s.sive face lay the seal of an unctuous secrecy, nothing more. Out of his obliquely-set eyes he regarded us indifferently, but he nodded to our guide, who returned the salutation with a sly laugh. For some inexplicable reason that laugh fired my suspicions. It was--so to speak--an open sesame to a chamber of horrors, the more horrible because intangible and indescribable. Ajax said afterwards that he was similarly affected. The contagion of fear is a very remarkable thing, and one little understood by the physiologists. I remember I put my hand into my pocket, because it began to tremble, and I was ashamed of it. And then, as I still stared at the fat Chinaman, his smooth mask seemed to drop from his face, and treachery, cunning, greed, hatred of the "white devil" were revealed to me.

I was now convinced we had come on a fool's errand that was like to end evilly for us, but, being a fool, I held my peace and said nothing to Ajax, who confessed later that if I had spoken he would have seconded a motion to retreat. We advanced, sensible that we were being trapped: a psychological fact not without interest.

Opposite the door through which we had just pa.s.sed was another door as stout as the first. The Chinaman unlocked this with a small key, and allowed us to enter, the guide with the candle leading the way. And then, in a jiffy, before we had time to glance round us, the candle was extinguished; the door was closed; we heard the click of a patent lock; and we knew that we were alone and in darkness.

The first thing that Ajax said, and his voice was not pleasant to hear, was: "This serves us right. Of all the confounded fools who meddle with what does not concern them, we are the greatest."

Then I heard him fumbling for his matchbox, and then, when he discovered that it was empty, he made some more remarks not flattering to himself or me. I was more frightened than angry; with him rage and disgust were paramount.

We stood there in that squalid darkness for about a hundred years (it was really ten minutes), and then the voice of our guide seemed to float to us, as if from an immeasurable distance.

"Boys," he said. "How air ye makin' it?"

Ajax answered him quite coolly--

"What do you want? Our money of course. What else?"

The fellow did not reply at once. These opium fiends have no bowels of compa.s.sion. He was doubtless chuckling to himself at his own guile.

When he did speak, the malice behind his words lent them point.

"Your money? The five you gave me'll keep me a week, and after that I'll come for more."

With that the voice died away, and Ajax muttered: "It looks to me as if this were a case of putting up the shutters."

We had forgotten all about The Babe, which is not surprising under the circ.u.mstances.

"Putting _up_ the shutters? Pulling them down, you mean! there must be a window of sorts in this room."

But after careful search we came to the conclusion that we were directly under the road-bed, and that the only opening of any kind was the door through which we had pa.s.sed. I thought of that door and the face of the man behind it. For what purpose save robbery and murder was such a room designed? I could not confront the certainty of violence with a jest, as Ajax did, but I was of his opinion otherwise expressed: we had been trapped like rats in a blind drain, and would be knocked on the head--presently.

The uncertainty began to gnaw at our vitals. We did not speak, for darkness is the twin of silence, but our thoughts ran riot. I remember that I almost screamed when Ajax laid his hand on my shoulder, and yet I knew that he was standing by my side.

"I shall try the heathen Chinee," he whispered. So we felt our way to the door and tapped three times, very softly, on the centre panel. To the Oriental mind those taps spell bribery, but the door remained shut.

"What have you been thinking about?" said Ajax, after another silence.

"My G.o.d--don't ask me."

"Brace up!" said my brother. I confess that he has steadier nerves than mine, but then, you see, he has not my imagination. I put my hand into his, and the grip he gave me was rea.s.suring. I reflected that men built upon the lines of Ajax are not easily knocked on the head.

"It's a tight place," he continued. "But we've been in tight places before, although none that smells as close as this infernal hole. Now listen: I'm prepared to lay odds that The Babe is not an opium fiend at all, and has never been near this den. He wrote that letter at the saloon, didn't he? And ten to one he borrowed the paper from the bar- tender. That's why it smelled of opium. The handwriting was very shaky. Why? because The Babe was only half alive after a prolonged spree. That accounted for the tone of the letter. The Babe was thinking of the parsonage, and his mother's knee, and all that. You follow me--eh? Now then, I think it barely possible that instead of our rescuing The Babe, he will rescue us. We got in late last night, but our names were chronicled in the morning papers, for I saw them there. If The Babe sees a paper he will go to our hotel, and----"