Chapter III: Sweet Counsel and “Black Smoke.”

“Roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mince pies, plum pudding, cheese-straws, a choice between beer and champagne! Well, Quong Lung, and what do you want of me, you prince of plotters?”

The speaker had all the outward and visible signs of one who was a slave to opium; but under the influence of Quong Lung’s Christmas dinner his eyes sparkled and his spirits rose to a high pitch.

“Nothing, nothing, Jim--at least nothing to speak of; and we won’t speak of it until we have had a small black coffee, and--a small black pipe. By the way,” he went on, “Miss Ah Moy and Miss Shun Sen will come in presently with the coffee and pipes.”

Quong Lung’s guest, James Ray, was lank, and sallow, and of uncertain age, because of his terrible vice, and his hair was prematurely gray. He had been an electrical engineer of high promise until he became an opium-fiend. Even his clothes betrayed his failing, no less than his scanty and feeble beard and mustache and his leaden complexion. He had attended the same Eastern college as Quong Lung, and had imbued the latter with a taste for Shakespeare and Byron and the Psalms of David; together they had graduated from Yale; and then Quong Lung, recognizing the ability of his friend and the possibilities of electricity in the career of a highbinder, had introduced Ray to the fascination of opium-smoking; and so--through the uses of adversity--he held the latter in pawn for his own nefarious ends.

“Why all this magnificence, Quong Lung?” inquired Ray, after Ah Moy and her colleague had brought in the coffee and the implements pertaining to “black smoke.” “You have but to say the word, old man, and, like Ariel, ‘I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’”

Now the hiring of Ah Moy and Shun Sen to twang their _samyens_ for the delectation of white devils, and hand them coffee and sing to them, “came high,” for the damsels were famous in their way and in great demand.

“This is too small a thing for you to notice, Jim,” replied Quong Lung; “nothing is too good for my friend.”

“Why didn’t you add, ‘the earth is my lord’s and the fullness thereof,’ and crush me with your compliments? As though I were a damned coolie!”

There was some petulance in Ray’s voice, as he gave way to the feeble irritability that attends the constant use of narcotics and stimulants by all except Orientals. He rose to his elbow from the mat on which he was smoking, and threw the pipe on its tray, like a spoiled child. But Quong Lung took no notice of the little outbreak, and Ah Moy put the pipe to his lips with her own fair hands and soon coaxed him into complacency. When a look of contentment had once more settled on his face, Ray said, deprecatingly: “It was the ‘dope’ that spoke, Quong Lung, and not I; forgive me, old man! And now, what do you want?”

Quong Lung motioned to the girls to withdraw, and when he was alone with Ray he said: “Jim, I shall hang unless you help me.”

“You must be in a bad fix, indeed, Quong Lung, if you depend on my small arts to help you. Explain.”

“Certain papers implicating me are in the possession of one of my blood-hounds, who has shown himself recalcitrant and ungrateful--the damned dog! By means of the battery yonder, which you rigged up for me, I frightened the brute considerably this morning, and he will be here again two nights hence with such of the papers as his fears may compel him to part with; but if his courage should revive, as it may, and if he should come without the documents, I want to put him under the stress of telling me where they are to be found, and then I desire that he should never speak again!”

Quong Lung darted a look full of dangerous meaning at Ray.

“Why don’t you employ your regular bull-dogs to attend to this unpleasant affair, Quong Lung?”

“Because their methods are coarse and their weapons clumsy.”

“But it is deuced risky to be an accessory before the fact in a murder case, my friend.”

“No, no, Jim, not murder! Call it, rather, ‘the sudden death of an unknown coolie, from unknown causes.’”

“And the consideration for me?”

“Two hundred dollars now,” said Quong Lung, laying a pile of notes on the platform on which they were smoking, “and two hundred more after the thing is over.”

“And if I refuse?”

Quong Lung shrugged his shoulders, and said, in an indifferent tone of voice: “Life without opium, and without means of obtaining it, were hell, as you know. Besides, so many accidents are constantly happening in Chinatown.”

“Very well,” replied the other, rising languidly to his feet and thrusting the notes into his pocket; “very well. You must let me have entire possession of this room for the next two days, and provide such assistance and implements as I may require.”

As he was leaving the room he stopped to smell a tuberose that stood on a bamboo flower-stand. The passing act seemed to give him an idea, for he turned suddenly to Quong Lung, saying: “See to it, Quong Lung, that you provide plenty of punk-sticks for the eventful night. You will need them, I am thinking. And be good to this green brother,” pointing to the tuberose.