by Bill Peschel
Because our companion was the Chinawoman.
* * * * *
We ate in Chinatown instead. She led us up Montgomery and west on California until the streets grew close enough to meet overhead, and the signs changed from English letters to the bars and broad stokes familiar to that race. The English signs we saw were those intended to attract custom, such as laundries, opium dens and disorderly houses.
She led us up another alley and down a set of stairs and into a large, well-lit basement. The familiar smells of cooked noodles, chicken and ducks swarmed over us. Through the door, and a wave of human heat followed. The room was packed with Chinamen, as alike in their grey suit jackets as eggs in a basket. They were hunched over their bowls of rice and noodles, jammed so tight we shuffled sideways behind our guide. The tables were packed with bowls of rice, soups and meats. The only offerings to Western tastes were the bottles of whiskey and shot glasses.
Silence spread from near us outward as they realized our presence. I had heard silence before, but this was thick enough to stop us in our places. A kitchen door opposite us opened, steam rolled out, and a short, bland-faced Chinaman crept into the room. He stood as high as the Chinawoman and his face was shining in sweat. In one ham hock hand he held his cleaver up near his shoulder, hefting it gently as if calculating his range.
The girl pushed herself forward and locked Mr. Cleaver in a violent argument. We stood in silence and looked around. I had known Chinamen and their ways from my years in the city. They work hard, cause little trouble and in return are subject to harassment, beatings and the occasional light murder, all of which goes unpunished. They move about with their heads down, trying to cause no trouble. Here, they gazed at John and me with poker faces that were still unnerving. You never know what they were thinking outside, in the street or in the mines. You still don’t know here, but you know they’re thinking different thoughts.
I felt a close presence behind me and a voice in my ear:—“Sam, where are we?”
I took stock of my inner map and gauged the direction of the sun:—“Chinatown.”
“Could ye be a wee more specific?” he said. “Could we, say, find our way out if the fellow with the cutlery objects to our presence?”
“Oh, sure, if the sons and daughters of the Celestial Empire here will let us leave. This neighborhood’s no larger than seven blocks by three.”
The argument was nearing a crescendo and it appeared that our champion was scoring points and about to carry the debate. Judging by the nods of the Chinamen who were paying attention, it might be by acclamation.
“Going by the number packed in this room,” John said. “How many do you think are living in these 21 blocks, you think?”
“Oh, about thirty thousand or so.”
“My God—” he breathed, cut off when Mr. Cleaver planted his chopper into the table. Fortunately, no one’s arm or neck was in the way. He waved the diners near him to clear a space, and the Chinawoman turned to us, bowed, and directed us to sit among her compatriots.
We squeezed into the pack. Fresh bowls of fish and noodles were placed in front of us, along with shots of whiskey, and we set to as we listened to her story.
She told us she was Chen Yin, which produced a chuckle from me, a smile from her and confusion from John.
“Yin means silver in her language,” I told him.
Her story was familiar to me. She and her husband were going hungry in Hunan province when they agreed to come to this country with the help of the Sam Yup Company. “One of the six merchant trading companies that run Chinatown,” I said to John. “They import laborers, for a fee, which the worker pays back.”
She nodded. “It is our way. But Chen Fu was a gambler. He fell into debt. He went to Big Jim for a loan. When he fell behind on that, Big Jim held him in his music hall and took it out in work. I worked to pay off his debt to Big Jim. Tonight was to be last payment. But he said Chen Fu owed the interest on the loan, bigger than what he borrowed. I argued.”
“Is this true?” John asked me.
“He’s lying, of course. I wrote about it when I was at the Call, along with the other abuses that have been heaped on the Chinese here. They didn’t endear me to Big Jim.” I finished the bowl and drank off the remains and thought. “To be remembered like that’s quite a compliment, if I say so.”
“Well then,” John said. His face had grown redder and redder as he came to understand the injustice. “We’ll go to the police about this. Won’t we, Sam?”
“Can’t say that’ll help. The police here tend not to bother about a Chinaman unless they need one to arrest for something.”
Then the damn fool puffed himself up like a peacock and said something that sent the shivers rocketing down my spine and turned my guts to water.
“Then we’ll just have to free him ourselves, right Sam?”
* * * * *
I heard his mad scheme as the horror bubbled up inside me. We were to use the coded knock to gain entry by the back door. We temporarily inconvenience the custodian of the portal, free Chen Fu and any other Chinamen who was being held there, and leave.
Chen Yin said,—“I’ll take him to Sam Yup. The company will get him out of San Francisco. Send him to work the mines in Chinese Camp. That teach him to gamble.”
I said I wasn’t of a mind to care about his future more than my own. I confessed that I wasn’t much in a fight.
“But you think fast,” John said, beaming at me like sunshine. “That was a brilliant plan, drawing off those scoundrels and giving me time to run after Chen Yin. How did you deduce that they’d chase you?”
I blushed and looked away. I felt like a fraud, but I didn’t want to disappoint the lad. “They’re miners,” I said. “Their kind always give chase, if only for the sport of it. They’re like cats in that way.”
And then, God helped me, he clapped his hand on my shoulder (leaving me with a distinct crick that I can feel to this day) and said, “I owe you my life.”
Even in the dim candlelight of the cellar, I wondered if he saw my face burning bright. Especially since Chen Yin, leaning back so John couldn’t see her, buried her face in her hand, silently laughing.
* * * * *
An hour later, we had returned to the old homestead. We were delayed by an argument over what we needed. My suggestion of a sledgehammer and saw was raised by a rope and wedges. John pumped for a revolver, but I told him that those that had them provided undertakers with too much business. We realized that neither of us had experience at breaking and entering and rescuing males in distress. We decided to take ourselves there and improvise. Chen Yin gave us a hank of rope, reasonably pointing out that we needed to do something with the fellow at the back door.
We reached the back of Big Jim’s saloon. It was pitch-black, with the only light coming from where the alley met the street, and the flash from the occasional blast overhead. We paused awhile to build up our nerve and let our eyes adjust to the gloom. My heart, which had done enough back springs for the day, was pounding again to beat the band. My knees were weak, and I leaned against the building to keep from going faint.
Soon we could dimly see each other. “Are we ready?” John said. I could see the worry in his face. The alcohol had worn off and the thought What were we doing? hammered me. The scheme was sheer madness. Big Jim had it in for me. To be caught stealing a Chinaman from him was tantamount to the Christians entering the lion’s den and laying down in front of them with a sprig of parsley as an appetizer. Chen Yin had stayed behind; this was clearly the time to retreat gracefully before the worst thing that could happen, happened.
Then the door opened. I could tell because I had unwittingly leaned against it. Instead of the floor, I hit solid flesh. Strange hands grabbed me and whirled me around in a do-si-do. It was one of the alley rascals I had evaded, and judging by the swollen nose, the one John had punched. He had been wary that it was Big Jim returning to pummel him again. But once he saw me, a grin split his face. Here was
an opportunity to get his own back, and he raised his fist. John grabbed his arm, spun him around and head-butted him. He went down.
“Aren’t you going to knock him out?” I said.
“That only happens in the penny dreadful,” he said. In a trice we trussed him with the rope like a Christmas goose and stuffed a rag in his mouth to stifle his objections to the quality of our work. There was a staircase nearby and we hoisted him down with us for company. At the bottom was a dark, dank basement stuffed with boxes and barrels, and we left him there to rest awhile, with his legs tied up to encourage him to stay.
Upstairs in the hall, we could hear the party going on in the saloon, so we paid no never mind to making noise. We followed Chen Yin’s directions and went down the snaking hall a ways until we found where the Chinamen were kept. It was a heavy door from a medieval dungeon, made of stout oak with bars set in it. There was no knob, just a keyhole for a lock.
John looked in the barred window and called out for Chen Fu. He responded, and appeared at the window. We held a confab, and he agreed to come with us if we could spring him. We hunted around for a key, hoping it was hung up nearby, but there was nothing.
I stared at the door like it was my most hated enemy and said. “Pity our success hinges on having the right tool.”
At that, John laughed and clapped my other shoulder, fracturing it as well. “Clemens, you’re a genius! The hinges!”
I had ignored the obvious. A door meant to keep someone in the room had to be turned so that the hinges were on the outside. In the hall. With us.
We found a box of hand tools in one of the rooms we had passed. We hammered out the hinges. We lifted the door from its hinges, and we were flooded by Chinamen. Big Jim had built up a significant bank of them to run his business, and now many of them were advantage of the opportunity. The rest, perhaps out of loyalty, perhaps out of fear, stayed in their bunks.
Then a hand clamped again on my shoulder. I turned, expecting another burst of admiration from John, and caught a blow on my ear that created a sudden darkness. I should never have minded John. It turns out that a punch can knock you out.
* * * * *
When I awoke, I was staring at the ceiling. This is my natural posture upon awakening, but I’m not usually behind the bar. Nor did I usually smell of rotgut whiskey and cigar butts. Not lately. The roar had not abated, and my head ached abominably, so I chose to stake my claim to the floor and learn as much as I could with moving anything, including my eyes.
Above me, a bartender puffing on a stogie busied himself with pouring whiskeys next to two men standing on the bar. One of them was Big Jim. He busied himself giving a speech to the crowd and being rewarded with huzzahs in return. Standing comfortably next to him was John. His hands were bound. He was the silent partner in the act, because he had a gag around his mouth. I blinked away the fuzziness in my head and realized, to my growing horror, that he also had a noose around his neck, with the rope rising up to the balcony that ringed the room.
Big Jim was apparently making a fine speech to the crowd, judging by the roaring response. He was pointing out that it was the Fourth of July, the day that marked our separation from the Mother Country. He reminded them of the many atrocities the British troops and the Loyalists who still backed them inflicted on all right-thinking Americans. How they burned our farms and hung the men who fought under Washington, and how they came back in the year 18 and 12 and burned the White House, and how we beat them back and how we’re still fighting them. And now, to mark the solemn occasion, they were going to hold a mock lynching to show how they feel about the English, using a live Englishman who he caught breaking into his building!
“But first,” Big Jim yelled. “He’s going to sing for us! Who wants to hear ‘Yankee Doodle’?”
I had heard enough to scare my hair white. I didn’t know what to do about it, but I did know that I didn’t want to hear anymore about it. The barkeep finished his work above me and stepped away, leaving me stained with vile whiskey and cigar ash. I saw my chance and I took it; I rolled over and crawled like a baby for the end of the bar, and ducked through the closest door before anyone noticed.
I found myself back in the hall that we had abandoned. I did not stop to take stock of my situation. I did not stop, period. I ran for the back door (now left unguarded; no one taking notice in the confusion that the man had abandoned his post and was, I hope, being nibbled on by rats in the basement. I unhoisted the bar from the door frame and opened up.
I took three steps into the dark alley. Before I could build up a head of steam, I was grabbed again and made to eat the wall. My protests were silenced when I felt the blade of a knife rubbing up against my jugular.
“Hold still!” I heard Chen Yin’s voice. “It’s my husband’s rescuer.” I turned and saw in the light from inside a horde of Oriental faces grimly assessing my skin, led by my silver-haired rescuer, with Chen Fu next to her. I could have kissed them all, even the uglier ones.
“We heard that you had been caught,” she said.
I admitted the fact and explained the uproar that was about to commence. She turned to her countrymen and blasted them with Cantonese until they fled. Some vanished in the darkness of the alley. Four of them, including Chen Fu, pulled out short cloth bags filled with buckshot and went inside.
She took my head in her hands. “Walk to the entrance and go in, but stay by the door. I will follow behind. Quickly!”
I obeyed. I still had no idea what to do, but obviously something was about to happen. And since she and I were going to be in public, she needed to walk behind me. Not ahead, leading me. Not by my side, but two steps back, her head down. Such were the ways of that time.
I hurried down the alley to the street, turned, and hustled passed the row of Big Jim’s curtained windows to the door.
John was still on the bar, but he had been colored up some. He had been used for target practices, for he was covered with flour and struck with reds and browns, the sources of which I’d rather not consider. But he looked proud and angry, and glared at the crowd of sozzled miners, grafters, bums, blacklegs, thieves and other scum of the Barbary Coast. The noose was still around his neck, the rope disappearing through the railings on the second floor.
Big Jim had reached the heights of his peroration and called for the rope to be hauled up. The rope tightened and John was launched. I must have cried out in horror, my screams lost in the general cheering.
John was only supposed to be suspended a few feet, but for some reason the rope kept pulling and pulling. Big Jim, a look of panic spreading over his map, gave a yell to the haulers to avast. Something was going wrong, but any thoughts in that direction were interrupted by an even bigger noise that filled the room and the heads of everyone present.
As John was being pulled heavenward, the saloon exploded in fireworks. Multiple rockets crashed through the windows, trailing broken glass and fire and smoke. The explosions sent everyone to the floor, including myself and Chen Yin. But I kept my eyes on John, unlike everyone else, and so I saw that the Chinamen on the balcony received him, hauled him over the railing, and disappeared in the smoke and confusion. It was done as neat and quick as a magic act.
Reasoning that I should do the same, I took Chen Yin’s hand and followed their example, helped along by the audience moving as one in the same direction. She led me back into Chinatown, where we ducked down one of the twisty alleys and up a set of back stairs to the roof. There, to my joy, was John, freed from his shackles, slamming the filth from his clothes and hallooing to beat the band.
“What an adventure!” his voice had acquired a rasp from the rope, but he gripped my hand like a vise. “I was confident that you wouldn’t let me down, and you didn’t! Did you see those explosions? I was occupied at the time trying to breathe, but you should have seen it! Imagine rockets flying at the bar, trailing clouds of sparks and smoke and blowing up as they crashed into the wall behind it! Big Jim’s will have to undergo serious rep
airs before he can reopen.”
I agreed, but pointed out that he might be more occupied in finding out who freed his Chinamen. I urged him to find a place to hide for a few days before his ship left.
“That will be no problem,” Chen Yin said. “Our hospitality to him will be limitless, and to you as well.”
I thanked her as prettily as I could but said I should be able to shift for myself. I’d return to the Occidental and check aboard my ship tonight.
And that’s the end of this story. John made it to Australia, and then back to England, where he fell in with a ruffian named Holmes. He must have told him about me, because at every opportunity, when the great detective needed someone he trusted in some desperate situation, he would turn to me, which led me into more hair-raising scrapes than I’d care to confess. No matter how many times I resisted, no matter how many times I told him of my cowardice, he refused to accept it. Apparently, people will believe everything they hear, but the truth. Such is the curse of the humorist.
Source Notes
The following stories were reprinted with their original title: “The Fighting ‘Foudroyant’” (Sept. 24, 1890); “In Paris Out of the Season” (Sept. 22, 1894); “A Wellington (Street) Memorial” (May 18, 1895); “Our Colonial ‘Comrades’ at the Lyceum” (July 3, 1897); “Letters to the Celebrated: No. III—To Mr. A. Conan Doyle” (Nov. 20, 1897); “Mr. Punch’s Animal Land, The Coneydoil or Shurlacombs” (Feb. 26, 1898); “The Debut of Bimbashi Joyce” (Jan. 3, 1900); “Penmen’s Politics” (Sept. 26, 1900); “‘No P’Lice Like Holmes!’” (Sept. 25, 1901); “Sherlock Holmes Adapted.—No. 1” (Nov. 27, 1901); “Our Holmes” (Jan. 15, 1902); “Authors at Bow Street” (Feb. 19, 1903); “Dudley Jones, Bore Hunter” (April 29, 1903); “Back to His Native Strand” (May 27, 1903); “A Sporting Offer” (Sept. 16, 1903); “The Prodigal” (Sept. 23, 1903); “Mr. Punch’s Symposia” (Feb. 3, 1904); “The Intelligence Department” (May 18, 1904); “A Way We Have at the ’Varsity” (June 15, 1904); “Telepathy Day by Day” (Aug. 3, 1904); “Society Whispers From the States” (Aug. 24, 1904); “To Brighten Cricket” (June 6, 1906); “Great Discoverers” (Aug. 22, 1906); “Cheap Books” (Dec. 18, 1907); “Sir Conan Doyle on Big Bores” (March 4, 1908); “International and Imperial Crime Exhibition, 1910 at the Great Black City” (May 26, 1909); “Why Read at All?” (Feb. 23, 1910); “Mr. Punch’s Gala Variety Entertainment” (June 7, 1911); “The Great Wager” (Oct. 18, 1911); “Professor Billinger’s Downfall; or, The Extinct-Game Hunters” (Nov. 6, 1912); “How Scotland Yard Detectives Are Trained” (March 12, 1913); “The Terrors of War” (Dec. 9, 1914); “Literary Gossip” (April 16, 1919); “From the Street of Adventure” (April 23, 1919); “The Mud Larks” (June 18, 1919); “Dedications” (June 20, 1920); “The Adventure of the Agitated Chemist” (July 20, 1921); “The Thunderbolt” (Nov. 23, 1921); “Ministers Who Might Have Been” (Nov. 15, 1922); “Me, Or The Strange Episode of the Reincarnated Greek” with George Morrow’s illustrations from “Fiction as She Is Wrote” by E.V. Knox (April 18, 1923); “Mr. Punch’s Personalities” (May 12, 1926); “The Velvet Blotting Clue” (May 11, 1927); “My Dear Holmes” (Jan. 11, 1928).