Yut Lee was ahead of them, making a turn into another passage. In the light from a bulb beyond the turn, Grant saw a panel swiftly dropping down from the ceiling like a portcullis, closing the hall ahead. He and Buddy were in absolute darkness. Grant wheeled, and crashed into another panel that was dropping down behind them.
His hand shot back, caught Slesson’s wrist, and jerked him down. As they flattened to the floor, tongues of flame lanced the darkness. The passage rang with pistol fire poured into it from slits in the panel that blocked their advance.
The bullets, screaming just above their heads, smacked against the armored panel behind them. Grant held his fire, but Slesson drew his seventeen-shot machine gun and sprayed the darkness with lead.
“Hold it, punk!” Grant snapped. “They’re firing from slots.”
Grant rolled toward the wall, to avoid the return fire at the flashes from Slesson’s gun. But there was no return fire. In the sudden hush, Grant had time to clearly realize that after all, his identity was known here. But why all this hocus-pocus? Why hadn’t the tong men shot him down without it?
A thin thread of light pierced the darkness to the left, and Grant saw that a section of the side wall was sliding open from floor to ceiling. The light blinked off, but not before Grant glimpsed a figure at one side of the opening. Fire spurted from the darkness, and again the passageway crashed with the tong men’s fusillade and the answering volley from Grant and Slesson.
There was a yell, the skrrr of a sliding panel, a gurgling groan, and the chunk of a body slumping to the floor.
Then a second slender pencil of light penetrated the gloom of the passage, coming from the compartment beyond the panel. Slesson rolled clear as a machine gun began to hammer. Grant squeezed lead at the flashes. Another yell, and another slumping body. The flashlight shifted, flickered out. The panel dropped into place.
“Dude,” Slesson’s voice was a snarl, “did dey nick youse?”
“No, nothing but splinters,” Grant reported. “God, how did they—”
The door back of them cracked open a handbreadth. The flashlight bored in. A pistol barked. Grant swung about, sent a burst of slugs at the aperture. Then his pocket machine gun went dead.
“For God’s sake,” he barked at Slesson, “give me another clip!”
Slesson made a hasty, fruitless search. “I ain’t got one,” he reported ruefully. “Well, if we ain’t de damnedest saps, emptyin’ our rods—”
The floor of the passage suddenly tilted up and they rolled down the steep slope, sliding, tumbling, finally to land with a terrific thump in utter blackness. And then the gloom blazed into a dazzling flare. Half a dozen Orientals, stripped to the waist and clutching long, curved knives, crouched beside the walls, ready to close in.
The room was bare. There was not a stick, not a missile, not a scrap of anything to serve as a weapon. And when that crescent of thirsty blades closed in—
Grant did not hesitate. He flashed forward in a low, gridiron tackle. His long, muscular body seemed a fluent stream aimed at the knees of a highbinder at his right. The motion drew the enemy’s attention from Buddy Slesson. Grant’s victim slashed down with a cut that would have sheared his head off, had it landed.
But Grant’s body seemed to freeze, half a yard short of the enemy. Instead of tackling low, he lifted himself into the air, hurdling the crouching highbinder. The latter over-extended, himself to meet the charge and stumbled forward, stabbing empty air. Swift as the deceptive motion of a juggler, Grant was behind his enemy. As in his dizzying stunts on the football field, now also his speed and deception had gained him precious yardage. He wheeled and caught the highbinder by the neck and crotch, snatching him bodily off the floor. With his own body thus protected, Grant hit the line.
He tore through center, bowling over two, and divided the rest of the fumbling Chinese. He felt the rake of steel, the flailing of limbs, and the warm trickle of their blood as he bored through.
Slesson charged the right wing, as Grant hurled his human shield head-on against the wall. A crunch of bone, a tinkle of steel, as the highbinder’s blade dropped from a nerveless hand. Grant snatched up the curved knife, wheeled again, and gathered himself for a fresh assault.
Slesson was badly entangled. The five remaining highbinders were now aware that they were facing a fight, rather than enjoying a massacre. Had they realized this sooner, Grant’s mad charge might have failed.
Slesson’s heavy fist smashed home like the head-on collision of two locomotives. Blood and teeth spattered on the floor, and a highbinder slumped down like a sack of meal. Then Slesson, stumbling over the man whom Grant had felled, crashed headlong to the floor and lay there, dazed by the shock. The pack whirled to meet Grant.
Grant sidestepped, slashed with his knife, reversed his lunge, and parried with his left forearm, around which he had contrived to wrap the blouse snatched from off the fallen Chinaman. The highbinder’s blade fouled. Grant’s knife sliced home. The surge of his body carried him clear of the rush. His knife licked out and up. He felt the gush of blood that drenched his wrist. Then, as he closed to the rear, he caught a glimpse of Slesson’s groggy effort to rise.
Now Grant lost a precious instant. A slippery patch of blood-spattered floor threw him off balance. He was trembling from his terrific efforts. The deadly glare of the room began to dance with red spots. Yet he slashed, parried, slipped, until he slid down onto his back in a pool of blood. Slesson, now recovered, roared with wrath and charged barehanded toward the enemy. Then he tripped again, over a dead Chinaman.
Time ceased. The surviving three highbinders had but a yard to go, Grant wondered when they would strike. He felt his muscles contract for a final desperate effort—and knew they could not respond in time.
CHAPTER III
Westward Ho!
And then a deafening concussion shook the room. Plaster fell in great chunks from the ceiling, and black, oily, acrid fumes billowed in. Another blast, heavier than the first Bricks and more plaster, and whistling fragments, a bedlam of savage yells, a ragged volley that swelled to a drumming thunder. Then a file of yellow men with blazing pistols came pouring through the gaping hole in the wall.
Foo Sam was leading them. His visually bland face was venomous with wrath, and his shoe-button eyes were as deadly as the automatic with which he swept the room.
Grant struggled to his knees; then suddenly lay down again and jerked Slesson back to the floor. Meanwhile Foo Sam’s men were emptying their pistols into the ceiling, the walls, the floor, riddling dead and dying—and doing little damage until, running out of bullets, their hands blossomed out with curved knives and crescent-bladed hatchets.
Then Grant learned things about Mongol fury.
The three surviving On Leon tongsters, though scarcely harmed by the erratically flying bullets, were hacked to pieces by the blades.
The assault swept on, jabbering and yelling. Hatchets cracked through wood. A door burst open, and the infuriated Hep Sings poured into the chamber beyond.
Grant and Slesson, eyeing each other, cocked an ear toward the high-pitched gibberish and unearthly howls that marked the progress of the battle.
“Get the hell out, Buddy!” snapped Grant “We can’t help Foo Sam—all Chinks look alike, and we’d kill his men by mistake.”
“If de yellow sons of bees didn’t kill us by mistake Jeez, did youse see dat little Chink kneel on de back of de guy I cold-calked, an’ just hack him inter hunksa hamburger?”
As they emerged through the blasted wall into the alley, Grant recognized the car that awaited; engine idling. Red-haired Torchy Cullinane was at the wheel, and in back sat a big blond Polack whose head, in proportion to his beefy body, seemed scarcely larger than a grapefruit. His straw-colored wiry hair was cut so short that his pinkish scalp showed clearly. This was Mike Novak. As he repacked his unused bombs in the excelsior that b
lossomed out of a wooden case, he told Grant that Foo Sam had done some fast work in summoning the reserves.
“I feex him, hey? W’at you dink, Meester Grant? Good shoot, hey?”
“Step on it, Torchy,” commanded Grant. Then, to the big Polack, “Mike, if I ever wanted a bomb in my life, it was a couple of minutes ago!”
“Joost you allers leave it to me, Meester Grant,” beamed the Polack. “I feex him.”
The doors of Joe Murray’s five-story warehouse at the foot of the alley off Hasted Street closed behind the getaway car. Grant set the trick elevator in motion.
As the car stopped at the fifth floor, the door slid open. The thick-set, gray-haired field marshal of the mob greeted them.
“An’ phwat th’ hell have yez been doin’?” he greeted Grant and Slesson. “Yez look loike ye’d been boxin’ wit a buzz saw, th’ both av yez. Wait until Oi phone th’ docther.” He did so, briefly. Then asked, “An’ where’s that yellow haythen, Foo Sam?”
“Foo Sam,” explained Grant, “is attending to some unfinished business.” He outlined his crackbrained raid on the On Leon headquarters.
“That Chinaman feller,” interpolated Mike Novak, “call me joost when I fix up de pineapples. So I bring ’em wit’ me.”
“Did yez foind out where thim dirty haythens is kapin’ Foo Yong?”
Grant shook his head. Before he could offer any suggestions, the whirring of the elevator buzzer announced a visitor. Murray rang back, and presently they heard the cage click to a halt. Two Chinamen emerged—Foo Sam, who looked as though he had escaped from a sausage-mill, and a leather-faced little man, scarcely more than five feet tall, who also was slashed and disheveled. They both clutched curved, red streaked knives, visible through the slashes in their sleeves, but they were bowing as punctiliously as though violence were a thing unknown to them.
“My flend, Li Fat,” said the bland, sing-song voice of Foo Sam. “No find my blutha, Foo Yong. Plenty fight. Find Li Fat—”
“Shure, an’ it looks like somethin’ found the both of yez!” Joe Murray chuckled. Li Fat’s sing-song Cantonese broke in chattering.
“Li Fat say,” translated Foo Sam, after a moment, “On Leon Tong takee Foo Yong all samee San Flisco, keep him safe.”
“We’re a bunch of saps,” rapped Grant, with the light of an idea dawning on his nicked and grimy face. “Why the hell don’t we pay the twenty’ grand to Yut Lee, get Foo Yong back, and cut out this fighting?”
“That is an idee,” admitted Murray’, slowly. “We ain’t fixed up ter fight Chinks, nor—”
The telephone jangled sharply. Murray answered. Then, placing the palm of one ham-like hand over the mouthpiece, he turned to the men. “Shpake of the devil!” he ejaculated. “It’s Yut Lee. Now, how t’ hell did he know me secret number? Oi must hov it changed at once!—Yes, ye damned haythen, go ahead!”
Came then a long pause, during which Murray listened intently, his expression gradually becoming more and more concerned. Finally he jammed the receiver back onto the hook and turned to the others with the statement: “We’re too late. The On Leon Tong hov tuk back their ransom offer. They’re holdin’ Poo Yong now ’til they square up wid th’ Hep Sings fer yure raid. Then they may proposition us.”
Grant’s brow corrugated. “Which means someone else—a white big shot is back of this,” he declared. “We’ll find out, when the time comes, that Foo Yong is a hostage to make the Murray mob behave!”
“Since whin has annywan made me mob behave?” demanded Murray body. “Be jabbers, no bunch of Chinks c’n do it, ner anny white mob nayther!” He paused, his ruddy face belligerent. “Git yer stuff togither, byes—ye’re goin’ ter Frisco!”
Now it was the elevator buzzer that interrupted the gang leader. It proved to be the fat little medico who served the mob. In a very short time, he had sponged and taped Grant, Slesson, Foo Sam and Li Fat. Then he departed, richer by a hundred dollars.
When they returned to the living room, Mike Novak, the Polish bomber, was snoring on a sofa, and Torchy Cullinane was idly paging through a movie journal.
Murray opened the conference. “Torchy c’n fly our new crate out to Frisco,” he announced. “Jim, yez will need Buddy an’ Mike wid yez, an’ Mike shud take a box ov his Chicago pineapples.”
“Me go long too,” Foo Sam declared. “Me have velly smart man, along Oakland. Him name Hop Ching, velly smart—him schola.”
“Belong your club?” asked Grant.
“All same,” said Foo Sam. “Yes, Hop Ching him velly smart Hep Sing.”
“Faith, Foo Sam’s smart too,” Murray agreed. “Shure, yez c’n go along.”
“But why not you, too, Joe?” asked Grant.
“Shure an’ Slim Hammond’s or Pug Dorni’s gang moight be afther makin’ trouble, whilst yer away.—Besoids, there’s a new oiris in me garden about ter bloom, that Oi’ve got ter watch.—An’ now all av yez hit th’ hay. Oi know ’tis day now, but yez have been up all night. Yez can start tomorrer morning, onless yez develop a fever—”
“Or something,” added Grant, thinking of Mary Smith’s pet expression. “And that reminds me—.” He reached for the telephone.
“Be damned to that!” warned Murray. “Oi’ll not be havin’ that colleen frum Ioway tellin’ yez that yez can’t go ter Frisco.”
Grant reluctantly obeyed. For after all, Joe Murray, not Grant, was head of the old Grandi gang. The college bred son of the late Guglielmo Grandi had inherited only the legitimate real estate business of the deceased big shot. He had persistently refused Murray’s urgings to take up gang life as a regular profession, and made only occasional ventures into gangland, such as to avenge his father’s death, thwart oppression of poor farmers by a crooked bank, put a stop to a series of deadly train wrecks, combat a red menace, and now to rescue a kidnapped friend. The rest of the time he attended to his real-estate business in the northern city where he lived. Down here in Chicago, Joe Murray was in command.
So Grant obeyed, and did not phone to Mary Smith.
His last waking thought was, “Why did the Chinks place a reward of twenty grand on my head, just because I bumped off one half-breed rodman? It doesn’t make any sense. Why, even one grand will square the death of the most valuable hatchet-man. And how the hell did the On Leons recognize me, when I busted into their hangout?”
Grant slept on that thought.
CHAPTER IV
The Philosopher
They slept the clock around. The following morning, Grant reluctantly abandoned the idea of phoning good-bye to Mary Smith.
“Faith an’ Oi’ll phone th’ little lady mesilf,” said Murray. “It’s glad Oi am, av an excuse to talk to her.”
Murray drove them to the airport. Mike Novak brought along a suitcase full of pineapples. Foo Sam wore an inconspicuous business-suit, and carried a mysterious grip. All five men were armed with automatics and the deadly little seventeen-shot machine guns.
“Jimmy bye,” said Joe Murray, as they stowed their luggage in the big plane, “Oi wisht Oi cud go wid yez. But th’ snake-eyed Slim Hammond an’ th’ bashed-faced Pug Dog will bear watchin’, Oi’m thinkin’. Phwat’s a handful of murtherin’ haythens to a son of Bill Grandi?”
The roar and thunder of the eleven-hundred horse-power hornet drowned his words. Nine hours later the invaders landed at the Oakland airport. There Grant engaged a car to take them to the residence of Hop Ching, the “velly sma’t fella” who was to coach the Murray mob in the intricacies of tong warfare. They pulled up in the midst of the Oriental quarter of Oakland.
Foo Sam led the way into a dingy place, which, according to the lettering on its grimy windows, was “Ah Chan’s Laundry.” Ah Chan set aside the abacus on which he was calculating a bill, and listened for a moment to Foo Sam’s sing-song. He grinned, clasped his two hands, bowed, and unlimbered several stanzas of Cantones
e, then parted a grayish curtain that screened the back room.
“Him say, maybeso, Hop Ching see Melican man,” translated Foo Sam.
“Dat’s a hell of a lingo!” grumbled Buddy Slesson. “But I guess youse can’t blame de Chinks for singing when they talk. Dey does everything backwards. Only I don’t see how we’ll tell ’em apart—”
“Easy as pie!” advised Grant, following their guide. “If someone shoots at you, he’s an On Leong Tong highbinder; but if one of ’em throws a knife at a bird that’s trying to sink an axe in you, then he’s a Hep Sing.”
Mike Novak, tenderly nursing the suitcase of bombs he carried under his arm, was evidently not worrying about the similarity of Chinese faces.
They crossed a rubbish-cluttered courtyard, then Ah Chan opened a gate, followed a narrow passage through half a dozen turns, and led the way up a gloomy staircase. At the head of the flight he jabbed a pushbutton, chanted a few words, and then, as the door opened, he left Foo Sam to carry on.
A smooth-faced young Chinaman in faultlessly tailored worsteds appeared in the doorway, and listened to Foo Sam’s remarks, then without a word retraced his steps, leaving Grant’s party waiting at the landing. In a moment he returned and said, “This way, gentlemen. My grandfather will be pleased to see you.”
“Fer cripes sakes,” muttered Slesson, “dat guy slings damn near as good United States as I do!”
The room into which they were ushered was a distinct surprise even to Grant, who was not entirely unaware of the Chinese custom of concealing regal splendor behind a grimy, tattered front. But the striking feature of that spacious, silk-tapestried room was the old, thin-faced man with two long drooping moustaches, who arose from his hand-carved teakwood desk to meet his callers.
His silken cap was precisely placed on his shaven head; his straggling moustaches trailed down to his collarbone; and his long, shimmering robe of blue silk was of the shade prescribed by the Book of Rites as suitable for a scholar and a gentleman. So likewise was his attitude of just the proper reserve, relieved by the precise degree of cordiality suitable for greeting a distinguished, though foreign, caller.
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