The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  “Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing.” That was the verdict of the coroner’s jury; and that is why I pride myself on the neat and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse. There was no bungling, no brutality; nothing of which to be ashamed in the whole transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more does his infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, and no more does his fat moon-face rise up to vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my night’s sleep deep.

  Villain: Quong Lung

  The Shadow of Quong Lung

  C. W. DOYLE

  CHARLES WILLIAM DOYLE (1852–1903) was born in Landour, India, and studied at Calcutta University before moving to Great Britain to study medicine in London and Edinburgh, finally receiving his medical degree from the University of Aberdeen in 1875. He practiced in England until 1888, then emigrated to the United States to live in Santa Cruz, California, where he became a close friend of Ambrose Bierce.

  His first book, The Taming of the Jungle (1899), was a series of sketches about the simple lives of the primitive Indian people who lived in Terai, the huge jungle that skirts the foothills of the Himalayas, depicting their superstitions and their love of the beauty of their surroundings. The book was (inevitably) compared with the works of Rudyard Kipling and more than one newspaper (Boston’s Saturday Evening Gazette, Brooklyn’s Daily Eagle, and The Press) rated his book a worthy rival.

  Doyle wrote only one other book, The Shadow of Quong Lung, which appears to have been written mainly to show the inhumane condition of the slave girls of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The five connected stories feature the evil Quong Lung who, unlike most “Oriental” villains of the time, was not intent on world conquest. He was merely a rich and powerful gangster with a band of thugs who would stop at nothing to guarantee his ongoing rule of the region, including his control of prostitution, slavery, kidnapping, and murder. Two of the stories won prominent prizes: “The Wings of Lee Toy” (San Francisco Examiner, December 19, 1897) for a Christmas story and “The Seats of Judgment” (Argonaut) for a short story written in 1898.

  “The Shadow of Quong Lung” was originally published in The Shadow of Quong Lung (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1900).

  THE SHADOW OF QUONG LUNG

  C. W. Doyle

  I

  A Tender Rhetorician

  “THOU ART CHIN LEE, SCRIVENER?” asked a handsome young Chinaman of the professional letter-writer whose table, with his implements of writing, was set close to the wall at one of the crossings on Clay Street, San Francisco.

  “Chin Lee, scrivener, am I; and thou art in good hap this fair morning to have come my way, instead of stopping at the station of Ah Moy (may the sea have his corpse!), who catcheth the unwary lower down the street.”

  “I am Ho Chung, and I am late come from Pekin, leaving behind me Moy Yen, my wife, who hath gone back to her kin, who are of the northern hills and speak not as we do. I am fain to send her a letter that can be read of her people, whereby they shall know that I am an honorable man, and that I am making preparation for her journey to this land. Thou art learned in the tongue of the hill people?”

  “All the tongues of our great country have yielded me their secrets,” said Chin Lee with the gravity becoming the lie that he uttered daily. (He had an agent in Chinatown who spoke the Manchu dialect, and translated the communications brought to him by Chin Lee.) “Thou art in great luck this propitious morning,” he went on, “for Ah Moy is descended from striped swine.”

  “They say he hath a more tender pen, but that thou art more honest.”

  “They—mine enemies, doubtless!—tell the truth concerning my honesty, but they lie when they depreciate my qualities as a tender writer. Tenderness and Affection are of my household, and sup with me nightly. But how didst thou talk with Moy Yen, seeing that thy speech differs from hers?”

  “I taught her a few words of my tongue, and she taught me a few of hers; and so——”

  “Ay, ay!” interrupted Chin Lee; “love hath its own language, and is not in much need of mere words in any tongue. But what is your wish?”

  “I would have you tell the young woman—Moy Yen, my wife—that when the man-child Ho Sung—or Moy Yep, if it be a girl (which the Gods forbid!)—hath arrived, I will send her moneys to bring her and the little one to San Francisco. And, Chin Lee,” he hesitated a moment, “didst ever love a woman?”

  “I have loved them in every province of our Flowery Land—and in many tongues, Ho Chung.”

  “But hast thou knowledge of a sam-yen played under a balcony in a Lane of Death, where nothing is asked?”

  “Behold the proof!” replied Chin Lee, rolling up his sleeve and displaying a scar on his arm.

  “And did a little child come to thee thereafter?”

  “Yea; and the songs I wrote to it are sung in the streets of Shanghai to this day—for I was overpowered with the marvel of its littleness. See, I will add one of those songs to the letter I shall write for thee for the consideration of a ping-long (betel leaf).”

  They crossed the street to the reduced gentleman who sold the toothsome delicacy, which the Hindoos understand so much better. And as they discussed the spicy morsels they walked to and fro on the sunny side of Union Square, which is a sequestered retreat, as it were, in the teeming traffic of Chinatown.

  “I will write thee two letters,” began Chin Lee; “one to fit the case of a man-child, and the other if thy babe should be a girl. The price for two letters shall be the same as for one—and, my friend, where didst thou say Moy Yen, thy wife, lived?”

  “In the lane Pin-yang, of the city Moukden, which is in the Manchu province Shing-king in the hill country. But, belike, thy letter will not reach her, for the lane is one of many small ones in a great city.”

  “His stubborn apprehension is clearly due to his much affection,” thought Chin Lee; then he said aloud, “Never fear! Moy Yen, with a smiling babe at her breast, shall receive a letter that shall delight her greatly: my aged father, who looks after my affairs in China (Heaven soften his taking off!), hath an agent in Moukden, and will see to it that the letter doth not miscarry.”

  “But Moy Yen is——”

  “She is very beautiful?” interrupted Chin Lee, guessing his thought with the aid of much practice.

  “She is more beautiful than I can tell, and——”

  “So it was in my case,” again interrupted Chin Lee. “The woman that caused me the hurt I showed you—it was a dangerous hurt (he was talking in a confidential and friendly strain by this time—an old trick of his)—but the woman was worthy, by reason of her beauty and her tenderness, of the sudden taking off of even Chin Lee, who is the slave of a wakeful conscience, and the possessor of much experience in affairs of the heart; and it is an ointment to the hurt, which still twingeth shrewdly when the air nips, to clothe my so great experiences in the garments of my rhetoric for the benefit of my honorable patrons.”

  “Would it help thy rhetoric to see a presentment of Moy Yen?” asked Ho Chung, drawing an enamelled case from his pocket, and displaying a miniature of a young Chinese woman painted by a Chinese artist.

  “The sight of Youth and Beauty are as spurs to the halting poet, or as the sun that waketh a sleeping valley whose charms are enhanced by his ardent rays”; and Chin Lee held the miniature at various distances from his bespectacled eyes, and examined it critically.

  “To have looked on this once,” he went on unctuously, “were sufficient inspiration to lay the foundation of a letter that should serve as a model for all lovers from Pekin to Yun-nan;—but to look at it in favored intervals till this hour tomorrow would result in the erection of such turrets and pinnacles of rhetoric as were never before built in our language.”

  He paused awhile in meditation, regarding the miniature with head aslant. “Wilt thou leave this with me till tomorrow at this hour, so that I may write that which befits thy affection, and is due to Moy Yen’s beauty and worth?” Then, noticing Ho Chung’s hesitation,
he went on: “The picture hath no value to any one save thee—but who may appraise what is dear to the heart? Nevertheless, I will give thee twenty dollars to hold until the picture is restored to thee.”

  “It is my comfort in a strange land,” said Ho Chung, eyeing it hungrily.

  “And it is worthy of the rhetoric of Chin Lee,” responded the other, loftily.

  That settled it. The exchange of money and picture having been made, Ho Chung gave the scrivener many and full particulars to be transmitted to Moy Yen:—details of his own life and work in San Francisco; and hopes for her own welfare and that of the babe that had, doubtless, arrived.

  “Write my heart into the letter, Chin Lee,” he ended.

  “I will enclose it in the amber of my rhetoric, and transmute the youth, and hope, and the wonders of this land of sunshine into words that shall ripple as pleasantly as the wavelets on the beach at Santa Cruz when the full moon lays its benediction on the sleeping sea and the winds are hushed!”

  II

  The Entertainment of a Mouse by a Cat

  “Thou hast come, doubtless, to discharge thy debt to me, Chin Lee,” said the stout, arrogant man behind the counter who had Destiny in his looks.

  “Ay, Quong Lung,” replied Chin Lee, with a newly acquired confidence. “I have that with me that shall not only free me from my indebtedness to thee, but which will put money in thy purse. But my words are privy, and to be spoken only in thy inner chamber.”

  Quong Lung bolted and locked his front door from within, and further fortified the passage with a fatefully contrived barricade;—for the wars of the tongs never cease, and there had been a standing reward for his life for many days. But the contending hatchetmen and highbinders agreed that Quong Lung had a charmed life, and that his enemies were short-lived.

  And Chin Lee, professional letter-writer and past-master in the art of lying—and owing Quong Lung money, and a bitter debt of service!—stretched himself with easy negligence on the smoking mat in Quong Lung’s inner apartment, whilst the latter took his place on the other side of the mat.

  After they had smoked three or four pipes in silence, Chin Lee drew Moy Yen’s miniature from his blouse and handed it to Quong Lung.

  “Would she be worth while,” he asked simply, for rhetoric was out of the question with this man.

  “She would, if she were available.”

  “All things are available to the mighty. But the price I ask is a great one, Quong Lung, and the strong are ever merciful and generous, and it will not strain thy mercy and generosity to pay my dues.”

  “Name them.”

  “The remittance in full—to be given in writing—of the money I owe thee; and——” He paused a moment, and then went on in a trembling voice: “See, Quong Lung, the knowledge thou hast of that little happening in Ross Alley ten years ago, when a man was found dead with a certain writing in his hand, hath sat like lead on my soul, and frozen—time and again—the flow of words whereby I live.”

  “Yes?”

  “Return the writing to me, and I will do thy bidding at all times.”

  “Thou shalt do my bidding at all times, in any case,” said Quong Lung, carelessly. “See to it that the young woman is made ‘available’ without loss of time.”

  “Death hath no such bitterness as thy supremacy, Quong Lung!”

  “Only fools kill themselves, Chin Lee; and ’twere pity,” he went on, with a sneer, “ ’twere pity to put an end to the flow of thy ‘rhetoric.’ ”

  He turned his head slowly and looked insolently at the trembling Chin Lee, who had ceased smoking and was kneeling suppliantly before him with clasped hands. As a cat plays with a mouse only to enliven the little game of catching it again, he appeared to relent as he said, “Thy debt in money shall be remitted when the young woman is ‘available’—to use thy phrase. But thy debt in service shall continue with growing interest: I have need of thy ‘rhetoric.’ Now, tell me about the young woman.”

  “Her name, Inexorable, is Moy Yen, and she is the wife of Ho Chung, who is a skilled goldsmith, and earneth high wage in the service of Quen Loy of Dupont Street.”

  “She is here?”

  “Nay, Far Reacher; she is in Moukden, of the province of Shing-king, where the people use other speech than ours, as thou knowest. And Ho Chung, her husband, is saving money for her journey to this land with her babe, after it is born.”

  “Her babe?” asked Quong Lung, with a frown.

  “Yes, Most Merciful.”

  “And what should I do with a babe? My shadow hath fallen on it. See to it that it withers.”

  “The lightning shall strike it, Most Worshipful!”

  “Have a photograph made of this portrait: it will be needful to Moy Yen’s admission to this land as a ‘Native Daughter.’ ”

  “And if she should be as beautiful as her picture shows her to be, wilt thou remit the greater debt?”

  “Perhaps,” said Quong Lung, eyeing him for a moment with disdain. “Now go!”

  III

  How Rhetoric May Serve Love

  “Here is thy picture, Ho Chung,” said Chin Lee when they met at the appointed hour.

  “I could not sleep last night for thinking of it,” responded Ho Chung, returning his money to the letter-writer, and concealing the precious miniature in his blouse.

  “Sweetly shalt thou sleep tonight, young man, lulled by the consciousness that never fair woman received letter like this that thou shalt send to Moy Yen. But it is not fitting that such rhetoric as mine should be wasted in a roaring street. Come with me to the square below where, at least, there is grass with pleasant shadows thereon.”

  When they had reached Union Square, Chin Lee unrolled the papers in his hand, and read the following letter which he had indited:

  “Moy Yen—Cherry Blossom!—to think that these my silly words shall take thine eyes!”

  “Excellent!” interrupted Ho Chung; “I perceive thou hast suffered as I do.”

  Chin Lee acknowledged the compliment with a smile, and went on with his reading:

  “—But to begin rightly: It hath been my good hap to meet with a Master of Rhetoric, one Chin Lee, who is not too old to have forgotten the thrill of the tender passion, and who hath suffered grievously in the cultivation of the affections. He hath much skill in the lofty art of the scrivener, for he hath labored all his life, and at all hours of the day and night, in the stony fields of poesy and expression. His skill is only less than my devotion, which he has herein transmuted into tender phrase and loving passage befitting thy surpassing excellence. What manner of man he is is hereunder told: His learning is only equalled by his benevolence, which is the talk of all people in this great and wondrous city of San Francisco, so that when any one hath good luck all men say, ‘Herein is the hand of Chin Lee!’ ”

  “But this is naught to Moy Yen, who would fain hear of me,” broke in Ho Chung.

  “The young are ever impatient,” said Chin Lee, looking reprovingly over the top of his spectacles. “Patience is always rewarded.” He then proceeded with his letter:

  “What I would, first and last, impress upon thee, Dew of the Morning, is the superexcellence of my Honorable Friend, Chin Lee, who hath toiled in the tea gardens of learning, where only the ‘Orange Pekoe’ of speech, so to speak, is cultivated.”

  “ ’Tis a fair sentence,” said Chin Lee, looking up at Ho Chung; “ ‘the Orange Pekoe of speech’ is a fair phrase, and smacks rightly.”

  “Proceed,” replied Ho Chung, kicking aside a pebble on the path.

  Chin Lee, adjusting his spectacles, went on:

  “But, whatsoever happens, always remember that Chin Lee is an Honorable Man—and my best friend.”

  “But this doth not touch me,” said Ho Chung, with some irritation.

  “Shall I, an uncredited man, act as a go-between for my honorable patrons and their correspondents who live where our speech is not spoken?” asked Chin Lee, with some heat.

  “Perhaps thou art righ
t—but I would dictate the rest of the letter. See, I will propitiate thee with favorable mention of thee to Moy Yen.”

  “Now nay, Ho Chung; bethink thee: shall one who is acquainted with the ‘Four Books’ and the ‘Five Classics’ yield to a mere goldsmith in matters pertaining to rhetoric? Shall I permit my perfect knowledge of the Confucian Analects to be trampled under foot even by a lover? Thy lack of learning should stand suppliantly in the presence of an understanding that comprehends the encyclopædia ‘Wan heen tung kaou,’ compiled by the learned Ma Twan-lin.” He finished with a lofty emphasis.

  “Nevertheless, Chin Lee,” replied Ho Chung, with a look of impatience on his face, “if I may not speak from my heart to Moy Yen’s, I shall be compelled to employ the pen of Ah Moy who, they say, writeth as he is bidden.”

  “Ah Moy is a pig, and his father is a stray dog! He knoweth naught of the ‘Ta-heo’ (the Book of Great Learning), and he inditeth letters for coolies only to their filthy trulls—but thou art a sing-song (a gentleman), and hast done wisely to come to the only sing-song in my profession in San Francisco.”

  “Thy time is precious, Chin Lee; and I, too, must be about my day’s work,” said Ho Chung, turning his back on the letter-writer.