by Jake Logan
“Come on, get up,” Slocum cried, swiveling around to kneel by the man. He pressed his fingers into the man’s throat. No pulse. He turned him over and saw a bullet smack in the middle of his back. If the slug had not killed him outright, the broken spine would have left him paralyzed for whatever remained of his short life.
Slocum yelped in pain when a bullet grazed his left arm. He looked to the roof of the building and saw a dozen Sum Yop lined up with rifles. They were getting serious about killing now. He dodged, ducked and stumbled across the street to the safety of the alley. Only then did he stop, bend over with hands on his knees and gasp for breath. He was lucky to be alive.
When he got his breath back, he slowly retraced his path through Chinatown until he found himself shadowed by a pair of burly men. He caught sight of one and recognized him as being Ah Ming’s personal guard. Motioning, Slocum got the man to come closer.
“I got him out, but he was killed. Tell Ah Ming.” Slocum was not sure if anything got through other than the name of the man’s mistress. Within minutes, Slocum found himself shoved down a narrow stairway and once more in the intricate underground maze of passages below Chinatown.
Slocum made no effort to remember where he went this time. He was shoved along by the hatchet man following him, and eventually they came to the same room where Ah Ming had patched up his wounds and given him the chore of fetching her pa.
He sat on the bed, his head aching and his body ready to die around him.
Slocum looked up when Ah Ming came into the room. She now wore a midnight black silk jacket and pants that matched her hair and eyes. Tiny silver threads subtly highlighted her hips and breasts in ways no Western woman would consider. If anything, the silver chasing diminished her charm rather than accentuated it. It was as if Ah Ming wanted to disappear rather than stand out.
“He is dead,” she said without preamble.
“I’m sorry. I got him out of the building. They had tortured him.”
She stared without blinking at Slocum. He felt like a truant schoolchild.
“They’d tortured him. Cut out his tongue.” He had no reason to bedevil her with such details. Her pa was dead from a bullet in the back. That ought to be enough.
“You freed him? Before he died?”
Slocum nodded. “I reached him inside the Sum Yop headquarters. They attacked, I killed a few. After I freed him, your pa used those axes like he was born with them in his hands to kill a couple more.”
“The dynamite blew a hole in the wall.”
Slocum looked more closely at her. She must have watched or at least had spies report back everything that was visible from the street. He nodded.
“You did not protect him as you escaped.”
“I was taking fire. I told him to run for it, to get back to you. He understood that I was going to cover for him. I ran out of ammo, then I…”
“You stumbled over his body.”
“That’s right,” Slocum said, feeling guilty. At the time he had thought he was the toughest hombre in San Francisco, going into that den of killers and rescuing the old man. Now he felt as if he had failed in every respect.
“You must retrieve his body.”
“That’s not going to be too hard,” Slocum said. “The Sum Yop will leave it out in the street.”
“They have taken it. They are hiding it.”
“Why?”
“They want to dishonor him.”
Slocum knew how that worked. Indians were always doing foolhardy things for honor. The Celestials had something similar in their devotion to “face.” Honor meant everything. Slocum could understand that. Without honor, what was a man?
“You will get him?” Ah Ming came and sat beside him. Her fathomless eyes stared into his, and he felt suddenly dizzy, as if she had given him some knockout drops. Slocum tried to explain it away because of the heavy perfumed odor in the air. The Chinese burned incense everywhere. He took a deep sniff and caught some of the joss sticks but more of Ah Ming. Her hair was like a mountain meadow and that girlish figure looked less and less like a child’s and more like a woman’s with every passing second.
A million thoughts shattered in Slocum’s head. He had loved Anne. There was no telling if he would have married her, but that was possible. And she had died in his arms. He still felt the cold chill along his body and arms as he had clutched her lifeless body, even knowing she had frozen to death.
Then the coldness went away and he found something warmer and more pliant in his arms. Ah Ming. She moved still closer until her body pressed against his. Her arms circled his neck and pulled his face to hers. The kiss was warm. Then it became molten. Slocum had tried to drown his sorrow at losing Anne, but he had sought refuge in the wrong places.
Ah Ming moved even closer and began moving slowly against him, rubbing herself like a cat, making small purring sounds as her tongue invaded his mouth. She pressed past his lips so her tongue could duel with his. They began to frolic, move back and forth in a slow, sensual oral dance that deepened. Slocum felt himself responding when he had thought he would never again feel anything for a woman.
“You are tense,” Ah Ming said. “Let me make you hard, too.”
She slithered down his body, moving as gracefully as a snake. She dropped to her knees in front of him. Her clever fingers worked at his gun belt and then the buttoned fly of his jeans. Before Slocum realized it, she had released him. He sprang upright, fully erect and aching. The cool air in the underground room quickly became a distant memory as warm, soft lips closed on the purpled head of his erection. Slowly moving, Ah Ming took more and more of him into her mouth until he was squirming on the hard bed.
He felt the end of his manhood bounce off the roof of her mouth and go deeper. He groaned as she pulled back. Every inch of the way her tongue stroked along the sensitive underside of his fleshy shaft. She quickly took him fully into her mouth again, this time using her teeth to lightly score the top and bottom of his length.
Slocum reached down and ran his hands into the woman’s silky black hair. He guided her in and out, demanding more speed from her as he felt the volcanic pressures mounting within him.
When he was sure he would erupt, he was suddenly left out in the cold. He opened his eyes and stared at Ah Ming. She got to her feet and took a step backward. With agonizing slowness, she unfastened her padded jacket and slipped out of it.
“You like this?”
“Yes,” was all he could say. Slocum hardly trusted himself to speak. His throat was tensed and a knot built in the pit of his stomach as more and more pale skin appeared to torment him. A shoulder, then the other. The jacket slid to the floor, but he watched Ah Ming carefully unfastening the frogs on her blouse. The deep divide between her breasts appeared.
And then her breasts! What he had been missing! He had thought she was like a young girl, but those firm breasts were definitely a woman’s. Capping each was a dark circle of aureola with a hard button popping up in the middle.
“You like?” Ah Ming stepped closer, cupping one breast.
Slocum showed how much he liked the offer. His tongue flicked out, snake-quick, and lightly touched the tip of one nipple. A shudder passed through her body. He carefully circled the nipple and then worked into the valley between her breasts. He put his arms around her waist and drew her closer. She came willingly. Moans escaped her lips as he continued to torment her with his oral assault.
One breast, then the other and he hardly noticed how she shucked off her blouse so she was naked to the waist. His hands worked over her bare back and then downward to the firm, small mounds of her ass. She moaned even louder as Slocum pulled her close. He ran his lips across her bare belly and then worked lower, getting his tongue under the waistband of her linen trousers. She reached down and slipped them off her hips.
The pants fell around her graceful legs. Slocum was delighted to see that she wore nothing under them. He moved lower. His mouth brushed her nether lips and then his tongue sl
ipped into her. The dampness seeping out became a torrent as he flicked his tongue over the pink nub growing at the V of her sex lips.
She moved forward and pushed him flat onto the bed to crouch over his face as he continued to run his oral organ in and out of her. Then Ah Ming moved lithely down him, stripping his pants as she went. He lay flat on his back, jutting upright. For a moment. She rose, then dropped, taking him fully into her tightness.
They both gasped at the sudden intrusion. Slocum was surrounded by soft heat that clutched at him with increasing power. She rose, squeezed down and tried to hold him within her. She was too wet for that. He slid free like a watermelon seed. She lowered herself slowly, taking him all the way in.
“You’re wearing me out,” Slocum said. He had not thought he would ever be aroused by a woman again. Now he was acting like a young buck on his first exploration into the wonders of a woman. He twitched and jerked about within Ah Ming, then arched his back and drove himself upward as hard as he could when she began massaging him with her knowing inner muscles.
She rose and fell faster now. The friction along his length burned like a forest fire. It spread throughout his loins and then exploded like a stick of the dynamite he had used on the Sum Yops.
She pumped fiercely for a moment, let out a tiny cry of pleasure and then sank down, her cheek resting on his chest.
“You are not like other men,” she said.
“Is that a good thing?” Slocum did not know how to take her comment.
“It is very good.”
“You’re more than good,” he said.
Ah Ming did not answer. She lay on him. He felt her hot breath and the pressure of her body and the way her legs clamped down around one of his. She moved the slightest bit, stimulating herself against his thigh.
He was surprised to find that she got him hard again so quickly. And after they had finished a second lovemaking, she whispered in his ear, “You will bring back my father?”
“His body?”
“Yes, his body. He must be returned to the Celestial Kingdom for burial.”
With his arms around such a lissome, willing woman, who had brought him back from black despair, Slocum could only nod. He knew how difficult that would be, but somehow for Ah Ming he would do it.
5
Tess Lawrence looked at Sir William. Seldom had she seen him more cheerful. The cold wind off the bay blew her strawberry blonde hair about, forcing her to constantly touch it. She worried he might think this was a bit too forward, but the explorer took little notice. He stared not across the carriage at her but out into the city. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a big gust.
“This is a fine day to be alive,” Sir William said. “Yes, I say it is.”
“I suppose,” Tess said uncertainly. “Why do we have to go to the police station? The officers are quite capable of interrogating the robbers and finding who sent them, aren’t they?”
“I doubt it. Did you see their heavy brows and undershot jaws? Definitely brutes of low caste and even lower intelligence.”
Tess wondered if he meant the police or the robbers. Asking would have made her sound either ignorant or cheeky. Neither of those would increase her stature in Sir William’s eyes.
“What do you hope to find out?”
“I will personally conduct the interrogation. Those sailors, and sailors they were from their clothing and the curious way they walked—did you notice that, my dear?”
“They acted as if the floor was rolling about under them,” she said.
“Exactly! Sailors used to the bounding main. They have only recently come ashore. How is it that a crew of Chinese sailors takes it into their heads to rob me of my fine exhibits? That is a poser. It is also a question I will answer by careful deduction. I doubt if any of the police in this city even speak Chinese.”
“Mandarin or Cantonese,” she murmured.
“Exactly right. You catch on quickly. By learning what dialect of Chinese they speak, we will learn much. Are they from the north? Or the south? If the latter, they are likely to be South China Sea pirates.”
“Why would they want the jade?”
“Anything of value is their goal to steal,” Sir William said haughtily. “What finer collection in all of California can there be but mine? It is destined to be shipped to Boston soon. You have made those arrangements, haven’t you?”
“I am finishing them now. I think by rail would be safer and quicker,” Tess said. Her head spun. She had juggled so many items for Sir William that they all blurred together, and she struggled to keep this and her own affairs in proper order. Setting up the exhibition at the museum had been time consuming, but nothing like determining the best way of shipment for possibly fragile jade ornaments. The vibration from the steel wheels for weeks on end had to be considered against the somewhat smoother trip in a sailing ship around the Cape. Vibration was more destructive than even the most severe battering of a storm, but Tess had decided the chance of a ship sinking was greater than the jade being stolen by train robbers. There would be armed guards accompanying the shipment, in any case, but even if the train derailed, its cargo would not be consigned to the depths of the ocean.
Even if train robbers stole the jade, there was a chance of ransoming it back. This was what she had told Sir William.
So many details made her head ache. And now Sir William wanted to confront the thieves personally.
“What is it you expect from me when we arrive at the police headquarters?”
“My dear, you will take notes. Every utterance I make must be recorded. This will make a splendid chapter in my autobiography, don’t you think? Yes, yes, it will. I also want you to study those ruffians for any sign of lying. They will be expert at it, mind you, being both sailors and Chinamen, but I am sure you will be able to detect it.”
“How?”
“There will be a furtiveness. Their eyes will dart about. They are not clever enough to conceal such mannerisms inherent in lying.”
“What if they play poker?”
Sir William looked at her, startled. Then he laughed. “You do have a quaint wit, my dear. Imagine that. Poker faces!” He laughed loudly, causing the driver to turn and look at him curiously to see what the joke was.
“There it is, driver,” Sir William called. “The police precinct where the surviving robbers were taken for incarceration. Pull over here and wait for us, that’s a good chap.”
Sir William hopped down and took a step toward the front door before he remembered his manners, swung back and took Tess’s extended hand to help her from the carriage.
“Thank you, Sir William,” she said. The brief touch had been electric for her. How brave and daring he was!
Then Tess had to hurry to catch up with him. He took the steps three at a time in his hurry to begin the questioning.
“You, my good man,” Sir William barked, pointing to a sergeant behind a large desk. “Where have you put my prisoners?”
“Yer prisoners, now, sir? Who might you be and who might they be?”
Sir William puffed himself up, thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat and struck a pose with one foot slightly before the other. Tess thought he must have looked the same when he climbed the highest peak in Africa or discovered the trove of jade in Shanghai.
“The brigands who attempted to steal the priceless jade artifacts from the museum last night. I captured them; I demand to question them.”
“What’s that?” The sergeant scratched his head as he studied Sir William. “I don’t unnerstan’ a word of what yer sayin’.”
“Allow me, Sir William,” Tess said.
“Yes, of course, my dear. You do have the common touch.” Sir William stepped back and allowed her to go to the policeman’s desk.
“Last night there was a robbery attempt. A gang of Chinese hooligans—”
“They were sailors fresh from the sea,” Sir William cut in.
“Yes, of course,” Tess said, irritat
ed at the interruption. She had the police officer’s attention. She knew he was more interested in staring at her bustle and undoubtedly fantasizing about what lay under the undulating wire structure, but she had his attention.
“You was sayin’, miss?” The sergeant ignored Sir William.
“The Chinese sailors who tried to rob the museum last night. There were many influential people there who are very disturbed. People from society. Rich men and their wives,” she pressed. This caused a spark of understanding to flare in the policeman’s eyes.
“Four of the bastards,” the cop said. “No offense, miss. We got ’em in cells down there. Captain Reilly’s in charge.”
“Sir William,” Tess said, inclining her head slightly in her employer’s direction, “would like to be present at the questioning. He might speed up the gathering of information.”
“You mean he wants to take a turn with the brass knucks? Why didn’t you say so?” The sergeant got to his feet and went to a corridor. He bellowed down it, “A gent’s here to help Captain Reilly!” The echo made Tess cringe.
“That’s not what you wanted to do,” Tess protested to Sir William. “Is it?” She clutched at her throat when she thought it might be. Sir William had a wild, untamed streak that might cross over into barbarism.
“Nothing of the sort, my dear, nothing of the sort. But you did well. Broke the ice, got us through, all of that.”
“Jist head on down. Last cell on the right.”
When Tess started to go with Sir William, the sergeant reached out and took her arm to stop her.
“Wait a second, miss. What goes on there ain’t fer delicate sensibilities.”
“She has no ‘delicate sensibilities,’ my good man,” Sir William said. “She’s my assistant. Come along now. We must not keep the captain waiting.”
Tess went with Sir William, doing her best to keep up as he hurried along. She glanced in some of the cells and winced at the sight. The prisoners were kept like animals.
“They act like animals, they should be caged like animals,” Sir William said, as if he had read her mind. Tess decided her expression had conveyed her shock at seeing men in shackles in barred cages.