by Jake Logan
“I’m here to see the big boss,” Stark declared. The man in front of the door did not move a muscle. There was not even a twitch of an eyelid or throb of a vein. The man might have been cut from pale yellow stone.
“Little Pete? I want to talk to Little Pete.” This got him more than a twitch. The man reached out, grabbed Stark by the lapels of his coat and yanked him forward. Surprised, he grabbed for the slungshot in his pocket. Stark pulled it out and swung. The heavy lead-filled bag hit the man’s forearm. He did not even flinch.
Stark yelped when he was lifted off his feet and shoved through the door that someone inside the old warehouse had opened. Stark staggered and fought to keep from landing on his butt. The door slammed shut. Through the dust and dark he saw a hatchet man sporting two of the wicked hand axes.
“You were expectin’ me, were you? That’s good. Real good. Uh, I’ll just go this way. Little Pete wants to talk to me, he does.”
Stark found himself herded through the maze to a small clearing made from stacks of crates. Seated on a low stool was a man he took to be Little Pete. He was dressed better than the others and sipped at tea.
“Howdy,” Stark said. “You must be Little Pete.”
“Why do you interrupt my tea?”
“That’s no way to talk to a man who’s got what you want.” Stark felt buoyed by the knowledge that he had the jade crown. He went and took the tiny porcelain cup that Little Pete had placed on a low table and knocked back the contents. He spat it out. “That tastes like shit. You need to get yourself some decent whiskey.”
Little Pete said nothing. His emotionless eyes fixed on Stark until the man turned a little edgy.
“Look, I got the crown. The jade crown.”
“The emperor’s?” For the first time, Little Pete showed a flicker of emotion.
“Yup, the one that the crazy Englishman had on display with the rest of the jade gewgaws.”
“How did you come by this…artifact?”
“No reason to go into details. Let’s say Sir William don’t care to buy it from me. He’s such a poor loser, too. Now, you, I see you got the look of a wise man ’bout you. I’m willin’ to part with the crown for, oh, call it two thousand dollars.”
“So little?”
Stark licked his lips and wondered if he had made a big mistake. The chink thought the jade crown was worth more.
“Just for you, two thousand,” Stark said, deciding not to press his luck. He was asking twice what Sir William had balked at.
“I would see the crown,” Little Pete said.
“No way, no sir, not like that. We got to be sure this is on the up-and-up, you know?”
“I will not pay without seeing the emperor’s crown,” Little Pete said. “If you cannot show it to me, there is no need to continue.” He clapped his hands. From the shadows came three of the biggest Chinamen Jason Stark had ever seen. He was not a tall man; they were. Each was almost a full head taller and all outweighed him by fifty pounds. None of it looked to be fat, either.
“Hold your horses, my good man. I said I won’t deal on those terms. But we can come to a meetin’ of the minds, so to speak.”
Little Pete tilted his head slightly, silently urging Stark to continue.
“We meet, see. We meet in some neutral spot. I got the crown so you can look it over. But you bring the money with you. Gold coins or bullion would be good, though I’ll take scrip. When we’re all satisfied, you and me, we swap. You get the jade crown and I get the money. How’s that?”
“The time of meeting?”
“This evening,” Stark said, his mind racing. He had not thought this far in advance.
“I must have the crown now,” Little Pete said. “So, the meeting where you tell me the location of the crown is now.”
Stark frowned. He did not follow what the tong leader meant. Then he did. Strong hands grabbed him and lifted him off the floor.
“Hey, no strong-arm stuff. I ain’t tellin’ you shit!”
“You have not been introduced to the ways of the Orient. We will begin with sharp knives. Then move to needles,” Little Pete said, grinning wickedly. “If you have not told me what I desire, heated branding irons are good. I like them most of all.”
“Hold your horses, wait, let me go!”
Stark screamed as a knife was pressed into his kidney. He kicked feebly and then screamed even louder when a second knife slashed along his lowest rib, then moved to the next and next. His coat quickly became a bloody rag.
“I’ll tell you what you want. Don’t, damn you, that hurts!”
“You give up so easily?” Little Pete sounded disappointed. “I had hoped for more.”
“You’re a madman!”
“Some say that,” Little Pete agreed amicably. “You will say that after a few hours of excruciating torture.” He gestured toward a back room.
Stark kicked harder. The knife points kept coming, no matter how he twisted.
“I…I’ll show you where it is. I got the crown hid real good. Stop, just stop. You’re killin’ me with the knives!”
“We have hardly begun,” Little Pete said. “Very well. Show us the crown.” He grinned even more fiendishly and added, “I hope it is not there. It has been so long since I have enjoyed a good torture.”
Stark babbled in terror. Why had he thought he could ever deal with these crazy, bloodthirsty chinks?
20
“Captain, the ship is coming again. White smoke. Steam!”
Lai Choi San lifted her spyglass and studied the navy frigate. Her lips thinned to a line. How could this happen? Her mind raced as she considered the possibilities. There were two boilers in the frigate. Only one had blown, leaving the second functioning and capable of driving the ship after hers.
She peered through the squall that wrapped both ships. Without sail, she was in perilous straits. The steam-powered frigate could plow on, no matter what the weather.
“Fix our stern cannon,” she ordered.
“The range is too great,” Sung said. He had bandages wrapped about his chest, making him into a mummy. His voice whistled when he talked and occasional pink flecks came from his mouth. Lai Choi San doubted he had long to live, yet he insisted on getting up to help defend the ship. She only hoped he did not die at an inopportune time and put the entire ship in jeopardy.
“We must let it come closer,” she said. “They will not expect cannon fire. Our first shot must count.”
“As we have done before?” Sung asked. A tiny smile crept to his lips. “The way we did against the British cargo ship?”
“It wasn’t armed,” Lai Choi San said. “We had to lure it close to put a hole in its hull.” She lowered the spyglass and wiped rain from her face. These were the times she felt most alive.
In danger and with…him. But he was not here, and she must grab what thrills she could.
“Rudder, hard to port,” she bellowed. The two men on the rudder put their backs into the effort, swinging the ship by force of will as much as by muscle to heel over. This put the frigate in the precise spot she wanted in another minute or two.
“It still steams toward us,” Sung said. He spat blood now. Slocum’s bullet had nicked a lung. He gripped the railing and watched closely as the gunners prepared the brass cannon. “Use sold shot. There is no mast to bring down with chain.”
Stripped to the waist and glistening in the cold rain, the men worked frantically to determine elevation, distance and estimate the powder for the shot. Lai Choi San paid them no attention. They were the best gunner mates she had ever found—impressed, in one man’s case. He had become as loyal as any other of her crew once the benefits of being a pirate became clear. Why starve on a fishing junk when you could prosper by robbing other ships?
“Fire at the frigate’s midsection,” she said. Her heart raced. The pounding waves, the storm pelting her with rain, the approaching danger, it all came together in a heady mixture more intoxicating than any rice wine. Lai Choi San grabbed
the railing to steady herself when the cannon fired.
“Direct hit!” cried Sung.
Lai Choi San said nothing. She lifted the spyglass again and watched gouts of fire explode upward. The shot had crashed into the smokestack of the one functioning boiler and ripped it away. The back pressure from the suddenly removed stack sent a shockwave downward that must have blown the rivets out of the good boiler. If not, it certainly popped the pressure valves. That was as good as destroying the engine. They would have to rebuild a head of steam.
“Sung, quarter sail. Get us away before they fire on us. I would return to San Francisco.”
“The crown?”
“We have not recovered it yet,” she said with a touch of anger coming to her words.
“The bitch from the Portobello must have—”
“No, Sung, she did not know where it was. She was only being stubborn. Another day or two of torture would have revealed her ignorance. She thought she had it, but she did not. Slocum did not have it. Sir William does not have it. Somewhere in the city someone has our emperor’s crown.”
“How will you find it?”
Lai Choi San laughed now. “Knowing who does not have it reduces the number of people we must kill to find it,” she said. “Hurry, Sung. I see the other ship’s captain ordering his men to fire upon us with their rifles. We are still in no position for him to bring his heavier guns to bear. We must remain out of range.”
A rifle bullet whined through the air above her head. Lai Choi San did not flinch. She had been under fire too many times for that. She turned and watched as her crew lowered the topmost sails. She felt the junk surge as a gust of wind caught the canvas. If she had unfurled all the sails, the mast would have snapped from the wind. Her speed was not what she would have liked but it was still faster than the frigate. Escape was all that mattered now.
Escape and finding her emperor’s crown so she could…
“Repair what you can,” she said to her second mate. Li bowed deeply. “Wrap Sung’s body in canvas. When we are back in China we will give him a proper burial.”
“As the mistress orders, so shall it be,” Li said, bowing even more deeply.
She looked up at the tattered upper sails. Ruining them to get away from the frigate had been necessary. Considering the ferocity of the wind, not much damage had occurred, but finding a protected cove to ride out the storm would have been the prudent course. Time wore on her, though, and she doubted the frigate’s captain would have allowed her out of a cove should he have discovered her.
“You and you,” she said, pointing to crew who were standing and watching the repair work. “Row me to the docks.”
“Mistress,” called Li. “Will you need guards? These two are callow youths, not true fighters.”
“So?” she asked of the youngsters.
Both bowed and one said, “We will die for you, Captain!”
“They will do,” Lai Choi San said. In a low voice, she told the pair, “See that you are armed with both knives and pistols.”
They hurried off to get their weapons. Lai Choi San stared across the turbulent bay to the docks and the city beyond. Gaslights were being lit along the San Francisco streets. She could not abide the smell of the burning gas, but then that was the least of her discomforts in the city. The entire place stank. Not only were the streets filthy, so were the inhabitants. Not one in a hundred had bathed recently.
“Barbarians,” she said in a low voice. Then her two crewmen returned. She hopped into the boat and let them row, one at each oar. As they approached the docks, she worked out a plan for hunting down the possessor of the jade crown. It had only been mildly humorous telling Sung where she did not need to look. That left only those in Chinatown to question.
As the boat touched the dock, she grabbed the mooring ropes and quickly fastened it. She had worked as a sailor much of her life. Such menial chores were not beneath her, although she commanded a ship of her own. One day, she would have a fleet of junks at her beck and call. They would be the terror of the South China Sea and even the Dragon Lords would kowtow to her.
“One on each side, three paces back,” she said to her crewmen-turned-bodyguards. She had little faith that they would conquer should a serious challenge be delivered, but they would fight nobly and die similarly.
She avoided the functionaries at dockside. They would only impede her questioning. She had no cargo to load or unload. Only when she had the crown would she think about hoisting anchor and sailing across the Pacific for home. Even then, she might not need much in the way of supplies to reach Hawaii where she could take on more water and food for the real journey.
The closer Lai Choi San got to the section of town where her people lived, the uneasier she became. She had seen the ravages of wars between the Triads in China. The tongs had turned the people into rabbits scurrying for their burrows. Only once did her two bodyguards move up when a hatchet man approached. Lai Choi San motioned them back, advanced and then called out, “Do the Sum Yop fight everyone else?”
She had recognized the approaching hatchet man as Sum Yop by the small insignia on his hat.
“The Sum Yop need no allies,” came the reply.
“I would speak with Little Pete.”
She had no idea what caused the attack. The hatchet man looked calm, but her words sparked him to whip out a long-bladed knife and lunge forward. She drew her pistol and fired—the hammer fell on an empty cylinder. Before she could make a second attempt, both her guards had driven their knives into the hatchet man’s torso. The killer sank to the cobblestone street and flopped facedown.
“He is On Leong,” her guard said after a quick examination of the body. “Not Sum Yop.”
“So they impersonate each other to add to the killing.” She shook her head, then tended to her pistol. The cylinder had been unloaded. “Slocum,” she said, remembering how he had shot Sung with his own six-shooter. “He must have unloaded the other pistols.” She turned to her guards and ordered them to check their weapons. As she had suspected, both six-guns were similarly empty.
“What shall we do, Mistress?”
“Use your knives. We will avoid meeting anyone from now on. I will go to the Sum Yop headquarters and see Little Pete. Stay out of sight.”
She did not wait to see if the men obeyed. She knew they would. Lai Choi San hurried through the winding streets and was panting by the time she climbed a hill and came to the front of the Sum Yop building. What had to be extraordinary activity held the entire block. Sentries paced along the roof and more than a half dozen hatchet men prowled the street.
She motioned for her two bodyguards to remain behind as she edged forward, silent as a shadow.
The mouth of the alley where the entrance into the Sum Yop headquarters was as close as she could get without being challenged. Lai Choi San crouched down in a doorway, partly hidden by darkness. Her dark eyes fixed on the door as it opened and Sum Yop killers came spilling out. Six, eight, ten of them. Behind this phalanx of death strutted Little Pete. For such a small army to venture out during a tong war, a major attack had to be underway.
Or so she thought until she saw the man being dragged between two more Sum Yops. Lai Choi San caught a glimpse of the man’s pale face. He was Occidental. She pressed harder against the door and tried to make herself into as small a target as possible when the knot of hatchet men came toward her.
“You might save yourself additional pain,” Little Pete said, apparently talking to himself. Lai Choi San saw the prisoner jerk erect. Fear etched his face. She saw blood on his coat and he walked with a limp whenever his guards prodded him with their knives.
“I tell ya, I won’t give it up easy. You got to pay.”
“The price will be your miserable life. That has been decided.” Little Pete stopped and looked up and down the street. From nowhere came a dozen more Sum Yops. They formed a wedge in front of him while the others who had emerged from the headquarters with him fanned out on either side an
d trailed to protect his flanks. Only the two men holding their prisoner remained close to Little Pete. A casual observer might think the Sum Yop leader was out for a solitary stroll.
“Want more. Kill me ’n you’ll never find it.”
“Very well,” Little Pete said. “There might be a few dollars exchanged. Does that ease your mind?”
“Surely does,” the man said. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Yes, the sooner you show me, the sooner you can spend your reward,” Little Pete said.
Lai Choi San wondered if the Occidental was stupid to not hear the obvious contempt in Little Pete’s words. Once he was squeezed dry of information, the man was going to be shark food.
She watched as the men walked away from her. In her gut, Lai Choi San knew what it was Little Pete went to retrieve.
What could it be but the emperor’s crown!
21
“They have it,” Lai Choi San said.
“What is this, Mistress?”
“Never mind,” she snapped at her guard. “They are going to get it. We must not let them keep it.”
“There is no way we can fight so many. We will die.”
“You worry about death in my service?” she asked coldly.
“No, Mistress, not at all,” one guard hurriedly explained. “If we die, you do not get whatever it is you seek. That would be wrong.”
Lai Choi San cursed volubly. The man was right. She needed her entire crew, and even then there might not be enough. Little Pete had most of his killers around him. How the foolish Occidental could not understand his life was forfeit the instant he turned over the crown—and it had to be the jade crown they were after—was a mystery unless the man was completely stupid. If so, how did he get the crown from Sir William?
She broke into a run, not following Little Pete but angling away out of Sum Yop territory. It took her only a few minutes to find another hatchet man standing guard at a street corner.