Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

  Wilson could not guess how his uncle had ever heard except that any event, however small, seemed to be public in Shanghai.

  “It wasn’t anything—” he said. “I suppose I look quieter to people than I really am. There wasn’t really much trouble. I rather like Joe’s Place.”

  His uncle appeared to have forgotten the subject at hand but Wilson knew that it was a habit. He knew that his relative was worried.

  “Have you ever tried the wheel upstairs?” Uncle William asked. “Joe knows all the gambling tricks from Monte Carlo to Canton. Well—you were asking me about Ned Hitchings. I guess he knew them, too. Ned was a wild boy back at home.”

  “I never heard of him, sir,” Wilson Hitchings said.

  His uncle pursed his lips.

  “When the Hitchings family drums anyone out of camp,” Uncle William answered, “they don’t speak of them to the rising generation. Ned Hitchings is your father’s and my third cousin. He had a share in your great-grandfather’s trust estate. Your grandfather was executor. When the estate was settled, your grandfather took him into the New York office. Ned and your father and I were younger then. That was before I came out here. Ned used to shock me then. He wouldn’t shock me now.”

  “No,” said Wilson. “I don’t suppose he would.”

  “You see,” Uncle William explained, “one grows tolerant as one grows older. Even in the Hitchings family. Yes, Ned was quite a boy. He didn’t fit well in the office. That money he inherited didn’t fit well with him. He married a dancing girl out of one of those Broadway extravaganzas. It rather shocked me then. It wouldn’t shock me now. Come to think of it, she was a rather pleasant girl, but it finished Ned. You couldn’t have a man like that active in the business. Be careful whom you marry, Wilson, please. Be careful.”

  “Yes, I will,” Wilson answered.

  His uncle flicked the ash from his cigar.

  “Well,” he said. “Ned drifted out to Honolulu and put all his money into a house that he called ‘Hitchings Plantation.’ Ned always spent his money freely. They had a daughter; then his wife died; then he lost his money. He mortgaged his place. He wrote your father and me asking us to help him out. We didn’t. Maybe we were wrong. . . . That’s all. I never thought about the girl until she turned the place into a gambling establishment. Have you never heard of it?”

  “No, sir,” Wilson said.

  “Then I would find out about it, if I were you,” said Uncle William. “It seems they want to keep the tourists entertained in Honolulu. The place is called ‘Hitchings Plantation’ and the authorities are rather partial toward it. Every tourist with sporting proclivities goes straight there from the boat. It’s the talk of the world cruises. They are joking about it out here now. They are saying it is part of Hitchings Brothers. It isn’t good for business, Wilson. We have been trying for the last six months to buy Ned’s daughter out and close the place.”

  “And she won’t sell,” said Wilson.

  Uncle William shrugged his shoulders.

  “You saw the letter,” he answered. He glanced over his shoulder toward the open door behind him as though he were listening for some sound.

  “Are you expecting a caller, sir?” Wilson asked.

  “You are rather quick, aren’t you?” his uncle answered. “As a matter of fact, I am; a rather secret caller, and I am not going to do business with him either. . . . Well, you know as much as I do about Hitchings Plantation. I want you to see what is the matter, Wilson. I want you to buy it and get it closed, and you had better rely on intuition. The only thing that has kept our heads above water here is intuition. Don’t ask me any more. I have got other things on my mind tonight.”

  The door behind them creaked. There was a soft pad of slippers on the veranda and William Hitchings’ servant, a white-robed figure in the dark, was whispering something softly.

  “He is waiting now?” asked Uncle William.

  “Yes, marster,” the servant said.

  Uncle William rose and lighted a fresh cigar.

  “Anything else you want to know?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” Wilson said. “Perhaps I had better find out someone who knows about Hitchings Plantation before I go to bed. It is time I began to put things together.”

  “Yes, it is time,” said Uncle William. “I wish I might help you, but there is a gentleman here to see me. I wonder if you could guess who he is.”

  “How can I guess, sir?” Wilson asked.

  “Think,” said Uncle William. “Try to think carefully about what happened this afternoon.”

  “Do you mean that Mr. Moto is calling?” Wilson asked. He could not see his uncle’s face, but he guessed that his uncle was smiling.

  “No,” his uncle said; “not exactly, but Mr. Moto probably has someone waiting in the street outside. No, Wilson, not Mr. Moto. Mr. Chang is calling—the gentleman who once had business interests in Manchuria. And I can guess what he wants. He wants me to help him with some more business. Well, I won’t. There’s a point where one must stop. I’ll see you in the morning, Wilson.”

  As Wilson Hitchings walked down the hallway to the front of his uncle’s house, he did not realize that his uncle was not behind him until he was close to the front door. Near it on the left, the door to his uncle’s study was ajar and only a dim light was burning in the hallway. As Wilson passed the study, the door opened wider and a voice spoke softly.

  “Mr. Hitchings.” The voice was so quiet and assured that Wilson was neither startled nor surprised.

  “Yes?” he said, and turned to the study door, to find he was facing a man whom he had never seen. The man was a broad-shouldered Chinese, past middle age, dressed in gray, European clothes. He had close-cropped iron-gray hair. Wilson had been in the Orient long enough by then to realize that all Chinese did not look alike. He was even able to identify certain types. The man, he concluded, because of his delicate, rather nervous features, was from the South rather than from the North of China. His dress and his manner showed that he was a man of ability. Just at that moment, the Chinese gentleman looked very much surprised. He was staring at Wilson, unblinking, almost suspiciously, and he had forgotten to be polite.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I thought you were Mr. Hitchings, sir.”

  Wilson smiled.

  “You mistook me for my uncle, sir,” he said. “But I am Mr. Hitchings, too.” Wilson was astute enough to perceive that the man was very much relieved. He smiled also and held out his hand, a slender, delicate hand.

  “I am so glad,” he began. “I thought you were a stranger.” And then Wilson heard his uncle’s heavy step.

  “Yes, it’s my nephew, Mr. Chang,” his uncle was saying, “and you need not worry. My nephew knows how to keep his mouth shut. Our family has always been tight-lipped with customers.”

  Mr. Chang’s smile grew broader, and he bobbed his head in a quick, nervous bow.

  “Yes, indeed, I know,” he said. “That is why I have come to you tonight, and why I hope so much that I may interest you.”

  His uncle’s car was waiting outside the wall and Wilson Hitchings told the driver to take him home. He sat looking through the window at the city streets which for the most part in that quarter were like the streets of a Continental European city. But there was an intangible addition, something exotic that made him ill at ease. The shops and the faces on the streets were like that day: superficially correct but inwardly bewildering.

  “There was something wrong about today,” Wilson Hitchings said to himself, yet he could not have told exactly what was wrong. It was only the inherited intuitive sense which had kept his family afloat for several generations that told him things were not exactly right. And there had been a curious inflection in his uncle’s voice, when he had spoken of Mr. Chang, which had been sharper than amusement. What disturbed Wilson Hitchings most was his utter lack of knowledge and his consequent complete inability to give a reason for his uneasiness. That unrest of his was as enigmatic as the tension wh
ich surrounded the city of Shanghai. He had felt that disquiet more than once when he had been by himself doing nothing. In the back of his mind there was always the impression of mysterious things happening inland that came out in garbled accounts in the local press. Shanghai had seemed more than once, as it seemed to him tonight, an impermanent safety square in some enormous game—a city which might disappear overnight. The clubs, the offices, all the people of his race, were only there on sufferance. They were probably doing nothing permanent, but that impermanence made it interesting. His family had ridden successfully on the turbulence of China. He wondered if he could do it. He wondered if his life would be a series of errands such as the one his uncle had assigned to him that night. His uncle had thought nothing of sending him on a six weeks’ journey and, curiously, the implications of that journey did not worry him as much as the unknown implications around him. At least there was something definite in what he was going to do.

  His rooms had the austere simplicity of his family’s house at home. He had not taken many things with him when he had been sent to the East, although he knew that he would be there for a long while, perhaps indefinitely. He had brought perhaps a hundred volumes which now stood on plain white shelves. There was a family Bible and some old books on travel and navigation. There were some pictures on the wall, all of which had to do with the family—one was a faded photograph of the old square Hitchings house in Salem which had been torn down fifty years ago. There were framed photographs of the Hitchings family portraits, whose faces were like reflections of his own face in an oddly distorted mirror. On the whole, they were soothing faces, both intellectual and strong. And he was proud of them; the family had always been proud of its ancestry. He had been used to a simple life at home, and he had not yet overcome a sense of surprise to find his Chinese servant ready and waiting when he came home at night.

  “Zsze,” he said to his servant, “you must get your accounts ready. In a few days I am going on a journey.”

  “Yes, marster,” the servant said. “Upcountry, marster?”

  “No,” Wilson told him. “I am going to Honolulu just for a while.”

  “Oh, yes, marster,” the man said; and then he turned to the table and picked up a card. “A gentleman—he came to call on you this evening.”

  “What sort of a gentleman?” Wilson asked.

  “A Japanese gentleman,” the man said. “He was very sorry you were out. He left his card.”

  Wilson took the card, read it and placed it in his wallet. It was one of those business cards to which he had already grown accustomed. On one side were characters, on the other was a European name.

  “I. A. MOTO” the printing read, and beneath was written in pencil: “So sorry you were out. I hope to see you soon.”

  The inscription on the card amused him, but what impressed Wilson most was the accuracy of his Uncle William’s prophecy. He recalled that his uncle had said that Mr. Moto would probably try to meet him. Although he had the gift of an orderly mind which could set aside a train of thought and turn readily to another, and though he understood that Mr. Moto was no affair of his, he did not feel like sleep. Intuitively he had the sense that something was happening in Hitchings Brothers. Both Mr. Chang and his uncle had been obviously ill at ease.

  When his servant had gone, he picked up a book to read;—a translation by Gilbert Murray of Euripides’ “Medea.” He began reading the play, purely for conscientious reasons, and because he had brought the volume with him, hoping sometime to read it; but when he reached Medea’s first speech to the women of Corinth, the words began to hold him. The bitterness and the anger of that woman, whom he had always considered a pleasant girl in Hawthorne’s “Tanglewood Tales,” and Euripides’ own knowledge of the depth of a woman’s mind, filled him with reluctant wonder. There was the conviction of universal tragedy in the bitterness of Medea. Was it possible, he wondered, that all women possessed this latent bitterness? It had certainly not been manifest in his own relations with the girls he had met at home. They had been nice girls, happy girls, and their mothers had been contented and poised. Then, much as he deplored the conduct of Jason, in that it differed rather strongly from his own personal standards, it occurred to him that there was much in Jason which was universal also, and there was too much of Jason’s psychology which he could understand. The Hitchingses had always been looking for the Golden Fleece. There was something of the spirit of Jason in all the Hitchingses—the same restiveness—the same relentlessness.

  Vaguely, and inaccurately, he could identify himself with those pages of Euripides. Somewhere in the night sounds outside his room, the Greek chorus was singing a noiseless, mysterious song that was ringing in the background of his thoughts. He, himself, had been selected to deal with a bitter and a probably unscrupulous woman who was using the family name despitefully, because of resentment. Wilson sighed and turned a page of his book. He was logical enough and frank enough with himself to understand that he was not well equipped to cope with such a problem. He had never been successful with the sort of woman whom he visualized—the adventurous type; and undoubtedly, the proprietress of a gambling house would be exactly that. On the whole, he could not understand why his uncle had said that he was the sort that women liked.

  “Unless I am perfectly safe,” he said to himself. “That is probably the reason.”

  The evening was still young and it did no good to read. He could not compose himself for reading because of his own uneasiness. He called for his servant to get him a motor and a driver and walked out into the warm, noisy street.

  “Joe’s Place,” he said to the driver. He wanted to find out more about Hitchings Plantation before he went to sleep and he knew that Joe Stanley was probably the one to tell him. The car moved into the dark city, through streets of twinkling electric signs, more effective than any he had ever seen, perhaps because of the Chinese characters depicted on them in red and green and blue. Joe’s Place was in the French concession, on a noisy street, lined with restaurants and cabarets. There was an American bar on the lower floor, with tables and music. There were gambling rooms upstairs. Joe Stanley, himself, was standing near the bar and Wilson wondered, as he often had before, what had brought Joe Stanley to Shanghai to end his days. It was a story which Mr. Stanley never told.

  Although he must have been in his middle sixties, he was remarkably well preserved, a soft-spoken courteous American, like a character in a Bret Harte novel. Wilson had seen him more than once, and each time he had learned something new but vague about Mr. Stanley’s past.

  Mr. Stanley took a cigar from the corner of his mouth and gave Wilson a friendly nod.

  “Going upstairs to play?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” said Wilson. “Not tonight.”

  “Well, I’d go upstairs, if I were you,” said Mr. Stanley.

  But Wilson sat down at a small table near the bar.

  “I am just going to stay long enough to have a glass of beer,” he said. He had to speak loudly to be heard above the noise of drinkers at other tables and of patrons by the bar. “Won’t you join me, Mr. Stanley?”

  Mr. Stanley sat down next to the table and pulled his yellow vest straight.

  “You know I never drink,” he said. “I wish you wouldn’t sit down here tonight. There’s too many rough boys here.”

  “I won’t be here more than a minute,” Wilson said. “Have you ever heard of Hitchings Plantation in Honolulu, Mr. Stanley?”

  “Yes, son,” Mr. Stanley said. “I’ve heard of it. Why do you ask me?”

  “The name,” said Wilson. “I was interested. That’s all.”

  “That’s funny,” Mr. Stanley said. “There was a party in here talking of it, this afternoon. That isn’t why you are asking, is it?”

  “How do you mean?” Wilson asked him.

  “Nothing,” said Mr. Stanley. “Nothing. A Russian named Sergi was talking of it this afternoon too. Does that mean anything to you, son? He was in here with a Chinese bu
sinessman named Chang Lo-Shih. They tell me they play for high stakes there. There is a croupier named Pierre—but maybe you know it already, don’t you, son?”

  Wilson sipped his beer carefully and tried to think, but he could not understand Mr. Stanley’s attitude. It presupposed a knowledge which he did not possess. Mr. Stanley’s eyes had grown narrow, and he was smiling faintly, mockingly.

  “Why do you think I should know?” Wilson asked. “I have never been to Honolulu.”

  “No?” said Mr. Stanley. “But your name is Hitchings, isn’t it? I don’t know what you are aiming at, Mr. Hitchings, but you don’t get me dragged in. I’m too wise and I’ll keep still—so don’t you worry. There is Sergi sitting over there.” He nodded across the room, and Wilson followed the direction of his glance. A man with a pale, waxen face was sitting alone at the table, staring at an empty glass. A cigarette drooped listlessly from between his lips. “You know Sergi, don’t you, Mr. Hitchings?”

  “No,” said Wilson. “I don’t. I came here to ask you a simple question and I don’t know what you are driving at.”

  “No?” said Mr. Stanley. “Listen, son, it’s getting late and it’s time you was in bed. If you want to know about Hitchings Plantation, ask Mr. Chang, not me. I’m not taking a hand in this. Do you get me, son?”

  “No,” said Wilson. “I don’t.”

  Mr. Stanley rose.

  “It don’t matter if you don’t,” he said. “I know when to keep my mouth shut. No one will get anything out of me. What I know won’t hurt a soul. Are you glad of that, son?”

  “I still don’t know what you mean,” Wilson said.

  Mr. Stanley held out his hand.

  “Put it there, son,” Mr. Stanley said. “You haven’t been out here long, but if I was running a big enough show, I’d have you in it. You’re right to be looking out, but I’m not going to blab what I know to any Japanese. Understand me, son?”

  “No,” said Wilson patiently; “but I don’t suppose you’ll explain.”