by Grant Allen
The wind is seldom fair;
Though to the straits of pleasure bound,
Too oft we touch at care.
Impervious danger we explore;
False friends, some faithless she:
Pirates and sharks are found ashore
As often as at sea.”
- DIBDIN.
HE was a wonderful chap, that Chinaman, and he spoke a wonderful lingo. “Here see Mista Guiteau, Melican gentleman, allee samee like him shoot Plesident Gahfield with loaded levolver at depot of Baltimoree and Potomah Lailway. Plesident stand at ease on platform, allee likee so; Guiteau comee up, dlaw first-chop pistol; shootee Plesident. Plesident fallee; plenty blood jump out; blood flow down likee water on platform!” Then he smiled a broad smile of supreme content. He leered at the victim. The contemplation of the shot, and the wax blood on the floor, seemed to afford to his mind the supremest satisfaction. I may be prejudiced, but, as I said just now, I never did care for these yellow-faced Chinamen.
He would pass on to the next. “Here Missee Bland, Melican lady, poison joss-pigeon man,” that’s Chinatown for a parson, you know; “because he no love her allee samee like she love him — no want to marry her. That not good murder. No use for waxwork. No makee blood. Not muchee for see. Good waxwork murder makee much blood. Fall out on floor. Melican gentleman likee see plenty blood when he come visit waxwork. So much more blood, so much more Melican gentleman give cash to Chinaman.”
He was about right as to the prevailing taste, I don’t doubt; but the stolid, coldblooded, Celestial way in which he gloated over it all was something truly ridiculous, and yet awful too. I followed him about just for the mere curiosity of hearing how he regarded things. He was a study in character, and as such he interested me.
But the thing in the whole exhibition that seemed to afford him the profoundest delight was the inevitable working-model of a French guillotine. So fine and so realistic a guillotine I had never seen before. On its block lay a waxwork gentleman in eighteenth-century dress, supposed to represent King Louis the Sixteenth in the very act of having his head cut off. Nothing could be more ingenious than the working of this model. The head was joined to the shoulders by a coat of wax; and if the party in the chamber chose to subscribe five dollars between them, they could see the king actually decapitated before their very eyes for that trifle. The money was soon raised, and then the Chinaman, with infinite glee, proceeded to draw the bolt, and let the axe fall on the unfortunate monarch. I never in my life saw anything more hideous. “Why, there’s blood in it!” I cried.
Medical student as I had been, the horrible realism of the thing fairly took my breath away.
Li Sing smiled. “Yes, leal blood,” he answered. “Plenty blood spurt out, allee samee likee Li Sing leally cut him head off.”
And then he explained it to me. The head, neck, and trunk, it seemed, were filled with blood, real bullock’s blood, “put in flesh every morning;” it was Li Sing’s business to fill it again, and remake the neck with wax after every performance. When the axe fell, it cut the head off clean, and at the same time touched projecting springs on either side, which released the imprisoned blood by atmospheric pressure. The effect was ghastly and life-like in the extreme — or, perhaps, I ought rather to have said death-like. You could almost believe it was a real person being executed under your eyes; I know the sight just turned me sick with horror.
And yet Li Sing himself exercised a curious fascination over me for all that. His delight in this hideous performance was so unmixed, and his face so impassive withal, while he gazed and gloated, that I couldn’t help loitering behind after the rest had gone to have a bit of a talk with him. By way of facilitating the interchange of ideas, I gave him a dollar, which he pocketed at once with many fervent expressions of Oriental gratitude. I understood him to wish that my great-great-grandfather might be ennobled for this munificent deed, and that my remoter ancestors might each receive a step up in the table of precedence in their existing place of celestial residence.
“Melican gentleman lookee tired,” Li Sing said, after a while, observing how I leaned on my stick for support. “Melican gentleman no wantee sittee?”
“I’m not an American,” I said in reply. “I’m an Englishman, from over the sea, a stranger in San Francisco. But I shouldn’t mind sitting down for a minute or two, if you’ve got a stool handy.”
Li Sing looked at me hard; after which (as it was almost closing time) he pushed Guiteau on his trial unceremoniously from his place, and handed me the chair in which the waxwork murderer had been peacefully seated. It was a very comfortable chair indeed, for a prisoner at the bar, and I sank into it most agreeably. “You no know nobody in Flisco, then, Englishman?” he inquired with curiosity.
“No, nobody,” I answered. “I’m just down on a visit. Not been long in America. I go back to-morrow. But I had an hour to spare this afternoon, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just strolled in casually to see the waxworks.”
Li Sing seemed interested. “Waxworks velly good,” he said. “Guillotine velly good. Allee samee likee leally cut head off. English gentleman takee cup of tea? Waitee to see Li Sing clean up guillotine and puttee back head again?”
It was a hateful sight, and yet I was very tired. And I was still English enough for the promise of a cup of tea to appeal to all the profoundest sentiments and sympathies of my nature. I nodded assent. I was distinctly sleepy. A cup of tea would help to wake me up. And then I must go down to the bureau once more and inquire whether they’d cabled the Sacramento yet.
Li Sing went off to fetch the tea and teapot. He was in high spirits for a Chinaman. He brewed the mixture under my eyes with a little spirit-lamp. Of that I was glad, for after what I’d seen of Chinatown the evening before, I rather suspected Chinese cleanliness. But nothing could be nicer or neater than Li Sing’s five-o’clock-tea arrangements. He had a pretty little porcelain pot, and two dainty cups of Oriental red; and he poured out the liquor steaming, with cream and sugar as a concession to my Western tastes; and I confess, better or more stimulating tea than that I never drank, and never shall, I fancy.
However, I was so drowsy even before I drank the tea that I could hardly keep my eyes open while he completed his arrangements. Once or twice, indeed, my head dropped back listlessly in Guiteau’s chair; and once or twice I woke again with a start, to see myself confronted by Marat in his bath, with Charlotte Corday, as pale as death, in the act of sticking a cheap Pittsburg knife into him. And after the tea, strange to say, I felt sleepier still; so sleepy, that in less than ten minutes I’d dozed off altogether, and was conscious of nothing more in the room around me, except a vague sense that I was sleeping in the midst of a conclave of murderers.
My sleep, however, wasn’t unbroken by appropriate dreams. I slept heavily, almost as if I had been drugged; but I was dimly conscious for all that, through a haze of memory, of a sort of hideous nightmare that kept me strained and attentive. I imagined I was a slave on the middle passage. My hands and feet were bound with chains; my arms were tied; somebody was tugging away hard at the fetters that clanked on my ankles. A growing discomfort seemed to oppress my limbs. I was sitting cramped in a row with a dozen others. But whiffs of Chinatown seemed to intervene as well.
There was an odor as of opium; while the gangs of slaves on either hand were, not black, but yellow. And up and down through the human mass that thronged the stifling hold in which I gasped for breath, Li Sing, the Chinaman, moved bland and impassive, casting a phlegmatic glance to right and left as he paced the floor, and murmuring to himself in his broken pigeon English, “Good, good; velly good; makee plenty blood; makee plenty kill for Melican gentlemen.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE JAWS OF DEATH IN REAL EARNEST.
Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing,
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.”
— LONGFELLOW.
BY AND BY, I was aware of a
trickling of water over my feverish brow, and a movement of air about my burning throat. I was gasping and ill: my tongue was dry, and my head aching. I opened my eyes slowly; I stared around me with a start. Li Sing was fanning me with a fan, and applying eau-de-Cologne to my aching forehead with a wet towel.
No more than that seemed clear to me at » first. I was merely aware of an unpleasant sensation of coming to, much as I have since felt it after having a tooth drawn under gas at a modern dentist’s.
I raised my eyes feebly, and saw Lucrezia Borgia smiling down upon me from her sallow pallid bust, and Mrs. Bates, the murderess, preparing to stab her sleeping victim. In a minute more, I remembered where I was and recognized that for some hours at least I must have been sleeping heavily. It was pitch-dark without, and the Chamber of Horrors was lighted up within by a single kerosene lamp, which just sufficed to throw a ray of visible gloom upon the distorted faces of all those waxen murderers. A terrible fear seized upon me that the Sacramento might by this time have really come in, and that Edith might have found herself, on her landing, alone among strangers.
I put my hand into my pocket to feel for my watch; or at least, I tried to; but to my utter surprise I discovered I couldn’t move a joint of my arm. Was this rheumatism or paralysis? I gave a mad wrench. Great heavens! what could it mean? Ah, gentlemen, you may stare. My arms and legs were tied! Tied with a stout new rope, that confined me to the chair. I was bound hand and foot in Guiteau’s seat, unable to move a muscle for my own deliverance.
“What does it mean, you scoundrel?” I burst out, the sense of my helplessness just beginning to dawn upon me. “How dare you attempt —— —— —— —”
But before I could get another word out, Li Sing had stepped behind me with dexterous rapidity, and, quicker than I knew what was happening, slipped something adroitly into my mouth between my open teeth — something that prevented me from uttering a single cry or sound, and that no struggling on earth could ever avail me to get rid of. I recognized in a moment that it was a cunningly devised mechanical gag with india-rubber adjustments, like those that are used for gagging the mouths of guillotined criminals. It formed part of the apparatus of that hideous show, and Li Sing had shown it to us the afternoon before with all the other paraphernalia of his hateful exhibition.
As soon as it was fitted on, and I sat there, helpless and speechless, but trembling all over with rage, Li Sing stepped back a couple of paces deliberately, and cast an admiring glance at his own careful preparations. “English gentleman, don’t be afraid,” he said, in his horrible jargon. “Li Sing only tly little piecey expeliment. English gentleman makee dollar present to Li Sing. Li Sing go out buy piecey lope while gentleman sleepie, and tie up lope lound English gentleman.”
He smiled a bland smile of infantile delight at his own cleverness as he said it. But his words appalled me. The scoundrel had used my own dollar that I gave him, to buy the rope with which he had bound me hand and foot in the murderer’s chair there.
Then it dawned upon me slowly that he must have hocussed my tea, and kept me asleep there on purpose while he bought the rope and bound me.
I don’t know whether the Chinaman read this suspicion in my angry eyes, but at any rate he looked me back in the face, and answered me almost as if I had spoken to him. “Yes, English gentleman,” he said, gazing across at me pensively from those mild almond eyes of his, “Li Sing burn piecey opium in the loom while gentleman sit and wait for tea. Li Sing put piecey Indian hemp in tea-pot. Indian hemp velly good for makee gentleman sleep. Indian hemp bling plenty dleam. Li Sing go out and buy piecey lope to tie gentleman up while gentleman sleep there.” And he laughed musically.
A cold thrill of horror coursed through my bones. I realized in a flash the full awfulness of the situation. The impassive, phlegmatic, pitiless yellow man had me wholly at his mercy, and could murder me, if he chose, with no more compunction than you or I would show at crushing a cockroach.
The very deliberateness with which he spoke and moved had something inhuman in its crawling cruelty. He toyed with death as a cat toys with a mouse. He played with his victim, with a smile on his face, as a boy plays with a frog while he mangles it mercilessly.
I may be prejudiced, gentleman, as I said before, but somehow, I can never quite trust those yellow-faced Chinamen.
Presently, he disappeared for a moment, and then came back with a bucket of water. He laid it by the side of the guillotine, and worked the knife up and down in the groove to see if it went smoothly without a hitch anywhere. After that, he sat down on a stool before me, like a man who has plenty of time to spare, and needn’t hurry himself. I knew now he had awaked me and refreshed me with eau-de-Cologne in order that he might enjoy the full delight of watching my helpless misery. He looked at me close, not savagely, but good-humoredly (which was ten thousand times worse), and smiled once more that bland, infantile smile; “Li Sing workee guillotine evelly day,” he said slowly and very distinctly, watching my face as he spoke, to see if it twitched; “Li Sing makee plenty blood flow; but never blood from living Melican gentleman. Allee time, Li Sing want to see how guillotine workee on living man. To-day, English gentleman come see Li Sing; talkee Li Sing in loom; tellee Li Sing him stlanger in Flisco. Li Sing tinkee, this good time for tly piecey expeliment. English gentleman alone; English gentleman tired. Makee English gentleman go sleepie with Indian hemp in Guiteau’s chair. Go out buy lope, tie English gentleman up. Now go cut head off English gentleman.”
The stolid joy of blood with which he spoke added to the horror and awe of my situation. In a moment, a ghastly picture rose up before my eyes. I thought of Edith, coming alone by night to that strange town, and finding when she arrived her future husband missing — perhaps even learning at once by what horrid fate he had died. For her sake, I fervently prayed one prayer. If Li Sing killed me, I trusted at least he would escape detection. I trusted he would destroy every trace of blood. I trusted his crime would never be discovered. I trusted Edith might never know the awful truth as to my disappearance.
Li Sing looked at me once more, and once more he smiled. He seemed to read my thoughts with Oriental cunning. “Melican judge never find out,” he said, shaking his shaved head till the pigtail waved behind him. “Li Sing always buy bucket of blood evelly day in market. Plenty of blood in Li Sing’s drain. Washee up allee right, makee guillotine clean again. Takee body to Chinatown, likee Chinaman do. Sendee box to Chinatown cemetelly with body to belley him. Chinaman no wantee know what body I belly. English gentleman stlanger in Flisco; got no fiends. Nobody comee askee after English gentleman.”
He told me all his vile scheme cynically, just so, with a chuckle of delight. Then he rubbed his hands quietly in passive Celestial joy. “Tly guillotine at last on live gentleman’s neck,” he said, hugging himself with the pleasure of an ideal achieved. “See plenty blood lun out; live blood; warm, beautiful!”
I groaned inwardly. It was all I could do. I was tied so tight from head to foot that I couldn’t move a limb or a finger any way. And Edith by this time might be looking for me in vain at every hotel in San Francisco.
At last, after he had gloated long enough over my helpless condition, the Chinaman rose again, and came toward me cautiously. He cut with his knife the rope that bound me externally to the chair, and unwound it by stages. I could see then that he had used two pieces of rope, one to tie me rigidly from head to foot in a stiff, upright position, and the other to bind me to the chair, with cramped legs, while he made his final preparations for guillotining me.
As the outer rope was loosed, I made one violent effort to shake myself free; but all in vain. Li Sing had done his work far too cleverly for that. He was a practised hand, for he had been an assistant in a hospital at Hongkong, he told me. I couldn’t wriggle a limb half an inch either way under those firm close knots of his.
He lifted me in his arms, all rigid as I lay, and carried me over in his arms as one might carry a log of cordwood, for I had no more po
wer of will or motion. Then he laid me down on the platform of the hideous machine, and fitted my neck into the horrible groove. I looked up, and saw the hateful knife gleaming over my head. Li Sing looked up too, and chuckled to himself audibly. “Plenty blood lun, lun,” he said. “Velly plitty expeliment. Li Sing wantee allee time to see how guillotine workee on Melican gentleman.”
No, gentlemen; I tell you, it’s not all prejudice. The yellow man is as pitiless as Nature herself. He kills, and laughs. He tortures, and enjoys it.
Li Sing stood watching me with my head in the groove, in my helpless agony, for full five minutes. Evidently, now he had gained his heart’s desire at last, he couldn’t bear to get over the scene too quickly. He wanted to drink it in, bit by bit, and taste its full flavor by rolling it delicately on his mental palate. The five minutes seemed to me like a perfect eternity. But I knew they were no more, because he took out my watch, and held it up visibly before my eyes. I saw it pointed to twenty minutes past two in the morning. “Give you five minutes,” the Chinaman said, with the watch in his hand. And then, he counted them out with deliberate slowness. “One... two... three... four... and a quarter... four and a half... four and three-quarters... five! And now for the expeliment!”
As he spoke, with stolid, fiendish joy gleaming childishly on his smooth face, he clutched at the cord, and gave a hasty pull to the weighted machinery. I closed my eyes, and knew all was up. I had but one last prayer: “Heaven grant that Edith may never learn it!”
How long a time a second seems when you’re waiting for the axe of a guillotine to fall! Slowly, slowly, the awful thing slipped down. I heard it slide in the groove with incredible deliberateness. I waited and wondered, with my eyes closed. But as the second lengthened itself out to half a minute at least — half an eternity, rather — I opened my eyes at last once more, and glanced patiently upward.
Li Sing stood gazing at the knife with a disappointed look. And the blade itself, which I had heard sliding slowly downward in its groove, and grating against the side, stuck in the machine half a yard above me.