“You were speaking of Mr. Jack Ridley, of the Castleton?” she asked.
“Yeah, I was, Miss,” I said, dragging off my ragged old cap.
“Who are you?”
“Steve Costigan, A. B. mariner aboard the trader Sea Girl, outa San Francisco.”
“You hate Ridley?”
“Well, to be frank, I ain’t got no love for him,” I said. “He just robbed me of a fight I won fair and square.”
She eyed me for a minute. I ain’t no beauty. In fact, I been told by my closest enemies that I look more like a gorilla than a human being. But she seemed plenty satisfied.
“Come into the back room,” she said, and, to the bartender: “Send us a couple of whisky-and-sodas.”
In the back room, as we sipped our drinks, she said, “You hate Ridley, eh? What would you do to him if you could?”
“Anything,” I said bitterly. “Hangin’s too good for a rat like him.”
She rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and, looking into my eyes, she said, “Do you know who I am?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I ain’t never seen you before, but you couldn’t be nobody else but the girl the Chinese call the ‘White Tigress.’”
Her narrow eyes glittered a little and she nodded.
“Yes. And would you like to know what drove a decent white girl into the shadows of the Orient — made an innocent, trusting child into one of a band of international criminals, and the leader of desperate tongmen? Well, I’ll tell you in a few words. It was the heartlessness of a man — the man who took me from my home in England, lied to me, deceived me, and finally left me to the tender mercies of a yellow mandarin in interior China.”
I shuffled my feet kind of restless; I felt sorry for her and didn’t know what to say. She leaned toward me, her voice dropped almost to whisper, while her eyes burned into mine: “The man who betrayed and deserted me was the man who robbed you tonight — Jack Ridley!”
“Why, the low-down swine!” I ejaculated.
“I, too, want revenge,” she breathed. “We can be useful to each other. I will send a note to Ridley asking him to come to a certain place in the Alley of Rats. He will come. There you will meet him. There will be no one to hold you this time.”
I grinned — kinda wolfishly, I reckon. “Leave the rest to me.”
“No one will ever know,” she murmured, which kind of puzzled me. “Hong Kong’s waterfront has many secrets and many mysteries. I will send a man with you to guide you to the place. Then, come to me here tomorrow night; I can use you. A man like you need not work away his life on a trading schooner.”
She clapped her hands. A Chinaboy come in. She spoke to him in the language for a minute, and he bowed and beat it. She arose: “I am going now. In a few minutes your guide will come. Do as he says. Good luck to you; may you avenge us both.”
She glided out and left me sitting there sipping my licker and wondering what it was all about. I’d heard of the White Tigress; who in China ain’t? A white girl who had more power amongst the yellow boys than the Chinese government did. Who was she? How come her to get so much pull? Them as knowed didn’t say. That she was a international crook she’d just admitted. Some said she was a pirate on the sly; some said she was the secret wife of a big mandarin; some said she was a spy for a big European power. Anyway, nobody knowed for sure, but everybody agreed that anybody which crossed her was outa luck.
Well, I set there and guzzled my licker, and pretty soon in come the meanest, scrawniest looking piece uh humanity I ever seen. A ragged, dirty shrimp he was, with a evil, furtive face.
“Bli’me, mate,” said he, “le’s be up and doin’. It’s a nice night’s work we got ahead of us.”
“Suits me,” said I, and I follered him out of the saloon by a side door into the nasty, dimly lighted streets, and through twisty alleys which wasn’t lighted at all. They stunk like sin and I couldst hear the stealthy rustling noises which always goes on in such places. Rats, maybe, but if a yellow-faced ghost hadda jumped around my neck, I wouldn’ta been surprised a bit.
Well, the cockney seemed to know his way, though my sense of direction got clean bumfuzzled. At last he opened a door and I follered him into a squalid, ramshackle room which was as dark as the alleys. He struck a light and lit a candle on a rough table. They was chairs there, and he brought out a bottle. A door opened out of the room into some other part of the place, I guess; the windows was heavily barred and I saw a trap door in the middle of the floor. I could hear the slow, slimy waves sucking and lapping under us, and I knowed the house was built out over the water.
“Mate,” said the Cockney, after we’d finished about half the bottle, “it comes to me that we’re a couple o’ blightin’ idjits to be workin’ for a skirt.”
“What d’ya mean?” I asked, taking a pull at the bottle.
“Well, ‘ere’s us, two red-blooded ‘e-men, takin’ orders from a lousy little frail, ‘andin’ the swag h’over to ‘er, and takin’ wot she warnts to ‘and us, w’en we could ‘ave the ‘ole lot. Take this job ‘ere now—”
I stared at him. “I don’t get you.”
He glanced around furtive-like, and lowered his voice: “Mate, let’s cop the sparkler for ourselves and shove out! We can get back to Hengland or the States and live like blurry lords for a while. Hi’m sick o’ this bloody dump.”
“Say, you,” I snarled, “what’r you drivin’ at? What sparkler?”
“W’y, lorlumme,” said he, “the sparkler we takes off Mate Ridley afore we dumps his carcass through that trapdoor.”
“Hold everything!” I was up on my feet, all in a muddle. “I didn’t contract to do no murder.”
“Wot!” said the Cockney. “Bli’me! The Tigress says as you was yearnin’ for Ridley’s gore!”
‘Well, I am,” I growled, “but she didn’t get my meanin’. I didn’t mean I wanted to kill him, though, come to think about it, it mighta sounded like it. But I ain’t no murderer, though killin’ is what he needs after the way he treated that poor kid. When he comes through that door, I’m goin’ to hammer him within a inch of his life, understand, but they ain’t goin’ to be no murder done — not tonight. You can bump him later, if you want to. But you got to let me pound him first, and I ain’t goin’ to be in on no assassination.”
“But we got to finish him,” argued the Cockney, “or him and To Yan will have all the bobbies in the world after us.”
“Say,” I said, “the Tigress didn’t say nothin’ about no jewel nor no To Yan. What’s they got to do with it? She said Ridley brung her into China and left her flat—”
“Banan orl!” sneered the Cockney. “She was spoofin’ you proper, mate. Ridley never even seen ‘er. Hi dunno ‘ow she got into so much power in China myself, but she’s got somethin’ on a mandarin and a clique o’ government officials. She’s been a crook ever since she was big enough to steal the blinkin’ paint orf ‘er bloomin’ cradle.
“Listen to me, mate, and we ‘ands ‘er the double-cross proper. I wasn’t to spill this to you, y’understand. I was to cop the sparkler after you’d bumped Ridley, and say nuthin’ to you about it, see? But Hi’m sick o’ takin’ orders orf the ‘ussy.
“Old To Yan, the chief of the Yan Tong, ‘as a great fancy to Ridley. Fact is, Ridley’s old man and the old Chinee ‘as been close friends for years. Right now, To Yan’s oldest darter is in Hengland gettin’ a Western eddication. Old To Yan’s that progressive and hup to the times. Well, it’s the yellow girl’s birthday soon, and To Yan’s sendin’ ‘er a birthday present as would make your heyes bug out. Bli’me! It’s the famous Ting ruby, worth ten thousand pounds — maybe more. Old To Yan give it to Jack Ridley to take to the girl, bein’ as Ridley’s ship weighs anchor for Hengland tomorrer. I dunno ‘ow the Tigress found hout habout it, but that’s wot she’s hafter.”
“I see,” said I, grinding my teeth. “I was the catspaw, hey? She handed me a line to rub me up to do her dirty work. She th
ought I wanted to bump Ridley, anyway. Why’n’t she have some of her own thugs do it?”
“That’s the blightin’ smoothness o’ ‘er,” said the Cockney. “Why risk one o’ her own men on a job like that, w’en ‘ere was a tough sailor sizzlin’ for the blinkin’ hopportunity? She really thought you was wantin’ to bump Ridley; she didn’t know you just warnted to beat ‘im hup. If you’d bumped ‘im and got caught, she wouldn’t a been connected with it, so’s it could be proved, because you ain’t one o’ ‘er regular men. She thought you was the right man for the job, anyway, because, mate, if Hi may say so, you looks like a natural-born murderer. But look ‘ere — let’s cross ‘er, and do the trick hon our hown.”
“Not a chance,” I snapped. “Unlock that door and let me out!”
“Let you hout to squeal hon me,” he whined, a red light beginning to gleam in his little rat eyes. “Not me, says you! Watch hout, you Yankee swine — !”
I saw the flash of his knife as he came at me, and I kicked a chair into his legs; and while he was spitting curses like a cat and trying to untangle hisself, I bent my right on his jaw and he took the count.
With scarcely a glance at his recumbent form, I twisted the lock off the door and stalked forth into the darkness. I groped around in a lot of twisty back alleys for a while, expecting any minute to get a knife in my back or fall into the bay, but finally I blundered into a narrow street which was dimly lit and soon found myself back in a more civilized portion of the waterfront. And a few minutes later who do I see emerging from a saloon but a man I recognized as a stoker aboard the Castleton.
“Hey, you,” I accosted him politely, “where is that lousy first mate of yours?”
“Try and find out, you boneheaded mick,” he answered rudely. “What d’ya think uh that?”
“Chew on this awhile,” I growled, clouting him heartily in the mush, and for a few seconds a merry time was had by all. But pretty quick I smashed a right hook under his heart that took all the fight out of him, along with his wind.
Having brung him to by a liberal deluge of water from a nearby horse trough, I said: “All right, if you got to be so stubborn you won’t answer a civil question, I won’t insist. But lemme tell you somethin’, and you can pass it on to that four-flushin’ mate — when I get my hands on him, I’m goin’ make him eat that foul decision. And say, you better find him and tell him that if he keeps packin’ around what To Yan give him, he’s goin’ to lose it, along with his life. He’ll understand what I mean. And tell him to stay away from the Alley of Rats, if he ain’t already gone there.”
Well, it was mighty late by this time. The streets was nearly deserted, even them which usually has a crowd of revelers on ’em all night. I was sleepy, but knowing that the Castleton was sailing the next morning, I took one more stroll around, hoping to run onto the mate. I was sure he hadn’t gone aboard yet, because he always spent his nights ashore when he could.
After hunting for maybe an hour or more, I was about to give it up. I was passing a dark alleyway when something come slipping out, looking like a slim white ghost. It was the White Tigress.
“Wait a minute, Costigan,” she said, as friendly as you please. “May I speak to you just a moment?”
“You got a nerve, Miss,” I said reproachfully, “after the bunk you handed me—”
“Ah, don’t be angry at me,” she cooed, patting my arm. “Forget it. I’ll make it up to you, if you’ll just come with me. You’re the kind of a man I admire.”
I’m the prize boob of the Asiatics. I follered her along the little, dark, smelly alley, through an arched doorway and into a kind of small court, lighted by smoky lamps. Then she turned on me and I got a chill.
Boy, all the cat-spirit in her eyes was up and blazing. Her face was whiter than ever, her red lips writhed into a snarl, and of all the concentrated venom I ever seen flaming out of a woman’s eyes, it was there! Murder, destruction, torture, sudden death and damnation she looked at me.
“I reckon maybe I better be going Miss,” I said, kind of nervous. “It’s gettin’ late and the Old Man’ll be expectin’ me back—”
“Stand where you are!” she said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.
“But the cook may be drunk and I’ll have to make breakfast for the crew!” I said wildly, beginning to get desperate.
“Shut up, you fool!” she exclaimed in a voice which plumb shook with passion. “I’ll fix you, you dumb, imbecilic, boneheaded, double- crossing beast! It was you who warned Ridley, wasn’t it? And he ditched the ruby and never showed up at the Alley of Rats. It was just by pure luck that we got him at all. But he’ll tell what he did with the gem before we get through with him. And as for you—”
She stopped a minute and her eyes ran up and down my huge frame gloatingly; she actually licked her lips like a cat over a mouse.
“When I finish with you, you’ll have learned not to interfere with my affairs,” she added, taking a long, thin raw-hide whip from somewhere and flicking it through the air. “I’m going to lash you within an inch of your life,” she announced. “You won’t be the first, either. I’m going to flay you and cut you to pieces. I’m going to whip you until you’re a blind, whimpering, writhing mass of raw flesh.”
“Now listen, Miss,” I said, with quiet dignity, “I like to oblige a lady but they is such a thing as carryin’ curtesy too far. I ain’t goin’ to let you even touch me with that cat.”
“I didn’t suppose you would,” she sneered, “so I provided for that.” She clapped her hands and into the courtyard from nowhere come five big Chinese. They was big, too; the smallest was larger than me and the biggest looked more like a elephant than a man. They come for me from all sides like shadows.
“Grab him, boys,” she snapped in English, and I give a wolfish grin. I was plumb at ease now I had men to deal with. They was reaching for me when I went into action. A trained fighter can clean up a roomful of white civilians — and a Chinee can’t take a punch. Quick as a flash I threw my whole shoulder-weight behind the left I smashed into the yellow map of the one in front of me; blood spattered and he sagged down, out cold. The next instant the rest was on me like a pack of wolves, but I whirled, ducking under a pair of arms and dropping the owner with a right hook to the heart. For the next few seconds it was a kind of whirlwind of flailing arms and legs, with me as the center.
At first they tried to capture me alive, but, being convinced of the futility of this endeavor, they tried to kill me. A knife licked along my arm, and the sting of the wound maddened me. With a roar, I crashed my right down on the neck of the Chinee which had me around the legs, driving him against the ground so hard his face splattered like a tomato. Then, reaching back and getting a good hold on the yellow boy which was both strangling me from behind and trying to knife me, I tossed him over my head. He hit on his neck and didn’t get up. I then ducked a hatchet swiped at me by the biggest of the gang, and, rising on my toes, I reached his jaw and crashed him with a torrid left hook. I didn’t need to hit him again.
The fight had took maybe a minute and a half. I glanced scornfully at the prostrate figures of my victims, and then looked around for the Tigress. She was crouched back in a angle of the wall, with a kind of stunned look in her eyes, the whip dangling from her limp fingers. She give me one horrified look and shuddered and murmured something about a gorilla.
“Well,” I said, kind of sarcastic, “it don’t look like they is goin’ to be no whippin’ tonight — or have you got some more hatchet-men hid away somewheres? If you have, trot ’em out. Action is what I crave.”
“Great heavens,” she murmured, “are you human? Do you realize that you’ve just laid out five professional murderers? And — and — what are you going to do with me?”
Seeing that she was scared gave me a idea. Maybe I could make her tell something about Ridley.
“You come with me,” I growled, and taking her arm, I marched her out of the courtyard by another way, until we come to ano
ther courtyard similar to the one we’d left, but open enough so I couldst see if anybody tried to slip up on me. Spite of what she’d did, I felt kind of ashamed of myself, because if I ever seen a scared girl, it was the White Tigress. Her knees knocked together and she looked like she thought I’d eat her. When she thought I wasn’t looking, she dropped the whip like it was hot, giving me a most guilty glance. I reckon she thought maybe I’d use it on her, and I felt clean insulted.
“Where’s Jack Ridley?” I asked her, and she named a place I’d never heard of.
“Don’t hit me,” she begged, though I never hit a woman and hadst made not the slightest threatening motion at her. “I’ll tell you about it. I sent the note to Ridley and waited for the Cockney to come and report to me. He had orders to hide you in a safe place after you’d turned the trick, and then come back and tell me about it. But after a while the Cockney turned up with a welt on his jaw, and said you’d balked on the job. He said you knew about the ruby somehow and that you proposed that you and he kill Ridley, take the stone and skip—”
“Aha,” thought I to myself, “I bet he lied hisself into a jamb!”
“ — but I realized that you couldn’t have known about it unless he told you, so I laid into him with the raw-hide and pretty soon he admitted that he let it slip about the ruby. But he said you wanted him to double-cross me, and he wouldn’t do it, and you knocked him out and left. He said that after he came to he waited a while, intending to kill Ridley himself, but the mate never showed up. I knew the Cockney was lying about part of it, at least, but I believed him when he said that likely you had killed Ridley yourself and skipped. I started my gang out looking for you, but they caught Ridley instead. It was just by chance.
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 178