"First-rate, come ahead in and take a seat."

Closing the door noiselessly Fong moved soft-footed to a chair beside the table. Here, taking off his hat and putting it in his lap, he fixed a look on Burrage that might have been the deep gaze of a sage or the vacant one of a child. The green-shaded lamp sent a bright, downward gush of light over his legs, its mellowed upper glow shining on his forehead, high and bare to his crown. He had the curious, s.e.xless appearance of elderly Chinamen; might have been, with his tapering hands, flowing coat, and hairless face, an old, monkey-like woman.

"Well," said Mark, stretching a hand for his pipe, thinking his visitor had come to pay a friendly call, "I'm glad to see you, Fong, and I'm ready to talk all the storlies you want. So fire away."

Fong considered, studying his hat, then said slowly:

"You velly good man, Mist Bullage, and you lawyer. You know what to do--I dunno no one same likey you. Miss Lolly and Miss Clist two young ladies--not their business. And Missy Ellen"--he paused for a second and gave a faint sigh--"Missy Ellen velly fine old lady, but no sense. My old boss's fliends most all dead, new lawyers take care of his money.

They say to me, 'Get out, old Chinaman!' But you don't say that. So I come to you."

Mark's hand, extended to the tobacco jar at his elbow, fell to the chair arm; the easy good humor of his expression changed to attention.

"Oh, you've come for advice. I'll be glad to help you any way I can.

Let's hear the trouble."

Again the Chinaman considered, fingering delicately at his hatbrim.

"My old boss awful good to me. He die and no more men in the house. I take care my boss's children--I care all ways I can. Old Chinaman can't do much but I watch out. And one man come that I no likey. I know you good boy, I know all the lest good boys, but Mist Mayer bad man."

"Mayer!" exclaimed Mark. "The man I met there the other night?"

"Ally samey him."

"What do you mean by 'bad'?"

"I come tell you tonight."

"You know something definite against him?"

"Yes. I find out. I try long time--one, two months--and bimeby I get him. Then he not come for a while and I say maybe he not come any more and I keep my mouth shut. But when you there last time he come again and I go tell what I know."

"You've found out something that makes you think he isn't a fit person to have in the house ?"

"Yes--I go velly careful, no one know but Chinamen. Two Chinamen help me--one Chinaman get another Chinaman and we catch on. I no tell Miss Lolly, she too young; I come tell you."

Mark leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

"Say, Fong, I'm a little mixed up about this. Suppose you go to the beginning and give me the whole thing. If you and this chain of China boys have got something on Mayer I want to hear it. I'm not surprised that you think him a 'bad man,' but I want to know why you do."

What Fong told cannot be given in his own words, recited in his pidgin English, broken by cautions of secrecy and digressions as to the impracticability of enlightening his young ladies. It was a story only to be comprehended by one familiar with his peculiar phraseology, and understanding the complex mental processes and intricate methods of his race. Condensed and translated, it amounted to this:

From the first he had doubted and distrusted Mayer. In his dog-like loyalty to his "old boss," his love for the children that he regarded as his charge, he had personally studied and, through the subterranean lines of information in Chinatown, inquired into the character and standing of every man that entered the house. Sometimes when Mayer was there, he had stood behind the dining-room door and listened to the conversation in the parlor. The more he saw of the man the more his distrust grew. Asked why, he could give no reason; he either had no power to put his intuition into words, or--what is more probable--did not care to do so.

Two months before the present date a friend of his, member of the same tong, was made cook in the Argonaut Hotel. This gave him the opportunity to set in action one of those secret systems of espionage at which the Oriental is proficient. The cook, confined to his kitchen, became a communicating link between Fong and Jim, the room boy who attended to Mayer's apartment. Jim, evidently paid for his services and described as "an awful smart boy," was instructed to watch Mayer and note anything which might throw light on his character and manner of life.

To an unsuspecting eye the result of Jim's investigations would have seemed insignificant. That Mayer gambled and had lost heavily the three men already knew from the gossip of Chinatown. The room boy's information was confined to small points of personal habit and behavior.

Among Mayer's effects, concealed in the back of his closet, was a worn and decrepit suitcase which he always carried when he went on his business trips. These trips occurred at intervals of about six weeks, and in his casual allusions to them to Ned Murphy and Jim himself he had never mentioned their objective point.

It was his habit to breakfast in his room, the meal being brought up on a tray by Jim and being paid for in cash each morning. For two and sometimes three days before the trips, Mayer always signed a receipt for the breakfast, but on his return he again paid in cash. Through a bellboy, who had admitted Jim to a patronizing intimacy, the astute Oriental had extended his field of observation. One of this boy's duties was to carry the mail to the rooms of the guests. For some weeks after his arrival Mayer had received almost no mail. After that letters had come for him, but all had borne the local postmark. The boy never remembered to have seen a letter for Mayer from New York, the city entered on the register as his home. Through this boy Jim had also gleaned the information that Mayer invariably paid his room rent in coin.

He had heard Ned Murphy comment on the fact.

From this scanty data Fong and his a.s.sociates drew certain conclusions.

Mayer had no bank account, but he had plenty of money. Besides his way of living, his losses at gambling proved it. His funds ran low before his journeys out of town, suggesting that these journeys were visits to some source of supply. Arrived thus far they decided to extend their spying.

The next time Mayer left the city Jim was paid to follow him. The room boy waited for the familiar signs, and when one morning Mayer told him to bring a check slip for his breakfast, went to the housekeeper and asked for a leave of absence to visit a sick "cousin." The following day Jim sat in the common coach, Mayer in the Pullman, of the Overland train.

Alighting at Sacramento the Chinaman followed his quarry into the depot and saw him enter the washroom, presently to emerge dressed in clothes he had never seen, though his study of Mayer's wardrobe had been meticulously thorough. He noted every detail--unshined, brown, low shoes, an overcoat faded across the shoulders, a Stetson hat with a sweat-stained band, no collar and a flashy tie. He did not think that anyone, unless on the watch as he was, would have recognized Mayer thus garbed.

From there he had trailed the man to the Whatcheer House. Dodging about outside the window he watched him register at the desk, then disappear in the back of the office. A few minutes later Jim went in and asked the clerk for a job. This functionary, sweeping him with a careless cast of his eye, said they had no work for a Chinaman and went back to his papers. During the moment of colloquy Jim had looked at the last entry in the register open before him. Later he had written it down and Fong handed the slip of paper to Mark. On it, in the clear round hand of the Chinaman who goes to night school, was written "Harry Romaine, Vancouver."

This brought Fong to the end of his discoveries. Having come upon a matter so much more momentous than he had expected, he was baffled and had brought his perplexities to a higher court. His Oriental subtlety had done its part and he was now prepared to let the Occidental go on from where he had left off. Mark inwardly thanked heaven that the old man had come to him. It insured secrecy, meant a carrying of the investigation to a climax and put him in a position where he could feel himself of use to Lorry. If to the Chinaman George Alston's house was a place set apart and sacred, it was to her undeclared lover a shrine to be kept free at any cost from such an intruder as Mayer. It did not occur to him as strange that Fong should have chosen him to carry on the good work. In the astonished indignation that the story had aroused he saw nothing but the fact that a soiled and sinister presence had entered the home of a girl, young, ignorant and peculiarly unprotected. Neither he nor Fong felt the almost comic unusualness of the situation--an infrequent guest called upon by an old retainer to help run to earth another guest. As they sat side by side at the table each saw only the fundamental thing--from separate angles the interests of both converged to the same central point.

At this stage Mark was unwilling to offer advice. They must know more first, and to that end he told Fong to bring Jim to his room the following night at eight. Meantime he would think it over and work out some plan. The next day he sent the phone message to Crowder and that night told him the story over dinner at Philip's Rotisserie.

It threw Crowder into tense excitement; he became the journalist on the scent of a sensation. He was so carried away by its possibilities that he forgot Pancha's part in the unfolding drama. It was not till they were walking to Mark's lodging that he remembered and stopped short, exclaiming:

"By Ginger, I'd forgotten! Another county heard from; it's coming in from all sides."

So Pancha's experience was added to the case against Mayer, and breasting the hills, the young men talked it over, Crowder leaping to quick conclusions, impulsive, imagination running riot, Mark more judicial, confining himself to what facts they had, warning against hasty judgments. The talk finally veered to the Alston's and Mark had a question to ask that he had not liked to put to Fong. He moved to it warily--did Mayer go to the Alston house often, was he a constant visitor?

"Well, I don't know how constant, but I do know he goes. I've met him there a few times."

"He hasn't been after either of them--his name hasn't been connected with theirs?"

"Oh, no--nothing like that. He's just one of the bunch that drops in. I was jollying Chrystie about him the other night and she seemed to dismiss him in an offhand sort of fashion."

"He oughtn't to go at all. He oughtn't to be allowed inside their doors."

"Right, old son. But there's no good scaring them till we know more. He can't do them any harm."

"Harm, no. But a blackguard like that calling on those girls--it's sickening."

"Right again, and if we get anything on him it's up to us to keep them out of the limelight. It won't be hard. He only went to their house now and again as he went to lots of others. If this Chinese story pans out as promising as it looks, then we can put Lorry wise and tell her to hang out the 'not at home' sign when Mr. Mayer comes around. But we don't want to do that till we've good and ample reason. Lorry's the kind that always wants a reason--especially when it comes to turning down someone she knows. No good upsetting the girl till we've got something positive to tell her."

Mark agreed grudgingly and then they left the Alston sisters, to work out the best method of discovering what took Boye Mayer to Sacramento and what he did there.

Jim proved to be a young, and as Fong had said, "awful smart boy."

Smuggled into the country in his childhood, he spoke excellent English, interspersed with slang. He repeated his story with a Chinaman's unimaginative exactness, not a detail changed, omitted or overemphasized.

The young men were impressed by him, intelligent, imperturbable and self-reliant, a man admirably fitted to put in execution the move they had decided on. This turned on his ability to insinuate himself into the Whatcheer House and by direct observation find out the nature of the business that required an alias and a disguise.

Jim said it could easily be done. By the payment of a small sum--five dollars--he could induce the present room boy in the Whatcheer House to feign illness, and be installed as a subst.i.tute. The custom among Chinese servants when sick to fill the vacancy they leave with a friend or "cousin" is familiar to all Californians. The housewife, finding a strange boy in her kitchen and asking where he comes from, receives the calm reply that the old boy is sick, and the present inc.u.mbent has been called upon to take his place. Mayer's last visit to Sacramento had been made three weeks previously. Arguing from past data this would place the next one at two or three weeks from the present time. But, during the last few days, Jim had noticed a change in the man. He had kept to his room, been irritable and preoccupied, had asked for a railway guide and been seen by Jim in close study of it. To wait till he made his next trip meant running the risk of missing him. It would be wiser to go to Sacramento and be on the spot, even if the time so spent ran to weeks.

The room boy could easily be fixed--another five dollars would do that.

So it was settled. The young men, pooling their resources, would pay Jim's expenses, ten dollars for the room boy, and a bonus of fifty. If he brought back important information this would be raised to a hundred.

When he came back he was to communicate with Fong, who in turn would communicate with Mark, and a date for meeting be set. It was now Monday; arrangements for his temporary absence from the Argonaut Hotel could be made the next morning, and he would leave for Sacramento in the afternoon.