VIII
By the time he was on the noon boat that left for Macao, Blake had quiteforgotten about the revolver. As he steamed southward over smooth seas,threading a way through boulder-strewn islands and skirting mountainouscliffs, his movements seemed to take on a sense of finality. He stood atthe rail, watching the hazy blue islands, the forests of fishing-boatsand high-pooped junks floating lazily at anchor, the indolent figureswhich he could catch glimpses of on deck, the green waters of the ChinaSea. He watched them with intent, yet abstracted, eyes. Some echo of thewitchery of those Eastern waters at times penetrated his own preoccupiedsoul. A vague sense of his remoteness from his old life at last crept into him.
He thought of the watching green lights that were flaring up, dusk bydusk, in the shrill New York night, the lamps of the precinct stations,the lamps of Headquarters, where the great building was full of movingfeet and shifting faces, where telephones were ringing and detectiveswere coming and going, and policemen in uniform were passing up and downthe great stone steps, clean-cut, ruddy-faced, strong-limbed policemen,talking and laughing as they started out on their night details. He couldfollow them as they went, those confident-striding "flatties" with theirash night-sticks at their side, soldiers without bugles or banner, goingout to do the goodly tasks of the Law, soldiers of whom he was once theleader, the pride, the man to whom they pointed as the Vidoc of America.
And he would go back to them as great as ever. He would again compeltheir admiration. The newspaper boys would again come filing into hisoffice and shake hands with him and smoke his cigars and ask how much hecould tell them about his last haul. And he would recount to them how heshadowed Binhart half way round the world, and gathered him in, andbrought him back to Justice.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Blake's steamer drew nearMacao. Against a background of dim blue hills he could make out the greenand blue and white of the houses in the Portuguese quarters, guarded onone side by a lighthouse and on the other by a stolid square fort.Swinging around a sharp point, the boat entered the inner harbor, crowdedwith Chinese craft and coasters and dingy tramps of the sea.
Blake seemed in no hurry to disembark. The sampan into which he stepped,in fact, did not creep up to the shore until evening. There, ignoring therickshaw coolies who awaited him as he passed an obnoxiously officioustrio of customs officers, he disappeared up one of the narrow andslippery side streets of the Chinese quarter.
He followed this street for some distance, assailed by the smell of itsmud and rotting sewerage, twisting and turning deeper into the darkness,past dogs and chattering coolies and oil lamps and gaming-house doors.Into one of these gaming houses he turned, passing through the blackwoodsliding door and climbing the narrow stairway to the floor above. There,from a small quadrangular gallery, he could look down on the "well" ofthe fan-tan lay out below.
He made his way to a seat at the rail, took out a cigar, lighted it, andlet his veiled gaze wander about the place, point by point, until he hadinspected and weighed and appraised every man in the building. Hecontinued to smoke, listlessly, like a sightseer with time on his handsand in no mood for movement. The brim of his black boulder shadowed hiseyes. His thumbs rested carelessly in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. Helounged back torpidly, listening to the drone and clatter of voicesbelow, lazily inspecting each newcomer, pretending to drop off into adoze of ennui. But all the while he was most acutely awake.
For somewhere in that gathering, he knew, there was a messenger awaitinghim. Whether he was English or Portuguese, white or yellow, Blake couldnot say. But from some one there some word or signal was to come.
He peered down at the few white men in the pit below. He watched the manat the head of the carved blackwood table, beside his heap of brass"cash," watched him again and again as he took up his handful of coins,covered them with a brass hat while the betting began, removed the hat,and seemed to be dividing the pile, with the wand in his hand, intofours. The last number of the last four, apparently, was the object ofthe wagers.
Blake could not understand the game. It puzzled him, just as the yellowmen so stoically playing it puzzled him, just as the entire countrypuzzled him. Yet, obtuse as he was, he felt the gulf of centuries thatdivided the two races. These yellow men about him seemed as far away fromhis humanity, as detached from his manner of life and thought, as werethe animals he sometimes stared at through the bars of the Bronx Zoocages.
A white man would have to be pretty far gone, Blake decided, to fall intotheir ways, to be satisfied with the life of those yellow men. He wouldhave to be a terrible failure, or he would have to be hounded by aterrible fear, to live out his life so far away from his own kind. And hefelt now that Binhart could never do it, that a life sentence there wouldbe worse than a life sentence to "stir." So he took another cigar,lighted it, and sat back watching the faces about him.
For no apparent reason, and at no decipherable sign, one of the yellowfaces across the smoke-filled room detached itself from its fellows. Thisface showed no curiosity, no haste. Blake watched it as it calmlyapproached him. He watched until he felt a finger against his arm.
"You clum b'long me," was the enigmatic message uttered in thedetective's ear.
"Why should I go along with you?" Blake calmly inquired.
"You clum b'long me," reiterated the Chinaman. The finger again touchedthe detective's arm. "Clismas!"
Blake rose, at once. He recognized the code word of "Christmas." This wasthe messenger he had been awaiting.
He followed the figure down the narrow stairway, through the slidingdoor, out into the many-odored street, foul with refuse, bisected by itsopen sewer of filth, took a turning into a still narrower street, climbeda precipitous hill cobbled with stone, turned still again, alwaysovershadowed and hemmed in by tall houses close together, withblack-beamed lattice doors through which he could catch glimpses ofgloomy interiors. He turned again down a wooden-walled hallway thatreminded him of a Mott Street burrow. When the Chinaman touched him onthe sleeve he came to a stop.
His guide was pointing to a closed door in front of them.
"You sabby?" he demanded.
Blake hesitated. He had no idea of what was behind that door, but hegathered from the Chinaman's motion that he was to enter. Before he couldturn to make further inquiry the Chinaman had slipped away like a shadow.
The Shadow Page 8
