The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  Ho Chung, who stood immediately behind the speaker, had it in mind to slay him there and then, but that would have interfered with far more important matters.

  “She hath a sorrow that adds to her beauty, methinks,” remarked the well-fed friend, who was in a better position to see Moy Yen. He put his head to one side critically, and smacked his lips as he regarded her.

  “I overheard one say at the restaurant, last night, that Quong Lung gave Chin Lee the scrivener, whose daughter she is alleged to be, three thousand dollars for her,” remarked the young Chinese man-about-town. (Ho Chung smiled grimly at this, and the thought of what had but just happened on the wharf shot one ray of comfort into the sorrow at his heart.)

  “Quong Lung never made a better investment, Lee Yung, and he is no mean appraiser of flesh,” returned the man who fulfilled the Psalmist’s description of the ungodly, “whose eyes swell with fatness, and they do even what they lust.”

  “I am told, too, that she will admit no one into her room; not even a woman. Quey Lem, the old hag who looks after the girls here, told me last night that Quong had her put into this cell three days ago as a punishment, because she discouraged his advances with a knife——”

  “It is on the bed beside her,” interrupted the stout man, catching sight of the knife.

  “It is a great telling, Nu Fong,” went on the man of fashion, and the crowd, whom he elegantly ignored, listened to his “telling.” “I am in favor with Quey Lem for very good reasons,” began Lee Yung: “I give her a trifle occasionally for taking thought of me”; and he looked round arrogantly at Ho Chung, who had trodden on his heel as he advanced an inch in the forward movement to the window.

  “She was like a wild-cat newly caged, Quey Lem told me,” resumed Lee Yung; “and she would have died of inanition—for she refused to eat or drink.”

  “What made her give so much trouble, Lee Yung?”

  “Oh, she hath a lover, or a husband—some such obstacle—whom she expected to meet in San Francisco; and Quong Lung diverted her from him.”

  “Ho, ho, ho!” laughed Nu Fong. “Diverted is good! But why did she not die of starvation?”

  “Thy academic career, Nu Fong, hath been sadly neglected. If you were a ‘Native Son,’ as I am, you would know that these White Devils can steal one’s senses by poisoning the air one breathes; and that when one is in that condition they can feed him through tubes let into the stomach through the mouth.”

  “That is a joyless way of taking one’s sustenance, Lee Yung; and an insult to the palate that hath its inalienable rights.”

  By this time they had advanced close enough to the window to give Lee Yung a full view of Moy Yen, who now sat listlessly with downcast eyes.

  “By the Grave of my Father!” exclaimed Lee Yung; “rumor hath not lied for once. From the crown of her head to her little feet she is formed for the uses and offices of love.” More he was not permitted to say, for Ho Chung, taking firm hold of the young men’s queues, knocked their heads together.

  “Have ye no respect for beauty in distress, ye pampered dogs?” he asked, angrily. “Nay; make no motion, lest ye die suddenly.”

  He thrust them to one side, and stepped to the window. The sound of his angry voice had attracted the other crowds in the passage, and, as they surged towards him, he warned them back with an imperious gesture.

  “The young woman within is Moy Yen, my wife, who hath been stolen from me. I would have speech with her, and I would not be overheard. Let this argument persuade ye to keep back,” and he drew a knife from his sleeve.

  XII

  That Iron Bars Are Ineffectual Sometimes

  When Moy Yen heard Ho Chung’s voice she raised her head and ran to the window; and when the crowd had fallen back at Ho Chung’s bidding, he turned to Moy Yen, and clasped the hands she had extended through the bars.

  “Oh! Moy Yen, Moy Yen, the Gods that were sworn to protect thee are false—and there are no Gods, but only devils of greater or lesser degree. Oh! Little One, how camest thou here?”

  “My Beautiful Lord,” she replied; “Suey See, the wife of one Quong Lung, showed me and my father letters in Hong Kong written for thee by Chin Lee, thy so great friend, and they said I was to put myself in charge of Suey See, who would give me honorable escort to San Francisco. And so I came.”

  “But this was to be the day of thy arrival.”

  “Thy letters, My Lord, said I was to start two weeks earlier than the time agreed upon, and I but obeyed thee. But now you will take me hence, my Lord and Master.”

  “Yes; thou shalt certainly escape hence, my Best Beloved; but the time for thy escape is short, and I have much to ask thee. Where wast thou taken on the day of thy arrival?”

  “To the house of Quong Lung. But why dost thou ask, Ho Chung?” and she raised pleading eyes to his face.

  “Tell me all, my Heart; and make haste, oh, make haste!—the time is short.”

  “Of anything that happened I am entirely innocent, my Husband; for they led me to a chamber where they said I should find thee—but thou wast not there; and soon after, and whilst I wept, the drugged food and drink they had given me after I left the ship bereft me of my senses, and I fell into a deep sleep.”

  She stopped to weep awhile, until Ho Chung bade her proceed.

  “When I woke, dear Master, a light burned in the room; and one, whom I now know to be Quong Lung, stood beside me with hungry eyes. And he spoke to me—such things as only lovers say to one another. But, when he laid a desecrating hand on my shoulder, I leapt from the bed and made at him with the knife that was concealed in my sleeve, and which I have so far managed to hide from my foes. So Quong Lung fled, and the door closed behind him with a snap; and I could not beat it down, nor wrench away the bars from the window. I was as a bird in a cage, and, therefore, I could but cry for help—but none came. Every night a strange heaviness comes upon me, and the air of my room becomes impregnated with a sweet heavy odor; and thereafter, in a half-swoon, I either see or dream that strange men and an old woman are about me; and when I wake I neither care to eat nor drink. And, because I persisted in repelling Quong Lung, I was brought here by means unknown to me; and here men, with hideous passions and evil looks, come and stare at me in my helpless captivity, and say abominable things to me. And I am to stay here till I yield myself to Quong Lung—but I would sooner die, Ho Chung, my Husband, as thou must know in thy heart. And now take me hence.”

  “Thou Brave, and Beautiful, and Faithful!—but, oh, Moy Yen, thou art, indeed, like a bird in a cage, and I am powerless to free thee—except in one way. Yes, indeed, thou must escape hence, for this is the abode of Dishonor, and better death than dishonor! Courage! the road to freedom is not so hard to travel. See, Little One, come nearer, for fear any one in the crowd should hear our speech and report to Quong Lung. So; press thy bosom to the bars, so that I may feel the beating of thy faithful heart. Now close thine eyes, for beautiful as they are thy face hath another beauty when thine eyes are closed—as I have often seen when thou hast slept.”

  Therefore Moy Yen closed her eyes, and pressed her bosom against the bars of the window.

  “My husband,” she murmured, “now thou art come, I am happy once more.”

  Ho Chung placed his hand where he could feel the beating of her heart.

  “ ’Twas here Thine-and-Mine used to repose, Cherry Blossom!” As he spoke, he steadied the point of the knife with the hand he had laid on her breast, and, before any one in the crowd could guess his intention, he drove it through her heart with a swift blow from the other hand.

  XIII

  An Accident in Chinatown

  The crowd broke and fled in wild disorder, as Ho Chung turned from the window. With Moy Yen’s dying scream ringing in his ears, he strode rapidly towards Quong Lung’s abode, whither he had been preceded—during his interview with Moy Yen—by Wau Shun, who acted as “bully” at the establishment on Waverley Place. He was one of the most dangerous highbinders in Chinato
wn, for he was backed by the full weight of Quong Lung’s power; moreover, no man knew what he intended, or where he was looking, because of his atrocious squint. At present he was undergoing a severe castigation of words from Quong Lung, and writhing under the lash of his master’s scorn.

  “So; thou art not ashamed to take the wages of a man, and to run like a woman, Wau Shun! Doubtless, thy constant association with the women thou hast in keeping has turned thy blood to milk. Ho Chung is but a boy beside thee in years.”

  “Nay, Compeller, I am here in thy best interests, for Ho Chung will arrive presently, and I am come to protect thee.”

  “Protect me! Does the jackal protect the lion?”

  “Nay, Most Powerful; but there is a killing forward, and thy honorable hands must not be soiled with blood.”

  “Oh! And why didst thou not do thy office at thy post, my considerate jackal? Thou hadst thy fangs with thee.”

  “I could not use powder and lead, Great Master, for fear of killing Moy Yen.”

  “Were thy knife and hatchet blunt, then?”

  “Ho Chung’s wrath was terrible to behold, Quong Lung; even the crowd fell back before it—for he is tall and strong, and he appeared to be demented.”

  “It is plainly to be seen that thy courage is no better than that of the women in thy charge. And to talk to me of blood!—and killing! As though a Master of Accidents hath any need to imbrue his hands in vulgar things! But stay in the room, and keep thy arguments of powder and lead in readiness lest they should be needed.”

  He walked down the passage, and bolted the barricade across it; it was a flimsy affair of latticed slats, and would readily yield to the pressure of a man’s shoulder—but there was a thread stretched across the passage a foot in front of the barricade, which Quong Lung facetiously named “The Thread of Destiny.”

  Returning to the room, which was brilliantly illuminated, he threw the door open, so that he should be plainly seen by any one entering the passage; and leaning carelessly against the door-post, he smoked awhile in silence. Presently, he opened the door leading into the street by pressing on a spring, and calmly awaited events.

  He had scarcely completed these details, when Ho Chung flung himself into the passage, brandishing a knife in his hands.

  “Thou villain, Quong Lung!” he shouted, “thank the Gods, I have found thee!”

  As Ho Chung put his weight against the barricade, he broke the thread in front of it, and a hundred-weight of iron descended on his head from a trap in the ceiling of the passage, and killed him instantly.

  THE EDWARDIANS

  Rogue: Cecil Thorold

  The Fire of London

  ARNOLD BENNETT

  THE PROLIFIC ENOCH ARNOLD BENNETT (1867–1931) produced about a half-million words a year for more than twenty years and, consciously frugal, kept an exact count of the number and precisely how much he received as payment for his novels, stories, and plays. His reputation largely rested on his many works about the lower-middle-class people of the region in which he was born, Staffordshire, whose inhabitants were making pottery when the Romans invaded England and continue to do so to the present day. Such realistic novels as The Old Wives’ Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910), and Riceyman Steps (1923) were once regarded as among the first rank of English novels, though they have largely fallen out of favor in the twenty-first century.

  Bennett frequently wrote mystery and crime fiction, notably The Grand Babylon Hotel (1902), a novel of pure detection; The Statue (1908), written in collaboration with the mystery novelist Eden Phillpotts, which lives up to its subtitle, A Story of International Intrigue and Mystery; and The Night Visitor and Other Stories (1931), which contains stories about people in a great hotel, including the adventure of the poet Lomax Harder, who kills a man for a very good reason in the classic story “Murder!” Perhaps Bennett’s finest achievement in the crime genre is The Loot of Cities (1904), a collection of six stories about the combination Robin Hood/promoter/criminologist Cecil Thorold, “a millionaire in search of joy,” whose unorthodox methods include kidnapping to further a romance and stealing to recover stolen goods.

  “The Fire of London” was originally published in the June–November 1904 issue of The Windsor Magazine; it was first collected in The Loot of Cities (London, Alston Rivers, 1904).

  THE FIRE OF LONDON

  Arnold Bennett

  I.

  “YOU’RE WANTED on the telephone, sir.”

  Mr. Bruce Bowring, managing director of the Consolidated Mining and Investment Corporation, Limited (capital two millions, in one-pound shares, which stood at twenty-seven-and-six), turned and gazed querulously across the electric-lit spaces of his superb private office at the confidential clerk who addressed him. Mr. Bowring, in shirt-sleeves before a Florentine mirror, was brushing his hair with the solicitude of a mother who has failed to rear most of a large family.

  “Who is it?” he asked, as if that demand for him were the last straw but one. “Nearly seven on Friday evening!” he added, martyrised.

  “I think a friend, sir.”

  The middle-aged financier dropped his gold-mounted brush and, wading through the deep pile of the Oriental carpet, passed into the telephone-cabinet and shut the door.

  “Hallo!” he accosted the transmitter, resolved not to be angry with it. “Hallo! Are you there? Yes, I’m Bowring. Who are you?”

  “Nrrrr,” the faint, unhuman voice of the receiver whispered in his ear. “Nrrrr. Cluck. I’m a friend.”

  “What name?”

  “No name. I thought you might like to know that a determined robbery is going to be attempted tonight at your house in Lowndes Square, a robbery of cash—and before nine o’clock. Nrrrr. I thought you might like to know.”

  “Ah!” said Mr. Bowring to the transmitter.

  The feeble exclamation was all he could achieve at first. In the confined, hot silence of the telephone-cabinet this message, coming to him mysteriously out of the vast unknown of London, struck him with a sudden sick fear that perhaps his wondrously organised scheme might yet miscarry, even at the final moment. Why that night of all nights? And why before nine o’clock? Could it be that the secret was out, then?

  “Any further interesting details?” he inquired, bracing himself to an assumption of imperturbable and gay coolness.

  But there was no answer. And when after some difficulty he got the exchange-girl to disclose the number which had rung him up, he found that his interlocutor had been using a public call-office in Oxford Street. He returned to his room, donned his frock-coat, took a large envelope from a locked drawer and put it in his pocket, and sat down to think a little.

  At that time Mr. Bruce Bowring was one of the most famous conjurers in the City. He had begun, ten years earlier, with nothing but a silk hat; and out of that empty hat had been produced, first the Hoop-La Limited, a South African gold-mine of numerous stamps and frequent dividends, then the Hoop-La No. 2 Limited, a mine with as many reincarnations as Buddha, and then a dazzling succession of mines and combination of mines. The more the hat emptied itself, the more it was full; and the emerging objects (which now included the house in Lowndes Square and a perfect dream of a place in Hampshire) grew constantly larger, and the conjurer more impressive and persuasive, and the audience more enthusiastic in its applause. At last, with a unique flourish, and a new turning-up of sleeves to prove that there was no deception, had come out of the hat the C.M.I.C., a sort of incredibly enormous Union Jack, which enwrapped all the other objects in its splendid folds. The shares of the C.M.I.C. were affectionately known in the Kaffir circus as “Solids”; they yielded handsome though irregular dividends, earned chiefly by flotation and speculation; the circus believed in them. And in view of the annual meeting of shareholders to be held on the following Tuesday afternoon (the conjurer in the chair and his hat on the table), the market price, after a period of depression, had stiffened.

  Mr. Bowring’s meditations were soon interrupted by a telegram. He opened i
t and read: “Cook drunk again. Will dine with you Devonshire, seven-thirty. Impossible here. Have arranged about luggage.—Marie.” Marie was Mr. Bowring’s wife. He told himself that he felt greatly relieved by that telegram; he clutched at it; and his spirits seemed to rise. At any rate, since he would not now go near Lowndes Square, he could certainly laugh at the threatened robbery. He thought what a wonderful thing Providence was, after all.

  “Just look at that,” he said to his clerk, showing the telegram with a humorous affectation of dismay.

  “Tut, tut,” said the clerk, discreetly sympathetic towards his employer thus victimised by debauched cooks. “I suppose you’re going down to Hampshire tonight as usual, sir?”

  Mr. Bowring replied that he was, and that everything appeared to be in order for the meeting, and that he should be back on Monday afternoon or at the latest very early on Tuesday.

  Then, with a few parting instructions, and with that eagle glance round his own room and into circumjacent rooms which a truly efficient head of affairs never omits on leaving business for the week-end, Mr. Bowring sedately, yet magnificently, departed from the noble registered offices of the C.M.I.C.

  “Why didn’t Marie telephone instead of wiring?” he mused, as his pair of greys whirled him and his coachman and his footman off to the Devonshire.

  II.

  The Devonshire Mansion, a bright edifice of eleven storeys in the Foster and Dicksee style, constructional ironwork by Homan, lifts by Waygood, decorations by Waring, and terra-cotta by the rood, is situated on the edge of Hyde Park. It is a composite building. Its foundations are firmly fixed in the Tube railway; above that comes the wine cellarage, then the vast laundry, and then (a row of windows scarcely level with the street) a sporting club, a billiard-room, a grill-room, and a cigarette-merchant whose name ends in “opoulos.” On the first floor is the renowned Devonshire Mansion Restaurant. Always, in London, there is just one restaurant where, if you are an entirely correct person, “you can get a decent meal.” The place changes from season to season, but there is never more than one of it at a time. That season it happened to be the Devonshire. (The chef of the Devonshire had invented tripe suppers, tripes à la mode de Caen, and these suppers—seven-and-six—had been the rage.) Consequently all entirely correct people fed as a matter of course at the Devonshire, since there was no other place fit to go to. The vogue of the restaurant favourably affected the vogue of the nine floors of furnished suites above the restaurant; they were always full; and the heavenward attics, where the servants took off their smart liveries and became human, held much wealth. The vogue of the restaurant also exercised a beneficial influence over the status of the Kitcat Club, which was a cock-and-hen club of the latest pattern and had its “house” on the third floor.