by Jake Logan
“What happened?” Tess came running out of the main room and stopped to stare at Sir William and Slocum. “You both look as if you were drowned and washed ashore somewhere.”
“That’s close enough to the truth,” Slocum said. He remembered he had intended to fetch his gear and get the hell out of town when Tess had stopped him before. The idea of leaving San Francisco was even stronger now that he had decided he did not know who had the jade crown. Whoever had stolen it from him might be one of the museum patrons who had taken a fancy to it. Just because the society people on the opening night were richer than he had any chance of becoming did not mean they weren’t thieves.
Slocum snorted in disgust. If anything, most of them had gained their riches by being crooks. Or worse. The railroads had been built using coolie labor, with the workers’ pay seldom more than a bowl of rice a day. He had seen the dockworkers. More were Chinese than white. The town ran on the backs of the Celestials. While all that might be true, it did not tell him who had the crown.
It was definitely time for him to hightail it.
“What are you going to do, Sir William?” Tess was distraught.
“Prepare what remains of the exhibit for transport. If I don’t find the jade crown myself, then the display will have to endure without it,” he said airily. “A new expedition might be in order, too. That crown was unique, but there might be others of more historical significance for me to uncover.”
“You took that one off a courier,” Tess said uneasily.
“I discovered it. It was a legitimate artifact lost to the ages.”
Slocum wanted no part of their discussion. From the hints Sir William had dropped, he might have stolen the crown off the Chinese emperor’s head and then claimed it was an archaeological treasure “lost to the ages.” The British explorer had a way of viewing the world through a very narrow spyglass. If he saw something that interested him, nothing else existed until he possessed it. Not for the first time, Slocum wondered why Sir William ignored the most beautiful trophy of all—Tess Lawrence.
Leaving them, he made his way through the maze of corridors until he reached the storage room where he had stashed his gear. He quickly changed his clothes, noting that those he put on were hardly better than those he took off. The only difference was the new set had been drying.
With Tess’s and Sir William’s voices echoing through the deserted museum, Slocum sat on a stool and cleaned his Colt Navy. Saltwater would destroy the precision mechanism. The next time he had to draw might require some accurate shooting. Having the six-gun jam or the ammo misfire would be his downfall.
“‘He drew, he misfired, he died,’” Slocum quoted quietly as he ran his cleaning rod in and out of the barrel before attending to the six chambers in the cylinder. “Not the kind of epitaph I want. Better to have it read, ‘He killed six but there were seven.’” Satisfied with the action and the new rounds he slid into the cylinder, he spent a few minutes working on the holster, rubbing in saddle soap and making sure the leather would not catch if he had to draw fast.
Done with his cleaning chores, he slung the cross-draw holster around his waist again, then picked up his gear. He stopped in the doorway when he heard sounds that should not be echoing through the museum. Dropping his gear, he drew his pistol and went hunting.
Sir William and Tess had returned to the curator’s office to continue their argument. He was surprised that the woman put up such a spirited dispute to the egomaniacal explorer’s ideas.
Then he heard the soft sound of silk sliding across silk. Or perhaps a Celestial’s slipper on the hardwood floor. Slocum moved like a puff of wind through the corridor and saw the hatchet man crouched near the entrance to the main room. When the Chinaman shifted his weight slightly, Slocum saw two hatchets in his hands. This killer meant business. Slocum aimed carefully, then cocked his six-gun.
He yelped when the wood handle of a thrown hatchet banged into his hand, forcing him to drop his gun. Ignoring the pain, he spun and caught at a burly wrist bringing a second ax down on his head. Slocum quickly discovered the Celestial was stronger than he was. He stepped into the man, then spun around while still holding the hatchet man’s wrist. Slocum tripped him and wrested the ax away.
By this time the first killer had responded. Jumping to his feet, he silently came at Slocum, the two hatchets weaving a deadly pattern in front of him. Slocum feinted, then hit the floor and rolled, coming up with a fallen hatchet. He could never hope to match the man’s skill with the deadly blades—and he did not try. He threw it directly at the hatchet man’s face.
Quick swipes of the two flashing hatchets knocked it away, but Slocum had bought himself enough time to kick at the tong killer on the floor and knock him away from where he tried to grab Slocum’s Colt Navy.
Slocum retrieved his gun, fired three times, then brought the muzzle around to fire two more. The Celestial with the pair of hatchets died. The other was slammed back and lay propped against a wall, bleeding from two bullets just above his heart.
“I say, what’s going on?” cried Sir William.
“Keep Tess in the office. Lock her in, if you have to. The tong’s sent men to kill me. Maybe you, too.”
“Little Pete? The Sum Yops?”
Slocum had been with both tongs enough to see subtle differences. There must be some badge or pin or other identifying mark to let the casual passerby in the street know who he was dealing with, but Slocum could not see the insignia. He had seen the man he had gunned down in Ah Ming’s underground maze.
“The On Leong,” Slocum said. “My time’s run out.”
“What time is that?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Slocum said, never intending to do anything of the sort. He did not want to admit his motives for recovering the jade crown had nothing to do with keeping Sir William’s exhibition complete.
“I can be of great help,” the explorer said, irritated. “I am an expert on these people.”
“For once, do as I say and we might all get out of this without having our hair parted down the middle by one of those hatchets.”
Slocum reloaded as he headed for the main door. He had to see if Ah Ming had sent more than this pair to kill him.
She hadn’t.
Exhausted, Slocum lay on his belly watching the mouth of the alley. He tried not to cry out when rats ran around him, sniffing and occasionally nipping at him. Memory of the rat pit made him want to run. Memory of the four hatchet men he had killed during the day kept him still and silent.
A solitary man walked past the opening of the alley, hesitated, looked down into the gloom as if hunting for Slocum, then walked on. Coming to Chinatown had been foolish, but Slocum knew the only way he was going to get out of San Francisco alive was to dicker with Ah Ming. She had issued the death warrant for him and no one else could issue a stay of execution. Going to Little Pete would produce nothing but a swift knife in the ribs. If Little Pete thought he could weaken the On Leong by killing Slocum, he would. Both tong leaders had come to the conclusion that Slocum had.
Nobody knew who had the jade crown.
The sound came to him like wind in the tall pines. A distant whisper, nothing more. He tensed, then rolled onto his back. His six-shooter pointed directly at Ah Ming. She had come up from the far end of the alley, making a sound to alert him only at the last instant.
“You move like an Apache,” he said, trying to compliment her.
“They are savages. I move like a Chinese.”
“I’ve been hunting for you all day, but your hatchet men have other ideas. Why did you send them to kill me?”
She stared at him and the gun in his hand without a trace of fear. He could end her life with only a small pressure on the trigger, but he wouldn’t. She had found him. That meant she wanted to palaver, too.
“You failed. The jade crown is gone.”
“You don’t know that,” he said. Then a tiny piece fell into place. “Lai Choi San doesn’t have it. She just lef
t.”
“Without the crown? I do not believe this is so,” Ah Ming said.
“Little Pete doesn’t have it,” Slocum said. “He’s still willing to trade your pa’s body for it.”
“He is a liar,” she said with rancor.
“I’m not. I promised to find the jade crown so I could trade with Little Pete.”
“Why are you so sure Lai Choi San does not have it and yet is on her way back to China?”
Slocum knew Ah Ming would find it hard to believe, but he tried. “I play poker. Some of it is luck, the way the cards fall. Part of it is knowing the odds. Most of it is reading the fellow across the table to figure out if he’s bluffing or has something worth betting. Lai Choi San does not have the crown, but she wants it real bad.”
“You can be so sure? By looking hard at her?”
“I can,” Slocum said with more confidence than he felt.
“Why did she leave the harbor?”
“I don’t have any idea,” Slocum said. He holstered his pistol and stood. If she had wanted to kill him, their conversation would not have gone on this long.
“Why do you seek me? To order me to call off my boo how doy?”
“The hatchet men? No, I just want the time we had agreed upon. Till the end of the week.”
“Little Pete will throw my father into the bay by then.”
“Talk to him. Tell him I’m bringing the crown, but it’s out of the city.”
“He will not believe it.”
“Tell him Lai Choi San has the crown.”
Ah Ming stood a little straighter and her hands went into the huge sleeves of her dress. Like Little Pete, she carried weapons there. He was within seconds of a knife or a pistol being used on him.
“It’s a lie, but you said he was a liar. There’s no harm in lying to a man like him.”
“What will you do to find the emperor’s crown?”
She had Slocum there. He had no idea how to track the valuable artifact through San Francisco’s criminal underground. If no one in Chinatown had it, that meant one of the other gangs must. The Sydney Ducks had been disbanded years ago, but there were any number of successors that controlled crime outside Chinatown. He had to find his way among them.
Even as this thought crossed his mind, he knew in his gut that it would do no good. Still, he had to say something, try something.
“Until the end of the week, Mr. Slocum,” Ah Ming said. She stepped back, turned and in the time it took Slocum to blink, she disappeared. He strained to hear her slippers moving on the littered alley. Only the scampering rats and the sound of a building settling reached his keen ears.
He heaved a deep sigh. He had won himself a little more time. Not enough to actually find the jade crown, but enough to figure out who had stolen it from him. Slocum set out to begin his search in earnest.
Allies, Slocum thought. That was what he needed. Trying to find the crown by himself would never work—he had done nothing but fail so far. He needed more eyes and ears, more feet hitting the pavement and even knives and guns to back him up. Sir William was out of the question. The way he had so foolishly antagonized Lai Choi San told Slocum the arrogant Brit was too used to getting his own way to know when to be quiet. The tongs were not to be trusted. Slocum knew that Little Pete’s reputation for having the temperament of a stepped-on sidewinder was well deserved. Ah Ming was hardly better. She was driven to get her father’s body back and devil take the hindmost.
That did not leave him a whole bunch of people to recruit.
He stopped climbing when he reached the summit of Sutro Peak. Dawn was breaking. He had, at most, three more days to locate the jade crown. With the sunlight of a new day warming his back, he slowly scanned the coastline going southward for any vessels. A smile came to his lips when he saw the triangular parti-colored sails of a junk.
That had to be Lai Choi San sailing not two miles down the coast. She had left the harbor but not to return to China with her emperor’s crown. The pirate sought something in that direction, and Slocum had a good idea what it might be. He had spent an hour in the harbormaster’s office sneaking a peek whenever he could at the list of ships due into port soon. Only one had been of interest—or would have been of interest to Lai Choi San.
Knowing she would not go too far, Slocum began the long walk down the west-facing side of the hill, heading for the rocky shore. How he was going to get onto the pirate junk was something he could work out later.
And after he got aboard, then he could figure out how to recruit Lai Choi San to help him.
14
“This is certainly a balls-up affair,” Sir William said. “Beg your pardon, my dear. I don’t mean to use such language in front of a lady, but everything has completely turned upside down, don’t you see?”
“Yes, it has, Sir William,” Tess said. She chewed at her lower lip as she looked around the main display room in the museum. There were a dozen display cases laden with jade. They all mocked her. No matter how hard she tried, she could not avoid looking at the one where the jade crown had been. It was only a small void in the collection but it might have been big enough to drive a stagecoach through.
“I cannot cope with this. I simply cannot do it anymore. My nerves are all jangled. You do it.”
“What?” Tess’s eyes widened. “You want me to see to the packing and final arrangements for transportation of the collection?”
“You can do it, my dear. You are most capable.”
“But you said you would tend to it personally, that no one else could make even the simplest of plans without your approval.”
“I am hereby granting you full authority to do all that. I must not be bothered with minutiae. There are so many other things to occupy me.” Sir William struck his pose, hand over his heart and the other reaching for the sky. “Recovering the fifteen-hundred-year-old crown of the emperor of China is foremost.”
“I’m dumbstruck, Sir William,” she said. “I have no idea where to begin.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” he said sternly. “Do things step by step. Pack the jade in excelsior inside crates. Arrange for it to be placed aboard a transcontinental train so it arrives safely in Boston. You have already made arrangements for the exhibition in that fine city, have you not?”
“Why, yes, of course, just as I arranged for this museum.”
“See? You are capable enough.”
“It’s a grand responsibility,” she said, her blue eyes glowing with inner fire. “This is a valuable collection.”
“Very valuable, considering the blood and toil it took to gather it. Now,” he said, “we both have things to do. I want the collection on the train by the day after tomorrow. How long do you think it will take to arrive?”
“Are you riding with it, Sir William?”
“If I find the jade crown, yes. Otherwise, I will remain in San Francisco until that matter is put to rest. You can accompany the collection and wet-nurse them, so to speak.” For a moment his eyes dropped to Tess’s ample bosom. She blushed at the thought that he might finally look upon her as a woman and not an animated clotheshorse. The instant passed.
“You’d meet me in Boston?” Tess studied the man closely for a clue to his real intentions.
“Yes, yes, of course. I would not miss the opening night for anything.” He paused, pursed his lips, then said, “Except recovering the emperor’s crown, that is. Never have I seen such a fine example of Oriental art. The quality of the carving, the color of the jade, all perfect. One might say it is a museum piece fit for an emperor.” He laughed at his small joke.
“Where are you going to hunt for the crown?” Tess asked. “Do you have any ideas?”
“In spite of what that Slocum chap says, I am certain the pirate has it. Lai Choi San is her name. She ogled the crown and coveted it the opening night. She must have it. I’m going to the harbor and inquire after her.”
“Very well, Sir William,” Tess said. “I certainly have my work cut
out for me.” She rubbed her hands together in anticipation of crating so many fine jade artifacts.
“You’re forgetting something, my dear.”
“What?” Tess jumped guiltily.
“I will write you a check for, oh, a thousand pounds so you can pay for the workmen, the material and, naturally, the cost of shipment on the railroad.”
“Of course,” Tess said, slumping in relief. “I thought you meant something else.”
“Whatever it might have been, you will think of it on your own. You’re a clever lass. Yes, yes, quite clever.”
“That I am,” Tess said softly. Sir William bustled off to write her the check as she walked slowly from one display case to the next, mentally packing each piece. This was something she had not dared hope for. Ultimate authority in transporting the entire collection!
Tess Lawrence got to work.
“The ship just sailed and you have no notion where it is headed? That’s outrageous, sir!” bellowed Sir William.
“I keep track of the cargo for what excise taxes we can levy,” Captain Johnson said, forcing himself to keep his temper. “There’s too many smaller vessels going in and out, fishing boats and the like, for me to keep track of them all.”
“This was a Chinese junk!”
“I received the report from my lieutenant,” Johnson said. “You were the one who talked him into trying to board that vessel?”
“I convinced him to do his duty, that’s what,” Sir William said. “You were nowhere to be found.”
“I was on medical leave,” the captain said. He hobbled around the counter and sat heavily in a chair, his leg thrust out in front of him. “This time of year, my gout gets so painful I can hardly put in a half day’s duty.”
“Then the U.S. Navy should replace you,” Sir William said tactlessly.
