In the past, bloody tong battles had raged close to this building. Tides of death had swept around its base when hatchetmen and slant-eyed sharpshooters fought for supremacy. Then peace had come to Chinatown. The tongmen had arrived at secret pacts and agreements. The Ming Tong was now ruled over by the benevolent and aged Lo Mong Yung, father of the Mingmen.
IN the mouth of an alley across from this building the tall Manchu paused. He would have to cross one more street to reach the door of tong headquarters, and two federal men were on patrol there. They were ready to nab and question any members who might come. In the minds of the white men tonight the tong was linked up with sinister narcotic activities. In spite of the wisdom, strength and kindliness of old Lo Mong Yung, they felt that Ming headquarters might be the clearing house of the dreaded drug.
The tall Manchu understood this. His eyes glittered. He waited, watching, debating, as ten minutes passed. The Manchu’s patience seemed inexhaustible. He appeared able to make of himself a living statue.
A half hour went by. Then, at the end of it, he was rewarded. For something down the block attracted the attention of the federal men. This was a truckload of rice, spices and bamboo shoots arriving at the side door of a harmless old merchant’s shop. The federal men suspected apparently the consignment might contain hidden dope.
Seizing his opportunity, the tall Manchu crossed the street as quickly as he had the others. He slipped through the doorway of Ming headquarters so deftly that he seemed only a breath of the night fog entering.
Yet a voice instantly sounded close to his ear. A flashlight clicked on, and the hard snout of an automatic was pressed against the Manchu’s side.
He didn’t cry out or jump as a white man might have been expected to do. He stood straight and taut, staring into the lens of the flash, waiting, unawed it seemed by the presence of the gun.
“Where are you headed, fellah? What’s your name and what’s your business?” The words came from the lips of Detective Bartholdy, veteran sleuth of the city narcotic squad; a man who had spent twenty years of his life hunting dope, and a man who trusted no Chinaman.
The tall Manchu caught a glimpse of Bartholdy’s face. Suspicion gleamed in the detective’s narrowed eyes. Bartholdy was set for trouble. He had been lurking here to nab just such a visitor. He would never let this man enter the tong without exhaustive inquiries. Valuable minutes had already passed. The tall Manchu in the black suit, notwithstanding his outward calm, was in a hurry.
He addressed the detective in excellent English, but in the slightly nasal, singsong accents of his race. “My name is Ho Ling,” he said. “I go about my private business, and that business is harmful to no one.”
The detective only pressed the gun tighter. “Yeah? And how do I know that? I don’t remember seeing you around here before. I’ve got a pretty good memory for faces.”
“It is not likely, white man, that you would remember the faces of all the five thousand members of my race who inhabit this quarter.”
“Don’t try to high-hat me, fellah! Show me some identification.”
The tall Manchu nodded gravely. He held out a slender but powerful hand with pointed fingertips and nails that were carefully manicured, “This ring,” he said. “Perhaps you have seen one like it before. It is the symbol of my tong. I am not a Mingman. I am here in the stronghold of the Mingmen, however, on a peaceful mission.”
On the Manchu’s third finger gleamed a ring of immense proportions and singular design. A dragon’s head of rose onyx was held in a wrought gold setting. Two tiny emeralds sparkled in the dragon’s eyes. Its nostrils flared open.
BARTHOLDY grunted and leaned forward, moving his flash so that the rays fell on the strange ring. His intent face was not more than a foot above the ring which the Manchu held high.
“I never remember seeing a ring like that before,” Bartholdy said. “I guess—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. For the Manchu’s long and powerful hand moved imperceptibly. The third finger, as though it had a life all its own, twitched upward ever so slightly. As it did so the tiny, hideous jaws of the onyx dragon opened wide. From them shot a jet of strange, pungent vapor. Straight into Bartholdy’s open mouth and nostrils it went.
The cry that rose to his lips was stilled. The Manchu’s other hand, working in lightninglike conjunction with the one that bore the ring, wrenched the gun from Bartholdy’s fingers before he could pull the trigger.
Bartholdy, gasping and trying to retain his faculties, endeavored to keep a grip on the wall behind him. He could not. Slowly and still soundlessly his body sagged. His knees gave way under him. He sank to the floor and lay inertly; not dead, but knocked out for many minutes by the concentrated essence of a powerful anaesthetic vapor he had inhaled.
The Manchu’s expression had not changed. His eyes still gleamed. His yellow face was impassive. Before moving from where he stood he caught hold of the head of the dragon ring, gave it a dexterous twist and snapped it open. The hollowed out onyx, which was merely a thin shell, disclosed a small metal cylinder. The Manchu took this out, dropped it in his pocket. It was empty now. It had done its work. He replaced it with a fresh one, snapped the onyx dragon’s head down again.
Then he glanced down at Bartholdy’s inert form. It could not stay there. In a moment the two federal men would be back. They might look in the doorway of Ming headquarters and see it.
The Manchu’s keen eyes saw a door opening toward the left. He turned the knob, stuck his head inside, and saw that here was a classroom maintained by the Ming Tong and used in the daytime to teach Chinese merchants American business tactics.
In a moment he had transferred the unconscious Detective Bartholdy to this chamber. He left the detective propped solemnly before a desk. Then he moved silently up a long flight of stairs to the building’s second floor. He walked down a short corridor and stopped suddenly again, as a voice challenged him for the second time that night.
This was no white detective or federal agent. It was a tall, stern-faced Chinaman, clad in a silk robe with flowing sleeves. His yellow arms were crossed and his hands stuffed in those sleeves.
“Who are you, stranger, and what is your business that you come to the headquarters of the Ming Tong at this time of night?” The Chinaman with the folded arms spoke in Cantonese.
The tall Manchu gave answer fluently, in the same language, as though all dialects were familiar to him.
“Sung, courageous guardian of the portals of this most honorable tong, I come in peace. I would have talk with Lo Mong Yung, venerable father of the Mingmen. Tell him that one by the name of Ho Ling wishes to see him.”
The robed Chinaman shook his head sternly. “You appear to know me and call me by name, but I have never seen you before. There are fears and evil whispers abroad tonight. Caution has been impressed upon me by my master.”
The Manchu eyed the other calmly. He knew that in those flowing sleeves, clenched in the snaky yellow fingers, were twin automatics capable of mowing him down in a second. He knew that the Chinaman, Sung, had been selected for this post because he had nerves of steel, the brain of a fox, and could shoot with the uncanny accuracy of a born marksman. He nodded and reached into his own coat pocket.
“It is about these fears and whispers that I come,” he said.
The other’s body stiffened; But instead of a gun the tall Manchu brought a card from his pocket.