“You eatum noodle?” he asked in bland pidgin-English.
Perhaps he knew who I was, perhaps not. If he knew me for the man who had talked with him earlier in the evening he knew that I could talk Cantonese. Also I fancied Soo Hoo Duck could speak English as well as the average college graduate. Yet now he stood before my table and talked the broken pidgin-English of the Chinese coolie.
I nodded a curt answer to his question. I was in no mood for the subtleties of Chinese diplomacy.
“You eatum all alone?”
Again I nodded.
“Heap no good eatum allee time alone. You cat chum some one piecee fliend, maybeso two piecee fliend heap more better. You savvy me? I heap savvy you. I heap fliend you.”
I studied the motionless wrinkles of the impassive face and sought to pierce the wall of black reserve which hung before his beady eyes. Was he fishing for an invitation to join me at my meal? I shrugged my shoulders. It was to be a lone game.
“I no savvy you,” I said, and turned my shoulder to him.
Without another word he slippety-slap-slipped away, his shuffling feet moving with a slow rhythm which somehow conveyed the impression of offended dignity.
Two men slipped in the door, men who were panting from a hasty ascent of the stairs, men who glanced quickly about the room before they settled themselves at a table.
I marked their faces for future reference.
From the back door there came a party of three pasty-faced fellows with ratty eyes and vicious mouths. There was a startling similarity of appearance in the three. Stoop-shouldered they were, white, furtive, yet garbed in the most expensively tailored clothes.
There sounded heavy feet on the stairs and a square-toed, broad-shouldered, bullet headed individual slumped his way into the room and jostled over to a table in the corner — a plainclothes detective.
The stage was set.
Evidently three separate factions had been sufficiently interested in the appearance of Ed Jenkins to rush special representatives to the scene. Nor could I be sure that they were not all three working in a common cause.
The two heavy-set fellows who had first entered were typical strong-arm men. They were probably instructed to kidnap me, throw me in a waiting car, take me to some secret destination. The three stoop-shouldered, putty-faced men were “guns,” men who represented the typical gangster killers. Now that prohibition had systematized crime, had placed ready money in the hands of criminal gangs, they were a type that was becoming daily more common. The plainclothes man had apparently been sent to watch and listen, and he was more than likely in cahoots with one or both of the other factions.
I leisurely ate my chicken noodles, sipped my tea and looked about me, waiting for the first move that would enable me to plan my campaign, start my counter offensive.
And I was unarmed. I rarely carry a gun. It is a felony for a crook to possess a weapon and I dare not take the chances of having a gun on me. I depend on my wits. A cop might pinch me for having a gun under my arm, but he can’t arrest me for having my wits about me.
And now I was without a plan. Usually I try to keep one jump ahead of events, to have a general plan of campaign. But this time I was not my own master. Events had crowded my hand. Helen Chadwick was in danger and I must force things to an issue. Nor did I misunderstand the situation in the slightest. For some reason I had suddenly become a creature of importance in crookdom. This sudden interest in me was not merely because of my record or on account of past scores. Somewhere, somehow, something was happening concerning which I knew nothing, yet the happening of which was making me of prime importance in the plans of somebody, perhaps of several somebodies.
Lord knows there were enough complicating factors of the situation there in that smelly Chinese café, and yet I kept watching the outer door, feeling that there would be still other developments. Perhaps it was the attitude of the men, a sort of tense waiting. Perhaps it was a hunch, perhaps merely the emotional strain. Whatever it was, it kept me watching the outer door.
Five minutes passed, and the swinging door shot back under the impetus of a stiff-armed jab that would have rocked a prize-fighter. The man who stepped into the room and sneeringly contemplated those within was more or less known to me. Twice before he had been pointed out to me, and each time the pointing had been accompanied with a warning.
Bob Garret, a hound for publicity, one of the outstanding figures on the detective force, bold, ruthless, clever after a cunning fashion — and, as he stood there, contemptuously turning his glittering eyes from face to face, I knew his errand. He, too, was interested in Ed Jenkins. I could read it in his glance, in his every gesture.
At length his eyes locked with mine. For several seconds we stared at each other. He seeking to overawe me by his very gaze; I refusing to lower my eyes. Then he came forward.
“Ah, Jenkins. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I’ve seen many of your — er — photographs.”
I said nothing. As a crook, society had labeled me an outcast. I had no rights save such as I could command. I could no more openly resent the insult in the man’s voice than I could the brazen assurance with which he drew up a chair and sat at my table.
He extracted a black cigar from his pocket, clipped the end, scraped a match across the sole of his shoe, and regarded me appraisingly through the film of blue tobacco smoke.
“The Phantom Crook, eh?”
No reply was apparently expected from me. The words had been merely in the nature of a taunting preliminary. It is by such methods that the police break down the spirit of those with whom they deal, sneer them back into the shadows whenever they would rehabilitate themselves. I was used to it. Yet I resented it. If society desired to confine me within barred walls that was the privilege of society — provided it could catch me and prove its case. But when I sought to keep within the law I should have been given the privileges of a citizen, freedom from police persecution. However, society creates conditions, not theories. And, in the meantime, here was this pudgy detective sneering at me across the table.
About forty-one or two, he was, and there was the look in his eyes which creeps into the eyes of those who are accustomed to achieve their ends by bully-ragging and hypocrisy. His face was scraped and massaged to plump pinkness. The great knuckles of his ham-like hands were cushioned beneath a layer of soft fat. Plainly he was one who liked the good things of life. Probably he had started as a youth to fight his way to the top, and then sheer animal cunning had served his purpose better. He was a combination of fighter and coward, of a cunning man and a fool — and the law had clothed him with the majesty of its authority, had given him license to do almost as he wished with those who had once been unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of organized society and to be thenceforth labeled as ex-convicts, crooks.
“Not very glad to have me as a dinner companion, are you?”
The words were spoken with the easy assurance of one who knows that he has the backing of unlimited power; but they, at least, called for an answer.
I raised my eyes from my food, let them bore into his so that he could get the full meaning of my answer.
“No,” I said, and spat the word at him.
His eyes shifted somewhat beneath the hostility of my gaze, and the knowledge that they had shifted angered him.
“All right. Let’s get down to business.”
He flipped a careless little finger across the end of his cigar, scattering ashes over the table, upon my butter, into my food, and his pink face came forward as he lowered his voice.
“Jenkins, you’re a crook. You’re wanted in other states. Because you’ve found a hole in the extradition laws you’re all clear in California. You’ve developed a technique with safes that’s never been equalled anywhere, and no one knows just how you do it. You always seem to have plenty of money, and you’re a Lone Wolf.”