“You tellum fortune, John?”
He carried on the conversation in the pidgin-English which white men use in conversing with the lower, coolie class, and I could see he was enjoying the situation.
“I no savvy white man’s fortune. Heap savvy China boy’s fortune.”
Again he laughed and flipped open his coat.
“You savvy police badge?”
I grew sullen.
“Heap savvy.”
“All right. You lookum badge. You heap tellum my fortune. You no tellum, makum you get off street, buy license, make lots trouble.”
I stroked my beard.
“What for you come Chinatown? You come for makum arrest me?”
He shook his head, his frosty eyes twinkling.
“No. I come to pickum poppy. You savvy poppy?”
“Pickum poppy?”
“Yes, pickum poppy.”
“How you find one piecee poppy Chinatown street?”
Again he laughed, a cold, remorseless laugh.
“Maybe so, pickum two piecee poppies. Use poppies catchum wolf.”
I turned that over in my mind while he chuckled to himself at having mystified an old man.
I glanced up, and, as I did so, I saw a taxicab swing around the corner, come to a stop before the Tsoy Far Low Café, and the driver dash up the lighted stairs, carrying a package under his arm.
Mansfield watched that cab driver, too, watched him with preoccupied, veiled eyes. Seemingly he had forgotten me.
The cab driver came back down the stairs. Almost at his heels came Sam Sneed, the police stool-pigeon. Mansfield stiffened to attention.
Sneed saw him, nodded his head, turned sharply to the right, slipped along the sidewalk close to the buildings, and vanished in an oblong of darkness which marked the entrance to an alley.
Mansfield heaved a sigh, and his mouth relaxed into a self-satisfied smile.
And then there came a flutter of pink, a flounce of skirts.
Ngat T’oy, in the costume of a red poppy, was running swiftly down the café stairs.
One bare suggestion of a glance she flashed me, hardly a pause in the swift motion of her eye, and then she was in the taxicab. The gears clattered, the wheels spun, and the cab hurtled around the corner and was gone.
I sat there, puzzled, apprehensive.
On the curb Captain Mansfield nodded his head and smiled, then turned and walked rapidly away.
Ngat T’oy had been in a costume of the kind that can be readily rented for masquerades. A cap made of red buckram fluttered imitation poppy petals in the air. A collar of green fringe merged into great green leaves which extended over her arms. Her legs were attired in green stockings.
And I dared not fold up my table and leave just then.
Too many people had watched me while I was conversing with Mansfield. Chuck Gee’s spies were still stationed on either corner of the block.
Whatever had happened it had caused Ngat T’oy to rush from the place in too big a hurry to pass any word to me. It had been planned by Mansfield, and her hurried departure had fitted in with his plans. And he had spoken of picking poppies.
Impatiently I plucked at my false beard, and contemplated my next move.
Fifteen minutes passed, and I gathered up table and stool and started shuffling down the street.
In the alley back of the Tsoy Far Low Café I removed my stringy beard, straightened my carriage somewhat and approached the café entrance. I knew that I would be taking risks, but I wanted a taxicab, and aged Chinese fortune-tellers do not telephone for taxicabs to come to them.
There was still an eddy of excitement about the café. I did not take a cab which stood near the entrance, but waited until one came cruising up to the stand. From a point somewhat to the rear of the line I gave the driver a signal. He swung over to me, and I popped into the door.
The ten dollars that I pressed into his hand gave him far more speed than any story I could have concocted. There was a newspaper upon the seat, one of the late evening editions, and I raised this in such a manner that it completely covered my face as we went past the lighted café entrance. To an observer on the sidewalk I was merely a passenger immersed in the news, suffering from our twentieth century complex which demands that we must have our morning papers issued the night before, and must read them “on the run.”
With my eyes on the printed page before me, but with my mind on Ngat T’oy in the red poppy dress, I soon began to see a big light.
I set the paper down on the seat and gave the address of a costume company to the driver. Events were moving rapidly, and the next two hours would see much accomplished. I must discover Mansfield’s game and block it. A trap had been set, and I must slip through that trap. I had my own plans for the future, and the first step was to convince Boardman that I could laugh at his efforts to apprehend me.
At the costumer’s I secured the costume of a clown and changed into it at once. I have always been partial to such a costume. The big nose, the peaked cap, the baggy trousers and blouse make recognition almost impossible, even when one has unmasked; and the costume is easy to slip on and off.
At the curb I found another taxi.
“To the policemen’s ball,” I told the driver as I fished one of the oblong pasteboards from my pocket, the sale of which had tested my nerves earlier in the evening.
It was late, but cabs were still arriving and departing. The stairs were thronged with a laughing, chatting crowd. Masks were everywhere in evidence, and costumes represented every form of disguise which the mind of man could conjecture. There were comic-strip characters, moving-picture policemen, hick constables, lizards, chanticleers, fiction characters, caricatures, all thronging about the immense hall, rubbing elbows, chatting, laughing.
I looked at my watch.
Ten o’clock. They were to unmask at midnight.
On a raised dais in the center of the hall were seats for guests of honor. These guests were not masked, and Paul Boardman was among them.
I knew that my costume wouldn’t win any of the prize money, but I felt pretty certain it would enable me to circulate through the crowd long enough to find a red poppy, and to dance with her until I could learn something about the trap that was being set.
No sooner had I started to mingle with the throng than Paul Boardman began a speech.
As a member of the police commission he was in his element. Nor could there be any doubt of his political power. His moves were made with shrewd insight. His influence was extended day by day until he had dominated every branch of the police department except the chief and one or two of the old standbys. The chief had been a prominent figure, had done much to stamp out the crime wave which had swept the city under the previous administration, and the people would not stand for his summary removal, without some good excuse.
In the meantime Boardman was greasing the skids for him, making friends in the force, pretending to act with wide-eyed impartiality. In reality he was establishing a deep-rooted system of graft which reached down into the lowest dive in the city. From hundreds of such dives, from gilded cafés, from big-time criminals, from exclusive gambling joints, Paul Boardman was mulcting graft. The men who worked with him would stop at nothing. They were bound together by mutual profits, illegal activities, quick riches. Murder was as nothing to them, and the underworld knew it. Never had such a system been built up in the city. And this system had been built up under the guise of a reform administration. So smoothly did it function, so well were the newspapers controlled, that the average citizen on the street believed Paul Boardman had done as much as any man in the city to stamp out crime, to abolish graft and to increase police efficiency.
Now he was indulging in his forte, making a political speech.