“I want Kwan,” he said, as though to answer.
In the table’s centre was the black numbered square surrounded by money. The croupier had a downturned bowl in front of him. Jack stood still but seemed unbalanced: blood on his forehead, collar undone, coat torn. The gamblers let their cigarets burn. Six players sat ’round the table and the wretched coolie sprawled on the floor made seven. Jack reached over and lifted up the bowl. The croupier looked a dry stick with a thin beard. He betrayed nothing as the buttons spilled on the tabletop. Jack put the bowl on the man’s head, a terrible affront.
“Kwan,” Jack said, almost politely.
Still nothing. I was becoming nervous. We were trapped down here in an underground dead-end. The upstairs servants might’ve signalled for help and we’d be boxed in neatly. I held my gun at my side and was having trouble concentrating. The heavy odours and the stolid Chinese, with their blank faces and dark slitted eyes, unsettled me. One was holding a clay cup of tea. I felt like fainting. Jack hit the croupier a sickening blow to the head with his Webley. He shoved the counters off the table and gathered up the money.
“Kwan,” he repeated.
Jack stuck the barrel in the mug of a little shrimp wearing a collarless shirt. Clockwise he went from face to face. Jack’s mouth was open and spittle slavered off his jaw. He settled on a Fu Manchu type by me who lifted a bony hand. I saw light through long transparent fingernails and jabbed my gun in the gambler’s back. He twitched, then very slowly the victim moved a finger and pointed at the stove. Jack went to touch it and laughed. With a straining heave he pulled the stove away from the wall to reveal a gap with yet more stairs leading down.
“Get that,” Jack said, pointing at a light. “I’m going in. Stay here and cover me.”
I handed him the oil lamp. He crouched and went into the hole. I kept up a forbidding façade for the Chinamen but was outmatched by their studied impassivity. They were damned lucky to be here in Montreal. An act was passed by government a few years back against all Oriental immigration. No more Gold Mountain. In Vancouver I’d been a child when the Asiatic Exclusion League had smashed windows throughout Chinatown. Had they half a chance these characters would make me into chop suey as recompense.
Jack’s voice came from somewhere far away and I shuffled to the hole.
“Mick. Mick,” he said.
“What?”
“Come down. Watch your head.”
I took the stairs backward with the circle of motionless watchers staring at me, statues in a tomb. I turned and another dozen steps brought me to a narrow way filled with rotting burlap. A light flickered ahead as I came to a room lined with shelves stacked with old fowling pieces, rusty pikes and swords, a set of measuring weights, pots of opium, and boxes labelled in Chinese. Jack stood in the middle with a laughing man wearing a real pig-tail.
“Kwan here thinks it’s funny I took their money,” Jack said.
“Very funny, very funny,” Kwan said.
“Some joke,” I said.
My eyes roamed this Aladdin’s cave and my heart stopped when I saw a familiar rectangle of black metal. Jack and Kwan bantered and Kwan handed Jack an automatic pistol, a Browning. While they were occupied haggling I sidled over to the object of interest and opened it up. My nerves thrilled and pain receded. I closed the box and turned back to the pair. Jack gave Kwan some money and they shook hands curiously. When I pocketed the black box I tipped over Jack’s oil lamp. It smashed to the ground and I jumped back as the oil spilled over sacks and wicker pots. Jack and Kwan turned as flames spread to the shelves. In the enclosed space the smoke started choking and the fire blocked the way back upstairs. Kwan swore and hopped over to a corner where he began scrabbling at the wall. Jack staggered in the poisonous smoke and I pulled him over to the Chinaman. Kwan found what he was looking for and the wall crumbled away. We shoved into a recess and to a ladder leading up. Jack yanked Kwan down from it and started pulling himself up. I followed suit and kicked at Kwan as he clawed at me. Jack pounded on a trapdoor above through the thickening smoke and finally cracked it open in a shower of rust and dirt. He pushed up and out and I came after into an alley crowded with rubbish bins and restaurant waste. Smoke poured from the secret shaft and we could hear a rising wail around the corner. Kwan’s head poked out the ground as we dragged ourselves to the alley mouth.
“Du nu loh moa!” he screamed at me, then in English: “You son of bitch.”
“Shut up,” I said.
He came at me but I pulled out my gun and pointed it at him. It was too much and I was exhausted.
“Bugger off,” I said.
He spat and stamped and slouched away, shaking his fist at me. Jack was laughing broadly, tears streaming down his face.
“You’re a wonder, Mick, really you are. You truly have a gift.”
I was now lightheaded from the dope smoke but had enough presence of mind to straighten up and help Jack walk away as machine guns started clattering.
“Firecrackers,” Jack said.
Jabbering Chinese ran about and one had already wrenched open a fire hydrant as others began a bucket brigade. More limped and scattered away from what would soon be a welter of firemen and police. Jack and I went along St. Urbain and turned left. In a few minutes we were on a quiet street behind St. Patrick’s, where D’Arcy McGee had lain in state after he’d been assassinated in Ottawa. And where was Louis Riel? Buried facedown with a stake through his heart for treason. Old Tomorrow had said, as I did now: “He shall hang though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour.”
From the neighbourhood came a rising howl of wolves roused by the fire engine and ruckus. My hearing had improved. The St. Patrick’s bell rang eight times. Only eight o’clock. It felt much later, the witching hour. Jack sat on the grass near an old wall. I stamped my feet to keep the blood moving. It was cold and I remembered I had nowhere to stay.
“That was bloody marvellous, Mick,” said Jack, shaking his head.
“It was an accident.”
“Of course it was. You’ve a rare talent. The perfect capper to a hell of a night.”
“I agree.”
“Now then, have you any money?” asked Jack.
“Don’t tell me you’re skint again,” I said.
“’Fraid so.”
“Well then.”
That son of a bitch Bob. It was the least I could do to give Jack two hundred dollars without asking where or how he’d lost his own stake. It meant I was down below seven hundred, but I held a hole card that’d make money irrelevant.
“What’re you thinking?” I asked.
“I was thinking how I’ve been nursing a viper at my breast this whole while. Dammit but I was napping.”
“Bob?”
“Aye. Now that Kwan’s buggered I’ve lost a line. What a balls-up. It’s going to take some time to straighten this mess out.”
“I could use some rest myself,” I said disingenuously.
“All right. We’ll split up for the time being. Were I you I’d change hotels.”
“Easy enough.”
“It’s Friday night. Check in a few days at the Hotel X for a message, name of Conrad.”
“You want any help?” I asked.
“Not just now. The money’s enough.”
“What’re you going to do?” I asked.
“Tace is Latin for candle, old man,” Jack said.
“Well I won’t whisper. We’ve done it now. Murder.”
Jack sized me up a moment.
“There is that. The wheel spins.”
He got to his feet.
“Remember, the Hotel X,” he said.
“Oke.”
Jack shook his head and reeled off into the darkness. I walked until I came back to Bonaventure. In the station I read an advertisement on a board for the Hotel Boniface so I telephoned in advance for a room, then walked over to Windsor Station and picked up my bag. In the grill I ate a hasty sandwich, drank a coffee, and pocketed a spoon. The hotel was on Dorchester and en route I stopped at a night-owl chemist for an apparatus. At the Boniface I signed the book Thomas Scott, paid three days in advance and asked for a candle. Upstairs behind a locked door I cleaned my hands and face in hot water with soap. I lit the candle, took out the vial from the black metal box I’d stolen, and began. Carefully I tipped salts into a spoon. The colour of the grains told me it was indeed morphine, not heroin, a relief. I fitted together a new hypodermic needle from the drugstore and bound my arm tightly with a towel. The salt and water solution I heated in the spoon and when it was ready I filled the device, drew the mixture, and injected myself. Slowly I blew out the candle, felt pain withdraw, and soon was gone to another place far away.