CHAPTER V A HUNT IN THE UNDER-WORLD
During the ride from the water front Captain Tom Halstead had sat on the front seat of the cab, quiet and reserved.
Now, as they entered the outer confines of Chinatown, Halstead leaned slightly forward, peering out at the shops and at the queer Oriental jumble, mixed here and there with white people, that thronged the narrow sidewalks.
"Are you headed for any particular place, sir?" queried the young skipper, after a few moments.
"No," admitted Mr. Baldwin. "I know nothing of Chinatown. We must drive through, first of all, at a venture. Presently an idea may come to us. Whatever we do, our plans must soon be formed. If I dared speak to a police officer—but the risk is too great."
"There's a restaurant," murmured the boy, suddenly. "It looks like a big and clean place. Why don't you and Mr. Ross slip in there, have some tea or something, and let me prowl about in these queer, crooked streets for a few minutes? Chinatown is only a few blocks in extent, I understand. I may be able to learn something that way, unless you have a better plan, sir."
"I am afraid you'll run into danger, alone in this barbarous crowd," objected Mr. Baldwin.
"I'm not in the least afraid," smiled Tom, confidently. "Two prosperous looking men like you might attract attention, but, as for me, the people hereabouts will think only that I'm some young sailor ashore for a lark. Shall I stop the cab, sir?"
"Yes," agreed Joseph Baldwin, though he spoke doubtfully.
Tom's hand shot up at once, grabbing the check string. The driver pulled up his horses, then came to the door, opening it.
"This will be as good a place for you to remain, driver, as anywhere," said Halstead, as he stepped out. Then he turned, waiting for Messrs. Baldwin and Ross to alight.
"Shall I find you in that restaurant, sir?" the young skipper inquired.
"Yes; but don't be too long away, Halstead, or we shall be more uneasy than ever."
"Trust a sailor to take care of himself in any crowd, sir," laughed Tom Halstead, jauntily. With that he stepped off, at a more rolling gait than he usually employed on shore.
The young motor boat captain carried in his mind a good personal description of Gaston Giddings. He had secured this from Mr. Baldwin before leaving the yacht.
"Ugh! The smell here is worse than in New York's Chinatown," Tom told himself, disgustedly.
From upper windows of some of the buildings that lined the narrow, dirty streets came the squawkings of Chinese fiddles and other discordant "musical" instruments of a wholly Oriental type. There seemed to be two or three joss-houses, or temples, in every short block. On the street floors, however, stores offering all kinds of Chinese merchandise were most common. Tom suspected that the gambling places and opium joints lay in the rear of these stores.
"Want a guide to Chinatown? Show ye everything, boss, for two dollars. Show ye every real sight in Chinatown," appealed a seedy, dirty, young white man who now held Tom by one sleeve.
"Anything really worth seeing?" asked Halstead, smilingly.
"Oh, everything worth seeing," responded the seedy guide, with a wide wave of one arm. "Best two dollars' worth you ever had. Most curious sights you ever saw in any part of the world. Sailor, ain't ye?"
"Yes."
"Sailors are my specialty," declared the seedy guide, grimly. "Come, ye'd better haul up the two dollars and let me take you about."
"What about opium joints, for instance?" asked Tom Halstead, speaking as though he had not enthused much as yet.
"I know 'em all," asserted the seedy guide, eagerly. "Want to smoke the opium pipe?"
"Can't say," replied Tom, vaguely. "Yet, if I do go around with you, you've got to take me to the really swell opium places."
"Oh, I can do it—better'n any other guide in Chinatown," promised the fellow, quickly. "Come, just hand over the two dollars, and see what I can show you."
With a great pretense of reluctance Captain Tom produced four half dollars, which he handed to the guide.
"Remember, now," he said, "I want what you might call the aristocratic places."
"If ye ain't satisfied," promised the guide, glibly, "then ye'll get your money back."
"Go ahead, then, but mind what I told you."
Through dark alleyways, or through stores into rear apartments, Halstead followed his conductor. In rapid succession he passed in and out of half a dozen opium joints. One was as much like another as two kernels of wheat resemble each other.
In each place there was the same outer room, then the same bunk-room, an apartment fitted up with bunks at the sides. It was in these rooms that the smoking was done. The intending smoker stretched himself out in a bunk, while a Chinese attendant brought lamp and kit. A tiny ball of opium was quickly lighted—"cooked"—at the lamp's flame. Then this glowing pellet of opium was thrust into the bowl of an opium pipe, and the latter handed to the smoker in the bunk. The smoker consumed his pellet after two or three whiffs. After smoking three or four pipes, most of the smokers succumbed, falling back in a torpid sleep.
The air was heavy, disgusting in these places. Degraded white men and women were occasionally to be seen, though most of the smokers were Orientals, generally Chinese.
Heart-sick and dizzy, Tom Halstead still kept on, though, whenever he reached outer air, he took pains to inflate his lungs several times before again entering one of the wretched, squalid "joints."
Off the bunk-rooms several of these dens had "private" sleeping apartments, for white smokers who desired more privacy. Wherever he noted doors to such private rooms Tom Halstead thrust them open, glancing inside. Nor was his conduct resented. The opium smokers were too far gone to show or feel anger.
"You haven't shown me any very swell places yet," protested the young skipper, after leaving the seventh place.
The guide, a thin, undersized, slovenly man in his early thirties, turned to look the motor boat boy over keenly.
Tom noticed that the fellow's eyes had a look in them much like the look in the eyes of several of the smokers they had just seen.
"This fellow is an opium-user himself," decided Tom Halstead.
"Say, young feller," remarked the guide, in a cautious undertone, "you're looking for someone."
"Perhaps I am," the young skipper half admitted.
"Who is he?"
"No matter. But do you know any of the men who come here to Chinatown often to use the pipe?"
"Say, if there's any white hop-fiend that I don't know, then he's a brand-new one," rejoined the guide.
"Do you know a young man of twenty-four or five, about five-eight tall, dark, slim, rather fine-looking, smooth faced and with a slight scar under his right ear?"
"I guess that must be young Doc Gaston," whispered the guide.
Gaston? That was Giddings's first name. Tom Halstead started, though he strove to conceal his excitement.
"Where does Doc Gaston go?" he demanded.
"What'll you pay to find out?" insisted the guide, cunningly.
"Ten dollars."
"Make it fifty, and I'll do it for you."
Tom, however, stuck to his original price, though three or four minutes were lost in haggling.
"Ten dollars is the highest price," Tom declared, flatly. "That pays you for standing by me until I get Doc Gaston—if he's the one I'm looking for—outside of Chinatown."
"Well, gimme the money now, then," demanded the guide.
"Oh, no," retorted the young skipper, tartly. "You get the money after we're through and on the edge of Chinatown in a cab. Now, don't haggle any more, or I'll drop the matter altogether. Are you going to take my offer, or not?"
"Say, you'll sure pay the ten, will ye?" whined the fellow.
"As sure as there's a sky above us."
"Then come along."
"Where's the place?" questioned Tom Halstead.
"Around the next corner."
"Do you know where Yum Kee's restaurant is?"
"O' course. They call Yum Kee the Chinatown Delmonico."
"Lead me back there, then, and we'll get the carriage."
Tom Halstead had been around so many corners in this crowded, complex quarter of San Francisco that he had lost his bearings. The guide, however, piloted him back to the waiting cab within two minutes.
First of all, however, the young skipper peered in at the restaurant. Messrs. Baldwin and Ross were at one of the rear tables, eating.
"Tell the driver where to go, now, and we'll make the start," Tom instructed the guide. Soon afterwards they alighted before a brightly-lighted Chinese grocery store. Besides the proprietor, there were three or four clerks and a dozen yellow-skinned, pig-tailed customers in the place. The guide, with an air of being at home here, led the way straight back, pushing ajar a door at the rear. The instant they entered this rear compartment the sickening odor of sizzling opium greeted Captain Tom's nostrils. This proved to be the inevitable outer room, but the guide led into the adjoining bunk-room. In this latter apartment were half a dozen doors.
"Just look through 'em," whispered the guide. "Don't talk to me none. Remember, if there's a row here, I've got to make up a yarn that will square things for me."
Two of the private rooms into which Halstead boldly intruded proved to be empty.
In the third room a weazened little old Chinaman crouched over a lamp and a tray holding an outfit. He was preparing to remove these things. In the bunk, sprawled out, with glassy eyes, was a young man whom Tom Halstead recognized in a flash—weak, vice-ridden Gaston Giddings!