"Where shall I come?" I enquired.
"Sixteen Soo Chow Road," she said. "Are you surprised?"
Either way I might have answered this question would have given offence, so I evaded it with an assurance that I would be on hand for tiffin the next day.
Sixteen Soo Chow Road was guarded by two policemen. They took no notice of me and I walked straight in and asked for Mrs. Davis. No one in the house knew her by that name. In a few minutes I found her and was cordially received. The place was in a great state of excitement, for one of the women had taken four shots at a prominent merchant of Shanghai early in the morning in one of the city's cafés. The woman was under arrest and this accounted for the presence of the policemen at the entrance. I did not like the idea of being about for fear I would be called as a witness and become mixed up in a nasty scrape which I knew nothing about. However, I decided to be a man and see the meal out. Tiffin was brought in and Mrs. Davis, for she was still Mrs. Davis to me, entertained me as would the hostess of the most respectable home in the world. After a good meal and a pleasant call I took my leave. I was somewhat wiser from my study of human nature. I also had made another friend in this world.
I made arrangements with the skipper of a British tramp steamer to take me to Hongkong and before long I found myself on the shores of this beautiful island ready for new experiences. Hongkong proved to be a poor field for adventure and after seeing the sights I went up the river to Canton. In both places I put up at Japanese hotels where I thrived on Japanese diet at Japanese prices. I returned to Hongkong and after a few days along the waterfront I sailed for Manila on a British tramp.
Before the ship got under way a United States Quarantine officer made a cursory examination of the crew before she would be allowed to leave for the Philippines. As he passed me he said, without stopping, that I had malaria. This was cheerful news, for a Hankow doctor had told me that I had a touch of dry pleurisy and a Canton physician had prescribed a mixture for dysentery. I said to myself when the American Quarantine doctor made his lightning-speed diagnosis, "That is a delightful thought; I must have all the diseases under the sun." I hadn't been feeling very well, which I attributed to the long period I had lived on Japanese and Chinese food and the irregular life I had been leading, so I discounted the contradictory statements of all my physicians and concluded that with good food and regular hours in Manila I would soon be in normal shape.
Country Boys of North China
