“It's be accident; I takes th' wrong steer, that's all. I makes it a point, knowin' I'm none too wise, to plant meself when we pulls up to the feed opposite to a gilded old bunk, who looked like ready money. 'Do as he does, Dropper' I says to meself, 'an' you're winner in a walk!' So, when he plays a fork, I plays a fork; if he boards a chive, I boards a chive; from soup to birds I'm steerin' be his wake. Then all of a sudden I cops a shock. We've just made some roast squabs look like five cents worth of lard in a paper bag, an' slopped out a bunch of fizz to wash 'em down, when what does that old Rube do but up an' sink his hooks in a bowl of water. Honest, I like to 've fell in a fit! There I'd been feelin' as cunning as a pet fox, an' me on a dead one from th' jump!”
“Did any of them smart Alecks give youse th' laugh?” asked the Nailer.
“Give me th' laugh,” repeated the Dropper, disgustedly. “I'd have smashed whoever did in th' eye.”
While beer and conversation were flowing in Number Twelve, a sophisticated eye would have noted divers outside matters which might or might not have had a meaning. On the heels of Big Mike's laundry deeds of desolation and destruction at Low Foo's, not a Chinaman was visible in Pell Street. It was the same when Mike came out of Tony's and climbed the stairs to his room. Mike safely retired from the field, a handful of Four Brothers—all of them Lows and of the immediate clan of Low Foo—showed up, and took a slanteyed squint at what ruin had been wrought. They spoke not above a murmur, but as nearly as a white devil might gather a meaning, they were of the view that no monsoon could have more thoroughly scrap-heaped the belongings of Low Foo.
Other Chinamen began to gather, scores upon scores. These were Hip Sing Tongs, and they paid not the slightest heed to Low Foo's laundry, or what was left of it. What Four Brothers were abroad did not mingle with the Hip Sing Tongs, although the two tribes lived in friendship. The Four Brothers quietly withdrew, each to his own den, and left the Hip Sing Tongs in possession of the street.
Being in possession, the Hip Sing Tongs did nothing beyond roost on the curb, or squat in doorways, or stand idly about. Now and then one smoked a cigarette.
About 11.20 o'clock, a Chinaman entered Pell Street from the Bowery. Every one of the Hip Sing Tongs looked at him; none of them spoke to him. Only, a place was made for him in the darkness of the darkest doorway. Had some brisk Central Office intelligence been there and consulted its watch, it might have occurred to such intelligence that had the newcomer arrived from Philadelphia over the B. & O. by latest train, he—assuming him to have taken the ferry with proper dispatch—would have come poking into Pell Street at precisely that hour.
Trinity struck midnight.
The bells sounded dim and far away. It was as though it were the ghost of some dead midnight being struck. At the sound, and as if he heard in it a signal, the mysterious Chinaman came out of the double darkness of the doorway in which he had been waiting, and crossed to the stairway that led up to the room of Mike. Not a whisper came from the waiting Hip Sing Tongs, who watched him with that blend of apathy and eagerness observable only in the Oriental. No one went with the mysterious Chinaman. Nor did the stairs creak—as with Big Mike—beneath his velvet shoes.
Five minutes passed.