"You sabby Suey Sing men?" said the old man. "Two men all same Suey Sing."
"The Suey Sing Tong--I'll bet he's lying," said the sergeant. "It's more like the Sare Bo Tong. Well, go along with him and get the boy's story. Maybe the kid can't lie so fast. I'll go down to the hall and send up a squad. There's like to be trouble over this."
"Do you think there will be a fight?" I asked.
"There was a lot of the Hop Sings about as we came up," said the officer, "and I reckon the old man belongs to 'em. The others was mostly Sare Bos. There's bad blood between 'em, anyhow, and I look for some killing out of it. Are you walking down?"
"No, I've a bit of business here." And I turned back to the door that had barred the way to the rooms of Big Sam.
As I reached the threshold I drew back before the advance of a party of Chinese, who filed out of the shop one by one to the number of a dozen or more. Their stolid faces showed no interest in me or anything else, and half of them turned to the south, half to the north, and they followed the uncompanionable Chinese habit of straggling in single file. A tall stout Chinaman, dressed in baggy trousers and a padded Chinese coat of fine blue cloth, stood just inside the door and watched them narrowly as they went out. As the last coolie passed I stepped forward and into the doorway.
The tall Chinaman looked at me blandly.
"Were you not a little indiscreet to think of interfering in one of our family quarrels?" he said, with a ghost of a smile on his full smooth face. He spoke English fluently, with just a trace of the Chinese intonation. The "r" that is the despair of the Chinese tongue rolled full and clear from his lips. I had been on the point of addressing him in the "pidgin English" considered necessary in communicating with the heathen intelligence, and was stricken with surprise.
"I--I didn't think of interfering," I replied.
"One would not have suspected you of so much discretion to see you running across the street," he said, with the same bland look. "The next time you think of taking part in such an entertainment, I beg of you to reflect that half the men in the crowd carried something like this." And with a smile he drew back the Chinese jacket and touched the handle of a big navy six-shooter. The weapon was eighteen inches long and would carry a forty-four caliber bullet for a hundred yards. "If he didn't have that he probably had something of this sort about him." He gave his voluminous sleeve a shake, and a big knife with a ten-inch blade was in his hand. "These pleasant little parties are not always what they seem," he continued, "and it is just as well to watch them from a distance."