"You have shown your power to end it," I said.
"You are too flattering, I fear," said the King of Chinatown. "Fire in flax, you say. It is so much easier to keep fire out of flax than to stamp it out after it starts. It is in my power to punish these men, but I fear that it is beyond my power to smother their enmity. In the code of the tongs blood or blood-money must pay for this." He mused for a little and seemed to be speaking to himself as much as to me. "That this should happen at such a time, when everything depends on our self-control! It is shameful--shameful--a reproach to our race."
"At such a time? I do not understand you," I ventured. The hint in his words was too plain to miss.
He looked at me sharply.
"You do not know what is going on in your own city, Mr. Hampden," he said politely.
"I confess to a lack of information on the point you mention."
"It will be brought to your attention later," said Big Sam dryly. "But I am detaining you with matters of no interest. You wished a translation of these papers?"
His face was bland and impassive, yet I had the impression that he felt he had said too much.
"It has been deeply interesting," I said. "But I am imposing on your good nature." It was of no use to seek to learn from Big Sam anything that he thought fit to conceal, and I placed the slips before him.
He read them off gravely. One was a polite note of invitation to dinner. The other a memorandum of goods bought, or to be bought.