Then we turned a corner, went down some steps and came to a padlocked door. My guide unlocked it, put me outside on a platform, whistled and left me, after saying, “You keep still; bimeby you catch him!” Then I heard his footsteps going back into the building.
I was alone on an outside balcony, looking down into a dark alley, three floors below.
After awhile a door opened, and a man beckoned to me. We went through a little hall with doors on each side and dark passages leading off every which way, and down these, in and out till I was more confused than ever, and then finally he knocked at a little door. It was opened, and I was pushed inside.
It was a tiny box of a room, low and narrow. On a broad bunk at one side, two Chinese actors in costumes were lying, smoking opium pipes. Leastways, I thought they were Chinamen, but as soon as the door was shut, one jumped up and took me in his arms. I screamed and fought to get away, but he called me Reba, and I knew it was Daddy. No wonder I didn’t recognise him before. He had on a wig with a long queue, and a gold embroidered costume, and his face was painted in a hideous fashion, with his nose all white and streaks under his eyes.
After I had kissed half the paint off his face he told me what had happened.
Daddy had been in San Francisco long enough to get pretty well acquainted with Chinatown. He had kept around there from the first, to escape notice, and he had got to be mighty good friends with one of the actors who spoke English fairly well. When he was chased by the detective he had made straight for Moy Kip’s room, and asked to hide out. The Chinese are used to fooling the police, and Kip just threw a gown over Daddy’s shoulders, painted his face, and put him on the opium bunk. When the officer went through the actors’ rooms, he looked in, but didn’t see any more than I saw at first. Then Moy Kip watched me through the little window over the stage, and as soon as the detective left the place they sent for me.
Daddy and I were taken to a room three stories under the sidewalk, where we hid for a week, going upstairs at meal-times. It was just like one big family of about eighty men, but only one or two women. The little rooms we had were dark and dirty and close, and the smell was something awful. I couldn’t have stood it alone, but Daddy was safe. That was enough for a while.
But living Chinese fashion, without sunlight or decent food, didn’t agree with Daddy at all, and he fell sick. It wasn’t only the air that was ailing him, it was the fear of capture, too, and with all the hardship and worry his fever got steadily worse. A Chinese doctor in big spectacles and a long white mustache came in to see him, and mixed him up some black, horrid, smelly stuff, made of sea-horses and lizards, and Moy Kip burned punks in the joss-house upstairs, but he didn’t get any better. He was always worrying about something when he was delirious, and I couldn’t make out quite what it was about till one day, just before the end, when his mind cleared and he told me. Moy Kip wanted to marry me! Daddy didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t bear to ask me to marry a Chinaman, and he didn’t like to refuse the man who had been right kind to him.
You can imagine how I felt about it. It would have been bad enough if Moy Kip had been an ordinary Chinaman, but, being an actor, he belonged to almost the lowest caste. Undertakers and barbers and boatmen are the only ones below. Actors can’t even mix equally with ordinary coolies. Besides, Kip being the principal “white-face” actor or comedian, the manager didn’t let him leave the theatre much, for fear he’d be kidnapped by highbinders and held for ransom. If I married him, the life would be something awful.
And now, to make it all worse, my poor old Dodo was taken away. He died in my arms after being sick a week.