Garland went to the cabin. The room which he entered opened into the restaurant and was the Chinaman's den. Its only furniture was a bunk with a coil of dirty blankets, a chair and table, on which stood an adding machine, the balls running on wires. Near it was the ink well and bamboo pen and small squares of paper covered with Chinese characters. One door led into the restaurant and another into the kitchen. In this room, lit by a wall lamp, its window giving on a tangled growth of shrubs, sat Knapp sprawled before the stove.
Their greetings were brief, and drawing up to the table they began the plans for the next night's work. Through the window the air came cool and moist, fighting with the odors of cooking and the rank, stifling Chinese smell. On the silence without rose the horses' soft whinnyings to one another and then the Chinaman's returning passage through the grass and the rasp of the closing door. He put a bottle and glasses before the men, slipped speechless into the restaurant, and returned, an animated shadow, with the lamp in his hand. This he set on the table in his own room, and sitting before it, began moving the balls in the adding machine. Upon the low voices in the kitchen, the dry click of the shifted balls broke in sharp staccato, followed by pauses when, with a hand as delicate as a woman's, he traced the Chinese characters on the paper.
It was he who heard first. His hand, raised to move a line of the balls, hung suspended, his eyes riveted in an agate-bright stare on the wall opposite. He half rose; his meager body stiffened as if the muscles had suddenly become steel; his face turned in wild question to the room beyond. He was up and had hissed a terrified, "Look out, boss, someone come!" when a rending blow fell on the door.
For a breath there was stillness, then pandemonium—a sudden burst of action following on a moment of paralysis, an explosion of sound and movement. It all came together—the breaking in of the door, the rat-like rush of the men, the crash of falling furniture, of shivered glass, of dark, scrambling figures, and the blinding flash of a revolver. The Chinaman's face, ape-like in its terror, showed above the blankets of his bunk, Knapp lay on the ground caught by the falling table, and in the window jagged edges of glass and a trail of blood on the sill showed the way Garland had gone. In the doorway the sheriff stood with his leveled revolver, while the voices and trampling of men came from the shrubs outside.
CHAPTER XV
THE LAST DINNER
It was depressing weather, rain, rain, and then again rain. For two weeks now, off and on, people had looked out through windows lashed with fine spears or glazed with watery skins which endlessly slipped down the pane. Muddy pools collected and spread across the street, the cars that drove through them sending the water in fan-like spurts from their wheels. Down the high, cobbled hills rivulets felt their way and grass sprouted between the granite blocks. A gray wall shut in the city, which showed dimly under the downpour, gardens blossoming, roof shining beyond roof, wet wall dripping on wet wall.
From his parlor window in the Argonaut Hotel, Boyé Mayer looked down on the street's swimming length, and then up at the sky's leaden pall. It was not raining now but there was no knowing when it might begin again. He yawned and stretched, then looked at his watch—half-past four. What should he do for the rest of the afternoon?
Several times during the last month this problem of time to be passed had presented itself. The rain had cut him off from stately promenades on the sunny side of the street and the diversions of San Francisco had grown stale from familiarity. The bloom of his adventure was tarnished; he was becoming used to riches, and comfort had lost its first, fine, careless rapture. It was not that he was actually bored, but he saw, as things were going, he might eventually become so, especially if the rain continued. So far, the green tables and Pancha had held off this undesired state, but like all attractive pastimes both had their dangers. His luck at the green tables had been so bad that he had resolved to give them up, and that made the menace of boredom loom larger. Life in San Francisco in the height of the wet season, with cards denied him and Pancha only to be visited occasionally, was not what it had promised to be.
He had thought of leaving, going to the South, and then decided against it. There were several reasons why it was better for him to stay. One was the money in Sacramento. This had become an intruding matter of worry and indecision. It was not only that the store was so greatly diminished—his losses had made astonishing inroads in it—but he feared its discovery and he hated his trips there. He always spent a night in the place, on a stone-hard bed in a dirty, unaired room, and in his shabby clothes was forced to patronize cheap eating houses where the fare sickened him. He managed it very adroitly, carrying in his old suitcase the hat, coat, shoes and tie he had bought in Sacramento, changing into them in the men's washroom in the Sacramento depot, and emerging therefrom the Harry Romaine who rented room 19 in the Whatcheer House.