“The next day, having cashed in half the pearls. Buck says to me: ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘and we’ll settle up with father Abraham.’
“Off we starts and gets to the place, and there was the bird shop sure enough beside a Chow restaurant, but there was no father Abraham.
“A young Chink was in charge, and when Buck asks for Fong Yen he said there was no such person. Then he seemed to remember, and said that Fong had sold the shop and gone back to China.
“‘Why, that’s him inside there,’ said Buck, and makes a dive into the shop, but there was no one there. Fong must have done a bunk through a back door or something—anyhow he was gone.
“Then all of a sudden there comes up a big master mariner looking man along the street, drops anchor before the bird shop and calls out asking for Ming Lu. The young Chink came out and asks what he wants, saying there was no such person as Ming Lu.
“‘Say, brother,’ says Buck, jumping at the truth, ‘was Ming Lu, by any chance, an old gendarme in spectacles?’
“‘He was,’ says the crab, and then he spun his story. He’d been walking along Alta Street three months ago when he saw three Chinks at a corner, an old boob in spectacles and two young ones. As he came up with them they started quarrelling, pulling the old chap about and kicking him cruel, and Blake, that was the guy’s name, started in like a whole-souled American to save the antiquity from ruin.
“He helped Ming back to his bird shop, and the old chap near drowned him in gratitude, and gave him a chart of a pearl island his son, that had been murdered in a tong dust-up the month before, had discovered when a sailor in one of the Chinese bêche de mer boats, that had been wrecked, with all hands lost but his precious son.
“Blake gave him ten dollars to buy opium with, and being a schooner owner, lost three months hunting for that island which wasn’t there.
“It was the same island that had been wished on us—Buck pulled out his chart and they compared—exactly the same, spot of blood and all. The things must have been lithographed by the dozen and Lord knows how many mugs had fallen to the gratitude trap; which no one but a Chink could ever have invented, if you think over the inwards and outwards of it.