He was a rogue, yet he was straight in his way. To be a perfect rogue, at least to succeed in the art, you must be straight in some ways. The bandit who betrays his brethren never goes far without a dagger sticking in his back.
M’Gourley had “discovered” Danjuro years ago. M’Gourley had twice come to financial smash, once because of an earthquake, and again in the upheaval caused by the breaking of the Barings. Danjuro had helped him twice, and he had helped Danjuro many times; helped him with his Western craft, Scotch cuteness, and knowledge of Europeans.
In every city of the East, in every city of the world, you will find a fixed Scot always prospering; M’Gourley was a floating Scot. Navigating Japan from end to end, now at Tokyo, now at Kioto, now at Nagasaki, crossing to Corea and pottering about there, meeting brither Scotchmen and helping them in trade speculations, selling, or assisting in the sale, of everything sellable from coals to kakemonos, went M’Gourley, a busy man, but somehow a rather unfortunate one.
Suddenly Japan rose and smashed China, Russia stepped in and robbed her of the pieces, and Japan sat down, drew her kimono round her, and began to think about Russia.
M’Gourley just then (it was some two years before he met Leslie) was on the Lao-Tung peninsula, a black wandering dot, innocuous to governments, one would imagine, as a beetle.
Suddenly M’Gourley returned to Japan, and the day after his return a sheaf of documents addressed by a gentleman named Lessar to a gentleman named Mouravieff was in the hands of the Japanese Council of Elders.
I don’t say anything about the transaction at all; it is not for me to take away the characters of my characters. I only know this, that if the Russian Government had caught Mac just then, they, laboring under, perhaps, a fantastically wrong impression, would have done something decidedly unpleasant to him.
At all events, Mac bought a new suit of reach-me-down clothes at a native shop in the Honcho Dori at Yokohama, and got so drunk that three Mousmés had put him to bed, whilst a fourth fanned him, and a fifth played soothing tunes on a moon-fiddle to exorcise the demon; and a piece of priceless gold lacquer presented to Mac by a high official was sold by him to an American week later for five thousand dollars gold coin—gold coin being much more useful than gold lacquer to a man in Mac’s way of life.
Thus it came about that Mac was a persona grata with the Japanese Government, and had many little privileges not enjoyed by ordinary Europeans.
Danjuro’s shop was situated in Jinriksha Street, a street like a picture slashed out of the “Arabian Nights,” a picture that a child had made additions to with a lead pencil and half spoiled.