Martin strode to the hard-breathing giant, placed his hand on the fellow’s damp shoulder and said softly, “It was a message! It has been answered.” And he went silently into the rain again.
A square away he paused and looked at a large clock. Once more he saw that in his impatience he was ahead of time. The cold rain had now penetrated the shoulders of his coat and Martin felt the steam rising from his hot body. What did Drew want in this undesirable section? Accustomed as Martin was to certain ways of life, he could not help but feel the disease of this unnatural quarter. He stood on the corner of Bowery and Pell—the Chinese street—a mimeographed edition of its former tong retreat and underground silence. It was true, a small group of thin-lipped, older men with their discreet smoke-houses and their hatchet-men survived. But the list was growing smaller so swiftly that the aroma of opium now had a death-like stench. The neon lights of New America had quickly dispelled the shadows and the soft lanterns of oriental intrigue. Martin looked across the street toward the little theater on the corner. It was half hidden by rain, but he could faintly see the line of trade in front of it. As the fog deepened, sailing lower under Brooklyn Bridge, Martin could hear the tangled music of a victrola somewhere nearby. The singsong lady of Shanghai was mute behind the stalls. But her Tiao-wu chords brought about by twangy, cut-off strings and yellow pipes as high as reeds can go, caused him to reflect upon the ancient wailing destined to wail forever....
Suddenly he felt his arm seized and the hard mouth of a gun pressed into his back.
“Don’t make a mistake,” said a harsh, low voice.
Martin dropped swiftly on his hands and brought his heels upward, barely missing the other’s chin. The fellow chuckled.
“Still good with your feet, eh, Martin,” he said. “Damn your French foot! It nearly got me!”
Martin squatted by the gutter as he rinsed his stinging hands in the pure flow of rainwater. Getting up, he rubbed his sore shoulders.
“You’ve gone to hell, Duke,” he said. “You weren’t this bad when I left Panama. You should have stuck to reefers. What is it now?”
“The Duke” drew his fingers slowly under his nose, then brought up his coat collar to hide his face, pretending to shake.
Martin smiled, shook hands with his friend whose uproarious laughter followed this act, and pulled him along to a tea-shop on Pell Street. Inside, he ordered coffee while the Duke took Chow Mein with tea.