A POLICEMAN.
To face p. 280.
Whilst the warrant is being read, the accused has had time to collect his wits. He of course denies the accusation, and politely asks the men to be seated. At the same time he calls the cook, and declaring that they must be tired and hungry after their long walk, he orders him to at once get dinner ready for them, and in a whisper he gives him a hint that he does not wish him to spare any expense in providing such a meal as will put them in the best humour possible.
The runners freely protest that they have no time to delay, that their orders are imperative, and that the “Father and Mother of his People” is impatiently awaiting their return. This of course is all put on, for dinner is just the one thing they have been looking forward to; so pretending to yield to the entreaties of their host, they at once make themselves at home. They smoke their pipes and then laugh and chat with the members of the household, just as though they had been invited guests, and not policemen who had come to carry off the head of it to prison.
After a time, when they have got into a comfortable humour with each other, the rich man takes the head runner aside, and after a few minutes of earnest conversation and the slipping of a few dollars into his hand, an air of increased geniality seems to have suddenly sprung up between him and his uninvited guests. They are now most polite and deferential to him, and the swaggering, bullying manner natural to them is replaced by a childlike gentleness that is really most touching. Dinner over, instead of incontinently grabbing him by the tail and hauling him along the road as their instinct would prompt them in the case of any of the common people, they part from him with smiles and bows and high-flown compliments, whilst the culprit actually stands at his door, and ostentatiously, for the benefit of the man who has accused him of stealing his fields, entreats them not to leave him too soon, and assures them that his heart will be desolated if they do not come quickly and pay him another visit.
When they reach the Yamen, the “Man that knows the County” demands of them where their prisoner is. They have their story all ready, and they explain that when they reached his home they could find no trace of him, and that without any explanation to his friends he had disappeared and they could not find him. They declare, however, that they are keeping an eye upon the family, who they are convinced are hiding his movements, and that before long they will be able to arrest him and bring him before the magistrate. There is no doubt but that both the “Man that knows the County” and these scamps whose faces are dyed with the opium hue, all had their tongues in their cheeks whilst this fable was being rehearsed. Both sides know that the whole thing is a farce, but seeing that the original idea was devised by the thinkers and humorists that lived when the history of the nation was in twilight, it would not do for their far-off descendants to give the show away, and so with solemn faces they play out the thing, as though a tragedy and not a comedy were being enacted.
The runners have scarcely left the house, when the rich man hastens, as fast as he can hurry, to the city, and enters his reply to the accusation that has been laid against him. He denies that in toto, and produces deeds, that have been so deftly manufactured that they have the impress of a hundred years upon them, and which he declares prove decisively that the fields in question belong to him, and have come to him in proper legal succession from his forefathers.
He is careful, however, after he has put in his plea, to find out some relatives of the “Father and Mother of the People” who have followed him from his distant home for occasions like this, with whom he confers. An earnest but not an unduly prolonged conversation takes place, when a certain sum of money changes hands, which is destined to find its way into the pocket of the mandarin, and whose purpose is to give him such a clear and profound grasp of the case that he will have no difficulty in deciding that the accusation against the rich man has been a trumped-up one.
Ten days go by and no further proceedings have been taken. The complainant, well aware of the cause of this, scrapes together as large a sum as he can possibly afford, and by the same underground method sends it to the “Man that knows the County,” with the hope that he will be able to see the justice of his case and give him back his fields. At the same time he enters what in legal phraseology is called a hurrying petition, the object of which is to hasten the action of the mandarin so as to finish up the case without delay.