As the detective reached the spot, he turned on a strong white light from his electric flash lamp, full on the lurking figure inside the park.
He saw a man in the blue blouse, loose trousers, and felt-soled slippers of an ordinary Chinese laundryman. But he could not see the man’s face. It was obscured by the shrubbery, and the fellow was cunning enough to keep it there while the light was turned on him.
“Who are you?” demanded the detective sharply, in the Chinese tongue.
The man was taken aback at hearing a Caucasian address him in his own language, and he blurted out a Mongolian oath of dismay.
Nick Carter took no notice of this—although he understood its purport well enough. Instead, he asked the Chinaman if his name wasn’t Pon Gee. This was the first name that came to his tongue, and he merely wanted to get the fellow into conversation.
But the wiles of the Chinese coolie have been proverbial ever since—and before—Bret Harte wrote his famous poem. The man did not reply. He put up one arm, so that the long, hanging sleeve of his blouse completely covered his face, and ran away into the blackness.
Nick Carter could not follow him with the light, and he knew it would be waste of time to hunt in the park for such an elusive object as a Chinese laundryman. So he shut off his flash and walked thoughtfully across the road to his waiting taxi.
“I knew it was the work of the crossed-needles gang, anyhow,” he reflected. “That fellow was only a look-out. The Yellow Tong has hundreds of such men in New York—fellows who do not understand what they are doing for the organization, or why. He was told to watch Anderton’s house, of course, and to report if the murderers of my poor friend were interfered with. Poor Anderton! He was too good a man to be done to death in that ghastly fashion.”
Andrew Anderton was a bachelor. He never had had[Pg 8] time for marriage, he said. His explorations in foreign countries would not have fitted well into married life, either. So he had lived his own life in his own way, and, being a wealthy man, had been able to go where he would, and study with every advantage at his finger ends.
“I waited for you, Mr. Carter,” remarked the driver of the taxi, as the detective stepped in. “I knowed you’d want to go home some time. Where to, now?”