Paddy Blake departed in great haste, and Charley Tong Sin offered O’Shea a cigarette from an ornately jewelled case, remarking:
“You are in Shanghai for business or pleasure? It is a bully good town for fun; not as swift as New York, but not so slow either. I went to college in America.”
“Which is more than I did,” confessed O’Shea. “Oh, I am just looking about Shanghai, not to find out how swift the town is, but to invest a bit of money, maybe. Jordan, Margetson? That is a big shipping house?”
“The same. I am in charge of the native business,” chirruped Charley Tong Sin. “Anything in the shipping line you want, you come to see me and I will put you wise. You have done business in these ports before, captain?”
“No; mostly in the Atlantic trade. I was in the office of your firm this afternoon, asking some information about a possible charter.”
“Ah, but you did not see me. Too bad,” and the comprador added with bland self-satisfaction: “It must have been after three o’clock. Then I am in the club drinking gin cocktails every day until I go home to dinner. It is my custom. There is no man in Shanghai that does more business and drinks more gin cocktails, but I do not mix the two things. I am the wise guy, eh? What tonnage do you want to charter, and where to?”
“I am not quite ready to say,” replied O’Shea, who preferred to keep his affairs to himself even when offered the assistance of so capable an adviser as Charley Tong Sin.
“I beg your pardon. Come to my office when you have made up your mind, Captain O’Shea. For the sake of the jolly sprees I had in little old New York, I will see that you are not stung in Shanghai. What do you say to a drive on the Bubbling Well Road before you go back to your hotel? My carriage is waiting a little way from here. I came to the park to meet a friend but he has not arrived.”
The invitation was attractive and the acquaintance of the comprador worth cultivating. O’Shea accepted with thanks, and presently they climbed into a very shiny victoria with two Chinese grooms on the box. The spirited little horses, admirably matched, danced through the paved streets of the settlement and out into the wider spaces of the countryside. The shipmaster found pleasure in new places; with him sight-seeing had never lost its zest, and the Bubbling Well Road was one of the things that no voyager to the Orient ought to miss. To view it by night was rather unsatisfactory, but the air was deliciously sweet and cool, and the handsome embowered residences of merchants and diplomats and Chinese officials appeared quite magnificent when duskily discerned by the glimmer of the stars.
“You have seen the native city? No?” said Charley Tong Sin. “It is very dirty, but picturesque to beat the deuce. What you say? To-morrow morning I go to have an appointment with His Excellency, the governor, at his yamen. It is on business. Perhaps you would like to meet me there and have an audience. It is rather good fun, much red-tape, a big bunch of officials, and plenty of kow-towing. Not many foreigners have admittance to him in this way.”