“Just one,” said Peter de Peyster.
“No, we all get ’em,” protested Roddy. “Each time!”
“Th’ ’men’ment to th’ ’men’ment is carried,” announced the Orchid Hunter. He untwisted his legs and clapped his hands. The paper walls slid apart, the little Nezans, giggling, bowing, ironing out their knees with open palms, came tripping and stumbling to obey.
“Take away the tea!” shouted the Orchid Hunter. “It makes me nervous. Bring us fizzy-water, in larges’ size, cold, expensive bottles. And now, you fellows,” proclaimed the Orchid Hunter, “I’m goin’ into secret session and initiate you into Yokohama Chapter, Secret Order of White Mice. And—I will be Mos’ Exalted Secret White Mouse.”
When he returned to the ship Perry told the wardroom about it and laughed, and the wardroom laughed, and that night at the Grand Hotel, while the Japanese band played “Give My Regards to Broadway,” which Peter de Peyster told them was the American national anthem, the White Mice gave their first annual dinner. For, as the Orchid Hunter pointed out, in order to save life, one must sustain it.
And Louis Eppinger himself designed that dinner, and the Paymaster, and Perry’s brother-officers, who were honored guests, still speak of it with awe; and the next week’s Box of Curios said of it editorially: “And while our little Yokohama police know much of ju-jitsu, they found that they had still something to learn of the short jab to the jaw and the quick getaway.”
Indeed, throughout, it was a most successful dinner.
And just to show how small this world is, and that “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform,” at three o’clock that morning, when the dinner-party in rickshaws were rolling down the Bund, singing “We’re Little White Mice Who Have Gone Astray,” their voices carried across the Pacific, across the Cordilleras and the Caribbean Sea; and an old man in his cell, tossing and shivering with fever, smiled and sank to sleep; for in his dreams he had heard the scampering feet of the White Mice, and he had seen the gates of his prison-cell roll open.
The Forrester Construction Company did not get the contract to build the three light-houses. The Japanese preferred a light-house made by an English firm. They said it was cheaper. It was cheaper, because they bought the working plans from a draughtsman the English firm had discharged for drunkenness, and, by causing the revolving light to wink once instead of twice, dodged their own patent laws.