Sweet Counsel and “Black Smoke.”
“Roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mince pies, plum pudding, cheese-straws, a choice between beer and champagne! Well, Quong Lung, and what do you want of me, you prince of plotters?”
The speaker had all the outward and visible signs of one who was a slave to opium; but under the influence of Quong Lung’s Christmas dinner his eyes sparkled and his spirits rose to a high pitch.
“Nothing, nothing, Jim—at least nothing to speak of; and we won’t speak of it until we have had a small black coffee, and—a small black pipe. By the way,” he went on, “Miss Ah Moy and Miss Shun Sen will come in presently with the coffee and pipes.”
Quong Lung’s guest, James Ray, was lank, and sallow, and of uncertain age, because of his terrible vice, and his hair was prematurely gray. He had been an electrical engineer of high promise until he became an opium-fiend. Even his clothes betrayed his failing, no less than his scanty and feeble beard and mustache and his leaden complexion. He had attended the same Eastern college as Quong Lung, and had imbued the latter with a taste for Shakespeare and Byron and the Psalms of David; together they had graduated from Yale; and then Quong Lung, recognizing the ability of his friend and the possibilities of electricity in the career of a highbinder, had introduced Ray to the fascination of opium-smoking; and so—through the uses of adversity—he held the latter in pawn for his own nefarious ends.
“Why all this magnificence, Quong Lung?” inquired Ray, after Ah Moy and her colleague had brought in the coffee and the implements pertaining to “black smoke.” “You have but to say the word, old man, and, like Ariel, ‘I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’”
Now the hiring of Ah Moy and Shun Sen to twang their samyens for the delectation of white devils, and hand them coffee and sing to them, “came high,” for the damsels were famous in their way and in great demand.
“This is too small a thing for you to notice, Jim,” replied Quong Lung; “nothing is too good for my friend.”
“Why didn’t you add, ‘the earth is my lord’s and the fullness thereof,’ and crush me with your compliments? As though I were a damned coolie!”
There was some petulance in Ray’s voice, as he gave way to the feeble irritability that attends the constant use of narcotics and stimulants by all except Orientals. He rose to his elbow from the mat on which he was smoking, and threw the pipe on its tray, like a spoiled child. But Quong Lung took no notice of the little outbreak, and Ah Moy put the pipe to his lips with her own fair hands and soon coaxed him into complacency. When a look of contentment had once more settled on his face, Ray said, deprecatingly: “It was the ‘dope’ that spoke, Quong Lung, and not I; forgive me, old man! And now, what do you want?”