Blindfolded Part 31

"It is a strange resemblance," said Mr. Carter. "Don't you find it almost impossible to distinguish between them?"

"To tell you the truth, sor, no," said Corson. "It's a trick of the eye with you, sor. If you was to be here with 'em for a month or two you'd niver think there was two of 'em alike. There's as much difference betwixt one and another as with any two white men. I was loike you at first. I says to meself that they're as like as two pease. But, now, look at those two mugs there in that door. They're no more alike than you and me, as Mr. Wilton here can tell you, sor."

The difference between the two Chinese failed to impress me, but I was mindful of my reputation as an old resident.

"Oh, yes; a very marked contrast," I said promptly, just as I would have sworn that they were twins if Corson had suggested it.

"Very remarkable!" said Mr. Carter dubiously.

In and out we wound through the oriental city--the fairy-land that stretched away, gay with lanterns and busy with strange crowds, changing at times as we came nearer to a tawdry reality, cheap, dirty, and heavy with odors. Here was a shop where ivory in delicate carvings, bronze work that showed the patient handicraft and grotesque fancy of the oriental artist, lay side by side with porcelains, fine and coa.r.s.e, decorated with the barbaric taste in form and color that rules the art of the ancient empire. Beyond, were carved cabinets of ebony and sandal-wood, rich brocades and soft silks and the proprietor sang the praises of his wares and reduced his estimate of their value with each step we took toward the door. Next the rich shop was a low den from whose open door poured fumes of tobacco and opium, and in whose misty depths figures of bloused little men huddled around tables and swayed hither and thither. The click of dominoes, the rattling of sticks and counters, and the excited cries of men, rose from the throng.

"They're the biggest gamblers the Ould Nick iver had to his hand," said Corson; "there isn't one of 'em down there that wouldn't bet the coat off his back."

"Dear me, how dreadful!" said Mrs. Bowser. "And do we have to go down into that horrible hole, and how can we ever get out with our lives?"

"We're not going down there, ma'am," interrupted Corson shortly.

"And where next?" asked Luella.

The question was addressed to the policeman, not to me. Except for a formal greeting when we had met, Luella had spoken no word to me during the evening.

"Here's the biggest joss-house in town," said Corson. "We might as well see it now as any time."

"Oh, do let us see those delightfully horrible idols," cried Mrs.

Bowser. "But," she added, with a sudden access of alarm at some recollection of the reading of her school-days, "do they cut people's hearts out before the wicked things right in the middle of the city?"

The policeman a.s.sured her that the appet.i.te of the joss for gore remained unsatisfied, and led the way into the dimly-lighted building that served as a temple.

I lingered a moment by the door to see that all my party pa.s.sed in.

"There's Wainwright," whispered Porter, who closed the procession.

"Where?" I asked, a dim remembrance of the mission on which I had sent him in pursuit of the snake-eyed man giving the information a sinister twist.

Porter gave a chirrup, and Wainwright halted at the door.

"He's just pa.s.sed up the alley here," said Wainwright in a low voice.

"Who? Terrill?" I asked.

"Yes," said Wainwright. "I've kept him in sight all the evening."

"Hasn't he seen you?" asked Porter. "I spied you as soon as you turned the corner."

"Don't know," said Wainwright; "but something's up. There he goes now. I mustn't miss him." And Wainwright darted off.

I looked searchingly in the direction he took, but could see no sign of the snake-eyed enemy.

The presence of Terrill gave me some tremors of anxiety, for I knew that his unscrupulous ferocity would stop at nothing. I feared for the moment that some violence might threaten the party, and that perhaps Luella was in danger. Then I reflected that the presence of Doddridge Knapp's daughter was a protection against an attack from Doddridge Knapp's agents, and I followed the party into the heathen temple without further apprehensions.

The temple was small, and even in the dim, religious light that gave an air of mystery to the ugly figure of the G.o.d and the trappings of the place, the whole appeared cheap--a poor representative of the majesty of a religion that claims the devotion of four hundred million human beings.

"That's one of the richest carvings ever brought into this country,"

said Corson, pointing to a part of the altar mounting. "Tin thousand dollars wouldn't touch one side of it."

"You don't say!" cried Mrs. Bowser, while the rest murmured in the effort to admire the work of art. "And is that stuff burning for a disinfectant?"

She pointed to numerous pieces of punk, such as serve the small boy on the Fourth of July, that were consuming slowly before the ugly joss.

"No, ma'am--not but they needs it all right enough," said Corson, "but that's the haythen way of sayin' your prayers."

This information was so astonis.h.i.+ng that Corson was allowed to finish his explanation without further remarks from Mrs. Bowser.

"I'll show you the theater next," said he, as he led the way out of the temple with Mrs. Bowser giving her views of the picturesque heathen in questions that Corson found no break in the conversation long enough to answer. As I lingered for a moment in some depression of spirit, waiting for the others to file out, a voice that thrilled me spoke in my ear.

"Our guide is enjoying a great favor." It was Luella, noticing me for the first time since the expedition had started.

"He has every reason to be delighted," I returned, brightening at the favor I was enjoying.

"Foreign travel is said to be of great value in education," said Luella, taking my arm, "but it's certainly stupid at times."

I suspected that Mr. Carter had not been entirely successful in meeting Miss Knapp's ideas of what an escort should be.

"I didn't suppose you could find anything stupid," I said.

"I am intensely interested," she retorted, "but unfortunately the list of subjects has come to an end."

"You might have begun at the beginning again."

"He did," she whispered, "so I thought it time he tried the guide or Aunt Julia."

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank him, you mean," she said gaily. "Now don't be stupid yourself, so please change the subject. Do you know," she continued without giving me time to speak, "that the only way I can be reconciled to this place and the sights we have seen is to imagine I am in Canton or Peking, thousands of miles from home? Seen there, it is interesting, instructive, natural--a part of their people. As a part of San Francisco it is only vile."

"Ugh!" said I, as a whiff from an underground den floated up on the night air, and Luella caught her handkerchief to her face to get her breath. "I'm not sure that this rose would smell any sweeter by the name of Canton."

"I'm afraid your argument is too practical for me to answer," she laughed. "Yet I'm certain it would be more poetic seven thousand miles away."

"Come this way," said Corson, halting with the party at one of the doors. "I'll show you through some of the opium dens, and that will bring us to the stage door of the theater."

"How close and heavy the air is!" said Luella, as we followed the winding pa.s.sage in the dim illumination that came from an occasional gas-jet or oil lamp.

"The yellow man is a firm believer in the motto, 'Ventilation is the root of all evil,'" I admitted.

The fumes of tobacco and opium were heavy on the air, and a moment later we came on a cl.u.s.ter of small rooms or dens, fitted with couches and bunks. It needed no description to make the purpose plain. The whole process of intoxication by opium was before me, from the heating of the metal pipe to the final stupor that is the gift and end of the Black Smoke. Here, was a coolie mixing the drug; there, just beyond him, was another, drawing whiffs from the bubbling narcotic through the bamboo handle of his pipe; there, still beyond, was another, lying back unconscious, half-clad, repulsive, a very sorry reality indeed to the gorgeous dreams that are reputed to follow in the train of the seductive pipe.

"Do they really allow them to smoke that dreadful stuff?" asked Mrs.

Bowser shrilly. "Why, I should think the governor, or the mayor, or you, Mr. Policeman, would stop the awful thing right off. Now, why don't you?"