<h2 id="c8">VIII</h2>
<p>By the time he was on the noon boat that
left for Macao, Blake had quite forgotten
about the revolver. As he steamed southward
over smooth seas, threading a way
through boulder-strewn islands and skirting
mountainous cliffs, his movements seemed to
take on a sense of finality. He stood at the
rail, watching the hazy blue islands, the forests
of fishing-boats and high-pooped junks
floating lazily at anchor, the indolent figures
which he could catch glimpses of on deck, the
green waters of the China Sea. He watched
them with intent, yet abstracted, eyes. Some
echo of the witchery of those Eastern waters
at times penetrated his own preoccupied soul.
A vague sense of his remoteness from his old
life at last crept in to him.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_108">[108]</div>
<p>He thought of the watching green lights
that were flaring up, dusk by dusk, in the
shrill New York night, the lamps of the precinct
stations, the lamps of Headquarters,
where the great building was full of moving
feet and shifting faces, where telephones were
ringing and detectives were coming and going,
and policemen in uniform were passing up and
down the great stone steps, clean-cut, ruddy-faced,
strong-limbed policemen, talking and
laughing as they started out on their night details.
He could follow them as they went,
those confident-striding “flatties” with their
ash night-sticks at their side, soldiers without
bugles or banner, going out to do the goodly
tasks of the Law, soldiers of whom he was
once the leader, the pride, the man to whom
they pointed as the Vidoc of America.</p>
<p>And he would go back to them as great as
ever. He would again compel their admiration.
The newspaper boys would again come
filing into his office and shake hands with him
and smoke his cigars and ask how much he
could tell them about his last haul. And he
would recount to them how he shadowed Binhart
half way round the world, and gathered
him in, and brought him back to Justice.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_109">[109]</div>
<p>It was three o’clock in the afternoon when
Blake’s steamer drew near Macao. Against
a background of dim blue hills he could make
out the green and blue and white of the houses
in the Portuguese quarters, guarded on one
side by a lighthouse and on the other by a
stolid square fort. Swinging around a sharp
point, the boat entered the inner harbor,
crowded with Chinese craft and coasters and
dingy tramps of the sea.</p>
<p>Blake seemed in no hurry to disembark.
The sampan into which he stepped, in fact,
did not creep up to the shore until evening.
There, ignoring the rickshaw coolies who
awaited him as he passed an obnoxiously officious
trio of customs officers, he disappeared
up one of the narrow and slippery side streets
of the Chinese quarter.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_110">[110]</div>
<p>He followed this street for some distance,
assailed by the smell of its mud and rotting
sewerage, twisting and turning deeper into the
darkness, past dogs and chattering coolies and
oil lamps and gaming-house doors. Into one
of these gaming houses he turned, passing
through the blackwood sliding door and climbing
the narrow stairway to the floor above.
There, from a small quadrangular gallery, he
could look down on the “well” of the fan-tan
lay out below.</p>
<p>He made his way to a seat at the rail, took
out a cigar, lighted it, and let his veiled gaze
wander about the place, point by point, until
he had inspected and weighed and appraised
every man in the building. He continued to
smoke, listlessly, like a sightseer with time on
his hands and in no mood for movement. The
brim of his black boulder shadowed his eyes.
His thumbs rested carelessly in the arm-holes
of his waistcoat. He lounged back torpidly,
listening to the drone and clatter of voices below,
lazily inspecting each newcomer, pretending
to drop off into a doze of ennui. But all
the while he was most acutely awake.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_111">[111]</div>
<p>For somewhere in that gathering, he knew,
there was a messenger awaiting him.
Whether he was English or Portuguese, white
or yellow, Blake could not say. But from
some one there some word or signal was to come.</p>
<p>He peered down at the few white men in
the pit below. He watched the man at the
head of the carved blackwood table, beside his
heap of brass “cash,” watched him again and
again as he took up his handful of coins, covered
them with a brass hat while the betting
began, removed the hat, and seemed to be
dividing the pile, with the wand in his hand,
into fours. The last number of the last four,
apparently, was the object of the wagers.</p>
<p>Blake could not understand the game. It
puzzled him, just as the yellow men so stoically
playing it puzzled him, just as the entire
country puzzled him. Yet, obtuse as he was,
he felt the gulf of centuries that divided the
two races. These yellow men about him
seemed as far away from his humanity, as detached
from his manner of life and thought,
as were the animals he sometimes stared at
through the bars of the Bronx Zoo cages.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_112">[112]</div>
<p>A white man would have to be pretty far
gone, Blake decided, to fall into their ways,
to be satisfied with the life of those yellow
men. He would have to be a terrible failure,
or he would have to be hounded by a terrible
fear, to live out his life so far away from his
own kind. And he felt now that Binhart
could never do it, that a life sentence there
would be worse than a life sentence to “stir.”
So he took another cigar, lighted it, and sat
back watching the faces about him.</p>
<p>For no apparent reason, and at no decipherable
sign, one of the yellow faces across the
smoke-filled room detached itself from its fellows.
This face showed no curiosity, no
haste. Blake watched it as it calmly approached
him. He watched until he felt a
finger against his arm.</p>
<p>“You clum b’long me,” was the enigmatic
message uttered in the detective’s ear.</p>
<p>“Why should I go along with you?” Blake
calmly inquired.</p>
<p>“You clum b’long me,” reiterated the
Chinaman. The finger again touched the detective’s
arm. “Clismas!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_113">[113]</div>
<p>Blake rose, at once. He recognized the
code word of “Christmas.” This was the
messenger he had been awaiting.</p>
<p>He followed the figure down the narrow
stairway, through the sliding door, out into
the many-odored street, foul with refuse, bisected
by its open sewer of filth, took a turning
into a still narrower street, climbed a precipitous
hill cobbled with stone, turned still
again, always overshadowed and hemmed in
by tall houses close together, with black-beamed
lattice doors through which he could
catch glimpses of gloomy interiors. He
turned again down a wooden-walled hallway
that reminded him of a Mott Street burrow.
When the Chinaman touched him on the sleeve
he came to a stop.</p>
<p>His guide was pointing to a closed door in
front of them.</p>
<p>“You sabby?” he demanded.</p>
<p>Blake hesitated. He had no idea of what
was behind that door, but he gathered from
the Chinaman’s motion that he was to enter.
Before he could turn to make further inquiry
the Chinaman had slipped away like a shadow.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_114">[114]</div>
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