One only had been known to resist--Sassy Sam, who with a dwarf's body possessed a giant's soul. Sassy Sam was a hatchet-man of dread eminence, belonging to the Hip Sing Tong. Equipped of a Chinese sword, of singular yet murderous appearance, he chased Mike the length of Pell Street. Mike out-ran Sassy Sam, which was just as well. It took three shells of hop to calm Mike's perturbed spirit; for he confessed to a congenital horror of steel. “That's straight,” said Mike, as with shaking fingers he filled his peanut-oil lamp, and made ready to cook himself a pill, “I never could stand for a chive. An' say”--he shuddered--“that monk has: one longer'n your arm.” Sassy Sam and his snickersnee, however, did not cure Mike of his weakness for punching the Mongolian head. Nothing short of death could have done that. Some six months prior to his caving in the skull of Low Foo, because of those shirts improperly missing, Mike did that which led to consequences. Prompted by an overplus of sweet, heady Chinese rum, or perhaps it was the heroic example of Sassy Sam, Ling Tchen, being surprised by Mike in Pell Street, did not--pig-tail flying--clatter inside and lock his door. More and worse, he faced Mike, faced him, coughed contumeliously and spat upon the cobbles. To merely soak Ling Tchen would have been no adequate retort--Ling Tchen who thus studied to shame him. Wherefore Mike killed him with a clasp knife, and even went so far as to cut off the dead Tchen's head. The law might have taken notice of this killing, but some forethoughtful friend had had wit enough to tuck a gun beneath the dead Tchen's blouse, and thus it became at once and obviously a case of self-defence. There was a loose screw in the killing of Ling Tchen. The loose screw dwelt not in the manner of that killing, which had been not only thorough but artistic. Indeed, cutting off Ling Tchen's head as a finale was nothing short of a stroke of genius. The loose screw was that Ling Tchen belonged to the Hip Sing Tong; and the Hip Sing Tongs lived in Pell Street, where Mike himself abode. To be sure, since Ling Tchen did the provoking, Mike had had no choice. Still, it might have come off better had Ling Tchen been an On Leon Tong. An On Leon Tong belongs in Mott Street and doesn't dare poke his wheat-hued nose into Pell Street, where the Four Brothers and the Hip Sing Tongs are at home. Mike's room was in the rear, on the second floor of Number Twelve. It pleased and soothed him, he said, as he smoked a pill, to hear the muffled revelry below in Tony's. He had just come from his room upon that shirt occasion which resulted so disastrously for Low Fee. Mike was among friends in Tony's. Having told in full how he did up Low Foo, and smashed that shirt thief's laundry, Mike drank two glasses of beer, and said that he thought now he'd go upstairs and have a smoke. “There must be somethin' in lickin' a chink,” expounded Mike, “that makes a guy hanker for th' hop.”