"It’s the most exasperating thing you can run against." "Well, when my merchant failed me, I went to another I knew slightly, then to an interpreter, then to the boss of the Chinese guides. The same ’No sabby,’ and the same stolid look everywhere." "Why didn’t you go to the Chinese interpreter at the City Hall? He’s a white man, and wouldn’t be afraid to give away secrets." "I tried him, but he said it was nonsense. It’s evidently a cipher, though it’s one pretty well known in Chinatown." "I’ll tell you what to do then, Hampden,"--and he took out his pencil and wrote a few words on a card. "Take this to Big Sam at his Chinatown office to-morrow. Show him the paper, and he’ll give you the reading. He is under some obligations to me, and he can hardly refuse." "Just the thing! As Big Sam comes pretty near being the King of Chinatown, he will have no one to fear." "Now about the Council of Nine. What did you get?" "Well, I saw two members of the Council and a few of their followers. I tried to pump them, and I dare say I shall become as good a convert to their propaganda as old Bolton himself. They have some crack-brained notions of an uprising of the people, but they don’t appear to have anything definite in view at present." And I gave my employer an account of my visit to the House of Blazes. He stroked his red whiskers meditatively, and then said: "Well, that doesn’t sound as though they could amount to much, but as long as P. Bolton is backing them, you’d better keep a close eye on them." *CHAPTER IV* *MACHIAVELLI IN BRONZE* Waverly Place was in the full tide of business. The little brown man in his blue blouse and clattering shoes was seen in his endless variety, chattering, bargaining, working, lounging, moving; and the short street, with its American architecture half orientalized, was gay with colors and foul with odors. Patient coolies trotted past, bending between the heavily laden baskets that swung upon the poles passed over the shoulder. On the corner an itinerant merchant sat under an improvised awning with a rude bench before him on which to display his wares, and a big Chinese basket beside him from which his stock might be renewed as it was sold. Here was a store with a window display of fine porcelains, silks, padded coats and gowns covered with grotesque figures, everything about it denoting neatness and order. Next it was a barber shop where two Chinese customers were undergoing the ordeal of a shave.