"Ask what you like, cully," he replied with an impudent leer. "You can bet I’m too fly to give up anything I ain’t wanting you to know. I ain’t a-goin’ to split on the man that paid me, even if he has gone to the morgue. I’m game, I am." And he straightened himself with a pitiful exhibition of the criminal’s pride. "Oh, you needn’t be afraid of giving away Bolton’s secrets," I said. "I know more about them than you do." And I mentioned several incidents of his employment that made his eyes open and his face pale with the fear that he was caught beyond escape. "What I want you to tell me is what Bolton was doing with Big Sam?" The spy looked sullenly at the floor, and shook his head. And it was not until I had threatened to put a charge of attempt to murder against him that he replied: "Well, I don’t see as there’s any harm in tipping it off to youse on that. The old rat’s game was to get Big Sam to put up money for them crazy bunko-men on the Council of Nine. He done it, too. I’ll bet he got the coolie to put up as much as he gave himself." "Did you take the money from Big Sam to Bolton?" "Me? Not much! They was too fly to let me get my nippers on it. I was plain messenger-boy--that’s what I was--and I carried a lot of talk about what the Council was going to do. You knows all that game. If youse want it, I can give youse a yard of it now." I could well believe that this creature was not trusted with any of the purposes that these men had in their alliance. So I turned to the question: "What was that Chinese paper in the pocket of the overcoat you left with me that night you tried to kill me when I chased you out of Mr. Kendrick’s yard?" "Oh, youse is the feller that got that coat, are you? Well, that paper was just an order or ticket that would let me into Big Sam’s tong house when the tong was meeting--so as I could see him without losing time. It wasn’t no use to me; but Big Sam let on he was giving me first cousin to the Mint when he passed it over." Nothing more was to be got out of this man, so I left the fetid prison, and followed up the line of inquiry by seeking Big Sam. I found him just entering the store that led to his dwelling. He received me with courtesy, but there was a trace of suspicion in his eyes as he invited me to follow him to his office. "I suppose I do not bring news in telling you that our mutual acquaintance, Mr. Peter Bolton, is no more," I said, as we entered the oriental hall. In that room with its intricate ornamentation, its grotesque carvings and garish hangings, Peter Bolton and the troubled city of San Francisco seemed thousands of miles away, and I felt like a traveler in Cathay, who had come overseas bearing news of distant countries. "You are not the first to tell me," said Big Sam. "I had the regret of hearing it some hours ago."