San Francisco (Calif.) -- Fiction; Shanghaiing -- Fiction; Short stories
“We’ll try a place I heard of in Jackson Street,” he told Hansen after
they had climbed the stairs from the Blubber Room. “Here, take these
handcuffs and this badge. It’s a building inspector’s. Nobody will know
the difference where we’re going.”
The seaman crammed two pairs of rusty handcuffs in the side pockets of
his pea-jacket. He pinned the badge on his vest.
“I’m James Keenon,” explained Abie. “No crook or Chink knows Keenon in
this town. He’s the man behind. He works up the case, scouts around,
and lets somebody else do the pinching. He don’t testify at the trials.
He’s the brains. The detectives you hear about are his tools.”
“I dank that’s a good way,” said Hansen.
“Of course it’s good--for me! All I have got to do is say I’m Keenon,
flash my badge, and you make the arrest.”
Abie opened his raincoat. He ran a finger through an armhole of his
vest. A gold insignia flashed beneath the shielding coat as the crimp
pulled out a suspender strap.
“That’s where all the good ones wear it,” he explained. “But you want
yours in sight. You’re the tool, to-night.”
The mate was a big man. He would have made two of Abie. He lacked the
crimp’s energy and assurance. He dropped back one stride and followed
Abie up a hill, through an alley and over a roof.
“Nothin’ doing,” said Abie after glancing at three windows. “This used
to be a creepin’ joint where sailors were trimmed. The creepers have
crawled away. Guess the police were wise.”
The crimp led Hansen through a maze of courts, covered arches and
hallways. They started descending cellar steps. Musty bales loomed
before them. It was the place of Wan Fat, dealer in li-she nuts.
Abie recalled a brief-caught conversation which he had overheard in the
rear of the Blubber Room. Wan Fat, and his brother Sing Fat, observed
the law. Next door, however, lived Hong Kee, who was known to have a
supply of choice Victoria opium. The matter of the opium was common
gossip along the Barbary Coast. Hong Kee did not know Abie.
The crimp’s pride had been awakened by Captain Gully. Here was a
chance. He tiptoed between Wan Fat’s bales of nuts, drew Hansen to his
side, and pointed to a low door.
“Bust through there,” he whispered. “You won’t need no gat. I’ll go all
the way up-stairs. We’ll trap the rats.”
Hong Kee and two of his patrons were enjoying themselves around a
layout tray when Abie, armed with a rusty revolver, dropped through a
roof-scuttle and Hansen broke down the door.
The placid faces of the Chinamen underwent several changes after the
crimp ripped open a chair’s cushion and pulled out five toys of opium.
He had learned of the hiding-place while listening to the conversation
of two hop fiends in his mother’s dive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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