Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 21, 1922 — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FORTUNE UNAWARES. 9 white as snow and big as a pea. I tucked the bowls alternately under my lower lip, China-fashion, and shoveled the food into my mouth with chopsticks. Man, it was good! And Lung Hi folded his hands over his paunch and beamed at me. “Where you stop now?” he asked. “* Verez?” ‘““No more.” I said. ‘“ To-night I buy some clothes and go along Hotel American. To-morrow I think I can get a job.” He grunted again and patted me on the shoulder as I went out, feeling like a dead jackal turned into a lion. I got shaved, but I bought the razor afterward.’ And I got two suits of decent whites ready-made at a Chinese tailor’s, with shirts and socks and underwear, hand- kerchiefs and ties and shoes, all in a leather grip, and had a hot bath at the barber’s before I tackled the clerk for a room with a real bed and sheets that were changed daily. I didn’t look like a first-saloon tour- ist, but I passed muster. “Only two rooms left,” he said. has no bath, but it is larger.” “‘ Maskee,” 1 said, and he gave me the one with the bath. I had another real meal in the dining- room, and went up to my chamber, with a cheroot in my mouth, sleepy for that bed. I set the red godling up on the bureau and kowtoed to him. “IT do not know your honorable name,” I said, ‘ but I take back all I may have thought against you. You are one No. 1 topside joss.” There was a perpetual Billikeny smile graven on his ruddy features, but it seemed to broaden. I didn’t know then what a bully little mascot he was going to turn out. “One CHAPTER III. LI. YUEN. WAS just finishing an early breakfast the next morning. I had had another hot bath and another quite unnecessary shave, and I felt fit. A boy came into the dining-room, chanting in his Chinese sing- song: “ Call fo’ Misteh Kennedy! Call fo’ Misteh Kennedy!”’ I didn’t get it at first. Then I nodded to him as he passed my table. The old familiar Americanism of it completely re- habilitated me, though I could not imagine who on earth wanted me. And, on the moment, I decided, with eighty dollars in my pocket, that Hawkins and his job could go hang. - As I went toward the desk the manager himself met me, smiling, tipped off by the clerk. I might have been the local agent of the Standard Oil Company, for his def- erence, yet I knew they had sized up that light-weighted, fake-leather grip of mine. A tall Chinaman was with him, spectacled, grave, dressed: in dark purple silk-brocade, a coral button on his cap. He bowed to me, and I to him, and then he handed me a note. I opened it wonderingly. The writing was spidery, precise. The stars perish; But the soul of man is a thing immortal. As two fine wines are blended; Each gaining from the other; So souls ‘flourish On the rare essences of friendship. There the verse stopped, the opening lines, barring the first, of the verse in the lacquered box. And underneath: Will the friend of my son honor his father with a visit? At three this afternoon I shall have the leisure that I trust. will serve your convenience. With your consent my carriage will call for you half an hour before that time. May the ties of friendship bind us. Lr Yuen. The manager purred as I said I would be ready. The messenger left with cere- mony, and I departed, almost as bewildered as Aladdin after he had rubbed the lamp. Then I went out to get a few things for a better presentment of myself—not too many—for I had a shrewd idea that Li Yuen, if he knew where to find me, had a true idea of my circumstances. Lung Hi must have recognized the gun and tipped me off. I made a few inquiries as to Li Yuen. He was top chop, without a doubt, wealthy and respected. It was he, I learned, who, when a certain power had tried for many days in many ways to lift artillery to the comicloool C©