Therefore, said Wong Get, as a matter of honor it is necessary that our brother be avenged and that no chances be taken. A much too long time has already elapsed. I have written the letter and will read it.
He fumbled in his sleeve and drew forth a roll of brown paper covered with heavy Chinese characters unwinding it from a strip of bamboo.
To the Honorable Members of the On Gee Tong:
Whereas it has pleased you to take the life of our beloved
friend and relative Wah Sing, it is with greatest courtesy
and the utmost regret that we inform you that it is
necessary for us likewise to remove one of your esteemed
society, and that we shall proceed thereto without delay.
Due warning being thus honorably given I subscribe
myself with profound appreciation,
For the Hip Leong Tong,
WONG GET.
He ceased reading and there was a perfunctory grunt of approval from round the circle. Then he turned to the official soothsayer and directed him to ascertain whether the time were propitious. The latter tossed into the air a handful of painted ivory sticks, carefully studied their arrangement when fallen, and nodded gravely.
The omens are favorable, O honorable one!
Then there is nothing left but the choice of our representatives, continued Wong Get. Pass the fateful box, O Fong Hen.
Fong Hen, a slender young Chinaman, the official slipper, or messenger, of the society, rose and, lifting a lacquered gold box from the table, passed it solemnly to each member.
This time there will be four, said Wong Get.
Each in turn averted his eyes and removed from the box a small sliver of ivory. At the conclusion of the ceremony the four who had drawn red tokens rose. Wong Get addressed them.
Mock Hen, Mock Ding, Long Get, Sui Sing-to you it is confided to avenge the murder of our brother Wah Sing. Fail not in your purpose!
And the four answered unemotionally: Those to whom it is confided will not fail.
Then pivoting silently upon their heels they passed out of the cellar.
Wong Get glanced round the table.
If there is no further business the society will disperse after the customary refreshment.
Fong Hen placed thirteen tiny glasses upon the table and filled them with rice whisky scented with aniseed and a dash of powdered ginger. At a signal from Wong Get the thirteen Chinamen lifted the glasses and drank.
The meeting is adjourned, said he.
Eighty years before, in a Cantonese rabbit warren two yellow men had fought over a white woman, and one had killed the other. They had belonged to different societies, or tongs. The associates of the murdered man had avenged his death by slitting the throat of one of the members of the other organization, and these in turn had retaliated thus establishing a vendetta which became part and parcel of the lives of certain families, as naturally and unavoidably as birth, love and death. As regularly as the solstice they alternated in picking each other off. Branches of the Hip Leong and On Gee tongs sprang up in San Francisco and New York-and the feud was transferred with them to Chatham Square, a feud imposing a sacred obligation rooted in blood, honor and religion upon every member, who rather than fail to carry it out would have knotted a yellow silken cord under his left ear and swung himself gently off a table into eternal sleep.
Young Mock Hen, one of the four avengers, had created a distinct place for himself in Chinatown by making a careful study of New York psychology. He was a good-looking Chink, smooth-faced, tall and supple; he knew very well how to capitalize his attractiveness. By day he attended Columbia University as a special student in applied electricity, keeping a convenient eye meanwhile on three coolies whom he employed to run The College Laundry on Morningside Heights. By night he vicariously operated a chop-suey palace on Seventh Avenue, where congregated the worst elements of the Tenderloin. But his heart was in the gambling den which he maintained in Doyers Street, and where anyone who knew the knock could have a shell of hop for the asking, once Mock had given him the once-over through the little sliding panel.
Mock was a Christian Chinaman. That is to say, purely for business reasons-for what he got out of it and the standing that it gave him-he attended the Rising Star Mission and also frequented Hudson House, the social settlement where Miss Fanny Duryea taught him to play ping-pong and other exciting parlor games, and read to him from books adapted to an American child of ten. He was a great favorite at both places, for he was sweet-tempered and wore an expression of heaven-born innocence. He had even been to church with Miss Duryea, temporarily absenting himself for that purpose of a Sunday morning from the steam-heated flat where-unknown to her, of course-he lived with his white wife, Emma Pratt, a lady of highly miscellaneous antecedents.
Except when engaged in transacting legal or oilier business with the municipal, sociologic or religious world-at which times his vocabulary consisted only of the most rudimentary pidgin-Mock spoke a fluent and even vernacular English learned at night school. Incidentally he was the head of the syndicate which controlled and dispensed the loo, faro, fan-tan and other gambling privileges of Chinatown.