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I had been watching Kennedy with interest, for the Tong wars always make picturesque newspaper stories, when a knock at the door announced the arrival of Dr. Leslie, anxious for some result. "Have you been able to find out anything yet?" he greeted Kennedy eagerly as Craig looked up from his microscope. Kennedy turned and nodded.
What is he singing? Oh, come! that is overdoing it, Jacky! Why, Jem! he is telling them he killed you on the spot." "I'll punch his head!" "No! take it easy," said Robinson; "he is a poet; this is what they call poetical license." "Lie without sense, I call it when here is the man." "Ting tong! ting tong tong! I slew him he fell by the Wurra-Gurra River. I slew him! ting tong! he fell ting tong!
This room was vividly painted with weird figures depicting Chinese forms of torture, a veritable charnel-house of what in Europe would be called the Dark Ages. There were plenty of evidences that at no very distant date this chamber had been in use to punish horribly those who had offended against the fire god or the commands of the Tong leaders.
He met Le Compte Davis, Paul Schenck, Joe Ford, Dick Kittrelle, Al MacDonald, W. I. Gilbert, Frank Dominguez and Jud Rush among the lawyers; the district attorney and his staff of deputies; "Bud" Hill, the county counsel; police detectives, deputy sheriffs, private detectives, city and county officials, federal agents and a host of others, including such picturesque characters as Martin Aguirre, court bailiff, former sheriff and one-time warden of San Quentin; Charlie Sebastian, whom the reporters declared unanimously was a capable chief of police, despite his faults; Billy Wong, representing the Bing Kong Tong of Chinatown, and "Cap" Gillis, Chinatown "lookout" and undying friend of the police reporters.
"I wish I could make up my mind whether it is due to the closing of the joints by O'Connor, or the belief that one tong is informing on the other about opium smuggling." Kennedy passed over all the picturesque features in the newspapers, and from it all picked out the one point that was most important for the case which he was working to clear up.
Tutt hardly cross-examined Fong at all, but with Mr. Burke he pursued very different tactics, speedily rousing the wrestler to such a condition of fury that he was hardly articulate, for the old lawyer gently hinted that Mr. Burke was inventing the whole story for the purpose of assisting his friends in the On Gee Tong.
He remembers the war there was in the halls of the gnomes; and how the fairies came for the opals once, which Tong Tong Tarrup has; and the way that the giants went through the fields below, he watching from his gateway: he remembers quests that are even yet a wonder to the gods.
There were other sights on these rainy days endless processions of slipshod men on wooden clogs, clattering their way through the narrow streets, while they protected themselves from the watery downpour by flat oil-paper umbrellas; other strong-limbed men acting as wheel-horses to draw or push incredible weights of lumber; and saving themselves from the wet by bushy coats of straw that made them look like porcupines; women, little and big, carrying babies on their backs, occasionally a girl, aged anywhere from four to eight, loaded with a baby aged two; shops, shops, shops, one-storied, artistic, fantastic, with signs on which Ah Sing and Ah Tong have mingled Chinese characters and English, and which inform you that the proprietors can furnish you with the sake of Japan or the gasoline of the Standard Oil Company; these things convince you that you are in the midst of a crowded population struggling for subsistence and ready to work, a population of inexhaustible vitality and enterprise.
He was also the head of a powerful secret society, or 'tong, and wielded a tremendous influence in the Washington settlement, so his countrymen dared not betray him. There was another, and in its way an equally potent reason why the Chinaman played so well the rôle of convert.
And they remained impassive when the interpreter explained that the five of them had been found guilty of the murder of Chung Ga, and that Ah Chow should have his head cut off, Ah Cho serve twenty years in prison in New Caledonia, Wong Li twelve years, and Ah Tong ten years. There was no use in getting excited about it.
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