# Tutt and Mr. Tutt/Mock Hen and Mock Turtle

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Mock Hen and Mock Turtle
"Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."—Ballad of East and West.
"But the law of the jungle is jungle law only, and the law of the pack is only for the pack."—Other Sayings of Shere Khan.
A HALF turn from the clattering hubbub of Chatham Square and you are in Chinatown, slipping, within ten feet, through an invisible wall, from the glitter of the gin palace and the pawn-shop to the sinister shadows of irregular streets and blind alleys, where yellow men pad swiftly along greasy asphalt beneath windows glinting with ivory, bronze and lacquer; through which float the scents of aloes and of incense and all the subtle suggestion of the East.
No one better than the Chink himself realizes the commercial value of the taboo, the bizarre and ​the unclean. Nightly the rubber-neck car swinging gayly with lanterns stops before the imitation joss house, the spurious opium joint and tortuous passage to the fake fan-tan and faro game, with a farewell call at Hong Joy Fah's Oriental restaurant and the well-stocked novelty store of Wing, Hen & Co. The visitors see what they expect to see, for the Chinaman always gives his public exactly what it wants.
But a dollar does not show you Chinatown. To some the ivories will always be but crudely carven bone, the jades the potter's sham, the musk and aloes the product of a soap factory, the joss but a cigar-store Indian, and the Oriental dainties of Hong Fah the scrappings of a Yankee grocery store. Yet behind the shoddy tinsel of Doyers and Pell Streets, as behind Alice's looking-glass, there is another Chinatown—a strange, inhuman, Oriental world, not necessarily of trapdoors and stifled screams, but one moved by influences undreamed of in our banal philosophies. Hearken then to the story of the avenging of Wah Sing.
'Tis a tale was undoubtedly true
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
In the murky cellar of a Pell Street tenement seventeen Chinamen sat cross-legged in a circle round an octagonal teakwood table. To an Occidental they would have appeared to differ in no ​detail except that of a varying degree of fatness. An oil lamp flickered before a joss near by, and the place reeked with the odor of starch, sweat, tobacco, rice whisky and the incense that rose ceilingward in thin, shaking columns from two bowls of Tibetan soapstone. An obese Chinaman with a walnutlike countenance in which cunning and melancholy were equally commingled was speaking monotonously through long, rat-tailed mustaches, while the others listened with impassive decorum. It was a special meeting of the Hip Leong Tong, held in their private clubrooms at the Great Shanghai Tea Company, and conducted according to rule.
"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.
​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 other 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.
Detective Mooney, of the Second, detailed to make good District Attorney Peckham's boast that there had never been so little trouble with the foreign element since the administration—of which he was an ornament—came into office, saw Quong Lee emerge from his doorway in Doyers Street ​just before four o'clock the following Thursday and slip silently along under the shadow of the eaves toward Ah Fong's grocery—and instantly sensed something peculiar in the Chink's walk.
"Hello, Quong!" he called, interposing himself. "Where you goin'?"
Quong paused with a deprecating gesture of widely spread open palms.
"'Lo yourself!" replied blandly. "Me go buy li'l' glocery."
Mooney ran his hands over the rotund body, frisking him for a possible forty-four.
"For the love of Mike!" he exclaimed, tearing open Quong's blouse. "What sort of an undershirt is that?"
Quong grinned broadly as the detective lifted the suit of double-chain mail which swayed heavily under his blue blouse from his shoulders to his knees.
"So-ho!" continued the plain-clothes man. "Trouble brewin', eh?"
He knew already that something was doing in the tongs from his lobby-gow, Wing Foo.
"Must weigh eighty pounds!" he whistled. "I'd like to see the pill that would go through that!" It was, in fact, a medieval corselet of finest steel mesh, capable of turning an elephant bullet.
"Go'long!" ordered Mooney finally. "I guess you're safe!"
​He turned back in the direction of Chatham Square, while Quong resumed his tortoiselike perambulation toward Ah Fong's. Pell and Doyers Streets were deserted save for an Italian woman carrying a baby, and were pervaded by an unnatural and suspicious silence. Most of the shutters on the lower windows were down. Ah Fong's subsequent story of what happened was simple, and briefly to the effect that Quong, having entered his shop and priced various litchi nuts and pickled starfruit, had purchased some powdered lizard and, with the package in his left hand, had opened the door to go out. As he stood there with his right hand upon the knob and facing the afternoon sun four shadows fell aslant the window and a man whom he positively identified as Sui Sing emptied a bag of powder—afterward proved to be red pepper—upon Quong's face; then another, Long Get, made a thrust at him with a knife, the effect of which he did not observe, as almost at the same instant Mock Hen felled him with a blow upon the head with an iron bar, while a fourth, Mock Ding, fired four shots at his crumpling body with a revolver one of which glanced off and fractured a very costly Chien Lung vase and ruined four boxes of mandarin-blossom tea. In his excitement he ducked behind the counter, and when sufficiently revived he crawled forth to find what had once been Quong lying across the threshold, the ​murderers gone, and the Italian woman prostrate and shrieking with a hip splintered by a stray bullet. On the sidewalk outside the window lay the remnants of the bag of pepper, a knife broken short off at the handle, a heavy bar of soft iron slightly bent, and a partially emptied forty-four-caliber revolver. Quong's suit of mail had effectually protected him from the knife thrust and the revolver shots, but his skull was crushed beyond repair. Thus was the murder of Wah Sing avenged in due and proper form.
Detective Mooney, distant not more than two hundred feet, rushed back to the corner at the sound of the first shot—just in time to catch a side glimpse of Mock Hen as he raced across Pell Street and disappeared into the cellar of the Great Shanghai Tea Company. The Italian woman was filling the air with her outcries, but the detective did not pause in his hurtling pursuit. He was too late, however. The cellar door withstood all his efforts to break it open.
Bull Neck Burke, the wrestler, who tied Zabisko once on the stage of the old Grand Opera House in 1913, had been promenading with Mollie Malone, of the Champagne Girls and Gay Burlesquers Company. Both heard the fusillade and saw Mock—a streak of flying blue—pass within a few feet of them.
​"God!" ejaculated Mollie. "Sure as shootin', that's Mock Hen—and he's murdered somebody!"
"It's Mock all right!" agreed Bull Neck. "That puts us in as witnesses or strike me!" And he looked at his watch—four one.
"Here, Burke, put your shoulder to this!" shouted Mooney from the cellar steps. "Now then!"
The two of them threw their combined weight against it, the lock flew open and they fell forward into the darkness. Three doors leading in different directions met the glare of Mooney's match. But the fugitive had a start of at least four minutes, which was three and a half more than he required.
Mock Hen took the left-hand of the three doors and crept along a passage opening into an empty opium parlor back of the Hip Leong clubroom.
Diving beneath one of the bunks he inserted his body between the lower planking at the back and the cellar wall, wormed his way some twelve feet, raised a trap and emerged into a tunnel by means of which and others he eventually reached the end of the block and the rooms of his friend Hong Sue.
Here he changed from the Oriental costume according to Chinese etiquette necessary to the homicide, into a nobby suit of American clothes, put on a false mustache, and walked boldly down ​Park Row, while just behind him Doyers and Pell Streets swarmed with bluecoats and excited citizenry.
Hudson House, the social settlement presided over by Miss Fanny and affected for business reasons by Mock Hen, was a mile and a half away. But Mock took his time. Twenty-five full minutes elapsed before he leisurely climbed the steps and slipped into the big reading room. There was no one there and Mock deftly turned back the hand of the automatic clock over the platform to three-fifty-five. Then he began to whistle. Presently Miss Fanny entered from the rear room, her face lighting with pleasure at the sight of her pet convert.
"Good afternoon, Mock Hen! You are early to-day."
Mock took her hand and stroked it affectionately.
"I go Fulton Mark' buy li'l' terrapin. Stop in on way to see dear Miss Fan'."
They stood thus for a moment, and while they did so the clock struck four.
"I go now!" said Mock suddenly. "Four o'clock already."
"It's early," answered Miss Fanny. "Won't you stay a little while?"
"I go now," he repeated with resolution. "Good-by li'l' teacher!"
​She watched until his lithe figure passed through the door, and presently returned to the back room. Mock waited outside until she had disappeared. Then he changed back the clock.
"We've got you, you blarsted heathen!" cried Mooney hoarsely as he and two others from the Central Office threw themselves upon Mock Hen on the landing outside the door of his flat. "Look out, Murtha. Pipe that thing under his arm!"
"It's a bloody turtle!" gasped Murtha, shuddering
"What's the matter, boys?" inquired Mock. "Leggo my arm, can't yer? What'd yer want, anyway?"
"We want you, you yellow skunk!" retorted Mooney. "Open that door! Lively now!"
"Sure!" answered Mock amiably. "Come on in! What's bitin' yer?"
He unlocked the door and threw it open.
"Take a chair," he invited them. "Have a cigar? You there, Emma?"
Emma Pratt, clad in a wrapper and lying on the big double brass bedstead in the rear room, raised herself on one elbow.
"Yep!" she called through the passage. "Got the bird?"
Mock looked at Murtha, who was carrying the terrapin.
​"Sure!" he called back. "Sit down, boys. What'd yer want? Can't yer tell a feller?"
"We want you for croaking Quong Lee!" snapped Mooney. "Where have you been?"
"Fulton Market—and Hudson House. I left here quarter of four. I haven't seen Quong Lee. Where was he killed?"
Mooney laughed sardonically.
"That'll do for you, Mock! Your alibi ain't worth a damn this time. I saw you myself."
"You saw someone else," Mock assured him politely. "I haven't been in Chinatown."
"Say, what yer doin' wit' my Chink?" demanded Emma, appearing in the doorway. "He was sittin' here wit' me all the afternoon, until about just before four I sent him over to Fulton Market to buy a bird. Who's been croaked, eh?"
"Aw, cut it out, Emma!" replied Mooney. "That old stuff won't go here. Your Chink's goin' to the chair. Murtha, look through the place while we put Mock in the wagon. Hell!" he added under his breath. "Won't this make Peckham sick!"
Mr. Ephraim Tutt just finished his morning mail when he was informed that Mr. Wong Get desired an interview. Though the old lawyer did not formally represent the Hip Leong Tong he was frequently retained by its individual members, ​who held him in high esteem, for they had always found him loyal to their interests and as much a stickler for honor as themselves. Moreover, between him and Wong Get there existed a curious sympathy as if in some previous state of existence Wong Get might have been Mr. Tutt, and Mr. Tutt Wong Get. Perhaps, however, it was merely because both were rather weary, sad and worldly wise.
Wong Get did not come alone. He was accompanied by two other Hip Leongs, the three forming the law committee appointed to retain the best available counsel to defend Mock Hen. In his expansive frock coat and bowler hat Wong might easily have excited mirth had it not been for the extreme dignity of his demeanor. They were there, he stated, to request Mr. Tutt to protect the interests of Mock Hen, and they were prepared to pay a cash retainer and sign a written contract binding themselves to a balance—so much if Mock should be convicted; so much if acquitted; so much if he should die in the course of the trial without having been either convicted or acquitted. It was, said Wong Get gently, a matter of grave importance and they would be glad to give Mr. Tutt time to think it over and decide upon his terms. Suppose, then, that they should return at noon? With this understanding, accordingly, they departed.
​"There's no point in skinning a Chink just because he is a Chink," said the junior Tutt when his partner had explained the situation to him. "But it isn't the highest-class practise and they ought to pay well."
"What do you call well?" inquired Mr. Tutt.
"Oh, a thousand dollars down, a couple more if he's convicted, and five altogether if he's acquitted."
"Do you think they can raise that amount of money?"
"I think so," answered Tutt. "It might be a good deal for an individual Chink to cough up on his own account, but this is a coöperative affair. Mock Hen didn't kill Quong Lee to get anything out of it for himself, but to save the face of his society."
"He didn't kill him at all!" declared Mr. Tutt, hardly moving a muscle of his face.
"Well, you know what I mean!" said Tutt.
"He wasn't there," insisted Mr. Tutt. "He was way over in Fulton Market buying a terrapin."
"That is what, if I were district attorney, I should call a Mock Hen with a mockturtle defense!" grunted Tutt.
Mr. Tutt chuckled.
"I shall have to get that off myself at the beginning of the case, or it might convict him," he ​remarked. "But he wasn't there—unless the jury find that he was."
"In which case he will—or shall—have been there—whatever the verb is," agreed Tutt. "Anyhow they'll tax every laundry and chop-suey palace from the Bronx to the Battery to pay us."
"I'd hate to take our fee in bird's-nest soup, shark's fin, bamboo-shoots salad and ya ko main," mused Mr. Tutt.
"Or in ivory chopsticks, oolong tea, imitation jade, litchi nuts and preserved leeches!" groaned Tutt. "Be sure and get the thousand down; it may be all the cash we'll ever see!"
Promptly at twelve the law committee of the Hip Leong Tong returned to the office of Tutt & Tutt. With them came a venerable Chinaman in native costume, his wrinkled face as inscrutable as that of a snapping turtle. The others took chairs, but this high dignitary preferred to sit upon his heels on the floor, creating something of the impression of an ancient slant-eyed Buddha.
Wong Get translated for his benefit the arrangement proposed by Mr. Tutt, after which there was a long pause while His Eminence remained immovable, without even the flicker of an eyelid. Then he delivered himself in an interminable series of gargles and gurgles, supplemented by a few cough-like hisses, while Wong Get translated with rapid ​dexterity, running verbally in and out among his words like a carriage dog between the wheels of a vehicle.
It was, declared Buddha, an affair of great moment touching upon and appertaining to the private honor of the Duck, the Wong, the Fong, the Long, the Sui and various other families, both in America and China. The life of one of their members was at stake. Their face required that the proceedings should be as dignified as possible. The price named by Mr. Tutt was quite inadequate.
Mr. Tutt, repressing a smile, passed a box of stogies. What amount, he inquired through Wong Get, would satisfy the face of the Duck family? A somewhat lengthy discussion ensued. Then Buddha rendered his decision.
The honor of the Ducks, Longs and Fongs would not be satisfied unless Mr. Tutt received five thousand dollars down, five more if Mock Hen was convicted, three more if he died before the conclusion of the trial, and twenty thousand if he was acquitted.
Mr. Tutt, assuming an equal impassivity, pondered upon the matter for about an inch of stogy and then informed the committee that the terms were eminently satisfactory. Buddha thereupon removed from the folds of his tunic a gigantic roll of soiled bills of all denominations and carefully ​counting out five thousand dollars placed it upon the table.
"H'm!" remarked Tutt when he learned of the proceeding. "His face is our fortune!"
"Look here," expostulated District Attorney Peckham in his office to Mr. Tutt a month later. "What's the use of our both wasting a couple of weeks trying a Chinaman who is bound to be convicted? Your time's too valuable for that sort of thing, and so is mine. We've got three white witnesses that saw him do it, and a couple of dozen Chinks besides. He doesn't stand a chance; but just because he is a Chink, and to get the case out of the way, I'll let you plead him to murder in the second degree. What do you say?"
He tried to conceal his anxiety by nervously lighting a cigar. He would have given a year's salary to have Mock Hen safely up the river, even on a conviction for manslaughter in the third, for the newspapers were making his life a burden with their constant references to the seeming inability of the police department and district attorney's office to prevent the recurrence of feud killings in the Chinatown districts. What use was it, they demanded, to maintain the expensive machinery of criminal justice if the tongs went gayly on shooting each other up and incidentally taking the lives of ​innocent bystanders? Wasn't the law intended to cover Chinamen as much as Italians, Poles, Greeks and niggers? And now that one of these murdering Celestials had been caught red-handed it was up to the D. A. to go to it, convict him, and send him to the chair! They did not express themselves precisely that way, but that was the gist of it. But Peckham knew that it was one thing to catch a Chinaman, even red-handed, and another to convict him. And so did Mr. Tutt.
The old lawyer smiled blandly—after the fashion of the Hip Leong Tong. Of course, he admitted, it would be much simpler to dispose of the case as Mr. Peckham suggested, but his client was insistent upon his innocence and seemed to have an excellent alibi. He regretted, therefore, that he had no choice except to go to trial.
"Then," groaned Peckham, "we may as well take the winter for it. After this there's going to be a closed season on Chinamen in New York City!"
Now though it was true that Mock Hen insisted upon his innocence, he had not insisted upon it to Mr. Tutt, for the latter had not seen him. In fact, the old lawyer, recognizing what the law did not, namely that a system devised for the trial and punishment of Occidentals is totally inadequate to cope with the Oriental, calmly went about ​his affairs, intrusting to Mr. Bonnie Doon of his office the task of interviewing the witnesses furnished by Wong Get. There was but one issue for the jury to pass upon. Quong Lee was dead and his honorable soul was with his illustrious ancestors. He had died from a single blow upon the head, delivered with an iron bar, there present, to be in evidence, marked "Exhibit A." Mock Hen was alleged to have done the deed. Had he? There would be nothing for Mr. Tutt to do but to cross-examine the witnesses and then call such as could testify to Mock's alibi. So he made no preparation at all and dismissed the case from his mind. He had hardly seen a dozen Chinamen in his life—outside of a laundry.
On the morning set for the trial Mr. Tutt, having been delayed by an accident in the Subway, entered the Criminal Courts Building only a moment or two before the call of the calendar. Somewhat preoccupied, he did not notice the numerous Chinamen who dawdled about the entrance or the half dozen who crowded with him into the elevator, but when Pat the elevator man called, "Second floor!—Part One to your right!—Part Two to the left!" and he stepped out into the marble-floored corridor that ran round the inside of the building, he was confronted with an unusual and somewhat ominous spectacle.
​The entire hallway on two sides of the building was lined with Chinamen! They sat there motionless as blue-coated images, faces front, their hands in their laps, their legs crossed beneath them. If anyone appeared in the offing a couple of hundred pairs of glinting eyes shifted automatically and followed him until he disappeared, but otherwise no muscle quivered.
"Say," growled Hogan, Judge Bender's private attendant, who was the first to run the gantlet, "those Chinks are enough to give you the Willies! Their eyes scared me to death, sticking me through the back!"
Even dignified Judge Bender himself as he stalked along the hall, preceded by two police officers, was not immune from a slight feeling of uncanniness, and he instinctively drew his robe round his legs that it might not come into contact with those curious slippers with felt soles that protruded across the marble slabs.
"Eyes right!" They had picked him up the instant he stepped out of the private elevator—the four hundred of them. If he turned and looked they were seemingly not watching him, but if he dropped his glance they swung back in a single moment and focused themselves upon him. And every one of them probably had a gun hidden somewhere in his baggy pants! The judge confessed to not liking these foreign homicide cases. You ​never could tell what might happen or when somebody was going to get the death sign. There was Judge Deasy—he had the whole front of his house blown clean out by a bomb! That had been a close call! And these Chinks—with their secret oaths and rituals—they'd think nothing at all of jabbing a knife into you. He didn't fancy it at all and, as he hurried along, supremely conscious of the deadly cumulative effect of those beady eyes, he fancied it less and less. What was there to prevent one of them from getting right up in court and putting a bullet through you? He shivered, recalling the recent assassination of a judge upon the bench by a Hindu whom he had sentenced. When he reached his robing room he sent for Captain Phelan.
"See here, captain," he directed sharply, "I want you to keep all those Chinamen out in the corridor; understand?"
"I've got to let some of 'em in, judge," urged Phelan. "You've got to have an interpreter—and there's a Chinese lawyer associated with Tutt & Tutt—and of course Mr. O'Brien has to have a couple of 'em so's he'll know what's going on. Y' see, judge, the On Gee Tong is helping the prosecution against the Hip Leongs, so both sides has to be more or less represented."
"Well, make sure none of 'em is armed," ​ordered Judge Bender. "I don't like these cases."
Now the judge, being recently elected and unfamiliar with the situation, did not realize that nothing could have been farther from the Oriental mind or intention than an attack upon the officers engaged in the administration of local justice, whom they regarded merely as nuisances. What these Chinamen supremely desired was to be allowed to settle their own affairs in their own historic and traditional way—the way of the revolver, the silken cord, the knife and the iron bar. Once enmeshed in Anglo-Saxon juridical procedure, to be sure, they were not averse to letting it run its course on the bare chance that it might automatically accomplish their revenge. But they distrusted it, being brought up according to a much more effective system—one which when it wanted to punish anybody simply reached out, grabbed him by the pigtail, yanked him to his knees and sliced off his head. This so-called American justice was all talk—words, words, words! From their point of view judges, jurymen and prosecutors were useless pawns in life's game of chess. Perhaps they are! Who knows!
When Judge Bender entered the court room it was, in spite of his injunction, full of blue blouses. A special panel of two hundred talesmen filled the first half dozen rows of benches, the others being occupied by witnesses both Chinese and white, ​policemen and the miscellaneous human flotsam and jetsam that always manages somehow or other to find its way to a murder trial. Inside the rail O'Brien, the assistant district attorney, was busy in conversation with three cueless Chinamen in American clothes. At the bar sat Mock Hen with Mr. Tutt beside him, flanked by Wong Get, Tutt, Bonnie Doon and Buddha.
The judge beckoned Mr. Tutt and O'Brien to the front of the bench.
"Is there any chance of disposing of this case by a plea?" he inquired.
O'Brien looked expectantly at Mr. Tutt, who shook his head. The judge shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, how long is it going to take?"
"About six weeks," answered the old lawyer quietly.
"What!" ejaculated judge and prosecutor in unison.
"A day or two less, perhaps," affirmed Mr. Tutt, "but, likely as not, considerably longer."
"I shall cut it down as much as I can," announced the judge, appalled at the prospect. "I shall not permit this trial to be dragged out indefinitely."
"Nothing would please me better, Your Honor," said Mr. Tutt with the shadow of a smile. "Shall we proceed to select the jury?"
The accuracy of Mr. Tutt's prophecy as to the ​probable length of the trial was partially demonstrated when it developed that most of the talesmen had a pronounced antipathy to Chinese murder cases, and a deep-rooted prejudice against the race as a whole. In fact, a certain subconscious influence affecting most of them was formulated by the thirty-ninth talesman to be rejected, who, in a moment of resentment, burst forth, "I don't mind trying decent American criminals, but I hold it isn't any part of a citizen's duty to try Chinamen!" and was promptly struck off the jury list.
"I say, chief," disgustedly declared O'Brien to Peckham at the noon recess as they clinked glasses over the bar at Pont's, "you've handed me a ripe, juicy Messina all right! I won't be able to get a jury. We've been at it since ten o'clock and we haven't lured a single sucker into the box!"
"What's the matter?" inquired the D. A. apprehensively.
"I can't quite make out," answered O'Brien. "But most of 'em seem to have a sort of idea that to kill a Chinaman ain't a crime but a virtue!"
"Well, don't tell anybody," whispered Peckham, "but I'm somewhat of that way of thinking myself. Set 'em up again, John!"
However, by invoking the utmost celerity a jury was at last selected and sworn at the end of the nineteenth day of the trial. As a jury O'Brien ​confidentially admitted to Peckham it wasn't much! But what could you expect of a bunch who were willing to swear that they hadn't any prejudice against a Chink and would as soon acquit him as a white man? The truth was that they were all gentlemen who, having lost their jobs, were willing to swear to anything that would bring them in two dollars a day. The more days the better! And it is historic fact that during the sixty-nine days of Mock Hen's prosecution not one of them protested at being kept away from his wife and children, his business or his pleasure. On the contrary they all slumbered peacefully from ten until four—and when the trial ended, on the whole they rather regretted that it was over, the only genuine opinion regarding the case being that the Chinks were all as funny as hell and that Mr. Tutt was a bully old boy.
The evidence respecting the death of the unfortunate Quong Lee made little impression upon them. Seemingly they regarded the story much as they did that of Elisha and the bears or Bel and the dragon—as a sort of apocryphal narrative which they were required to listen to, but in no wise bound to believe. They were much interested in Quong's suit of chain mail, however, and from time to time awoke to enjoy the various verbal encounters between the judge and Mr. Tutt. As ​factors in the proceedings they did not count, except to receive their two dollars per diem, board, lodging and hack fare.
The trial of Mock Hen being conducted in a foreign language, the first judicial step was the swearing of an interpreter. The On Gees had promptly produced one, whom O'Brien told the court was a very learned man; a graduate of the Imperial University at Peking, and a Son of the Sacred Dragon. Be that as it may, he was not prepossessing in his appearance and Mr. Tutt assured Judge Bender that far from being what the district attorney pretended, the man was a well-known gambler, who made his living largely by blackmail. He might be a son of a dragon or he might not; anyway he was a son of Belial. An interpreter was the conduit through which all the evidence must pass. If the official were biased or corrupt the testimony would be distorted, colored or suppressed.
Now he—Mr. Tutt—had an interpreter, the well-known Dr. Hong Su, against whom nothing could be said, and upon whose fat head rested no imputation of partiality; a graduate of Harvard, a writer of note, a——
O'Brien sprang to his feet: "My interpreter says your interpreter is an opium smuggler, that he murdered his aunt in Hong Kong, that he isn't ​a doctor at all, and that he never graduated from anything except a chop-suey joint," he interjected.
"This is outrageous!" cried Mr. Tutt, palpably shocked at such language.
"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" groaned Judge Bender. "What am I to do? I don't know anything about these men. One looks to me about the same as the other. The court has no time to inquire into their antecedents. They may both be learned scholars or they may each be what the other says he is—I don't know. But we've got to begin to try this case sometime."
It was finally agreed that in order that there might be no possible question of partiality there should be two interpreters—one for the prosecution and one for the defense. Both accordingly were sworn and the first witness, Ah Fong, was called.
"Ask him if he understands the nature of an oath," directed O'Brien.
The interpreter for the state turned to Ah Fong and said something sweetly to him in multitudinous words.
Instantly Doctor Su rose indignantly. The other interpreter was not putting the question at all, but telling the witness what to say. Moreover, the other interpreter belonged to the On Gee Tong. He stood waving his arms and ​gobbling like an infuriated turkey while his adversary replied in similar fashion.
"This won't do!" snapped the judge. "This trial will degenerate into nothing but a cat fight if we are not careful." Then a bright idea suggested itself to his Occidental mind. "Suppose I appoint an official umpire to say which of the other two interpreters is correct—and let them decide who he shall be?"
This proposition was received with grunts of satisfaction by the two antagonists, who conferred together with astonishing amiability and almost immediately conducted into the court room a tall, emaciated Chinaman who they alleged was entirely satisfactory to both of them. He was accordingly sworn as a third interpreter, and the trial began again.
It was observed that thereafter there was no dispute whatever regarding the accuracy of the testimony, and as each interpreter was paid for his services at the rate of ten dollars a day it was rumored that the whole affair had been arranged by agreement between the two societies, which divided the money, amounting to some eighteen hundred dollars, between them. But, as O'Brien afterward asked Peckham, "How in thunder could you tell?"
The court's troubles had, however, only begun. ​Ah Fong was a whimsical-looking person, who gave an impression of desiring to make himself generally agreeable. He was, of course, the star witness—if a Chinaman can ever be a star witness—and presumably had been carefully schooled as to the manner in which he should give his testimony. He and he alone had seen the whole tragedy from beginning to end. He it was, if anybody, who would tuck Mock Hen comfortably into his coffin.
The problem of the interpreters having been solved Fong settled himself comfortably in the witness chair, crossed his hands upon his stomach and looked complacently at Mock Hen.
"Well, now let's get along," adjured His Honor. "Swear the witness."
Mr. Tutt immediately rose.
"If the court please," said he, "I object to the swearing of the witness unless it is made to appear that he will regard himself as bound by the oath as administered. Now this man is a Chinaman. I should like to ask him a preliminary question or two."
"That seems fair, Mr. O'Brien," agreed the court. "Do you see any reason why Mr. Tutt shouldn't interrogate the witness?"
"Oh, let me qualify my own witness!" retorted O'Brien fretfully. "Ah Fong, will you respect the ​oath to testify truthfully, about to be administered to you?"
The interpreter delivered a broadside of Chinese at Ah Fong, who listened attentively and replied at equal length. Then the interpreter went at him again, and again Ah Fong affably responded. It was interminable.
The two muttered and chortled at each other until O'Brien, losing patience, jumped up and called out: "What's all this? Can't you ask him a simple question and get a simple answer? This isn't a debating society."
The interpreter held up his hand, indicating that the prosecutor should have patience.
"Ah-ya-ya-oo-aroo-yung-ung-loy-a-a-ya oo-chu-a-oy-ah-ohay-tching!" he concluded.
"A-yah-oy-a-yoo-oy-ah-chuck-uh-ung-loy-oo-ayah-a-yoo-chung-chung-szt-oo-aha-oy-ou-ungaroo—yah-yah-yah!" replied Ah Fong.
"Thank heaven, that's over!" sighed O'Brien.
The interpreter drew himself up to his full height.
"He says yes," he declared dramatically.
"It's the longest yes I ever heard!" audibly remarked the foreman, who was feeling his oats.
"Does not that satisfy you?" inquired the court of Mr. Tutt.
​"I am sorry to say it does not!" replied the latter. "Mr. O'Brien has simply asked whether he will keep his oath. His reply sheds no light on whether his religious belief is such that it would obligate him to respect an oath."
"Well, ask him yourself!" snorted O'Brien.
"Ah Fong, do you believe in any god?" inquired Mr. Tutt.
"He says yes," answered the interpreter after the usual interchange.
"What god do you believe in?" persisted Mr. Tutt.
Suddenly Ah Fong made answer without the intervention of the interpreter.
"When I in this country," he replied complacently in English, "I b'lieve Gees Clist; when I in China I b'lieve Chinese god."
"Does Your Honor hold that an obliging acquiescence in local theology constitutes such a religious belief as to make this man's oath sacred?" inquired Mr. Tutt.
The judge smiled.
"I don't see why not!" he declared. "There isn't any precedent as far as I am aware. But he says he believes in the Deity. Isn't that enough?"
"Not unless he believes that the Deity will punish him if he breaks his oath," answered Mr. Tutt. "Let me try him on that?"
​"Ah Fong, do you think God will punish you if you tell a lie?"
Fong looked blank. The interpreter fired a few salvos.
"He says it makes a difference the kind of oath."
"Suppose it is a promise to tell the truth?"
"He says what kind of a promise?"
"A promise on the Bible," answered Mr. Tutt patiently.
"He says what god you mean!" countered the interpreter.
"Oh, any god!" roared Mr. Tutt.
The interpreter, after a long parley, made reply.
"Ah Fong says there is no binding oath except on a chicken's head."
Judge Bender, O'Brien and Mr. Tutt gazed at one another helplessly.
"Well, there you are!" exclaimed the lawyer. "Mr. O'Brien's oath wasn't any oath at all! What kind of a chicken's head?"
"A white rooster."
"Quite so!" nodded Mr. Tutt. "Your Honor, I object to this witness being sworn by any oath or in any form except on the head of a white rooster!"
"Well, I don't happen to have a white rooster about me!" remarked O'Brien, while the jury rocked with glee. "Ask him if something else won't do. A big book for instance?"
​The interpreter put the question and then shook his head. According to Ah Fong there was no virtue in books whatever, either large or small. On some occasions an oath could be properly taken on a broken plate—also white—but not in murder cases. It was chicken or nothing.
"Are you not willing to waive the formality of an oath, Mr. Tutt?" asked the judge in slight impatience.
"And wave my client into the chair?" demanded the lawyer. "No, sir!"
"I don't see what we can do except to adjourn court until you can procure the necessary poultry," announced Judge Bender. "Even then we can't slaughter them in court. We'll have to find some suitable place!"
"Why not kill one rooster and swear all the witnesses at once?" suggested Mr. Tutt in a moment of inspiration.
"My God, chief!" exclaimed O'Brien at four o'clock. "There ain't a white rooster to be had anywhere! Hens, yes! By the hundred! But roosters are extinct! Tomorrow will be the twenty-first day of this prosecution and not a witness sworn yet."
However, a poultryman was presently discovered who agreed simply for what advertising there ​was in it to furnish a crate of white roosters, a hatchet and a headsman's block, and to have them in the basement of the building promptly at ten o'clock.
Accordingly, at that hour Judge Bender convened Part IX of the General Sessions in the court room and then adjourned downstairs, where all the prospective witnesses for the prosecution were lined up in a body and told to raise their right hands.
Meantime Clerk McGuire was handed the hatchet, and approached the coop with obvious misgivings. Ah Fong had already given a dubious approval to the sex and quality of the fowls inside and naught remained but to submit the proper oath and remove the head of the unfortunate victim. A large crowd of policemen, witnesses, reporters, loafers, truckmen and others drawn by the unusual character of the proceedings had assembled and now proceeded without regard for the requirements of judicial dignity to encourage McGuire in his capacity of executioner, by profane shouts and jeers, to do his deadly deed.
But the clerk had had no experience with chickens and in bashfully groping for the selected rooster allowed several other occupants of the crate to escape. Instantly the air was filled with fluttering, squawking fowls while fifty frenzied ​police officers and Chinamen attempted vainly to reduce them to captivity again. In the midst of the mêlée McGuire caught his rooster, and fearful lest it should escape him managed somehow to decapitate it. The body, however, had been flopping around spasmodically several seconds upon the floor before he realized that the oath had not been administered, and his voice suddenly rose above the pandemonium in an excited brogue.
"Hold up your hands, you! You do solemnly swear that in the case of The People against Mock Hen you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God!"
But the interpreter was at that moment engaged in clasping to his bosom a struggling rooster and was totally unable to fulfill his functions. Meantime the jury, highly edified at this illustration of the administration of justice, gazed down upon the spectacle from the stairs.
"This farce has gone far enough!" declared Judge Bender disgustedly. "We will return to the court room. Put those roosters back where they belong!"
Once more the participants ascended to Part IX and Ah Fong took his seat in the witness chair. The interpreter's blouse was covered with pin-feathers and one of his thumbs was bleeding profusely.
​"Ask the witness if the oath that he has now taken will bind his conscience?" directed the court.
Again the interpreter and Ah Fong held converse.
"He says," translated that official calmly, "that the chicken oath is all right in China, but that it is no good in United States, and that anyway the proper form of words was not used."
"Good Lord!" ejaculated O'Brien. "Where am I?"
"Me tell truth, all light," suddenly announced Ah Fong in English. "Go ahead! Shoot!" And he smiled an inscrutable age-long Oriental smile.
The jury burst into laughter.
"He's stringing you!" the foreman kindly informed O'Brien, who cursed silently.
"Go on, Mister District Attorney, examine the witness," directed the judge. "I shall permit no further variations upon the established forms of procedure."
Then at last and not until then—on the morning of the twenty-first day—did Ah Fong tell his simple story and the jury for the first time learn what it was all about. But by then they had entirely ceased to care, being engrossed in watching Mr. Tutt at his daily amusement of torturing O'Brien into a state of helpless exasperation.
Ah Fong gave his testimony with a clarity of ​detail that left nothing to be desired, and he was corroborated in most respects by the Italian woman, who identified Mock Hen as the Chinaman with the iron bar. Their evidence was supplemented by that of Bull Neck Burke and Miss Malone, who also were positive that they had seen Mock running from the scene of the murder at exactly four-one o'clock.
Mr. 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.
"But I tell yer I don't know no Chinks!" bellowed Burke, looking more like a bull than ever. "This here Mock Hen run right by me. My goil saw him too. I looked at me ticker to get the time!"
"Ah! Then you expected to be a witness for the On Gee Tong!"
"Naw! I tell yer I was walkin' wit' me goil!"
"What is the lady's name?"
"Miss Malone."
"What is her occupation?"
"She's a gay burlesquer."
"A gay burlesquer?"
​"Sure—champagne goil and gay burlesquer."
"A champagne girl!"
"Dat's what I said."
"You mean that she is upon the stage?"
"Sure—dat's it!"
"Oh!" Mr. Tutt looked relieved.
"What had you and Miss Malone been doing that afternoon?"
"I told yer—walkin'."
Mr. Tutt coughed slightly.
"Is that all?"
"Say, watcha drivin' at?"
Mr. Tutt elevated his bushy eyebrows.
"How do you earn your living?" he demanded, changing his method of attack.
Bull Neck allowed his head to sink still farther into the vast bulk of his immense torso, strangely resembling, in this position, the fabled anthropophagi whose heads are reputed thus to "grow beneath their shoulders."
Then throwing out his jaw he announced proudly between set teeth: "I'm a perfessor of physical sculture!"
The jury sniggered. Mr. Tutt appeared politely puzzled.
"A professor of what?"
"A perfessor of physical sculture!" repeated Bull Neck with great satisfaction.
​"Oh! A professor of physical sculpture!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, light breaking over his wrinkled countenance. "And what may that be?"
Bull Neck looked round disgustedly at the jury as if to say: "What ignorance!"
"Trainin' an' developin' prominent people!" he explained.
"Um!" remarked Mr. Tutt. "Who invited you to testify in this case?"
"Mr. Mooney."
"Oh, you're a friend of Mooney's! That is all!"
Now it is apparent from these questions and answers that Mr. Burke had testified to nothing to his discredit and had conducted himself as a gentleman and a sportsman according to his best lights. Yet owing to the subtle suggestions contained in Mr. Tutt's inflections and demeanor the jury leaped unhesitatingly to the conclusion that here was a man so ignorant and debased that if he were not deliberately lying he was being made a cat's-paw by the police in the interest of the On Gee Tong.
Miss Malone fared even worse, for after a preliminary skirmish she flatly refused to give Mr. Tutt or the jury any information whatever regarding her past life, while Mooney, of course, labored from the beginning to the end of his testimony ​under the curse of being a policeman, one of that class whom most jurymen take pride in saying they hold in natural distrust. In a word, the white witnesses to the dastardly murder of Quong Lee created a general impression of unreliability upon the minds of the jury, who wholly failed to realize the somewhat obvious truth that the witnesses to a crime in Chinatown will naturally if not inevitably be persons who either reside in or frequent that locality.
Twenty-four days had now been consumed in the trial, and as yet no Chinese witnesses except Ah Fong had been called. Now, however, they appeared in cohorts. Though Mooney had sworn that the streets were practically empty at the time of the homicide forty-one Chinese witnesses swore positively that they had been within easy view, claiming variously to have been behind doors, peeking through shutters, at upper windows and even on the roofs. All had identified Mock Hen as the murderer, and none of them had ever heard of either the On Gee or the Hip Leong Tong! Mr. Tutt could not shake them upon cross-examination, and O'Brien began to show signs of renewed confidence. Each testified to substantially the same story and they occupied seventeen full days in the telling, so that when the prosecution rested, forty-two days had been consumed since the first ​talesman had been called. The trial had sunk into a dull, unbroken monotony, as Mr. Tutt said, of the "vain repetitions of the heathen." Yet the police and the district attorney had done all that could reasonably have been expected of them. They were simply confronted by the very obvious fact—a condition and not a theory—that the legal processes of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence are of slight avail in dealing with people of another race.
Now it is possible that even had Mr. Tutt put in no defense whatever the jury might have refused to convict, for there was a curious air of unreality surrounding the whole affair. It all seemed somehow as if—assuming that it had ever taken place at all—it had occurred in some other world and in some other age. Perhaps under what might have been practically a direction of the court a verdict of conviction might have been returned—but it is doubtful. The more witnesses testified to exactly the same thing in precisely the same words the less likely it appeared to be.
But Mr. Tutt was taking no chances and, upon the forty-third day of the trial, at a nod from the bench, he opened his case. Never had he been more serious; never more persuasive. Abandoning every suggestion of frivolity, he weighed the testimony of each white witness and pointed out its obvious lack of probative value. Not one, he said, ​except the Italian woman, had had more than a fleeting glance of the face of the man now accused of the crime. Such an identification was useless. The Chinamen were patently lying. They had not been there at all! Would any member of the jury hang a dog, even a yellow one, on such testimony? Of course not! Much less a human being. The people had called forty witnesses to prove that Mock Hen had killed Quong Lee. It made no difference. The On Gee could have just as easily produced four hundred. Moreover, Mr. Tutt did a very daring thing. He pronounced all Chinese testimony in an American court of justice as absolutely valueless, and boasted that for every Chinaman who swore Mock Hen was guilty he would bring forward two who would swear him innocent.
The thing was, as he had carefully explained to Bonnie Doon, to prove that Mock was a good Chinaman and, if the jury did not believe that there was any such animal, to convince them that it was possible. His first task, however, was to polish off the Chinese testimony by calling the witnesses who had been secured under the guidance of Wong Get. He admitted afterward that in view of the exclusion law he had not supposed there were so many Chinamen in the United States, for they crowded the corridors and staircases of the Criminal Courts Building, arriving in companies—the Wong family, the Mocks, the Fongs, the ​Lungs, the Sues, and others of the sacred Hip Sing Society from near at hand and from distant parts—from Brooklyn and Flatbush, from Flushing and Far Rockaway, from Hackensack and Hoboken, from Trenton and Scranton, from Buffalo and Saratoga, from Chicago and St. Louis, and each and every one of them swore positively upon the severed neck of the whitest rooster—the broken fragments of the whitest of porcelain plates—the holiest of books—that he had been present in person at Fulton Market in New York City at precisely four-fifteen o'clock in the afternoon and assisted Mock Hen, the defendant, in selecting and purchasing a terrapin for stew.
Mr. Tutt grinned at the jury and the jury grinned affectionately back at Mr. Tutt. Indeed, after the length of time they had all been together they had almost as much respect for him as for the judge upon the bench. The whole court seemed to be a sort of Tutt Club, of which even O'Brien was a member.
"Now," said Mr. Tutt, "I will call a few witnesses to show you what kind of a man this is whom these highbinders accuse of the crime of murder!"
Mock, rolling his eyes heavenward, assumed an expression of infantile helplessness and trust.
"Don't overdo it!" growled Tutt. "Just look kind of gentle."
​So Mock looked as gentle as a suckling dove while two professors from Columbia University, three of his landlords in his more reputable business enterprises, the superintendent of the Rising Sun Mission, four ex-police officers, a fireman, and an investigator for the Society for the Suppression of Sin swore upon Holy Writ and with all sincerity that Mock Hen was not only a person of the most excellent character and reputation but a Christian and a gentleman.
And then Mr. Tutt played his trump card.
"I will call Miss Frances Duryea, of Hudson House," he announced. "Miss Duryea, will you kindly take the witness chair?"
Miss Fanny modestly rose from her seat in the rear of the room and came forward. No one could for an instant doubt the honesty and impartiality of this devoted middle-aged woman, who, surrendering the comforts and luxuries of her home uptown, to which she was well entitled by reason of her age, was devoting herself to a life of service. If a woman like that, thought the jury, was ready to vouch for Mock's good character, why waste any more time on the case? But Miss Fanny was to do much more.
"Miss Duryea," began Mr. Tutt, "do you know the defendant?"
"Yes, sir; I do," she answered quietly.
​"How long have you known him?"
"Six years."
"Do you know his reputation for peace and quiet?"
Miss Fanny half turned to the judge and then faced the jury.
"He is one of the sweetest characters I have ever known," she replied, "and I have known many——"
"Oh, I object!" interrupted O'Brien. "This lady can't be permitted to testify to anything like that. She must be limited by the rules of evidence!"
With one movement the jury wheeled and glared at him.
"I guess this lady can say anything she wants!" declared the foreman chivalrously.
O'Brien sank down in his seat. What was the use!
"Go on, please," gently directed Mr. Tutt.
"As I was saying, Mr. Mock Hen is a very remarkable character," responded Miss Fanny. "He is devoted to the mission and to us at the settlement. I would trust him absolutely in regard to anything."
"Thank you," said Mr. Tutt, smiling benignly. "Now, Miss Duryea, did you see Mock Hen at any time on May sixth?"
​Instantly the jury showed renewed signs of life. May sixth? That was the day of the murder.
"I did," answered Miss Fanny with conviction. "He came to see me at Hudson House in the afternoon and while we were talking the clock struck four."
The jury looked at one another and nodded.
"Well, I guess that settles this case!" announced the foreman.
"Right!" echoed a talesman behind him.
"I object!" wailed O'Brien. "This is entirely improper!"
"Quite so!" ruled Judge Bender sternly. "The jurymen will not make any remarks!"
"But, Your Honor—we all agreed at recess there was nothing in this case," announced the foreman. "And now this testimony simply clinches it. Why go on with it!"
"That's so!" ejaculated another. "Let us go, judge."
Mr. Tutt's weather-beaten face was wreathed in smiles.
"Easy, gentlemen!" he cautioned.
The judge shrugged his shoulders, frowning.
"This is very irregular!" he said.
Then he beckoned to O'Brien, and the two whispered together for several minutes, while all over the court room on the part of those who had sat ​there so patiently for sixty-nine days there was a prolonged and ecstatic wriggling of arms and legs. Instinctively they all knew that the farce was over.
The assistant district attorney returned to his table but did not sit down.
"If the court please," he said rather wearily, "the last witness, Miss Duryea, by her testimony, which I personally am quite ready to accept as truthful, has interjected a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt into what otherwise would in my opinion be a case for the jury. If Mock Hen was at Hudson House, nearly two miles from Pell and Doyers Streets, at four o'clock on the afternoon of the homicide, manifestly he could not have been one of the assailants of Quong Lee at one minute past four. I am satisfied that no jury would convict——"
"Not on your life!" snorted the foreman airily.
"——and I therefore," went on O'Brien, "ask the court to direct an acquittal."
In the grand banquet hall of the Shanghai and Hongkong American-Chinese Restaurant, Ephraim Tutt, draped in a blue mandarin coat with a tasseled pill box rakishly upon his old gray head, sat beside Wong Get and Buddha at the head of a long table surrounded by three hundred Chinamen in their richest robes of ceremony. Lanterns of ​party-colored glass swaying from gilded rafters shed a strange light upon a silken cloth marvelously embroidered and laden with the choicest of Oriental dishes, and upon the pale faces of the Hip Leong Tong—the Mocks, the Wongs, the Fongs and the rest—both those who had testified and also those who had merely been ready if duty called to do so, all of whom were now gathered together to pay honor where they felt honor to be due; namely, at the shrine of Mr. Tutt.
Deft Chinese waiters slipped silently from guest to guest with bird's-nest soup, guy soo main, mon goo guy pan, shark's fin and lung har made of shreds of lobster, water chestnuts, rice and the succulent shoots of the young bamboo, while three musicians in a corner sang through their nose a syncopated dirge. "Wang-ang-ang-ang!" it rose and fell as Mr. Tutt, his neck encircled by a wreath of lilies, essayed to manipulate a pair of long black chop-sticks. "Wang-ang-ang-ang!" About him were golden limes, ginger in syrup, litchi nuts, pickled leeches.
Then he felt a touch upon his shoulder and turned to see Fong Hen, the slipper, standing beside him. It was the duty of Fong Hen to drink with each guest—more than that, to drink as much as each guest drank! He gravely offered Mr. Tutt a pony of rice brandy. It was not the ​fiery lava he had anticipated, but a soft, caressing nectar, fragrant as if distilled from celestial flowers of the time of Confucius. The slipper swallowed the same quantity at a gulp, bowed and passed along.
Mr. Tutt vainly tried to grasp the fact that he was in his own native city of New York. Long sleeves covered with red and purple dragons hid his arms and hands, and below the collar a smooth tight surface of silk across his breast made access to his pockets quite impossible. In one of them reposed twenty one-thousand-dollar bills—his fee for securing the acquittal of Mock Hen. Yes, he was in New York!
The monotonous wail of the instruments, the pungency of the incense, the subdued light, the humid breath of the roses carried the thoughts of Mr. Tutt far away. Before him, against the blue misty sunshine, rose the yellow temples of Peking. He could hear the faint tintinnabulation of bells. He was wandering in a garden fragrant with jasmine blossoms and adorned with ancient graven stones and carved gilt statues. The air was sweet. Mr. Tutt was very tired. . . .
"Let him sleep!" nodded Buddha, deftly conveying to his wrinkled lips a delicate morsel of guy yemg dun. "Let him sleep! He has earned his sleep. He has saved our face!"
​It was after midnight when Mr. Tutt, heavily laden with princely gifts of ivory and jade and boxes of priceless teas, emerged from the side door of the Shanghai and Hongkong American-Chinese Restaurant. The sky was brilliant with stars and the sidewalks of Doyers and Pell Streets were crowded with pedestrians. Near by a lantern-bedecked rubber-neck wagon was in process of unloading its cargo of seekers after the curious and unwholesome. On either side of him walked Wong Get and Buddha. They had hardly reached the corner when five shots echoed in quick succession above the noise of the traffic and the crowd turned with one accord and rushed in the direction from which he had just come.
Mr. Tutt, startled, stopped and looked back. Courteously also stopped Wong Get and Buddha. A throng was fast gathering in front of the Shanghai and Hongkong Restaurant.
Then Murtha appeared, shouldering his way roughly through the mob. Catching sight of Mr. Tutt, he paused long enough to whisper hoarsely in the lawyer's ear: "Well, they got Mock Hen! Five bullets in him! But if they were going to, why in hell couldn't they have done it three months ago?"
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1945, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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