The establishment of Yeh Ling was just between the
desert of Reed Street, and the sown of that great and
glittering thoroughfare which is theatreland. The desert
graduated down from the respectable, if gloomy, houses
where innumerable milliners, modistes and dentists had
their signs before the doors and their workrooms and
clinics on divers landings, to the howling wilderness of
Bennet Street, and in this particular case the description
often applied so lightly is aptly and faithfully affixed, for
Bennet Street howled by day and howled in a shriller key
by night. Its roadway was a playground for the progeny
of this prolific neighbourhood, and a “ring” in which all
manner of local blood-feuds were settled by waist-bare
men, whilst their slatternly women squealed their encouragement
or vocalized their apprehensions.
Yeh Ling’s restaurant had begun at the respectable end
of the street and he had specialized in strange Chinese
dishes. Later it had crept nearer and nearer to The
Lights, one house after another having been acquired by
the unhappy looking oriental, its founder.
Then, with a rush, it arrived on the main street, acquired
a rich but sedate facia, a French chef and a staff
of Italian waiters under the popular Signor Maciduino,
most urban of maitres d’hotel, and because of gilded and
visible tiles, became “The Golden Roof.” Beneath those
tiles it was a place of rosewood panelling and soft shaded
lights. There was a gilded elevator to carry you to the
first and second floors where the private dining-rooms
were—these had doors of plate glass, curtained diaphanously.
Yeh Ling thought that this was carrying respectability
a little too far, but his patron was adamant on the
matter.
Certain rooms had no plate glass doors, but these were
very discreetly apportioned. One such was never under
any circumstances hired to diners, however important or
impeccable they might be. It was the end room No. 6,
near to the service doorway which led through a labyrinth
of crooked and cross passages to the old building in
Reed Street. This remained almost unchanged as it had
been in the days of Yeh Ling’s earlier struggles. Men and
women came here for Chinese dishes and were supplied
by soft-footed waiters from Han-Kow, which was Yeh
Ling’s native province.
The patrons of the old establishment lamented the
arrival of Yeh Ling’s prosperity and sneered at his well-dressed
customers. The well-dressed customers being, for
the most part, entirely ignorant that their humble neighbours
had existence, ate their expensive meals unmoved
and at certain hours danced sedately to the strains of The
Old Original South Carolina Syncopated Orchestra,
which Yeh Ling had hired regardless of expense.
He only visited the fashionable part of his property on
one day of the year, the Chinese New Year, a queer little
figure in a swallow-tailed coat, white-vested, white-gloved
and tightly, as well as whitely collared.
At other times, he sat at ease midway between the
desert and the sown in a pokey little parlour hung about
with vivid pictures which he had cut from the covers of
magazines. Here, in a black silk robe, he pulled at his
long-stemmed pipe. At half-past seven every night, except
Sundays, he went to a door which opened on to the
street, and was the door of one of those houses which
linked the two restaurants, and here he would wait, his
hand upon the knob. Sometimes the girl came first, sometimes
the old man. Whichever it was, they usually passed
in without a word and went up to Room No. 6. With
their arrival Yeh Ling went back to his parlour to smoke
and write letters of great length and beauty to his son at
Han-Kow, for Yeh Ling’s son was a man of great learning
and position, being both a poet and a scholar. He
had been admitted a member of the Forest of Pencils,
which is at least the equivalent to being elected an Academician.
Sometimes, Yeh Ling would devote himself to the matter
of his new building at Shanford and dream dreams of
an Excellency who would be its honoured master—for
all things are possible in a land which makes education a
test of choice for Ambassadorial appointments.
He never saw the two guests depart. They found their
way to the door alone, and soon after eight the room was
empty. No waiter served them; their meals were placed
in readiness on a small buffet and as No. 6 was veiled
from the observations of the curious by a curtain which
stretched across the passage, only Yeh Ling knew them.
On the first Monday of every month, Yeh Ling went
up to the room and kow-towed to its solitary occupant.
The old man was always alone on these occasions. On
such a Monday, with a large lacquered cash-box in his
hand and a fat book under his arm, Yeh Ling entered
the presence of the man in No. 6, put down his impedimenta
on the buffet and did his reverence.
“Sit down,” said Jesse Trasmere, and he spoke in the
sibilant dialect of the lower provinces. Yeh Ling obeyed,
hiding his own hands respectfully in the full sleeves of
his gown. “Well?”
“The profits this week have fallen, excellency,” said
Yeh Ling but without apology. “The weather has been
very fine and many of our clients are out of town.”
He exposed his hands to open the cash-box and bring
out four packages of paper money. These he divided
into two, three of the packages to the right and one to
the left. The old man took the three packages, which
were nearest to him and grunted.
“The police came last night and asked to be shown over
the houses,” Yeh Ling went on impressively. “They desired
to see the cellars, because they think always that
Chinamen have smoke-places in their cellars.”
“Humph,” said Mr. Trasmere. He was thumbing the
money in his hand. “This is good, Yeh Ling.”
He slipped the money into a black bag which was on
the floor at his feet. Yeh Ling shook his head, thereby
indicating his agreement.
“Do you remember in Fi Sang a man who worked for
me?”
“The drinker?”
The old man agreed to the appellation.
“He is coming to this country,” said Mr. Trasmere,
chewing a tooth-pick. He was a hard-faced man between
sixty and seventy. A rusty black frock-coat ill
fitted his spare form, his old-fashioned collar was frayed
at the edge and the black shoe-string tie that encircled
his lean throat had been so long in use that it had lost
whatever rigidity it had ever possessed, and hung limp in
two tangled bunches on either side of the knot. His eyes
were a hard granite blue, his face ridged and scaled with
callosities until it was lizard-like in its coarseness.
“Yes, he is coming to this country. He will come here
as soon as he finds his way about town and that will be
mighty soon, for Wellington Brown is a traveller! Yeh
Ling, this man is troublesome. I should be happy if he
were sleeping on the Terraces of the Night.”
Again Yeh Ling shook his head.
“He cannot be killed—here,” he said. “The illustrious
knows that my hands are clean—”
“Are you a man-of-wild-mind?” snarled the other. “Do
I kill men or ask that they should be killed? Even on the
Amur, where life is cheap, I have done no more than put
a man to the torture because he stole my gold. No, this
Drinker must be made quiet. He smokes the pipe of
Pleasant Experience. You have no pipe-room. I would
not tolerate such a thing. But you know places.”
“I know a hundred and a hundred,” said Yeh Ling,
cheerfully for him.
He accompanied his master to the door, and when it
had closed upon him, he returned swiftly to his parlour
and summoned a stunted man of his race.
“Go after the old man and see that no harm comes to
him,” he said.
It seemed from his tone almost as though this guardianship
was novel, but in exactly the same words the shuffling
Chinaman had received identical instructions every
day for six years, when the thud of the closing street-door
came to Yeh Ling’s keen ears. Every day except
Sunday.
He himself never went out after Jesse Trasmere. He
had other duties which commenced at eleven and usually
kept him busy until the early hours of the morning.
