Singapore Nights
By Frank Owen
The East never sleeps, never rests. Its maze of confusion and mystery flows onward endlessly
1
Dick Varney stood on the docks in Singapore gazing idly at his surroundings. This was a new life, a new world, and it was just as well. He had been bored with New York anyway, aside from the fact that it was a dangerous place for him to remain. He had come to the East as a member of the crew of a large freighter. The fact that he was a rather worthless member hadn't really mattered. The main thing was that no one suspected he was the famous Richard Varney.
Along the waterfront Chinese junks piled up everywhere like so much kindling wood. Hordes of sleek-eyed Orientals pattered about jabbering, laughing, chanting incessantly. Near at hand scores of steamers lay at anchor. Almost every nation was represented in the kaleidoscope of flags. They helped to make the color of the morning even more vivid.
At last Dick turned his steps inland. He walked through spacious avenues on which fronted magnificent government buildings and enormous hotels which might have been in New York or London, so resplendent were they with gayly dressed ladies and well-groomed men. He shunned the big hotels. His clothes were not in fit condition for him to stop at them. Oddly enough it did not enter his head to buy better ones. He was dressed like a common sailor, in clothes of cheap blue shoddy material, and yet he had grown accustomed to them. He dreaded the thought of being forced to wear full-dressed shirts and stiff white collars again.
He crossed the Singapore River, pausing for a moment to appreciate the beauty of the gay-hued sampans which almost completely filled the stream from bank to bank. It was extremely interesting. He was a born artist. Every new scene attracted him. He smiled at the rikshas containing well-dressed perfumed ladies and drawn by poor coolies who had advanced no farther in life than to be beasts of burden. Lean, raw-boned fellows, the very expression of their emaciated faces showed plainly the years of toil and privation through which they had passed. Wealth and poverty are responsible for some grimly provocative pictures.
Dick Varney entered the business section where stood the enormous banks and office buildings, so modern that they would not have seemed misplaced in the heart of any large city. The glamor is fading from the East. Modernism is creeping in.
He was amazed at the motley throngs which he met everywhere, Europeans, Hindoos, Japanese, Malays, Filipinos, Dyaks and Javanese. Every quarter of the globe was represented and the costumes were as varied and absurd as any in Barnum's circus.
In spite of himself he chuckled. "I'd hate to keep a clothing store here," he mused.
At last he journeyed into the low-built poorer section of the city, and there,
almost hidden among the blue, yellow
