Now the lights of the steamer showed in the darkness, high above the water, moving silently and majestically down upon the man floating there like a chip—
Jerry threw his weight against the oars. The steamer was almost upon him. He sent the boat back its own length, measured with one keen glance the distance he had allowed for clearance, and took from his pocket the flashlight. The Shanghai was opposite the spark of red that indicated the position of the lantern on the shore when Jerry flashed his signal—three short flashes and a longer one.
Next moment he had caught up his oars. From a port hole high above there shot a dark object which swooped down and struck the water with a smashing impact; two other bundles followed it.
The ship continued on its way, but at three points on the dark water a tiny glow showed where the cork-buoyed packages of smoking opium were floating. To each had been attached a small glass tube containing phosphorus, invisible at any great distance, but easily distinguished by the man in the boat.
Jerry pushed the skiff forward with sturdy breast strokes. He reached over the side for the first of the packages and hauled it in. Another stroke carried within reach of the second bundle.
He was just about to seize it when a warning sound reached him—the cough of a gas engine. In a flash he remembered the launch which had passed seaward close to shore. They had taken advantage of the same darkness that had protected him.
A light blazed out—the search light of the revenue boat.
In that instant the young man thought of his mother, old, placid, credulous, to whom he had told fairy stories to account for the money he gave her so prodigally at times. And he saw the dark eyes and the oval face of a girl—his girl, Irene—and the face of Lee Hin, serene and impassive as if carved of ivory. It was Lee Hin who had warned him this very evening; and warned him of the business itself, and of Burke, Jerry’s associate in it.
As if it had been a spectre, summoned by this racing thought, a face stood out of the darkness ahead: the red, threating face of Burke, standing at the shoulder of another man in the prow of the launch.
“That’s him!” Burke was saying, in his hoarse, growling voice. “Look out for the dope—”
Jerry gripped an oar and swung himself to his feet. He cast a burning look upon the informer.
“You dirty dog—”
The nose of the launch rose on the swell. As it came down it caught the forward end of the skiff under its sharp keel.
In the same instant there was the crack of a pistol, and Jerry pitched from his skiff into the water. Burke, the gun still quivering in his hand, stared over, searching the glistening surface of the tide.
“Take that gun away from him!” a voice from the rear of the launch commanded. “He had no business to shoot—”
“I did it in self-defense!” Burke growled. “In another moment he would have got me with that oar! Get a move on, you fellows! Grab that package! We've got to get ashore before Lee Hin makes his getaway!”
But when they came to the shack of Lee Hin, ten minutes later, the lights were out and the place was deserted.
The Chinaman was gone.
ON THE money he had saved from his profits in opium running Burke was able to travel north in first-class style. He sojourned for a time in Canada, then went east and visited New York.
He told himself he was through with dope. Every man’s hand was against the drug-runner, while the vender of good moonshine or smuggled liquor was looked upon as a public benefactor. No more opium for him—he would become a bootlegger.
He stayed in New York ten days, and discovered that the business he had contemplated entering was organized like a trust or a shipping pool, and that to enter it he must have “real money.” His little roll, which he had looked upon with considerable complacency, was reduced to microscopic size by comparison with the financial resources of these eastern operators.
Burke cut his New York visit short. Memories were stirring uneasily within him—the face of a dark-eyed girl, which flashed upon him sometimes out of the dusk, and the smell of fog blowing gustily down Market Street. There was nothing like that in the East. He went to Chicago.
In Chicago he stayed two days. He had purposed to remain at least a week, but on that second day a feeling, which had come to him before, returned with increased energy. It was what Burke called a “hunch.”
“That little dame is thinking about me,” he growled down in his burly throat. “She’s forgetting that scut, and I’m going back! I got a hunch she'll treat me right, now that she’s forgotten him!”
Three nights later Burke was standing on the upper deck of the Oakland ferry, looking with ferocious tenderness at the lights of his native city. The clock in the tower of the Ferry Building showed that it was still early; but a powdery fog was blowing down street, making it seem late.
Burke secured a room at a waterfront hotel. He scrubbed and groomed himself, anointed his hair with perfume, and presently sallied forth. He was going to test that hunch of his.
He journeyed to an outlying residential district. Down a side street he tramped stolidly. He turned a corner—and hesitated.
There, a few doors away, was the apartment house. He slipped along to the tradesmen’s entrance and stepped into its sheltering gloom. He didn’t feel exactly comfortable. He had pictured himself going boldly up to the door and ringing the bell. Now he decided to wait a while—to reconnoiter.
People came and went—elderly people; children; occasionally a girl whose half perceived figure brought him forward, tense and breathless. Then as he was starting toward the entrance of the apartment, the girl he was hoping yet fearing to see came down the street from the opposite direction, passed within five feet of him, and went into the house. She had not seen him, but he had seen her.
Burk realized that the impression of that pale, sorrowful face would be with him till he died.
He left his retreat a few minutes later and walked slowly away. He could feel the perspiration trickling down his forehead into his eyes. His heart pounded steadily at his ribs.
Burke decided, without thinking much about the matter, to walk the two miles back to his hotel. He struck off down a street lit with old-fashioned gas lamps, whose straw-colored flames gleamed green and witchlike in the eddying fog. He had steadied down to his habitual pace, and had no premonition to look behind him. If he had only had one of his hunches now. . . .
But he didn’t. Perhaps it would have made little difference, in any case; for the lithe figure, which had detached itself from the shadows of a vacant lot across from the apartment house as Burke departed, blended easily with the gloom of the late evening.
He returned to his hotel, somewhat reassured by his walk. His blood tingled and he felt thoroughly alive. He even grinned to himself as he took his key
