For several minutes Ling Foo stared at the oblong blackness; then with a
hysterical gurgle he ran to the door, slammed and bolted it, and leaned
against the jamb, sick and faint, yet oddly relieved. He would not now
have to account to the police for the body of an unknown white man.
A queer business. Nothing exciting ever happened along this part of
Woosung Road. What he had witnessed--it still wasn't quite
believable--belonged to the water front. Things happened there, for these
white sailors were a wild lot.
When the vertigo went out of his legs, Ling Foo cat-stepped over to the
scattered embroidered jackets and began mechanically to replace them on
the counter--all but two, for these were speckled with blood. He
contemplated them for a space, and at last picked them up daintily and
tossed them into a far corner. When the blood dried he would wash them out
himself.
But there was that darkening stain on the floor. That would have to be
washed out at once or it would be crying up to him eternally and recasting
the tragic picture. So he entered the rear of the shop and summoned his
wife. Meekly she obeyed his order and scrubbed the stain. Her beady little
black eyes were so tightly lodged in her head that it was not possible for
her to elevate her brows in surprise. But she knew that this stain was
blood.
Ling Foo solemnly waved her aside when the task was done, and she
slip-slapped into the household dungeon out of which she had emerged.
Her lord and master returned to his alcove. Ah, but the pipe was good! He
rocked slightly as he smoked. Three pipefuls were reduced to ashes; then
he wriggled off the cushion, picked up his cash counter and began
slithering the buttons back and forth; not because there were any profits
or losses that day, but because it gave a welcome turn to his thoughts.
The storm raged outside. Occasionally he felt the floor shudder. The
windows ran thickly with rain. The door rattled. It was as if all objects
inanimate were demanding freedom from bolts and nails. With the tip of his
long, slender finger Ling Foo moved the buttons. He counted what his
profits would be in Manchurian sables; in the two Ming vases that had come
in mysteriously from Kiao-chau--German loot from Peking; counted his
former profits in snuff bottles, and so on.
The door rattled furiously.
Ling Foo could consider himself as tolerably wealthy. Some day, when this
great turmoil among the whites subsided, he would move to South China and
grow little red oranges and melons, and there would be a nook in the
gardens where he could sit with the perfume of jasmine swimming over and
about his head and the goodly Book of Confucius on his knees.