The Case of the Curio Dealer by William Hope Hodgson (top 10 novels .txt) 📖

intruded. I wondered what dreadful things the brute could tell of untellable Rites; and while I was wondering this, Hual Miggett returned.

I took the two garments and the funny little cap from him, and nodded towards the inner door.

“Monsieur the High Chief Executioner of the brotherhood has just stuck his ugly head into the shop,” I told him.

The man went ghastly in color, and stared at me, as if I were something superhuman. I began to think my shot must have got a bulls-eye.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, mixed up with people of that kind,” I told him. Then I stuffed the garments (they were very thin material) into my inside pockets, and the cap I folded small, and slipped under my belt; for I was not going out of that shop, carrying any parcel of a size sufficiently large to make the watchers suspect me of being used as a vehicle for the conveying of their beastly god to some other place. I guessed I should have a bad accident, before I had gone the length of the street, if any of them got thinking that!

“To-morrow, about ten in the morning,” I said, and went out of the shop, without saying another word.

They’re rum hogs, some of these mixed breeds, I thought to myself; and walked comfortably up into the city, quite pleasantly aware that a couple of the watching Chinamen were following me. They dropped back, however, near the end of the street, apparently satisfied that I was no one they were looking for.

October 31.

At ten o’clock this morning, I entered Hual Miggett’s shop, with a lanky looking “female” upon my arm.

Hual Miggett came forward; and, for a time, the “lady” and I looked at this thing and that, and bought one or two trifles. I observed that the Mixed Breed seemed enormously depressed, and scarcely spoke. He appeared to be pondering something, to the exclusion of everything else. Well, he certainly had enough of troubles to make a man think!

After a few minutes, I beckoned Hual Miggett to take a look up and down the street. Then I told him to see what the big Chinaman was doing. He opened the inner door boldly, and went in, as if to fetch something. When he came back, he told me that the man with the knife was sleeping on the floor.

“Strip off smart now, Billy!” I said to the “woman” I had brought in.

The hat and veil came off instantly, and the very ample dress followed. The result was a typical seeming young Chinese, but lean and exceedingly muscular.

“Over there, behind the counter!” I said. “Smart now, before you’re seen. Keep your gun handy; but for the Lord’s sake don’t use it unless you’re absolutely cornered.”

I had a brace of heavy Colts in my own pockets; for I was taking quite some risks myself, during the next couple of minutes.

“Now, Miggett,” I said, “get moving, if you want any of us to come through this with a whole skin. Out with that son of yours!”

I had the dress up, ready in my hands, and Hual Miggett literally dragged the dazed lad out of the mummy-shell. Before he was firmly on his feet, I was pulling the dress over his head. Without waiting to fasten it, I dived for the hat and veil, to get his give-away head and face hidden. In a moment, I had crammed the hat on to him, and dragged the veil over and round his face; then I hurried to fasten the dress. I made my fingers fly! If we had been caught in that minute by the big Chinaman, I should certainly have had to shoot; and then there would have been fifty of the brutes into the shop in no time; and the results would have puzzled our greatest friends to identify; for the beggars have an extraordinary penchant, as I might term it, for knife-work.

About a minute later, I was outside the counter again, still with a female-seeming creature upon my arm. A dress and a veil may cover a multitude, well not exactly a multitude; but certainly they make most things look alike!

“Are you ready there, Billy?” I called softly to the sporting runner, crouching behind the counter.

“Sure,” he said.

“Then look out now,” I told him. “I’m going to bring out that big brute. Just let him see you, and then get away smart; or there’ll be murder done right here. Ready?”

“I guess so,” was the confident kind of answer that pleased me. “The bigger the guy is the better. It’s not him I’m botherin’ about; it’s the devils in the street.”

I turned to the counter, and picked up a porcelain Mallet vase, which I looked at with great interest, and suddenly let slip, with an enormous crash on to the floor, where it broke into quite some pieces. I hoped it was valuable. Anyway, it did what I meant it to do; for the inner door opened swiftly, and the great bulk of the big Chinaman filled the doorway, as he stared into the shop.

At the exact instant Billy Johnson, the runner, glided out from below the end of the counter nearest to the street, and tip-toed noiselessly towards the door, in full view of the big Chinaman.

There was a hideous, inarticulate bull roar from the inner doorway, and I glanced towards the great, flat swaying face. The eyes were glaring, like two greenish slits; and a little froth had blown out over the coarse, walrus-like moustache. There was a crashing of falling gear, as he leaped forward; for he had literally ripped one of the projecting counters clean over on to its side as he made his rush. Then the huge bulk of the great Chinaman dashed past me at a speed that was amazing, considering his size. As he thundered by me, I saw that he had in his hand a great four-foot-long knife. The dull blue glint of the steel shone just for one fraction on my eye; then man and knife were out of the door, with a second crash; for his great shoulder had struck and burst one of the wooden door-posts clean off.

But Billy Johnson was away, thirty yards ahead, running like a deer, with a swift, beautiful, strong pat, pat, pat, of entirely capable feet.

From all sides, as we crowded in the doorway and stared, there were converging upon him ever increasing numbers of Chinamen, seeming to come literally out of nowhere. The huge Chinaman was still, however, nearer to Johnson than any one else, and running with a grim intentness; his great head held curiously low.

I saw Johnson take the tracks in half a dozen swift steps, and then he was heading straight for the water-side. I heard the sudden, deep, brrp! brrp! of the racing launch’s exhaust, distinct above the roar of the growing crowd.

Suddenly the big Chinaman flung up his right hand, and I saw the dull gleam of the yard-long blade. Then, still running, he threw, and I could not help shouting; though, of course, no one could have heard me in the din that was now going on.

“Missed him!” I yelled; for the big knife had gone slap over Johnson’s shoulder, missing him by no more than an inch or two. Evidently the big Chinaman had understood suddenly the plan by which the runner hoped to escape. A number of the other pursuers must also have discovered it on the instant; for there came an irregular ripple of revolver firing; but gun practice is apt to be off the target, when both parties are running.

Then Johnson was at the quay side.

“Safe!” I yelled again, as I saw him jump. “Good man, Johnson! Good man!”

“I guess, Miggett, that’s cheap at a thousand dollars,” I told him.

There was firing from the dense and increasing bunch of men at the water-side; and from all down the street there was a sound of running feet, as hundreds of American citizens ran up to discover the whereforeness of so much powder and noise.

A City Marshal (a big Irishman by the looks of him) raced up limberly, white-helmeted and superb in summer uniform. I saw him laying about him, cheerfully, on the heads and shoulders (chiefly the heads) of a number of interested and unoffending citizens, who appeared, however, to consider his attentions as the natural order of things.

There was a deal of further gunfiring from the quay front; but already I could see the racing launch, away out in the bay, half a mile or more from the quay.

Up the street, there was a crash of horses’ hoofs, as a squad of mounted Marshals swept bang round a corner. They roared down past the shop — big Irishmen, most of them, joyous and holding their guns with a pleasurable expectancy.

“Great sport, Hual Miggett,” I said, “over one solitary pigtail!”

The crowd on the water front was fading — literally vanishing; for the mounted Marshals are so inexpressibly and cheerfully effective. And, after all, a bullet fired with a smile … almost as one might say, as a jest, is quite as deadly as those dispatched in a more serious spirit.

I glanced at Hual Miggett, and wondered what he was thinking. Possibly quite as much of the yellow god, which had caused all this trouble, as the torpid, cheerless “female” at my side.

“I guess we’d better depart in the confusion,” I said. “Come along, sweet maid.”

We moved out of the shop, pleasingly unobserved, and reached my ship within the space of two uneventful minutes.

September 1.

We sail to-night, and I went across to see Hual Miggett this morning. I thought that I deserved the reward of virtue; for I had a genuine hankering for that Goat god. But hear the essential meanness of the Mixed Breed.

I found him very glum; but I wasted no pity on him.

“How much for this?” I asked, slapping the Goat god on its capable, bronze shoulder.

“A t’ousand dollars, Cap’n Brother,” he said.

“A thousand cents,” I answered, and walked towards the door.

“Eight hundred dollars, Cap’n Brother,” he called out. “I lose many dollars to you, gladly, for your great goodness to me, Cap’n Brother.”

“I don’t want you to lose,” I said. “We’ll drop all talk of what I’ve done, or haven’t done. You’re not able to pay me, anyway, even if I’d let you. I’ll give you your thousand for the thing, simply because I want it, and I won’t have you patting yourself on that weevily mean back of yours, and thinking you’ve done me a favor. This thing is worth not a cent more than five or six hundred. Here are the notes. Give me a receipt, or you’ll be swearing I’ve not paid you, next. Oh, don’t talk. I’m just a bit sick of you!” I told him.

He tried to excuse himself; but I simply held out the notes, and waited for the receipt. Then, without bothering to fall on his neck and say good-bye, I walked out of the shop, with the old bronze Goat god tucked under my arm.

Anyway, I thought to myself, it will be something to remember this little affair by.

Down in my cabin, however, having locked the door, I worked the secret opening in the base of the god, and then, gently and tenderly, I slid from the hollow interior the amber god (the Kuch) which I had taken from the mummy-case, and hidden inside the Goat god, when I sent Hual Miggett for a suit of his son’s clothing.

I keep wondering, rather pleasantly, what the mean-souled Mixture thought, when he found the yellow god had vanished. Possibly superstition (being no longer deadened by the