Page:Oriental Stories Volume 01 Number 04 (Spring 1931).djvu/61

 to thousands of his brethren shuffling daily up and down Nanking Road. His face was nearly a full moon, with slit eyes half hidden behind thick, myopic-lensed spectacles. But, where the eyes of his fellows might be lack-luster, trachomatous, or opium-befogged, Tsang's were bright and shrewd. And where the rotundity of others was all too generous fat, Tsang's was a beautiful crisscross of powerful midriff muscles, the heritage of a man who had practised long and arduously at the art of wrestling. Similarly, his leg muscles were unusually well developed and he was capable of exerting cruel and uexpected pressure in a variety of "scissor" holds.

What Tsang Ah-bou thought of the antics of the foolish Occidentals with whom he passed his working-days might be the subject of an interesting dissertation, were one able to penetrate his smiling reserve. Several of his foreign friends were privately of the opinion that Tsang considered them as children, wayward, deplorably lacking in politeness. Nevertheless, once he had given them his friendship, they knew they could depend upon him. They were aware that he would cheerfully risk his life for them—as he had done, times innumerable. And on one occasion, when the difficulty had been financial, he had calmly mortgaged his two "small wives" to raise the wherewithal to tide over a foreign friend. For Tsang, as was right and proper in an Oriental gentleman, boasted of three spouses.

More than once, John A. Fletcher, the young and successful manager of the Sino-American Banking Corporation, had tested the quality of Tsang's courage and staunchness—and found it sterling.

On a certain April morning—the last day of the month, to be precise—with a foretaste of summer in the heat that came billowing into Fletcher's office, he was thinking with some envy of Tsang. The two had met casually in the Municipal Building the day before, and Tsang had said that he planned to visit his ancestral home on the cool lake at Hangchow, there piously to brush the dust off the spirit tablets of his progenitors.

Fletcher's thoughts shifted from Tsang to the problem that lay before him: whether or not to close down his one losing branch bank at the port of Chinkiang on the Yangtzse River. To close would mean a heavy loss, but to remain open might cause a heavier one, for Chinkiang was in the hands of an army of revolutionists. The rebels politically were a vivid pink tint, verging on Bolshevik red. If they attained too much power, they might even threaten Shanghai

His gloomy thoughts were interrupted by his diminutive Chinese office-boy, who flitted in to announce that a "Conte di Mazzino" wished to see him.

On the heels of the boy, without waiting for permission, a dessicated little European came briskly into the room. The man was garbed in morning coat and gray, pin-striped trousers, a costume too hot for the day which was seeing half of Shanghai in tropic whites. His mustache and imperial were of such a glossy black that Fletcher at once suspected dye. His dark, shiny hair was of an equally suspect hue. He spoke in English, but with a heavy accent and with startling rapidity.

"I am truly sorree to troubl' you, sir, but I 'ave ship, yes, w'ich is eatin' off de head in harbor an' is makin' me pay tonnage dues. De ship, she is register' at Lloyds an' at our Italian consulate. Her worth is more dan one half million of dese Shanghai dollar'. Dis mornin' I 'ave decide' to borrow fifty t'ousand on her, an' go up river to Hankow wit' my large cargo. You will loan me de pittance of de fifty t'ousand, hein?"