Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/352

340 "What for?" demanded Sing Toy.

"That our pidgin," replied Corbell. "You good friend to us; you say nothing at all to anybody."

"What for you take him?" said Sing Toy.

He looked from one to the other with his beady eyes, but without moving his head.

"Good Lord!" ejaculated Corbell in despair. He knew the Chinese—everyone knew the Chinese in those days—and he recognized the bland persistency that would be neither swerved nor balked. "Look here, Sing Toy," he explained, with an elaborate appearance of patience. "You live long time with the Colonel, good many years." "Fo'teen year, tlee month," supplied Sing Toy.

"All right. You like Colonel very much?"

Sing Toy nodded, unblinking.

"Well, this man not good friend to Colonel. So we take him over mountains because he do bad pidgin for the Colonel and we want to stop it."

"Aren't you giving this show away too much? He'll get us into trouble if he blabs," interposed Frank swiftly.

"He can get us into just as much trouble with what he saw to-night—if he wants to," Corbell pointed out. "Better let me run this."

Sing Toy waited until this by-play was finished, quite as though he had not understood a word of it.

"We want you to say nothing," continued Corbell. "We no hurt him."

"You kill him, you want to," stated Sing Toy astonishingly. "I no care. I kill him myself, but you go stop me."

They stared at him in blank astonishment.

"Well, I'll be damned!" ejaculated Corbell. "So you were laying for Boyd with that baby cannon of yours, were you? What for you want kill him?"

"Same t'ing. He make bad pidgin for Cunnel."

"What do you know about it."

"Know all 'bout it. My second-uncle he wo'k in bank."

Suddenly Sing Toy became voluble. His monosyllabic style