Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/353

Rh of discourse gave way to a flood of apparently uncorrelated syllables. It did not sound exactly like Chinese. As a matter of fact it was Sing Toy's kind of English produced under excitement. Ravenscroft stared rather wildly. But the others smoked in placid calm. They knew the Chinese, and they were waiting for Sing Toy to run down. When this at length happened, Corbell resumed his catechism. Patiently, by question, he elicited sentence by sentence what the oration had been about. Sing Toy's second uncle seemed to have been possessed of astonishingly particularized information. Sing Toy knew more about the Colonel's affairs, the amount and kind of his paper, and especially all the details of the directors' meeting, including its discussions and the nature of its agreements and resolutions than any man present. The four white men listened with a growing respect.

"So you sorted out your gun and went after him. What you think you make by that?" commented Carlson, when he had finished.

"Eve'ybody say they solly, velly solly. Nobody do nothing at all. Nobody," stated Sing Toy. "I try get money. All China-man know Cunnel. They know he good man, that he pay some time. They jus' soon lend Cunnel money. No can get enough. So I go kill him."

"Sing Toy, you're all right!" cried Carlson warmly.

"What for you take him? What you do with dat man?" Sing Toy returned inexorably to his first question.

Corbell rolled a comical eye at his friends and began painstakingly to explain in words of one syllable. He was cut short.

"I savvy," said Sing Toy. "You got 'nuff money?"

"Well no not quite," confessed Corbell, "but we'll fix that somehow."

"How much you need?"

"Oh, quite a lot."

"How much?"

"Better tell him first as last," laughed Carlson. "He'll never let up on you."

"Thirty thousand dollars," said Corbell.