Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [125]
Lai Tsin had warned her of this and she had immediately refused to stay there, but he had insisted she must. “It is not suitable for a Western woman to stay in a hotel with Chinese,” he told her firmly.
He was waiting for her in a black-hooded rickshaw and they soon left the smart paved streets behind, jogging through crowded alleys and up and down hills and steps to a shabby waterfront area. Their rickshaw man wove his way through a maze of narrow lanes behind the docks and stopped in front of a dilapidated gray wooden warehouse. Lai Tsin alighted and held out his hand to help her.
“This is what I have brought you to see,” he said, flinging open the door proudly. “Our own godown in Hong Kong. I was fortunate to find it so near the waterfront, because the big trading companies own most of the land. I have bought it in your name, Francie. Look, here are the papers for you to sign.” She stared at the papers covered in Chinese writing.
“This is only the beginning,” he said excitedly. “The taipans of the big hongs would eliminate us immediately if we were to try to compete with them, it is only because we are small that we have a chance. And it is that very smallness that will be our biggest asset—it will enable us to pick up the crumbs they consider too much trouble to sweep up themselves.
“And if this little godown does not look worthy of the L. T. Francis Company, then only remember this: that from smallness and discretion grows greatness. Our lack of ostentation enables us to act stealthily, and stealthily we will creep up on our competitors, until one day we shall stun them with our power.”
Francie stared at him, impressed. He looked small and fragile, his skin was stretched thin as parchment across his prominent cheekbones, but his black almond eyes sparkled with intelligence and knowledge. He was her mentor, her guide through life, and he knew everything.
Lai Tsin took her hand and led her inside. The wooden shelves were covered in the dust of years and a thin ray of sunlight filtered through a broken pane in the small window. It looked shabby and desolate, but he promised confidently, “The next time you see this it will be filled to overflowing with our wares.”
The waterfront was a hive of activity. Everywhere Hakka coolies, stripped to the waist, were carrying, lifting, and staggering beneath burdens more than twice their own weight. Forming human chains, they loaded the little tugs that chugged back and forth to the ships anchored in the deep water bay. Sweat streamed down their backs, it dripped from their furrowed brows into their eyes, but they had no time to wipe it away.
Francie watched curiously, but she didn’t notice one of the coolies stop work and stare at her and Lai Tsin. Nor did she see him edge closer, stealing toward them in the shadows behind the mountain of crates.
The coolie was large-boned and desperately thin, his back was bent and there was a permanent frown of anguish on his filthy, sweat-streaked face. He was short and wiry, he kept his head bowed and his face hidden beneath the wide straw coolie hat. He wore his thick, coarse black hair shaved at the front and braided in a queue, and he was dressed in the cheap, black cotton pants they all wore. His skin was burned a dark yellowish brown and only his eyes gave him away; they were the eyes of a Western man, burning with rage and pain and hatred. They were Sammy Morris’s eyes and they were staring, stunned, at Francie.
If he had ever prayed in his life it was to see her again. When they had flung him, emasculated and half-dead, into the stinking hold of the filthy Chinese clipper, he had thought he would die. He had wanted to die—what was there to live for? To suffer the excruciating pain that racked his bleeding body? To live with the knowledge that Josh was dead? To feel the rats sniffing his blood, gnawing at his limbs, impatiently waiting their turn to mutilate him