At ten minutes after ten the next morning Lillian Shan and I arrived at the front door of Fong Yick’s employment agency on Washington Street.
“Give me just two minutes,” I told her as I climbed out. “Then come in.”
“Better keep your steam up,” I suggested to the driver. “We might have to slide away in a hurry.”
In Fong Yick’s, a lanky, grey-haired man whom I thought was the Old Man’s Frank Paul was talking around a chewed cigar to half a dozen Chinese. Across the battered counter a fat Chinese was watching them boredly through immense steel-rimmed spectacles.
I looked at the half-dozen. The third from me had a crooked nose—a short, squat man.
I pushed aside the others and reached for him.
I don’t know what the stuff he tried on me was—jiu jitsu, maybe, or its Chinese equivalent. Anyhow, he crouched and moved his stiffly open hands trickily.
I took hold of him here and there, and presently had him by the nape of his neck, with one of his arms bent up behind him.
Another Chinese piled on my back. The lean, grey-haired man did something to his face, and the Chinese went over in a corner and stayed there.
That was the situation when Lillian Shan came in.
I shook the flat-nosed boy at her.