The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles

Chapter 10

Chapter 10The China sliced through the placid waters of

Victoria Harbor and docked at a pier on Hong Kong Island. I decided

to wait until Katharina and the third-class passengers disembarked

before leaving the ship myself. I wanted to make sure Eichel didn’t

spot Katharina in the crowd because I was sure he only

half-believed the story about her leaving the ship in Nagasaki. And

even if he did, which of his alleged assignments took precedence?

Katharina or me?

A steady rain pelted Hong Kong when the

gangways were finally affixed to the ship. I watched as a few

hundred third-class passengers left the China along with

scores of first and second-class passengers from their distinct

gangways. As the passengers spilled out onto the pier, class

distinctions suddenly dissipated as they ran for cover into one of

the buildings or attempted to hail a hackney.

Potts told me that Katharina would be

wearing a navy blue straw hat with a red feather in it so I could

identify her. As I waited, I looked down at the second-class deck

to see if Eichel was watching. I didn’t see him.

Then I saw Katharina. She was in the middle

of a sea of surging black umbrellas moving swiftly along the dock.

Every so often, I spotted her navy blue hat and red feather as it

bobbed up and down under her umbrella.

She remained with the crowd until she was

about thirty feet from the ship. Then along with four other

passengers, she climbed aboard an enclosed hackney carriage. As the

carriage pulled away, I looked down at the second-class deck. I

didn’t see Eichel.

I waited another half hour, and then I

prepared to disembark. As I did, I ran into Deputy Captain

Partington.

“Expecting trouble in Hong Kong?” Partington

asked, nodding at the revolver I had pushed into my waistband.

“Not if I can help it, but it doesn’t hurt

to be prepared.”

“Captain Kreitz informed me of the

baroness’s plans and her temporary exile in steerage. Quite

inspired.”

“You haven’t seen Eichel by any chance have

you?”

“I did, actually. He left the ship just

after we docked.”

I wasn’t expecting that. It meant that

Eichel could have been watching the passengers disembark from the

vantage point of the pier. Had he seen Katharina? And if he had,

did he follow her? Suddenly, I was eager to get to the address

Katharina had given me. It meant taking a ferry from Hong Kong

Island across Victoria Harbor to Kowloon on the mainland.

I turned to go, and Partington grabbed my

arm.

“Be careful with that thing,” he said,

nodding at the butt of my Colt .45. “I would keep it out of sight

if I were you. This is a British Crown Colony, and there are strict

rules about carrying firearms.”

I nodded.

“And be careful where you go and where you

eat,” Partington continued. “Hong Kong is still dealing with an

outbreak of the bubonic plague.”

That bit of news stopped me in my tracks.

“Bubonic plague?”

“Yes, but it’s almost over now… It began

earlier this year and has killed about three thousand people…

Still, one must be on one’s guard.”

Partington’s news was a shock, but I

promised to meet Katharina at the Kowloon office of her brother’s

business.

Twenty minutes later, I was on board a ferry

for the ten-minute ride to the Tsim Sha Tsui pier at the tip of the

Kowloon Peninsula. I dug into my pocket for the slip of paper with

the address of the M. K. Trading & Lumber Co. and got

directions from one of the Kowloon Ferry Company employees. In

another ten minutes, I was at the office. It was on the second

floor of a four-story red brick building.

Before I could enter the building, Katharina

opened the door, cautiously scanned the street in both directions,

and pulled me inside. She had discarded the gray and white matron’s

dress she was wearing when she left the ship and was now wearing

attire more suited to her.

“So you made it, after all,” she said as we

walked upstairs and into the outer office where two Chinese men

were hunched over wooden desks operating abacuses. Both men wore

jackets of Shantung silk, dark crape breeches, white leggings, and

velvet embroidered shoes.

“I thought you might have gotten lost or

been shanghaied,” Katharina continued.

“No such luck.”

“Did anybody follow you?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“Okay, follow me.” She led me to a large

office in the rear. When we entered, a man who was maybe five feet

four and in his mid-forties stood up from his desk. He wore what I

later learned was a barong Tagalog—a loose fitting

embroidered linen shirt with a Chinese collar that he wore outside

his black pants.

“This is Mr. Luis Soliven, the manager of my

brother’s company here in Hong Kong,” Katharina said. “Mr. Soliven,

you will be interested to know, is a graduate of Yale

University.”

Then she introduced me and added, “Mr.

Battles is a legendary lawman and gunfighter from Kansas. He once

attended the University of Kansas but left to pursue more exciting

activities.”

I shot her a sour look. Of course, the fact

that the butt of my Colt was quite visible from my waistband didn’t

help amend Soliven’s first impression of me.

Katharina had already explained her

situation to Soliven and her plans to leave the SS China and

take a smaller company chartered freighter from Hong Kong to the

Philippines. The ship was leaving early the next morning for the

750-mile, 2-day voyage.

“Looks like you have it all figured out, so

why did you want to meet me here today?”

Katharina was apparently shocked by my

question.

“Naturally, I assumed you would be coming

with me.”

“I hadn’t planned on it. I am booked to

Manila on the China and then to Saigon on another ship. And

besides, all of my belongings are still aboard the

China.”

Katharina smiled. “No, they’re not. They

should be on the way here.”

I couldn’t hide my irritation at this news.

“What the hell? I didn’t arrange for that.”

“I’m sorry… I arranged with Mr. Potts to

have your things delivered here. I’m afraid I told a little fib. I

told him you approved.”

I settled into a chair in front of Soliven’s

desk. “You do take liberties, Baroness…”

“I apologize, William, but I felt this

needed to be handled as discreetly as possible. It wouldn’t do for

you to be tramping all over Hong Kong with your trunks. What if

Eichel were to see you?”

“I don’t have trunks… just a couple of small

cases.”

“All the better. Now, let’s get everything

settled for tomorrow with Mr. Soliven.”

I still felt guilty about the misgivings I

had as a result of the forged letter Eichel had given me, so I

tempered my annoyance with Katharina and her imperious behavior.

After a brief conversation with Soliven, we received directions to

the dock where a freighter called the Medina would be waiting.

We waited another hour or so until Potts

arrived with my belongings.

“Yew sure abaaaht dis, guvenor?” Potts

asked. “Seems a bi’ sudden.”

I assured

Potts the change in plans were well thought out, even though I knew

they weren’t. I gave him ten dollars[3] and thanked him

for his help and his discretion on the China. Then I asked

him if he had seen Eichel return to the ship.

“I don’t fnk ’e ’as,” Potts said. “Best keep

an eye aaaht fer ’im. E’s a slippery blighter.”

Potts and I shook hands; he tipped his hat

to Katharina and turned to leave. Just as he did the outer office

door opened, and in walked Eichel.

It didn’t take him long to spot us standing

in Soliven’s office, and he made a beeline for it, bypassing the

two Chinese men who were still working at their desks. There wasn’t

much we could do. We were trapped. Katharina moved next to me.

Potts and Soliven stood before us facing the door. As soon as

Eichel walked in, Soliven moved to block his path.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t just walk into my

office,” he said.

“I appear to have already done that,” Eichel

said, shoving Soliven aside and onto the floor. Seconds later, he

was standing before Katharina and me, looking first at her then at

me. “My how cozy we are, eh, Baroness… Mr. Battles.”

I moved between Eichel and Katharina,

pulling her behind me as I did. “What do you want, Eichel?”

“You both know very well what I want. And I

am not leaving here until I get it.” His right hand moved quickly

to the shoulder holster inside his coat and pulled a short-barreled

revolver. At the same time, I jerked the Colt from my waistband. I

was about to shoot when one of the Chinese men from the outer

office rushed in and hit Eichel in the small of his back with a

long wooden club resembling a baseball bat.

The man was much bigger than any Chinese I

had ever seen, standing probably six feet tall and weighing close

to two hundred pounds. The force of the blow sent Eichel stumbling

forward, his brown bowler flying off his head.

Then the man with the club hit him several

more times until Eichel was sprawled on the floor, gasping for air

and moaning. I reached down and removed the Smith & Wesson

revolver that he had still managed to clutch in his hand. By now,

the other smaller Chinese man had entered the office and stood with

his right foot on Eichel’s neck.

Soliven climbed from the floor and said

something in Chinese to the two men, both of whom backed away from

Eichel. Then he looked at Katharina.

“Are you okay, Baroness?” he asked.

She nodded. “Thank God. Now what?”

“I will take care of it,” Soliven said. He

called one of the Chinese men over and whispered something to him.

The man nodded and scurried out of the room. Meanwhile, Eichel

remained prostrate on the floor, still moaning and gasping.

“I’m glad I didn’t ’ave ter use dis,” Potts

said, returning a nasty-looking knife to its sheath inside the blue

and white ship’s uniform he was wearing. “But I am afraid i’ was me

fault ’e found you. The bloke must ’ave followed me.”

The Chinese man returned to the room

carrying several yards of rope and a cloth bag. Then he and the

other Chinese employee hogtied the still-groggy Eichel, gagged him,

and put the cloth bag over his head.

Soliven, Potts, Katharina, and I moved out

of the room into the larger outer office.

“I think you should all leave before he

comes to his senses,” Soliven said. “We will deal with this man…

uh… what is his name again?”

“His name is Eichel, an’ ’e is a passenger

on da China,” Potts said. “Should I get ’im back ter da

ship?”

Soliven looked at me and then at Katharina.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea. I suggest that Mr. Eichel

take another ship to a destination far from here.”

I looked at Katharina and then at Potts.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s called shanghaiing,” Potts said.

Soliven explained that he knew of several “boarding masters” whose

job it was to find crews for ships sailing out of Hong Kong.

Boarding masters, also known as crimps, were paid blood money for

each man they “recruited,” he said.

“Recruited?” I asked.

“Well, that is a generous interpretation,”

Soliven said. “Sometimes they trick men or render them unconscious

or beat them senseless. Then they forge their signatures on the

ship’s articles of agreement. Once that’s done, the men are bound

by law to remain on the ship until the end of the voyage. If they

don’t, they can be thrown in the brig.”

“It sounds awful,” Katharina said.

“It’s be’er van bein’ buried somewhere in

Hong Kong or at sea,” Potts said.

“Where will Eichel go? I mean, what ship

will he be put on?” Katharine asked.

Soliven raised his hand and scuttled back

into his office, picked up a ledger from his desk, and

returned.

“It looks like there are two ships that

might qualify… both leaving tomorrow… one going to Sydney,

Australia, and the other to Capetown, South Africa,” Soliven said,

looking at the list of ships in port and their scheduled

departures.

“I don’t think we want to know any more

about this,” I said. “I don’t care where he goes as long as it’s

not Manila or Saigon.”

“I agree,” Katharina said.

Potts nodded and then said something that

made a lot of sense to me. “Now yew bof can return ter da

China an’ continue yaaahr trip in style.”

I was relieved. At least aboard the

China, I knew I would arrive in Manila in two days and be

able to make my onward connection five days later with the ship

that would take me to Saigon.

“Here, guvnor,” Potts said, extending a hand

holding the ten dollar bill I had just given him. “I don’t feel

right keepin’ i’ now what yew are returnin’ ter da

China.”

“You keep it, Mr. Potts. You have more than

earned it. If you hadn’t have led Eichel to us, we might be looking

over our shoulders for the next several weeks or even months.”

Katharina laughed. “Yes, Mr. Potts, it was a

bit of luck that you brought us in addition to Mr. Battles’s

clothes.”

I handed Eichel’s revolver to Soliven. In

the rear office, Eichel had regained consciousness and was

blubbering unintelligibly while squirming vigorously on the floor

in a futile attempt to get to his feet. I watched Eichel flounder

vainly on the floor for a few moments, and even though I didn’t

like him, I found myself feeling a little sorry for him. God knows

where he was going to wind up, and what if he had family back in

San Francisco?

I was still watching Eichel when Potts

jarred me out of my trance. “Yew all right, guvnor?”

I nodded and looked at Katharina, who was

also watching Eichel. She seemed to know what I was thinking.

“He could have killed you…”

At that, Soliven jumped in. “You know, Mr.

Battles, things here in Asia are much different from what they are

in America. Things happen in Hong Kong that would never happen in

New Haven, Connecticut.”

I regarded Soliven with a baffled

expression.

“For example, just two years ago, a

wholesale public execution took place in Kowloon when thirty-four

pirates were decapitated by Chinese authorities wielding

broadswords,” Soliven said. “It was quite gruesome, and thousands

came to see it. The severed heads were lined up in front the

corpses so the public could walk by and look at them. Can you

imagine such a thing happening in America?”

I shook my head.

Katharina gasped. “How awful… but at least

Mr. Eichel will not suffer such a fate.”

Soliven promised to have our belongings

returned to the China. We thanked him and his two Chinese

employees for their help, and then Katharina, Potts, and I turned

to leave.

“Gute Reise, Herr Eichel,” Katharina said

over her shoulder as we walked out the door.

The three of us took two-wheeled rickshaws

to the Kowloon Ferry Company terminal. Along the way, we passed

dozens of small shops selling rolls of Canton silk, grass matting,

carved ivory, jewelry, bronzes, porcelain, ebony furniture, and

lacquer ware. The streets swarmed with shoulder-to-shoulder

pedestrian traffic through which the slender Chinese men pulling

our rickshaws moved deftly. My ears and nose were met with a

dissonant sympathy of sounds and smells I had never before

experienced. Asia, I had concluded from my experience in Japan and

now Hong Kong, was going to be a place of baffling surprises and

inscrutability.

About an hour later, the three of us were

back on the China. Potts informed Deputy Captain Partington

that Eichel had decided to disembark in Hong Kong and proceeded to

have his belongings cleared from his cabin and sent to the M. K.

Trading & Lumber Co. offices.

When I got back to my cabin, I put my Colt

back into the night table by my bed. As I did, I couldn’t help

thinking how close I had come to gunplay with Eichel. I was just a

split second from shooting him, and I suspect he would have shot me

also, given that we were only about five feet apart.

Such a close encounter was not what I was

expecting on my journey to the Orient. However, it reminded me that

trouble and peril always seemed persistently to be near me.