It’s just one little step—in New York, anyhow—from the Caucasian to the Oriental. As a matter of fact it’s only across the street, and that doesn’t count for any distance at all. The Chinese have settled down on that little part of the city which is split into wedge-shaped blocks by Mott, Pell and Doyers streets, very much like a flock of birds alight on some tree, and with apparently as little reason. They have brought with them their manners, their customs, their habits and their traditions. They have imported their own gods, and even the furniture for the joss houses. They have introduced to American men and women the choices of their Oriental vices, that of opium smoking, and they have provided places where their patrons may enjoy the drug. They wash your shirts and iron your collars; they take your money and smile at you; they go to your Sunday schools and sing hymns in queer cracked voices that would be worth big money to a comedian, and they profess to be converted to your way of thinking, but they are smooth and wise.
They are never weaned from the worship of Confucius or Tao, or Buddha, as the case may be, but don’t you see when a Chinese wants to learn the language of the people with whom he lives, it is very nice to have as a teacher a nice looking girl, and the English of the Bible is no different than any other English. So, by saying he has foresworn the gods and the
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 faith of his fathers, he gets his education directly from the red lips of a daughter of the white devils, and sometimes he puts on the finishing touches by marrying her.
Can you beat it?
Much he thinks of women, for in that Empire from whence he comes a woman is a chattel, a bit of merchandise, worth so much in money or goods, as the case may be, and he buys her as a white man buys a horse. She is his wife, his mistress, or his servant, and the price fluctuates accordingly.
When Yen Gow, the slickest Oriental that ever cooked a pill, hit Mott street for the first time, he noticed that there were very few women of his race in the colony, and being a man who made money, no matter by what means, he considered it was an evil that he was in duty bound to remedy. He had a varied career, and among other things being an expert, he had taught American women how to smoke “hop.”
Incidentally, it is pat to say here that Yen Gow represents a man and not a dummy, and that this story is absolutely true in every detail and is very far removed from fiction.
If you haven’t what you want, get it, is a maxim practiced by a certain class of people in all countries in the world whose methods, both from a moral as well as a legal standpoint, are not considered to be exactly right. So being shy one female of his own blood and color, Yen took a 3,000 mile ride to ’Frisco to remedy the defect. No one knows just how deep he had to dig for that slant-eyed lady, dressed in the clothes of a boy, whom he smuggled into the top floor of a Mott street tenement one night. But it was his investment,
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 and he spent his money like another man would buy ground or buildings.
He fitted the room up with couches and curtains and furniture, but first of all he fitted a good, strong lock to the door that couldn’t be tampered with either from the inside or outside unless one had the key. There was only one key and he had it. When you buy property that has feet you are not inclined to take chances.
Having attended to all of the details that he considered necessary, and frightened the lady by telling her that the people of New York were cannibals who liked nothing better than Mongolian flesh, he began to do business.
He first lounged into the fan-tan joint of Hop Lee on Pell street.
“Have you ever heard of Moy Sen?” he asked.
“Moy Sen; who is she?”
“Who is she? Were you born yesterday? There are three hundred and twenty girls in ’Frisco, and they are as little like Moy Sen as the earth is like the sun. Why, the viceroy of the Shang-tuan province heard of her and sent an envoy with nothing to do but look at her and if she was what they said she was, to bring her back even if it cost him ten thousand taels.”
“Did he get her?”
“Can a child get a rainbow? She heard he was coming, so she dressed in the clothes of a working boy and ran away to New York.” He stepped a little closer and whispered: “She is here now.”
Then he cunningly told his story, and when he had finished he had made it clearly understood for what purpose she was here, and added further that being
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 an utter stranger she had placed herself under his care.
“Now, if you care to see her I will take you.”
Nothing could be simpler—nor plainer.
In figuring up his profits—which were large—Yen Gow got into the habit of multiplying them by two, and then mentally cursing himself because he had not bought two slaves instead of one. With no conscience and no morals, he was a thing of stone whose only thought was the easy acquirement of money. If, by cutting off a finger or an ear from his chattel he could have increased her value, he would have done it with as little compunction as lopping off a chicken’s head.
When the money didn’t come in fast enough he took to beating her, and it wasn’t long before the slim, brown body of the girl began to take on bluish spots where the knots in the rope had struck and left their imprint. She had never known there was such a thing in the world as love, but she began to hate with a fierceness and vindictiveness that any woman is capable of when she has been wronged, no matter of what race or nationality she may be.
Revenge follows closely on the heels of a woman’s hate, and it is always deadly. One woman can hate another woman and still smile on her as if she was the dearest and best friend in the world, while she is waiting to let go her poisoned shaft. But she has no smiles for the man she hates any more than a cat will purr when it has just had an encounter with a dog.
Many a night when the sightseeing crowds were going through Chinatown’s streets the girl looked at her captor, and let her tapering hand slip inside the loose fold of her silk blouse until it caressed the jade
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 handle of a long, thin and keen-edged blade. If he had known how near death he was he would have put his back against the wall and pulled out that big American revolver he always carried in his sash. But not knowing he went along with his head up in the clouds.
Because her heart was the heart of a woman she stopped feeling for the knife and set her mind on other things, such as any caged animal would under the circumstances. It was finally concentrated on the key—that slim piece of metal which he never let out of his keeping day or night. It gave her courage to live the life she was leading, and the thought spurred her on, for at last she had an object.
The long, lean, gray wolf of the prairies will follow its prey for days. Hungry and thirsty and tired it will trail like a shadow, never once deviating from the heels of its victim. Through snow, and rain, and sleet, and wind, surmounting all obstacles it will stay until the end, and the end to the wolf always means the feast.
Somewhere in the veins of this Chinese girl there must have been one drop of wolf blood, for once she set her mind upon the possession of that key she never wavered. It was before her night and day. She planned a thousand ways to get it, but never one was right. She watched him with furtive eyes, but for all the good it did, ............