d, "and I guess there are a lot more. But I reckon it's
the same in 'Frisco as it is here, they keep their killings to
themselves, and they don't let any white men get mixed up in it at all.
That's why you never can tell anything about it. But right now Chinatown
is pretty dangerous, and all the sight-seeing business there has been
shut off. No one is going into Mott and Pell Streets now."

"Pell Street!" exclaimed the boy. "Is that in Chinatown?"

"Right in the heart of it," was the reply. "Why?"

"Because I'm headed there now," Hamilton answered, taking from his
pocket the schedule he had been given by Burns to check up, and showing
it to the officer.

"That's Chinatown all right," the policeman said, "just look at the
names!"

"I hadn't looked at it closely," the boy remarked, "why, yes, so it is.
Well, Tong or no Tong, I suppose I've got to chance it, if those are
orders."

The policeman shook his head.

"Looks to me as though you'd have to wait a while. Take some other
district first and come back next week."

"Can't," the boy answered. "The Census Inspector and I have to go to
'Frisco to straighten out a Chinese tangle over the census there. The
Chinese refused point-blank to have anything to do with the census, and
there was a heap of trouble."

"What was it?" asked the policeman, walking along beside Hamilton in the
direction of Chinatown, his beat extending to the limits of that
section.

"When the rule for the census was issued, so they told me in
Washington," Hamilton answered, "in order to make sure that the Chinese
would not place any obstacles in the way, not only was a copy of the
President's proclamation in Chinese pasted all over the walls of the
city, but, in addition a decree was made by the Chinese consul-general
that it was the wish of the Chinese government that the population in
the city be properly numbered."

"That was a good idea," said the policeman approvingly.

"It would have been," said Hamilton, "if the Chinese had paid any
attention to it. Instead of that, some of the Tongs got together and had
a brief threat printed and pasted across the face of the President's
proclamation, as well as that of the consul, that no Chinaman was to
give any information to a census officer, unless he wanted to come under
the displeasure of the Tongs."

"The nerve of them!"

"At this," continued the boy, "the consul put out a second order,
sharper than the first, not only commanding obedien