tated frankly that another man was about to be assassinated and he
desired to retain a certain lawyer in advance to defend him if he was
not already employed by the commonwealth. It is no easy matter for the
police to secure the conviction of a Chinaman charged with any crime,
let alone that of murder. There is only one place where a policeman
will believe a Chinaman. That is in a cemetery, while a chicken's head
is being cut off. If asked any questions at that time, after certain
Chinese words have been repeated, a Chinaman will tell the truth, so
the police believe. Although all Chinaman are smooth faced and have
their heads shaved they do not "look alike" to the policemen, who have
no trouble in telling them apart. This, of course, applied only to the
policemen detailed to look after Chinatown. If it were not that the
Chinamen kill only men of their own race and let alone all other men,
the citizens of San Francisco would have sacked and burned Chinatown.
Once the Highbinders were rooted out of the city, and before the
catastrophe they were going to do so again.

Some time ago a Chinese shrimp fisherman incurred the displeasure of
the members of another society and he was kidnapped in the night and
taken to a lonely, uninhabited island some miles from San Francisco,
tied hand and foot and fastened tight to stakes driven in the ground
and left to die. Two days later he was found by friends, purely by
accident and released, famished and worn out, but he refused to tell
who his captors were, and again become a victim of the terrible
Highbinders, the curse of the Pacific coast.

Incidents of the above characters nearly always ending in murder, were
so common that the wealthy and powerful Chinese Six Companies, the big
merchants of the race, held years ago meetings with the purpose of
bringing the societies to peace and while they often succeeded the
truce between them was only temporary.

Of all the dark, secretive and lawless Chinese villages that dot the
wayward Pacific slope, the one that looks down on the arm of San
Francisco Bay, just this side of San Pedro Point, is the most
mysterious and lawless. The village hasn't even a name to identify it,
but "No Sabe" would be the most characteristic title for the
settlement, because that is the only expression chance visitors and
the officers of the law can get out of its sullen, stubborn,
suspicious inhabitants.

They don't deride the laws of this land. They simply ign