"Go'long!" ordered Mooney finally. "I guess you're safe!"

He turned back in the direction of Chatham Square, while Quong resumed
his tortoiselike perambulation toward Ah Fong's. Pell and Doyers Streets
were deserted save for an Italian woman carrying a baby, and were
pervaded by an unnatural and suspicious silence. Most of the shutters on
the lower windows were down. Ah Fong's subsequent story of what happened
was simple, and briefly to the effect that Quong, having entered his
shop and priced various litchi nuts and pickled starfruit, had purchased
some powdered lizard and, with the package in his left hand, had opened
the door to go out. As he stood there with his right hand upon the knob
and facing the afternoon sun four shadows fell aslant the window and a
man whom he positively identified as Sui Sing emptied a bag of
powder--afterward proved to be red pepper--upon Quong's face; then
another, Long Get, made a thrust at him with a knife, the effect of
which he did not observe, as almost at the same instant Mock Hen felled
him with a blow upon the head with an iron bar, while a fourth, Mock
Ding, fired four shots at his crumpling body with a revolver one of
which glanced off and fractured a very costly Chien Lung vase and ruined
four boxes of mandarin-blossom tea. In his excitement he ducked behind
the counter, and when sufficiently revived he crawled forth to find what
had once been Quong lying across the threshold, the murderers gone, and
the Italian woman prostrate and shrieking with a hip splintered by a
stray bullet. On the sidewalk outside the window lay the remnants of the
bag of pepper, a knife broken short off at the handle, a heavy bar of
soft iron slightly bent, and a partially emptied forty-four-caliber
revolver. Quong's suit of mail had effectually protected him from the
knife thrust and the revolver shots, but his skull was crushed beyond
repair. Thus was the murder of Wah Sing avenged in due and proper form.