_our_ fortune!"

* * * * *

"Look here," expostulated District Attorney Peckham in his office to Mr.
Tutt a month later. "What's the use of our both wasting a couple of
weeks trying a Chinaman who is bound to be convicted? Your time's too
valuable for that sort of thing, and so is mine. We've got three white
witnesses that saw him do it, and a couple of dozen Chinks besides. He
doesn't stand a chance; but just because he is a Chink, and to get the
case out of the way, I'll let you plead him to murder in the second
degree. What do you say?"

He tried to conceal his anxiety by nervously lighting a cigar. He would
have given a year's salary to have Mock Hen safely up the river, even on
a conviction for manslaughter in the third, for the newspapers were
making his life a burden with their constant references to the seeming
inability of the police department and district attorney's office to
prevent the recurrence of feud killings in the Chinatown districts. What
use was it, they demanded, to maintain the expensive machinery of
criminal justice if the tongs went gayly on shooting each other up and
incidentally taking the lives of innocent bystanders? Wasn't the law
intended to cover Chinamen as much as Italians, Poles, Greeks and
niggers? And now that one of these murdering Celestials had been caught
red-handed it was up to the D.A. to go to it, convict him, and send him
to the chair! They did not express themselves precisely that way, but
that was the gist of it. But Peckham knew that it was one thing to catch
a Chinaman, even red-handed, and another to convict him. And so did Mr.
Tutt.