the orderly shelves around them. The floors look scrubbed and there is an
absence of litter. It is all very efficient and very natural except for
the immobility of the men in the chairs and the silence that seems to have
descended on them.

* * * * *

A Chinese silence. And if you linger in the neighborhood you begin to feel
that this is more Chinese than the gaudy dragons and the firecracker daubs
and the bobbing paper lanterns of fiction.

This night I am looking for Billy Lee. No. 2209 Wentworth Avenue, says Mr.
Lee's card. We are to talk over some matters, one of which has already
been made public, others of which may never be.

He sits in his inner office, attired like a very efficient American
business man, does Mr. Lee. We say hello and start the talk. In the rooms
outside the inner office are a dozen Chinese. But there is no sound. They
are sitting in chairs or standing up. All smoking. All silent. A sense of
strange preoccupation lies over the place. Yet one feels that the twelve
silent men are preoccupied with nothing except, possibly, the fact that
they are Chinese.

Mr. Lee himself is none too garrulous. We have been talking for several
minutes when he becomes totally silent and after a long pause hands me a
cablegram. The cablegram reads: "Hongkong--Ying Yan: Bandits captured Foo
Wing and wife. Send $5,000 immediately. Signed: Taichow."

* * * * *