“That fellow with the red hair,” said
the police captain as he pointed.
“I’ll watch him,” the sergeant answered.
The captain had raided two opium dens the day before,
and the pride of accomplishment puffed his chest.
He would have given advice to the sheriff of Oahu
that evening.
He went on: “I can pick some men out of
the crowd by the way they walk, and others by their
eyes. That fellow has it written all over him.”
The red-headed man came nearer through the crowd.
Because of the warmth, he had stuffed his soft hat
into a back pocket, and now the light from a window
shone steadily on his hair and made a fire of it, a
danger signal. He encountered the searching glances
of the two officers and answered with cold, measuring
eyes, like the gaze of a prize fighter who waits for
a blow. The sergeant turned to his superior with
a grunt.
“You’re right,” he nodded.
“Trail him,” said the captain, “and
take a man with you. If that fellow gets into
trouble, you may need help.”
He stepped into his automobile and the sergeant beckoned
to a nearby policeman.
“Akana,” he said, “we have a man-sized
job tonight. Are you feeling fit?”
The Kanaka smiled without enthusiasm.
“The man of the red hair?”
The sergeant nodded, and Akana tightened his belt.
He had eaten fish baked in ti leaves that evening.
He suggested: “Morley has little to do.
His beat is quiet. Shall I tell him to come with
us?”
“No,” grinned the sergeant, and then looked
up and watched the broad shoulders of the red-haired
man, who advanced through the crowd as the prow of
a ship lunges through the waves. “Go get
Morley,” he said abruptly.
But Harrigan went on his way without misgivings, not
that he forgot the policeman, but he was accustomed
to stand under the suspicious eye of the law.
In all the course of his wanderings it had been upon
him. His coming was to the men in uniform like
the sound of the battle trumpet to the cavalry horse.
This, however, was Harrigan’s first night in
Honolulu, and there was much to see, much to do.
He had rambled through the streets; now he was headed
for the Ivilei district. Instinct brought him
there, the still, small voice which had guided him
from trouble to trouble all his life.
At a corner he stopped to watch a group of Kanakas
who passed him, wreathed with leis and thrumming their
ukuleles. They sang in their soft, many-voweled
language and the sound was to Harrigan like the rush
and lapse of water on a beach, infinitely soothing
and as lazy as the atmosphere of Honolulu. All
things are subdued in the strange city where East
and West meet in the middle of the Pacific. The
gayest crowds cannot quite disturb the brooding peace
which is like the promise of sleep and rest at sunset.
It was not pleasing to Harrigan. He frowned and
drew a quick, impatient breath, muttering: “I’m
not long for this joint. I gotta be moving.”
