When God Laughs and Other Stories

THE CHINAGO "The coral waxes, the palm grows, but man departs." —Tahitian proverb. Ah Cho did not understand French. He sat i n the crowded court room, very weary and bored, listening to the unceasing, explosive French that now one official and now another uttered. It w a s j u s t so m u c h gabble to A h Cho, and he marveled at the stupidity of the Frenchmen who took so long to find out the murderer of C h u n g Ga, and who did not find h i m at all. The five h u n d r e d coolies on the plantation knew that Ah San had done the killing, and here was Ah San not even arrested. It was true that all the coolies had agreed secretly not to testify against one another; b u t then, it was so simple, the Frenchmen should have been able to discover that Ah San was the m a n . They were very stupid, these Frenchmen. Ah Cho had done n o t h i n g of w h i c h to be afraid. He had had no h a n d i n the killing. It was true he had been present at it, and Schemmer, the overseer on the plantation, had rushed into the barracks immediately afterward and caught h i m there, along w i t h four or five others; b u t w h a t of that? C h u n g Ga h a d been stabbed only twice. It stood to reason that five or six m e n could not inflict two stab wounds. At the most, if a m a n had s t r u c k b u t once, only two men could have done it. So it was that Ah Cho reasoned, when he, along w i t h his four companions, had lied and blocked and obfuscated i n their state¬ments to the court concerning w h a t had taken place. They had heard the sounds of the killing, and, like Schemmer, they had r u n to the spot. They had got there before Schemmer—that was all. True, Schemmer h a d testified that, attracted by the sound of quarrelling as he chanced to pass by, he h a d stood for at least five minutes outside; that then, when he entered, he found the pris¬oners already inside; and that they had not entered j u s t before, because he had been standing by the one do...