The interpreter delivered a broadside of Chinese at Ah Fong, who listened attentively and replied at equal length. Then the interpreter went at him again, and again Ah Fong affably responded. It was interminable.

The two muttered and chortled at each other until O'Brien, losing patience, jumped up and called out: “What's all this? Can't you ask him a simple question and get a simple answer? This isn't a debating society.”

The interpreter held up his hand, indicating that the prosecutor should have patience.

“Ah-ya-ya-oo-aroo-yung-ung-loy-a-a-ya oo-chu-a-oy-ah-ohay-tching!” he concluded.

“ A-yah-oy-a-yoo-oy-ah-chuck-uh-ung-loy-oo-ayah-a-yoo-chung-chung-szt-oo-aha-oy-ou-ungaroo-yah-yah-yah!” replied Ah Fong.

“Thank heaven, that's over!” sighed O'Brien.

The interpreter drew himself up to his full height.

“He says yes,” he declared dramatically.

“It's the longest yes I ever heard!” audibly remarked the foreman, who was feeling his oats.

“Does not that satisfy you?” inquired the court of Mr. Tutt.

“I am sorry to say it does not!” replied the latter. “Mr. O'Brien has simply asked whether he will keep his oath. His reply sheds no light on whether his religious belief is such that it would obligate him to respect an oath.”

“Well, ask him yourself!” snorted O'Brien.

“Ah Fong, do you believe in any god?” inquired Mr. Tutt.

“He says yes,” answered the interpreter after the usual interchange.

“What god do you believe in?” persisted Mr. Tutt.

Suddenly Ah Fong made answer without the intervention of the interpreter.

“When I in this country,” he replied complacently in English, “I b'lieve Gees Clist; when I in China I b'lieve Chinese god.”

“Does Your Honor hold that an obliging acquiescence in local theology constitutes such a religious belief as to make this man's oath sacred?” inquired Mr. Tutt.

The judge smiled.

“I don't see why not!” he declared. “There isn't any precedent as far as I am aware. But he says he believes in the Deity. Isn't that enough?”

“Not unless he believes that the Deity will punish him if he breaks his oath,” answered Mr. Tutt. “Let me try him on that?”

“Ah Fong, do you think God will punish you if you tell a lie?”

Fong looked blank. The interpreter fired a few salvos.

“He says it makes a difference the kind of oath.”

“Suppose it is a promise to tell the truth?”

“He says what kind of a promise?”

“A promise on the Bible,” answered Mr. Tutt patiently.

“He says what god you mean!” countered the interpreter.

“Oh, any god!” roared Mr. Tutt.

The interpreter, after a long parley, made reply.

“Ah Fong says there is no binding oath except on a chicken's head.”

Judge Bender, O'Brien and Mr. Tutt gazed at one another helplessly.

“Well, there you are!” exclaimed the lawyer. “Mr. O'Brien's oath wasn't any oath at all! What kind of a chicken's head?”

“A white rooster.”

“Quite so!” nodded Mr. Tutt. “Your Honor, I object to this witness being sworn by any oath or in any form except on the head of a white rooster!”

“Well, I don't happen to have a white rooster about me!” remarked O'Brien, while the jury rocked with glee. “Ask him if something else won't do. A big book for instance?”

The interpreter put the question and then shook his head. According to Ah Fong there was no virtue in books whatever, either large or small. On some occasions an oath could be properly taken on a broken plate-also white-but not in murder cases. It was chicken or nothing.

“Are you not willing to waive the formality of an oath, Mr. Tutt?” asked the judge in slight impatience.

“And wave my client into the chair?” demanded the lawyer. “No, sir!”

“I don't see what we can do except to adjourn court until you can procure the necessary poultry,” announced Judge Bender. “Even then we can't slaughter them in court. We'll have to find some suitable place!”

“Why not kill one rooster and swear all the witnesses at once?” suggested Mr. Tutt in a moment of inspiration.

“My God, chief!” exclaimed O'Brien at four o'clock. “There ain't a white rooster to be had anywhere! Hens, yes! By the hundred! But roosters are extinct! Tomorrow will be the twenty-first day of this prosecution and not a witness sworn yet.”

However, a poultryman was presently discovered who agreed simply for what advertising there was in it to furnish a crate of white roosters, a hatchet and a headsman's block, and to have them in the basement of the building promptly at ten o'clock.

Accordingly, at that hour Judge Bender convened Part IX of the General Sessions in the court room and then adjourned downstairs, where all the prospective witnesses for the prosecution were lined up in a body and told to raise their right hands.

Meantime Clerk McGuire was handed the hatchet, and approached the coop with obvious misgivings. Ah Fong had already given a dubious approval to the sex and quality of the fowls inside and naught remained but to submit the proper oath and remove the head of the unfortunate victim. A large crowd of policemen, witnesses, reporters, loafers, truckmen and others drawn by the unusual character of the proceedings had assembled and now proceeded without regard for the requirements of judicial dignity to encourage McGuire in his capacity of executioner, by profane shouts and jeers, to do his deadly deed.

But the clerk had had no experience with chickens and in bashfully groping for the selected rooster allowed several other occupants of the crate to escape. Instantly the air was filled with fluttering, squawking fowls while fifty frenzied police officers and Chinamen attempted vainly to reduce them to captivity again. In the midst of the melee McGuire caught his rooster, and fearful lest it should escape him managed somehow to decapitate it. The body, however, had been flopping around spasmodically several seconds upon the floor before he realized that the oath had not been administered, and his voice suddenly rose above the pandemonium in an excited brogue.

“Hold up your hands, you! You do solemnly swear that in the case of The People against Mock Hen you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God!”

But the interpreter was at that moment engaged in clasping to his bosom a struggling rooster and was totally unable to fulfill his functions. Meantime the jury, highly edified at this illustration of the administration of justice, gazed down upon the spectacle from the stairs.

“This farce has gone far enough!” declared Judge Bender disgustedly. “We will return to the court room. Put those roosters back where they belong!”

Once more the participants ascended to Part IX and Ah Fong took his seat in the witness chair. The interpreter's blouse was covered with pin-feathers and one of his thumbs was bleeding profusely.

“Ask the witness if the oath that he has now taken will bind his conscience?” directed the court.

Again the interpreter and Ah Fong held converse.

“He says,” translated that official calmly, “that the chicken oath is all right in China, but that it is no good in United States, and that anyway the proper form of words was not used.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated O'Brien. “Where am I?”

“Me tell truth, all light,” suddenly announced Ah Fong in English. “Go ahead! Shoot!” And he smiled an inscrutable age-long Oriental smile.

The jury burst into laughter.

“He's stringing you!” the foreman kindly informed O'Brien, who cursed silently.

“Go on, Mister District Attorney, examine the witness,” directed the judge. “I shall permit no further variations upon the established forms of procedure.”

Then at last and not until then-on the morning of the twenty-first day-did Ah Fong tell his simple story and the jury for the first time learn what it was all about. But by then they had entirely ceased to care, being engrossed in watching Mr. Tutt at his daily amusement of torturing O'Brien into a state of helpless exasperation.