The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Page 24
Simon hadn’t looked at the girl until then. He did now.
“By the way,” he said casually, “you’d better get a move on with this scramming act. Kinglake is going to have to call Headquarters in a few minutes. You can scram in my car – it won’t take me more than ten minutes to check out of the Alamo House. Go and put some things in a bag.”
“Yes,” she said, impassively and obediently; and went out of the room.
Simon smoked his inherited cigarette with unalloyed enjoyment.
Kinglake gathered the papers on the desk together and frowned over them wisely.
The Saint made another search of the unlamented ungodly, and found his own automatic in Weinbach’s pocket. He nested it affectionately back in his clip holster.
The Lieutenant gazed yearningly at the telephone, tightened a spartan stopper on a reawakening ebullience of questions, and got out another of his miasmic cigars.
Olga Ivanovitch came in again.
She had changed into a simple gray suit with plain white trimmings. Her honey-colored hair was all in place again, and her face was cool and freshly sweetened. She looked younger than Simon had ever remembered her. She carried a pair of suitcases. Kinglake really looked at her.
Simon hitched himself off the corner of the desk where he had perched.
“Well,” he said, “let’s be on our way.”
He shook hands with Kinglake for the last time, and picked up Olga’s bags and went out with her. They went down the crushed coral walk through a rambling profusion of poinsettias and bougainvillea that were only dark clusters under the moon. The Gulf waters rolled against the beach beyond the seawall with a hushed friendly roar. Simon Templar thought about Jean Lafitte again, and decided that in the line of piracy he could still look the old boy in the eye on his home ground.
They left the gate; and the girl’s step faltered beside him. He slowed with her, turning; and she stopped and faced him.
“Spassibo,” she said, with an odd husky break in her voice. “Thank you, thank you, tovarich . . . I don’t think it’s any use, but thank you.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think it’s any use?”
Light seeping from a window of the house behind them like a timid thief in a dimout touched her pale halo of hair and glistened on her wide steady eyes.
“Where can I go now?”
The Saint laughed.
“My God, you Russians! Look, darling. You played along with Maris for quite a while. Several of the ungodly must know it. But they’ll never know that Maris ever changed his mind about you. They’ll only know that you got out of Galveston one jump ahead of the barrage. So you’re all set to move in again somewhere else. That’s what you wanted isn’t it? Well, I wasn’t kidding either. That’s what you’re going to do. Only next time you’ll do it legitimately – for the FBI or something like that. I’m taking you to Washington with me so you can meet a guy named Hamilton. I have to see him . . . Besides,” he added constructively, “it’s a dull trip, and we might make fun on the way.”
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER
The Danger Zone
A few blocks to the north of Market Street in San Francisco, Grant Avenue ceases to be a street of high class stores and becomes a part of China.
Major Copely Brane, freelance diplomat soldier of fortune, knew every inch of this strange section. For Major Brane knew his Chinese as most baseball fans know the strength and weakness of opposing teams.
Not that Major Brane had consciously confined his freelance diplomatic activities to matters pertaining to the Orient. His services were available to various and sundry. He had accepted employment from a patriotic German who wished to ascertain certain information about the French attitude toward reparations; and it was perhaps significant of the Major’s absolute fairness, that the fee he had received from the German upon the successful completion of his task was exactly the amount which he had previously charged a French banker for obtaining confidential information from the file of a visiting ambassador as to the exact proposals which the German government was prepared to make as a final offer.
In short, Major Brane worked for various governments and various individuals. Those who had the price could engage his services. There was only one requirement: the task must be within the legitimate field of diplomatic activity. Major Brane was a clearing house of international and political information, and he took pride in doing his work well. Those who employed him could count upon his absolute loyalty upon all matters connected with the employment, could bank upon his subsequent silence; and best of all, they could rest assured that if Major Brane encountered any serious trouble in the discharge of his duties, he would never mention the name of his employer.
Of late, however, the Major’s activities had been centered upon the situation in the Orient. This was due in part to the extreme rapidity with which that situation was changing from day to day; and in part to the fact that Major Brane prided himself upon his ability to deliver results. There is no one who appreciates results more, and explanations less, than the native of the Orient.
It was early evening, and the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown were giving forth their strange sounds – the shuffling feet of herded tourists, gazing open-mouthed at the strange life which seethed around them; the slippety-slop of Chinese shoes – skidded along the cement by feet that were lifted only a fraction of an inch; the pounding heels of plain-clothesmen who always worked in pairs when on Chinatown duty.
Major Brane’s ears heard these sounds and interpreted them mechanically. Major Brane was particularly interested to notice the changing window displays of the Chinese stores. The embargo on Japanese products was slowly working a complete change in the merchandise handled by the curio stores, and Major Brane’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the fact. Disputes over the murder of a subject can be settled by arbitration, but there can be but one answer to a blow that hits hard at a nation’s business.
Major Brane let his mind dwell upon certain angles of the political situation which were unknown to the average man. Would the world powers close their eyes to developments in Manchuria, providing these developments smashed the five-year plan and . . . ?
His ears, trained to constant watchfulness in the matter of unusual sounds, noticed the change in the tempo of the hurrying feet behind him. He knew that some man was going to accost him, even before he turned appraising eyes upon the other.
The man was Chinese, probably Western born, since he wore his Occidental clothes with the air of one who finds in them nothing awkward; and he thudded his feet emphatically upon the sidewalk, slamming his heels hard home with every step.
He had been hurrying, and the narrow chest was laboring. The eyes were glittering with some inner emotion of which there was no other external sign, save, perhaps, a very slight muscular tenseness about the expressionless mask of the face.
“Major Brane,” he said in excellent English, and then stopped to suck in a lungful of air. “I have been to your hotel. You were out. I came here. I saw you, and ran.”
Major Brane bowed, and his bow was polite, yet uncordial. Major Brane did not like to have men run after him on the street. Much of his employment entailed very grave dangers, and it was always advisable to keep his connections as secret as possible. Grant Avenue, in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown, at the hour of eight forty-seven in the evening, was hardly a proper place to discuss matters of business – not when the business of the person accosted was that of interfering with the political situation in the Far East.
“Well?” said Major Brane.
“You must come, sir!”
“Where?”
“To my grandfather.”
“And who is your grandfather?”
“Wong Sing Lee.”
The lad spoke in the Chinese manner, giving the surname first. Major Brane knew that the family of Wong was very powerful, and that Chinese venerate age, age being synonymous with wisdom. Therefore, the grandfather of the panting youth mus
t be a man of great importance in the social fabric of Chinatown. Yet Major Brane could recall no prominent member of the Wong family whose given name was Sing Lee. Somehow, the entire name sounded manufactured for the occasion.
Major Brane turned these matters over in his mind rapidly.
“I am afraid that I am not at liberty to accept,” he said. “Will you convey my very great regrets to your estimable grandparent?”
The lad’s hand moved swiftly. His face remained utterly expressionless, but the black lacquer of the eyes assumed a reddish glint which would have spoken volumes to those who have studied the psychology of the Oriental.
“You come!” he said fiercely, his voice almost breaking, “or I kill!”
Major Brane squared his shoulders, studied the face intently. “You might get away with it,” he said, in a dispassionate voice that was almost impersonal, “but you’d be caught before you’d gone twenty feet – and you’d be hung for it.”
The boy’s eyes still held their reddish glint. “Without the help which you alone can give,” he said, “death is preferable to life!”
And it was only because Major Brane knew his Chinese so well that he determined to accompany the boy, when he heard that burst of impassioned speech. When your Chinese resolves upon murder, he is very, very cool; and very, very wily. Only when a matter of honor is concerned, only when there is a danger of “losing face,” does he resolve upon a heedless sacrifice. But when such occasions arise, he considers his own life of but minor moment.
Major Brane nodded. “Remove your hand from the gun,” he said. “There is a plainclothes man coming this way. I will go with you.”
He reached out, clamped a friendly hand about the arm of the youth, taking hold of the muscles just above the elbow. If the plainclothes officer should accost them, Major Brane wanted to prevent the youth from doing anything rash. And as his fingers clamped about the arm, Major Brane felt the quivering of the flesh, that tremor which comes from taut nerves.
“Steady!” he warned.
There is a popular belief that the Chinese is unemotional. The fallacy of that belief is on a par with the hundreds of fallacies which bar an understanding of the Orient by the Occident. Major Brane realized just how deadly dangerous the present situation was. If the officer should insist upon searching the youth for a weapon . . . But the officer was reassured by Major Brane’s words.
“If it’s real jade,” said Major Brane in a loud tone of voice, regarding the bulge in the pocket of the youth’s coat, “I’ll look at it, but I want a bargain.”
The officer veered off. The Chinese glittered his beady eyes at Major Brane and said nothing. A casual observer would have gathered that he was totally oblivious of the danger he had just escaped as well as the ruse by which he had been saved. But the reddish tinge left the surface of the eyes, and the boy took a deep breath.
“M’goy!” he muttered mechanically, which is a Cantonese expression of thanks, and means, “I am not worthy.”
Major Brane made the prompt reply which etiquette demanded.
“Hoh wah!” he said, which in turn means, “good talk!”
And the fact that most Westerners would have found the words amusing as well as entirely unrelated to expressions of thanks and welcome is but illustrative of the gulf between the races.
The young Chinese led the way down a side street. Major Brane fell in slightly behind, walked unhesitatingly, his hand swinging free making no covert effort to reach toward the shoulder holster which was slung beneath his left arm. He had given his word, and his word had been accepted.
They paused before a dark door, which was the center one of a row of dark doors. Apparently these entrances were to separate buildings, huddled closely together in the congestion of poverty; but when the door swung open, Major Brane found himself in a courtyard enclosed by a brick wall. The enclosure was spacious and airy. The other doors had been but dummies set in the brick wall, and were kept locked. Had one opened any one of those other doors, he would have encountered nothing but brick.
Major Brane gave no evidences of surprise. He had been in such places before. The Chinese of wealth always builds his house with a cunning simulation of external poverty. In the Orient one may look in vain for mansions, unless one has the entree to private homes. The street entrances always give the impression of congestion and poverty, and the lines of architecture are carefully carried out so that no glimpse of the mansion itself is visible over the forbidding false front of what appears to be a squalid hovel.
“Quickly!” breathed the Chinese.
His feet pattered over flags, paused at an entrance, to the side of which was an altar and the Chinese characters which signify the presence of Toe Day, the god whose duty it is to frighten away the “homeless ghosts” who would attach themselves to the family, yet will permit free access to the spirits of departed ancestors.
A bell jangled. The door swung open. A huge Chinese servant stood in the doorway.
“The master awaits,” he said.
The boy pushed his way into the house, through a reception room furnished in conventional dark wood furnishings, into an inner room, the doorway to which was a circle with a high ledge at the entrance, to keep away evil spirits.
Major Brane knew at once that he was dealing with an old family who had retained all the conventions of ten thousand years; knew, also that he would be kept with his back to the door if he were received as a prisoner, and given a seat across the room, facing the doorway, if he were an honored guest.
His eyes, suddenly grown as hard as polished steel, surveyed the interior of the room. An old man sat on a low stool. A wisp of white beard straggled down from either side of his chin. His face was withered and wrinkled. Most of the hair was gone from the head. The nails of the little fingers were almost three inches long. The left hand waved toward a stool which was at the end of the room facing the door.
“Cheng nay choh,” he said to Major Brane, and the boy interpreted. “Please sit down,” he said.
Major Brane heaved a sigh of relief as he sat down upon the rigidly uncomfortable chair which faced the doorway – the seat of honor.
The servant brought him a cup of tea and a plate of dried melon seeds, which he set down upon a stand of teakwood inlaid with ivory and jade. Major Brane knew that regardless of the urgency of the matter in hand, it would not be broached until he had partaken of the food and drink, so he sipped the scalding tea, took a melon seed between his teeth, cracked it and extracted the meat with a celerity which branded him at once as one who knew his way about. Chopsticks can be mastered with a few lessons, but not so with the technique of melon seeds.
The old man sucked up a bamboo pipe, the bowl of which was of soft metal. It was packed with sook yen, the Chinese tobacco which will eat the membranes from an uneducated throat. He gurgled into speech.
There was no doubt in Major Brane’s mind but that the young boy would act as interpreter; and he guessed that the lad was quite familiar with the situation, and eager to express himself upon it. Yet such is the veneration for age that the boy kept his eyes upon the old man’s face, listening intently, ready to interpret, not what he himself wanted to say, but what the head of the family should utter.
For some three minutes the old man spoke. Major Brane caught a word here and there, and, as his ears conveyed those words to his consciousness, Major Brane sat very rigidly attentive.
The boy interpreted, when the grandfather had finished speaking; and his voice held that absence of tone which comes to one who is repeating but the words of another.
“Jee Kit King has been taken by our enemies. She will be tortured. Even now, they are preparing to start the torture. She will be tortured until she speaks or until she dies, and she will not speak. You are to save her. You must work with speed. And your own life will be in danger.”
Major Brane snapped questions. “Who are your enemies?”
“Enemies of China.”
“Who are they?”
“How long has the girl been missing?”
“Less than one hour.”
“Why do they torture her?”
“To find out what she did with the evidence.”
“What evidence?”
That question brought a period of silence. Then the boy turned to the old man and rattled forth a swift sentence of Cantonese. Major Brane understood enough of that question to know that the youth was asking the old man for permission to give Major Brane the real facts; but even as the old man pursed his puckered lips about the stained mouthpiece of the pipe, Major Brane sensed that the reply would be adverse.
In fact there was no reply at all. The old man smoked placidly, puffing out the oily tobacco smoke, his eyes glittering, fixed upon the distance.
The young man whirled back to Major Brane, lowered his voice.
“There is, in this city, Mah Bak Heng, who comes from Canton.”
Major Brane let his eyes show merely polite interest. He already knew much of Mah Bak Heng, and of his mission, but he kept that knowledge from showing in his eyes.
The boy began to outline certain salient facts.
“Mah Bak Heng has power in Canton. Canton is in revolt against the Nanking government. The Nanking government wishes to unite China to the end that war may be declared upon Japan, over Manchuria. Until the Canton matter is fixed, there can be no war. Canton has money and influence . . .
“Mah Bak Heng keeps peace from being made. He cables his men to yield to the Nanking government only upon terms that are impossible. Mah Bak Heng is a traitor. He is accepting pay from enemies of China, to keep the revolution alive. If we could prove that, the people of Canton would no longer listen to the voice of the traitor.