The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Page 25

  “Jee Kit King is my sister. This man is the grandfather. We talked it over. Jee Kit King has studied in the business schools. She can write down the words of a man as fast as a man can speak, and then she can copy those words upon a typewriter. She is very bright. She agreed that she would trap Mah Bak Heng into employing her as his secretary. Then, when the payment for his treason was delivered, she would get sufficient evidence to prove that payment, and would come to us.

  “We know she secured that evidence. She left the place of Mah Bak Heng. But on the way here, two men spoke to her. She accompanied them to a cab. She has not been seen since.”

  The boy ceased speaking, drew a quivering breath.

  The old man puffed placidly upon the last dying embers of the oily tobacco, reached a stained thumb and forefinger into a time-glazed pouch of leather for a fresh portion.

  Major Brane squinted his eyes slightly in thought. “Perhaps she went with friends.”

  “No. They were enemies.

  “She had the evidence with her?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because, just before I went to you, three men came hurriedly to her room and made a search.”

  Major Brane puckered his forehead in thought.

  “That means?” he asked.

  “That they captured her, searched her but could not find that which they sought, and then went to the room, thinking it was hidden there.”

  “And not finding it?” asked-Major Brane.

  “Not finding it, they will torture Jee Kit King.” The boy wet his lips with the tip of his tongue, gave a motion that was like a shudder. “They are very cruel,” he said. “They can torture well. They remove the clothes, string the body by hands and feet, and build small fires in the middle of the back.”

  “The girl will not speak?” inquired Major Brane. “Not even under torture?”

  “She will not speak.”

  “How can I save her? There is no time. Even now they will have started the torture,” said Major Brane, and he strove to make his tone as kindly as possible.

  The boy gave vent to a little scream. His hand flashed out from his pocket. The last vestige of self control left him. He thrust a trembling revolver barrel into the middle of Major Brane’s stomach.

  “When she dies,” he screamed, “you die! You can save her! You alone. You have knowledge in such matters. If she dies, you die. I swear it, by the memory of my ancestors!”

  Major Brane glanced sideways at the menace of the cocked revolver, the quivering hand. He knew too well the danger in which he was placed. He looked at the old man, saw that he was lighting a fresh bowl of tobacco and that the clawlike hand which held the flaming match was as steady as a rock. The ebony eyes were still fixed upon distance. He had not so much as turned his head.

  Major Brane realized several things. “I will do my best,” he soothed, and gently moved backward, as though to get to his feet. The motion pushed the gun a little to one side. “If this girl is your sister,” he said, “why is she a Jee, when your grandfather is a Wong?”

  “She is not my sister. I love her. I am to marry her! – You must save her. Fast! Quick! Go and do something, and prepare to die if you do not. Here, you can have money, money in plenty!”

  The old man, his eyes still fixed upon space, his head never turning, reached his left hand beneath the folds of his robe and tossed a leather bag toward Major Brane. The mouth of the bag was open, and the light glinted upon a great roll of currency.

  “Where does the girl have her room?” asked Major Brane, making no move to reach for the money.

  The boy was too nervous to speak. He seemed about to faint or to become hysterical. The shaking hand which held the revolver jiggled the weapon about in a half circle.

  “Quick!” snapped Major Brane. “If I am to be of help I must know where she lives.”

  But the boy only writhed his lips.

  It was the old man who answered. He removed the stained stem of the pipe from his mouth, and Brane was surprised to hear him speak in excellent English.

  “She has a room at Number Thirteen Twenty-Two Stockton Street,” he said. “The room is maintained in her name.”

  Major Brane swung his eyes.

  “I’ve seen you somewhere before . . .” he said, and would have said more. But as though some giant hand had snuffed out the lights, the room became suddenly dark, a pitch black darkness that was as oppressive as a blanket. And the darkness gave forth the rustling sound of bodies, moving with surreptitious swiftness.

  Major Brane flung himself to one side. His hand darted beneath the lapel of his coat, clutched the reassuring bulk of the automatic which reposed in the shoulder holster.

  Then the lights came on, as abruptly as they had been extinguished. The room was exactly as it had been three or four seconds before, save that Major Brane was the only occupant. The chairs were there. The old man’s pipe, the bowl still smoking and the oily tobacco sizzling against the sides of the metal, was even propped against a small table.

  But the old Chinese grandfather and the boy himself had disappeared.

  A man came shuffling along the flags of the outer room. It was the same servant who had escorted Major Brane into the room.

  “What you want here?” he asked.

  “I want to see the master.”

  “Master not home. You go out now.”

  Major Brane holstered his weapon, smiled affably. “Very well.”

  The servant slip-slopped to the courtyard, unlocked the door.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  “Good-bye,” observed Major Brane, and stepped out into the street.

  A fog was coming in, and its first damp, writhing tendrils were clutching at the dim corners of the mysterious buildings. The sounds of traffic from the main avenues came to him, muffled as though they were the sounds of another world.

  Major Brane moved, and as he moved a patch of shadow across the street slipped into furtive motion. A stooped figure hugged the patch of darkness which extended along the front of the dark and silent buildings. Another figure walked casually out of the doorway of a building at the corner, stood in the light, looking up and down the lighted thoroughfare. It might have been waiting for a friend. A bulky figure, padded out with a quilted coat, hands thrust up the sleeves, came from a doorway to the rear and started walking directly toward Major Brane.

  Major Brane sighed, turned, and walked rapidly toward the lighted thoroughfare. The fact that the boy had been forced to accost him on the street made it doubly inconvenient. Things which happen upon the streets of Chinatown seldom go unobserved.

  Major Brane had no way of knowing who those shadowing figures might be; they might be friends of the people who had employed him, keeping a watch upon him lest he seek to escape the trust which had been thrust upon him, or they might be emissaries of the enemy, seeking to balk him in accomplishing anything of value.

  But one thing was positive. Somewhere in the city a Chinese girl was held in restraint by enemies who were, in all probability, proceeding even now to a slow torture that would either end in speech or death. And another thing was equally positive: unless Major Brane could effect the rescue of that girl, he could count his own life as forfeit. The young man had sworn upon the memory of his ancestors, and such oaths are not to be disregarded. Moreover, there had been the silent acquiescence of the old man.

  “Grandfather!” sputtered Major Brane under his breath. “He’s no more her grandfather than I am! I’ve seen him before somewhere, and I’ll place him yet!”

  But he knew better than to waste any mental energy in jogging a tardy recollection. Major Brane was having his hands full at the moment. He had a task before him which required rare skill, and the price of failure would be death.

  He reached back for his tobacco pouch, and his hand touched something which swung in a dangling circle from the skirt of his coat. He pulled the garment around. The thing was the leather pouc
h which the old man had tossed to him. It was filled with greenbacks of large denomination, rolled tightly together.

  That bag must have been pinned to his coat by the old servant as he was leaving the courtyard. The knowledge gave Major Brane a feeling of mingled security and uneasiness. That meant that at least one of his shadows must be in the employ of the old man who had posed as the girl’s grandfather. That shadow would make certain that Major Brane found the sack of currency, that it did not come loose and roll unheeded into the gutter.

  But there were three shadows. What of the other two? And there was the disquieting knowledge that even the friendly shadow would become hostile should Major Brane fail in his undertaking.

  The young man had promised that Brane should not outlive the girl; and the promise had been sworn by the sacred memory of the young man’s ancestors.

  Major Copely Brane walked directly to his room in the hotel, which was almost on the outskirts of Chinatown. That step was, at least, noncommittal, and Major Brane needed time to think. Also, he had a secret method of exit from that room in the hotel.

  He opened the door with his key, switched on the lights, bolted the door behind him, and dropped into a chair. He held his arm at an angle so that his wristwatch ticked off the seconds before his eyes.

  He knew that it was hopeless to plunge blindly into the case without a plan of campaign. And he knew that it would be fatal to consume too much time in thought. Therefore he allowed himself precisely three minutes of concentration – one hundred and eighty seconds within which to work out some plan which might save the life of the girl, and, incidentally, preserve his own safety.

  He thought of Mah Bak Heng. Major Brane had some shrewd suspicion about Mah Bak Heng, but he had no proof. There was a chance that those suspicions could be converted into proof by the burglary of a certain safe. But that burglary would take time. Even with the necessary proof, Major Brane would be no nearer locating those who held the girl captive; and she would be dead long before he could bring sufficient pressure to bear upon the Chinese politician to force a trade or treaty.

  Major Brane squirmed uneasily in his chair. Thirty seconds had ticked by. He might trust to blind chance, figure out who would probably be chosen to kidnap a girl who had acquired dangerous information, make a guess as to the location that would be picked upon for torture. But there was only one chance in a hundred that, with all of his shrewd knowledge of things Oriental, he would be able to make a correct guess. Then there would remain the task of effecting a rescue.

  No. The girl would have died a slow death long before such a plan could be carried into execution.

  Forty-five seconds gone.

  Major Brane shifted the position of his legs. His eyes were cold and hard as polished steel. His jaw was thrust forward. His lips were a thin line of determination. The light illuminated the delicately chiseled lines of his aristocratic face.

  He went back to the first principles of deductive reasoning. The girl was a spy. She had evidently secured the thing that would link Mah Bak Heng with interests that were inimical to China. That thing would, if Major Brane read his man right, be in the nature of cash. But cash leaves no trail. Therefore, the thing which the girl had secured was something equivalent to cash, which also indicated the person who had paid the cash. It was a safe bet that this something had been a check.

  She had left the place, seeking her friends; and the enemy had known she was a spy – at least that soon, perhaps before. Had the girl been aware that her disguise had been penetrated? That was a question which could only be answered in the light of subsequent events. Those subsequent events proved that the girl had been “taken for a ride” by her enemies. Undoubtedly, she had been searched almost immediately; and the subsequent searching of her rooms would indicate that this search had been fruitless.

  So far, then, the enemies were deprived of the evidence which they had sought to take from the girl. The girl had hidden it in some place that was not on her person. Where?

  Obviously, those enemies had thought the most likely place was the girl’s bedroom. Rightly or wrongly, they had reasoned that the check was hidden there. It was impossible now to find the girl within the time necessary to save her life; but the people who held her captive would torture her, not for the pleasure of torture, but for the purpose of securing that which they coveted – the check. Therefore, if they secured the check without torture, they would refrain from torture.

  That thought lodged in Major Brane’s mind, and he immediately seized upon it as being the key to the situation. His eyes stared unwinkingly, his brows deepened into straight lines of thought.

  Then, after a few moments, he nodded his head. His eyes snapped to a focus upon the dial of the wristwatch. The time lacked thirteen seconds of the three-minute limit which he had imposed upon himself.

  Major Brane crossed to a desk in one corner of his room. That desk contained many curious odds and ends. They were articles which Major Brane had collected against future contingencies, and they dealt with many phases of the Orient. He selected a tinted oblong of paper. It was a check upon a bank that was known for its connections in the far east. The check was, of course, blank. Major Brane filled it in.

  The name of the payee was Mah Bak Heng. The amount caused Major Brane some deliberation. He finally resolved upon the figure of fifty thousand dollars. He felt that in all probability that amount would be the top price for the final payment, and he knew Mah Bak Heng well enough to believe that he would command the top price for the final payment, assuming that there had been several previous payments.

  It was when it came to filling in the name of the payer at the bottom of the check that Major Brane pulled his master stroke. There was a slight smile twisting the corners of his lips as he made a very credible forgery of a signature. The signature was that of a man who was utterly unknown in the Oriental situation, save by a very select few. But Major Brane had always made it his business to secure knowledge which was not available to the average diplomat.

  He blotted the check, folded it once, straightened the fold and folded it again. Then he began to fold it into the smallest possible compass, taking care to iron down each fold with the handle of an ivory paper knife. When he had finished, the check was but a tight wad of paper, folded into an oblong.

  Major Brane took the cellophane wrapping from a package of cigarettes, carefully wrapping the spurious check in it, and thrusting the tiny package into his pocket.

  He left his room by the secret exit: through the connecting door into another room; through another connecting door into a room that had a window that opened on a fire escape platform; out the window to the platform; along the platform to a door; through the door to a back staircase; down the stairs to an alley exit; out the alley to the side street.

  He hailed a passing cab and gave the address of the building where Jee Kit King had her residence. As the cab swung into speed, Major Brane looked behind him.

  There were two cars, following closely.

  Major Brane sighed wearily. It was no surprise; merely what he had expected. He was dealing with men who were very, very capable. He didn’t know whether he had shaken off one of the shadows, or whether one of the following cars held two men, the other holding one; but he was inclined to believe all three were following, two in one car, one in the other.

  He made an abortive effort to shake off the pursuit. It was an effort that was purposely clumsy. The following cars dropped well to the rear, however, and switched off their lights.

  A less experienced man than Major Brane would have believed that the ruse had been a success, and that the shadows were lost. Major Brane merely smiled and sent the cab rushing to the address where the girl had lived.

  He found her apartment without difficulty.

  It was on a third floor. The lodgings were, for the most part, given over to people of limited means who were neat and clean but economical.

  The door of the girl’s apartment was locked. Major Brane hesitat
ed over that lock only long enough to get a key that would turn the bolt; and his collection of skeleton keys was sufficiently complete to cut that delay to a period of less than four seconds. He entered the apartment, leaving the door open behind him; not much, just a sufficient crack to insure against a surreptitious bolting from the outer side without his knowledge.

  When he had jerked out a few drawers and rumpled a few clothes, Major Brane picked up a jar of cold cream. A frown of annoyance crossed his features as he saw that there was only a small amount of cream in the jar

  But in the bathroom he found a fresh jar, unopened. He unscrewed the top, thrust the cellophane-wrapped check deep down into the greasy mixture. He let it remain there for a few seconds, then fished it out again. In taking it out, he smeared a copious supply of cold cream over the edge of the jar, and wiped his fingers on a convenient towel, leaving the excess cold cream smeared about the edge of the jar, a deep hole in the center of the cream.

  Unwrapping the cellophane, he left it on the shelf over the washstand, a transparent oblong of paper smeared with cold cream; left it in such a shape that it was readily apparent it had served as a container for some small object.

  Then Major Brane, pocketing the spurious check, wiped his hands carefully to remove all traces of the cream from his fingertips, but was careful to leave a sufficient deposit under the nails of his fingers to be readily detected.

  He walked to the door of the apartment, peered out. The hallway seemed deserted. As furtively as a thief in the night, Major Brane tiptoed down this hallway, came to the stairs, took them upon cautious feet, emerged upon the sidewalk.

  He motioned to his cab driver.

  “Married?” he asked.

  The man nodded.

  “Children?”

  Another nod.

  “Remember them, then, if anything happens,” said Major Brane. “Your first duty is to them.”

  “I’ll say it is!” agreed the cab driver. “What’s the racket?”

  “Nothing,” commented Major Brane crisply. “I simply wanted to impress that particular thought on your mind. Swing toward Chinatown and drive as fast as you can. Keep to the dark side streets.”