Once more she nodded, and then said simply, “Ouch, you’re hurting my arm.”
I realized, then, the tension with which I was gripping her.
“All right,” I said. “Answer the telephone now.”
She moved over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, yawned and said, “Hello,” in a voice that was thick with sleep.
I watched the expression on her face.
The receiver snarled rapid, metallic sounds that were audible to me only as a rapid-fire, rattling sequence of noises — noises that clattered forth some crisp message, then quit abruptly.
But those noises made Genevieve Hotling’s eyes pop wide open.
She picked up a pencil and started writing rapid shorthand notes on a pad.
We heard the businesslike click at the other end of the line as the person who had spoken dropped the receiver into place, without giving Genevieve an opportunity to ask a question.
Genevieve replaced the receiver back into place and turned to me.
“Well?” I asked.
She said, “The person at the other end of the line didn’t ask who I was, simply started delivering this message.”
“And the message?”
She read her shorthand notes:
“We wish the return of the maps you have taken from the trunk. Tomorrow morning, after Fred Collette has made his morning deliveries, you will see our hand. The one whom you thought in danger, whom you will later think is safe, can be rescued from the clutches of your law only when we say the word. Otherwise, the Little Sun will be eclipsed into perpetual darkness.”
I looked at Yat Sing. “Herb Rendon?” I asked. “The man in the Monterey House Hotel?”
“Him gone bed.”
“You’re sure?”
“Go room, turn out light, make snore noise,” Yat Sing said.
I said, “The woman with the straw-colored hair left with South American, the one who called on me in the New Orleans hotel.”
“Heap savvy.”
“Can you find that man?”
“Any time.”
My face showed surprise.
“He leave here,” Yat Sing explained. “Two China boys go along behind.”
I looked at the message Genevieve had written out for me. “Before Frank Collette has made his morning delivery.” What did it mean?
An idea occurred to me. I consulted the telephone directory, then sat down at the telephone and dialed the morning newspapers.
The second paper I tried gave me the answer I wanted. The Circulation Department told me that Frank Collette was a lad who made morning bicycle deliveries in a section of the residential district.
After a few minutes’ delay, I got the boundaries of the territory assigned to Frank Collette.
I said to Yat Sing, “Ngat T’oy is being held a prisoner somewhere within the boundaries of this district. Something that will be published in tomorrow morning’s newspaper will change the entire situation. And... wait a minute.”
I sketched out a mental map of the city, then got up from my chair and said to Yat Sing, “It is easier than that. The residence of Benjamin Colter Ruttling is within the district covered by Frank Collette’s newspaper deliveries.”
I saw Yat Sing’s dark, slanting eyes glitter with emotion.
I said to him, “Not yet. So far, it is a one-man job. In order to make their message dramatic, they gave us too broad a clue.”
Yat Sing said, “Maybe-so on purpose.”
“That,” I told him, “is why I am going alone.”
Chapter Sixteen
We paused at the doorway of the apartment house. Outside, the streets seemed silent and deserted. Yat Sing stepped out to the cement porch, moved down two steps to the street. We followed, Genevieve Hotling, the Chinese hatchet man, and I. A car swerved around the corner and screamed to a stop. I knew the driver. He was a trusted messenger whom Soo Hoo Duck used in times of emergency. But the lad looked at me with no sign of recognition. It was to Yat Sing that he gave his message.
“I am,” he said rapidly in Chinese, “the unworthy bearer of a most important message. He who is the Master desires that you and the Vanishing Ghost should seek his presence immediately.”
Without a word, I stepped from the curb, opened the rear door of the car and nodded to Genevieve. “Will you get in?” I asked.
“Is this necessary?” she inquired.
“I think it is.”
“Why?”
“I think it will insure your safety.”
I didn’t tell her that since it had been to her the message concerning Little Sun had been delivered, she stood no chance whatever of being released from what virtually amounted to detention by the Chinese. It would take some event of major importance to make the Chinese resort to extreme measures. But once they decided to take those measures, there would be no turning back.
We climbed in the car and in minutes were in the middle of Chinatown.
The car came to a stop. Yat Sing looked at me.
I said to Genevieve, “You’ll have to trust me and trust these men. Will you promise to stay with them for a little while?”
“For how long?”
“Until you hear from me again.”
Yat Sing was holding the door open for me impatiently. When Soo Hoo Duck summoned one to an audience, it was useless to waste time in polite nothings. Why worry about asking the girl’s permission? She would stay, whether she wanted to or not.
I joined Yat Sing on the sidewalk. We crossed to an unlighted doorway, black with sinister shadows.
It was too dark to see the door open, but we could feel the movement of air, hear the slight creak of hinges.
Yat Sing’s hand was at my elbow, and we went inside.
We were taken to the presence of Soo Hoo Duck without the loss of a moment; nor did Soo Hoo Duck waste time in the flowery preliminaries which are incident to Chinese conversation.
“My son,” he said to me in Chinese, “the minutes have been as hours crawling across the face of the clock like turtles in the sun. Come at once, please.”
Not knowing what to expect, my heart filled with dread, I followed him through a door and into a corridor, conscious of the fact that I was hard put to it to keep pace with this little old man, while behind me, Yat Sing was all but running.
We paused before a door.
Soo Hoo Duck did not knock. As far as I could see, there was no way by which he made our presence known, but there was some secret signal of communication, perhaps some beam of invisible light, perhaps we were standing upon a concealed signal which, beneath the heavy carpet, established a contact and flashed a light or actuated a buzzer.
The door opened.
A Chinese woman whom I had never seen before said, “She waits,” and flung the door wide open.
Soo Hoo Duck’s hand clutched at my arm and I could feel a faint trembling running along my nerves. It was as though Soo Hoo Duck’s fear had subtly communicated itself to me.
I entered that room not knowing what to expect.
Ngat T’oy sat in a chair over in a corner of the room. She was wearing street clothes, and at first glance, she seemed to be quite her usual self.
“Hello,” she said to me, after making a little Chinese gesture of respect to her father. “Boy, am I glad to see you! I thought you would never get here.” And then she began to laugh, and a note of wild, fearful hysteria edged her voice.
The woman said to Soo Hoo Duck, “She won’t let me undress her; won’t let me touch her.”
I saw Soo Hoo Duck’s eyes soften with sympathy. “My dear,” he said in Chinese, “perhaps a doctor of the white race can quiet you with...”
“No! No! No!” she screamed. “They drug you. No doctor. I’ll be all right. I’m just nervous, that’s all.”