All of a sudden, I heard Ngat T’oy’s half scream.
“What is it, Little Sun?” I asked.
She was staring at the back of the car, her eyes wide. The jade handle of the dagger was peeping into sight from out behind the spare tire.
“Good Lord!” I said.
Ngat T’oy pushed me to one side, scrambled into the car, pulled out the knife, then stood so the light struck it. She searched it with the greatest care.
“Anything on it?” I asked.
“No,” she breathed.
She dove back into the car once more, groped around, and came out with her purse, held that up to the light. Then suddenly her arms were around me. She was laughing, crying, talking all at once. I felt her lips on mine, her arms straining me to her.
“Ed! Oh, Ed!” she cried. “It was a dream! They planted those things in the back of my car, thinking I wouldn’t find them until... Oh, Ed! Oh, my darling!”
Chapter Nineteen
Soo Hoo Duck listened to so much of my story as I told him. I saw his kindly eyes soften into gentle sympathy as I talked. When I had finished, he waited for a few moments, putting my story in order in his mind, getting ready to ask questions.
I didn’t want to answer any of those probing questions.
I glanced at Yat Sing.
Yat Sing’s face was as bland as a full moon, but his eyes, glittering, inscrutable, penetrating, were boring skeptically into mine. It was then I played my trump card.
I said, “I have been doing much thinking — thinking that I could have done to better advantage earlier. Everyone seems to think that I have certain valuable documents which I took from the trunk of Betty Crofath. I thought they were all wrong. But perhaps they were right and I was wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Soo Hoo Duck asked me.
“Betty Crofath,” I said, “was very clever. She realized that, before she left South America, her baggage might be searched by persons who rather suspected she had information she should not have. Therefore she worked out an elaborate code.”
“What?”
“I noticed,” I said, “in reading her diary, that she always described the furniture in any room which she thought was artistically arranged. At the time, I thought that she had a taste for interior decorating. But lately, a new explanation has occurred to me.”
“And that?” Soo Hoo Duck asked.
I said, “Suppose that when she described the location of the table she was talking about a flat top that was under construction in Japan? Suppose that chairs were destroyers? Suppose that beds, pianos or other massive articles of furniture were battleships?”
“The diary,” he said sharply. “Where is it?”
I took it from my pocket.
I noticed Soo Hoo Duck’s fingers tremble as he opened the pages.
“I have picked out several instances where rooms are described,” I said. “Let us orient them with reference to a map of Japan. Notice that invariably she describes the location of the furniture in these rooms according to directions. There was a piano in the northeast corner, while a table was on the west side of the room. Hardly the sort of furniture arrangement which would impress one as being artistic,” I said. “And notice that on the south side of the room were a group of half a dozen chairs.”
Yat Sing picked up a pencil and began drawing maps.
As these topographical outlines began to form physical features of familiar regions, there was grateful acknowledgement in every expression that Soo Hoo Duck made in my direction. Finally, he turned to Yat Sing and said, “To this man, I shall always bare my soul.”
Later, Soo Hoo Duck ordered tea, egg foo yung, fried rice and strips of Chinese pork for his guests. For himself, he had that peculiar, tasteless rice gruel which is a standard breakfast dish in China. It is perhaps the only bit of oriental diet my stomach can’t quite stand.
When we had finished, I arose.
Soo Hoo Duck looked at me sharply, arose and said, “Excuse me a moment, please,” and stepped quickly into an adjoining room.
I could hear him talking in low tones with the woman who was waiting on Ngat T’oy.
When he came back, his face was softened. He looked at me with affection. “My son,” he said, “she sleeps.”
“Quietly?” I asked.
“Quietly. She sleeps, and there is even a smile which plays about her lips.”
“It is well,” I said.
“You are leaving?”
I nodded.
“The other girl,” Soo Hoo Duck said gently, “sleeps also, and I am advised that before she went to sleep she asked that under no circumstances should she be permitted to sleep so that slumber would rob her of seeing you upon your return.”
I hesitated.
“And,” Soo Hoo Duck went on, “the woman who watches over her says that in her sleep she has mentioned your name.”
I turned toward the door. “It is not well,” I said, “that a woman should mention the name of The Phantom Crook in her sleep. Our ways are different. Hers is the way of light and life and laughter. My feet take me through the dark alleys. I travel in the ways of stealth. Better to let her go her way than to encourage her eyes to see the dark shadows of life.”
“You have enemies,” Soo Hoo Duck said. “You are at war with the law of your own land, but the hand of every Chinese is the hand of a friend. In my family, you are as an honored son. And should you ever go to China, I can assure you that you will be treated as a king. Only here, in your land, where your lawmakers themselves admit that justice is blind, is it necessary for you to follow the ways of stealth — a land which tonight you have served to such great advantage that you would be honored, were the facts but known.”
“The facts will not be known,” I told him. “Many facts will not be known. When a newsboy named Frank Collette tosses a newspaper upon a certain porch in the exclusive residential district, and the Filipino houseboy goes to get that newspaper, other facts will come to light. Then Ramon Vasquo Gomez will be charged with murder. There will be much confusion among the members of the Bak Shui Wong Chemical Company. And there will be an even greater incentive to eliminate The Phantom Crook. It is well, therefore, that I go before these things are discovered, and that the girls remain in peaceful slumber.”
For a moment, Soo Hoo Duck debated the point. Then his eyes slithered over to the face of Yat Sing, his captain who had charge of the far-flung Chinese Intelligence. What he saw in Yat Sing’s face made him sigh wearily with resignation. He turned to me, clasped his hands in front of his heart and shook them gently. “Farewell, my son. Your bravery and wisdom have done much for your country and for mine.”
I bowed humbly. “I have profited by the light of your wisdom,” I told him. “As the moon can but reflect the light of the sun, so have I but seemed to be wise. Now I go out into the shadows and there will be only darkness for me there.”
It was a typical Chinese speech, but there was truth to it.
I would leave this magnificent place with its carved furniture, its deep rugs, its crystal chandeliers and go out into the darkness. Only when some disaster threatened would I dare return.
In the meantime, because I had laughed at the law, I was destined to plunge once more into the shadows of night, into the alleys of Chinatown.
The Wax Dragon
Chapter Twenty
It was a tingling of the hair roots which made me feel that the flesh on the back of my neck was crawling. I knew the sensation from past experiences, knew what it meant.
There, in the narrow, smelly streets of Chinatown, I fought down the impulse to turn and confront the man who was following me. By an effort of will I maintained the shuffling, shambling gait of a Chinaman, a gait which belonged with my present disguise. My mind raced on ahead of my lagging feet. If the man behind me knew he was following Ed Jenkins, disguised as a Chinaman, that would be one thing. If he thought he was following Yee Dooey Wah, a Chinese cook, that would be another. I must find out.