A shadow loomed on the curtain over the door. Once more I ducked my head as the curtains parted and light streamed into the room.
The situation was dangerous. I dared not let the light strike my features, yet every time I lowered my eyes, raised my hand to my face, I knew I was courting discovery. Mansfield was no one’s fool and it would not be long before his suspicions were aroused. We were sitting on the edge of a volcano, the girl and I.
“It’s no use, Captain, he’s given us the slip again. We’ve examined everyone in the restaurant and Chuck Gee has sent men through every passageway. We’ve finecombed the block.”
A less dangerous man than Mansfield would have cursed, made some outward display of his emotion. Mansfield sat calm. His gray eyes bored steadily into the table, his head bowed in thought.
“That’s all, then, Saunders. We’ll go ahead with the other.”
The man in the doorway seemed uncertain.
“The other?”
Mansfield scowled.
“The yellow shadows,” he said, at length.
The curtain dropped back into place. There was cold sweat on my forehead. Mansfield was thinking, and when he thought he thought clearly. I had been trailed to the restaurant. I had not left. Every nook and corner had been searched. Therefore, by the process of elimination, I must be in the only place they hadn’t subjected to a detailed examination, to wit, sitting there with Mansfield.
Would he put two and two together? If the faintest flicker of suspicion ever crossed his mind he would instantly appreciate the significance of my “headache,” of my lowered eyes and raised hand every time the light came into the room. It seemed so plain to me that I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t tumbled before.
It was not for myself I feared. It was for the girl. She would be trapped as an accomplice.
There was only one hope. Ngat T’oy had carried off the situation so far simply because she held herself in the foreground. She was so unmistakably genuine that she carried me with her — and she kept Mansfield from considering me without constant interruption.
Now she rose to the occasion once more.
“In a way I am glad,” she said brazenly.
Mansfield flicked his cold gray eyes over her youthful features.
“I know it,” he said.
There was silence for a second or two. I had not liked the calm way Mansfield took that statement. She had sought to draw him into a discussion, to anger him — and she had failed.
“You are friendly with Helen Chadwick,” went on Mans field, after a pause. “She is in love with Jenkins. Perhaps you have seen Jenkins, for all I know. Probably you were the one who interceded with your father for him.”
Ngat T’oy shook her head quickly.
“You should not say such things of Miss Helen Chadwick,” she asserted.
I heaved a gentle sigh of relief. I was glad she had said that. The police were not entirely sure as yet of just where Helen Chadwick stood in my affections. Had they known, she would have been doomed. But they suspected, and that was almost as bad. She was of the upper social strata, one of the best families in the city, friendly with Mrs. Loring Kemper, the society leader of the charmed, inner circle. The police hesitated to drag her into the thing; and yet they had made one or two futile attempts.
Mansfield let his eyes bore into the inscrutable almond-shaped eyes of the girl, then shrugged his shoulders.
“You can have your opinion, see? I’ve got mine. The department can’t stop you bein’ friends with Helen Chadwick, but I can give you fair warnin’. Keep out of what’s goin’ to happen. See?”
His eyes left the girl and turned to me.
“As for you, Soo Hoo Duck, let me give you a word of advice. You keep your hands off from Chuck Gee. Savvy? He’s helpin’ the department in this thing, and Jenkins has got to be caught, savvy?”
I bowed my head in dignified acquiescence.
There was a steady, ominous silence until I raised my eyes again. Mansfield was staring at me with a peculiar expression upon his face. It was not entirely suspicion, but it was a recognition of something that wasn’t exactly as it should be.
For a moment we faced each other. Discovery was near at that instant. The slightest false move would have crystallized his mind to the present.
But he was preoccupied with his own schemes. His message fitted in with some carefully laid plan, and he was a thinker. That alone saved us, for his eyes clouded with thought and he repeated his warning advice to us.
“Whatever happens, Chuck Gee is to have a free hand at the policemen’s ball tonight. Do you savvy that?”
Ngat T’oy took advantage of the opportunity again to attract his attention.
“At the policemen’s ball?”
There was puzzled curiosity in her tone.
“At the policemen’s ball,” he said, and from the ring of his voice I knew that he had accomplished what he had in mind all along. That note of curiosity in Ngat T’oy’s voice was what he had been angling for.
I puckered my brows in thought.
Why at the policemen’s ball? Why would Chuck Gee be there? Why must he have a free hand? What were the yellow shadows Mansfield had mentioned to Saunders? Why had he sought to arouse curiosity in Ngat T’oy concerning what was to happen at the ball?
Mansfield was smooth, smooth and diabolically clever.
He arose.
“Better let me take you folks out to the street. There’ll be a bunch of my men scattered around the place; and if anybody’s going to be manhandling little spitfire here I want to be the one.”
Together we descended the stairs to the street, Ngat T’oy walking stiff and straight, her beady eyes looking into the distance, as impersonal as a waxen figure; Captain Mansfield inclined to swagger a bit for all that Ed Jenkins had once more slipped through his fingers.
As for myself, I preserved a grave and dignified demeanor. Keeping my shoulders bowed as became one of my assumed years, trying to feel just as Soo Hoo Duck would have felt in order that my actions should be entirely in keeping with the part I had assumed, I shuffled down the stairs and out upon the sidewalk.
There was a crowd of curious spectators about the place, and the police were breaking these up into knots, forcing them to walk on. Men in uniform and men in plain-clothes were gathered about, waiting further instructions. On the outskirts jabbering Chinese flitted hither and thither, conversing in their sing-song dialect. Some of these were doubtless the men of Chuck Gee, some were merely curious spectators.
I attuned my ears to the varied tones of the Cantonese dialect, seeking to pick up some information which might enlighten me, getting my mind away from my own problems and into tune with the difficult language, knowing that at any minute one of the men might address a remark in Chinese to me, and that I would be forced to reply in kind, giving to my voice just the right tonal inflection.
A Chinaman wriggled his way through the crowd, made as though to pass in front of us, then paused to let us go by. His eyes were upon the police.
“Ho sheng!” he hissed as we went past, a sharp word of Chinese warning.
I did not turn my head, but scattered my reply over my shoulder, Chinese fashion, letting him know that I had already received my lesson and would be very cautious, a reply which was sufficiently indefinite to satisfy him whether he intended to convey some specific warning or was merely cautioning Soo Hoo Duck against too close an association with the police.
Ngat T’oy flashed a roguish look from her almond eyes at me, but I shuffled onward, head lowered, face grave.
We passed through the outer ring of the police, mingled with the knots that were being dispersed and sent on their way, and still Mansfield remained with us. Now I was certain that he was playing a game, some game which had been previously planned and decided upon when his assistant had reported that Ed Jenkins had once more slipped through his fingers.