“Yes. It might mean that Ming is settling down over there, taking a more personal control.”
“Good. Just as long as it keeps him there.”
“And you might like to know that a very large load of heroin has just left these waters for the States.”
“Oh?” I said: “Shouldn’t we tell someone about that, while we’re here?”
Harry leaned back and said dreamily: “An informer has been scheduled to tell your narcotics boys precisely where it’s going to be landed. On the islands off Santa Barbara, California. Then it’s to be taken in small bundles to the mainland in lobster boats at a later date.”
“An informer? One of yours?”
“No, dear boy. One of Ming’s.”
“Oh. And the real landing point?”
“W-e-l-l...under that cover story, there’s another one which won’t reach their ears quite so readily. Has to do with a group of American draft-dodgers in Canada who think they’re merely carrying marijuana. But that story isn’t true, either. The truth is that it’s to be landed in Los Angeles itself, hidden inside the hollowed-out blocks of eight brand-new Japanese motorcars.” He said glumly: “Unless that’s a cover story as well. We can’t be sure. But we’ve given all the versions to your fellows; let them sort it out; they’re better at that sort of thing than we are.”
“So business for Ming is looking up.”
“And for a thousand miles around, every police force is girding its loins for trouble. Watch out, Cain. I’d hate to see you tangle with him too closely.”
We got up and wandered out onto the noisy nighttime street, and Harry said, worried:
“I’m not going to mention Ming to Bettina. If you want to, that’s your pigeon. But I won’t, or I’ll never get her on that ferry. If she thinks Ming’s involved in this, she’ll never touch it with a ten-foot pole.”
“All right. Send her over, and I’ll tell her myself.”
“And she’ll come smartly back on the first boat.”
“We’ll see. There’s at least a likelihood that I can persuade her.”
“You’re an incurable optimist, Cain.”
I told him: “No. But I know what a woman can do when she has a reason to do it. I’ll supply the reason.”
We found Harry’s police car, and he drove me over to the airport. Bonelli looked at me a trifle hard when I made the introductions. Harry treated him with a great deal of respect tinged with a certain touch of one-day-we’ll-get-you-too. I asked Harry if he were a betting man, and he looked surprised, and I said:
“Do you play the horses?”
He grimaced, “Sometimes. Can’t really afford it, not on my salary.”
I asked him: “How much money do you have on you now?”
He fumbled and came up with a hundred Hong Kong dollars, and I took it from him and said to Bonelli: “A hundred dollars on twenty-two for Superintendent Mann-Crawford.” Bonelli beamed and wrote out a little receipt, and I said to Harry: “A good horse coming in at ten o’clock tomorrow morning; it pays odds of nearly four and a half to one.”
For a moment, he looked suspiciously as though he thought I was trying to bribe him; but then he realized that this couldn’t be so, and said: “Good, long time since I backed a winner.”
We made our farewells, and in a moment we were airborne again.
And by one o’clock in the morning, we were passing once more through the noisy mahjong room on the way to Bonelli’s office. We found out that the junk he was expecting had been delayed ‘by the need for evasive action’ and would not be arriving until the morning, and Bonelli insisted that I spend the night in his quarters; he had an investment to protect.
“By tomorrow night,” he said, “you’ll be taking your own chances on your own junk with your own crew of bodyguards. And chances, Mr. Cain, are what brings me in the fortune I have become accustomed to.”
The room he gave me was a wild chimera in scarlet silk and black ebony, and it contained a huge carved bed covered by a shining teak canopy and framed with ivory-inlaid screens. The walls were hung with landscapes, one of them by no less a personage than Ma Yuan, and there was a splendid tapestry by the artist-Emperor Hui Tsing. There were two young Chinese girls to bring me drinks and run my bath in a magnificent room of highly polished red teak that was as smoothly worn as old alabaster and that reflected the dim lights of the sweetly scented candles. I luxuriated in the bath for an hour, with the two girls pouring in more hot water as I needed it. Then, later, I did pushups for thirty minutes and sat down to study the file that Markle Hyde had sent over on his daughter’s life history, her foibles, her dreams, her whims, and her talents. And with it, there was the thickest bundle of currency I had ever seen all at once. When I had finished reading the file, it seemed to me that I knew her quite a lot better; he’d done a good job, her father. The last page of the file was a plea: “Please, Mr. Cain, get her back.”
I slept in a pair of borrowed pajamas of bright blue Shantung silk and did not wake up till ten in the morning.
And at noon, when I was sipping the tea that one of the girls brought me—a semifermented oolong from Foochow—Bonelli came in and said excitedly:
“Sally Hyde has turned up, Mr. Cain. She came in on the ferry half an hour ago and has gone to the Pesha Palacio.”
I said: “Came in? From Hong Kong?”
He looked at me very suspiciously, and thought for a while, and stroked his nose with a delicate finger, and said: “Ah...I see. Then perhaps I shouldn’t go over and see her? Or even call her father?”
I said happily: “Why don’t we let her unpack her bag first.”
He looked at me shrewdly and said: “You’re a devious man; aren’t you?”
“Just planted a couple of seeds to see what would sprout.”
“Dragon’s teeth, perhaps? You realize that, whoever the young lady is, she’s not likely to last for very long, don’t you? I hope you consider her quite expendable.”
“Just as little expendable as I am myself, Signor Bonelli.”
“Good, that’s a comforting thought. I was worried momentarily. Perhaps I should have known better. Did you sleep well?”
“Excellently, thank you.”
