She frowned. “Y-e-s...an ancient sect of fighting men.” She said sharply: “The guards? Wuh-keis?”

“Probably.”

There was a long silence. At last, she said: “I believe Bettina told you that I am expert in many of the...the arts of self-defense. For karate, for judo, for all the others...for me, these things are very easy. But it is not possible to fight against a Wuh-kei. You should know that. We must have a gun, and even then...”

Bonelli said: “She’s right, Cain. You’re a big man, a strong man, but don’t imagine that you can do anything, anything at all, with your bare hands.” He said smoothly: “But I believe you have already learned that, no?”

I felt the bump at the top of my head. “I’ve learned it.”

He went to the door and opened it, and turned and said: “I’ll be back in a moment.”

And then, the two of us were alone. There was a little silence, and Mai sat down again and waited, her eyes cast down, as though the intimacy of just the two of us meant something and that she had to be demure. The savage little wildcat who had burst into the room was gone, and in its place there was just a lovely young girl looking shy and alone and half frightened. The sudden change was quite charming.

She said at last: “Will they have hurt Bettina?”

“Yes, they hurt her.”

There were almost tears there. “And you too? The Wuh-keis?”

I shook my head. “Not me. This afternoon, when I left the hotel, they jumped me. I ran and dived into the water off the wharf.”

Suddenly, she was laughing. “You did not know that there is not very much water there? That is why the wharf is no longer used.”

“I found that out. One of Bonelli’s men came to my rescue.”

Now she was serious again. “And now, we go to Bettina. How did you find out where she is?”

I said: “I’m not sure that I have found out. We’ll know when we get there.”

“It is my fault that they took Bettina. Is that why you want me to come along with you?”

“No. And it was my fault, not yours.”

“Why then?”

“I don’t really know the answer to that one. I just feel I’ll need help. And if half of what Bettina says about you is true, then you might be able to provide it.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have along to hold my hand. Is that what you want me to say?”

“Yes. That is what I wanted you to say.”

Bonelli came back looking rather sheepish; but he carried two guns with him. A nine-millimeter Luger, which I took, and a .32 Walther, which I gave to Mai. He had a well detailed blueprint too of the store he used to own. I thought it was lucky that Bonelli was the type of man never to give up possession of anything that might, just conceivably, one day come in handy.

I wondered about Mai. It seemed strange, conspiring with one so fragile for what was ahead. But Bettina had almost convinced me. Worth ten men in a fight, she had said, any kind of a fight. I remembered, too, what Bonelli had said about the impregnability of his private quarters, and the look on the faces of the two guards when Mai had unceremoniously burst past them, not even deigning to look round at the man she’d thrown over her slender shoulder. There had been indignation in their faces, and surprise, and shock; but most of all, there’d been a very wary respect.

And creeping around in the darkness with that slender, scented body close beside me in the silence was something that just had to be tried out.

I once saw a 1932 eleven-liter V-12 Hispano-Suiza rusting away in a garage. It was the legendary Type 68 that weighed three tons and could eat up the roads at a hundred and fifteen miles an hour without exceeding three thousand rpms—which was pretty fast in those days. A glamorous beast of a car, it had hanging sidemounts and a body made almost entirely of strips of tulipwood fastened with copper rivets. It was smoother and shinier than the deck of an expensive yacht; the leatherwork was like silk; and the lines were those of a thoroughbred racehorse. I remembered drooling over the car and wondering about its historic potential, wondering if it was still as magnificent as the myths about it claimed. I longed to get my hands on it and test it, revel in the sheer frightening luxury of its performance. And now, that’s how I felt when I looked at Mai, not believing entirely in the legend, but somehow feeling an overwhelming urge to find out for myself, to see if the legend were true and perhaps to revel in the astonishment of its being true.

I’d like to have told her, but I thought it wasn’t a very flattering analogy.

Bonelli spread the blueprint out on the beautiful, carved desk and touched it with the back of a delicate finger. He said: “The cellar is here, under the main storeroom. There’s a heavy iron door in this corner, with a flight of, what, ten or twelve steps going down.”

“The door to the cellar—what kind of a lock?”

“Old-fashioned, Yale type.”

The Chinese symbols on the print were hard to read and semi-obliterated with age. I asked, indicating: “A skylight here, is that it?”

“Yes. Twenty feet above the floor.”

“And this gimmick here?”

“An air vent. Just a simple tube leading in from the roof. It’s about eight inches across. Far too small to enter.”

“A filter under it, can you remember?”

“No filter. The cats used to fall through it and kill themselves on the concrete floor below. When someone was cooking food down below, they’d slither through it and find there was no way to back up, so they’d jump and fall the twenty feet. And, sometimes, a bird would fly in. But it’s only eight inches across. The skylight is your best way in, but there’s a bell hanging from it. Just a simple device, an old ship’s bell that rings once or twice if you lift the panel.”

“Let’s look at the other ways in. The doors?”

“Good locks on them, heavy timber doors. And the windows are barred with iron straps.”

“A rope then, from the roof, through the skylight. It seems a trifle simple, but the simplest way is usually the best. The bell should be no problem. Is it hooked on? Removable?”

“Yes, it is.”

Mai was peering over our shoulders. She said: “And their first line of defense will be the secrecy. If, that is, you are sure she’s there, if you’re sure the other story is a lie.”

I said: “I’m not sure. I’m just hoping she’s not on that junk where they’re expecting me to look for her.” I asked Bonelli: “What about lighting on the street? What about a way up to the roof?”

“No street lighting at all. And there are two ways up to the roof. There’s an iron stairway up one of the walls, but a gate at the bottom is kept locked, and the staircase is unsteady and not very safe. We used to use it in the old days when we stored tools up on the roof. But there’s no weather protection up there, and so, ever since the place has been used for firecrackers, the stairway has not been used. Or kept in repair.”

“And it’s therefore noisy. The other way?”

“The water-piping. A cast-iron pipe leads from a reservoir on the roof to a large wooden barrel on the alleyway, bolted to the wall.”

“Strong enough for my weight?”

“It was only put in a few years ago. It should still be strong. Up at the top, there’s a protruding grille of iron spikes to discourage anyone from climbing it—like the rat-preventive discs on a ship’s hawser. But it shouldn’t stop a determined man. And, after all, there are always guards in the building, even if it’s only the usual sleeping watchman. And the geese, of course.”

We talked for a while about the possibilities. We checked this, eliminated that, and made little mental notes about the other; and soon, I knew exactly what we had to do, and how we had to do it.

CHAPTER 7

The little cul-de-sac called Rua Querenta is one of those dingy industrial streets that die at dusk.