“Do you?”
“A letter, a tape recording, something of that nature? Everything Wentworth had to tell you, in Bonelli’s capable hands with instructions to hand it over to the police if you don’t return? Am I right?”
The oldest cliché in the world, the insurance. I wished Bonelli could know how well it was working. He’d feel happier for me.
I said: “As you suggest, something of that nature.” A little more formidable, perhaps.” The image of nothing is always more than nothing.
I said, frowning: “I could always find out precisely what it was that seems so formidable. And then get it.”
“Could you? Oh, you’d find out all right. I’ve no illusions on that score. But you’d never get it.”
He stared at me, wondering hard what it was that I’d done that was so clever. He grunted, at last, a short, angry sort of grunt. He stood up and walked around, moving in behind me; I did not turn to look at him.
He said: “My organization is probably the most powerful of its kind in the world, Mr. Cain. If I raise my hand just a little, you could be wiped out as though you’d never existed. You must be aware of that. And yet, you come in here and talk to me glibly about insurance for your life, about letters, tape recordings.”
I said quickly: “Your suggestion, not mine.”
“Something else then? And I’m expected to spend the rest of my life with this menace hanging over me? If you get run over by a street car, it’s to be the end of my operation, is that it? How can you be sure that what Wentworth told you was the truth? Or all of it? Or even a part of it that is not generally known? He wasn’t my closest associate, you know.”
“But close enough.”
“Was it he who told you about Patachiaow?”
I said casually: “No. He was more concerned with Valenski.”
There was a little silence behind me; I wished I could have seen the muscles on his face twitch.
He said again: “I see.” In a little while he came round to face me, and said: “All right, I’m convinced that you know more than you should know, and I’m convinced that your death would be a disaster for me. Is this, then, the end of our conversation?”
I said: “Not quite. Now tell me where Sally Hyde is? Tell me that, and I’ll give you back your lieutenant.”
He spread his hands wide, protesting. “But I don’t know where she is! Believe me, Cain, I’m tempted to ask your help in finding her, for my own sake. She obviously knows a great deal too much about my organization, more than I suspected. It’s imperative now that I find her, more imperative than ever.”
“Find her and...?”
He sat down again and looked at me hard. “Can we do business, Cain? Does money tempt you?”
“No, on both counts.”
“You can’t be bought and you can’t be frightened, is that it?”
“Let’s say I’m not prepared to sell you my conscience.”
“Oh my God! I never thought that you’d be such an old-fashioned man, Cain! The world’s not what it used to be, and you may as well resign yourself to the fact that the honest man is a moribund breed. Moribund, or already dead.”
“You move in the wrong circles, Mr. Ming.”
“Yes, undoubtedly I do. But do you think I could work so freely, so successfully, if I found, anywhere, the kind of morality you’re trying to peddle? It’s a sick world, Mr. Cain, as you must agree. I didn’t make it sick, though, yes, I profit from its sickness.” He said dryly: “When a man finds chaos all around him, he’s a fool to sit back and watch someone else making the money.”
I said: “Forty years ago it wasn’t sick. That’s when your kind of galloping cancer took hold.”
He laughed, a pleasant, genuinely amused laugh. “They tell me you’re a studious sort of man, Mr. Cain, so go back to your books and read the history of opium! It’s had a hold, as you call it, as long as there’s been a history. And the corruption I profit from, are you suggesting that’s new too? No. Adam was the first liar, and the first murderer was another man named Cain. The wicked have been with us for a very long time.”
We could have been discussing food or wine or the theater; he was quite at ease now, an imposing sort of man with a great deal of authority. He waved a cigar case at me, and when I shook my head lit one for himself, a thin Papetela Quintero. He was reading my thoughts, and he smiled and said:
“I am an evil man, Mr. Cain, but you weren’t thinking that, were you?”
I said: “No, I wasn’t. I was trying to relate you to evil. Frankly, I find it a hard thing to do.”
“I’m glad. Someone else’s approbation, even if it’s temporary and faulty, is a very gratifying thing.”
“Can I see Markle Hyde?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Then he’s dead.”
“No.” There was a slight, self-satisfied smile on his face. “Hyde knows very well what plans I have for him. First, his son. Now...his daughter.” The evil was now more apparent.
I said: “Not any more, Ming Sin-san.”
Now he leaned back in his chair and looked at me, the blue smoke curling above his white hair. He said very deliberately: “You hold a very good trump, Mr. Cain. Don’t overplay it, or you’ll lose your advantage.”
I said: “If Sally Hyde gets run over by a street car too.”
“You are driving a very hard bargain. Too hard, perhaps. I don’t even know what’s in your hand.”
“But you can guess. Or, more correctly, you dare not run too big a risk.”
