I said politely: “That be nice for you, won’t it?”
“Of course. All it requires is a little manipulation. And you, my dear Cain?”
“Me? Back to San Francisco.”
I looked at Mai, and she lowered her eyes and said nothing. I said to Bettina: “Are you ready for Hong Kong now?”
She said, hinting broadly: “Of course. That’s where the money is now that I’m a free woman again.”
Bonelli was opening a bottle of champagne, Boulinger 1959, and pouring it into beautiful tulip-shaped glasses; they were deeply engraved and were made, I suspected, at Louis Vaupel’s New England Glass Company about seventy-five years ago.
I said to him: “There’s an awful lot of Markle Hyde’s money to be used up. And a lot of people who’ll need it. The men on Theo’s junk. Theo himself, Bettina, Mai.”
Mai said sharply: “No money. I have my work with Bettina. I do not need it.”
Bettina said: “Take it and give what you don’t want to me. Don’t be a bigger fool than God made you.”
I saw Mai smile suddenly, and she looked at me and said: “Or do you want to take me back to the States with you?”
“No. Not really.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
“Would you have come if I’d asked you?”
She did not hesitate, “No. Of course not. And you must have known that.”
“Yes, I knew that.”
Bettina was staring glumly at her champagne, and I said: “I don’t really feel like celebrating.” She pushed the glass away and said to Bonelli, almost wistfully: “Could I have Scotch instead? Champagne gives me a rash on my belly.”
I sat and drank with them for a while, and then I wrote a note to Harry Mann-Crawford in Hong Kong, reminding him of the Queen’s pardon for Bettina and thanking him for his help; I told him:
...And when this fellow Wentworth has finished all he has to say, no doubt there’ll be some tidying up to be done at your end too. I didn’t really come here to break up a crime syndicate, but it seems that, with help, that’s what we’ve done. So sweep up all the refuse, and may your career thereby be enhanced. . . .
We drove over to the airport in Bonelli’s car, and we put the two of them on the plane, and we stood there, saying nothing as the Caravelle took off sharply. We watched it climb and wondered why it should be so hard to bring to an end something that had caused so many people so much grief.
We turned away and, as we walked slowly back to the car, Bonelli glanced up at me sideways and asked softly: “Is it hard to see her go?”
“Yes. Very hard.”
“If you ever want to come back...”
“Yes, I know that.”
“And sadness makes better men of us, did you know that?”
“Yes, I know that too. It doesn’t help very much, does it?”
“In the course of time...”
“Uh-huh.”
There was a plane leaving for the States that night, and I bought myself a ticket, and we spent the waiting hours walking round the colorful town together, looking at the brilliantly painted signs, listening to the raucous noises, pushing our way through the restless crowds: and I knew that, with Mai, a little of my life had drained away.
And then, the sun went down and the evening came, and then the darkness pierced by the bright and shining lights; and the sounds of the town rose in their nightly crescendo.
And soon, Macao was only a memory.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Lyle-Smythe was born in Surrey, England. Prior to World War II, he served with the Palestine Police from 1936 to 1939 and learned the Arabic language. He was awarded an MBE in June 1938. He married Aliza Sverdova in 1939, then studied acting from 1939 to 1941.
In January 1940, Lyle-Smythe was commissioned in the Royal Army Service Corps. Due to his linguistic skills, he transferred to the Intelligence Corps and served in the Western Desert, in which he used the surname “Caillou” (the French word for ‘pebble’) as an alias.
He was captured in North Africa, imprisoned and threatened with execution in Italy, then escaped to join the British forces at Salerno. He was then posted to serve with the partisans in Yugoslavia. He wrote about his experiences in the book The World is Six Feet Square (1954). He was promoted to captain and awarded the Military Cross in 1944.
Following the war, he returned to the Palestine Police from 1946 to 1947, then served as a Police Commissioner in British-occupied Italian Somaliland from 1947 to 1952, where he was recommissioned a captain.
After work as a District Officer in Somalia and professional hunter, Lyle-Smythe travelled to Canada, where he worked as a hunter and then became an actor on Canadian television.
He wrote his first novel, Rogue’s Gambit, in 1955, first using the name Caillou, one of his aliases from the war. Moving from Vancouver to Hollywood, he made an appearance as a contestant on the January 23 1958 edition of You Bet Your Life.
He appeared as an actor and/or worked as a screenwriter in such shows as Daktari, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (including the screenwriting for “The Bow-Wow Affair” from 1965), Thriller, Daniel Boone, Quark, Centennial, and How the West Was Won. In 1966-67, he had a recurring role (as Jason Flood) in NBC’s “Tarzan” TV series starring Ron Ely. Caillou appeared in such television movies as Sole Survivor (1970), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1972, as Inspector Lestrade), and Goliath Awaits (198I). His cinema film credits included roles in Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962), Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion (1965), The Rare Breed (1966), The Devil’s Brigade (1968), Hellfighters (1968), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972), Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977), Beyond Evil (1980), The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and The Ice Pirates (1984).
Caillou wrote 52 paperback thrillers under his own name and the nom de plume of Alex Webb, with such heroes as Cabot Cain, Colonel Matthew Tobin, Mike Benasque, Ian Quayle and Josh Dekker, as well as writing many magazine stories.
