He said gently: “So far, we’re dealing with fact. Another fact is that nobody, at that time, was particularly worried by her threat.” He shrugged. “An impetuous woman dramatizing a personal neurosis. But then Markle Hyde himself turned up, and the colors began to change. Green to amber. For all his age and his good works, Hyde is still a formidable man.” He said discreetly: “No doubt he told you all about his unhappy past?”

I nodded.

“And the past dies hard. So does the formidability. And still, the color was only amber. But then Hyde sent for you, and the color changed to red. A few inquiries were made about you, and nobody really liked the answers that were supplied. So Ming gave out a casual order, kill Cabot Cain; it was as simple as that. And now...now we start with the rumors. Your escape this morning led to an amusing circumstance that is particularly Macanese. Everyone knew, of course, that the young and inept assassin had been put onto you by Ming, and they knew that he had failed. So Ming’s office, so to speak, was flooded with applications from ten, twenty, who knows how many, lesser hoodlums, professional killers, pirates, smugglers, all the riff-raff that hangs out here and wastes its time waiting for the chance to turn an honest penny. I’ll do it, Mr. Ming, for a thousand dollars. No, take me, I’m better skilled. We have the best men in the murder business, Mr. Ming, and we’ll undercut anyone else’s price by twenty percent...You get the picture? Ming must have sighed to himself and agreed to let whoever was handy handle the job, and then he must have gone back to more pressing business. Intrigued? Yes, I thought you would be.”

“It sounds a little casual, wouldn’t you say?”

He raised a hand and smiled. “Ah, but so very exciting! A little stimulation to enliven a colony that suffers from the acutest possible boredom. The whole town knows about it, and is delighted. And it’s something to bet on. How long will Cabot Cain last?” He sighed and said again: “Are you sure I can’t interest you in number twenty-two? I’ll make you a special price.”

I said: “Just how well informed is Ming?”

“A sparrow falls in Macao, and Ming knows it.”

“And he’s worried enough about me to put out orders like those?”

“But very casually. So far, you haven’t hurt him at all, have you?”

“It might surprise you to know that all I plan to do is find Sally Hyde and take her back to the States.”

“Ah, that is the intention. But we all know, don’t we, that it’s not likely to stop there. One thing might lead to another...The earnest do-gooders are the people who start wars, aren’t they? And that’s what you are at the moment, Cain, a knight in shining armor ready to do battle for a damsel in distress. You really think it will stop there?”

I said mildly: “No, I don’t really. I suppose there just might be complications. Take a wild guess and suggest where she’s gone to ground?”

He shrugged. “A very wild guess, that’s all it would be. Once she’s here...she could be on a junk in the harbor, she could be in Hong Kong, she could be in Red China for all I know. People have a habit here—they come and go as they please, and to the devil with the authorities. So there’s really no way of checking.”

“In other words, your men haven’t been able to find her.”

“I didn’t really look very hard. Even if I’d found her, the chances of my persuading her to give up her dreams are rather thin.”

“You weren’t, by any chance, persuaded not to look too hard?” I was very polite about it, but I had to know.

He had the grace to laugh. “No, Mr. Cain, nothing like that at all. I pay a token percentage of my profits to Ming’s outfits. That’s part of the custom too. But it doesn’t really mean very much. It’s simply that this, for all of us, is the easiest way to survive in the comfort we’re all accustomed to.”

“The king of the rackets—just suppose Ming knew where Sally was; what then?”

Again, that elegant, I-could-care-less shrug. “In that case, she’d find herself snatched on the streets, bound and blindfolded, and taken to him—or perhaps to one of his lieutenants. He would want to know just why she was so sure that she could find him so easily. That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? I mean, if the police don’t know where he is—and I assure you that they don’t—then, how come she knows that he’s here in Macao? This is only one of his little outposts. In other words, Sally Hyde must have information that we don’t know about. And Ming would want to know precisely what that information is and where she obtained it.”

“Or again, he might just have her killed.”

“Perhaps. Life is cheap here, Mr. Cain. I run a fairly respectable chain of houses, as these places go, but there’s not one of my staff who wouldn’t cheerfully drop you in the bottom of the harbor with an anchor chain round your waist for the promise of a raise. But in this case...” He frowned, “No, in this case it would be necessary to prolong the life just long enough for Ming to find out what he really has to know. There’s a leak in his organization somewhere, or Sally Hyde would never have come here. And he surely has to find out where that leak is. It is not a pretty prospect, is it?”

“No, it’s not. We’d better do something about it, fast.”

Not exactly backing off, he said: “They tell me you’re staying at the Penha Palacio. A comfortable place.”

I felt he was trying to tell me something, and I waited.

He said: “But a trifle vulnerable, perhaps. So many people coming and going.”

The thought had occurred to me too. I asked him: “Where can I rent a reliable junk with an equally reliable crew?”

“Ah yes, of course, a moat round your castle. I wonder...” He thought for a while, and said at last: “One of my junks is coming into the harbor tonight, en route for Red China. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t keep it here for a while.”

“If you’re sure it’s nothing urgent.”

He said gently: “Just a few guns. Someone stole them from the harbor in Taiwan, and they seemed to finish up in my possession. I can get a very good price for them on the mainland, but there’s no great hurry. I don’t really like the Red Chinese, and it will do them good to fume for a while.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“If you anchor below Penha Hill, you’ll be in less frequented waters, but there’ll still be a sampan or two to watch out for.”

“And the crew?”

“My men.” It seemed to say everything.

I said: “All right. I have to go to Hong Kong, so as soon as I get back...”

“Hong Kong? How very fortuitous. I’m going there myself. Perhaps you’d like to honor me with your company? A small plane, a Bellanca, quite comfortable.”

“That would be very pleasant. The only thing is...I would like to go fairly soon.”

“Now?” He was on his feet, gesturing towards the door.

“Well, I don’t feel I should put you to so much trouble.”

“Trouble? I wish it were indeed trouble, so that I could more easily deserve your approbation. But it is a pleasure, and you are my guest.”

Well, that seemed friendly enough. I said: “If you’re sure it won’t tear you away from...all this.” I made a gesture at the little Chinese girl, and he smiled and said: “She’ll still be here when I get back, Mr. Cain.” I had a feeling I was being pressured, but he was so impossibly gracious about it that I couldn’t refuse. He said cheerfully: “Remember that the longer you live, the more I stand to make on my bets, Mr. Cain. If anyone should be waiting outside for you, I won’t make half as much, so let me show you a less obtrusive way out.”

I said: “My God, secret passages?”

He shook his head gravely. “Not even secret passages are very secret for very long, not in Macao. This way.”

We passed through the noisy fan-tan room again and went down a narrow staircase to the mahjong room, which was even noisier. The black counters were being shuffled loudly to the accompaniment of raucous yells from the winners. And nobody paid us the slightest attention. We went through a long, dark corridor and down some more stairs; and Bonelli opened an iron door with a heavy key; and we found ourselves in a cellar where Bonelli pointed to sacks of carrots piled high along the brick walls.

“Carrots from the mainland,” he said. “Imported whisky fetches such a high price here that I prefer to make my own. And there’s always the danger that legitimate supplies will be hijacked on the way in. All those junks you saw in the harbor—those that are not engaged in smuggling their own supplies are just as busy holding up those who do. So...we learn to provide ourselves from our own sources wherever we can.”

I said: “You’re a very enterprising man, Mr. Bonelli.”

He inclined his head gracefully, “We live in a criminal world, I’m afraid. It would be absurd not to profit from it, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s exactly what I would say.”

“And I promise you that you will never drink carrot whisky in my house. We make it exclusively for the paying customers, whose tastes are sometimes a trifle provincial.”

The long, low room with its whitewashed walls and stone arches could have been one of the great wine cellars in the South of France. There were rows of stacked bottles, and great oak casks, and copper measuring pots, and a dozen pipettes hung on the walls, their long glass tubes reflecting the light from small, iron-barred windows. Ten or twelve Chinese women wearing the black pajamas cut from the cloth they call “Fragrant Cloud Linen” were busy pasting labels onto the bottles, and I stopped and read one of them. It was Johnnie Walker’s Black Label, and when I raised my eyebrows, Bonelli said smoothly: “Well, the labels are genuine. We have them printed in England; the local printing really isn’t very good.”

We went down a small flight of stairs again and along a corridor of whitewashed brick, and Bonelli said: “Mind your head.” I’m six-foot seven, and low doors are always a nuisance; this one was of heavy iron. He unlocked the door, and we went outside.