I said sourly: “Yes. That was done by Prince Chu Tsai-yu, and if you want it, I can give you the complicated mathematical formula he used, though I don’t suppose you’d really understand it. But I’d much rather hear why I’m not supposed to last out more than a day or so.”
He smiled. “Perhaps you’d like to take one of the bets yourself? A lot of money is going to change hands at the appropriate time.” He walked over to the beautifully carved desk, took a little notebook from a drawer, and said earnestly: “If you were to take the number twenty-two, I think you’d stand to make the most profit. Twenty-two is going for eight thousand American dollars just now, and the price will rise very quickly.” He checked his watch and said: “It comes home so to speak, at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, and by ten-thirty or so, you would have picked up nearly four and a half times your investment. Twenty-eight will pay more, but its current price is prohibitive, and I wouldn’t really recommend it.” He snapped the little book shut and smiled delightedly and simpered: “An investment of eight thousand, and tomorrow morning you’d stand to win thirty-five. You could even use some of the money that Hyde is giving you.”
I said: “You’re getting carried away, Bonelli. Just tell me why, and who.”
“The why is easy. The who is easy too, really. Only...” He sat down again on his chair, sitting straight and slim like one of the emperors who had used it before him. He said, holding the tips of his fingers together and frowning at them:
“The most marketable product of Macao, Mr. Cain, is rumor. Accept that, and you will understand everything. We’re cut off from the rest of the world here, under constant threat from the mainland, and rumor is our life’s blood. All right? Now...Sally Hyde came here a few days ago, went straight from the airport to a bar named The Essence of Heavenly Light, and told the barman that she was looking for Alexander Ming. That’s all. She did not even buy herself a drink. She walked over to the bar and said loudly enough for anyone to hear: ‘Tell Alexander Ming that Sally Hyde is in Macao, looking for him.’ And then she walked out, went round to her hotel, waited for dark, went out again, and she’s not been seen since.”
“Her exact words?”
“Her exact words.”
“And just how surprised was the barman?”
Bonelli smiled. “A good point, Mr. Cain. But unhappily, my informant merely said that the barman just stared at her. Perhaps he is, perhaps he isn’t, one of Alexander Ming’s men. Her intention might have been for someone else to hear the threat. My informant stressed the fact that she spoke loudly, rather deliberately.”
“But you were talking about rumors.”
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.”
