“About five miles,” Moon Flower told him.
“But from here, walking?”
“About the same, if I don’t lose my way!”
“Then, as two experienced pedestrians, I think you and McKay must walk. If challenged again, you know the story, McKay. Stick to it. We must separate for safety.”
He raised the wizard walkie-talkie to his ear, adjusted it and listened; then: “Hullo, is that Sun Shao-Tung?” he said. “Yes. Nayland Smith here. Tell Lao Tse-Mung I have Yueh Hua and McKay with me. We’re about five miles from the house and they are proceeding on foot. First, I must know if my Ford was noted by The Master when he arrived at the garage . . . It was? And what explanation was offered for its disappearance?” He listened attentively . . . “Ford used for collecting gardening material? Good. Had been sent into Chungking for repairs? Would be returned later by mechanic? Excellent! We’ll be on our way.” He turned to Tony.
“Did you follow, McKay?” he rapped.
“Yes, I did. Fu Manchu has given orders for all ranks to look out for a Ford car. That’s why we were held up. There must be more Fords in Szechuan than I suspected, or we shouldn’t have slipped through so easily. You’re right about breaking up the part, Sir Denis.”
“I suspected this, McKay. I shall have to hang on to the briefcase. A missionary lama from Burma can’t very well carry one! But, for safety, suppose you take the Chinese manuscript? If challenged, it’s a religious treatise to be presented to your principal in Burma. No soldier or policeman will know any better. And lama priests still command some slight respect in this part of China.”
The leather case was taken from its hiding-place in the car and the mysterious manuscript tucked into a capacious pocket inside Tony’s ample garment, which resembled a long-sleeved bathrobe.
But when the parting took place, Moon Flower looked wistfully after the old Ford jolting away on the unpaved road. Tony knew what she was thinking, but it didn’t hurt him. He shared her feeling. Nayland Smith was an oasis in a desert, a well of resource. He put his arm around a slim waist concealed by the baggy boy’s clothes.
“Come on, my lad!” he said gaily, and kissed her. “We have faced worse things and survived.”
Moon Flower clung to him, her blue eyes raised to his; and the blue eyes were sombre.
“I am not afraid for us, Chi Foh,” she assured him. “I am thinking about my father.”
“We’ll get him out, dearest. Don’t doubt it.”
“I don’t dare to doubt it. But I feel, and you must feel, too, that this awful man, Dr. Fu Manchu, is drawing a net around all of us. He has dreadful authority, and he has strange powers. I understand now that it was he who killed the Russian. But how did he kill him?”
“God knows! But it’s pretty certain that his purpose was to get hold of this thing I have in my pocket. So we score over the great Fu Manchu!”
“Not we, Chi Foh. Fate stepped in. I have seen Dr. Fu Manchu. You have spoken to him. He holds my father, a clever man and a man of strong character, helpless in his hands. Dr. Fu Manchu is not an ordinary human being . . . He’s a devil-inspired genius. Sir Denis is our only hope. And he has tried for years to conquer him. Alone, what could you and I do?”
Tony laughed, but not mirthfully. “Very little, I admit. Fu Manchu has a vast underground organization behind him, and, at present anyway, the support of the government of China. We have nothing but our wits.”
Moon Flower forced a smile. “Don’t let me make you gloomy, Chi Foh. You mustn’t pay too much attention to my moods. I don’t expect us to overthrow Dr. Fu Manchu. I only pray we may be able to get my father out of his clutches.”
Tony hugged her affectionately, kissed her hair, which she had allowed Mrs. Wing, Ray Jenkins’s housekeeper, to cut short when Nayland Smith had decided that a lama priest couldn’t travel in the company of a girl. She turned her head aside, pursing her lips in a way which Tony found delicious.
“I don’t like my hair so short, Chi Foh. Although, when I left England, it was quite fashionable to wear one’s hair like a boy.”
“I’m quite happy about it. Moon Flower. Anyway, it will soon grow again.”
And they set out on the path to Lung Chang.
It was a crazy path, in places along embankments crossing flooded paddy fields, and sometimes wandering amongst acres of opium poppies which had become a major crop since all restrictions had been removed. The collective authorities reaped a rich harvest from the sale of opium; the growers struggled to live.
The few peasants they met paid little attention to the lama priest and the boy who trudged on their way, except for one or two who were Buddhists. These respectfully saluted Tony, and he gave them a sign of his hand which Nayland Smith had taught him.
After one such encounter, “I sincerely hope,’ he told Moon Flower, “that we don’t meet a real lama! Sir Denis might have been up to it, but I’m not!”
They were in sight of a village which Moon Flower recognized, not more than a mile and a half from their destination, before anything disturbing happened. The day had been hot and they had pushed on at speed. They were tired. They had reached a point at which there was a choice of routes; the main road or a detour which would lengthen their journey.
“Dare we risk the main road?” Tony asked. “Is it much used?”
“No,” Moon Flower admitted. “But we should have to pass through the village. I think this is a county line, and there may be a police post there.”
“Then I think we must go the long way. Moon Flower. Where will that bring us out?”
“By a gate into part of Lao Tse-Mung’s property, nearly half a mile from the house. It is locked. But there’s a hidden bell-push which rings a bell in the house. We have to cross the main road at one point, but the path continues on the other side.”
“Lead on!”
They resumed their tramp. Tony with his arm around Moon Flower, except where the path was so narrow and bramble bordered that they had to march in single file. At a point where the path threatened to lose itself amongst a plantation of young bamboo, their luck deserted them. The thicket proved to border the road and as there was no sound of traffic they stepped out from the path on to a narrow, unpaved highway. And Moon Flower grasped Tony’s arm.
A dusty bicycle lay on a bank, and sitting beside the cycle, smoking a cigarette, they saw a man in khaki police uniform!
Moon Flower suppressed a gasp. The policeman, however, looked more startled than they were as he got to his feet, dropping his Chinese cigarette, which Tony knew from experience tasted like a firework. It was now growing dusk and their sudden appearance out of the shadow bordering the road clearly had frightened him. m consequence he was very angry. He picked up his cigarette.
“Where do you two think you’re going?” he then demanded.
“We are trying to find our way to the river, which we have to cross. But we took the wrong path,” Tony told him.
“And where are you going, then?”
“I have to return to my monastery in Burma. I am taking this young disciple with me.”
“If you come from Burma, show me your papers—your permit to enter China.”
Tony took himself in hand. The sudden appearance of the security officer had shaken him. But now he was his own man again. He fumbled inside the loose robe. It was the one that Nayland Smith had worn before him. In an interior pocket he had all the necessary credentials, equally applicable to Sir Denis or to himself. They had been sent at speed by Lao Tse-Mung to Chungking before the party set out; how obtained Tony could only guess. Lao Tse-Mung was a clever man.
He handed the little folder to the police officer, wondering if the man could read. Whether he could or not, evidently he recognized the official forms. They authorized the bearer to enter China and remain for thirty days. There was still a week to go. Tony wondered that the smoke of his cigarette, drooping from a comer of his coarse mouth, didn’t suffocate him.