“It’s a long story, Owl... Why would you have warned me not to come here?”
“Because,” he told her, “George Levering was here a little while ago, and when he left a detective drove away with him. I’m mentioning it because I want you to know what to expect. And, by the way, Cynthia, did you suggest that Levering should come here to see if he couldn’t make me believe I’d been with Alma until three-thirty?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to keep Alma out of it.”
“Why Alma?”
“Oh, I don’t know, except that I didn’t want her to become involved.”
“Any particular reason?”
“No,” she said definitely; “Alma’s out of it. I thought an alibi might help her but she doesn’t need one.”
Yat T’oy opened the door, shuffled in with clinking ice and beaded glasses. Cynthia tasted her drink, smiled at the Chinese and said, “You heap savvy Tom Collins, Yat T’oy.”
It wasn’t until the grinning servant had left the room that the light died from her eyes.
“Tell me, Terry,” she asked, “do you think I can take it?”
“It depends,” he told her, “on how much you have to take. Can I help?”
“Yes, of course. That’s why I came. Will you?”
“My ears,” he told her, “are at your service.”
She frowned. “That’s one of those Oriental things that sound swell until you stop to analyze them,” she remarked. “Putting your ears at my service is very polite and very Chinesey, but it isn’t like saying ‘yes’.”
Terry laughed outright. “After all,” he said, “you must make allowances for environment. In Chinese there is no word for ‘yes’. Therefore, one expresses its equivalent by various means.”
“Terry, is that true? Isn’t there any word for ‘yes’ in Chinese?”
“Not in the general sense that we use it. That is, not in Cantonese dialect. They use ‘Hai or Hai loh,’ meaning ‘it is’. But Chinese etiquette generally forbids a short form of affirmative. The so-called Mandarin language has... However, you didn’t come here to listen to a dissertation on the Chinese language. Tell me, what’s on your mind?”
She surveyed him thoughtfully for several seconds and then said:
“Terry, I’m about to unburden myself of a serious utterance. I trust it won’t besmirch my reputation for perpetual flippancy.”
“Go ahead,” he invited.
“What you’ve just told me,” she said, “accounts for a lot of the change in you since you’ve been in China. You’re baffling, and darned if I don’t believe it’s all due to the fact you’ve forgotten how to say ‘yes’!”
“Yes?” he asked mockingly.
“Yes,” she said emphatically.
“And you came all the way up here to talk with me about this?” he inquired with exaggerated courtesy.
Her eyes clouded. “I came up here to talk with you about the murder.”
“Sparring around, stalling for time isn’t going to help any, Cynthia,” he said kindly.
She spread out the newspaper. “I don’t know how much of the evidence is being held back, but this gives a fairly complete account of the crime. Shall I read it?”
“No. Give me a summary. Never mind the newspaper embroidery, and try to forget that you’re you and I’m me. Be coldly efficient.”
“Do you want me to be entirely impersonal?” she asked.
“Yes, while you’re giving me the facts.”
She sighed docilely, raised her thumb and forefinger to her right temple, twisted her hand and made a clicking noise with her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
“Turning off the personality,” she explained, in answer to his inquiring eyes... “Don’t look at me like that, Owl. Must you see my mind entirely naked?”
“It’s the facts that I want unadorned,” he explained. “It always helps to have them that way.”
“Very well, Owl, prepare your ears, as the Chinese would probably say. It’s too bad your stomach isn’t big enough so you could sit cross-legged and hold it on your lap... No, no, Owl, don’t be sore. I’m just fighting a preliminary with myself... All right, here we go into the main event.”
“Bong! That’s the gong.”
She sighed, started speaking in a flat, mechanical monotone.
“Mandra,” she said, “had a gorgeous flat in an apartment building which he owned on the fringe of Chinatown. If you’re interested in a floor plan, there’s a sketch in the newspaper.
“The main thing is that this flat was really a combination of two big apartments and was arranged so he could have absolute privacy. Sam White, a one-time Negro heavy-weight, was Mandra’s bodyguard. There was a Japanese cook, a K. Tanigosha. Tanigosha went to bed early. Sam White never went to bed until after Mandra told him to.
“The three rooms where Mandra slept and did his work were separated from the rest of the flat by a locked door. Sam White guarded that locked door. No one could see Mandra except by passing Sam White.
“There was an exit door equipped with a lock which experts claim was practically burglar-proof. Mandra is supposed to have held the only key to that lock. He never admitted visitors through the exit door. But he could come and go as he pleased.”
Terry, watching her closely, said, “Why all the emphasis on the layout of the apartment, Cynthia?”
“Because I think it’s important,” she said. “Last night Mandra went into his private suite at about eleven o’clock. The newspaper mentions that ‘a young woman, whose identity is known to the authorities’, had an appointment with Mandra at eleven-thirty. Sam White says he didn’t see this young woman leave.
“At a quarter past two,” she went on, “a woman with the high collar of a fur coat turned up round her neck so it concealed most of her face, asked Sam White to tell Mandra that a friend of Juanita’s wished to see him on important business. According to the newspaper, Sam White saw this woman’s eyes and says she’s Chinese, and young. He could tell she was an Oriental from her eyes, and her voice sounded more Chinese than Japanese.
“There’s a telephone White uses in announcing visitors. He rang Mandra and told him about the girl. Mandra said to send her in. She stayed until two forty-five. That’s White’s story.”
“White saw her leave?” Terry asked.
“Yes.”
“And during the time she was in there, where was this woman who had entered at eleven-thirty?”
“That’s one of the things the newspaper says is ‘unexplained’,” she told him, staring at him steadily.
Watching her eyes, he said slowly, “You’re telling me now what the newspaper has to say?”
“Yes, because the newspaper sets forth all the evidence the authorities have.”
“Could Mandra have let this other girl out through the exit door?” Clane asked.
“He could if he’d wanted to,” she said, “but the newspaper emphasizes the fact that Mandra never, under any circumstances, used that door for such a purpose. And you must remember that Mandra had three rooms in this inner apartment.”
“Now let’s get this straight,” Clane said, his eyes fixing her with unwinking scrutiny, “This Chinese girl gave no name?”
“No.”
“But said she was a friend of Juanita’s?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s Juanita?”
“That’s just it. No one knows.”
“How about Sam White, the bodyguard? Does he know?”
“No, he says he doesn’t.”
“Go on,” Terry said, “tell me the rest of it.”
Cynthia consulted the newspaper.
“Doing that to refresh your recollection,” Terry asked, “or to hide your facial expression?”