“Since when?”
“Since this morning when you were talking with my father but watching me. That made me furious. I hated you when you left.”
“The district attorney,” he told her, “questioned me, trying to find out if I knew the identity of the Chinese girl who had called on Jacob Mandra.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Practically nothing.”
“And why suspect me?”
“I didn’t, particularly.”
“You acted like it.”
“I was,” he informed her, “simply looking for some clue... By the way, have you seen Juanita since Mandra’s death?”
“No. I had intended to...”
She broke off abruptly and her eyes, black as pools of ink, moved restlessly, then returned to meet his.
“Was that a trap?” she asked.
He said, “Yes, Sou Ha, it was a trap.”
She made no attempt now to conceal her feelings. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Is it necessary, then,” she asked, “that you must sacrifice my friendship upon the altar of your love?”
He said slowly, “Don’t misunderstand me, Sou Ha. Mandra was killed with my sleeve gun. The district attorney now has the weapon. It was found concealed in the cushions of a chair in which I had been sitting when I was questioned.”
“Bear witness,” she said softly, “that I came to you voluntarily. This morning when you sought to surprise information from me, I withheld it. That is the nature of my race. This evening, when you need my friendship, I have brought it to you. I was the Chinese girl who went to Jacob Mandra’s apartment.”
“Why did you go?”
“I went to warn him.”
“Of what?”
“I wished to warn him that the opium traffic must cease.”
“You knew that he was the head of it?”
“Yes.”
“And your father knew?”
“Yes.”
“You received the information from your father?”
She nodded her head.
“Why did you want to warn him? Did you know him?”
“No,” she said simply, “I knew the woman he loved.”
He became conscious of the boring interest in her eyes and tried to hold his features so they would show no expression when she should mention the name of that woman. Yet, almost at once he realized the futility of trying to evade those probing eyes which were for the moment so smoothly dark it was impossible to distinguish between pupil and iris.
“No, First Born,” she said slowly, “it was not the painter woman.”
“Who was it?”
“Her name is Juanita. She is a dancer.”
“And because of her you warned Mandra?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you let her warn him?”
“Because I could not find her, and it was necessary to take quick action.”
“Was your warning too late?”
“My father did not know of his death until you brought the news this morning.”
“What happened when you went there?” he asked.
“I explained to the Negro that I must see him at once; that I came because I was a friend of Juanita. He opened the door and I entered.”
“What time was this?”
Her sudden lapse into Chinese warned him that the answer to his question was, for some hidden reason, taxing her thought process so that speech became for the moment a mechanical reflex of thought. “At three characters past the second hour of the Ox,” she said, in Cantonese.
“When did you leave?”
“I was there for fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“What happened?”
“I found Mr. Mandra a very wise man. I talked with him and he listened. He knew who I was. He had heard Juanita speak of me.”
“Can you take me to this Juanita?” he asked.
She brushed the question aside.
“While Mr. Mandra talked with me, he held in his hands a sleeve gun. He asked me if I knew of some Chinese artisan who could make a duplicate of the gun so cunningly that the imitation could not be told from the original. When I took the sleeve gun in my hands to inspect it, a current of air blew one of the doors partially open. Mandra went to the door and closed it, but not before I had seen that which was within the room.”
“What was it?”
“The painter woman was lying asleep upon a couch.”
“You mean Alma or Cynthia?”
“It is the one with the hazel eyes and the upturned nose, with whom you had a Chinese dinner in the Blue Dragon. Her hair is the color of copper clouds at sunset.”
“That was Cynthia,” Terry said, “go on.”
“Mr. Mandra listened to me courteously. Before I left, he promised me that he would withdraw from the opium business. There was that about him which I liked. He was strong. He was dishonest, and he was cruel. But he did not lie.”
“Sou Ha,” he said, “it is important that I see this woman, Juanita, and talk with her.”
Her eyes showed the pain in her soul.
“Would you,” she asked, “do as much for me as you do for this painter woman?”
He crossed to her side and said, “Perhaps, Embroidered Halo, that which I am doing is as much for you as for the painter woman.”
She raised her face in silent interrogation.
“When the district attorney hears your story,” Terry explained, “as sooner or later he must hear it, he will realize that there were two people who last saw Mandra alive. One was an American and one a Chinese. Mandra was killed with a Chinese weapon,”
“You mean,” she asked, “that he must have been killed either by your painter woman or by me?”
“I am talking about what the district attorney will think.”
Her face was utterly inscrutable. “Suppose that I did kill him” she remarked tonelessly, “and the only way I could save your painter woman from being convicted of that murder was by coming forward and sacrificing myself? Would you ask me to do that, First Born?”
He stared at her intently.
“Tell me,” she said with sudden savage insistence.
“Why do you ask me that question?” he countered.
“A mother,” she said, “might scar her soul to save her child’s doll, knowing that it was but a toy, yet knowing also that it was loved by her child.”
He passed it off with a laugh, saying, “But I am not a child, you are not a mother, and the painter woman is not a doll. Come, let us start.”
Without a word, she walked to the mirror, adjusted her hat, took a compact from her purse, touched up her cheeks, and applied lipstick with the tip of a deft finger. During all this time she made no comment. When she had quite finished, she turned to him and said, “I am ready.”
They went in Terry’s car. Sou Ha guided the way into that maze of nondescript streets which lie to the north and west of San Francisco’s Chinatown.
“Turn to the right,” she said, “and stop at the curb.”
Clane spun the steering wheel, braked the car to a stop. Sou Ha opened the door and jumped to the sidewalk before he had switched off the lights and ignition. When he joined her, she slipped her hand possessively through his arm and said, “Remember that on this occasion you are my friend, and only my friend.”
They climbed two flights of narrow stairs. Smells of garlic and sour wine assailed their nostrils. Odors of Spanish and Italian cooking clung to the corridors. They turned to the right at the head of the stairs on the second floor and walked down a dimly lit passage. The apartment indicated by Sou Ha was at the back of the house. Her fingers tapped gently on the door.
Almost instantly it was opened.
Terry Clane gazed into eyes which thinly concealed hot emotions, as the crust of cooling lava still holds a reddish warning of that which lies beneath. She was young, he saw, well formed, dusky of skin, black of hair. She might have been a gypsy, or perhaps part Spanish or Mexican. She showed no surprise. Her eyes flitted from Sou Ha to him, back to Sou Ha.