“Bob died. I concentrated on my career. You concentrated on forgetting. You became an adventurer. I became a plodder... No, don’t interrupt, Terry, I’m a plodder, I know it. I’m a slave to my success.
“You told me once that the world levied a price for everything the world gave us, that the price of success was always more than the purchaser was prepared to pay. In some ways, Terry, you were right — that’s the worst of you, you’re always right.
“When you came back, it was a different Terry, one who had taught himself to adventure, to seek the thrill of new experiences. You found a different Alma, one who had become fairly successful. Some call me famous.
“For years, Terry, I’d been stifling all my impulses, concentrating every bit of my energy upon achieving success. I achieved it, and while I was achieving it, I was losing my ability to laugh, to live, and to love.
“I didn’t realize it consciously, but subconsciously I did. That’s why I encouraged Cynthia to play. I liked to watch her getting a kick out of life. I even went so far, Terry, as to get something of a martyr’s complex, thinking that girls like Cynthia who caught the masculine fancy always seemed to be able to play with life without getting their fingers burnt, but that always in the background must be some woman with a maternal instinct watching over them, standing between them and the blows which the world would strike.”
“Alma,” Terry said, getting to his feet, standing by his chair, staring across and down at her, “you’re unjust — unjust to yourself and...”
“Don’t, Terry!” she interrupted. “Don’t stop me now. I’ve got started and I must finish. You came back — Terry Clane, the adventurer. You’d sailed into the far ports, seen strange people, and had adventures — and liked them.
“You found Alma Renton a serious painter, rapidly winning international acclaim. And you found Cynthia, a happy, carefree play-girl, who, nevertheless, had enough sense of restraint and responsibility to be decent, who laughed at life because she refused to be crushed by it. And she appealed to the adventurer in you. But you were loyal, Terry, not to me, but to your memory of me. I still love you, but I love my career more. I’m too ploddingly methodical to appeal to you in the way Cynthia does. I think and plan and plod, while Cynthia lives and laughs and loves.
“I came to tell you, Terry, to quit fighting with yourself. I’m not a machine, I’m a woman. I want to have a home, a garden. I want to plan meals, I want a husband, I want children. But I know that I can never have them, Terry. Too long now I’ve concentrated every bit of energy I have towards perfecting my painting. Now it’s grown to be bigger than I am. It’s bigger than the woman in me, bigger than the maternal instinct, bigger than anything else in life.”
She ceased talking, and for a long moment Terry stood silent. Then he said slowly, “And so?”
“And so,” she said, “I want you to know that you mustn’t let any mistaken loyalty to me stand between you and Cynthia.”
“How much,” he said, “of what you have just said was said for yourself, and how much was said for Cynthia?”
She shook her head, jumped to her feet and said, “Terry, don’t cross-examine me. I’ve told you. I’ve told you the truth. Now I’ve got that off my chest, I must go. And you will go to see Howland, won’t you, Terry? It may mean a lot to Cynthia.”
She crossed to the door before he could stop her. Her hand reached for the knob, fumbled about in a groping search.
“Alma,” he said, reaching for her, “you’re crying. Come back here.”
As he took her shoulders in tender hands, the knob turned from the other side. She stepped back into his arms, keeping her tear-flooded eyes averted. The door opened.
Yat T’oy’s imperturbable eyes stared calmly at Terry.
“Embroidered Halo,” he said in Cantonese, “awaits you. I have taken her into your bedroom, that she may not know the painter woman is here. It is important that you go to her at once.”
13
Twin red spots showed on Sou Ha’s cheeks. Her eyes glittered with emotion, but she affected the elaborate casualness of flippant youth.
“Hi, Wise One,” she said.
“Hello, Sunshine,” he answered, matching her tone, while his eyes studied the dilated nostrils, the tense rigidity of her pose, and the evasion of her manner. “What’ll it be this time, melon seeds or highballs?”
She shook her head, made a little gesture with her hand, as though checking him. She was like some wild thing approaching a suspicious object, ready at any moment to turn and bound into flight.
“You were at Juanita’s apartment some time after our visit, and before midnight?” she asked.
He remained silent and motionless.
“Why did you go there?”
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’ll not lie to you, Embroidered Halo.”
She said slowly, “It is unfortunate Juanita hated the painter woman.”
“Time spent in contemplating misfortunes is time wasted,” he told her. “Unless one may thereby change the bad to the good.”
“Do you, then, love her that much?” she asked.
He purposely misunderstood her. “Juanita?” he inquired, raising his eyebrows.
She was impatient, and showed it in her voice. “The painter woman. Do not avoid the question.”
He moved towards her. “What is it, Sou Ha? What’s wrong?”
She backed away from him, her face utterly impassive save for the slightly dilated nostrils and those two tell-tale spots of dusky red beneath the satiny smoothness of the skin.
“Tell me,” she demanded.
His eyes were narrowed now. “I will,” he said, “answer your question with a question...”
“You will,” she told him, “answer my question with deeds, not with words. I have come to tell you the truth. I am the one who killed Jacob Mandra. He tried to blackmail me. He demanded that I should make my father cease fighting this opium ring, otherwise he would show that I had crippled a man by hitting him with my automobile. He said I was drunk, and some doctor also claimed I was drunk.”
He watched her in frowning concentration.
“And what did you do?”
“I placed the seal of silence on his lips. The man was evil, and I killed him.”
“With what?”
“With your sleeve gun.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From the case in your apartment. Afterwards Yat Toy saw it was gone and locked the door, lest you should accuse him of carelessness when you discovered its loss. I tied it to my arm and pressed my arm down on the table top as Mandra leered across at me. He was evil, I killed him, and my soul knows no regret.”
He studied her thoughtfully.
“Where was he sitting?”
“At the table where the body was found.”
“Was the portrait there in the room at the time you killed him?”
“No, certainly not. Juanita had taken that with her when she left at two o’clock.”
“Where was the painter woman?”
“Asleep in another room. I think she had been drugged. She did not waken, but she stirred uneasily. Her black bag lay on the table at Mandra’s elbow.”
“Did you leave through the corridor door?”
“No, I left as I entered.”
He regarded her with narrowed eyes. “Whom have you told of this?”
“No one save you.”
“Why do you tell me?”
“So that you can save the painter woman if it becomes necessary — but only if you have to do it to save her. Otherwise I am proud of what I did. My face does not regard such an act as being wicked. He was evil. He needed to die. The law could not touch me. I sent him to his ancestors.”