“The wise person,” Chu Kee replied, “always seeks to keep his mind at rest. It is a saying of our race that the biggest ships can sail only upon the placid rivers... And will you not stay for tea and melon seeds? I have been remiss in my hospitality. More and more, as I live in this Western world, I find my sense of values becoming warped. I sometimes forget that the personal contacts in life are of greater value than the things which are accomplished through those contacts.”
Terry Clane shook his clasped hands in grateful refusal of the invitation.
“Time races onward,” he said, “and I must keep pace with the sun.”
Chu Kee arose. Solemnly, he removed his glasses. Terry Clane bowed once more and backed through the door of the room. It was as he turned to face the teakwood door which led to the shabby corridor, that he heard the rustle of silks behind him and turned to encounter Sou Ha’s glittering eyes.
He noted the half-parted redness of her lips, the spots of delicate color which appeared beneath the smooth skin like the waxen texture of a rose petal.
Her hand reached for his arm; the long tapering fingers rested lightly on the sleeve of his coat.
“Tell me,” she asked, “do you, then, love her so much?”
“Who?” Terry inquired, his voice showing genuine surprise.
“The Paint Lady,” she said.
Terry’s quick interest showed in his voice. “What do you know of her?” he asked.
She stood as though he had struck her. Slowly her lips closed, her face became utterly inanimate.
“Please don’t misunderstand me, Embroidered Halo,” he pleaded.
She said nothing, but held unseeing eyes focused steadily upon his face.
He bent to kiss her forehead, and might as well have kissed a wooden image.
She was still standing there as he opened the door and slipped into the shabby corridor with its myriad smells.
3
It wanted ten minutes to noon when Yat T’oy silently intruded upon Terry Clane.
Clane, stretched out in a wicker chair in the solarium, raised the strip of cloth which covered his eyes against the glare of the sun. Yat T’oy’s parchment-like skin, seamed by innumerable wrinkles, hung loosely from his cheekbones, but stretched tightly across his forehead. Age had shrunk his frame until he was a bare five feet in height, but his glittering eyes missed nothing.
“What is it, Yat Toy?” Clane asked.
“The man with sunburnt skin and pale eyes, whose name tangles my tongue, awaits you,” he said in Cantonese. “It is the man who talks always of horses and money.”
“That will be Levering,” Clane said in English. “Tell him to wait for a few minutes. He wouldn’t call at this hour, Yat T’oy, unless he wanted something. Letting him wait will do him good.” And to illustrate his point, Terry quoted the Chinese proverb that, the longer meat stews, the more tender it grows.
Yat T’oy did not smile, but a general softening of the lines of his mouth indicated his understanding.
Terry gave his visitor ten minutes to stew, and then, entering the living-room, found Levering pacing the floor in ill-concealed nervousness.
Terry shook hands, indicated a chair, dropped into another chair, thrust out his feet, crossed his ankles, and said, “Would Scotch and soda help you say what you have to say, Levering?”
“I can say it without any help,” Levering blurted.
“Go ahead then, say it.”
“You were with Alma last night. You took her to the Raybornes’.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t drive her directly home. You drove her through Chinatown.”
“Quite right.”
“You left her at about three-thirty,” Levering asserted positively, then stared with his pale, speculative eyes at Clane’s sprawled figure.
“So what?” Terry drawled.
“I want to know if you went directly to your apartment after you left her.”
“Yes,” Terry said, smiling, “I went directly to my apartment after I left her.”
Levering’s face showed swift triumph.
“Thanks a lot,” he said, “I just wanted to know.”
“But,” Terry went on smoothly, “I didn’t leave her at about three-thirty. I left her some time shortly after one-thirty.”
Levering, who had half-risen from his chair, gave an exclamation and dropped back to a sitting position.
“You’re mistaken, Clane,” he said. “It’s very easy to be mistaken upon a matter of time. Think back and you’ll remember it was about three-thirty. It just happens that it may be important.”
Clane shook his head.
“Well,” Levering suggested, “you could at least say it was. You could make your recollection agree with Alma’s, couldn’t you?”
Clane picked up a striker, tapped a bowl-shaped gong which sent melodious notes throbbing through the apartment. A door opened and Yat T’oy stood in the doorway, his wrinkled countenance impassive, his eyes bright and alert.
“I’m going to have a glass of plain soda. You’d better have some Scotch and soda, Levering.”
“Very well,” Levering agreed sullenly, and waited until the door had closed before he said to Clane, “Why can’t you make it three-thirty? Why can’t you do that much for Alma?”
“Because,” Terry said, “I wouldn’t like to change the story I’ve told.”
Levering missed the significance of the remark.
“You know Alma well enough to know she’s on the square. You’d just be backing up her story.”
Yat T’oy appeared with a siphon of soda water, a bottle of Scotch, ice cubes, and glasses, placed them upon a coffee table and withdrew. Terry waited until the door had clicked shut and Levering had started mixing a drink.
“I’m afraid,” he said to Levering, “that the district attorney had my story taken down in shorthand.”
Levering had splashed a generous portion of Scotch over the ice cubes in his glass. He was adding charged water from the siphon when the significance of Terry’s remark dawned upon him. His pale eyes widened with consternation.
“The district attorney!” he exclaimed.
Terry nodded.
Levering raised his elbow, gulped down the contents of his glass as though feeling in immediate need of a stimulant.
Without giving him a chance to recover his composure, Terry went on smoothly, “And, by the way, when you leave here you’ll probably be shadowed, so don’t go to Alma.”
“But I don’t know where Alma is,” Levering blurted, and then pattered out frightened questions: “When did the district attorney grill you? What did you tell him? What makes you think I’ll be shadowed?”
“Well,” Terry said, staring in amused scrutiny at his visitor, “let’s see if we can’t deduce what must have happened. The district attorney tells me that Alma has disappeared and that her bed wasn’t slept in last night. I left her shortly after one-thirty this morning. You drop in to see me and very casually remark that I left her at about three-thirty. Evidently you hoped that I wouldn’t be quite clear as to the time I had left her. You figured you could make the positive statement that it had been after three-thirty this morning, and that my mind would absorb the suggestion, retain it as a definite impression, and repeat it later. Therefore, Levering, I would say you knew of some reason why it would be important to have it appear I’d left her after three o’clock instead of an hour and a half earlier.”