"Good evening," I said in a matter-of-fact manner! "If you will send your bully boy here into the alley, he can drag his unconscious brother within."
As I sat down opposite the lawyer, I was delighted to note his startled reaction.
"Your attempt at strong-arm tactics was ridiculous, of course, since I'm here to have a word with you."
"You are—what?" Chan was completely unnerved, and rattled to the Manchurian in Chinese. The wrestler left the room.
"Surely you don't think your clumsily baited trap would fool anyone but a child," I stated contemptuously. "Even the sometimes obtuse Inspector Lestrade would have laughed at it."
Alarm had flooded Loo Chan's eyes, and I pressed on.
"Dear me, I can see clearly that you have overdramatized again. The open window, the sound of a voice, and the curiosity of the Anglo-Saxon will entrap him. Do you think me a dunderhead? Had you not been aware of my presence, would you have spoken in English? Surely not, but in your native tongue."
I leaned back in the straight-back, regarding Loo Chan with disdain. In the alleyway this thought had not occurred to me, but the Chinese didn't know that, a knowledge gap that I hoped to preserve.
"Why . . . why then would you come here, on my footsteps, if you suspected a trap?" As he spoke, Loo Chan was mentally stumbling round, trying to regain firm footing.
"Because—in the patois of the American dime novel—the jig is up! Lawyers are reputed to be a cautious lot, and you had better get out now."
Consternation and confusion fought a battle on his face. Since the best defense against a counterattack is to never let it get started, I continued to knife him verbally, all the while trying to preserve an icy façade.
"I can afford to be generous with advice. Surely, here, I am completely safe." I indicated my dingy surroundings airily, as though I were seated in the commissioner's office at New Scotland Yard.
Loo Chan almost sputtered. In fact, he did. "You, the intimate and associate of that devil Holmes, think you are safe with us?"
"Completely." I leaned over the table, spearing him with an outstretched finger. A very effective gesture that, and one that I had seen Sherlock Holmes use to enforce a point.
"If Chu San Fu arrives tomorrow in Cairo, you cannot have him meet me. What might I tell him about the destruction of his London organization?"
Loo Chan's round face froze. He did not grasp what I was touching on, but the sound was ominous. His worried eyes were fastened on me with an unspoken question. I summoned an answer.
"You recall that the Limehouse Squad just happened to have a veritable blueprint of every part of Chu San Fu's operations in London. Where do you think it came from? Your files. Rather careless to have such information in your safe, don't you think? I'll wager Chu San Fu will."
"My safe was not opened."
"Wasn't it?"
"Furthermore," he continued desperately, as though trying to forestall the fatal moment, "none of my records were missing."
I actually laughed. It wasn't easy, but I believe I pulled it off rather well.
"They were photographed."
"But that's illegal."
"So it is. You should have a good case. Let's see, who will you sue? The master cracksman who got into your office? The photographer?" I did not choose to reveal that Slim Gilligan had performed both jobs. "Possibly, the man who planned the whole thing?"
"Holmes!" he exclaimed, and the taste of the word was gall and wormwood. Emotion twisted the Chinaman's face as he imagined disaster. Then the spark of cunning reentered his eyes.
"If you could not tell Chu San Fu—"
I used an upright palm to stem his words before he gained confidence by uttering them.
"You can't present him with a dead body. Do you think he would believe that you and those two gargantuans could not take me with ease? Impossible!"
The flicker of hope was erased from Loo Chan's face, and then the passivity of resignation settled over it.
"What is your thought?"
I had of late listened to so much of the history of Egypt from Holmes, Sir Randolph Rapp, and most recently Colonel Gray that I decided to make use of it.
"The ancients of this land made a habit of obliterating from history certain distasteful matters, which is why the reign of some of their pharaohs is hardly known at all. I suggest that tonight never happened. I was never here. If you can control the Manchurians, I see no problem."
I could sense the lawyer trying this thought for size and searching it for a flaw. Evidently he did not find one, for he rose to his feet, indicating the window.
"So be it. Best you leave this way. I will take care of the Manchurians."
While clambering out of a half-opened window in a dark alley in Cairo is not my idea of a dignified exit, all in all I felt that the matter had been well handled. True, I had consorted with the lawless, but surely this was better than filling a shallow grave in the shifting sands of Egypt. Or being the prisoner of Chu San Fu, whose feelings towards me were hardly benevolent.
As I scurried out of the alleyway and hastened back to Shepheard's, it jostled my conscience to accept the fact that I had played the role of the blackmailer. However, I was alive and free, so surely this transgression had been in a good cause.
If I could muster an alibi for my solo flight into dark doings in far-off places, I cannot, in conscience, deny a certain pride that provided me with great joy when I regained the lobby of the hotel only to run into an irate and anxious Colonel Gray.
"Good God, Doctor, where have you been? My men are searching the city for you!"
The high color of his face was more pronounced and the banality of his personality was a thing of the past, a mere cover, as I had already begun to suspect.
I regarded him with a cool manner, tinged with surprise.
"I was conducting an investigation of my own, Colonel. Please explain your concern." It was but a little thing, and yet I shall always cherish it in my memory.
"You were what!" Gray verged on apoplexy. "You realize that they would have handed me my head in London had something happened to you unless Holmes beat them to it right here!" He seemed ready to embark on more of the same when a new thought segued into his mind. Possibly there is more here than meets the eye, he was thinking. This Doctor may be an unknown quantity, and I'd best walk softly. Discipline forced his severe mouth into a semblance of a mirthless smile.
"Forgive my concern, sir, but you are a visitor to these shores." These were but words to cover an awkward situation. Gray knew it and suspected that I did as well. He was grateful to have an escape hatch.
"A Mr. Orloff from the Foreign Office has arrived, Doctor, and has been asking for you. I took the liberty of allowing him entry to your suite."
"Excellent, Colonel. I am in your debt." Gray almost clicked his heels as I made my way towards the lift with, I hope, a preoccupied expression.
Now there was no doubt in my mind regarding the Colonel's activities in Egypt. A squad of men were searching the city for me, and he could maneuver the hotel staff at will. Gray was Military Intelligence. The dark shadow of Orloff had shown up in Cairo. We had been transported by a naval vessel. Obviously, Holmes was not the only one concerned by the doings of Chu San Fu in the land of the Nile.
Outside our suite, I took the precaution of knocking on the door before fitting my key in the lock. Bursting unannounced into a room containing Orloff was no way to insure a safe existence. The rotund security agent was comfortably seated in a chair, the steel-rimmed hat that he so often employed, such an awesome weapon in his hands, close by. I may have detected a smidgen of concern vanishing from his green eyes. There was about him a quality always helpful to my ego. Orloff habitually treated me as an equal, an abrupt departure from his usual good sense, but I always felt the better for his faulty judgment.