Politely he asked, “Mr. Smith?”
Shaw nodded. “Correct. I’m expecting a lady.…”
“The lady is already here, master, and is waiting for you. If you will please follow me?”
The Chinese turned away through the door, holding it open for Shaw who followed him along a corridor and up a flight of stairs to a landing. From a door ahead of the stair more music came faintly. The waiter went towards this door and bowed Shaw through. He walked into a dimly-lit room partitioned into private cubicles. At the end of this room some kind of intimate cabaret-in-miniature was taking place and, apart from candles set in lanterns, one in each cubicle, the light from the stage provided the only illumination. In this light Shaw could see that most of the diners were elderly men of varying nationalities, some of them closeted with young women, some of them alone.
The waiter bowed himself past Shaw. “Excuse, please,” he murmured deferentially. “This way, please, master.” He led Shaw to a cubicle half way along on the left of the room, and stopped, bowing once more. From the shadows a voice said, “Smith, you are late, but how nice it is to see you,” and he saw the lantern’s gentle light falling on fine, very blonde hair curling round a pair of shell-like ears, and a thin, clinging, deeply slit dress — a jade-green cheongsam that suited her perfectly.
He said, “It’s nice to see you too. I’m sorry I’m late.” The waiter disappeared. Shaw sat down opposite the girl. “Now perhaps you’ll explain,” he said accusingly.
She said at once, putting a finger to her lips, “No. Here we must not talk — even with the cubicles, it is not entirely safe. Soon we shall talk of the important things.”
He shrugged and said lightly, “All right. For now I’ll just spend the time telling you how beautiful you are!”
She laughed. “Oh, that is corny, Smith, but I shall like it very much indeed! And in return I shall tell you how intriguingly handsome you are, in a craggy kind of way, and how much I admire your kind of man, who is tough, and probably quite ruthless with women. But there are other things you can talk to me about also, Smith.. about Hong Kong, of what I can see while I am here — of the places I must visit, of Hong Kong’s history since the British came, of typhoons and pirates and beautiful, seductive women who lured British sailors to their doom… all that sort of thing, you know?” She gurgled with suppressed laughter, looking into his eyes in the lantern’s light. “It interests me so much, all that. And now, Smith, here is the waiter. Are you good at ordering Chinese food, Smith?”
He smiled into the blue eyes and then looked up at the waiter, hovering now at his elbow. “I can always try,” he said, taking a large menu card from the Chinese. “What do you like… Miss Tegner?”
Distantly she said, “Oh, how that is like the British, to leave it to the woman! I like to be taken charge of, Smith. I thought you would have known that.”
“I was simply being polite — that’s a British habit, too, sometimes — but if you insist, I adore taking charge of women. Meanwhile, you’ve asked for it.” Shaw ran his eye down an immense list of numbered Chinese dishes and gave his order. Behind the table waiter, a wine steward hovered, and Shaw, glancing down the list of Chinese drinks, ordered instead a white wine that he felt would please the girl, a Bommes from the vineyards of Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey. When the Chinese had withdrawn he said quietly, “Let’s cut the historical sketch and the guidebook stuff, at any rate while the waiter isn’t around. I’m not very good at that sort of thing.”
“What are you good at?” she asked, giving him an amused and quizzical look.
He shrugged. “Plenty of things. Name it and I’ll do it. Only, not that… not till I’m less busy, anyway.”
“Smith, you disappoint me,” she said, pouting and drawing the ends of her hair beneath her nose in that gesture that he felt was so characteristic of her. “I wanted so much for you to take me around… while I am here visiting my cousin.”
“So that’s it,” he said, watching her closely. “Miss Tegner, I’m a very busy man, you’ve no idea just how busy currently. I hate to say this, but can’t he take you around?”
“He?”
“Your cousin.”
“He is a she, Smith, and I consider it ungallant of you to suggest my cousin should take me over — since you are under the impression she is a man! I prefer screaming jealousy to lack of gallantness, Smith. In any case my cousin is sick, and old, and bedridden. Strictly she is not my cousin, but my mother’s. She also is at the Shanghai.”
“Your mother?”
“My cousin! She has had a suite there for many years.”
“She must be enormously rich,” he said sardonically.
“She is, Smith, she is what you would call rolling. And this is quite, quite true. I stay with her when I come to Hong Kong, which I do now and then, on business.” She smiled. “I am not quite so ignorant of Hong Kong as I made out, Smith. It is just that I would like you to take me around!”
He asked, “What sort of business brings you here?”
“My own business. Here in Hong Kong I am sometimes able to contact Chinese writers, men and women who have managed to smuggle their manuscripts through from the mainland, and are seeking Western publishers for them.” Into the pause that followed he said mischievously but with intent to raise a satisfactory answer, “If you’ve come here, even partly, to be with your cousin, you shouldn’t be gallivanting. After business hours, you should be in attendance at the sick bed.”
She gave a light laugh, the silvery sound that did things to Shaw. She was too attractive by far, he thought — and the more dangerous to a conscientious agent because of it. He said, “Tell me about this joint — Mi Ling’s. It looks pretty sordid from the outside.”
Again she laughed. “Possibly you may consider it sordid inside, too, Smith!”
He chose to misunderstand. “It doesn’t look like it from where I’m sitting. It looks elderly and respectable.. more or less, anyway.”
“I was not speaking of the dining-room. All sorts of people come here — Chinese, English, Japanese, German, mostly rich men, and—” She broke off, lowering her voice. “Mi Ling offers other things in his establishment.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Go on?”
She shrugged, then looked at him directly and said in a still low but level, matter-of-fact voice, “Young girls, gambling — opium, I believe. Mi Ling caters for most of the vices, Smith.”
Shaw remembered his thoughts about the symbolism of the young naked females and the bearded old men. He said slowly, “Yes, I know what you mean. Why isn’t it raided?”
“In Hong Kong?” Her tone chided him. “But you are thinking perhaps of the opium… I understand the premises are raided from time to time on that account, and on that account only. But money talks here as elsewhere, Smith, and the opium smokers’ prison at Tai Lam gathers few of its inmates from Mi Ling’s!”
He grunted. “Anyway, I hope it isn’t raided while we’re here.”
She smiled. “You and I have no opium, Smith!”
He smiled back at her, then reached across the table and took her hand in his. He said, “Do you know, I’m beginning to lose all my capacity for being surprised at you — Helma.” Suddenly he had the curious but strong feeling he’d known this girl all her life, that they were very old friends… which was in itself a surprising thing considering they’d met only the once before, back across the world in the Savoy. But there was something about her that made a man feel thoroughly at home with her and anyway he had long ago given up being shy with women… just then the waiter came back with the soup and Shaw started in on some small-talk. Only half his mind was on what he was saying; clearly Ingrid Lange — or Helma Tegner — fitted into the picture somewhere, and he felt instinctively that she was on his side, but he knew she wasn’t the girl to be bulldozed whatever she had said about masterful men and he had to be patient and wait for her to