I hurried over and listened. I couldn’t hear anything, not even the stealthiest withdrawing footfall. I parted them and looked out. I couldn’t see anything either, just the darkness of an empty passageway. But I could smell something. A whiff of something — the faintest essence of something sweet — whether from a living flower or from floral extract, I couldn’t tell; there wasn’t enough of it to go by, and I was no expert, anyway. Well, maybe it had always been out there.
I went back to my job again. A wastebasket had nothing to offer but a two-day-old copy of Diario de la Marina. I turned my attention to the second clothespress next. It interested me. For one thing, it was backed against the same wall that held the opening with the bead curtain, so that argued that it wasn’t simply a secret exit as mine had been. Where there already was an outlet in full view, why bother to have an elaborate dummy one beside it? And secondly, now that I came over closer to it, I saw that it was not quite as identical as I had at first taken it to be. There was a difference of about a foot in height, in favor of this one. Then when I looked down at the base I saw what made it. This one was raised clear of the floor; it stood on legs. The other was based solidly, as it had to be to keep its real purpose secret.
It was rickety as a result of being elevated like that; the whole thing wobbled slightly when I tugged vainly at the grips on the huge doors. One of the legs was shorter than the rest, I saw, and half eaten away with wormholes. The center seam was actual in this case, but it was securely locked. I desisted, afraid of bringing the whole thing down on top of me if I struggled at it any more.
I took a step back from it, and then again I froze as I had the time before. But this time when I turned there was no optical illusion about the beaded fringe suddenly falling still or lightly wavering with aftermath of motion. It was openly, unabashedly tucked back into a small diamond-shaped opening, as if parted by two fingers, and in the center of this an eye was looking through at me. An eye with gummed lashes sticking out like rays all around it. It didn’t try to hide itself from me; instead, the split in the fringe widened, ran all the way down to the floor; the whole face came slowly through into the room, and with it the body underneath.
She was the prettiest Chinese girl I’d ever seen, and when they are pretty they shoot the works. She was like a doll and built to the specifications of one. About four-ten or five feet at the most, slim to match, tiny red dot for a mouth that you wondered show she could get food into at all. Her skin was the color of creamy porcelain, the eyes oblique, but just enough to be piquant. She had on apple-green trousers and a turquoise-blue coat, both sprinkled with small white chrysanthemums. She had two coral-pink geraniums packed in her hair just over one ear. She brought back some of that scent I’d noticed in the passage before.
I just stood there with my trap open. And I bet I wasn’t the first.
She came in a few steps toward me and then stopped. She dipped her knees demurely.
I put my hand up to the peak of my cap, dropped it again, in answer. It seemed to me to be a supremely silly thing to do, even at the moment I was doing it, but I wasn’t quite sure why. I suppose because I had no right to be found there where I was.
But for her part she showed neither surprise nor alarm, I noticed. It was almost as though she’d been expecting my arrival, and been coached to greet me when I came. Her very next words showed that.
“Buenas noches,” she said in a flutelike little voice that carried its own musical accompaniment.
I didn’t get the whole thing, but I mumbled back at her in kind.
She switched to English; they all seemed to speak it down here.
“Are you the caller my estimable uncle told me he was awaiting here tonight?”
So she was Chin’s niece; well, that was the first thing about him I found halfway passable.
I certainly wasn’t the caller he was expecting, but I nodded. What else was there to do?
She wanted to make quite sure. “You are Captain Paulsen?” I saw her eyes light briefly on the cap and dungarees. They were what had done it, they’d fooled her. He must be expecting some sea captain up here tonight. And what more likely than it was the one who did the running for them between here and the Everglades coast? The skipper of the launch or cutter the stuff was carried in?
This was starting to sound good. I liked it. I wondered if I could work it to get her to show me around a little by playing on the mistake in identity.
I touched my cap again to confirm her in the erroneous impression.
“He will be here soon. He was unavoidably called out on business.”
He should take his time, I thought. This was getting better and better by the minute.
“He asked me to tell you to please make yourself at home while you are waiting.”
I will, I promised her, unheard; just leave it to me.
“You came in that way, Captain?” She motioned to the spiked wardrobe.
“Yes.”
“It puzzled me how you got here; I wondered why they did not tell me they had admitted you at our other door.”
She seemed to take the secret passageway in her stride, I noticed. It didn’t match up with that pretty baby face of hers. I wondered just how much she knew about what it was like over there on the other side of the wall. But the more she knew, the more there was for me to find out from her, so why should I give a hoot?
“Your men are down there below?”
She meant in that Mama Inez dive. So evidently the real Paulsen brought some of his hands with him each time he came here. He needed them to cart the stuff to the place where they took it aboard. “Yeah, they’re down there,” I said.
I didn’t want to hurry things up, God knows, but I wanted to sound plausible. And also find out how much time I could count on for myself. “How soon will your uncle be back, do you think?”
“Soon. He went to see about getting an extra truck. He said one more would be needed tonight. He asked me to tell you this; he said you would understand.”
I did: an extra-heavy shipment tonight. Maybe they were having to cut down the number of runs back and forth they were making, so they were trying to make up for it by doubling on the amount they carried each time.
“Can I get you some tea, Captain, while you are waiting?”
That was about the one thing I could have done without beautifully right then: sitting drinking tea at a time like that!
I shook my head.
She suddenly corrected herself. She’d obviously never met the genuine captain face to face, but she must have been present behind the scenes at the times of his former visits. She wrinkled up her nose at me. The tiny thing could even be mischievous. “I mean, of course, the kind of tea the captain drinks. The rice wine of my uncle.”
I tried to shake my head to that, too, even at the risk of stepping out of character. I wanted to keep her in here with me, where I could get some information out of her.
But before I could stop her she’d dipped her knees again and turned to go back. She brushed open the fringes to go through, and then as she did so something seemed to go wrong. I saw two or three of the strands pull taut after her, and then she stopped and started wrangling with her wrist. A couple of the tricky things must have snarled on some button or ornament she wore on her sleeve.
She tried to free herself, failed, finally threw me an appealing look.