“I left the moment the elevator door clanged shut. I went down to my room, waited for perhaps five minutes, then went down in the elevator and out to the street.”
“When you left, did you notice a man in a brown, double-breasted suit with a white pin stripe sitting in a chair near the plate-glass window in the front of the lobby reading a newspaper?”
“No.”
“You didn’t notice him?”
“He was not there.”
I drummed nervously on the corner of the desk. “The water,” I said, “had begun to run over the bathtub before I left the room. That was because the Negro was holding his foot against the overflow escape. But not much water ran on the floor. That means he was murdered almost immediately after you left, Ngat T’oy.”
“Those two men in the night club?” she asked. “They suspect?”
I said, “We walked into a trap. Those two men are simply typical of two headquarters men who are waiting tonight in every Chinese café, every night club, every cocktail lounge. They have been instructed to watch for a couple — an American man and a Chinese girl. The man at the telephone was reporting to headquarters. He was checking our descriptions against the newspaper clipping he had taken from his pocket. You know what that means? The place is probably being surrounded right now.”
She nodded.
“Is there,” I asked, “some way out of here other than by the entrance?”
Her hand came over to rest on mine. “Ed,” she said softly, “when you are in Chinatown, there is always a way out — for you.”
Chapter Six
The greatest danger to Ngat T’oy was my presence. The greatest danger to me was hers. We came to a parting of the ways at a drab little door in an alley where we had been taken by secret passageways from the office of the night club.
Her hand touched mine lightly. “ ’Bye, Ed,” she said.
“Keep your chin up, Little Sun,” I told her.
Impulsively, she raised my hand, brushed the back of it against the smooth skin of her cheek. Then she was out in the alley, moving with swift steps on feet so light that they hardly tapped an echo from the fog-shrouded buildings on the side of the alley.
I gave her thirty seconds. Then I slipped out the door and walked down the alley in the other direction.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard the sound of a siren. A police car roared past as I turned the corner. Aside from that, there was no trouble gaining my dingy little room, and making myself comfortable, awaiting the first move which would be made by Soo Hoo Duck when Ngat T’oy had told him the news.
While I was waiting, I turned on the radio, both the short wave set which was tuned to police calls and the conventional long-wave outfit that brought in the news every hour.
I learned that police had by now identified the dead colored man as George Bronset, the Pullman porter. That, in turn, reopened the case of the dead woman in lower six whose body had in the meantime been positively identified as that of Betty Crofath of New Orleans and Buenos Aires.
And since New Orleans police were making frantic inquiries concerning the whereabouts of Daphne Strate, broadcasting descriptions and photographs of her, it looked as though Miss Strate was mixed in something a little more sinister than a pleasure trip to the West Coast.
From the police description of Daphne Strate, I recognized her as the girl I had met on the train — the one who had first given me the name of Hazel Deering, then, later on, had posed in the hotel as Betty Crofath.
An employe of the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing & Supply Company, Daphne Strate had, it seemed, simply disappeared into thin air. At the same time, a shortage of some six thousand dollars had been discovered on the books of the corporation. From the manner in which the coincidence was announced, it was plain that the police were not as yet definitely ready to pin that six-thousand-dollar shortage on Daphne Strate, but they were very anxious indeed to locate Miss Strate and ask her some questions.
The ticket seller remembered a young woman of Daphne Strate’s description who had purchased a ticket to Los Angeles. A check-up on the Pullman space had disclosed that Miss Strate occupied lower five, while Betty Crofath had occupied lower six. The police let it go at that, merely commenting on the numbers of the Pullman berths, and mentioning also that George Bronset, the Negro whose body had been discovered in the room apparently rented by Daphne Strate under the name of Betty Crofath, had been the porter on that car — the very one who had discovered the body.
No-one needed to say any more. The whole thing made a series of damning coincidences that built up into a wall of circumstantial evidence. The only trouble was that I had been trained to distrust circumstantial evidence. I had seen too much of what it could do.
Minutes ticked away while I waited for the hand of Soo Hoo Duck to show itself.
A knock sounded on my door.
“Who is it?” I called in Chinese, and I flatter myself that no detective on the force would ever have suspected it was a white man calling the question.
I thought I recognized the voice, but I could not be certain. “You order food from restaurant,” came from the door in the singsong of the say yup variation of the Cantonese dialect. “I bring food. Open the door so food does not get cold, please.”
I stepped over to the wall and placed my eye to the little periscope device I had installed. What I saw reassured me. The lone Chinese who was standing in front of the door clad in a loose-fitting blouse, light blue trousers, and embroidered Chinese shoes was Yat Sing.
Yat Sing was virtually the head of the Chinese Secret Service in San Francisco. He was a man of uncertain age, his moon face perfectly round and cherubic in its expressionless innocence, his eyes glittering with the concentration of attention, and his mouth schooled in silence.
On a first meeting, one never knew whether Yat Sing understood everything that was said to him, because he merely listened. He seldom spoke, asked very few questions, did not nod. He merely listened to what was said and then went out and did what was required. Anyone familiar with the results Yat Sing obtained never had any doubts whether he had understood what was said. Only at the first meeting could there be any question.
Yat Sing not only invariably carried out the missions he was called upon to undertake, but he usually added little artistic finishing touches, so dear to the heart of the true oriental diplomat.
I opened the door.
Until the door was safely closed once more, Yat Sing never once departed from the part he was playing of a gruff, good-natured but somewhat crude and inexperienced waiter.
“Get out table,” he said. “The belly makes complaint at cold food. Cash in advance, please.”
And Yat Sing had brought me a real meal — fresh fried shrimp with that peculiar Chinese sauce, made of catsup, with a little island of red hot mustard on top, hot fried rice, tea, chicken-almond chop suey and those delightful little pickled leeks the Chinese call son kieu tau. He brought all these on a series of trays, one atop the other, the whole expertly balanced. Had any detective stopped him, Yat Sing would have been able to show a complete Chinese meal. And, if he was not molested, he would be bringing me sufficient food so I need not run the danger of leaving my room for a full twenty-four hours.
I was hungry and the food looked good to me.
I pulled out a table, as he suggested, and closed the door.
Yat Sing sat and watched me while I ate, and talked in between mouthfuls.
“The secret of that girl in the hotel,” I told him, “is the key to the whole business. If Daphne Strate were merely an innocent bystander sucked into the vortex of events, she ceases to have any real significance, unless Betty Crofath gave her something to keep for her — something that, to a girl such as Daphne Strate, would seem to be a trivial article of no particular importance. If she is not an innocent bystander, then her connection with the case is of the greatest importance.”