“And so?” I asked.
“And so,” she said, “we do much speculating about Betty Crofath. The information which she has is vital if it is true. It is deadly dangerous if it is untrue. If it is true, it could only have been obtained in one way. But there is one other piece of information she has that bothers us,” Ngat T’oy said, an anxious expression on her face.
“The fact that she got in touch with your father?”
Ngat T’oy nodded. “To a few of the influential Chinese, my father is well known. To the mass of Chinatown, he is but a name — yet even the name is well guarded. Go into any place in Chinatown and ask for Soo Hoo Duck, and the person whom you ask will look at you with the peculiarly courteous disinterest at which my race is so adept. But thereafter, just try and leave Chinatown without being shadowed; try and conceal yourself so well that within twenty-four hours we would not know all about you — all about your background and how you had learned of the name, Soo Hoo Duck.”
I nodded.
“And now,” she said, “out of a clear sky, a woman writes from Buenos Aires a letter addressed to my father at the post-office box where he receives his mail under the name of Tai Yat. If our enemies have that information, it is important to know where they got it.”
“And what,” I asked, “do you wish me to do?”
“Are you free to do it for us, Ed?”
I merely nodded.
“No, please, tell us. We know it will be doubly dangerous for you, but there is no one else.”
“What I can do,” I told her, “I am glad to do.”
She said, “Betty Crofath is on a train that will arrive in Tucson at midnight tonight. She is in lower six of car four. She will be suspicious of anyone with an oriental background. But an attractive white man who is traveling with her could get a lot of information about her, which we need.”
Soo Hoo Duck interposed once more in Chinese. “A man,” he said, “who has that bearing that is attractive to women, who can charm the heart so that the ears hear his voice as the tinkle of running water; a man who has the power to draw women to him as a magnet draws iron. Tell him all of this, Ngat T’oy.”
Ngat T’oy turned to me. “A guy who is lousy with S.A.,” she said.
Soo Hoo Duck looked with surprise at his daughter as she ceased talking. “You have told him this?” he asked.
“I have told him that.”
Soo Hoo Duck sighed resignedly.
“Are you trying to flatter or to kid me?” I asked Ngat T’oy.
“Neither, Ed. You can do it.”
“Where do you get this Clark Gable stuff?” I asked her.
“How do you know what you do to a woman’s heart? Peace now, and let us plan what we are to do. Can we count on you?”
I nodded.
Ngat T’oy clapped her hands. A servant appeared in the doorway. Ngat T’oy asked him in Chinese, “You have a report?”
He came forward, bowing, and laid a plain Manila paper envelope on the table. Then he bowed and withdrew.
I opened the envelope.
It contained a plane ticket from San Francisco to Tucson — a railroad ticket from Tucson to San Francisco via Los Angeles — and a Pullman ticket for lower seven, car four, Tucson to Los Angeles.
Soo Hoo Duck’s sharp eyes slithered over the contents of the envelope as I pulled out the colored strips of paper.
“It is well,” he murmured approvingly. “Time has been short.”
There flashed through my mind some idea of what those tickets on such short notice must have meant, the pre-emption of outstanding reservations, the frenzied telephone calls, embarrassed official explanations. And it had all been done with the swift efficiency of an organization that ran as smoothly as a piece of high-speed machinery.
I put the tickets back in the envelope, and the envelope in my pocket.
A look of serenity established itself on the face of Soo Hoo Duck. “The problem is now gone from my mind,” he said, “as the morning mists leave the lake.”
I wished I had shared his assurance. Problems were being turned over in my own mind, problems that presented many angles. “You and I will have to arrange a few details,” I said to Ngat T’oy.
Her eyes laughed into mine. “Your words,” she said in Chinese, “have ever been the masters of my ears.”
Soo Hoo Duck beamed at us. So far as he was concerned, the matter was all disposed of and his mind could devote itself exclusively to the things of beauty in the world.
So for some ten minutes we split dried melon seeds, sipped tea and discussed the thought processes by which the sweeping curves of conifer bows had been translated into the Chinese architecture, which gives to its eaves that peculiar concave sweep.
At the end of that time, I made my farewells, giving a glance at Ngat T’oy as I bowed myself out of the room.
She joined me in the corridor beyond the heavy door.
“It’s going to be up to you to make the contact at the hotel, on behalf of your father,” I told her. “I’ll find out what I can. She must have a reservation at the Pelton Hotel. See if you can get a room across the corridor, or perhaps an adjoining room. Her train should arrive about nine. At eleven o’clock on the dot, you are to knock on the door of her room. But if, for any reason, anything should have gone wrong — if she doesn’t check in, for instance — you are to meet me at the Golden Lotus Petal at exactly ten-thirty. Do you understand?”
“At eleven,” she said, repeating after me, Chinese fashion, “I am to knock on the door of her room, if everything has gone without a hitch, if she registers at the hotel and there are no suspicious circumstances. Otherwise, I am to meet you at the Golden Lotus Petal at ten-thirty. Right?”
“Right.”
“And why it is so important that I get a room near hers?” she asked me.
“Because I don’t want anyone to know that you have gone to her room — anyone who might be waiting in the lobby. And when and if we decide she is to meet your father face to face, you will only need to spirit him into your room, then take a few quick steps across the hall. Under no circumstances is this girl to know that you are registered in the hotel. Understand?”
“Yes. Where will you be, Ed?”
“Around.”
“Okay.”
I patted her shoulder. My arm dropped to her waist. She abruptly came close to me with a lithe, cuddling motion, then swiftly twisted free.
“Good-by, Ed, and good luck! And don’t worry about not having the S.A.”
I left immediately to make my plane connection for Tucson.
Chapter Three
Dry desert heat held the nightdarkened city of Tucson in an inexorable grip. This heat was different from the high-humidity, smothering heat of the tropics. It was a heat in which perspiration evaporated so fast that the skin felt dry while the body suffered from dehydration.
Fine particles of abrasive desert dust seemed to be suspended in the air — particles so small as to be invisible, yet making the clothes seem harshly abrasive to the skin. A few months later this air would be as invigorating and almost as intoxicating as wine. Tourists would flock from the snowbound East to soak up the dry sunlight, the tang of the pure air. But now, for a period of six weeks, heat held sway in the desert.
The train was late, and no one seemed to have any very definite information as to when it could be expected.
The railroad depot was crowded with tired, dejected bits of human flotsam, some of them people who had been trying in vain to get on trains for nearly twenty-four hours, sprawled wearily in postures of dejection, getting up when they heard the sound of an approaching train, picking up their baggage, plodding wearily out to the platform, standing in long lines, being pushed and jostled, hearing the discouraging voice of a tired conductor, the slam of a vestibule door, and then trudging wearily back to the depot to resume another period of waiting.