Clane looked down at her, his eyes questioning.
“Go on,” he said.
“But these wise men,” Sou Ha went on, “steeped in the lore of their wisdom, know nothing of women. Therefore, they can teach nothing of women.”
She pressed a button. An electric mechanism shot back steel bolts on the inside of the door.
“And how does one go about acquiring this knowledge of women?” Terry Clane asked.
Her eyes laughed up at him. She came close to him. “You may kiss me again.”
A few moments later Terry Clane stepped out of the quiet luxury of that sumptuous room into the carpetless poverty of a dusty corridor illuminated by a single unshaded incandescent which dangled down from twisted green wires, faded and fly-specked.
The door behind him swung noiselessly shut and Clane could hear the whir of the electric mechanism as the heavy steel bars were shot home.
The kiss of the Chinese girl tingled against his lips. The touch of her hand was still warm upon his cheek and her words still ringing in his mind. These wise men with their knowledge which had been gleaned through the ages, their secrets of meditation by which knowledge might be transmuted into wisdom could teach nothing about women because they knew nothing about women.
And how did one learn about women?
He saw once more her laughing eyes, the red of her warm lips. “You may kiss me again,” she had said.
And Terry Clane, sure of himself when he had been within the fastness of a monastery high in the seclusion of snow-capped mountains, suddenly felt the tranquility of his mind vanish into nothing as he walked along the bare boards of the corridor and descended the narrow flight of stairs towards the smelly side street of San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Seven
Yat T’oy, Terry Clane’s man of all work who had been sent on to San Francisco two months in advance with instructions to secure, furnish, and provision an apartment or some suitable fiat, was still in the waiting room at the pier, sitting just as he had been when Terry left. When Clane returned, that man was occupying the same hard wooden bench with motionless calm. The waiting figure was steeped in a patience so infinite that it could only have been the heritage of centuries. This patience is the passive side of action, which recognizes that infinity is not an intangible something which begins with death, but is an ever-present reality that surrounds the philosopher with the calm consciousness of ceaseless time.
Yat T’oy expressed no surprise and no emotion as Terry Clane entered the waiting room. He rose and said, “I have baggage all together. You wish go to home now?”
There was no curiosity as to where Clane had been during the intervening hours, no question as to how Clane had known where Yat T’oy could be found. The Chinese servant had simply waited until Clane had come. Clane had arrived, and that was all there was to it. The master had his own affairs. If the master chose to confide in the servant, that was well. If he did not so choose to confide, that also was equally well. All of which didn’t mean that Yat T’oy’s inscrutable eyes didn’t take in everything and his active mind didn’t know virtually everything which touched upon Terry Clane’s life or might conceivably affect his happiness.
Yat T’oy would have committed murder on behalf of his master without even so much as a moment’s hesitancy. He would have only needed to know that something stood in Terry Clane’s way to do his utmost to see that the obstacle was removed. And while he knew and respected Clane’s desire to remain within the letter and the spirit of the law, nevertheless, Yat T’oy placed great reliance upon an eight-inch dagger which reposed in a cunningly concealed sheath harnessed to the back of his shoulder blade. Yat T’oy was an expert in the use of the razor-bladed weapon. However, Yat T’oy knew enough of the temperament of his master to say nothing about those occasions when Yat T’oy, sharing the anxiety which came from being in a tight spot, due to some personal enemy of his master, knew secretly that the cause of that anxiety had been permanently and skilfully removed.
His creed was one of deep-seated, unswerving loyalty. All other things were minor.
Yat T’oy was small of stature and he had been shrunk by age and hard work. His face was wrinkled and dried, but his eyes were as bright and alert as those of a bird. There was nothing that missed the comprehensive gaze of Yat T’oy, and that which he saw, he remembered in detail and duly reported to his master.
“Place to live very hard find,” he said in staccato English.
“But you have a place, Yat T’oy?”
“I have place.”
“Good place?”
“Not number one. Perhaps by’m’by later one get more better.”
It was characteristic of Yat T’oy that when he talked with Terry Clane in the pidgin English of the treaty ports, he was in no mood to be interrogated in detail and so Clane didn’t press him, but hailed a cab, watched Yat T’oy supervise the stowing of the baggage, then climbed in and let Yat T’oy give the cab driver the address.
When they arrived at the four-flat building where Yat T’oy had secured a big flat on the south half of the second story, Clane was agreeably surprised. “Why, Yat T’oy, this is perfect! I had heard it was almost impossible to get anything here in San Francisco. How on earth did you do it?”
Yat T’oy’s face brightened under Terry Clane’s approval. He spoke now in Cantonese. “The man who is the janitor of this building is of my family.”
Clane nodded silently, knowing that Yat T’oy referred to a relationship for which there is no exact counterpart in the Western world. The nearest that one can approach it is to say “alle same my cousin.”
“People who live this flat have much trouble,” Yat T’oy went on, grinning. “Cook stove make trouble alle time, trouble with electricity, burn out radio machine.”
Yat T’oy had reverted to English once more as he contemplated the trouble he had getting the apartment.
“What happened?” Terry Clane asked, fighting to keep back a smile. “What did the janitor have to do with it?”
“Flat leased by very rich, very greedy woman,” Yat T’oy said. “She owns stock big hotel but too greedy stay there.”
“I don’t get it,” Clane said.
“Has very fine rooms, four, five, six rooms in big hotel,” Yat T’oy said. “Hotel rooms become very easy to rent. She very greedy. She makes all five rooms into bedrooms and leases flat here. Rent on hotel rooms for one week pays rent on flat for one month. Always same, rich people try get more money. Americans very rich, never so rich have plenty. Always want more.”
“And I take it she has gone back to live in the hotel now?” Clane asked.
“Alle same gone back. Very damn fast gone back.”
“What happened?”
“Much trouble with flat. Electricity makes big blue flame, burns out tubes in radio, radio tubes very hard get. Much trouble with stove, much trouble with radiators, make noise all the time, leak water on carpet, very bad.”
“I see,” Clane said gravely, “and so she preferred the conveniences of the hotel?”
“She move.”
“Soon?”
“Two weeks. She make trouble, then move.”
“And how about us?” Clane asked gravely. “Will we have trouble with the radiators? Will there be short circuits in the electric wires? Will there be blowing out of radio tubes?”
“No trouble,” Yat T’oy said shortly, and began unpacking Terry Clane’s bags. “Janitor alle same my cousin.”
Clane prowled around the place. Much of the furniture was that which he had left in storage, valuable Chinese pieces which Yat T’oy had reconditioned with great care. For the rest, the Chinese, with that shrewd sense of values which is inherent in his race, had picked up here and there and at auctions and in second-hand shops luxurious furniture of prewar quality. Furniture which had been built to last and needed only reconditioning under the cunning touch of Yat T’oy’s skillful fingers to be as good as new.