“Grandfather!” sputtered Major Brane under his breath. “He’s no more her grandfather than I am! I’ve seen him before somewhere, and I’ll place him yet!”
But he knew better than to waste any mental energy in jogging a tardy recollection. Major Brane was having his hands full at the moment. He had a task before him which required rare skill, and the price of failure would be death.
He reached back for his tobacco pouch, and his hand touched something which swung in a dangling circle from the skirt of his coat. He pulled the garment around. The thing was the leather pouch which the old man had tossed to him. It was filled with greenbacks of large denomination, rolled tightly together.
That bag must have been pinned to his coat by the old servant as he was leaving the court yard. The knowledge gave Major Brane a feeling of mingled security and uneasiness. That meant that at least one of his shadows must be in the employ of the old man who had posed as the girl’s grandfather. That shadow would make certain that Major Brane found the sack of currency, that it did not come loose and roll unheeded into the gutter.
But there were three shadows. What of the other two? And there was the disquieting knowledge that even the friendly shadow would become hostile should Major Brane fail in his undertaking.
The young man had promised that Brane should not outlive the girl; and the promise had been sworn by the sacred memory of the young man’s ancestors.
Major Copely Brane walked directly to his room in the hotel, which was almost on the outskirts of Chinatown. That step was, at least, noncommittal, and Major Brane needed time to think. Also, he had a secret method of exit from that room in the hotel.
He opened the door with his key, switched on the lights, bolted the door behind him, and dropped into a chair. He held his arm at an angle so that his wrist watch ticked off the seconds before his eyes.
He knew that it was hopeless to plunge blindly into the case without a plan of campaign. And he knew that it would be fatal to consume too much time in thought. Therefore he allowed himself precisely three minutes of concentration — one hundred and eighty seconds within which to work out some plan which might save the life of the girl, and, incidentally, preserve his own safety.
He thought of Mah Bak Heng. Major Brane had some shrewd suspicions about Mah Bak Heng, but he had no proof. There was a chance that those suspicions could be converted into proof by the burglary of a certain safe. But that burglary would take time. Even with the necessary proof, Major Brane would be no nearer locating those who held the girl captive; and she would be dead long before he could bring sufficient pressure to bear upon the Chinese politician to force a trade or treaty.
Major Brane squirmed uneasily in his chair. Thirty seconds had ticked by. He might trust to blind chance, figure out who would probably be chosen to kidnap a girl who had acquired dangerous information, make a guess as to the location that would be picked upon for torture. But there was only one chance in a hundred that, with all of his shrewd knowledge of things Oriental, he would be able to make a correct guess. Then there would remain the task of effecting a rescue.
No. The girl would have died a slow death long before such a plan could be carried into execution.
Forty-five seconds gone.
Major Brane shifted the position of his legs. His eyes were cold and hard as polished steel.
His jaw was thrust forward. His lips were a thin line of determination. The light illuminated the delicately chiseled lines of his aristocratic face.
He went back to the first principles of deductive reasoning. The girl was a spy. She had evidently secured the thing that would link Mah Bak Heng with interests that were inimical to China. That thing would, if Major Brane read his man right, be in the nature of cash. But cash leaves no trail. Therefore, the thing which the girl had secured was something equivalent to cash, which also indicated the person who had paid the cash. It was a safe bet that this something had been a check.
She had left the place, seeking her friends; and the enemy had known she was a spy — at least that soon, perhaps before. Had the girl been aware that her disguise had been penetrated? That was a question which could only be answered in the light of subsequent events. Those subsequent events proved that the girl had been “taken for a ride” by her enemies. Undoubtedly, she had been searched almost immediately; and the subsequent searching of her rooms would indicate that this search had been fruitless.
So far, then, the enemies were deprived of the evidence which they had sought to take from the girl. The girl had hidden it in some place that was not on her person. Where?
Obviously, those enemies had thought the most likely place was the girl’s bedroom. Rightly or wrongly, they had reasoned that the check was hidden there.
It was impossible now to find the girl within the time necessary to save her life; but the people who held her captive would torture her, not for the pleasure of torture, but for the purpose of securing that which they coveted — the check. Therefore, if they secured the check without torture, they would refrain from torture.
That thought lodged in Major Brane’s mind, and he immediately seized upon it as being the key to the situation. His eyes stared unwinkingly, his brows deepened into straight lines of thought.
Then, after a few moments, he nodded his head. His eyes snapped to a focus upon the dial of the wrist watch. The time lacked thirteen seconds of the three-minute limit which he had imposed upon himself.
Major Brane crossed to a desk in one corner of his room. That desk contained many curious odds and ends. They were articles which Major Brane had collected against future contingencies, and they dealt with many phases of the Orient. He selected a tinted oblong of paper. It was a check upon a bank that was known for its connections in the Far East. The check was, of course, blank. Major Brane filled it in.
The name of the payee was Mah Bak Heng. The amount caused Major Brane some deliberation. He finally resolved upon the figure of fifty thousand dollars. He felt that in all probability that amount would be the top price for the final payment, and he knew Mah Bak Heng well enough to believe that he would command the top price for the final payment, assuming that there had been several previous payments.
It was when it came to filling the name of the payer at the bottom of the check that Major Brane pulled his master stroke. There was a slight smile twisting the corners of his lips as he made a very credible forgery of signature. The signature was that of a man who was utterly unknown in the Oriental situation, save by a very select few. But Major Brane had always made it his business to secure knowledge which was not available to the average diplomat.
He blotted the check, folded it once, straightened the fold and folded it again. Then he began to fold it into the smallest possible compass, taking care to iron down each fold with the handle of an ivory paper knife. When he had finished, the check was but a tight wad of paper, folded into an oblong.
Major Brane took the cellophane wrapping from a package of cigarettes carefully wrapping the spurious check in it, and thrusting the tiny package into his pocket.
He left his room by the secret exit: through the connecting door into another room; through another connecting door into a room that had a window that opened on a fire escape platform; out the window to the platform; along the platform to a door; through the door to a back staircase; down the stairs to an alley exit; out the alley to the side street.