2

I walked into the bar on the Wanchai waterfront at exactly eight o’clock. I had showered and changed and had put an adhesive plaster on the bullet graze on my shoulder. It felt sore and hot, but I was lucky it was no worse.

The bar was full. There were about twenty American sailors drinking and dancing and some thirty Chinese girls, all wearing Cheongsams, crowding around the bar or dancing. There were a few Chinese businessmen in the booths, drinking whisky and talking earnestly. The juke-box was blaring jazz loud enough to break a sensitive eardrum. I stood just inside the door, looking around. The Chinese Madame came out of the noise and the cigarette smoke, smiling. She led me to one of the few vacant booths and sat me down.

“What will you drink?” she asked, standing over me, her hard glittering eyes avoiding my stare.

“A Scotch… and you?”

“I’ll get you a Scotch.”

She went away and I lost sight of her behind the screen of dancers. After a five-minute wait, a waiter come to my table and put down a Scotch and soda. I waited. It was another ten minutes before the Chinese woman came back to my table and sat down. She looked a little worried.

“Mu Hai Ton will see you,” she said, “but not here. She wants you to go to her apartment.”

Another trap? I wondered. I was still a little shaky after my experience of the afternoon. I was now wearing a suit and had my .38 police special in its holster out of sight but ready for business.

“Where is she?”

“It is not far. I can arrange a taxi for you.”

I hesitated, then nodded.

“Okay… but how do I know she is the right girl?”

“She has her papers. She will show them to you. She is the right girl.”

“Do I go now?”

“She is waiting.”

I finished my drink and got to my feet. “After I’ve talked to her and after I am satisfied she is the right girl I will pay you fifty Hong Kong dollars.”

She smiled stiffly. “That’s all right. I will get you a taxi.”

I waited. After a few minutes she returned.

“He knows where to take you. The apartment is on the top floor. You will have no difficulty in finding it.”

I said I would be seeing her and I went out into the hot night. The taxi-driver grinned cheerfully at me as I opened the cab door. I got in and he drove off. It was a six-minute drive through the crowded back streets of the Chinese quarter. The taxi pulled up outside a jeweller’s shop. The driver pointed to a side door, grinning happily. I paid and over-tipped him and watched him drive away before I pushed open the door and began to mount steep stairs that brought me to a landing. Facing me was an elevator. I took it to the top floor. As it came to rest, I slid my hand inside my jacket and eased the gun a little in its holster. Then I stepped across the landing to a red-painted door. I rang the bell.

There was a slight delay, then the door swung open. A Chinese girl looked inquiringly at me.

She was tall and slim and very pretty. She wore a cream silk, heavily embroidered Cheongsam and scarlet sandals. Her black hair was adorned with two lotus blossoms.

“I’m Ryan,” I said. “I think you’re expecting me.”

She smiled, showing brilliantly white teeth. “Yes… come in.”

I moved into a large room full of flowers and furnished with modern light oak furniture.

The big windows had a view of the sea.

“You’re Mu Hai Ton?” I asked as she closed the door and walked with easy grace to an armchair.

“That is my name.” She sat down, resting her slim hands in her lap, her eyebrows slightly raised, the smile in place.

“How do I know that?”

The question seemed to amuse her. She waved a hand to the table. “My papers are there.”

I checked her identity card. She had arrived in Hong Kong five years ago. Her age was twenty-three. Her profession was that of a dancer. I relaxed a little and sat opposite her. “You knew Herman Jefferson?” I asked.

She nodded, continuing to smile.”Yes, I knew him. He died two weeks ago.”

“You knew his wife?”

“Yes, of course. I was a witness when they married.”

“Do you know what Jefferson did for a living?”

“Perhaps now I have answered some of your questions, you will tell me who you are and why you have come here,” she said, still not losing the friendly smile.

“I’m making inquiries for Jefferson’s father,” I told her. “He wants to know more about how his son lived out here.”

She lifted her eyebrows inquiringly. “Why?”

“I don’t know. He’s paying me to get the information so I’m trying to get it. I’m willing to pay you for any information you can give me.”

She cocked her head on one side. “How much will you pay?”

“It depends on how much you can tell me.”

“You want to know how he made a living?” She grimaced. “He didn’t make a living. He took money from Jo-An.”

“Ever know a girl called Leila?”

“Yes… she lived with Jo-An.”

“Leila told me Jefferson rented a luxury villa out at Repulse Bay.”

She threw her head back and laughed. She had a nice laugh and her throat was very beautiful.

“He couldn’t even afford to pay the rent at the Celestial Empire. He was no good… a bum.”

“I heard he was tied up in the drug trade”, I said casually.

That got a reaction. She stiffened and her smile went away. She stared at me, recovered herself, and shrugged. “I know nothing about the drug trade.”

“I didn’t say you did. Did you ever hear he was running heroin from Canton into Hong Kong?”

“No.”

“Frank Belling did it.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” She was watching me closely now, a little frown furrowing her forehead.

“You knew Belling, didn’t you?”

“I met him once… at the wedding.”

“He was Jefferson’s friend?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know anything about him.”

“I heard after the marriage, Jefferson left his wife and hired this villa at Repulse Bay.”

She moved restlessly.

“He lived with her at the Celestial Empire until he was killed,” she said. “He never had a villa at Repulse Bay.”

I offered her a cigarette, but she refused. As I lit up I asked myself why I was pursuing this line of questioning. Everyone I had met and questioned had said the same thing except Leila. Why should I instinctively feel Leila was telling the truth and all the others were lying? “Let’s talk about Jo-Ann,” I said. “Did you know her well?”

She nodded.

“She is one of my best friends. I am very sad she has gone to America. I hope soon to hear from her. She promised if she could arrange it for me to go there too.”

I hesitated for a moment, then decided to go all the way. “You haven’t heard then?” I asked.

She looked inquiringly at me. “Heard… what?”

“She’s dead.”

She started back as if I had slapped her face. Her eyes opened very wide and she put her hands to her breasts. I was watching her carefully. She wasn’t playacting. What I had just told her had come as a violent shock.

“Dead? How can she be dead?” she said huskily. “What happened?”

“She was murdered a few hours after arriving at Pasadena City.”

Her face suddenly fell apart. There was no other description for it. Her face crumpled and she didn’t look pretty any more. “You’re lying!” she said in a muffled strangled voice.

“It’s a fact. The police are trying to find her killer.”

She began to cry, holding her face in her hands. “Go away,” she moaned. “Please go away.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “I’m sorry to have given you a shock. I’m trying to find her killer myself and you could help me. Now, listen…”

She jumped to her feet and ran into another room, slamming the door. I stood for a moment hesitating, then I went out and closed the front door. I got in the elevator and rode down to the next floor, then getting out I waited, listening. I heard her front door open, there was a pause, then it shut. I went up the stairs silently and listened outside the red-painted door. After a few minutes I heard the tinkle of the telephone bell. I heard her talking softly and rapidly, but too softly to hear what she was saying. When she hung up, I went down the stairs to the elevator and took it to the ground floor. I walked out onto the crowded bustling street. Across the way was an arcade of shops. I entered and stood looking at various complicated cameras offered at give-away prices, my eyes from time to time looking at the door to the apartments opposite I could see reflected in the mirror in the showcase. I was acting on a hunch, but after ten minutes of waiting, I began to wonder if the hunch was going to pay off. Then just as I was about to give up, I saw her come out into the street. If I hadn’t been watching carefully I wouldn’t have recognised her. She was now wearing the drab black costume of the working peasant: the short coat and the baggy trousers. She looked to right and left and then walked quickly away towards the waterfront. I went after her. She was easy enough to follow. She reached a taxi rank, spoke to the driver, then got in. The taxi edged its way into the traffic.

I was lucky. The driver of the second taxi in the rank could understand a little English. I told him to follow the taxi ahead and showed him a twenty-dollar bill. He grinned cheerfully, nodded and as soon as I was in his cab, he went after the taxi which was now fifty yards ahead.

Mu Hai Ton got out at the Star Ferry station. I gave her a head start, then paid off my driver and went after her. She went third-class and I went first. The ferry-boat took us to the Kowloon City pier which is close to the Kai Tak airport.

From the ferry station she took a rickshaw. I decided it would be safer and easier to follow her on foot, but I had misjudged the speed a rickshaw boy can travel and I nearly lost her. By running hard, stared at by the Chinese who must have thought I was crazy, I just managed to hang on to the rickshaw, but only just.

She left the rickshaw in a narrow street, swarming with vendors, rickshaws and coolies trotting along with their heavy burdens and I watched her enter an alley that I knew led into the old walled City of Kowloon.

This part of Hong Kong was in actual fact Red Chinese territory. At one time the British authorities had no right to enter it, and it had become a sanctuary for criminals and drug addicts. But now, conditions having become so bad, the police made a regular patrol, and there had been no protest from the Red Chinese Government. But it wasn’t a place where any European would want to go.

I went after her. In the narrow crowded alleys with their stinking open drains, there was no hope of quick concealment.

If she had looked back she would have seen me, but she didn’t. I kept twenty yards behind her, jostling the filthy-looking Chinese who stared at me with drug-bemused eyes, moving away from me as if I were something untouchable.

We walked some distance through a maze of horrible alleys, then she paused at a door, pushed it open and went into a house. I waited a moment, aware I was being watched by a number of Chinese who either squatted or leaned against the wall of the alley, their faces the colour of mushroom fungus, the pupils of their eyes like pinpoints. I didn’t believe they even saw me, but their fixed stare gave me the creeps.

I pushed open the door. Facing me was a steep, narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs. I moved in and closed the door. I listened. Somewhere above I could hear a woman’s voice. I eased my gun in its holster, then went silently up the stairs to a landing. Facing me was a door. To my right was another door.

I paused, listening. I heard a man say, “Listen, you yellow bitch… if you’re lying to me, I’ll kill you!” The accent was American: the tone vicious.

“That’s what he said!” Mu Hai Ton’s voice was shrill. “He said she was murdered a few hours after she had arrived in Pasadena City!”

A gentle voice said behind me, “Don’t move, Mr. Ryan. Just keep your hands still if you please.”

A familiar voice with a heavy Chinese accent that I couldn’t place.

I remained still because in spite of the polite tone, the threat was there. “Please open the door and go in. I have a gun in my hand.”

I took a step forward, turned the door handle and gave the door a little push. It swung wide open.

It was a bare room. The floor was uncarpeted. There was a broad wooden bench that served as a bed with a wooden headrest to serve as a pillow. On an upturned packing case stood a metal kettle burned black, a small teapot and some small dirty tea bowls. Hanging on a hook on the wall was a filthy hand towel and below it was a basin and a large water jug.

The two figures squatting on the floor turned to stare at me. One of them was Mu Hai Ton. The other was a narrow-shouldered, lean-faced man, wearing a dirty black Chinese costume and a baggy black cap pulled down over his face.

For a brief moment I took him for Chinese, but a closer look told me he was European.

Mu Hai Ton gave a startled scream. The man swung his arm and the back of his hand caught her across the mouth, knocking her sprawling at my feet.

“You stupid bitch!” the man snarled, getting to his feet. “You led him right here! Get out!”

“Go on in, please,” the voice said behind me and I received a gentle prod in the back.

The girl scrambled to her feet, sobbing. She darted around me and I heard her clattering down the stairs.

I moved into the room. The man was staring at me, a vicious, cold gleam in his eyes.

I took a chance and glanced over my shoulder. Wong Hop Ho, the English-speaking guide, smiled apologetically at me. In his right hand he held a .45 Colt centred on my spine. He closed the door and set his back against it.

I examined the man before me. He looked half-starved and ill. He was unshaven and dirty and I could smell him. “See if he has a gun,” the man said.

Wong pressed his gun into my spine. With his left hand he patted me over, found my gun and removed it. He then stood away.

I decided this man in front of me could be no one else but Frank Belling. If he wasn’t then nothing else made sense. “Are you Belling?” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Okay, so you’ve found me,” the man said. “It’s going to do you damn little good.”

I looked at Wong who continued to smile apologetically at me.

“I certainly fell for you,” I said ruefully. “You were waiting at the airport to pick me up. That was careless of me. Who tipped you off I was coming?”

Wong giggled. “We hear these things,” he said. “You shouldn’t have been so curious, Mr. Ryan. You certainly shouldn’t have come here.”

“Well, I’m here,” I said. “I can’t help it if I’m curious… it’s my business to be curious.”

“What do you want?” Belling demanded.

“I’m trying to find out why Jo-An Jefferson was murdered. The idea was I should start from here and work back.”

His eyes glittered wolfishly in his thin pale face. “Is that straight… she’s dead?”

“Yes… she’s dead.”

He took off his baggy cap and threw it aside. His sand-coloured hair needed cutting. He ran filthy fingers through his hair and his mouth tightened into a thin line.

“What happened to her?” he said. “Come on… give me the facts.”

I told him about the mysterious telephone caller, John Hardwick, how I had been fooled into leaving my office, how I had found her dead on my return. I told him old man Jefferson had hired me to find her killer.

“He said his son would have wanted to find the man who killed her. He felt it was the least he could do to do what his son would have done.”

Belling said: “What are the police doing? Can’t they find him?”

“They’re getting nowhere. I’m getting nowhere either. That’s why I was looking for you.”

“Why the hell do you imagine I could help you?” he demanded, glaring at me. Sweat way running down his thin, white face. He looked frightened and vicious.

“You could tell me something about Jefferson,” I said. “Was he hooked up in this drug organisation you belong to?”

“I don’t know a thing about Jefferson! You keep out of this! Now get out! Jefferson is dead. Let him stay dead. Go on, get out!”

I should have been more alert, but I wasn’t and I suffered for it. I saw Belling look past me at Wong. I spun around. Wong stabbed me in the belly with his gun barrel. As I jerked forward in agony, he slammed the gun butt down on top of my head.