Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer

It was a few hours later that Professor Matsuyama began to entertain doubts about the phone call.

He was talking to his secretary. “I had an inquiry just now about one of my graduates,” he said. “It was from a matrimonial agency.”

“Who was it about?”

“Ichiro Honda.”

His secretary expressed astonishment. “That’s most odd,” she said.

“Why?”

“If I remember right, he got married some years back. Let me see. It was when he was in America, wasn’t it? A Japanese girl from a rich family, if I remember aright. She was studying at the same university. Quite a beauty, I gather. You’re too wrapped up in your work, Professor, that’s the trouble with you. Fancy forgetting something like that!”

The professor mumbled something and changed the subject. Come to think of it, he did remember having received a notification of marriage on a beautiful card printed in both Japanese and English some five or six years before.

He went into the corridor outside and gazed across the school grounds. The fine buildings stood serenely in their landscaped surroundings, each casting its shadow in the fading sun. It seemed to him that some dark shadow also lay over his former student, whom he remembered so clearly singing vigorously in the back row of the chorus.

He felt strangely uneasy. Pressing his head against a marble pillar, he began to pray, as a good Christian should, for the safety of his old pupil.

“Front desk. Hello!”

Junji Oba, reception clerk at the Toyo Hotel, answered the phone with the soft voice he reserved for business transactions. He moistened his lower lip with his tongue, just in case it was a foreigner and he had to switch to English.

“J.C. Airlines here,” said a woman’s voice. “Could you give me the room number of a Mr. Honda who is staying with you, please.”

“Honda? Yes, certainly. What would his first name be, please?”

“Ichiro. I-chi-ro.” She spelled out the three syllables of the name, pausing between each.

Junji Oba was new to the job. He had many years’ experience, but an unfortunate error at his last place of work had brought him to the Toyo Hotel. So despite his experience, he was forced to concentrate like a beginner in order to avoid error.

He searched the register diligently, running his fingers down the five hundred names that were listed floor by floor. Soon he discovered Honda’s name—corner room, third floor. Age twenty-nine, Japanese national, occupation engineer.

“Mr. Honda is in room 305,” he told the woman. He was about to hang up when the voice came back with an inquiry that was so strange that he had to ask her to repeat herself.

“I said, does he have a low voice?”

“A low voice, did you say? Or did you ask if he is short?”

“Yes, a low voice… a deep voice… an unforgettable voice.”

The reception clerk thought quickly. What a peculiar line of inquiry. If one wants to confirm that one has the right person, one doesn’t normally ask about his voice. One might ask about the person’s occupation—Mr. So-and-So of such and such a company, for example. Or Mr. Honda from America, or Mr. Honda from England. And yet this woman said she was from an airline company. So this was not a routine inquiry; it was aimed at research, detective work perhaps. He thought for a moment and remembered an Oriental with a deep voice amongst the guests, a man who normally spoke in English.

“Yes, I think he does have a low voice. We have so many guests staying, you see… it’s hard to remember.”

“But he really is staying there, isn’t he?” The clerk fancied he heard a tone of relief in her voice, as if she had tracked down the man at last after many difficulties. She went on: “Do you know how long he’s staying for?”

“Wait a minute and I’ll see.”

He put down the receiver and checked the reservation for room 305. It turned out that Ichiro Honda was a long-stay guest who had spent the last three months in the hotel. Maybe she’ll make it worth my while, Oba thought; he looked around carefully to see that he was not overheard before picking up the receiver again.

“Hello. Mr. Honda is a long-stay guest. I was just thinking, maybe I could give you any information you need face to face. It’s not very suitable for the phone, you know. I could meet you somewhere outside and give you good information.”

“What do you mean by that?” The woman’s tone hardened as if he had put her on her guard.

“Well, I was just thinking… I thought that if you wanted, I could possibly… I mean, I was just…” he stammered, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead.

“All I was asking was how long Honda will be staying for.” The voice was relentless. He tried to apologize for his misunderstanding, but to no avail. The woman became sterner and sterner. Now she had even dropped the polite “Mr.” from Honda’s name, speaking as if he was a criminal.

“Well, I really don’t know what his plans are. All I know is that he has stayed here for three months so far. If you ring again tomorrow, we could ask him what his plans are.”

“That will not be necessary,” she snapped, but behind her arrogant tone he thought he detected some uncertainty. Plainly, she was from a detective agency or something like that. Maybe she had been put on the job by a business rival, or else a prospective client.

“If you prefer, I could find out without reference to the guest himself. How about that?”

She did not reply, so he went on: “I am Oba, reception clerk. Over the years I’ve helped a lot of inquiry agents, you know; I usually get a small fee for my services, of course. If you are interested, I go off duty at eight tonight, and I’ll be waiting at the coffee shop over the road from this hotel—it’s called ‘Konto,’ and if you ask for me at the desk, they know me. If you’re interested, turn up there.” And he replaced the receiver rapidly before she could say anything more, but she was too fast for him and hung up even before he did. The negotiation was plainly over, but would she come?

“Lying bitch!” he muttered. Then he looked up and saw a foreign guest approaching the counter. He put on his practiced smile and greeted the customer in English.

Before he went off duty, by dint of inquiry amongst his fellow reception clerks and the room boys responsible for 305 he had acquired some interesting information about Ichiro Honda.

This guest certainly did have a deep voice. Although a long-stay guest, he paid his own bills in cash. He only used the hotel room to sleep in and usually came back late at night. He was a fluent speaker of English; though his name and appearance were Japanese, he rarely used that language, but was often to be seen conversing with foreigners in the lobby or coffee shop.

Even that should be enough for him to earn some money, Oba thought. And there was one more suspicious circumstance: Mr. Honda always went off somewhere for the weekends. He went to the coffee shop across the road and waited.

At eight forty-five he was called to the phone. He picked up the receiver and heard the same cold voice he had listened to earlier in the day.

“I checked, and your guest Mr. Honda isn’t the one I’m looking for, so I won’t bother to come and see you.”

“But madam!” he spluttered. “There must be some mistake! My Mr. Honda certainly does have a deep voice!”

She said nothing but hung up. He paid his bill, cursing the money wasted on his coffee and cake.

He awoke before seven; someone, a traveler with an early start, no doubt, was walking down the corridor wearing slippers. It was now three months since Ichiro Honda moved into the Toyo Hotel.