JAMES HADLEY CHASE - A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

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 play-acting. 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 pan 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.”