Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Backward Mule

“And what about Cynthia Renton?” Clane asked.

“The Painter Woman is safe.”

“Has she been able to communicate with her sister?”

“A messenger has told her sister she is all right.”

Clane settled back against the cushions.

Chu Kee said blandly, as though merely pointing out a bit of scenery, “A car follows us.”

“Did you think I hadn’t noticed that? ” Sou Ha asked, almost petulantly.

Chu Kee said in Chinese, “It is an ambitious fountain that seeks to be higher than the stream which feeds it.”

Sou Ha said contritely and also in Chinese, “I am sorry, Father. The words slipped past my tongue.”

“The wise man develops a slow tongue.”

“I am afraid that today I am not wise. But,” she added artfully, “I did not want you to think your daughter was unworthy of you. I expected of course we would be followed, and remember that I have the benefit of the rear-view mirror.”

There were several moments of silence. “Are you going to try to ditch the following car?” Clane asked, seeing that Sou Ha was driving directly toward Chinatown with no attempt whatever to take advantage of traffic signals or crowded intersections.

“To ditch them would but make them suspicious that we had something to conceal,” Sou Ha said. “We will be so innocent that we flaunt our virtue in their faces.” And then she laughed.

“But we must not take them to Cynthia’s place of concealment,” Clane said.

“We won’t,” Sou Ha told him, and then almost angrily said, “I know I have done everything wrong today, but at least give me credit for some sense.”

Chu Kee shifted his eyes in silent rebuke to his daughter’s petulance, then turned his attention back to grave contemplation of the road.

“Where we are going,” Sou Ha said hastily, attempting to atone for her fault, “is to see the wife of Ricardo Taonon.”

“You know where she is?” Clane asked in surprise. “The police have tried to locate her without success.”

“She made the mistake of going to Chinatown,” Sou Ha said.

“Why a mistake?” Clane asked.

“My father,” Sou Ha said with pride, “knows everything which goes on in Chinatown.”

“Pride,” Chu Kee said, “is the club by which Misfortune beats the virtuous into submission.”

“I speak but the truth,” Sou Ha pointed out.

“Ever the truth is humble,” Chu Kee retorted.

“What is Mrs. Taonon doing?” Clane asked.

“She is attempting to hide.”

“From the police?”

“From the police and others.”

“What others?”

“That remains to be ascertained,” Sou Ha said. “My father thought you would like to ask the questions.”

Clane bowed his head in acknowledgment of the compliment.

Sou Ha deftly piloted the car through the traffic, entered the streets of Chinatown, turned with no attempt at concealment into a side street, and stopped the car, switched off the lights, and turned off the motor.

Another car paused at the corner to disgorge two men who seemed particularly naive tourists, desiring to explore the streets of Chinatown.

Sou Ha did not even deign to glance at them. She stepped forward and opened the door of a small Chinese store.

A man who was seated behind the counter glanced up and then lowered his eyes to the book in which he was writing Chinese characters with a camel’s hair brush held rigidly perpendicular between thumb and forefinger.

Sou Ha led the way. Her father followed, and Clane brought up the rear.

There was an arched doorway near the rear of the store. Two faded green curtains hung down to shield this doorway. Sou Ha parted the curtains and went through. They moved down a narrow passageway, came to a large room where a dozen Chinese were grouped around a circular table, playing Chinese dominoes. They did not even glance up as the little party filed through the room and entered another passageway, then a smaller room, where there was furniture stored — apparently merely a storeroom for odds and ends, though shrewd eyes would have noticed that this furniture collected no dust, and that there were no cobwebs.

Sou Ha’s fingers pressed a hidden catch, a panel of wood slid smoothly back, operated by an electrical mechanism which betrayed its presence only by a faint whirring noise. The moment Clane had stepped through the sliding panel it closed behind them and they were in darkness. A small flashlight in Sou Ha’s hands disclosed steps which went down into a passageway where there was the smell of dampness. They followed this passageway for some fifty yards, then dipped down another flight of stairs, and Clane knew they were going beneath a street. Another hundred feet and they were climbing again and once more came to what seemed to be a solid wall. Again Sou Ha pressed a catch and a door opened. Another passageway led them into a small Chinese apothecary shop on a dimly lit side street.

Sou Ha glanced questioningly at her father. Chu Kee stepped forward and opened a door near the back of the store which disclosed a short corridor.

“At the end of this corridor,” he said in Chinese, “there is a place, the sign on the street proclaiming it to be the Green Dragon Hotel. It rents rooms to people who sign names which are fictitious upon the register. The woman you wish is in room twenty-three. We will go there without letting her know that we come.”

From here on Chu Kee took the lead, marching through the door at the end of the corridor into a narrow, dingy room which was large enough to hold half a dozen chairs and a small partitioned-off space in which were a desk, a rack for keys, a small telephone switchboard and an emaciated Chinese clerk.

The clerk barely glanced up, gave an all but imperceptible nod, then returned to a perusal of the columns of a Chinese newspaper.

Chu Kee led the way upstairs.

There were sounds of revelry in the first room at the head of the stairs, the laughter of a woman, too loud, too shrill and too harsh, a man’s blatant, boastful voice... The stealthy, shadowy figure of a Chinese moved noiselessly through the dim shadows near the end of the corridor, opened a door, entered a room and quietly closed the door behind him. Another door opened. A woman dressed for the street flashed past them, leaving behind her a smell of perfume so heavy that it reminded Clane of the banked flowers at a funeral. She was still young, but her face beneath the veneer of makeup was hard the eyes had the look of brazen defiance which is born of an inner fear. She glanced at Clane, started to smile, then saw Sou Ha and walked on past them.

Chu Kee seemed not even to notice.

The room they sought was near the end of the corridor. Chu Kee glanced questioningly at Clane.

Clane nodded and Chu Kee tapped gently on the door.

There was no sound from within.

Chu Kee knocked again, then tried the knob of the door. It was locked.

A woman’s voice from behind the door called out, “Whatdyawant?”

Chu Kee signified by a sign that Sou Ha was to answer.

“I wish to talk with you,” Sou Ha said politely.

The words which came from behind the door were slurred together with a coarse, careless diction. “I ain’t dressed and I don’t wanna talk to anybody. Get out.”

“It is on account of the register,” Sou Ha said, her voice subtly accenting the peculiar lilt which branded her unmistakably as being Chinese. “The last name cannot be read. It is necessary that it be written legibly so that the police will not question.”

“The name’s Brown. Write it any way you damn please.”

“But it is necessary that you should write it, otherwise sometimes there is trouble.”

“You got the book with you?”

“Yes.”