Erle Gardner - The Danger Zone and Other Stories

“Hang it, man, it’s encouraging when you feel that a little interest will make a man see things in a new light. Tell me, Williams, weren’t you really a bit impressed by chose last few words I gave you, there at the office that day?”

Slicker Williams was a quick thinker. “Warden,” he said gravely, “nothing you ever said to me in your life ever made a greater impression.”

A few blocks to the north of Market Street in San Francisco, Grant Avenue ceases to be a street of high class stores and becomes a part of China.

Major Copely Brane, free lance diplomat, soldier of fortune, knew every inch of this strange section. For Major Brane knew his Chinese as most baseball fans know the strength and weakness of opposing teams.

Not that Major Brane had consciously confined his free lance diplomatic activities to matters pertaining to the Orient. His services were available to various and sundry. He had accepted employment from a patriotic German who wished to ascertain certain information about the French attitude toward reparations; and it was perhaps significant of the Major’s absolute fairness, that the fee he had received from the German upon the successful completion of his task was exactly the amount which he had previously charged a French banker for obtaining confidential information from the file of a visiting ambassador as to the exact proposals which the German government was prepared to make as a final offer.

In short, Major Brane worked for various governments and various individuals. Those who had the price could engage his services. There was only one requirement: the task must be within the legitimate field of diplomatic activity. Major Brane was a clearing house of international and political information, and he took pride in doing his work well. Those who employed him could count upon his absolute loyalty upon all matters connected with the employment, could bank upon his subsequent silence; and best of all, they could rest assured that if Major Brane encountered any serious trouble in the discharge of his duties, he would never mention the name of his employer.

Of late, however, the Major’s activities had been centered upon the situation in the Orient. This was due in part to the extreme rapidity with which that situation was changing from day to day; and in part to the fact that Major Brane prided himself upon his ability to deliver results. There is no one who appreciates results more, and explanations less, than the native of the Orient.

It was early evening, and the streets of San Francisco’s China town were giving forth their strange sounds — the shuffling feet of herded tourists, gazing open-mouthed at the strange life which seethed about them; the slippety of Chinese shoes — skidded along the cement by feet that were lifted only a fraction of an inch; the pounding heels of plain clothes men who always worked in pairs when on China town duty.

Major Brane’s ears heard these sounds and interpreted them mechanically. Major Brane was particularly interested to notice the changing window displays of the Chinese stores. The embargo on Japanese products was slowly working a complete change in the merchandise handled by the curio stores, and Major Brane’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the fact. Disputes over the murder of a subject can be settled by arbitration, but there can be but one answer to a blow that hits hard at a nation’s business.

Major Brane let his mind dwell upon certain angles of the political situation which were unknown to the average man. Would the world powers close their eyes to developments in Manchuria, providing those same developments smashed the five year plan and...?

His ears, trained to constant watchfulness in the matter of unusual sounds, noticed the change in the tempo of the hurrying feet behind him. He knew that some man was going to accost him, even before he turned appraising eyes upon the other. The man was Chinese, probably Western born, since he wore his Occidental clothes with the air of one who finds in them nothing awkward; and he thudded his feet emphatically upon the sidewalk, slamming his heels hard home with every step.

He had been hurrying and the narrow chest was laboring. The eyes were glittering with some inner emotion of which there was no other external sign, save, perhaps a very slight muscular tenseness about the expressionless mask of the face.

“Major Brane,” he said in excellent English, and then stopped to suck in a lungful of air. “I have been to your hotel. You were out. I came here. I saw you, and ran.”

Major Brane bowed, and his bow was polite, yet uncordial. Major Brane did not like to have men run after him on the street. Much of his employment entailed very grave dangers, and it was always advisable to keep his connections as secret as possible. Grant Avenue, in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown, at the hour of eight forty-seven in the evening, was hardly a proper place to discuss matters of business — not when the business of the person accosted was that of interfering with the political situation in the Far East.

“Well?” said Major Brane.

“You must come, sir!”

“Where?”

“To my grandfather.”

“And who is your grand father?”

“Wong Sing Lee.”

The lad spoke in the Chinese manner, giving the surname first. Major Brane knew that the family of Wong was very powerful and that Chinese venerate age, age being synonymous with wisdom. Therefore, the grandfather of the panting youth must be a man of great importance in the social fabric of Chinatown. Yet Major Brane could recall no prominent member of the Wong family whose given name was Sing Lee. Somehow, the entire name sounded manufactured for the occasion.

Major Brane turned these matters over in his mind rapidly.

“I am afraid I am not at liberty to accept,” he said. “Will you convey my very great regrets to your estimable grandparent?”

The lad’s hand moved swiftly. His face remained utterly expressionless but the black lacquer of the eyes assumed a red dish glint which would have spoken volumes to those who have studied the psychology of the Oriental.

“You come!” he said fiercely, his voice almost breaking, “or I kill!”

Major Brane squared his shoulders, studied the face intently. “You might get away with it,” he said, in a dispassionate voice that was almost impersonal, “but you’d be caught before you’d gone twenty feet — and you’d be hung for it.”

The boy’s eyes still held their reddish glint. “Without the help which you alone can give,” he said, “death is preferable to life!”

And it was only because Major Brane knew his Chinese so well that he determined to accompany the boy, when he heard that burst of impassioned speech. When your Chinese resolves up on murder, he is very, very cool; and very, very wily. Only when a matter of honor is concerned, only when there is a danger of “losing face,” does he resolve upon a heedless sacrifice. But when such occasions arise, he considers his own life of but minor moment.

Major Brane nodded. “Remove your hand from the gun,” he said. “There is a plain clothes man coming this way. I will go with you.”

He reached out, clamped a friendly hand about the arm of the youth, taking hold of the muscles just above the elbow. If the plain clothes officer should accost them, Major Brane wanted to prevent the youth from doing anything rash. And as his fingers clamped about the arm, Major Brane felt the quivering of the flesh, that tremor which comes from taut nerves.

“Steady!” he warned.

There is a popular belief that the Chinese is unemotional. The fallacy of that belief is on a par with the hundreds of fallacies which bar an understanding of the Orient by the Occident. Major Brane realized just how deadly dangerous the present situation was. If the officer should insist upon searching the youth for a weapon... But the officer was reassured by Major Brane’s words.