Chronicles of the Secret Service (2 page)

As usual, he and Lady Wallace entertained several guests to luncheon but, directly afterwards, he went to his study, where he found the Inspector-General of Police, Sir Masterson Winstanley, already awaiting him. Without preamble, except to invite the Chief of Police to take a chair, he plunged into the matter which was uppermost in his mind.

‘Thanks for the detailed and clearly-worded report concerning this Japanese affair, Winstanley,’ he acknowledged. ‘That young man of yours, Ransome, is to be highly commended for his enterprise and zeal.’

‘I am glad to hear you say that, sir,’ returned the IG. ‘At the same time, I am deeply sorry all his work was allowed to go for nought, owing to the stupidity of the inspector in allowing the sailor’s belongings to lie within the man’s reach. There was no intention of making a charge. The Jap was only arrested to allow him to sober up. He’d been making a nuisance of himself. His belongings, with the exception of the letter, had been placed on the desk ready to be handed back to him. Nobody anticipated his taking the action he did.’

‘Of course not,’ agreed Wallace. ‘I think you are being rather unfair to the inspector in calling him stupid. And, in any case, if the Jap had been stopped from committing
hara kiri
, I don’t suppose we’d ever have obtained any useful information out of him.’

‘I’m pretty certain you would have done,’ replied Sir Masterson. ‘I haven’t forgotten how you made Yumasaki speak!’

‘H’m,’ grunted Sir Leonard. ‘It appears I failed to get him to say anything. The fellow was cleverer than I thought. Tell me exactly what happened at the police station.’

‘Superintendent Ransome was sitting at the desk, the
Japanese letter before him with its decoded translation. The inspector was standing by his side, a European sergeant a couple of yards away, and two Indian constables behind the seaman, who was, of course, standing facing Ransome. The fellow got into a terrible state of panic when he realised the letter was in the hands of the police. Then as soon as Ransome made him aware he knew the contents, and began questioning him, he suddenly sprang forward, grasped the knife and, before hands could be laid on him, had plunged it to the hilt into his abdomen. Ransome tells me it was a ghastly sight.’

‘It must have been. And was nothing of any significance discovered at all while the superintendent’s detectives were engaged in tracing the fellow’s movements?’

Winstanley shook his head, his stern, dark face expressing his regret.

‘You have seen the report, sir,’ he remarked. ‘Nothing has been left out.’

‘I realise that. I was merely anxious to know if there was some little action, a movement, anything in fact, that may have been remarked by those who saw the sailor, mentioned to your men but thought too insignificant to note.’

Again the IG shook his head.

‘The detectives spent the whole night at the job,’ he declared, ‘and you have read of the success that attended their efforts. As far as we know, everything he did and everywhere he went from the time he left his ship until his arrest, was discovered and noted.’

‘Splendidly efficient work that, Winstanley,’ approved Sir Leonard. ‘It couldn’t have been easy especially as he seemed always on his own.’

‘Those men of Ransome’s
are
efficient, sir. I take a great deal of pride in them.’

‘And in him,’ smiled the governor. ‘Well, there is to my mind one very significant fact which you have all apparently overlooked.’

‘What is that?’

‘The seaman went from one drinking den to another, and he was always alone! It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that there was anything curious in that. And yet it strikes me as being most interesting. Sailors all the world over are congenial souls and fond of company. If they don’t go ashore in port with their mates, they very soon pick up companions. This man did neither. He was all the time by himself, as far as your men have been able to ascertain.’

‘He was probably acting under orders.’

‘Of course he was. That’s obvious. But don’t you see my point? His instructions were that he was to meet someone who would give him a communication. Now a man entrusted with a mission of such importance would not ordinarily go and get drunk. In fact, he would be chosen for his reliability, wouldn’t he?’ Winstanley nodded, wondering what was coming. ‘The last thing,’ went on Sir Leonard, ‘he would do, one would imagine, would be to make a round of drinking dens. Now a sailor on his own, without any mission but to enjoy himself, who went pub crawling would pick up companions. This fellow did not – we presume his orders debarred that – but apparently his orders did not prohibit him from going to those drinking places. Your investigations show that he came ashore at six or thereabouts, went straight to the Fan Tan saloon, where he stayed drinking for half an hour, sitting alone at one of the tables in the place. Leaving there, he went from one to
another, remaining in each about the same period of time. In all, he visited six saloons. At twenty minutes past nine, he was arrested on the Praya, where he was found to be drunk. The fact that he was there indicates that he was not on his way to visit another den, but was returning to his ship. From all this, I gather that, although his instructions were to avoid companions, he was expected to visit drinking saloons. In other words, the person who gave him the letter was to meet him in one or other of those places. The regularity of the period he spent in each shows clearly that he was working to a timetable. In order not to be too conspicuous he had to have a drink or more in each. As it happens, the fact that he remained so steadfastly alone did make him conspicuous, for which we have reason to be grateful, because I doubt if his movements could have been traced otherwise. Obviously his employers did not anticipate the possibility of his getting drunk. Perhaps he hadn’t a very strong head, or the fascination of
samsui
was too much for him and he was unable to resist taking more than he could hold. Anyhow that doesn’t matter.’

‘But,’ objected Winstanley, ‘the belief that he was met in one of those saloons doesn’t help us much.’

‘Oh, yes, it does,’ disagreed Sir Leonard. ‘We have narrowed the search down to one place. He undoubtedly received the letter in the last saloon he visited, otherwise the presumption is he would have gone to another. Had he received it in a previous one there would have been no point in his continuing his pilgrimage.’

‘By Jove! I can see now what you’ve been driving at, sir. The last place he went to was that new dancing and drinking hall, the China Doll.’

‘Exactly. That’s where he was met and given the letter.’

‘But why did he have to go to so many? Surely his appointment could have been made for one specific place.’

‘There may have been a hundred and one reasons. You must remember we have been very severe on wiping out Japanese espionage in this colony, and the agents here now have found it necessary to be ultra-cautious. The man who eventually met the sailor may be known to your men and, as a police watch is always kept on these drinking dens, he was forced to be rigidly careful.’

Sir Masterson did not seem altogether satisfied with that.

‘Ransome’s Chinese are extraordinarily thorough,’ he remarked, ‘and have the patience of their race almost to an exaggerated degree. I don’t know myself how they did it, but they seem to have traced every movement of the sailor’s. Not once in their report, as you will have read in the transcription from my office, is there the suggestion that he may have met someone who passed something to him. It seems certain that he remained alone always.’

‘That means nothing,’ returned Sir Leonard. ‘It is perfectly easy to transfer an object like a letter from hand to hand unobserved when two persons are in the act of passing each other, or even from table to table – underneath, of course – when contiguous as they are in those places.’

‘Not so easy, when one of the parties as drunk as the Jap must have been by the time he got to the China Doll.’

‘There’s a good deal in that,’ nodded Wallace, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

‘Isn’t it likely,’ hazarded the Chief of Police, ‘that the agent who gave him the letter was an employee? A bartender or a waiter would entirely escape notice, if he passed it to him in the act of serving him.’

‘In that case, the man would be in one saloon only. There wouldn’t have been any reason for the seaman to visit six.’

‘No; that’s true.’

They discussed the matter for some time longer, the Inspector-General leaving with the promise that he would order Ransome to concentrate his men on obtaining a complete list of everyone, as far as possible, who had been on the premises of the China Doll between eight-thirty and nine-fifteen the previous night. Special attention was to be paid to Japanese patrons and, if there had been any, their places of residence were to be immediately subjected to a visitation and intensive search.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t a great deal of hope that anything will come of that,’ remarked Sir Leonard, as the two men shook hands. ‘Still I can think of nothing more promising at the moment. I have a feeling that something very significant has eluded your men, probably because it is too obvious to have been noticed. I haven’t the faintest idea what it may be or how the notion got into my head, but I have been puzzling it out ever since I first read your report. Tell Ransome to set his men investigating everything of which they previously took no notice, because it was part of the scheme of things. You get my meaning?’

Sir Masterson Winstanley did, and departed with his own mind in a state of extreme perplexity. He had had so much to do with Sir Leonard Wallace and seen such evidences of the cleverness of a brain that seldom missed anything, and seemed capable of thinking several moves ahead of that of an ordinary individual, that he felt now the governor, without at the moment knowing what it was, had hit on the one point that would probably mean success in the investigations. It was perhaps only natural that the Inspector-General
of Police should be anxious to fathom the elusive item upon which the governor was placing so much importance. As his rickshaw took him speedily to police headquarters, the uniformed coolies trotting along with rhythmic leg and arm movements, he continually muttered to himself: ‘Too obvious to have been noticed! Now what the devil could fit in that was so much in the scheme of things that it might have been overlooked by observant fellows like Ransome’s Chinese detectives?’

In the meantime, Sir Leonard had taken to pacing his study again, puffing clouds of smoke from his pipe as he strove to fathom that which was eluding him. For half an hour he tramped to and fro, quite forgetful that he needed rest in view of the fact that there was a garden party to attend later in the afternoon, that he afterwards was to receive the two unofficial Chinese members of the Legislative Council, Sir T’so Lin Tao and Sir Peter Hing Kee in audience, and that he and Lady Wallace were giving a great dinner and ball that night. For the time being his mind was devoted, to the exclusion of all else, to chasing something which he was certain would provide him with a very valuable clue. All at once he stopped dead. His steel-grey eyes gleaming triumphantly, he gave vent to a little chuckle.

‘Of course,’ he murmured. ‘Fancy taking all this time to remember a fact like that.’

He did not remind himself that that which he had recollected, and connected with the present certainty, that Japanese agents were again busy in Hong Kong, had been the merest passing mention of something lacking, at the time, any interest whatever. It is a tribute to that retentive mind of his that an item so small should have been stored away and now
resurrected. He left his study, walking along the corridor to his secretary’s office. Carter was engaged in perusing, and signing, a pile of official-looking documents. He looked up as Sir Leonard entered the room; immediately rose to his feet.

‘Carter,’ commenced the governor, ‘do you remember that Yumasaki was said to be rather keen on a Chinese dancing girl?’

The young man’s brow wrinkled in thought for a moment or two; then:

‘Yes, sir,’ he asserted; ‘I do vaguely remember something of the sort. Wasn’t she called—?’

He paused frowning, as he strove to recollect the name. Sir Leonard watched him with a smile on his face. Presently, as Carter’s memory failed to respond, the chief prompted it.

‘She was called the “China Doll”,’ he declared. ‘Am I not right?’

Carter whistled softly; his eyes gleamed.

‘You are, sir – not a doubt of it. And the last place the Japanese sailor was known to visit last night is called the China Doll!’

‘Ah! You have caught the significance. Leave those papers for a while, and set to work to find out all you can about the dancing girl – who she is, what she’s doing, and so on; also if there’s any connection between that drinking den and her. Go warily, and don’t let it be thought the inquiries are coming from Government House. When you have your information, come along to me. I’ll probably be dressing for the garden party.’

He turned, and walked out of the room, leaving Carter to start his inquiries at once.

Sir Leonard was on the point of leaving Government House for the fête before he saw his assistant again. In fact, he had come to the
conclusion that Carter was having more difficulty in tracing the dancing girl than had been anticipated. Actually this was far from being the case, the young Secret Service man finding information flowing into his hands, so to speak. But, for the sake of precaution, he had taken a rickshaw to Queen’s Road where, entering a cafe in which he knew he would not be recognised, had casually asked the Macanese proprietor questions over a pot of tea.

Resplendent in a morning suit that fitted him like a glove, a grey top hat on his head, Sir Leonard was about to enter his car when Carter arrived back. Lady Wallace was already seated, while an aide-de-camp, in full uniform, stood by ready to follow the governor. Servants in their official livery gave that touch of formal ceremony to the scene which Wallace disliked so much. The latter quickly read the signs in his secretary’s face, and smiled.