Bill for the Use of a Body (13 page)

Two minutes later another sampan, taking diners ashore from the Sea Palace, came on the scene. With excited cries its occupants hauled Julian and the woman to safety. Meanwhile the long low launch, with Merri half stifled in its stern, had turned towards the opening to the bay and, with its powerful engine going at full throttle, was heading out to sea.

When Julian came to he was in the Aberdeen hospital. He had not swallowed much water, but a blinding pain, as though his head were on fire, prevented him from thinking clearly; yet episodes from the recent fracas flitted through his mind like flashes from a cinematographic film, and he began to shout deliriously:

‘Merri! Save Merri! Save Merri!'

A Chinese nurse, who had him under observation, promptly gave him an injection and in a few minutes he drifted off into unconsciousness again. When he came out of his stupor it was daylight. His head was still throbbing dully, but his mind was capable of re-visualising the whole ghastly affair in its proper sequence. Seeing that he had woken, a nurse brought a Chinese doctor to him, and Julian said tersely, ‘Fetch the police. I must see the police at once.'

The doctor gave him a friendly smile, but shook his head and lisped, ‘Not yet. They are already doing all that is possible. You are suffering from concussion. You must rest. Presently I'll bring the police to you.' Then he was given a drink and a sedative that sent him off to sleep.

It was not until the Tuesday afternoon that he was allowed to make a statement to the police. A Eurasian officer and a Chinese sergeant came to take it. From them he learned that, while his own identity had been quickly established through an examination of the contents of his pockets, his papers had given no clue to that of his companion. So, although the head waiter at the Sea Palace had said that the kidnapped girl had often brought visitors to have a meal there, and that he thought she was
one of the professional guides from the Tourist Association, it was not until some hours after Mrs. Sang had telephoned to report that her daughter was missing that they had put two and two together. When Julian had furnished them with every particular that he could he said miserably:

‘You say that so far you have failed to trace the launch. But you must have some idea where these bloody Chinese pirates hang out. Can't a force be sent to raid their dens?'

The Sergeant showed his teeth in a slightly superior smile and the officer replied, ‘This is not the work of pirates. Normally they have only junks, and they would never dare come right in to Aberdeen and kidnap the sort of people who patronise the Sea Palace.'

‘How do you explain this awful business, then?' Julian demanded angrily.

The officer shrugged. ‘As we see it there are two possibilities. It is said that Miss Sang was an exceptionally beautiful girl. Some very rich man may have taken a fancy to her. If she had refused to have anything to do with him it is possible that he may have hired these thugs to carry her off for him. There is also the possibility that she may have been snatched by white-slavers. As with the pirates, such people do not normally molest girls of good standing, because to do so results in too great a hue-and-cry by their relatives. But, despite all our efforts to prevent it, the trade still goes on, and the white-slavers are much cleverer, richer and better organised than the pirates. For a beautiful Eurasian girl they could get a very high price, so it may be that it is they who have abducted Miss Sang.'

Julian groaned. The thought of Merri in the hands of a wealthy unscrupulous sensualist was bad enough; that she might, at that moment, be being beaten into submission in a brothel did not bear thinking about. As he made to sit up, a pain shot through his head. Flopping back he burst out:

‘Then why the hell haven't you attempted to find her by raiding all the brothels in Hong Kong?'

‘Sir,' the officer replied, ‘within the meaning of the Act there are no brothels in Hong Kong. There are many bars in what we now term the Susie Wong quarter that sailors and others frequent. They drink and dance with the hostesses and, if the girls are willing, afterwards accompany them to rooms upstairs. But such places are all under police surveillance and you may rest assured that Miss Sang is not in one of them.'

‘Where might they have taken her, then? To a Chinese port?'

‘I doubt it, sir. There are still houses of ill fame in every country in the world. But in recent years the Government of Red China has been endeavouring to bring about a much higher standard of morality. It now enforces heavy penalties on people who are caught infringing the new laws. If Miss Sang has been white-slaved it is more probable that she has been taken to Macao or Formosa. But we think it much more likely that she has been abducted by someone who is in love with her, and that she is still in the Colony.'

Julian had been unable to throw any further light on Merri's disappearance, or even provide the police with a possible clue; so, after he had told them that he was prepared to pay ten thousand Hong Kong dollars for information which would lead to her recovery, they left him in a state of such appalling frustration and almost unendurable misery that he developed a high fever. In consequence, it was not until after lunch on the Thursday that he was allowed to return to his hotel.

Meanwhile numerous accounts of the case had been published in the papers with photographs of Merri and the reward being offered. But they failed to bring forward anyone who could throw light on her abduction, and the police had made no progress with their investigations.

Back in his old room at the Repulse Bay, by then nearly numb with grief, Julian went straight to bed. But when
he woke on the following morning, with his temperature again normal and feeling physically, at least, somewhat recovered, he decided that he ought to go to see Mrs. Sang.

There was nothing that he could say or do to mitigate her loss and he dreaded an interview with her, since it could lead only to reproaches being heaped on him. But by taking Merri out to dinner in defiance of her mother's expressed wish he felt that he was, in a sense, responsible for the awful thing that had happened; so he owed it to Mrs. Sang at least to give her the opportunity to ease her feelings by abusing him to any extent to which her anger and distress might lead her.

Accordingly, when he had dressed he wrote a brief note:

Dear Mrs. Sang. I am now out of hospital, and if you would like to see me I will call upon you this afternoon
. Then he gave it to the hall porter to be sent to her by hand.

Soon after he had lunched he received an even briefer reply: ‘
Yes, I should like to talk to you. Come to see me at four o'clock. Tilly Sang
.'

Gloomily resigned to submitting to her bitter recriminations, he ordered a car for ten to four and had himself driven down to her house.

When he was shown into the drawing room one glance at Tilly Sang's face confirmed his belief that he had let himself in for a terrible gruelling and that she intended to castigate him unmercifully. Her blue eyes were harder than ever, her thin lips were tightly compressed and the battleship chin, which indicated the powerful will that had brought her through her sufferings, stood out aggressively.

But at the sight of him her expression suddenly changed. His head was still bandaged, forty-eight hours of fever had wasted his cheeks, his eyes were dull and his face drawn. He looked ten years older than when she had last seen him.

Coming to her feet she said, ‘I … I had no idea that you had been beaten up so badly. Please sit down. It was good of you to offer to come to see me.'

Sinking into a chair, he replied, ‘It was the least I could do. Although I can't add anything to what I told the police, which they will have passed on to you. I came only to give you the opportunity of reproaching me, as you have every right to do.'

She nodded. ‘I've every cause to call you to account for having persuaded Merri to go out with you in defiance of my orders; and I certainly intended to. But it is obvious that during the last few days you have been through a terrible time; and, as the injury to your head was reported to me as not very serious, it must have been mentally as well as physically. My reproaching you will not get us anywhere. But is there nothing at all that you withheld from the police—no little thing Merri said or did while with you—that might provide us with a new line of enquiry?'

‘No, nothing,' Julian assured her despondently. ‘Ever since I got my wits back I've been racking my brains for something of the kind, but uselessly. The police told you, of course, about the man in your garden to whom I gave my letter?'

‘Yes. And working on the description of him that you gave them, they've been hunting for him high and low. But as well look for a needle in a haystack as a nameless Chinese in Hong Kong. Anyway, all the chances are that having read your letter and let his employer know that you were going to take Merri to dine at Aberdeen that evening, he would have been one of the men in the launch and got away with the rest of them.'

‘That's about it,' Julian agreed, ‘and the police seem to think that these people made off with Merri either to Macao or Formosa intending to … to sell her into a brothel.'

Tilly Sang shook her blonde head. ‘No. I'm convinced,
thank God, that's not what has happened to her. She was kidnapped by that Japanese.'

‘Japanese?'

‘Yes. The young man you told me about. The Tourist Association people confirmed what you said about him, and that his name is Bill Urata.'

‘Oh, him.' Julian quickly shook his head. ‘No; I don't think that's in the least likely.'

‘Why not? You told me yourself that he had proposed to her, and that she liked him enough even to consider accepting him, but refused because she knew that it would make an irreparable breach between her and me if she married a Japanese. Apparently he's a rich young man, the son of a wealthy ship-owner in Osaka; so he'd have both the money and the means to pull off a coup of this kind. He probably arranged for one of his father's ships to be lying off Hong Kong, then sent his spy ashore to try to find out Merri's engagements. When the man got hold of your letter and learnt that you were taking her to Aberdeen that night that provided Urata with the perfect opportunity. All he had to do was to come in with his launch and wait there, scanning with his torch the people who were coming ashore after dining at either the Tai Pak or the Sea Palace until he spotted Merri, then go alongside the sampan and grab her.'

Again Julian shook his head. ‘I only wish I could believe you to be right, Mrs. Sang. If that had been the case at least we'd know that Merri's fared no worse than to be abducted by a man she likes and who is in love with her. But I just can't believe that Urata is the sort of chap who would be not only ready to defy the law but, possibly, have his people commit murder to get hold of her.'

‘Then you don't know the Japanese.'

‘But I do know Urata, whereas you don't. Besides, by upbringing he is an American; and not a gangster, but a man with a respectable background. I admit that your theory is highly plausible, but I'd bet any money that he
was not responsible for abducting Merri. He was certainly smitten with her; but he's only a playboy, and playboys don't go in for that sort of thing.'

‘Playboy or not, a Japanese is capable of going to any lengths to get what he wants,' Tilly Sang insisted. ‘Those little swine are as immoral as alley cats and as unscrupulous as the Devil himself. I ought to know. But speaking of them reminds me that I owe you an apology.'

Julian gave her a look of surprise as she hesitated for a moment, then went on, ‘The other day I called you a coward and I was wrong about that. I went down to Aberdeen on Monday and talked to the woman who owns the sampan. She said that when she came up she saw that you had jumped into the launch and were fighting like a tiger against the six murderous toughs in it. Not many men would have had the guts to take on such odds barehanded. And there's another thing. For years, while I was going through hell, I always held it against you that you didn't shoot me rather than let me be raped by those Japs. But it wasn't until you called here that I learned that you couldn't because you had no bullets for your gun. I realise now that I've been unfair to you and that, in the circumstances, you did your best for me.'

He bowed gravely. ‘It's good of you to say that, Mrs. Sang; and if anything could comfort me a little at the present time it is to know that you don't think quite so badly of me. I can honestly assure you that if I'd been down there in the room I would at least have hit you on the head with the butt of my pistol before they got the two of us, and that for months afterwards I felt absolutely terrible about having failed to get you up on to the roof.'

For the first time Tilly Sang smiled. ‘Let's say no more about it, then. Perhaps you would like some tea, or a drink.'

He accepted and, for a further three-quarters of an hour, while they had tea together, they talked round and round the subject uppermost in both their minds. Mrs. Sang
remained convinced that by then Merri was well on her way to Japan with Urata; but, much as Julian would have liked to agree, he could not overcome his fears that she had been white-slaved. By the time Julian left, their mutual anxiety had drawn them together; so the meeting ended in a manner that an hour earlier he would never have thought possible. They had promised to keep in touch and shook hands as though they had always been friends.

During the two days that followed there were no new developments, and Julian mooned about unhappily, trying to accustom himself to the thought that the odds were now all against his ever seeing his beautiful Merri again. Wherever he went in Hong Kong or Kowloon sights and sounds reminded him that when he had last been in those places they had been made the more delightful by her sunny presence at his side, telling him all sorts of things and bubbling with easy youthful laughter. He had begun to hate the island and longed to leave it, yet he could not bring himself to make plans for his departure without knowing what had happened to her.