Chronicles of the Secret Service (8 page)

‘Yes,’ smiled Carter. ‘Didn’t you know?’

She shook her head, and was about to rise out of respect but he stayed her.

‘Then – then who are you, sir?’ she asked.

‘I am his very inadequate secretary,’ he answered; then, addressing Sir Leonard: ‘There is no need for you to question Yumasaki, sir. I have made him confess.’

‘Everything?’

‘The whole woicks,’ Carter assured him with a grin.

Sir Leonard smiled.

‘I think you can dispense with the disguise now,’ he remarked.

‘Thank the Lord for that.’

The young man promptly removed the rubber pads which had so altered the shape of his face. The China Doll watched the transformation with amazement, and gasped audibly.

‘I regret your American sailor friend has gone for good, Joy,’ he remarked in his normal attractive voice. ‘Except for my hair, which is dyed, you see me as myself.’

‘Then everything – your desire to know me – was for the
purpose of trapping Yumasaki and the other Japanese espionage agents?’

He nodded.

‘I’m terribly sorry to have had to deceive you,’ he apologised, ‘but please believe that it has been a very sincere pleasure to have made your acquaintance.’

‘I understand,’ she murmured. ‘There is no necessity to explain, please. But, had I been aware of this before, I could have been of great assistance to you. I know so much.’

‘You are not a Japanese agent yourself, are you?’

She smiled, and shook her head. Sir Leonard interrupted the conversation to demand from Carter a recital of all he had learnt. Greater activity than ever prevailed on the part of the police as soon as Wallace was acquainted with the facts. Ransome sent for reinforcements. The dancing saloons, with which Yumasaki had been in any way connected, were raided, and searched from their roofs to cellars; the managers (or acting proprietors) and all employees were arrested, and removed to the cells of the Central Police Station. A good many of these were afterwards, of course, released, when it was ascertained that they had no connection with the Japanese spy system. The secret room at the Canton was a cleverly-constructed apartment which, when opened, proved a veritable gold mine of information. It contained not only the Japanese plans for espionage activities in Hong Kong, but proved to be a clearing house for the information gained by the agents throughout China. Japan’s activities in Hong Kong would henceforth be completely crushed. Further, she would receive a bad setback throughout the Far East, for not only had secret codebooks, orders, and plans come to light, but also a
list of agents operating in China Proper. When the China Doll heard of these discoveries from Carter – he had returned to the room in which Yumasaki lay under guard to find her still sitting where he and Sir Leonard had left her – she asked to be taken to the governor. The Japanese held up a protesting hand. He had been attended by a doctor, and was able now to think of other matters besides his wound.

‘It is useless,’ he remarked in his precise but sibilant English, ‘to hope to obtain from the governor the slightest consideration for me by pleading to him. He is made, I think, of steel.’

To his utter astonishment, and that of Carter as well, the girl turned on him like a veritable spitfire. For five minutes, she spoke in rapid, angry Chinese, until the man on the couch positively wilted and, into his face, came an expression of such utter consternation that it was comical. The two Chinese policemen guarding him, grinned broadly, and nodded approval. Carter wondered what it was all about. When, at last, she ceased speaking, she turned her back on the prone and livid Yumasaki.

‘Will you,’ she asked Carter, ‘be so kind as to take me to His Excellency, please?’

‘Of course.’

He led her up to the secret room in which Sir Leonard was still engaged with the Commissioner of Police, who had joined him, and a couple of interpreters.

‘This lady has requested to see you, sir,’ announced Carter.

Sir Leonard smiled kindly at her.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

She dropped a graceful little curtsy.

‘Will you be kind enough, Your Excellency,’ she begged, ‘to give me complete copies of all you have found in this room. I wish to send them to my government in Nanking.’

‘Copies will, in any case, be despatched to Nanking,’ Sir Leonard assured her. ‘Why do you particularly wish to send them?’

She smiled.

‘I do not particularly wish to send them myself, please. So long as my government receives them, I am satisfied.’

The five men were regarding her curiously.

‘You have my word for that,’ declared Wallace. ‘I gather, young lady, that you are not simply a dancer?’

She smiled again, and shook her head.

‘I am of the Chinese Counter Espionage Service,’ she confided. ‘Dancing was merely a blind for my other work. Also my pretended love for Yumasaki, and the fact that I allowed him to make love to me, was only a means to an end, please. I had obtained his confidence – he even permitted me to carry out small functions for him. I, for instance, gave the letter to the Japanese sailor who had been sent from the ship. I also,’ she added, ‘delayed him and made him drunk so that he would fall into the hands of the police.’ A little murmur of admiration and approval broke from the men. ‘I had discovered everything,’ she went on, ‘but the contents of the secret room of Yumasaki – first it was in the China Doll, before he thought it safer to come here. My work is now finished. I return to my home in Nanking after sixteen months’ absence.’

‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Carter. ‘To think we almost considered arresting you as one of Yumasaki’s accomplices. And I made a
bet with myself that you were only mixed up in Secret Service work as a cat’s paw! Ah, well, Joy, I’m jolly glad we’re allies.’

She smiled very sweetly at him. Sir Leonard rose, and extended his hand to her, which she took very timidly.

‘You deserve well of your country,’ he declared. ‘I will see that you convey the copies you spoke of to Nanking yourself. And Mr Carter will escort you.’

‘Oh, Your Excellency,’ she cried, ‘how kind you are. Thank you so much.’

Carter chuckled softly to himself.

‘Sir Leonard,’ he whispered to Sir Masterson Winstanley, ‘is taking an awful risk of losing a bright young assistant.’

The dour commissioner entirely lacked a sense of humour.

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed
sotto voce
. ‘You are not thinking of marrying the girl, are you?’

The young man’s eyes twinkled, but he sighed.

‘For the first time in my life,’ he muttered, ‘I find myself wishing I was a Chinaman!’

Anthony Anstruther felt intolerably bored. For weeks he had wandered through London searching for excitement and adventure; anything to give a zest to life. But from north to south, east to west, nowhere in the metropolis had he found anything that was even calculated to raise his interest above the ordinary level. A city that newspapers and novels had persuaded him to believe was full of glamour, of thrills, had turned out to be entirely humdrum, commonplace to the last degree. It was most disappointing. He had found that strolling through the environs of Soho at dead of night was very nearly like walking through a graveyard. Visions of crooks, assassins, members of foreign anarchistic organisations had faded woefully at the deserted appearance of Greek Street, the apparent respectability of Old Compton Street, the peacefulness of Dean Street. It was the same
down amidst the unsalubrious highways and byways of the East End and Dockland. All the excitement produced by the latter was a dog fight and the spectacle of a drunken sailor resisting arrest.

Anstruther was one of those fortunate young men with far more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime. He had been in the army, but had resigned his commission because he found the life dull. Yet now he was regretting his action. There were certain interests in a peacetime military career; one had an occupation and, even if it were not exactly congenial, it gave one something to do. Civilian life was sheer ennui. The trouble with Anthony Anstruther was that he had been brought up wrongly. Ever since he was a child, he had been pampered and petted. In addition, he possessed an ultra-vivid imagination. Now at the age of twenty-six, he had become blasé to the last degree. That was why, thoroughly tired of the ceaseless round of useless gaiety indulged in by his circle of friends, he was feverishly searching for the excitement he craved. And, as is the way of anything for which one sets out assiduously to find in this world, it eluded him.

Eventually he gave it up, having reached the conclusion that there is no adventure or romance in modern England. It was then, of course, that he found himself suddenly plunged into more excitement, not to mention danger, than even he, in his most imaginative moments, had dreamt. Fate delights in playing that kind of trick.

He had taken a girl friend to the theatre; afterwards, at her request, had escorted her to a nightclub in Greek Street. She had never been to a place of that type and, possessing something of his imagination and romanticism, had expected to find herself amidst glamorous and thrilling people, quite unlike those of the
circles in which she moved and had her being. He had warned her that she would be disappointed, but she had not listened to him, probably thinking his attempt at discussion was prompted by a belief that a girl of her breeding and refinement would be shocked by the ultra-Bohemianism of the denizens of a Soho nightclub. They had not been there more than a quarter of an hour before she reached the conclusion that she had been cheated. Everything fell so tremendously below expectations that she felt she had never been more disillusioned in her life. The patrons were mostly respectable-looking men and women in correct evening attire who danced together quite decorously, the proprietor was a dignified individual who might have been a retired naval officer; the band was composed of half a dozen bored musicians completely lacking anything in the nature of verve or fire. Only the three or four dance hostesses appeared in any way interesting, mainly because of their queer profession and the stories she had heard of the gold-digging propensities of their type. They were all extremely young girls, very much made-up, but well dressed, with that hard expression on their otherwise pretty faces that comes from preying upon impressionable men. The club itself consisted solely of a long room lined with tables and divans, the walls crudely painted with designs that suggested the artist was probably drunk when he executed them. Sonia Hardinge wondered why people attended such places; what interest or excitement they obtained from it. Others have pondered over the same problem. Human beings are queer creatures.

She and Anstruther danced a little; drank a little; nibbled at the sandwiches without which liquid refreshment could not be obtained. Then she rose.

‘I am utterly bored, Tony,’ she confessed. ‘Let me go.’

He picked up her wrap, which she threw over her arm, for it was a warm night in June, and they walked out of the place.

‘I told you you would be disappointed,’ he reminded her. ‘I have been searching for something exciting for ages, until I know London like a book, but there’s nothing in the whole of this city to raise even a thrill. It’s sickening.’

‘All nightclubs can’t be like this,’ she decided.

‘They’re all just as uninteresting. Some are more sordid and tawdry than others; that’s all.’

They walked towards Soho Square, where his car had been parked. Sonia was a pretty girl of the athletic type so typical of post-war femininity. She was tall and straight with a graceful carriage, fair hair, frank blue eyes, and aquiline features. She and Tony Anstruther, with his strong, good-looking face, and military bearing, made an attractive couple. They had almost reached the square, when she laughed softly.

‘You and I are both looking for something which life seems to deny us,’ she observed. ‘I almost think I shall be forced to accept one of your numerous proposals one of these days, in the hope that we shall be able to find a thrill in marriage.’

‘I wish you would,’ he murmured. ‘After all, I love you, Sonia, and you say you are fond of me. Why do you keep putting it off?’

‘Tony, you know very well, that we’re built all wrong for wedding bells just yet. If we were married now, we’d probably get bored with each other in a few months. When I marry you, my dear, I want to be sure of our happiness.’

‘Does that mean,’ he asked eagerly, ‘that you will marry me some day?’

‘I suppose so,’ she returned lightly; adding, with a little laugh, ‘unless I meet and fall in love with a fascinatingly glamorous international crook or something of that kind.’

‘I don’t believe there are any crooks,’ he grunted. ‘I’ve become convinced that the world is composed of commonplace, unattractive creatures who are as pure as driven snow. Good Lord! What a damned nerve!’

She glanced at him quickly on hearing his sudden exclamation; then her eyes followed his. They had reached the square were almost opposite his car, which was standing close to the railings of the little garden in the centre. A small tattered individual, who looked like a tramp, appeared to be busily engaged in covering the bodywork of the dark blue Bentley with chalk marks. Giving a snort of indignation, Anstruther hurried across the road, closely followed by Sonia. He pulled up dead and swore softly to himself as his eyes took in numbers of parallel lines drawn at right angles to each other. The car seemed to be covered with them. In the spaces between were sometimes noughts, sometimes crosses. The fact that a tramp had committed the sacrilege of playing the game, beloved of children, called Noughts and Crosses on his beloved car, for a few seconds caused Anstruther to lose all power of expression. Then he found his voice in grim earnest.

‘Here, you!’ he cried. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’

The small man looked up, and leered drunkenly.

‘’Lo,’ he greeted Tony. ‘Can’t yer see wha’ I’m doin’? Playin’ Noughts an’ Crosses, tha’s wha’ I’m doin’. Go ’way!’ He turned back to the car; made an erratic cross, and chuckled. ‘Tha’s done yer, m’beauty,’ he exclaimed. ‘See’f yer c’n beat tha’.’

Sonia’s sense of humour rose uppermost. A peal of delighted laughter rang out. The tramp straightened himself, turned, and regarded her with tipsy solemnity. He was a strange little man, not more than five feet in height, clothed in garments that had lost all right to individual terms. In fact, they looked like a heap of rags pinned and sewn together. Several days’ growth of beard adorned his face that was amazingly wrinkled and almost unbelievably dirty. His brown eyes, despite the heaviness that an overindulgence in strong liquor had caused, were extraordinarily sharp.

‘I’ve a jolly good mind to hand you over to the police,’ declared the indignant Anstruther. ‘Those blessed chalk marks will probably leave scratches. Hang it all! What on earth possessed you, you little worm, to select my car for your rotten game?’

‘Is’t your car, mate?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Good. Then let’s play ’gether. You c’n be th’noughts; I’ll do cross – crosses. See?’

From among his rags, he produced a second piece of chalk, which he held out to Anstruther. The latter knocked it out of his hand and, striding forward, pulled open a door, rummaged under a seat, and produced a chamois leather.

‘Here,’ he ordered, pushing it into the tramp’s hand; ‘set to work and clean that car at once.’

The little man threw it on the ground; kicked it away with such violence that he staggered and almost fell.

‘Shan’t clean car,’ he hiccoughed. ‘Wanna play Noughts an’ Cr – Crosses.’

Anstruther became thoroughly exasperated. Retrieving the
chamois from the road, he proceeded to rub off the chalk marks himself. At once a most unholy clamour of drunken protest rose from the tramp. Two or three people had already stopped to watch events. Now a crowd began to collect; windows of adjoining houses opened, and curious heads protruded. When the assembled throng gathered what all the fuss was about a great roar of laughter rent the air. Anstruther felt himself turning crimson, Sonia dived into the interior of the car, and stopped there. The tramp struggled desperately to prevent Tony from rubbing off the chalk marks.

‘’S not fair,’ he protested. ‘Jus’ ’cos y’know yer couldn’ beat me at Noughts an’ Crosses, yer won’ play.’

A man detached himself from the crowd, and strolled forward. He was a hunchback whose deformity reduced him to a height no greater than that of the tramp. His clean-shaven face was sallow and drawn, as though he habitually suffered much pain; his hair was jet black and rather unruly – he wore no hat. His features were nondescript and not unpleasant, with the exception of the eyes, which were dark, glittering, and restless, seeming to contain in their depths a suggestion of evil. Despite his unfortunate figure, his clothes fitted well and were of excellent material. He watched, for a few moments, the struggle still going on between Anstruther and the tramp; then he intervened.

‘Pardon me,’ he apologised to the former, in passable English but a thickness of utterance that was rather ugly, ‘I have not the intention of butt in for the curiosity. I t’ink I can manage the leetle man for you.’

Tony stood away from the tramp, and regarded the newcomer with interest.

‘I shall be very grateful if you can,’ he acknowledged, wiping his brow with a silk handkerchief. ‘He is beyond me.’

The hunchback stepped up to the little man, and touched him lightly on the arm. The latter swung round with a grunt.

‘Wha’ more of ’em,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s a trap, tha’s wharrit is. It’s a trap to gemme’ ’way fr’m my lit game.’

‘The motor car is not the place for to play the game. I have the slate. Come! I will show you how properly to play heem.’

‘D’you mean ter say yer think yer can play better’n me?’

‘I am the expert. No one have yet beat me.’

‘Garn! I’ll show yer. No one’s beat yer!’ He spat contemptuously in the road. ‘C’m on. I’ll show yer.’ He linked his arm in that of the hunchback; leered up at Anstruther. ‘Yer c’n have yer ole car,’ he remarked. ‘I don’ wannit.’

‘That’s all very well,’ grumbled Tony unwisely. ‘I think the little beast ought to clean away those marks before he goes. I can’t drive the car through London looking like that, and it will take me ages to do it.’

‘Do yer goo’, yer swine of a naris’crat,’ hiccoughed the tramp. ‘Your sor’s no goo’ – no goo’ ’t all.’

The hunchback shook his arm free; walked to the car, and peered in at the girl sitting there.

‘Madame,’ he observed, ‘if you and your frien’ will come to my house and wait for the leetle time, my servant will clean the car.’

‘It is very nice of you,’ she replied hesitantly, and her eyes met Tony’s inquiringly. Her instincts were naturally to refuse such an invitation, but here, she thought, was a chance of experiencing something a little out of the ordinary. She gathered from the expression in Tony’s eyes that he was thinking the same, but
was leaving the decision to her. At once she made up her mind. ‘If you are sure it won’t be any trouble to you,’ she decided, ‘we shall be glad to accept, won’t we, Tony?’

‘Rather,’ he agreed heartily. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I shall insist on paying your man for doing the job.’

‘Do not mention it,’ protested the other. ‘And it will be no trouble for me to have you in my home, Madame. It will be the great honour.’

Anstruther helped the girl from the car. The hunchback, with a flourish of a long arm, indicated a house across the square, and began to lead the way.

‘Here, mister,’ called the tramp, ‘I don’ wanna play with aris’crats.’

‘You are going to make the play with me, my frien’. Come!’

Grumbling drunkenly to himself, the little man fell in behind. The crowd, amused still, began to disperse. It was mostly composed of people living in that district; southern Europeans, to whom laughter came easily. They considered they had been afforded a free and very entertaining show; turned their steps homeward with increased happiness.

Sonia and Anstruther were approaching the house, indicated as his residence by the hunchback, who was two or three yards ahead, when they were astonished to hear a voice behind them whisper urgently and without any sign of intoxication in it.

‘Don’t go into that house, as you value your lives. Make some excuse, return to the car, and drive away.’

They glanced over their shoulders, to see the tramp almost on their heels. He still continued to leer drunkenly, and was staggering in his gait. A whiff of his drink-perfumed breath reached their nostrils, and caused the girl to shudder with
disgust. But only he could have uttered the warning. They were extremely puzzled; were quite unable to fathom such a mystery.