Afterward nothing notable occurred, until the moment when the mistress of the house informs me— or rather believes she is informing me—that Manneret has just been murdered. She asks me what I plan to do. I tell her that the news takes me by surprise, but that, quite likely, I shall be obliged to leave the British territory of Hong Kong and return to Macao for some time, perhaps even permanently. The evening nonetheless continues as planned. People talk about one thing or another, dance, drink champagne, break glasses and eat candwiches. At eleven-fifteen, the curtain rises on the stage of the little theater. In the audience, almost all the red plush chairs are occupied—chiefly by men—about thirty people in all, doubtless carefully chosen, since tonight the performance is for habitués. (Most of the guests at the party have left, not even knowing that something is supposed to happen on the floor below.) The performance begins by a strip tease in the Su-Chuan manner. The actress is a young Japanese girl whom the habitués have not yet seen; consequently she excites the curiosity of the public. She is, moreover, excellent from every point of view, and the act, although traditional, receives considerable applause; no one, as a matter of fact, disturbs the ritual, as happens all too often, by annoying comings and goings or inopportune chatter.
The program then includes an entr’acte in Grand Guignol style, which is called “Ritual Murders” and draws heavily on fake devices: knives with spring blades, red ink spread on the white flesh, screams and contortions of the victims, etc. The setting has remained the same as for the first scene (a huge vaulted dungeon into which a stone staircase descends); it requires only a few accessories such as wheels, racks or trestles; the dogs, on the other hand, play no part in it. But the high point of the evening is indubitably a long monologue spoken by Lady Ava herself, alone on stage throughout the number. The term monologue is not, moreover, quite suitable, for few words are spoken during this little dramatic fragment. Our hostess plays herself. In the costume she has just been seen wearing during the party, she makes her entrance, now, at the rear (through the large double door), in an extraordinarily realistic setting which perfectly reproduces her own bedroom, located like the rest of her private apartments on the fourth—top—floor of the huge house. Greeted by sustained applause, Lady Ava bows briefly to the footlights. Then she turns back toward the door, whose handle she has not released, closes it, and remains there a moment, listening to some sound from outside (imperceptible to the audience), one ear toward the decorated panel, but without pressing her cheek against the wood. She has heard nothing disturbing, probably, since she soon abandons this posture to approach the audience, which she henceforth no longer sees, of course. Then she takes a few increasingly uncertain steps to the left, seems to think twice, to change her mind, turns back to the right, heads obliquely toward the rear of the room, to return almost at once toward the audience. She is evidently in distress, her face is tired, worn, older, all the party’s urbanity suddenly vanished. Having stopped near a small round table covered with a green cloth that falls to the floor all around, she begins mechanically removing her jewelry: a heavy gold necklace, a charm bracelet, a ring with a large stone, earrings, which she sets one after the other in a crystal cup. She remains there, standing despite her fatigue, one hand on the edge of the table, the other arm hanging alongside her body. One of the young Eurasian servant girls then enters noiselessly from the left and stands motionless some distance from her mistress, whom she contemplates in silence: she is wearing bronze silk pajamas more clinging than is usual in the case of such garments. Lady Ava turns her face toward the girl, a tragic face with eyes so exhausted that they seem to rest on things without seeing them. Neither woman speaks. Kim’s features are smooth and inscrutable, Lady Ava’s so weary that they no longer express anything. There may be hatred on either side, or terror, or envy and pity, or pleading and scorn, or anything else.
And now the servant girl—though nothing has stirred in the interval—withdraws as she has come, lovely and mute, supple and silent. The lady has not made a movement, as if she had not even seen her leave. And it is then only after a notable lapse of time that she herself continues her comings and goings in the room, wandering from one piece of furniture to the other without deciding on anything at all. On the open desk, among the white sheets of manuscript, there is the heavy brown paper envelope, apparently stuffed with sand, which has been handed to her this evening; she weighs it in her hand, only to set it down again at once. Finally she goes over and sits down on a little round seat, with neither arms nor back, which looks like a piano stool, in front of the mirrored dressing table. She stares at herself in the mirror with deliberate attention—full face, three-quarters from the right, three-quarters from the left, full face again—then begins removing her makeup carefully, back to the audience.
When she has finished and again reveals her face, she is transformed: from a woman of no particular age, merely too heavily made up, she has become an old woman. But she looks less exhausted on the other hand, less remote, almost calm again. More decisively, she returns to the desk and with the blade of a pocket-knife opens the heavy brown envelope, which she empties out onto the scattered sheets: a large number of tiny white sachets, all alike, fall out pell-mell; she begins counting them rapidly; there are forty-eight. She picks up one of the sachets at random, tears open a corner and, without opening it further, taps some of the contents out of the orifice thus effected onto one of the manuscript sheets which she is holding in her other hand. It is a white powder, fine and shiny, which she examines carefully, raising it to her eyes, but pulling her head back a little at the same time. Satisfied by her scrutiny, she pours the grains of powder back into the sachet through the narrow opening, curling the sheet of paper into a summary funnel. Then, to close the white sachet, she folds the torn corner over, several times. She puts this sachet in one of the little inner drawers of the desk. She places the others back in the brown envelope, counting them once more, and replaces the envelope on the desk, where she found it. The sheet of paper she has just used remains slightly curved from the operation. Lady Ava rolls it in the opposite direction, in order to restore it to its original flatness; then her attention is drawn to what is written on the sheet, of which she rereads several lines.
Holding the sheet in one hand and continuing to read, she now walks toward the bed, a huge square canopy bed situated in an alcove at the other end of the large room, and she rings. The young servant reappears, in exactly the same costume as before, making as little noise and standing motionless in the same place. Lady Ava, who is half-sitting, half-leaning on the edge of the bed, inspects her in detail from head to foot, lingering over her breast, her waist, her hips in the clinging supple silk, then looking back up at the golden face, as smooth as porcelain, with its tiny lacquered mouth, its almond-shaped eyes of blue enamel, the black hair drawn over the temples to show the delicate ears and form, on the nape of the neck, a thick, short, shiny tress loosely braided so that it will come free, in bed, once the tiny ribbon that encircles the end is pulled. If the mistress’ expression has focused, becoming insistent, in fact, the servant girl’s has not changed since a moment ago; it is still just as impersonal and blank as before.
“You saw Sir Ralph, tonight,” Lady Ava begins. Kim merely gives an almost imperceptible nod—doubtless affirmative—for an answer, the lady continuing her monologue without taking her eyes from the girl, but indicating no surprise at not obtaining the slightest word, even when a question is asked quite categorically: “Did he seem normal to you? Did you notice how haggard he looked? Loraine will eventually drive him quite mad, if she keeps on giving in to his ideas. It’s all set now. As it is, Sir Ralph can only live on her account. Things will simply have to follow their course, now.” The girl again fails to show the slightest sign of agreement or interest; she might as well be deaf and dumb, or understand only Chinese. Lady Ava seems not at all affected by this (perhaps she herself has forbidden the young servant girls to answer) and continues, after a pause: “At this very m
oment, he must be running around trying to get hold of the money she asked for. And he’ll be ripe for our advice . . . suggestions . . . directions. All right. I don’t need you tonight. I’m old and tired. . . . You can sleep in your own bed.”
The Eurasian girl has vanished again, like a ghost. Lady Ava is once again standing near the desk, where she sets down on the flat surface, among the other papers, the sheet she had picked up to reread. She takes the brown envelope which contains the forty-seven sachets of powder; she could have noticed, on Kim’s second entrance, that the girl had seen the package: if the hiding place was in the room itself, the envelope would have been put away long since, the servant girl has thought, Lady Ava thinks, the red-faced narrator says, who is telling the story to his neighbor in the little theater. But Johnson, who has other matters on his mind, lends only half an ear to his fantastic stories of Oriental travels, with go-between antique dealers, white-slave traders, over-skillful dogs, brothels for perverts, drug traffic and mysterious murders. He also bestows no more than a rather vague, wandering, interrupted gaze on the stage where the performance is taking place.
Meanwhile, Lady Ava, in her room, has worked the secret combination which she alone knows (the Chinese workman who installed the machinery died shortly afterward), in order to open the panel of the invisible safe on the wall opposite the double door. This sliding panel forms, with the adjoining door of the bathroom, a double door identical to the entrance door opposite it; the visitor has the impression that the right-hand section—which is actually the door to the safe—is merely a false panel there for the sake of decoration, for symmetry. Lady Ava puts the brown paper package on one of the shelves, and begins counting the boxes piled in rows on the shelf below.
Meanwhile the American returns to Kowloon by one of the night boats, whose huge rooms lined with benches or chairs are almost empty at this late hour. He has had some difficulty getting rid of the police; the lieutenant has even insisted on escorting him to the dock and making him get on the first ferry to leave. Johnson has not dared get off immediately (as he had first thought of doing), fearing to find himself once again facing the police car, which has remained there as if to observe him. He therefore disembarks on the other side of the water. The only taxi on duty is taken, at the very moment he himself reaches it, by another customer who appears at the opposite door. Johnson decides to get into a red rickshaw whose sticky oilcloth cushion leaks its rotting hair out of a triangular rip; but he consoles himself by thinking that the taxi, a very old model, can scarcely be any more comfortable. The runner advances, moreover, as fast as the car, which heads in the same direction along the broad deserted avenue overhung, from one side-walk to the other, by the branches of the giant fig trees whose thick and delicate aerial roots dangle vertically like long hair. Between the huge knotty trunks appears at moments—soon caught up with and then passed—a girl in a white sheath dress who was walking rapidly along the house fronts, preceded by a big dog she was holding on a leash. The rickshaw stops at the same time as the taxi in front of the monumental door of the Hotel Victoria. But no one gets out of the car, and Johnson thinks he glimpses, glancing back as he steps into the revolving door, a face staring at him through the rear window which has remained closed, despite the heat. Then that would be a spy the lieutenant ordered to follow the suspect to Kowloon, to see if he was really staying in this hotel, and if he returned there at once without making further detours.
But Johnson has stopped at the hotel only to ask the porter if any message had been left for him in the course of the evening. No, the porter has nothing for him (he checks the message box to make sure); he merely received, a short while ago, a telephone call from Hong Kong asking if a certain Ralph Johnson was staying at the hotel, and how long he had been there. This was the lieutenant again, of course, who was certainly making his investigation obvious, unless the very obviousness is deliberate, in order to make an impression on him. It does not keep him, in any case, from leaving the lobby at once through the other revolving door, which opens at the rear of the building onto a square planted with traveler’s palms, on the other side of which is the street. Here there is a taxi stand, with as usual one car waiting, of a very old model. Johnson gets in (after checking that no one, in the vicinity, is watching his departure) and gives the address of Edouard Manneret, the only person who, on this side of the bay, can help him in his urgent need. The taxi starts at once. The heat, in such close quarters, is stifling; Johnson wonders why all the windows are closed to the top, and he tries to open the one on his side. But it resists. He struggles with it, suddenly filled with a terrifying suspicion caused by the resemblance of this old car with the one which has just. . . The handle comes off in his hand, and the window remains hermetically closed. The driver, hearing the noise behind him, turns around toward the glass which separates him from his passenger, and the latter has just time to assume a sleepy expression likely to mask his agitation. Was it not this face with its tiny slanting eyes which Johnson has seen at the wheel of the first car, at the ferry dock? But all Chinese look alike. It is too late, in any case, to change his destination; Manneret’s address has been given, and written down by the driver. If it is the driver’s mission to . . . But why did the spy who was watching him behind the closed window, at the hotel door, get out of the car? Where could he have gone? And how could a policeman cover his assignment in a cruising taxi? Unless, of course, this was a false taxi, also summoned by telephone from the island of Hong Kong and driving on purpose to the ferry dock to pick up the colleague and follow his orders. And, at this moment, this colleague himself is searching Johnson’s room in the Hotel Victoria from top to bottom.
Behind the giant trunks of the fig trees, a girl in a sheath dress calmly, rapidly passes by the elegant shops with their dark windows; a huge black dog precedes her, exactly like the girl of a little while ago, who wasn’t walking in this direction however and would have had difficulty covering all this distance in the interval. But Sir Ralph has more urgent problems which keep him from thinking about this one. If the lieutenant’s spy really got out of the car at the Hotel Victoria, although with a short delay (he might have been looking for change, or waiting for Johnson to leave him a clear field), this taxi could also be a real taxi. What reason, then, did the driver have for parking behind the hotel, as though to check all the exits? The car, meanwhile, has reached the address given. The driver has opened the glass between himself and the passenger to tell the latter the cost of the trip; he takes advantage of this situation to take the window handle, which the passenger is still inadvertently holding, and replaces it on its pivot with the dexterity conferred by habit, ready to play the same trick on a new passenger. After which he exclaims, in Cantonese: “American goods!” and bursts into shrill laughter. Johnson, while handing him a ten-dollar bill (of Hong Kong currency, of course), takes advantage of this joke to start up a conversation, attempting to clear up the mystery of the first spy. He says, in Cantonese: “English cars aren’t much better!”
The other man winks, with a sly expression full of complicity, answering: “Right! And what about the Chinese ones?” The man is probably one of the many propaganda agents who have come as refugees from Communist China, recently invading the Colony and taking over certain jobs—as taxi drivers and hotel porters in particular. But Johnson, following his own ideas, then asks: “Weren’t you just parked in front of the ferry dock, where I just missed you by a few seconds?”
“Yes, sure!” the man says.
“And you drove someone to the Hotel Victoria?”
“Check!”
“Did he get out of the car?”
“If he didn’t get out, he wouldn’t have taken the cab, would he?”
“All right. But once he did, why did you drive around the building to the square behind, instead of staying at the stand in front of the hotel?”
The Chinese again winks slyly, exaggeratedly, a little alarmingly: “The tail,” he says. “The police tail!” And he bursts
into his high-pitched laugh.
The American gets out of the car and walks away, vaguely stunned. He dares not go straight up to Manneret’s—though he has given his number quite clearly—on account of the taxi which has not yet driven away, still parked next to the curb. When he risks a glance in that direction to see what the driver is waiting for, he sees the front door of the car open and the little man stick out his head and one arm to show him the right doorway, gesturing politely, doubtless fearing that he will get lost in this dim avenue where the numbers on the buildings are not all visible. Johnson then decides not to walk around the block, as he had first thought of doing, and he rings at the outer door, which opens automatically. Inside the lobby, he easily finds the button for the light in the stairwell, where the coolness of the air conditioning revives his strength.
Edouard Manneret is at home, of course, and he soon comes to open his door himself. There are no servants at this hour; Manneret is usually up all night. But tonight he has obviously taken a stronger dose than usual, and his half-conscious state is a bad omen. He is wearing rumpled pajamas; he hasn’t shaved for several days, so that his goatee and mustache, instead of standing out clearly against his glabrous cheeks, are lost in a grayish blur of hair growing in all directions. His eyes are shiny, but with the abnormal luster caused by drugs. At first he doesn’t recognize Johnson, whom he takes initially for his own son, and compliments him on his fine appearance and his elegant clothes; with a fatherly gesture, he pats the tuxedo sleeve and straightens the bow tie. Johnson, whose last hope is in this old man, lets him proceed, determined to treat him considerately. He nonetheless introduces himself, his voice gentle but firm: “I’m Ralph Johnson.”
La Maison de Rendez-Vous and Djinn Page 15
