The Silver Dragon

by Jean S. MacLeod

  “The Silver Dragon?” Domenico’s white teeth flashed in a generous smile. “Oui! know him! He is a little restaurant near the boulevard Dubouchage.”

  He seemed quite content that she should go there and she settled back in her seat to wait. They threaded their way through the center of the town, which was still thronged with shoppers, and then quite suddenly they turned off the busy main boulevard into a comparatively quiet side street. When she looked at her watch it was only five o’clock.

  “Will you pull up here, Domenico, please?” she asked through the open section of the glass screen separating them. “I’m rather early. I’ll walk along the boulevard and come back.”

  Promptly he swung to the curb, leaping out to open the door for her.

  “You want to buy pretty things?” he suggested, nodding and smiling his appreciation of the impulse. “I leave the car over there.” He pointed to a handy taxi stand in the middle of the street. “Then I come back for you—two, three, four hours from now?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like as long as that, Domenico!” she protested, although when she thought about it, she did not know how long she was likely to be. “Shall we say seven o’clock?”

  “Oui! Oui!”

  That would give her a full hour from the time of meeting. If nothing had happened by seven o’clock, she would not wait any longer.

  Domenico touched his cap, smiling broadly as he watched her hurry off in the direction of the brilliantly lit boulevard.

  An hour later she was back on the sidewalk where he had left her. Her sole purchase had been a cream silk head square printed with deep yellow swaths of mimosa, which she had not been able to resist, and she clutched the paper bag to her as she crossed the road, as if it were some sort of amulet against danger.

  The Silver Dragon was a very small restaurant wedged between the back entrance of a hotel and what appeared to be a warehouse, but it was smartly faced with black glass and looked clean. It was, of course, Chinese.

  Several people hurried in and out as she walked slowly toward it and the fact reassured her a little because they all looked eminently respectable.

  She pushed the. door open, hesitating in the yellow glow of a dozen lanterns. Ahead of her a sea of small tables stretched to the back of the room where the huge figure of a dragon was embroidered in silver thread on a black backcloth.

  A very old Chinese man advanced toward her on silent feet.

  “You look for friend?” he asked.

  He was round-faced and courteous, with a benevolent smile that revealed a flash of gold teeth, and he looked at her expectantly. There was nothing at all sinister about him, Adele decided, or about The Silver Dragon. Nothing that could be seen on the surface.

  “No. I ... thought I would like something to eat,” she answered cautiously.

  “Plenty to eat,” he smiled, leading her between the rows of tables to a secluded corner where she sat down facing the door, her back to the embroidered dragon. “Plenty Chinese food, plenty English food!” He stood with his small fat hands tucked into the wide sleeves of his mandarin’s coat. “You very hungry?”

  Adele shook her head, trying to concentrate on the lengthy menu that he had placed before her.

  “Do you think I might just have some tea and perhaps a cake?” she asked.

  “A cream cake?” he inquired, completely unperturbed by the simplicity of her order.

  “If you please?” she smiled at him. “And China tea.”

  When her tea arrived she sat for half an hour watching people coming in and going out, but there was no sign of her acquaintance of the evening before.

  By half-past six the restaurant was almost deserted. The young Chinese waiters began to set the tables for the evening meal. Soon she would have to go.

  She began to feel nervous. It was a quarter to seven and there was still no sign of her contact. Then the restaurant door swung open and Dixon came in.

  He stood for a moment, gazing around, tall, suave, distinguished-looking, with the little old Chinese bowing at his elbow, and then he walked straight across the room to where she sat.

  “Are you surprised?” he asked. “I wondered if I would find you here.”

  “Dixon!”

  She gazed up at him as if she had encountered a ghost, and he smiled back at her ironically.

  “It would appear to be a very small world,” he commented, glancing down at the table. “Have you eaten or have you just come in?”

  “I’ve been here for ... quite a long while,” she was forced to confess.

  He turned to the man.

  “I’ll have the usual, Lee,” he said, “and chicken with almonds, I think, for Mrs. Cabot.”

  The old man bowed until his head almost touched the table.

  “I do not know it is Madame Cabot!” he exclaimed. “I very sorry. Very sorry indeed! I go prepare fine dinner to say how sorry I am. You wait and see, M’sieur Cabot. I prepare very best dinner in Nice for you’ bride!”

  Dixon took the chair opposite Adele, smiling dryly.

  “Lee is apparently impressed,” he said, laying the menu aside. “How did you find your way here?”

  “I asked Domenico.”

  His raised brows suggested that she had not really answered his question.

  “I see,” he said. “It’s considered to be one of the showplaces of Nice, but not for afternoon tea.”

  She knew that she ought to tell him all about the launch and the furtive little Frenchman, but somehow she couldn’t. She had put herself in a most invidious position by coming here at all, and he already distrusted her. How could she hope to convince him that she had come innocently, with no knowledge of what was expected of her? He simply would not believe her.

  And besides, her contact had not turned up. There was no way of proving to Dixon that what she said was the truth.

  Confused by his sudden unexpected appearance, she could no longer think clearly, and once she had evaded that first question he did not ask her any more. Instead, he signaled to one of the young waiters hovering in the background.

  “An aperitif, Fu,” he said. “Something to please madame.”

  Adele ordered a cinzano and Fu said, “The usual, m’sieur?” and went off with a bow to order their drinks.

  There was an awkward pause. Dixon looked at her with a guarded expression in his eyes, like a cat watching a rather audacious mouse. The silence between them deepened, and at last she knew that he was waiting for her to say something. Perhaps he expected her to tell him the true reason for her visit to The Silver Dragon.

  Instead she found herself looking up at the embroidered panel on the wall and asking, “The dragon in your study, Dixon, has it any connection with ... all this?”

  She lifted her hand in a quick gesture to include the tables and the silk lanterns swinging from the roof and Lee gliding past them on silent feet to receive a party of guests who had just come in.

  “Lee made my dragon,” Dixon agreed, the corners of his mouth quirking up in a smile. “He has an amazing eye for line and suggestion and he is a talented silversmith. He also knows quite a lot about precious stones.”

  Their eyes met across the white cloth, bit she could not imagine what connection precious stones had with the silver dragon. It had not even a jeweled eye. She could appreciate Lee’s skill as a silversmith, however, when she remembered the intricately chased head and wings of the silver model on the study desk.

  “I brought the kudu horn from Africa,” Dixon told her. “Lee saw it and thought that it looked exactly like a dragon’s tail and offered to graft on a silver head and the necessary wings. Since dragons breathe fire, the obvious use for our little flight of fancy was to make it into a table lighter. Hence the wick and the silver snuffer!”

  She traced a light pattern on the tablecloth with the base of her cocktail glass.

  “How long have you had it?” she asked.

  “Several years.”

  “Then you lived here, in Nice, before you
bought Les Rochers Blanches?” she asked in surprise.

  His smile deepened.

  “At La Garoupe,” he agreed.

  “Where we went the other day?” The thought of their stolen drive along the coast heightened the color in her cheeks. “Was that why you took me there, Dixon?” she asked awkwardly. “Were we—there together before?”

  “No.” The abrupt monosyllable grated harshly on her ears as he turned to beckon the wine waiter. “Will you have the other half?” he asked, looking at her empty glass. “The second one always tastes much better than the first!”

  He did not want to talk about their former intimacy nor about their marriage, because it aroused bitterness in him and he was not prepared to account to her for the past. Whatever his reason for taking her to La Garoupe, it was certainly not to remind her that they had been there before. Her eyes lifted to the embroidered dragon on the wall above them.

  “Did Lee name the restaurant after your dragon?” she asked, steering the conversation deliberately away from the personal.

  “I’m not quite sure whether Lee named it or whether I did,” he answered. “Perhaps it was a joint effort on our part. Lee and I have been friends for many years.”

  Their meal was served and they discussed Chinese food.

  “I’m not very sure about it,” Adele laughed. “Bird’s-nest soup, octopus, fried bumble bees and the rest!” She gazed down at the delectable slices of shrimps on her plate. “This looks wonderful, but the sharks’ fins and the roasted silkworms are almost frightening, aren’t they?”

  “Not any more so than bacon and eggs or fish and chips,” he smiled. “What you eat here won’t harm you, I can assure you. It’s the very best that Lee can produce.”

  Their plates were changed and Lee himself came with a large silver salver on which were piled slices of chicken breast garnished with mushrooms and bamboo shoots and smothered in almond sauce. He placed it on the table before them with a deep bow.

  “You are rather a special guest, aren’t you?” Adele mused, her tongue loosened a little by the warm glow of the wine and the delicious food, which she had really needed. “Lee made me feel like royalty just now!”

  “Like most Chinese, Lee has a profound sense of obligation, which can be decidedly embarrassing at times,” Dixon answered dryly.

  “I rather like him,” Adele decided, smiling in Lee’s direction. “Does he own The Silver Dragon?”

  There was a brief pause. She thought that he had not heard her question. Then his eyes met hers. In the orange glow from the lanterns they were almost black.

  “No,” he said distinctly. “I do.”

  It was difficult to believe, but probable enough.

  “I didn’t know,” she said.

  “Or you wouldn’t have come?”

  “I’m not sure.” All her uncertainty came surging back, her doubts and much of her fear. What did she really know about him? “I ... it’s the sort of place one might quite easily come to in the ordinary way.”

  “But not alone.”

  “No,” she was forced to agree. “Probably I made a mistake.”

  “Such mistakes can be costly.” He beckoned to the waiter. “We’ll have our coffee now, Fu,” he said.

  She sat twisting the stem of her wine glass until the coffee arrived.

  “Do you want to tell me why you came?” he asked almost casually.

  Her nerves had been taut all day, anticipating this visit to The Silver Dragon, and her unexpected encounter with Dixon had done nothing to reassure her, but it was the brief, almost indifferent question that finally snapped her self-control.

  “I have nothing to tell you,” she said, rising unsteadily to her feet. “Nothing that you would try to understand. You’ve always condemned me as a fraud and a cheat. Please take me home!”

  She had not meant to use the word because “home” was something she had never thought of in connection with Les Rochers Blanches. Dixon did not want a home in the real sense of the word. All he needed was a pied-a-terre, a roof over his head to shelter him between voyages, where he could write without being disturbed.

  Why then, had he married? Tears stung her eyes as she stood waiting for him to pay his bill. What madness had ever possessed him to think that he needed a wife!

  Mr. Lee Tong bowed them to the door. He was “very sorry” that they had to leave so early.

  “You come back,” he said, “pretty soon?”

  Dixon put an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

  “Pretty soon, Lee,” he agreed.

  Fu opened the swing door for them, bowing them out into the street.

  “I call a taxi?” he suggested, but Dixon shook his head.

  “We have one, Fu. It’s just across the road.”

  He had traced Domenico then, before he had come in. Adele began to walk away across the sidewalk, but was suddenly arrested by a slouching figure standing in the shadow of a closed warehouse. The man was lighting a cigarette, and as he drew on it she was near enough to see his features clearly for a moment, thrown into relief against the darkness. It was her shabby acquaintance of the night before.

  There could be no mistake. Three fingers of the hand that held the cigarette to his lips were missing!

  Nervously she turned to wait for Dixon. Had he seen the figure in the doorway? If so, he made no sign of having done so.

  “Did you have a pleasant day at Monte Carlo?” she asked unsteadily as they got into the car and Domenico drove away.

  “Quite pleasant,” Dixon returned. “I think you would have enjoyed it. I left my mother with Connie Stansford and managed to get an afternoon’s sailing at the yacht club. A sort of busman’s holiday, if you like.”

  “You’re very fond of the sea?”

  “It’s been in my blood ever since I can remember.” He sounded completely relaxed as he sat with his head back against the cushioning of the taxi and his long legs sprawled out in front of him. She had never seen him like this and she wanted him to go on talking.

  “I ought to be able to say that I’ve read all your books,” she told him, “but I can’t pretend. I borrowed a copy of Jelida yesterday, though, and I feel I’m getting to know her!”

  “Come and meet her,” he suggested. “She’s lying at Beaulieu.”

  Her eyes brightened.

  “I’d love that,” she accepted eagerly, until she suddenly remembered that she ought to know all about Jelida. The little yacht was not a new possession.

  The light died out of her eyes. Would it always be like this? When happiness seemed to be returning, when it looked as if it might be just within her grasp, would there always be the thought of the unknown past to shatter it to pieces?

  Could you build something up again once it was broken? Suddenly she knew that she had to speak quite freely to Dixon. Whatever the result, she had to know the truth of what stood between them.

  It was too late now, however. They had passed Ville-franche and were turning off the Corniche. Soon the sign of Les Rochers Blanches would be swaying in the light breeze just ahead of them and they would be home.

  She did not reject the word this time, for suddenly she was thinking of the villa as home.

  Olivia was waiting for them.

  “I thought you were going to Nice on business, Dixon,” she observed when they came in together.

  “That was the idea,” he agreed. “I picked Adele up at The Silver Dragon.”

  Olivia lit a cigarette.

  “Does that place really pay?” she asked.

  “Admirably.”

  “You’re far too soft with Lee Tong,” she decided for him. “He has a completely free hand there, I suppose?”

  “Completely.”

  Olivia drew deeply on her cigarette.

  “I don’t trust those Orientals,” she declared sweepingly. “Connie Stansford says their places are always being raided by the police. They’re in every sort of racket up and down the coast. There have been dozens of smuggling convictions
this year already.”

  Dixon walked slowly across the room. From where he stood he could just see Adele’s reflection in the long mirror set into the paneling behind his mother’s immaculately groomed head.

  “Smuggling isn’t confined entirely to the Chinese,” he remarked. “Your modern pirate is a completely cosmopolitan character, and I might even hazard a guess that the English are not always in the minority, either,” he added dryly.

  Olivia shrugged.

  “I’m quite prepared to believe that,” she agreed. “It’s one way of making money quickly and without a great deal of effort. The Riviera has always been a happy hunting ground for crooks of every nationality,” she added, without looking directly at her daughter-in-law.

  “I wouldn’t let it worry you too much,” Dixon advised. “The police are not fools. They have their own methods of dealing with these people. Sometimes they bide their time, but they generally run their quarry to earth in the end.”

  “Of course, if it were not for the receivers, these people wouldn’t be quite so daring,” Olivia reflected, tapping her cigarette to release the ash. “They must have some means of getting rid of their smuggled goods or their stolen property or what have you! The fences are the people who are really to blame. They’re making fortunes, Connie Stansford says, just by transferring the stuff from one hand to another.”

  “That’s the difficult part.” Dixon looked amused. “There’s a lot of excitement to be got out of the actual smuggling, and that attracts your adventurer and always will, but the real brains behind these big coups are the middlemen—the fences, if you like. They have to supply the finesse and the knowledge to complete the job, and always in the most difficult circumstances. Most of them are known to the police.”

  “Yet they get away with their audacious thefts time and time again!” Olivia exclaimed angrily. “Just think of the jewel robberies for instance. Last season one could hardly pick up a Paris newspaper without having to read a report of another big haul. And what about your own experience?” she went on heatedly. “Surely you’re not condoning that?”