“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I have remembered.”
“And he was alive when the lady left?”
The man shook his head. “I did not see her go out,” he answered. “The Master had ordered us to go to sleep. He had said there would be no one else to come or go last night. The lady took the bar from the gate herself.”
The reply did not leave much doubt that the affair was ugly. The worst I had expected had happened and I knew why I had come. It was through an impulse of my legal training. It appeared quite possible to me that Eleanor Joyce would need a lawyer before the day was over.
The bright hot sunlight of that summer morning was pouring into the Court through the dancing shadows of the tree branches, so that the grey stones were a shifting carpet of lights and shades. The door of the Major’s study was open and there, close to the threshold, sprawled on his back on the tiled floor, lay Major Jameson Best, still in his white suit which seemed hardly to have been disarranged.
I took off my hat without knowing exactly why except that I had seen the gesture before in motion picture films in the presence of the dead. I had no great sense of shock or any deep feeling of grief as I saw the Major lying dead, with the lines of character already erased from his face, leaving it a peaceful, open-eyed mask. Major Best was the sort to die by violence, as surely as the tiger in the stained silk painting that hung above him. He was the sort who should have died a dozen times before under the laws of averages, and probably he should have wished nothing better than this swift and painless ending. Yet it was the first time that I had seen a foreigner murdered in his own house in Peking. Such a crime was almost unheard of and the enormity of it, and the possibility that it might happen to someone else, was in itself unsettling. Then I wondered again where the police were. I was moving nearer the study door when I got my answer. There was a footstep in the study, a gentle cough, and Mr. Moto appeared in the doorway, exactly as though he were used to such matters. His grey suit was carefully pressed. The gold fillings of his front teeth, as he bobbed and smiled, glittered richly in the sunlight. He was dusting his fingers with a white silk handkerchief.
“Good morning!” he said. “It is a very nice morning, is it not? I had hoped that you would come. Shall we step inside, perhaps, and smoke a cigarette?” He stopped to speak to the servants who were gathered behind me, sharply, in Chinese.
“Leave here,” he said. “We do not wish to be disturbed.”
We walked gingerly past the dead man and sat down in the two chairs which Major Best and I had occupied the previous evening. The coffee cups and the whiskey were still on the table beside me. Mr. Moto smiled again. It was one of those devastating oriental smiles, useful in concealing the more realistic facts of life.
“This is very shocking,” Mr. Moto said. “I am very, very sorry. You are surprised that I am here?”
“I thought the police would be here first,” I answered. “But no, I’m not much surprised.”
Mr. Moto dusted his delicate hands with a handkerchief. His dark eyes moved toward me with a birdlike intensity, and he seemed to be waiting for me to make another remark.
“I am very sorry to be mixed up with your honorable country’s Secret Service,” I said. “I know it is a very efficient service. Of course, I understand it could only be your country’s intervention which has kept the police away so long.”
Mr. Moto nodded toward me. “You are a very clever man,” he said. “I am very, very glad because this is very difficult. I can rely on you to be tactful, I hope. It might be difficult if you were to talk too freely—to anyone but me.”
“I understand you,” I said. “There is no need to threaten me. Your people hold all the cards in North China now.”
“Please,” said Mr. Moto. “Please do not say it just like that. I do not threaten, oh no, of course not. It is only that you find yourself in an affair that may grow embarrassing to everyone. I have always liked Americans. Yes. And I like you very much. We shall be good friends I hope?”
Mr. Moto’s voice, speaking English with a loud and difficult intensity, made me ill at ease. His matter-of-fact repression was of a sort which I had never encountered. He sat there, smoking his cigarette, as though the dead man on the floor were nothing more than some abstract event in a chain of circumstance. It was not reassuring to know that I was a part of it.
“We are good friends, oh yes,” said Mr. Moto again. “It is so nice we are good friends. I am so very, very glad. It makes everything so very nice. It makes it so that I can tell you something, and then you will tell me something if you please? You say it in a beautiful way in America. You are so frank. I shall put the cards upon the table.”
“That will be very nice,” I said. And Mr. Moto drew in his breath between his teeth, and raised a hand before his mouth, and let it drop again on the arm of his chair.
“My people have much to concern them lately,” he went on. “We have many delicate combinations. You are clever to know that I have something to do with our Intelligence Service and I cannot imagine how you guessed. You are right in believing that this unpleasantness here has certain implications. You need not bother to—er—calculate what they are, and I hope you understand?”
“Well enough,” I said. “Thank you, Mr. Moto. You are interested because I was here last night. I hope you do not think I killed Major Best?”
“Please,” said Mr. Moto. “Please. Oh no, of course not!” He pointed at the dead man’s head. There was no doubt as to how he had died. There was a bluish puncture in the centre of the Major’s high narrow forehead.
“He died,” said Mr. Moto, “while standing here in the doorway—while speaking to someone, I think, for I found this near his feet.” Mr. Moto reached a hand delicately into his coat pocket and drew out a gold compact case. “A lady was talking to Major Best,” he said. “There is a saying among the Secret Service men in your country, where I have had the honor to study once, that a woman always leaves something. We both know her name, of course. Are you interested, Mr. Nelson?”
I did not like the look of it, and I was shaken more than was reasonable because it indicated that Eleanor Joyce was on the verge of ruin. A few words from Mr. Moto and she would never show her face at home again. Under such circumstances there did not seem to be much use in appealing to Mr. Moto’s chivalry. I pointed to the wound in Major Best’s forehead.
“A large bullet did that—at least a forty-five. Yes, we both know who the lady is, but she would have used something smaller, don’t you think?”
Mr. Moto turned toward me and sucked in his breath emphatically.
“In a matter like this one,” he said, “it might be very useful to conceal the motive of this crime. You mean the weapon was too large for the other sex. Yet I saw you myself conversing with the lady yesterday evening. I understand that you had words with her, outside this house last night. It may have been that you came back. The Chinese police and your own nationals would be interested to hear it. Shall I tell them, Mr. Nelson?”
A slight tremor ran down my spine but I kept my voice steady. “You talk and I’ll talk too. I’ll tell you anything I know, if that is what you want,” I said. Mr. Moto nodded.
“That is very, very nice—if you will be so kind,” he said. “You tell me, please, what words were spoken last night when you dined with Major Best. You tell me everything you saw. Exactly, if you please.”
I did not like his tone but it did not seem the time to tell him so. Instead, there was only one thing to do. I described the evening with Major Best. Mr. Moto sat listening, his face preoccupied and intent. He was trying to piece something together. I did not know exactly what.
“The man’s name was Wu Lo Feng,” I said.
“Yes,” said Mr. Moto. “Now I understand. That is exactly what I wished to know. I did not know the name. Thank you very much. May I ask you one more question? Could anyone have overheard your talk last night?” He waved his hand toward the open doorway, across the sunny Court. “Someone, fo
r instance, in the trees beyond the wall? You say there was a rustling in the trees?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
Mr. Moto looked at me impersonally and then his glance moved to the figure of Major Best.
“It was not possible—” the softness of Mr. Moto’s voice, the slow careful stress which he put on each syllable, made his question deliberately emphatic. “Think—think very carefully, if you please, that the Major mentioned someone else, a countryman of mine?”
“What was his name?” I asked.
“Takahara.” Mr. Moto’s voice had dropped almost to a whisper. “Takahara was the name.”
“Yes,” I told Mr. Moto. “Best asked me if I knew him. He said he was the sort who is in the centre of trouble. I’d never heard of him.”
Mr. Moto leaned closer to me and raised his hand before his mouth, so that I might not be contaminated by his breath.
“Please,” he said, in that same soft voice, “I think it would be better if you forget his honorable name. That is my affair. You have asked me if these things matter. If they do, I shall be very, very sorry for you. Yes! Very, very sorry!”
“Moto?” I asked him, “what do you mean by that?”
“Only this,” said Mr. Moto smoothly, “I am very sorry you should have been inconvenienced. Very, very sorry. You must forget, please, everything that you have heard. I know that I may rely on you for that. Our friend here was not killed by a pistol shot. He was killed by a bolt sent from a crossbow, so that there was no sound of a shot. The Chinese crossbows are very nice. You have seen them on sale no doubt? But now, I must not keep you any longer.” Mr. Moto rose and I rose also. “This matter will be arranged quietly, do not fear. Many things happen here quietly. I only ask you to forget—all names, everything. And now good morning, Mr. Nelson! Sometime I shall call on you, I hope so very much, and we shall drink whiskey together like good Americans. Ha, ha! And have a talk like friends. You have been very nice. Please excuse everything. Good morning!”
Mr. Moto turned his attention again to the body of Major Best, but just as I was starting away he called me back.
“Excuse me, please,” he said. “Here is something I have forgotten. Will you return it please?” And he handed me the gold compact case. “You see, I trust you, Mr. Nelson. You have been very, very nice.”
I thanked him, although I felt quite sure that Mr. Moto trusted no one. Nevertheless, that last gesture of his filled me with deep relief. That tableau of the study, of the dead man, and of the glinting gold filled teeth of Mr. Moto, had implications the more disturbing because I could not guess them. Mr. Moto’s businesslike adroitness was something which I did not wish to see again. My mind went back to Eleanor Joyce, now that I was holding her compact in my hand. My mind went back just as I had turned back to her, instinctively, the night before—in spite of my doctrine of broad tolerance which I had thought that China had taught me.
“Mr. Moto,” I said, and he looked up patiently and intently, although I knew that he wished that I would go, “I should like to be reassured about just one thing.”
“Yes?” said Mr. Moto. “One thing? Yes?” He had never seemed so delicate as he did when I stood there looking down at him, a miniature of a man, as small as the gardens and the dwarfed trees of his island.
“I’d like your definite word,” I said, “that Miss Joyce will not be involved in this. It was a mistake—her being here last night.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Moto heartily. “Yes, of course—only a mistake. We can be gentlemen, of course. You need not worry about Miss Joyce. This is not a lady’s business. Oh no! Not at all. I shall manage now, I think.”
“Thanks,” I said, and I found that I actually believed him. “Thank you very much.”
“And now,” said Mr. Moto again, imperviously polite, “I must not keep you any longer, but please, may I give you some advice as a friend? I should go back to your house. It must be very comfortable—you have such very good taste—and think no more about this. Remember only that you had a little dinner with Major Best the evening before he died and that it is very sad. Remember nothing else. I hope you understand?”
I understood and we shook hands.
“It’s all over as far as I’m concerned,” I said. “I’m not a fool and I don’t meddle.”
Chapter 8
I had not realized how much the interview with Mr. Moto had tired me until I was in my ricksha again, moving down the street. Then I took out my handkerchief and mopped my forehead, and my forehead was moist and clammy in spite of the warm sun. The reaction from that conversation was settling heavily upon me and with it a sense of deep relief. It is not so often in life that one has a second chance. Contrary to all my principles of not interfering in the course of events, I had deliberately involved myself in the adventures of a girl whom I hardly knew. I had acted quixotically, and China is no place for quixotic action, since the consequences are too unfathomable.
I had stepped, and she had stepped, close to the brink of a secret that had sent a man to his death. The shadows of that secret had been close about us for a while, and now by great good fortune those shadows had disappeared. I had stood by her and I had saved her perhaps from unpleasant consequences and now the slate was clean. I could go back to my life as it has been and she could go back to hers. It was like the dance of the evening before, when we had been close together for a moment—and now the dance was over.
“Well,” I said to myself, “that’s over and it doesn’t matter, does it?”
But it was not as easy as I had thought to feel that it did not matter, because something was all around me. Something had brushed by and had touched my shoulder. It had to do with a bandit in blue coolie clothes and the hard-eyed Major Best whose eyes were glazed forever, with an unknown but certainly disagreeable person named Mr. Takahara, and the intrigue of Japan. All the stories and the gossip which one hears in China in these days: of Japanese agents working mole-like in the dark, of sudden death, of bribery and corruption and of manufactured incidents, all had a new significance to me. I tried to set my thoughts in order, but I could not. I could not rid my memory of the body of Major Best sprawled on the study floor. He had died because he knew something. I was sure of that. Nor could I escape the vision of Mr. Moto, cool and professional. It was none of my business but I wondered how Mr. Moto had heard the news, when a crossbow shot made no sound.
Then my thoughts were running along another entirely useless channel, since Eleanor Joyce was out of this affair, I wondered, if things had been different how I should have acted, well or badly. Probably badly.
“Well,” I said to myself again. “That’s over and it doesn’t matter, does it?”
Yet even then I must have realized that it was not over. Once you touch a thing like that—once you get in the way of something, by all the laws of human action there is a different sort of ending. A question of Mr. Moto’s came back to me, which had not impressed me at the time.
“‘Could one have overheard your talk last night? Someone, for instance, in the trees beyond the wall?… You have asked me if these things matter. If they do, I shall be very, very sorry for you. Yes! very, very sorry!’”
Though there was nothing that pointed at danger, yet one could not be sure, because nothing was sure in those days.
Chapter 9
The situation which I am trying to describe is an indefinable and difficult matter, because it is a mood. I am trying to piece together a series of events following my meeting with Mr. Moto, events which started as small matters in themselves and ended in something close to climax. Now as I look back on them, I believe I always had a subconscious sense of something dangerous impending, for there is a part of one’s mind when it is aroused that is suspicious without reason—that never entirely sleeps. The difficulty is that the way I reacted to these events implies a certain knowledge of China, of the deviousness and the indirectness of life, and this makes it a hard matter to explain.<
br />
China and Peking that morning were closing about me in small gossamer meshes, so guilelessly as to be beyond accurate perception. I was on my way home, on the broad modern street again, which passes the South Wall of the Forbidden City. All the appurtenances of the place were beginning to take on a jewel-like glitter in the growing heat of the sun. The pink walls had a warmer hue, totally different from the icy pink of winter. Waves of heat radiated silkily from the yellow tiles. The white marble bridges over the outer moat sparkled in intricate, lacelike patterns. The cedars above the wall of the Tai Miao, where the Emperors once communed with the spirits of their royal dead, gave the only touch of color which was cool. I felt my utter insignificance as I saw that glow of color. I understood why the Chinese dwelt within walled courts, through my own desire to be again inside my walls, which would shut out symbolism and mystery. I remembered the first time I had set eyes on Peking streets and recalled that baffling impression of utter unfamiliarity, that lack of any basis for comparison with my own world, which every scene had presented. In the lapse of time between that first encounter and the present I had thought that I had learned something, but now I knew that I had not, and that I never would. The minutiae and the complexities of the Chinese mind, as represented by that city, were too great to be mastered, too diffuse ever to permit an accurate conclusion. Any generalization might be partially correct and be, at the same time, entirely wrong. In spite of the bright sun, I was like someone wandering in the dark.
When Yao stood at my door to meet me he no longer seemed like an individual whose traits I knew almost as well as my own. Instead of being able to associate him with his stupidities and his weaknesses, he became to my imagination a composite of all his race. His face had that placid, exasperating patience of China. The cynicism and materialism, so refined as to be nearly spiritual, the bluntness and the delicacy of perception, the abjectness and the vanity, the bravery and the cowardice, the loyalty and the deceit—all those eternal contradictions of China were printed on it. He was as difficult to construe as a page of Chinese characters whose ideographs shift elastically in accordance with the reader’s own thoughts. Yao followed me to my room and stood without speaking while I sat down behind my red lacquer desk.
Thank You, Mr. Moto Page 5
