by John Creasey
“Far better to have two red rubies than to cry tears of grief”.
Chapter Seven
Bombay
Almost as soon as the shadow of anxiety fell on Lorna’s face, it lifted. She smiled at tall, black-haired Pargetter, and said something which set him and Gillian Wilde laughing, before she moved across, stepping over bronzed limbs and scarcely covered torsos, brightly coloured towels and gaily striped chairs, to join Mannering. It was too early for the sun to burn, so she wore no wrap; a bottle-green swimsuit showed just how magnificent her figure was, and young men as well as old glanced at her, some shamelessly, some covertly.
“Is it what we’ve been expecting?” she asked. Facing the calm ocean, she could afford to allow anxiety to show again.
“Yes.” Mannering showed the marconigram to her.
“From London,” she remarked, bitterly, “where nothing has been happening, according to Bristow.”
“You forget there was a truce,” said Mannering. “Now we’ll have to make up our minds what to do. I’ll race you four times up and down the pool, the winner to make the decision.”
“Don’t make light of it,” Lorna protested, and yet relief began to show in her eyes. “You’d never let me win, and even if I won, you wouldn’t do what I want you to do.”
After a pause, while he quizzed her, aware that others were still watching her – and that two young girls were watching him with all the indications of hero-worship in their eyes – Mannering asked: “That depends. What do you really want me to do?”
Lorna did not answer at once. They had not talked about the situation since leaving London, although Mannering was sure that Lorna had thought about it quite as much as he. Now she looked at him with an expression which many would call sullen. He knew better. He could guess how her thoughts had vacillated, how she had tried to avoid being swayed by emotional fears, and how she had tried to see the situation as he did. She knew that; and she also knew that his greatest fear was for her.
“I suppose I know we’ll have to go on,” she said. “I wish to God it had never happened, but we can’t pretend that it didn’t. You want to go on, don’t you?”
“I wish I could go on alone,” Mannering said.
“Oh no, John. Not that. Either we both go home or we both go to Hong Kong.” She spoke with such intensity that he knew she was afraid he would try to persuade her not to come with him. “Promise me that.”
“Together, wherever we go,” Mannering pledged solemnly. “Part of the time anyhow.” Alarm flared in her eyes. “Don’t hedge!”
“I’ve been thinking,” Mannering said, mildly. “We needn’t hand ourselves to these people on a platter. We may as well make them think we’ve got cold feet, even if we haven’t. So if we disembark at Bombay, stay for a few days at the Taj, say, and then fly Air India or B.O.A.C. to Delhi as if we were going back to England, then fly to Hong Kong from Delhi, we’d get there in good time, and when we were not expected.”
Now his eyes were beginning to crinkle at the corners, laughter sparking in them. Lorna thought how remarkably like her cavalier portrait of him he was. “I could go on ahead, but not as the real me. The Wilmingtons will be glad to have you in Delhi for a few days, and we can soon work out the details. There are plenty of them.”
After another long pause, Lorna spoke half amusedly, half exasperatedly:
“You’ll have it your own way, whatever I say. You won’t do anything definite without consulting me, though, will you?”
“Not a thing,” Mannering assured her. “How about that race?”
Soon, she was breathless with exertion and with laughter. He marvelled, and was glad, and yet knew she also lived on the edge of fear.
Mannering sent a marconigram to Bristow, and a letter explaining in broad outline what he intended to do, and posted it on board; it would go airmail from Bombay. From the ship he cabled the Taj Mahal Hotel for a room, and cabled to the Wilmingtons, in Delhi: “Can you bear with Lorna and me for a few days next week?” If the captain’s table was surprised by the change of plans, there was little comment. Mannering felt as if he were living in a state of semi-reality, suspended between his real intentions and his pretended ones.
The curious shipboard excitement, like a mild fever, touched nearly everyone on the night before Bombay. No one appeared to meet or watch the Mannerings. No one seemed to notice that they went to a travel agency and booked passages for London with a stop-over at Delhi, and also went to a lot of trouble to get a refund for the unfinished part of the ship’s voyage. It was almost disappointing, until they went into their enormous high-ceilinged room at the hotel, the air stirred by a huge ceiling fan as well as a breeze off the Indian Ocean which seemed to blow straight through the massive Gateway of India. A letter underneath the door was marked: “By Hand.” It could be from almost anyone, and they read it together: “The companion ruby is waiting for you at Quinns.”
“So wherever we go we’re watched,” Lorna said.
“It won’t be too long before we start watching them,” said Mannering.
It was an empty thing to say, and both of them realised it, but it did one good thing: it forced Mannering to face up to the fact that they knew nothing at all about the people involved, the reason for wanting to keep him away from Hong Kong and from seeing Raymond Li Chen’s exhibition. He wasn’t even sure that it had anything to do with Bristow’s problem. If it had a political motive, there was no telling how dangerous it might become.
Was he right to take risks with Lorna? Was the wise thing to call the whole thing off?
He knew that if he did he would never be able to live with himself again, and that drove him to the obvious conclusion: he had to find a way to strike back soon. He had been on the defensive, almost on the run, for far too long. What he wanted to do more than anything else was to talk to Li Chen, and he put through a call to Hong Kong that evening. He stood by the window of the bedroom, watching the Orienta steam slowly out of the harbour and towards the open sea. The space by the Gateway of India was a seething mass of white-coated and white-dhoti’d men, gaily clad women and squirming, racing, laughing children.
His telephone bell rang. Lorna, sitting at the window, watched him as he moved towards it. Now he would have to decide what to say to Li Chen.
The operator said in sing-song English: “I am sorry, Mr. Mannering, but the gentleman you wish to speak to is not in Hong Kong today. He is said to be in London. Is there anyone else you wish to talk to?”
“No,” Mannering said, through his surprise and disappointment. “No, thank you.”
“It is my pleasure to help you, sir. No trouble.” The operator rang off, Mannering shrugged his shoulders and remarked: “Li Chen has plenty of time to fly to London and back before the exhibition date, I suppose, but I’ve never known him visit London without advising the main dealers well in advance.”
“John,” Lorna said, “he couldn’t be the man behind it, could he?”
“Why on earth should he be?”
“He may have started something which got too big for him, or he may have been frightened. It isn’t any use going on to Hong Kong if he’s not there, is it?”
“It doesn’t look like it,” agreed Mannering, but even as he spoke he argued with himself. It was easy to take it for granted that there was a connection between Raymond Li Chen’s collection and the missing valuables from the Chinese mainland, but there was no possibility of being sure.
“Let’s go for a stroll,” he said. “I feel stifling.” In fact he felt more frustrated than he could ever remember; whatever he wanted to do in this affair, he was forestalled or prevented. Even the seething mass of people in the streets, the continual babble of voices, the curry and rice vendors, the sellers of sweetmeats and cane-sugar pieces, of cigarettes and tattered books, of betel nuts and herbs and spices, could not raise his spirits. Beggar after beggar sidled up to him, keeping a wary eye on the nearest policeman. Each looked into his bleak face and moved away, discoura
ged. Then a tiny woman, with one child in her arms and another clutching at her sari, stood near with her palm outstretched. She looked as if she would do anything for the sake of a few pice. She actually blocked the Mannerings’ way.
“John, give her something,” Lorna said almost sharply. “Don’t snap her head off.”
“Do what?” asked Mannering, startled. He took two purple notes from his ticket pocket, and handed them to the woman, and as he did so, a small piece of paper slid as if by magic out of the folds of the ragged sari, and transferred itself to his palm. The little woman smiled, and her heart seemed to shine in her eyes. She murmured a word, and turned away. Mannering put the note in his pocket and walked on, looking about him. No one seemed to be taking any special notice of them, except the beggars, and one after another they stepped into their path, wary only of the police.
Many people were watching, and Mannering did not want to open the note yet, although he could hardly keep his hand off it.
They were back in the hotel before he took it out.
“You will find the woman who gave you this note near the entrance to the Jumna Temple”, the note ran. “Please come with her to see me.”
The signature was Raymond Li Chen.
“Is it Li Chen’s writing?” Lorna demanded.
“I’ve seen it a hundred times, and I think it is.”
“You can’t be sure,” Lorna insisted. “It could be a trick to find out if you’re really giving the case up.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Mannering said. “By going to see him.” When Lorna simply stood and stared at him as if astounded he went on quietly: “Darling, either we see this thing through, or we don’t. If we do, there is bound to be a risk, but there have been a thousand risks in the past, and we’re still alive and thriving.”
“I know,” Lorna said in a subdued voice. “When will you go?”
“Not too early,” Mannering said. For a few moments they stood very close together. “Now the time has come to see if I have forgotten the fine art of disguise. Care to hold the mirror for me?”
“You mean you brought your grease-paint case?”
“Of course I did,” Mannering said.
Lorna forced a laugh, and picked up the mirror, but he was more troubled about her than he had expected to be. It was as if she had a genuine premonition of danger.
But soon she seemed to become as absorbed as he in what he was doing.
He sat in front of the dressing-table mirror, with a small make-up case open in front of him, and began to make changes to his face. He was adept as a man could be, and was utterly absorbed in the task. He created lines on his face which seemed to alter the shape of his mouth and nose and chin, worked the lines in until they seemed part of his skin. He aged in front of Lorna’s eyes, ten or fifteen years at least. He worked on his hair, and his eyes so that they looked narrower and smaller, and he worked grease-paint into his nose so that it looked reddish-blue and veined. Time passed so quickly for each of them that when at last he finished, they were startled to find that it was nine o’clock.
“Will I do?” asked Mannering. His voice didn’t sound like his own, but that of an American, rather hard with broad vowels – Bostonian and Harvard, most people would have guessed. “It’s a lucky thing I brought that seersucker suit.” The suit was of striped black and off-white cotton, cool and beautifully tailored, a suit bought for a heatwave in New York a year before. He put this on. Out of a pocket in the lining Lorna took a small peaked cap of matching material with flap at the back, and a pair of rather new-looking tan brown leather brogues. He put these on, and stood up.
“I hate to say it,” Lorna said, “but no one could possibly recognise you.”
“That’s what I like to hear, hon!”
When Mannering left her, she was smiling; and that represented no mean achievement on his part. He listened at the door for a moment, heard nothing, and stepped outside. At the far end of the tiled passage were two white-clad floor waiters, consulting earnestly over trays. They looked up when he approached.
“Good evening, sahib.”
“Good evening, sir.”
“Hi,” said Mannering. “How do you get out of this place?”
They escorted him along the corridor, which matched one on the other side of an enormous well, towards the lifts. An attendant took him down. The hallway was nearly empty, more staff than guests stood about idly. Mannering walked out by the main entrance and across the gardens, ignoring two taxi-drivers who tried to catch his eye. He walked briskly in the cool, starlit night towards the Gateway; stars reflected on the calm water. Most of the crowd had gone, but the beggars and the food vendors were still there; it was like running a gauntlet of eager, voluble auctioneers. He walked towards the heart of the city until he was sure that no one followed him, then hailed a passing taxi. It was a Mini-Minor, and the driver was a huge Sikh wearing a turban, but dressed otherwise in European clothes. His English was excellent.
“Jumna Temple, sah. I know that very well, very famous place. All my life I am knowing Jumna Temple … The American gentleman is in a hurry?” He shot the little car along the cobbles, swaying from side to side. “I am very fast driver, also very safe. Not once in all my life have I had a fatal accident while driving—” He swerved wildly to avoid a motor cycle. “Son of a wanton, do you wish to break my lifelong record? American gentleman could not choose a better taxi-driver in all Bombay. I know it like the palm of my two hands. Also I tell fortunes. Also I take gentleman for night-life tour? Perhaps you think no night-life in Bombay, ha! ha! ha! American gentleman is indeed wrong. Wonderful night-life, beautiful women, oriental music, Western music, the Blues, the Twist, also the Beatles, we have them all. One hour tour for gentleman?”
“We’ll see,” said Mannering. “Stop by the temple, will you?”
“Temple not open all night, sah, but very good to see from outside. I take gentleman from America …”
They pulled up outside the temple. Mannering thrust three rupees into the driver’s hand, but the man stretched across, held the door, and looked and sounded as if he were astounded and affronted. “For one hour tour, twenty rupees, gentleman.”
“I’ve taken a ten minute drive,” Mannering said. “Keep the change!”
He watched the taxi drive off swaying as if with its driver’s wrath, into the dimly lit street. This was a very different part of Bombay, with tiny shops, still open, and shady side streets, flickering oil and candlelight, pale electric lights, people looming out of doorways and standing or squatting still and silent. Across the road were the shapes of the towers of the temple, and of holy men squatting by it. A woman with a baby in her arms and a child clinging to her dark red sari was standing as if with the patience of Job.
No one appeared to take any notice of Mannering, yet a thousand eyes were watching, a thousand retinas had the image of the tall man in the pale, striped suit. He approached the woman, who hardly came up to his breast, and she put out her hand in automatic supplication.
Mannering took the signed note from his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to her. The way her eyes rounded in surprise was the best proof possible of the effectiveness of his disguise.
“Take me to the man who gave you this note,” Mannering said.
She nodded, but he did not know whether she understood the words or simply the implication. She turned with a rustle of cotton, and the toddler by her side clung to the old and tattered sari and trotted along with her. They passed men sleeping in their bundles of rags, and others squatting and staring as if silently, yet Mannering knew that those thousand eyes were turned towards him.
Soon, he would know if the summons had really come from Raymond Li Chen.
Chapter Eight
The Man In The Shadows
The woman and her children made no sound; it was as if Mannering was following ghosts. Ghosts. The woman turned into a narrow street which had no pavements, only the cobbled roadway which went close up to the wall
s of houses and of shops. A few glimmering lights broke the darkness, that was all. Now he fancied he could hear the faint padding sound of the woman’s footsteps.
She turned into a doorway, and disappeared. He moved to follow her, but a man stood in the doorway, an Indian in a dhoti which made him, too, look like a ghost. He did not speak, but pointed to the right.
Mannering looked round. In another doorway, standing still, was a shorter man in a pale western-style suit. Mannering could not see him well because of the poor light. He stood in shadow.
Mannering said: “Thank you,” and crossed towards the second man, who did not move.
Mannering stopped in front of him, controlling his expression, keeping his voice low. The man was undoubtedly Chinese, but was not Raymond Li Chen.
“Do you know Li Chen?” Mannering asked.
“Me not know,” the Chinaman said in pidgin English.
“Tell him I want to see him,” Mannering said. “I am John Mannering.”
“Me not know,” the other insisted. “Ask other man, please.” He pointed along the street, and Mannering turned and peered through the gloom, but saw no one. He looked back at empty shadows. The Chinaman had gone, as silently as the woman and her children.
The night was still. Only the stars lit the street, which was both eerie and frightening. He did not go away immediately, but the seconds grew into minutes and there was no sign of anyone whom he had seen. He went along a few yards, to a tiny shop where several men squatted on either side of a metal bowl on which steamed some white-coloured mess, no doubt with a rice base. He asked:
“Do you speak English?”
None of them answered.
Mannering was less afraid than annoyed, and almost angry. It was as if he were fated to fight shadows. An open menace would be better than this uncertainty.
A man appeared by his side; it was the Chinaman.
“You not Mr. Mannering,” he said clearly. “Who are you?”