by Gavin Black
I used my handkerchief on everything I had touched in that room. Then I went next door and did it there, too, carefully. The aroma of cigar smoke hung on and I wasn’t surprised to see a butt smouldering in an ash-tray. It seemed to mark the minutes between life and death, between coming back from a too big lunch and lying with a knife sticking out of you. The room out here was smug with the neutrality of hotel sitting-rooms, giving away nothing to your occupancy. Next door they had only to remove horror from a purple coverlet and open up for letting again.
It made you want to die, when your time came, in some intense orgy of the personal, your things about you, the faces you had any emotional claim on nicely grouped around in a circle. In Tokyo I was a transient, with no claims on anyone, just an old fear to keep me company. All I really felt as I went around doing what I had to was that there mustn’t be, for me, another chapter of involvement with these people, where they held the power.
There was no one in the hall. I wiped the handle behind me and went down the corridor, away from Mikos, not going too fast. This time I didn’t mean to go out by the side entrance. The doorman might be back and a solitary would be noted. The main entrance was the answer, the safest exit. Everyone used this hotel and the lobbies held people at almost any hour of the day or night.
I went by the stairs. The orchestra they have for meals, even midday, was going through a selection from The Flower Drum Song and I walked down to the rollicking tune of “Sunday,” sprightly even from whining fiddles. Then, on the mezzanine, I almost bumped into Reggie Spratt.
He was an acquaintance, slightly more on one or two mildly boozy evenings, lean, balding, British, and insatiably curious.
“Hallo, old boy. Looking for a bar? This must be about the only hotel in the world where they’re bloody hard to find. Actually, you’re on the wrong level. We go down one. Join me?”
I smiled at him.
“I don’t midday, thanks. It puts me off for the afternoon.”
“Really? I thought that was an antique tropic prejudice long since chucked away with the topee.”
He beamed at me. One doesn’t usually think of the English as perpetually ready to switch on charm, but Reggie was prodigal with his, chucking it about. We went down the last flight of stairs together, slowly. Inside my head was a voice saying loudly: “Start on your alibi right now.”
“You don’t live here, do you?” Reggie asked.
“No. I wouldn’t if it was free.”
“Exactly my feeling. It’s a pity the Americans missed it when they blasted this city. But of course they had orders to spare it for the top brass. One must spare the decent hotel in every city one blasts if it’s at all possible. It’s one of the problems about atomic war they haven’t ironed out yet.”
The music was getting even louder. They were now playing “I Enjoy Being a Girl.”
“How are you getting on in your negotiations with that Greek?” Reggie asked.
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“Oh, really? I shouldn’t have thought you had a hope in hell, not against Shompei. Or have you some concealed big guns you haven’t brought into play yet?”
“Just medium range, but effective.”
“From all I hear this is big stuff. Very. I’d heard you’d gone home, actually.”
“I did. For more money.”
“Oh, it’s like that. Fight to the last ditch, eh? Splendid. Seeing Mikos today?”
“I may.”
I looked at Reggie then. It was just possible he was really interested. Officially he wasn’t in this little game, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t have an undercover role. There had been a considerable stink of activity of this kind from the very beginning.
We reached the lobby. I was acutely aware of having produced no casual alibi; I just couldn’t think of one. Reggie lifted his hand to me as I moved off towards the doors, and I went through them with the feeling of him watching, of his having noted for special consideration the fact that I was in a hotel I didn’t like at lunchtime, but not lunching, not even having a drink. It hadn’t been a good way to leave things between us.
A taxi drew up disgorging a Chinese woman in the Shanghai dress laden with packages, and I got in while she was still paying the driver.
“Benten Building. Hurry!”
The driver’s response was good. We spurted away, past the fish pond and the ornamental lanterns which are somehow reminiscent of Central American stone gods and once we were in the street he practically drove to kill. I began to hear the splintering sounds of a crash and had a vision of one of those white-coated policemen, who are everywhere, popping up far too soon in my schedule. We just missed a laden bus taking workers back from eating. There was shouting, but we missed it.
Then at Hibiya we got held up in a traffic jam, and I sat in the back listening to the clicking meter and wondering whether the blonde had waited, or whether she had decided to phone the hotel after all. If she had phoned the alarm might be out now, and that wasn’t a pleasant thought.
The delay seemed to make my driver slightly hysterical. Released again, we whirled into a covey of cyclists, all going fast, many of the riders coming back with empties from business men’s lunches, and one trick performer balancing eight bowls on an ebony tray, bearing these aloft. He swooped under the cab bonnet and turned to leer. My driver yelled:
“Konyaru chiksho kisama!”
It was really rather the way I was feeling, too.
In the Benten Building, emptyish during the lunch break, I still didn’t wait for the lift, I walked up. I had the feeling that I didn’t want to be confined with people who might just stand looking at me and later remember for the police. I still hadn’t any idea how I was going to deal with Reggie as a witness against me. It wanted a lot of careful thinking about. Maybe it was just as well I hadn’t said anything, so that my alibi, if I needed to use it, could be nicely polished.
I went down a passage towards a door I knew pretty well by this time, with a temporary card slipped into a holder which said: “Georges Mikos, business agent.” I stood quite still by the door, looking down at the knob. Then I turned it slowly.
“Come in,” Miss Haines said clearly from inside.
The blonde was sitting at her desk. In her hand was a large Luger, and it was pointed straight at me.
CHAPTER II
JAPAN HAS a fair number of good-looking women, though nothing like as high a percentage of these as you might imagine from the musical shows. And all of them, of course, are dark, which makes a blonde in Tokyo a particularly arresting sight. I’d felt this the first time I saw Marla Haines and I felt it again now, even with that gun pointed at my stomach.
“I’m glad you were careful,” I said. “But you should have locked the door. Anyone could have walked in.”
“I was only expecting you, Mr. Harris,” she said gently.
I shut the door.
“You can put that thing away now.”
“I think not. Sit down if you like. In that chair there.”
Miss Haines looked remarkably composed. She had been smoking a cigarette and she picked this up now from the rim of the ash-tray, her eyes never leaving me. I had the feeling that this wasn’t the first time by any means that she had held a gun. Lugers make an unpleasant noise when they go off, and the bullet smacks into a man like something from a small cannon. They’re a powerful argument.
“What’s wrong with my boss?” Marla Haines asked.
I looked at her.
“He’s dead. Someone stabbed him with a chopping knife.”
For a moment she didn’t believe me, I could see that. And then, suddenly, she did, as though from reasons of her own. It was a shock seeing her hit by terror. It started first in her eyes, panic horror, then it was like watching a face, a very lovely one, disintegrate. She couldn’t be as young as I’d thought, by any means. The life couldn’t just crumple out of a very young face like this. You could see her old in that moment, and gaunt with terror
from the emptiness that came with years. It made her hauntingly pathetic briefly, and then she rallied, though her lips went on trembling. Oddly the hand holding the gun didn’t. If anything she tightened her grip on that, spending a little of her desperation in clutching at something.
She didn’t know I’d listened in on the phone, and she wasn’t going to, if I could help it. It was one reason I was here, to see what she was going to do about those last instructions from Mikos. Under the circumstances, and to a dutiful secretary, those instructions were almost sacred.
“Do you mind if I lock the door before I sit down?” I said.
“Why?” She managed that.
“I’d hate the killer to walk in on us. He might be coming.”
I locked the door. The gun followed me. I went and sat in the chair she had indicated.
“If you’re thinking that I killed Mikos, think again.”
“You were there! This could be some trick. Why should I believe you?”
“Look, Miss Haines, he’s dead all right. When I went into the sitting-room of his suite the killer was still in the bedroom.”
I told her about that, the truth, all except my interception of the phone call. I said I went into the bedroom when I heard Mikos making an odd coughing noise. Watching her I wondered if that brought a kind of relief, the thought that I hadn’t heard what they said in Mikos’s last talk.
She believed me now. She stubbed out her cigarette and then put the gun down on the desk in front of her. She folded both her hands together and looked at them. She had long tapering nails painted a coral colour.
“Why did you come here?” she asked. “Why did you let me know you were in that suite? You could have just gone.”
“The killer’s hunting for something. I’ve got a feeling he didn’t find it in Mikos’s room. It seemed logical that he might come here. I didn’t like the thought of that one little bit. Why aren’t you out to lunch?”
“I often bring a sandwich. I did today. Mr. Mikos was coming back in the afternoon. That isn’t the only reason you came here, is it? Just because the killer might …? What do you want?”
“A lead. I’m pretty sure you can give me one.”
“I can’t! I swear it!”
It seemed to me that she was swearing too quickly.
“Nothing came into your mind just now when you heard Mikos was dead? Nothing that would be a pointer?”
“No! Of course not. Why should anyone want to kill Mr. Mikos?”
“There is a reason. A good one. Someone in this country might want to manufacture that diesel without paying for the licence to do so. You might almost say it’s an old Japanese custom. They could mean to steal the plans and just use them. It’s been done quite often before.”
“I don’t believe anyone could do that!”
“Then you’re not up in your business history. This country has a sad reputation which it now regrets for not showing a great deal of respect for international patents. There just might be quite a few of the boys of the old school still hanging on. If they got those plans they could simply go ahead and make that engine, maybe with a few minor changes, and then flood the markets.”
“But … the Swedes would sue them.”
“Suits like that sometimes take ten years in the courts out here. I could give you a tidy list of sufferers on that score if you wanted it. They wouldn’t exactly protect the crook against an action, but the chances are he’d have a long run before he had to stop production. Long enough to make a lot of money. Isn’t that a motive for killing Mikos and getting hold of the plans?”
“How could they get hold of them?”
“Where are the plans kept, Miss Haines? In a safe in the inner office here?”
“Of course not! Mikos wasn’t a fool.”
“Where?”
“In a safe deposit box at the Dai Nippon Ginko.”
“Always?”
“Yes. He knew how valuable they were.”
“Then the murderer could have been looking for a safe deposit key.”
“But that’s impossible. He couldn’t use it. I mean, they know the people who go to the vaults. You have to sign in and out. And a guard goes with you.”
“You know a lot about it?”
“I went with Mr. Mikos once to put some records away with the plans. I tell you, no one could get in there, just because they had a key. There isn’t any way those plans could be stolen.”
She reached out then for a cigarette, as though she needed one badly, her fingers fumbling a little with the packet and over matches. I saw the way she sucked that smoke down into her lungs and held it, letting it out slowly.
“Have you been Mikos’s secretary for long?” I asked.
“Only since he came to Tokyo.”
This meant that she had been living in Japan. I wondered what had brought her to this country, which is a kind of fag end of life for girls on their own who look like this one. In the way Shanghai used to be.
She was looking at me now, carefully, in control of feeling again.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“About what?”
“The murder. Being in that suite?”
“Only you know I was there. Are you going to tell?”
“Why do you put it like that?”
“It seems to me the sixty-four thousand dollar question. You could throw me to the wolves easily enough. And if you want to know, I think the police could probably make a murder charge stick if they were keen enough to.”
“Why did you really come here, Mr. Harris?”
“I’ve given you all the reasons.”
“And I find it a little hard to believe that. You could be after the plans yourself.”
“I am. But I want them legally, for a price. I represent extremely respectable business men in Singapore. We couldn’t use stolen plans. Which means that Mikos’s death is about the last thing that suits me. We’ll have to start all over again now, with some new agent the Swedes appoint. So you see that lets me out for motive.”
“You could be working for Japanese crooks.”
“Miss Haines, I’m a mildly rich man. And even if I weren’t, Japanese crooks are about the last ones I’d work for. With Mikos dead the whole deal is off until his Swedish principals decide what to do. That is, of course, unless he left some clear instructions behind him.”
Her eyes flicked to mine.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well … things might have reached a stage with, say, Shompei Shoten when a simple statement from you might be enough to prove contract. What did Mikos say to you on the phone?”
Marla Haines looked down at the desk.
“Nothing at all. Nothing that made sense. He must have been … dying then. It was just a lot of muttering. You heard me, didn’t you? Asking what was the matter?”
“Yes, I heard that.”
The girl was not an accomplished liar, or perhaps a killing had shaken her out of her form. I was perfectly certain then that she knew a great deal more about what was behind this than she intended to tell me. And my curiosity was again the kind you feel about an adversary. Maybe I had made a very serious blunder indeed in telling her that I had found Mikos. It gave her a card she could play whenever she wanted to, when the game hotted up, as I felt perfectly certain it was going to.
“Did anyone see you in the hotel?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“Yes.”
“So you’ve thought of an explanation?”
“No one needs one for being in the Myoko.”
“It looks as though you might, Mr. Harris.”
I didn’t detect any menace in the way she said that, but we looked at each other, for quite a little time. It was as though she had got feeling back on to balance again, and was watching her moves. Her next question made me certain of this.
“When do you think they’ll find him?”
“A maid is bound to go in to change the towels. It could happen any time.”
>
“And what then?”
“I should think the police will show up here pretty quickly. Do you want to be waiting when they do?”
She thought about that, and then shook her head.
“I’d rather not be here.”
“Where do you live?”
“In a hotel called the Asubira.”
“Then why don’t you go back there? You could say that Mikos rang you up to say he wouldn’t be in this afternoon. You finished some work and then went home. I should think they’ll search this place. They’re bound to start asking you questions sooner or later, but it might be later if you weren’t around during the first flurry of excitement.”
“And what about you, Mr. Harris?”
“I don’t plan on being around when the police arrive either. On the other hand I’d like a quick look around Mikos’s office in there. I’ll do it after you’ve gone, so you won’t have to know anything about it. Incidentally, where did that Luger come from?”
“Mr. Mikos’s bottom drawer. It’s a pity he didn’t have it in the hotel with him. He sometimes carried it in his attaché case, but he hadn’t a licence for it and was a bit afraid of police regulations.”
“Wipe your fingerprints off and we’ll put it back in his desk. Are you going to open the safe for me?”
She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged.
“All right. You’ll find the plans aren’t there.”
We went into the inner office in a kind of phase of collaboration between us. It was a combination safe and she knew how it worked, which made me feel pretty certain that Mikos, who was a careful man, didn’t use it for anything valuable. It contained very little, and no plans. She shut it with a click and then turned to me.
“Any other way I can help you?” That was slightly mocking.
“I’d like to have a look at the desk, if you don’t mind. I know it’s strictly irregular, and I won’t leave any fingerprints for the police to find.”
“You think you’ll come on something that will point to the killer?”
“You never know.”
“You’ll be wasting your time, but don’t let that stop you. And now I think I’ll go, as you suggested. I have a funny feeling that we might hear the police sirens at any moment. Leave everything tidy, won’t you?”