"Yes," said Mrs. Pollifax calmly.
He gave her a reproachful glance. "You don't have to agree so flatly; no one enjoys hearing the truth."
Robin said lightly, "I had no idea the life of a professional psychic could be so hazardous but I can agree with you on glamour becoming addictive. It certainly seduced me for a long time and I went to great lengths to enter the world of Beautiful People—however illicitly," he added with a humorous glance at Mrs. Pollifax. "After all, I started out in life as the son of a London locksmith, dropping all my h's, and ended up hobnobbing with sheiks and princes."
Mr. Hitchens looked at him in surprise. "You did?"
"But none of them had long eyelashes," Robin said gravely.
Mr. Hitchens shook his head. "I appreciate your sympathy but I feel—have felt since that third divorce over a year ago—so ashamed, really. You see, I always wanted—always planned—to live a life of the spirit—I hope that doesn't sound pretentious?—and all I've learned is how weak and shallow a person I am."
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Pollifax sturdily, "we all betray ourselves from time to time or how else would we find out what our selves are? 1 refuse your hair shirt, Mr. Hitchens, you're missing the point . . . namely it's where you are now that matters."
His scowl had returned. "What do you mean?"
"Well, feel ashamed if you must," she told him, "but look at Robin if you will. He lifted himself out of a frustrating environment into one where he could use his considerable talents and craft—however illicitly," she added with a mischievous glance at Robin, "but if he hadn't done this—in the only way he saw how, at the time—he would never have acquired the specialized skills or been in a position to join and appreciate Interpol, where presumably he's of great help in policing the world—"
"Hear! hear!" murmured Robin.
"—and he'd certainly never have met his wife Court, whom he loves dearly. Whereas you, Mr. Hitchens— you wouldn't be here in Hong Kong this morning, attempting to solve a murder, making headline news in the paper and meeting Ruthie again—if two women hadn't spun you dizzily off balance and left you open to coming here, now would you? If living is a process, then how does one arrive anywhere except by just such painful routes?"
Mr. Hitchens looked at her with interest. "You too?"
Mrs. Pollifax laughed. "Of course! It wasn't that long ago that I felt my life totally useless and wondered if it was worth continuing. Actually a doctor found me depressed enough to urge that I look for some work I'd always wanted to do—and off I went to apply for work as a spy! Which I must say changed my life considerably," she added humorously, "but this is not finding Alec, is it, or using Mr. Hitchens's considerable talent."
"Amazing," Mr. Hitchens said, staring at her.
"Of course," Robin told him with a quick, warm smile.
"Last night I felt quite strongly that Alec's still alive," Mr. Hitchens said shyly. He turned his attention away from Mrs. Pollifax but occasionally he glanced back at her with frank curiosity.
Robin said, "Is there some way you could find out— psychically—if it's Hong Kong itself, rather than Kowloon or New Territories or Macao, where Eric the Red plans his drama?"
"Drama!" said Mr. Hitchens.
Robin shrugged. "That's what terrorism is, basically—pure theater. Nothing in particular is ever accomplished by it, other than to focus attention on a small group of people who seize absolute power by threatening everything that holds civilization together."
"Absolute power," mused Mrs. Pollifax. "Like monstrous children thumbing their noses at adults who live by codes and laws and scruples."
Robin said in a hard voice, "In my line of work I've tangled with narcotic dealers and suppliers—that's Interpol's job—and I can say of them that at least they give value for their money. If what they sell destroys human lives their victims cooperate by choice in their own destruction, and if drug dealers bend and break every law in the book they as least know the laws.
"But terrorists—" He shook his head. "They're the parasites of the century. They want to make a statement, they simply toss a bomb or round up innocent people to hold hostage, or kill without compunction, remorse or compassion. If they need money, they simply rob a bank. I have to admit not only my contempt for them," he added, "but my fear, too, because their only passion is to mock and to destroy, and that really is frightening."
"Antilife," murmured Mrs. Pollifax, remembering Eric the Red's glance on the plane.
Mr. Hitchens said abruptly, "Get me a map—as many maps as you have."
Robin brought him maps: street maps of Hong Kong, of Kowloon, of New Territories and of Macao. Mr. Hitchens laid them out flat, side by side, on the long table and asked for silence.
"You've got it," said Robin.
Mr. Hitchens closed his eyes and sat quietly for a long time, until the ticking of a nearby clock seemed to fill the room. At last he lifted one hand and began slowly moving it across the surface of the maps, sometimes in a circular motion, sometimes up and down, several times lingering briefly in one place. Five minutes passed and then abruptly he dropped his hand to one of the maps and opened his eyes. "This area," he said, and removing a pen from his pocket he drew a circle. "This brings very uncomfortable feelings, a sense of violence, and very disturbing vibrations."
"Central Hong Kong," murmured Mrs. Pollifax, leaning closer to look. "Downtown Hong Kong?"
"Your circle takes in a large area," Robin said in a troubled voice, "and it doesn't even include Feng Imports."
Mr. Hitchens shrugged. "Perhaps to both, but there are guns somewhere inside this circle, and one that looks like this. Paper, someone?"
Mrs. Pollifax handed him a paper napkin and watched his nimble fingers block out lines. "Like this," he said.
Robin, staring at his sketch, said in horror, "But you've just drawn the outline of a multiple rocket launcher!"
"Have I?" said Mr. Hitchens indifferently. "I don't know what it is, I've only sketched what I saw."
Robin sat back and frankly gaped—his mouth was actually open in shock—and Mrs. Pollifax wondered if he had really grasped Mr. Hitchens's possibilities before this moment. She said softly, "Intelligence groups are using psychics, you know . . . I've read of it even in newspapers. The CIA . . . the Soviets ..."
"But—but Mr. Hitchens has never seen a rocket launcher," protested Robin. "And yet he's drawn one. I mean, it's uncanny."
"Of course," said Mrs. Pollifax, amused, for having had her life saved in Turkey by just such means she was herself beyond astonishment.
"Then they have to have a radio," Robin said, suddenly closing his mouth and rallying. "The circle doesn't include Feng Imports and if that circle is accurate, and if eleven members of the Liberation 80's are hiding inside that circle, and Detwiler is the mastermind of this project, there would have to be communication and my guess would be a highpowered radio." He nodded. "I think it's time I visit the Governor, I think it's time we risk some of Hong Kong's police being brought into this because it's time we have radio-detection vans cruising the streets checking for highpower transmissions. We're going to need help, it's too big a responsibility for a handful of people." He reached for the napkin with a wry smile. "I hope you don't mind if I take this along with me as evidence? I don't know quite how His Excellency will react to—to—"
Mr. Hitchens smiled forgivingly. "By all means take it."
Robin had just pocketed the napkin when the telephone rang; he moved swiftly to the desk and snatched it up on the first ring. "Yes?"
He listened, made a note on the pad in front of him and said, "Thanks enormously." Hanging up he turned to Mrs. Pollifax. "That Donald Chang to whom Sheng Ti delivered a packet of diamonds ... I phoned my superiors in Paris last night, thinking it wiser they call the Hong Kong police officially with an inquiry about the chap. That was Paris calling: Donald Chang works in the baggage room at Kai Tak airport."
"Aha," said Mrs. Pollifax.
Robin, shrugging into a fla
wlessly cut black linen jacket, nodded. "Exactly. I can't think of a better place for anyone engaged in the smuggling racket, for which the payoff could be one packet of diamonds from Detwiler at Feng Imports—another little tidbit for His Excellency." He saluted each of them with a smile. "I'm off ... I wish you a delightful cruise in Hong Kong harbor—see you later!"
11
THE HARBOR AND THE SKY WERE SUNLESS THIS MORNING and a gauze curtain of mist had swept over the mountains to soften and blur their shapes and obscure their peaks. A cold choppy wind blew across the water, and once aboard the launch Mrs. Pollifax shivered; a light had been turned off and without its radiance the brilliant tropical greens looked sullen; earthbrowns that had been invisible until now outweighed the greens in prominence, bringing a somber dullness to the landscape that was relieved only by the orange of a tile roof on the wooded hillsides or the snowy facade of a new block of high-rise buildings. A jolly Raoul Duty had become a moody Turner.
Mrs. Pollifax had joined Ruthie and Mr. Hitchens not merely to sightsee for two hours; she had the more practical purpose of gun-disposal, and being in possession of a murder weapon, she considered the harbor an excellent place in which to bury it forever. She felt no compunction about her illegal act, because at the moment she could think of no explanation for having the gun that would appease the police. But she admitted also to an interest in seeing Ruthie and Mr. Hitchens together; anything so unusual as two people accidentally meeting again thousands of miles from home tugged at her curiosity. The odds against it, she felt, were surely five million to one, and the coincidences of timing—of their being in Hong Kong on the same day, and of their arriving in the lobby of the same hotel at the same moment—thoroughly charmed her.
It had obviously charmed Ruthie, too, for she looked younger today and it was not entirely due to her wearing red slacks and a bright red shirt and kerchief; she looked transformed, as almost all women do when feeling courted. She called Mr. Hitchens "Hitch," to which Mrs. Pollifax reacted with amusement and a faint sense of shock, for she herself couldn't imagine calling him anything but Mr. Hitchens. She tried to picture what he might have been like when the two had met in high school, and she smiled as she set to work stripping him of his pedantic quality, enlarging on the boyishly delighted Mr. Hitchens who had crept out of the hotel by the rear entrance, adding a touch more shyness and removing five pounds and the hint of gray at his temples.
"What are you smiling at?" asked Ruthie, shouting above the wind and the sound of the engines.
They had taken places in the stem, away from the spray as the launch headed out into the harbor to thread its way among trawlers, sampans, pleasure boats, cargo ships and junks, but before Mrs. Pollifax could reply Mr. Hitchens shouted, "Coffee? They've opened up the snack counter!"
"Oh yes," said Mrs. Pollifax with feeling, and as he moved across the desk, staggering a little against the wind, she said, "I was just wondering what he was like when you met in high school."
Ruthie laughed. "Oh—very serious and very bookish, and feeling that being psychic couldn't possibly equal playing on the football team."
"And you loved him."
Ruthie gave her a quick, startled glance and looked just as quickly away. "Yes." She hesitated, looking embarrassed, and then she said with a controlled lightness, "Do you think that—well, old fires can be rekindled?"
Mrs. Pollifax smiled. "I don't see why on earth they should be," she said. "I think it far more interesting— and a great deal more fun—to simply begin all fresh and new."
Ruthie looked startled. "You mean—not try again but look for someone else fresh and new."
Mrs. Pollifax touched her hand. "Not at all, and if we're talking about you and Mr. Hitchens—and I can't think who else we'd be speaking of—I mean that whatever drew you together once can certainly draw you together again now but I think it a great mistake to look at it as a continuation. After all, you're different people now."
Ruthie said ruefully, "What drew him to me, according to my therapist, was his looking for a mother. Except that he outgrew that and wanted to enjoy his lost youth with Sophie and then Rosalie."
Mrs. Pollifax laughed. "What a pat explanation! Well, I rather think he encountered too much youth, from hearing him speak of it, and he just may have grown bored with motherhood after having to mother them. The young so frequently have no conversation, I find, and for myself I cannot imagine anything more frustrating than living with someone who didn't experience the horrors of the Kennedy assassinations, or even know who Clark Gable was."
Ruthie laughed. "That's refreshing, you almost make my doubts disappear."
Mrs. Pollifax looked at her with a twinkle in her eye. "Doubts—or fears? You know," she said, reaching over and clasping her hand for a moment, "I really think he's seeing you with fresh eyes—he seems so astonished by it all—which leaves it entirely up to you. Did you make a very good new life? Oh thank you," she said to Mr. Hitchens, who returned with three coffees in Styrofoam cups.
Ruthie said with pride, "Yes I did, I moved into a charming apartment in Boston, in a very old house; I began teaching a fifth grade instead of kindergarten, and I started traveling."
"And has she traveled!" exclaimed Mr. Hitchens, leaning forward to join their conversation. "She leaves Saturday for Bangkok, can you imagine?"
Mrs. Pollifax sipped her coffee and listened to them talk of travel, and then of Boston, and she decided that all was well between Ruthie and Mr. Hitchens. When the proper moment arrived she made her way to the railing, opened her purse and casually dropped overboard the gun that had killed Inspector Hao. With that done, she settled down to the remaining hour of their cruise, to glimpses of white beaches at Repulse Bay and the city of sampans at Aberdeen, but her thoughts began to wander back to Feng Imports and to Mr. Detwiler, and she began to consider both of them from a new angle that startled her because over and over the question persisted: why hadn't Detwiler visited his home for two months?
"Why Irma Blank!" exclaimed Mrs. O'Malley, a huge smile enveloping her face. "To think you've come back! How nice."
"Hello," said Mrs. Pollifax, smiling. "I found myself on the next street and thought I'd just stop in and say hello and—"
"And just in time for a spot of tea," said Mrs. O'Malley in her rich, authoritative voice. "Come in, come in, I was about to pour meself a cup. Feet tired, dear?"
Deceit, thought Mrs. Pollifax, was really difficult with this kindly woman; after all, she'd had an excellent lunch of soup, steamed dumplings, bean curd and for dessert two coconut snowballs, and except for a stroll back to the hotel to change into survey clothes she had been sitting for most of the day. "Terribly," she said with a sigh, "I'll really have to think about that housekeeping you suggested, although I did very well today with my surveys." She followed Mrs. O'Malley into the kitchen and as she sat down she placed her newspaper on the table, carefully arranged so that Alec Hao's photograph was prominent.
"Oh, that dear boy," said Mrs. O'Malley, catching sight of the newspaper as she poured tea. "The only son, too!"
"Oh?" said Mrs. Pollifax. "Did you ever—?" She paused, wanting to approach the matter obliquely but to settle once and for all if Alec had passed through this house after being kidnapped. "Have your paths ever crossed?" she asked.
Mrs. O'Malley, seating herself across the table, said, "Oh no, dear, for he's been in college in the United States, you know, doing very well, even graduating with Latin words after his name."
Mrs. Pollifax stared at her in astonishment. "How— that is—I don't recall reading that in the paper."
"No, no," Mrs. O'Malley told her soothingly, "it's from his father I heard it, may God rest his soul. Really proud of him, his father was."
"His father," echoed Mrs. Pollifax. "You knew his father. The man found dead yesterday."
She nodded. "Oh, many's the night he's been here for dinner, he and Mr. Detwiler being friends, yes. Such a nice man he was, too, the inspector, and how he loved my Begga
r's Chicken! It's baked eight hours in a clay pot, you know—"
Mrs. Pollifax sat stunned: Mr. Detwiler and Inspector Hao friends? The two men had not only known each other but were friends? She felt herself reeling as she sat and allowed Mrs. O'Malley's words to flow over her.
"—chicken stuffed with chestnuts, herbs and shredded cabbage and then wrapped in lotus leaves ..."
Mrs. Pollifax wet her lips, which felt suddenly dry, and said mechanically, "It sounds delicious."
"Oh, very special it is, yes," agreed Mrs. O'Malley.
"You could open a restaurant then," Mrs. Pollifax suggested. "That is, if ever you tire of keeping house for Mr. Detwiler." The circle was growing smaller, she thought, struggling to remain steady in the face of Mrs. O'Malley's casually imparted news. Two men in this strange confusion of clues had been in contact. Two points were converging: they had been friends, and at this Mrs. Pollifax began to feel a sense of excitement . . . Had the Inspector confided to his friend his growing suspicions of briberies and stolen passports, never realizing that Detwiler was heavily involved in both, and that it would lead to the Inspector's death? Or could it have been Detwiler who inadvertently dropped the clue for Inspector Hao that had begun the search that killed him?
Well, at least she had established once and for all— and this had troubled her—that Alec Hao had never passed through Detwiler's house after being kidnapped, but she admitted that she was appalled by the fact that they had been good friends, Detwiler and the dead Inspector.
"And Mr. Feng, did he come to dinner here, too?" she asked.
Mrs. O'Malley shook her head. "Oh no, he was never invited." From her dismissing tone Mrs. Pollifax deduced that he was not considered dinner-party material.
They continued their gossip for another half an hour. Mrs. Pollifax struggled earnestly to maintain her role of Irma Blank, but it was difficult, and when she at last excused herself she felt drained. At the door she said, "I'll not be in the same neighborhood tomorrow but it's been a real pleasure, Mrs. O'Malley. No news yet, I suppose, of your employer's return?"
Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha Page 11