The Imoto, as I have said, was a small ship and the smoking room was a small cabin done in the dull, dark wood decorations of smoking rooms the world over. Japanese and Chinese business men were seated about the little tables, reminding me that the Orient was fast becoming like the rest of the world and that manners and customs were superficially, at any rate, becoming nearly the same in every part of it. At first I thought I was the only European there until I heard someone calling me. A small, hard-bitten, sandy-haired man was waving a glass at me from the other end of the room.
“Has the liquor got me at last,” he whooped, “or is that you, Casey Lee.”
Then I knew how small the world was and how strangely paths become crossed. A picture of the sandy hair, and the sandpaper-like features flashed across my mind, though I had not seen them for a long while. The man was one of those wanderers like myself; Sam Bloom, an old pilot from one of the army squadrons who had come into my life during the war and who had disappeared almost as casually. At another time I should have been glad to have seen him, for there is a companionship among flying men which time does not efface, but just then I was almost embarrassed. How was I to explain to Sam Bloom exactly what I was doing? Far from feeling my embarrassment, Sam gave another whoop of delight.
“Come on, Casey!” he shouted. “Come over here and we’ll drink out the bar!”
“Sam,” I said, “let’s get out of here,” and I took him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him out the door onto the deck.
“Hey,” said Sam Bloom.
I got a firmer grip on his coat collar. “Come down to my cabin,” I said. “We can talk better down there.”
Bloom’s topaz-colored eyes grew alert. “Anything the matter, Casey? What are you doing here?”
I did not answer him until we were in the cabin, an outside room on B deck, on an aisle amidship. The cabin was big enough to show that Mr. Moto had done me well. A large bed, two upholstered armchairs, a wardrobe closet.
“Say,” Bloom said, “you’re living in style, aren’t you, Casey? Well, you’re in the big money now.”
“I’m not,” I said. “The Pacific flight’s all off. I’m going to Shanghai.”
“Is that so?” said Sam Bloom, and for the first time in our conversation, his voice had turned cautious. “If you’re looking for a job—” He eyed me and tapped a cigarette against the back of his hand. “You’re able to take a job, aren’t you, Casey?”
“What makes you think I’m not?” I asked.
“You’re looking seedy,” he said. “Your fingers shake. Listen, Lee, it wouldn’t make me popular if I said it out loud here on a Japanese boat, but I’m a flying instructor for the Chinese army. Say the word and I’ll get you in.”
I was embarrassed as to how to answer.
“Maybe—I don’t know,” I said.
We must have talked there about old times for an hour, and when he left me I felt bitterer than usual. Bitterer because Sam Bloom also had pitied me, and out of the kindness of his heart had offered me the only opportunity he could think of, the chance of teaching young Chinese soldiers how to fly. I almost wished that he had offered me that chance a day before, because I think I would have taken it gladly, but it was too late now. Then another thought struck me.
No one had asked me for my tickets or my passport—a strange omission for a passenger vessel—and how was I to land in China?
It had not occurred to me until that moment that I had torn my passport in two and had thrown it on the floor of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. I reached automatically for my inside pocket that contained the envelope with my steamship tickets. I had not examined them carefully before, but now that I did so, I was confronted by an astonishing sight. In the envelope beside the tickets was my passport, so perfectly mended that I could hardly detect a break in its pages. The sight of it reminded me that Mr. Moto had thought of everything.
The engines of that ship were pulsing beneath me, sending a steady throbbing tremor up and down my spine. That restless feeling of vibration reminded me again that I was being carried to an unknown place on an incomprehensible errand. The knowledge made me feel distinctly ill at ease and the uncertainty made me restless. My wrist watch told me that it was late, already close to midnight, but I had no desire to sleep. Instead, I walked back through the companionways and up the stairs to the smoking room. That was when I had my first shock of surprise, just as I stood on the threshold of that small and rather ugly room.
The passengers had cleared out by then, except for a Japanese in a cutaway coat and a woman with reddish-gold hair, who was seated with him at one of the round tables. At first I thought that I was dreaming, but there was no mistake as to who those two were. Mr. Moto and Sonya Karaloff, whom I had believed I had left permanently in Tokyo, were there in the smoking room, talking in low voices. In my astonishment I found it difficult to analyze my feelings, but I experienced something like a twinge of jealousy when I saw the girl with Moto at the table.
“Why, hello,” I said. “I thought I was here alone.”
It was a silly enough remark, as I knew I had not really been alone since Moto had clapped eyes on me at the Imperial Hotel. I knew that I had been watched carefully ever since. But their reaction was amazing.
Mr. Moto turned toward me politely and raised his delicate eyebrows so that his forehead puckered in wrinkles up to the shoebrush cut of his black hair.
“Excuse me,” he said, “there must be some mistake.”
“What?” I asked him. “What mistake?”
He smiled apologetically. “It is so easy for a foreigner to mistake one of my people for someone else,” he said. “I am so very sorry. I have never had the pleasure—of meeting you before.”
Sonya was looking at me also, blankly, half amused. “Nor I either,” she said. “There must be some mistake.”
I gazed at them stupidly before I remembered Sonya’s cautioning me that I was not to recognize anyone on the boat.
“I beg your pardon,” I said then. “This was careless of me.”
Mr. Moto smiled tranquilly and answered, “It is quite all right, but it is better to be careful.”
That was all there was to the scene. We did not say another word and perhaps there should have been no need for anything further to convince me that I was in the midst of something that was dark and devious, almost sinister—not after seeing those two there.
I sat in the corner of the smoking room for a little while as though I were a stranger, watching Sonya and Moto from the corner of my eye. I did not like it. I did not like to see her sitting with Moto, though it was none of my business. I felt that she did not belong in such a role. Finally I rose and went on deck. There was nothing but a warm breeze and a dark sea on deck, but, all the same, although the promenade seemed deserted, I had that same feeling of being watched. I could have sworn there were footsteps behind me as I walked by the rail. Once I was so sure of it that I spun around sharply on my heel, only to discover that there was no one visible—only the bare promenade behind me with a row of electric lights above it. Finally I went to my stateroom again, not because I wished to sleep, but because the place, on account of my baggage, was familiar and reassuring.
The cabin was just as I had left it, with my bags in exactly the places I remembered, but in some way I knew that someone had been there in my absence. Perhaps everyone, some time in his life, has had a similar experience of awareness—nothing else. As soon as I turned to bolt my door, I knew that my intuition was right, for the bolt had been removed. I could see the holes where the screws had been driven into the white woodwork of the door, but there was no bolt, and the sight gave me a second idea. I reached for my large leather suitcase and began fumbling with the straps, hastily and rather clumsily. If there was no bolt on the door, at least I wanted to be armed.
I had traveled in Japan with a thirty-eight automatic. I cannot remember exactly why I had taken this precaution, except that the Orient had always seemed a distant and peculi
ar place. I had carried it in my pocket through the customs and then had deposited it in the bottom of my bag. When I looked for it that night, however, it was not there. For a moment I stood with my hand close to the steward’s call button before common sense came back to me. They might not have wished me to lock myself in and they might have abstracted my automatic, but this was probably a part of the meticulous caution of a suspicious race which, I decided, probably meant no harm. Half an hour later I was in bed and had turned out the light. The porthole was open and a breeze blew across the cabin and I lay for a while listening to the swish of water and the throbbing of the engines before I went to sleep.
I have never been sure of the time when I woke up. It must have been in the dark of the small hours of the morning when something caused me to open my eyes, only to find myself staring into the black; but a flyer’s life makes the senses quick to perceive changes of atmosphere which may not dawn on others who have passed quieter days. As soon as I opened my eyes, I knew there was something wrong in spite of the same steady pulsing of the engines, and the same sound of water. Yet there was some change in the darkness which I could not describe. I knew I was not alone in my cabin. The knowledge did not frighten me as much as it annoyed me, for I was growing tired of constant espionage.
“Who’s there?” I said.
A voice answered, so close to my ear that I gave a start. Though I could not see a thing, I knew that whoever was there must be kneeling beside my bed.
“Hush!” It was a man’s voice, speaking very softly. “Please do not speak loud. I am a friend, Mr. Gentleman! I do not hurt.”
“Who are you?” I asked. Something in his voice made me careful not to raise my own. “What are you doing in here?”
“Please—” the voice was nearer to me—“don’t turn on the light! I do not wish them to see light. It is very dangerous, so many watch.”
I reached down and grasped an arm of the man beside me. “Who are you?” I demanded again. “What do you want?”
“Only to speak to you.” The answer came again, so softly that I had difficulty in catching the words. The arm did not move away. The impassiveness of that arm more than the voice made me listen. “Please do not speak loud or turn on the light. I’m in very great danger, Mr. Gentleman. I come and no one see, I think. I go and no one must see. I have something which they want. You are an American—you know American navy men.”
“Well,” I said, “what of it?”
“You know an American navy gentleman they call Commander Driscoll? You see him. You tell him I come to you. You tell him Ma come. I am in great danger, Mr. Gentleman. I think they know who I am. Mr. Moto, he know, I think. Will you tell Commander Driscoll, please—”
“Tell him what?” I whispered, and I knew that the man beside me was afraid of something—deathly afraid.
“I leave you note,” he said, “tomorrow, not now. I see you again tomorrow night because you are American. If I die, you tell Mr. Wu Lai-fu in Shanghai, if you please. You give note to him, if Commander Driscoll is not there.”
“What are you talking about?” I whispered.
“Please,” the voice was trembling in a strange appeal, “I have no time to say. Great danger. If I give you note, you take it, please.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” the voice seemed closer to me, “because you are American gentleman. Americans all very good people. You see when you get note. You give Driscoll. You tell Wu Lai-fu. Please, I’m going now.”
For a moment I lay there, wondering if I were asleep or awake, wondering if I were going mad; then I moved quickly and switched on the light. My cabin door was just closing very softly and there was no one in the cabin.
I could have believed that I had been asleep if it had not been for the sight of that softly closing door. Those whispered words in my ear were exactly like the words spoken by some agency in the subconscious mind which ring in one’s memory sometimes when one awakes suddenly and inexplicably in the middle of the night. That closing door was all which proved to me that I had not been asleep. I had been wide awake, listening to mysterious, dreamlike words spoken by a man whom I had not seen. Even though I could not understand those words, I had sense enough to see that they were ominous. They and my nerves conveyed to me the impression that a drama on that Japanese ship was moving silently around me and that I was being drawn into it whether I wished it or not. It was the first time, I think, that I had any definite idea of the seriousness of my own position.
As I tried to set my mind in motion to recall what I had heard, I grew uncomfortably aware that I could not be sure of myself, that my recollection and logic were blurred by alcohol and sleep. I was ashamed to admit to myself that my condition made me unfit to play a definite part in a crisis. Nevertheless, I did the best I could by trying to recall just what had passed. An unseen man, an Oriental, by his voice, who said his name was Ma, had been kneeling by my bed. He had spoken like a man who had been followed and watched; like a man laboring under fear. He had alluded to his imminent danger and to some message which he wished me to convey to Commander Driscoll. He had mentioned the name of a Chinese in Shanghai, and for some reason that name stuck peculiarly in my memory, perhaps because of its phonetic quality—Wu Lai-fu. But what was it about? What business was developing on that ship? What was Moto doing there, or Sonya? Why had the lock been removed from my door and my baggage searched? It was all entirely beyond me, but I felt that my heart was beating fast. I felt that I needed a drink and reached toward my old leather-covered flask which stood on the washstand. I reached for it and then I stopped. For the first time in years my own caution stopped me, for something warned me that my mind needed to be steady—steady without the relaxing effect of alcohol. So, though my nerves were jangling, I did not touch the flask. As I look back, I can always believe that night was a turning point in my career. My life had made me used to excitement and it had also made me reasonable. I was fully aware that it would have been useless and even dangerous to have raised an alarm. Instead of calling, I switched out the light then and got back into bed, not that I could have slept if I’d tried. Nor did I have the slightest desire to sleep, for I had an idea that the invisible stranger might be back again.
If so, I wished to be ready, therefore I half sat up, waiting in the dark, listening to the waves and wind outside my porthole singing that ceaseless song of the sea. There was no way of telling the time, but I must have been there for quite a while before I knew that I was right. Someone was entering my cabin again.
There was no sound of footsteps to warn me, but simply the noiseless opening of the unbolted door, showing first a crack of light from the alleyway outside, a crack which grew appreciably wider. Then, as I saw the light blotted out by a shadow, I slipped noiselessly off my bed. I was able to cross the cabin almost at a single leap and an instant later I was grappling with that shadow. Physical contact gave me a sense of reality. There was a moment’s noiseless struggle but whoever I had my hands on was not so strong as I. I could feel heavy woolen cloth and hear a sharp hissing breath. It is hard, at such a time as that, to remember just what happened, but suddenly the cabin light went on without my being able to recall which of us touched the switch. I could only recall that suddenly the light was on and that I was standing in the middle of the cabin, holding a Japanese ship’s officer by the throat and shaking him so that he choked.
“Please,” the man was saying, “excuse—”
And then I let him go. I let him go but I placed myself between him and the door and slammed it shut, while he stood in the center of the cabin feeling his windpipe.
“Excuse,” he said. “Excuse.”
I examined him for a moment before I answered. He was a small man with a face which reminded me of toy breeds of bulldogs which I’d seen at home. Even in that instant, however, there was one thing I was certain of intuitively. He was not the man who had been kneeling beside my bed, because he was not frightened. This little bulldog man had the
assurance of a hunter and a bravery incommensurate with his size.
“Excuse,” he said again.
“Next time you come in here, knock!” I said. “What’s the big idea?”
He began to bow, bobbing his head like a character in Gilbert and Sullivan and raising his hand politely in front of his lips. “It was a mistake,” he said. “I am so very, very sorry.”
“You’re all of you so very, very sorry,” I said. “Suppose you answer my question. What brought you inside my cabin?”
He was looking carefully about the room with his square jaw thrust forward, but finally he smiled at me in a bland mirthless way. “There is some mistake,” he explained. But obviously something puzzled him. “I thought, there was someone else here. Excuse—was there not someone else?”
Some instinct prompted me to lie before I had a definite reason for my motive. It had something to do with the other’s face which, in spite of the worry and embarrassment on it, looked relentless.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why should anyone else be here? I have this cabin to myself.”
Then he straightened himself officially. “I must explain,” he answered. “It was my duty. I found myself called away. My duty was to watch your door. I have done very badly. If no one was here, I am very glad.”
“No one was here,” I said. His narrow eyes bored sharply into mine. Then he glanced about the cabin again.
Mr. Moto Omnibus Page 5