Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

“I will not keep you much longer, Mr. Lee,” he said; “only a moment, please.” His dark narrow eyes were intent, but, as he continued speaking, I think his mind was somewhere else and he was only speaking to pass the time. “You do not know China? It is a sad country,” he said; “the most exploited country in the world. The barbarians are snatching at her again. The Japanese are barbarians and the Russians— But we may perfect our own methods some day.”

  “If the Chinese are all like you, I am sure they will,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Wu. “Unfortunately, they are not all like me.

  I heard the door open behind me and then I heard a voice which made me start—the throaty voice of the Russian girl named Sonya. There she was, walking across the dragon carpet, in white with her sables around her shoulders, a white suede bag clasped under her arm. I felt those violet eyes of hers upon me for a moment in a cool guileless glance.

  “So he came here safely,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wu, “you did very well to send him here.”

  I found my voice with difficulty.

  “Sonya—” I began.

  “This was better for you than being killed, Casey,” she said simply.

  My voice grew sharper as I answered. “Where do you fit into this picture, Sonya?”

  “Does it make any difference?” she asked me, and there was a mockery in the way she spoke. “Haven’t you had nearly enough trouble?”

  Mr. Wu was smiling. He was standing up straight behind his desk, his hands folded beneath his sleeves.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think you have had enough, Mr. Lee, and I am obliged to you. Your clothing will be waiting for you and a sum of money for your pocket. You will be taken to your foreign quarter, where no doubt you can go and drink yourself into a stupor. If you do not move out of it, except to take the first boat to your native land, perhaps you will be safe. Good-by, Mr. Lee.”

  “Sonya—” I said again. I tried to frame some question but hesitated and stopped.

  “Yes, Casey,” she said, “now that this is over, I think you had better take the next boat home. You were not meant for this. It is not your fault.”

  Even then it amazed me that in my position I should feel angry and hurt. It seemed to me that Sonya’s manner had something of the superciliousness of Mr. Wu’s. The door had opened and a white-robed servant was standing in the doorway.

  “Sonya,” I said—I spoke to her instead of to Wu—“you think I’m a fool, don’t you? I don’t understand a single thing that’s happening here but I don’t like it. You’re not finished with me yet.”

  Mr. Wu nodded as though my speech had confirmed some thought in his own mind.

  “Foreigners always boast,” he said. “Foreigners always grow angry. You have no idea how much you are to be congratulated, Mr. Lee, that you are leaving in such a pleasant manner. Now I advise you to leave at once before you are made to leave more quickly.”

  I looked at Sonya again. “Good-by,” I said.

  I walked out of the doorway with the man in white at my elbow, assiduous and polite. I was so much disturbed by the whole affair that I paid no attention to where we were going. I felt a deep humiliation at everything which had happened. The thinly veiled sarcasm of Mr. Wu had not been lost upon me. He thought that I was an irresponsible drunkard, who had been tossed up by the sea. There had been a moment—I could not tell just when—in which his interest in me had suddenly vanished. Something inexplicable had happened which had made me as useless to him as a sucked orange. He had extracted something from me without my being able to tell what. He had been anxious about that message to the point of trying to extort it and then his anxiety had waned. It had waned before Sonya had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

  That whole scene and that whole place has always been to me like a page of an Oriental romance, with no bearing on the actual life I have known. Perhaps the Orient is all like that. There may be in every Oriental a love of involved dramatics and fantasy that is expressed to us by the pages of the “Arabian Nights.” I do not know about this and I do not care, because I am only trying to state the actual facts as they occurred.

  Once I was back in the room where I had been dressed, I had a proof of Mr. Wu’s prosperity. A new and very good European suit, with shoes and linen, was waiting for me, and even a suitcase with a change of clothing. One of the servants explained the appearance of these articles in English, the first time I knew that he was familiar with the language.

  “You take,” he said, “compliments of Mr. Wu. Mr. Wu he say the motor wagon waits for you.”

  Fifteen minutes later I found myself dressed in a gray flannel suit which did not fit me badly. One of the men had lifted my bag and I had turned to leave the room, when one of the servants spoke.

  “Please,” he said, “the master has forgotten. His money and his flask.” And he handed me my tobacco pouch, containing my Japanese notes and my passport and my leather-covered flask with the metal cup in place at the bottom. I was glad to have my flask, for it seemed like an old friend, the only link that connected me with a previous incarnation—a doubtful one perhaps, but one in which I possessed my own integrity.

  I set my hat on the back of my head and tossed a ten-yen note to the servants.

  “All right, boys,” I said, “let’s go!”

  Then there was a walk through that labyrinth of courtyards and I was out of the gate where that same motor which had conveyed me there was waiting. I was inside it with my bag and the gate had closed behind me. The car started with no directions of mine, evidently because the driver had already received his orders. While I leaned back in the seat, without interest in the sights I saw, absorbed in my own thoughts, for the first time in many years I was thinking consecutively and fast; not of myself, for the first time in years, but of something more important than myself. If Driscoll were in this city, and I recalled that he had spoken of coming here, I knew that I must find him. Something was going on of actual importance. Men did not act as Moto and Wu Lai-fu had acted without grave cause. I did not have the message, but I had sense enough to know that there might be significant details in my adventure which a man in Driscoll’s position could understand. Clearly, in some way beyond my knowledge, the interests of my country were at stake. It seemed strange to me that I must see Driscoll.

  I had another impression besides these thoughts which I have not forgotten; that impression came upon me suddenly with the motion of the motor car, without the interposition of any specific sight or sound. I was aware that I was in a strange place where anything might happen, and believe me, I was right. I doubt if any city in the world is more amazing than Shanghai, where the culture of the East and West has met to turn curiously into something different from East and West; where the silver and riches of China are hoarded for safety; where opéra-bouffe Oriental millionaires drive their limousines along the Bund; where the interests of Europe meet the Orient and clash in a sparkle of uniforms and jewels; where the practical realities of Western industrialism meet the fatality of the East. I say I could feel this thing, and now I only state it as an explanation of Mr. Wu and of the events which follow. Believe me, I repeat, anything can happen in Shanghai, from a sordid European intrigue to a meeting with a prince.

  9

  THE AUTOMOBILE took me out of China into a city which might have been planted there from Europe or America, except for the rickshaw boys and the Chinese faces on the street. There were skyscrapers and stone buildings with all the tradition of the Renaissance, which looked upon warships from Europe and liners and junks floating on the muddy yellow waters of the Whangpoo. I could feel an excitement in the air, as though history were in the making, as though I were present at the changing of a world, and I have never forgotten that excitement. The car stopped at the door of an excellent hotel, where a doorman in livery took my bag. At the sight of my own people, seated drinking at little tables in the lounge, at the sight of its calm and order (I remembered that there was even a notice
of the meeting of the Rotary Club posted in white letters on a bulletin board), I felt the security of things I knew. Once again I could almost believe that everything which had happened to me had been a dream. As I walked up to the hotel desk, I could hardly conceive that I was the man who had jumped through the port of a vessel to avoid death, or the man who had been picked up like a drowned rat, as Mr. Wu had said, from the waters of the Whangpoo. The clerk at the desk was handing me a registry card, after the custom of the best hotels at home.

  “Can you tell me,” I asked him, “where I can find a naval officer named Commander Driscoll?” In the light of everything which I had gone through, the casualness of his answer did not seem logical.

  “Certainly, sir,” he answered. “Commander Driscoll is staying at this hotel—Room 507. Do you wish to see him, sir?” He reached toward a telephone. “May I ask the name?”

  “Tell him Lee,” I answered. “K. C. Lee, and have my bag sent to my room.” I heard him speak into the telephone. The Chinese boy in the smart uniform of a bellhop bowed to me and pointed to a lift. I had not recovered from the unreality of returning to my own world before we were standing before a room door where the clerk had told me Driscoll lived. I knocked and the door opened. The door opened and seemed to admit me back again to my own people, for there was Jim Driscoll, heavy and stocky, standing on the threshold staring at me, and as I glanced across his shoulder, I saw May Driscoll, Jim’s wife. It seemed a thousand years ago, before the fall of Babylon, that I had known such people.

  “How did you get here?” Jim Driscoll asked. “And what do you want here?” His manner was neither friendly nor approving. He was no longer looking at me as a friend or as a member of his own caste, but as an unsavory stranger.

  “Jim,” I said, “I want to talk to you. Something important, or I wouldn’t be here now.”

  Driscoll turned toward his wife. “May,” he said, “you’d better go into the bedroom and close the door.”

  I heard May laugh. “Why, Jim,” she said, “it’s Casey. Hello, Casey darling—Can’t I talk to Casey, Jim?”

  “No,” Jim Driscoll said. “You heard me, May. Please go in there and close the door.” And Jim Driscoll and I stood facing each other in the parlor of a hotel suite decorated with all the curious lack of taste which is common to any hotel suite.

  “All right,” Jim Driscoll said; “what do you want? Are you drunk or sober, Lee?”

  “Sober, Jim,” I said. “Cold sober.”

  He laughed shortly. “Are you? With a flask sticking out of your pocket?”

  “That doesn’t mean—” I began.

  “Doesn’t it?” Jim Driscoll inquired. “Not that it makes any difference, after Tokyo.”

  I tried to keep my temper. “I want to tell you something,” I said. “Are you in the Naval Intelligence?”

  He nodded shortly. “All right,” I continued, “a Chinese told me to give you a message. His name was Ma. He was murdered on the Imoto Maru.”

  As I was speaking, Driscoll had been pacing in front of me, a habit which he probably acquired from shipboard; but at the name of Ma he stopped dead in his tracks. He stopped and spun on his heel and puckered up his eyes.

  “Ma,” he said, as though I were not there. “That’s old Karaloff’s man!” He closed his hands and opened them and took a step toward me. “Where did you pick up this bit?” he inquired. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m telling you the sober truth. I ought to know, because that man Ma was murdered in my cabin on the Imoto Maru.”

  Jim Driscoll snorted contemptuously. “The sober truth,” he said. “It’s been quite a while since you told that. How did you get on the Imoto Maru? The last time I saw you, you were pickled in Tokyo. What got you aboard that ship?”

  It was difficult for me to remember that I had come with information that was more important than my own feelings, because Driscoll’s manner was not conciliating, and I have never been good at restraining my temper.

  “Jim,” I said, “I’m taking this from you because this may be more important than you or I. You remember there in the hotel, the way I was talking? Well, someone heard me. A man named Moto.”

  Jim Driscoll swore. “So that’s the play, is it?” he said. “And what did this man Moto look like?”

  “What do any Japanese look like?” I inquired. “He was small, almost delicate. He wore a morning coat, little feet, little hands—intelligent, polite. He could speak English as well as you can. Patent-leather shoes, a green ring on his finger. He kept saying he was so very, very sorry.”

  Jim Driscoll exhaled a deep breath and moved a step nearer to me. I might have been a prisoner being interrogated by the military police.

  “By God,” said Driscoll, “that’s the baby! Lee, what is your relationship with that man? How did he get hold of you?”

  “He offered to supply a plane so that I could fly across the Pacific,” I answered, “for certain considerations. My tobacco company welched on me. There I was.”

  Jim Driscoll turned his back on me, paced across the room and back. “You might be a little steadier if you had a drink,” he suggested. “Eh, what, Lee? Your mind might move along a more even groove. It probably takes a drink to give you guts. All right—” He opened a closet door and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a glass.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Are you joining me?”

  Jim Driscoll snorted through his nose. “It isn’t my business to drink with everyone,” he said. “I’m giving you a drink for medicinal reasons, Lee. Help yourself.”

  I pushed away the bottle. “When I’m through here,” I said, “I promise you I won’t trouble you again.”

  Jim Driscoll laughed. “That’s mutual,” he answered. “And now, so we can reach that point, perhaps you’ll tell me exactly what happened to you.”

  I told him; for the second time that night, I told the truth. And as I did so, I could not help comparing Driscoll unfavorably with the black-robed Wu Lai-fu. Against that other man Driscoll seemed blunt and stupid and incapable of any act of brilliance. Although he listened to me carefully, I wondered if he caught any real significance in what I said. I did not believe that anything much registered with him, to judge from the opinion which he rendered after he listened to me. He paced up and down the room again and halted in front of me.

  “There’s one thing obvious,” he remarked; “you can’t be trusted.”

  I felt my self-control leaving me. “That is hardly fair,” I said.

  Driscoll smiled with an elephantine sort of politeness. “Please excuse me,” he answered. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Have you got any feelings left, Lee? I gather you’re a spy in the pay of Japan. You can’t blame me for wondering exactly what your position is. So you haven’t got the message? Is that all you came to tell me?”

  “I thought maybe you could do something,” I answered. “But, of course, I was mistaken in that. You always were a dumbbell, Jim—just one of the routine people who gets ahead in the Service.” It pleased me to perceive that my remark nettled him.

  “Thanks,” he answered, and walked to the room telephone, and called out a number in the same way he might have signaled the engine room from the bridge. “So Wu Lai-fu’s in it, is he? You’ve got yourself into pretty company. All right, I want to see Wu—” His voice trailed off and changed into Chinese, as someone answered from the other end of the wire, reminding me that Driscoll had been a language officer in Peking. He talked for nearly a minute, unintelligibly, finally turning to me again when he had finished.

  “We’ll get this straightened out here and now,” he said. “Wu’s coming here himself. There must be something in the air to make that fellow call. This is serious and we’ve got to get on with it. . . . Now this Russian girl—what did you say her name was?”

  “You heard me,” I answered. “Sonya.”

  Driscoll gazed at me pityingly. “Who in hell cares about first names?” he inquired. “Are you sure you don’t
need a drink to pull your wits together? Use your mind. What was her last name?”

  I tried to think, but my indignation made thinking difficult. “I’m trying to think,” I replied. “She told me once—yes, I’ve got it now—she told me her last name was Karaloff.”

  Driscoll’s manner changed. His mouth dropped open and he stood stock-still. Whatever the name might have meant to him, I knew it was important.

  “That tears it,” he said softly, seemingly to himself. “It doesn’t seem possible, but I believe it’s right,” and he began to grin. “Lee, you’ve earned a drink. By God, that will be Karaloff’s daughter! That’s important! Help yourself! There’s the bottle, Lee.”

  I pushed the bottle away. “Not your whisky,” I said. “Who’s the old man?”

  Driscoll laughed again. “If you don’t know, it won’t hurt you,” he answered. “I’d sooner tell a secret to a microphone than talk to you. But listen Lee, I want to ask you a favor.”

  “Can you advance any reason why I should do you a favor under the circumstances?” I asked him.

  Driscoll answered earnestly. “Not for me,” he said. “I’m asking you in behalf of the land where you were born. In the hope that you have a drop of patriotism left. That girl must like you, Casey, if she tried to save your life. If she likes you, that’s something we can use.” And he began to pace the floor again.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We want this message,” Driscoll said. “It’s strange, the agencies which shape events. It just happens that you have blundered into something through the elements of chance. It may interest you to know that a phase of this business may concern the entire balance of power on the Pacific. Or does it interest you to know?”

  “Isn’t that your occupation?” I inquired. “Isn’t that why you get a cut out of our income taxes? Aren’t you a public servant?”

  Driscoll ignored my remark.

  “Casey,” he said, “that girl knows something. We don’t know what. We have no real way of reaching her, but you can.” He looked toward the closed door of his bedroom, where he had sent his wife. “You have a way with the ladies. They all love aviators. I ought to know. Now listen to me, Lee. A woman is always the weak link in such an affair as this. She can pry the secrets from the diplomat, and the gigolos can get the secrets from the ladies. You get my idea, Casey?”