Midnight Never Comes

own eyes I don't think I could have believed it. This chap Yuan Tao must be quite something.'

Chavasse paused, the cup half way to his mouth. 'So you know about him?'

'Naturally.'

'You must have had me watched pretty closely. Now that's something I can't understand. I thought you'd written me off?'

'Let's just say I didn't like to see you go and then I started getting daily reports which were more than interesting. Your friend could make a fortune if he set himself up in business.'

'He wouldn't be interested,' Chavasse said. 'He has one already, together with three factories in Hong Kong and a half interest in one of the biggest shipping lines in the Far East.'

'Yes, I was aware of that.'

'I thought you might be.'

'His niece seems a very attractive girl.'

'She's returning to Hong Kong next week,' Chavasse said. 'I bet that's something you didn't know.'

'What a pity. We'll just have to find something else to fill your time.'

'I'm sure you won't have the slightest difficulty.' Chavasse lit a cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke with a sigh of satisfaction. 'What's it all about?'

'To tell you the truth, I'm not sure.' Mallory went to the desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a buff file. 'Have you ever heard of a man called Max Donner?'

'The financier?' Chavasse nodded. 'You see him in the society columns all the time. Australian, isn't he?'

'That's right. Comes from a place called Rum Jungle, south of Darwin in the Northern Territory. There's a hell of a lot of development going on there now, but in Donner's day it was just a dot on the map.' Mallory opened the file and pushed it across. 'Have a look at the photos.'

Donner was a magnificent figure of a man, at least six feet three in height with a great breadth of shoulder, and dark hair swept back over his ears. The photos showed him in every possible aspect. Mingling with the stars at a film premiere, playing polo, shooting grouse, even shaking hands with Royalty at a Variety Club charity dinner and he was always smiling.

'How old is he?'

'Fifty.'

Chavasse was surprised. 'He doesn't look anywhere near that. He seems to live a full life.'

'He can afford to. At the last count he was worth at least a million and moving up fast. Not bad for an ex- Australian infantry sergeant with no formal education.'

The last photo showed Donner on his yacht in Cannes harbour, reclining in a deck chair, glass in hand, gazing up at the young girl who leaned against the rail beside him. She was perhaps sixteen and wore a bikini, long blonde hair to her shoulders, blowing in the breeze, half-obscuring her face.

'Who's this?' Chavasse said, holding up the photo.

'His step-daughter, Asta Svensson.'

'Swedish?'

'Right through to her pretty backbone. That was taken three years ago. She's nineteen now and very, very attractive.'

'I think Donner would agree with you to judge from the way he's looking at her on this picture.'

'What makes you say that?'

'He's smiling on all the others, but not on this one. It's as if he's saying, 'You, I take seriously.' Where does her mother fit in?'

'She died about three months before that picture was taken. She was drowned skin-diving off some Greek island or other, but you can read through the file later. I'll just give you an outline for the moment. It'll save time.'

He got to his feet, moved to the fire and started to fill his pipe. 'Max Donner is typical of a certain type of man who's rocketed to the top in this country since the war. Mostly they started with nothing and the boom in property and land values helped them along.'

'When did he arrive?'

'1948. Company Sergeant Major in an Australian infantry battalion when he was demobbed in '47. Good solid war record in the Western Desert, and New Guinea. He picked up the Military Medal there, by the way.'

'And how did he set about making a million from scratch in a strange land? I'd love to know.'

'Simple really, or at least he makes it look that way. The Sunday Times did a feature on him the other year. 'The Man from Rum Jungle,' they called it. There's a copy in the file. First of all he took a job as a salesman. Reconditioned car engines, then textile machinery. Fifteen hundred a year and a company car-good money for the hungry forties. Most men would have been satisfied.'

'But not Donner?'

'Not Donner. He went into partnership with a man called Victor Wiseman. They bought an old Victorian house in Kensington in January, 1950, for three thousand pounds with the aid of a substantial mortgage and converted it into four flats which they sold separately over the next six months for a total of seven thousand, three hundred.'

Chavasse pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. 'And never looked back.'

'Donner certainly didn't. Wiseman dropped out with his half when they reached twenty thousand and bought himself a restaurant in Clapham. You've got to take chances in the property game and he just didn't have the stomach for it.'

'He must have been kicking himself ever since.'

'I expect so. Our friend was doing so well by 1952 that he was able to form the Donner Development Corporation. One of the first outfits to get in on multi-storey office block building in the city centres. Later, he formed his own finance company. Hire purchase for the millions. The biggest golden goose of all.'

'I should have thought he would have been worth rather more than your million by now?'

'You should see what he spends. He believes in living life to the full and he's made some enormous donations to some of the new universities.'

'When did he get married?'

'1955. To Gunilla Svensson, widow of a Swedish stockbroker who'd handled Donner's affairs in Stockholm.'

'A love match?'

Mallory shrugged. 'It certainly looked that way at the time, especially if you go by what the gossip columnists were saying. I should think it quite possible. She was a very beautiful woman.'

'And what about the daughter. Presumably Donner's her guardian?'

'That's right. She has relatives in the States, but none in Sweden or this country. She was at Heathfield till she was seventeen then did a year at finishing school in Paris. She's spent this last year at Stockholm University studying Sociology.'

'Doesn't she ever come home?'

'She's stayed with him frequently in London if that's what you mean and he usually flies across to see her once a month.'

Chavasse nodded. 'Takes his parental responsibilities seriously then?'

'It certainly looks that way. From all accounts there can be little doubt about the genuineness of his affection for her.'

'And what about her?'

'One can't be certain. On the other hand she doesn't have a great deal of choice in the matter. Her mother left her a sizeable fortune, but Donner holds it on trust for her until she's twenty-five.'

'An interesting situation,' Chavasse said. 'But where does it all lead?'

'I'm not really sure. That's where you come in. About six months ago, M.I.6 handled a very minor espionage affair. You may remember it. An Admiralty clerk called Simmons was caught passing classified information to a man called Ranevsky, a naval attache at the Russian Embassy.'

'He got five years, didn't he?'

'That's right. It was all very small beer.'