Tony was wide-awake before she ceased speaking. He drew her down to him. She was trembling. “Where are we? What’s happened?”
He looked around in the darkness. The boat was tied up in a silent backwater. Through the motionless leaves of an overhanging tree which looked like a tree carved in ebony, he could see the stars.
“We are just above the place where we tied up before, Chi Foh. You remember the footbridge over the canal? There’s a path from the bridge which leads to a main road—the road to Lung Chang.” Yueh Hua caught her breath. “But . . . the man is dead!”
Tony got to his feet. He had a flashlamp in the locker; groped his way to it, found it, and shone its light on to the man who lay there.
Beyond doubt, Yueh Hua was right. Their passenger was dead. Yueh Hua knew that Tony had an automatic pistol, but he had hidden the flashlamp. He wondered if she would say something about it, tried to think of an explanation. But she said nothing.
Tony searched the man’s scanty clothing, but found no clue to his identity. In a body belt, which he unfastened, there was a considerable sum of money, but nothing else. The big portfolio was locked, and there was no key. So far he had gone when Yueh Hua called out:
“Throw him overboard, Chi Foh! He may have died of plague!”
But Tony, who had a smattering of medical knowledge, knew that he had not died of plague. Of what he had died he didn’t know, but he did know that it wasn’t of plague.
“Don’t worry, Yueh Hua. I told you before, there’s no question of plague. I must try to find out who he was.”
He went to work on the lock of the briefcase and ultimately succeeded in breaking it. He found it stuffed with correspondence in Russian, a language of which he knew nothing, much of it from the Kremlin and some from the Peiping Embassy; this fact clearly indicated by the embossed headings of the stationery. The man was a Soviet agent!
There was also a bound book containing a number of manuscript pages in Chinese, which, although he knew written Chinese, Tony was unable to decipher.
He put the book and the correspondence back in the broken briefcase and dropped the briefcase in the locker.
His walkie-talkie was there, too, carefully wrapped up. This was an occasion on which he desperately wanted to ask for Nayland Smith’s advice. If only he dared to take Yueh Hua into his confidence! He no longer doubted her loyalty. She had given him her love. But she was Chinese, and he hated the thought of breaking this idyll by confessing that he was an impostor, an American posing as one of her countrymen.
It was an impasse. He must rely upon his own common sense.
The body of the dead Russian must be disposed of. This was clear enough. When it was found (and eventually it would be found), the evidence must suggest that he had fallen into the hands of thieves who had taken whatever he had had in his possession. Therefore—the money belt must not be found on him.
Having come to these conclusions. Tony switched off the flash-lamp and rejoined Yueh Hua, who was watching him, wide-eyed.
“Is it a straight road to Lung Chang?”
“There are no straight roads in China.”
He forced a laugh, and kissed her. “All the better for us. Somewhere nearby, I am going to throw the dead man overboard.”
“That is right,” Yueh Hua agreed. “We need not carry much.
When we get to Lung Chang, my aunt will take care of us. But”—she drew back—”you will lose your boat!”
Tony was baffled. “I must take a chance. I have some money left. . . or I might steal another sampan, as you meant to steal mine!”
He pushed the boat out of the little backwater and on to the canal. Yueh Hua, he knew, was unusually highly strung. She watched him in a queer way he didn’t like. Just by the bridge he stopped rowing.
“Look the other way, Yueh Hua. I’m going to dump him here.” Some hazy idea that prayers should be said at such a time flashed through his mind. He dismissed the idea. It was impracticable, in the first place. In the second, the dead man, as a Soviet Communist, was an atheist. He dragged the half-clad body out and dropped it in the canal.
“May God have mercy on your soul,” he whispered. Tony forced a laugh. “So this is where we say goodbye to our boat. It’s too shallow to sink it here. We shall have to take a chance, and just leave it.”
* * *
“Oh, Chi Foh, my dear!” She threw her arms around him. “Your poor little boat—and we have been so happy on it.”
Tony loved her for the words, but immediately became practical again.
“We’ll drop whatever we don’t want overboard and pack up the rest. I can carry two bundles on this bamboo rod and you can carry what’s left in the old basket . . .”
There were tears in Yueh Hua’s eyes as she looked back at the deserted sampan. But she said nothing, and, Yueh Hua going ahead as arranged, and Tony following, still adorned with his huge bamboo hat, they started on the last leg of their journey to Lung Chang.
The road, when they came to it, didn’t look particularly dangerous, except to motorists. One thing was certain. At that hour, it carried little traffic. On the straight stretches. Tony allowed Yueh Hua to go ahead as far as he could keep her in sight. At bends, she slowed down until he drew nearer.
He had plenty of opportunity for thinking. Yueh Hua, he knew, had become an indispensable part of his life. He didn’t mean to lose her, whatever she was, where ever she came from.
Even if this added up to changing his career, he would marry her. He could live with Yueh Hua on a desert island, and be happy. She could be happy, too. She had proved it.
He heard an automobile coming swiftly from behind!
Stepping to the side of the neglected road, he let it go by. He was only just in time. It passed at racing speed—a new Buick. He never had a glimpse of the driver. Such speed, on such a road, betrayed urgency.
Yueh Hua was waiting for him by a bend ahead. He saw that she was frightened.
“In that car! . . . The man with green eyes! The big black was driving!”
This was staggering news.
It might mean, as he had feared, that Dr. Fu Manchu had learned of his contact in Lung Chang!
He longed to take Yueh Hua into his confidence. Her knowledge of the place, her acute intelligence, her intuition, would be invaluable now. But he was bound to silence.
The road here passed through an area of unreclaimed land where nature had taken over. They were in a jungle. They found their way to a spot where the fallen branch of a tree offered a seat. Dropping their loads, they sat down. He looked at Yueh Hua. There was no gladness in her eyes.
“Chi Foh, they know where we are going.
* * *
But, as Tony watched her, the mystery of Yueh Hua was uppermost in his mind. It was hard to credit the idea that Fu Manchu could have conceived such a burning passion for the grubby little girl Yueh Hua had then appeared to be, as to drive him up to this frantic chase.
He dismissed the supposition. He himself was the quarry. Perhaps he had made some mistake. Perhaps those hypnotic eyes had read more than he suspected. Dr. Fu Manchu had planned to interview him again. Nayland Smith had saved him. But the reward for his capture, flashed to so many centers, indicated that Fu Manchu knew more than he had credited him with knowing.
Tony put his arm around the dejected little figure beside him: “Tell me more about your friends in Lung Chang, Yueh Hua. If we can get to them, shall we be safe?”
“As safe as we can hope to be, Chi Foh. My aunt is an old, retired servant of the Lao family.”
“Does your aunt live right in the town?”
“No. In a small house on the estate. It is a mile from from Lung Chang.”
“This side, or beyond?”
