‘Tokenrui-san...’
‘Do not go tonight. Give me another day or two to sort this out.,
‘Tokenrui-san, I have not asked you to break your vow of silence. Do not ask me to play a coward’s game. She will lead me to him. I am certain of it.’
‘You know nothing of the woman. Nothing of the house. Nothing of Chameleon. And yet you would walk into this?’
‘I will be prepared.’
‘If this Chameleon is as you think, are you prepared for a knife in the back? A wire around the throat? A silent bullet in the head?’
‘I will be prepared.’
‘You try my faith in you.’
‘This is today. I live for today. You taught me that. If the spirit flies tomorrow, it will be as full as I can make it.’
Kimura said nothing more. He stared past O’Hara at the wall. O’Hara finally got up.
‘I respect and honour your silence, Tokenrui-san, I hope you understand why I must go.’
‘When the fool has enough scars, he becomes a wise man,’ said Kimura, still staring at the wall.
‘Arigato.’
‘Be careful.’ And as O’Hara started out the door, the old man looked up at him and smiled. ‘When you write this story of yours, remember, rhythm is the best measure of the latitude and opulence of a writer. If unskilled, he is at once detected by the poverty of his chimes.’
‘I’ll remember that. Does the Tendai say that?’
‘No, Ralph Waldo Emerson said it.’
Laughing, O’Hara left the house.
‘Shall I follow him?’ Sammi asked.
‘Of course.’
She had been elusive throughout the meal, saying very little, eating her raw fish and sipping sake arid making him talk about himself. He was a widower, he had told her, and was in the book business. It was his first vacation alone. He had dreamed of coming to Kyoto, but the trip had turned out to be lonelier than he had thought.
She had been sympathetic.
Now she led him down through more fenced walkways, past other sounds, into the quiet, almost fairylike residential section. She opened a gate in the high fence and led him through it. A large two-story house, unlike the others around it, sat fifty feet or so back from the street. Its tapered roof and carved columns told Falmouth it was the house of a wealthy person. The grounds were perfectly manicured and spotted with dwarf willows and pines. She held a finger to her mouth and led him around to the side of the place. A small creek trickled tunefully through the grounds and disappeared into the shadows, and somewhere in the back, wind chimes sang to the breeze.
Falmouth checked the place as carefully as he could without seeming obvious. The house was L—shaped. The only lights were at the far corner of the wing.
Deserted.
Beautiful. It might take some twisting to get the address. He didn’t have time to woo the information out of the lady. It had to be quick.
She stopped in front of one of the chambers in the main wing of the house and quietly slid back its panelled door. It wasn’t much of a step into the house, which was built on short, thick stilts, raising it no more than a foot or so above the ground.
When they were inside, she whispered, ‘My father lives in the back. No one else is here. We will leave the light off.’ She slid the panel shut, but light from the street filtered through the thin, opaque glass doors. She unbuttoned his jacket and took it off, then his tie, then drew him down beside her. He thought, damn the luck. To walk into a tasty piece like this and it all has to be business.
She undid his gold watch and laid it gently on the floor beside the tatami.
It was nine o’clock.
She lay back and drew him down beside her. Her lips brushed his. She reached back and drew out the hairpin. Affixed to the jade handle was a stiletto six inches long.
Her hair tumbled down around her shoulders.
What the hell, Falmouth thought, a few more minutes more or less—
It was almost the last thought he ever had.
As he leaned over to kiss her, she held the dirk at arm’s length and then plunged it into his ear.
Fire burned deep into the back of his throat, seared his brain and then erupted in pain.
His scream sliced the night like a hatchet. He rolled away from her, struggled to his knees, his trembling fingers touching the jade hilt, which stuck obscenely from the hole in his ear. The fire burned deeper and the pain of steel in his brain was unbearable.
He got to his feet but the room was already a blur, the pain frozen in his throat. He was growling like a fox in a trap. The floor tilted. He turned, tried to regain his balance and stumbled sideways and plunged headlong through the door. The glass shattered into hundreds of light blossoms. The frame cracked and the door crashed with him into the garden.
