Wu’s expression shifted into one of mild polite interest. His tone grew bland. “Oh. That.”
“Yes, Mr. Wu. That. Or more precisely, those. The fees. They still haven’t been paid.”
Artie Wu took the cigar from his pocket again, stuck it in his mouth, clamped down hard, then eased the clamp just enough to growl, “Was there a fight?”
“Exactly as described,” Ramsay said. “The twins, by all accounts, were formidable.”
Wu beamed around the cigar, removed it and said, “I seem to recall Mrs. Wu taking care of the fees with a check some time ago.”
The dam containing Ramsay’s exasperation broke. He almost sprang from his chair, but caught himself, rose more slowly and, with palms planted flat on the desktop, leaned toward Artie Wu. “The reason I wanted you here in this very room, seated in that very chair, was to inform you, sir—no, guarantee you—that unless the fees are paid today, not tomorrow, but today, the twins will accompany you back to London this after—”
The telephone rang. Ramsay snatched it up, snapped out an irritated hello, listened, frowned, said, “One moment,” and offered the instrument to Wu.
After Wu rose, accepted the phone and said hello, he heard Durant’s voice: “I hold here in my hand a certified check drawn on Barclays for twenty-five thousand pounds from our new client, Herr Enno Glimm.
The check will be deposited in approximately six minutes and you’ll again be solvent.”
“And what exactly is required of us?”
“We have to find a pair of hypnotists, a brother-and-sister act, who’ve gone missing.”
“Where?”
“Who cares?”
“A most sensible attitude,” Wu said. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
“We meet Glimm here at two.”
“I’ll be there,” Wu said, turned and handed back the telephone.
“Good news?” Ramsay asked.
“So-so,” said Wu as he took a checkbook from a suit pocket, placed it on the desk, absently patted his other pockets for something, then smiled at Perkin Ramsay and said, “Do you have a pen?”
In Carriages Bar of the Caledonian Hotel in Princes Street in Edinburgh, the sons of Artie Wu sat in a booth across from their father and watched him sign his name to a check for the second time that day. Arthur and Angus had half-pints of lager in front of them. In front of their father was a large and yet-to-be tasted whisky.
Wu tore out the check and handed it to Arthur, the older son by nine minutes. He glanced at the amount, raised an eyebrow and passed the check to his brother.
Angus studied it and said, “Four hundred quid,” letting a dubious inflection raise the specter of insufficient funds.
“It won’t bounce,” Wu said. “And it should get you through to the end of next month when I’ll send more. Now all you guys have to do is finish the term, bum around the Continent this summer and head for Princeton in August.”
Angus gave the check back to his brother and carefully examined his father before asking, “Have you really thought about what it’ll cost to send us through four years at Princeton?”
Wu sipped his whisky and ran some figures through his mind.
“About a hundred and sixty grand,” he said. “That’s for four years without frills. If you want frills, try poker.”
“Like you and Durant did?” Angus said.
“We played a few hands.”
“Durant says you two averaged six hundred a month from stud and draw,” Arthur said. “And that was back when the dollar was worth three or four times what it is now.”
“We got by,” Wu said.
“He also claims there were a lot of rich fish around Princeton then who were more than willing to sit down to an evening of cards with the pretender to the Chinese Emperor’s throne and his silent, ever-present bodyguard.”
Wu smiled and nodded, as if remembering. He was instead studying his sons and discovering yet again, with almost embarrassing satisfaction, that they looked as much like him as they did their mother.
They had his height but their mother’s rangy build. His slow smile and her lithe walk. His black hair and her gray eyes, which, along with Wu’s epicanthic folds, gave the twins what they called their all-Amerasian preppy look.
“Did you like it—Princeton?” Arthur asked.
Wu stared suspiciously at Arthur—then Angus. “Whenever you two want something, you always take me by the hand and try to lead me back down Reminiscent Row. So let’s hear it. What’s up?”
The twins traded quick looks and Angus won the invisible coin toss.
“We know where we can make a lot of money this summer.”
Wu stuck a fresh cigar in his mouth and, just before lighting it, asked, “Doing what?”
