was there still strapped to my side, but it was empty.
The beam of a powerful flashlight hit me in the face.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” a familiar Scottish voice demanded.
“Slumming,” I said and relaxed. “What are you?”
Sergeant Hamish, followed by a uniformed Chinese police officer, came on up the stairs.
“You were spotted coming in here,” he said. “I thought I’d better see what you were up to.”
“You’re a little late. I’ve been holding a one-sided conversation with your pal Frank Belling.”
“You were?” He gaped at me. “Where is he?”
“He’s skipped.” I fingered the lump on the back of my head. “A Chinese pal of his boffed me before we had time to exchange confidences.”
He moved the beam of his flashlight so he could see the back of my head, then he whistled.
“Well, you asked for it, coming here. This is the toughest spot in Hong Kong.”
“Would you take that goddam light out of my eyes? My head hurts,” I growled at him.
He moved past me into the room and swung the light around. Then he came out.
“The Chief Inspector will want to talk to you. Let’s go.”
“He’ll want to talk to a Chinese girl named Mu Hai Ton too,” I said and gave him the girl’s address. “You’d better get after her. She’s likely to have skipped.”
“What’s she got to do with this?”
“She led me to Belling. Hurry it up, friend. You could miss her.”
He said something in Cantonese to the policeman with him who clattered off down the stairs.
“You come on,” he said to me and we followed the policeman into the dark, evil-smelling alley.
Half an hour later I was back on the island and sitting in Chief Inspector MacCarthy’s office. They had got him out of bed by radio-telephone and he looked none too pleased. We had cups of strong tea in front of us. My head was still aching but the tea helped.
Sergeant Hamish leaned against the wall, chewing a tooth-pick, his cop eyes blankly staring at me. MacCarthy sucked at his empty pipe while he listened to my story.
I didn’t tell him about the Silver Mine Bay outing. I felt if I had told him he might have turned hostile. I told him how I had wanted to talk to Mu Hai Ton, how I had found her through the Madame at the Wanchai bar and how I had seen her surprise and distress when I had told her Jo-An was dead.
“I had an idea she might want to pass on the news,” I said, “so I waited across the road and followed her into the walled city.”
I told them how Wong had suddenly appeared, what Belling had said and how Wong had coshed me.
After a long pause, MacCarthy said, “Well, you asked for it. You should have come to me.”
I let that one go.
He sat for some moments thinking over what I had told him, then before he could say what was on his mind, the telephone bell rang. He scooped up the receiver, listened, then said, “Well, keep after her, I want her,” and hung up.
“She didn’t return to her apartment,” he said to me. “I have a man watching the place and we’re looking for her.”
I hadn’t expected she would have been there waiting for them to pick her up. I wondered if they would eventually find her in the harbour the way they had found Leila.
“Have you a photograph of Frank Belling?” I asked. “I have an idea this guy wasn’t Belling. He was an American.”
MacCarthy opened a desk drawer and took out a fat file which showed he was taking more interest in Belling than he had led me to believe. He opened the file and took out a half-plate glossy print which he flicked across the desk so it fell right side up in front of me.
I looked at the photograph and felt a queer creepy sensation crawl up my spine. It was the same photograph that Janet West had given me: the hard gangster face Janet West had said belonged to Herman Jefferson.
“You sure this is Belling?” I said.
MacCarthy stared blankly at me.
“That’s a police photograph. We distributed a number of them to the newspaper agencies and to the newspapers when we were trying to pick him up. Yes . . . that’s Frank Belling.”
“That’s not the man I talked to . . . the man who said he was Frank Belling.”
MacCarthy drank some of his tea and then began to fill his pipe. I could see by the expression in his eyes he was beginning to dislike me.
“Then who was the man you talked to?”
“Did you ever meet Herman Jefferson?”
“Yes . . . why?”
“Got a photograph of him?” “No ... he was an American citizen. Why should I have a photograph of him?”
“Can you describe him?”
“Thin, sharp-featured with thinning sand-coloured hair,” MacCarthy said promptly.
“Sound like the man I talked to ... the man who said he was Frank Belling.”
There was a long pause, then MacCarthy said heavily, “Jefferson is dead. He was killed in a road accident and his body was shipped to America.”
“Jefferson is alive . . . anyway, he was alive two hours ago,” I said. “That description of yours fits him.”
“The body in the car matched Jefferson’s size,” MacCarthy said as if trying to convince himself. “The body was so badly burned identification wasn’t possible but his wife identified him by the ring on his finger and the cigarette case he was carrying. We had and still have no reason to think he was anyone else but Jefferson.”
“If it wasn’t Jefferson and I’m damn sure it wasn’t, who was it?” I said.
“Why ask me?” MacCarthy said. “I’ve still no reason to think Jefferson is alive.”
“A tall thin man with pale green eyes, thin sandy hair and thin lips,” I said. I thought for a moment, then went on, “He had a crooked little finger on his right hand, come to think of it, as if it had been broken at one time and had been badly set.”
“That’s Jefferson,” Hamish said. It was the first time he had said anything since I had come into the office. “I remember the crooked finger. That’s Jefferson all right.”
MacCarthy puffed at his pipe.
“Then who was buried?” he asked uneasily. “Whose body was sent back to America?”
“My guess is that it was Frank Selling’s body,” I said. “For some reason Jefferson tried to kid me he was Belling.”
“Why should he do that?”
“I don’t know.” I touched the bump on my head and grimaced. “If it’s all the same to you, Chief Inspector, I’ll go to bed. I’m feeling like something the cat has dragged in.”
“You look like it,” he said. “Let’s have a description of Wong.” “He looks like any other Chinese to me. Squat, fat with gold teeth.”
“That’s right,” MacCarthy said and stifled a yawn. “They all look alike to us just as we all look alike to them.” He turned to Hamish. “Take as many men as you want and go through the walled city. See if you can find Jefferson. You won’t, but we’ve got to try.” To me, he said, “Okay, Ryan, you go to bed. You can leave this to us.”
I said I would be glad to and went out of the office with Hamish.
“Looking for Jefferson in the walled city is like looking for the invisible man,” Hamish said bitterly. “No one knows anything. Everyone covers up for everyone. I might have Jefferson right next to me and I wouldn’t know it.”
“Cheer up,” I said unfeelingly. “It’ll give you something to do.”
Leaving him swearing, I picked up the Packard and drove back to the Repulse Bay Hotel. I felt old, tired and worn out.
I left the elevator on the fourth floor where my room was. The night boy, a grinning, bowing Chinese, wearing a white drill jacket and black trousers, bowed to me as he handed me my key. I thanked him and walked to my room. I unlocked the door and entered the sitting-room. Most of the rooms in the hotel had sirting-rooms. The bedroom was beyond drawn curtains that divided the two rooms. I turned on the light and pulled off my jacket. The
