removed my hat, and, summoning all the nerve at my command, stole a peek into the room. Loo Chan had seated himself at a plain round table, and standing opposite him was the impressive form of the Manchurian wrestler who had been my jailer when Chu San Fu had kidnapped me in London. The Chinese lawyer was looking upwards at the muscular figure, something he would have had to do even if he were not seated.
'The yacht should arrive sometime tomorrow,' he said. Evidently this statement had significance, for the Manchurian nodded.
Good heavens, I thought with a flood of elation! I am privy to a conference here! Possibly the key to the strange series of events will be revealed to me. What a coup!
'We must be prepared for his coming,' continued Loo Chan.
Whatever else he intended to say I did not learn, for a horny palm was slapped across my mouth, stifling all but my faintest sounds of protest. Nor could I put up an effective struggle, for an arm, more like a nautical hawser, encircled my arms and body. I did get in a couple of backward kicks with my heels, but to no avail. Suddenly the arm encircling me slid away, as did the one over my mouth, and to my amazement I was free. There was the soft sound of a falling body, and I turned and found a large form motionless on the pavement of the alley. It was the other Manchurian, for there were two of them, brothers, employed by Chu San Fu. I hadn't the slightest idea of what had happened. Possibly a falling object, like a flowerpot, had fortuitously felled my captor. One thing was clear. They were on to my presence. In a flash I recalled that to the Chinese, surprise is akin to fear and is the breeder of it. This fact, well tested by experience, had to be used, or my goose was cooked to a turn!
Steeling myself, I marched through the door on the far side of the window into an odoriferous hallway and then through another door into the room I had observed.
Loo Chan wore a bland expression of satisfaction, and there was a gleam of cunning in his small, obsidian eyes, which faded when he realized that I was present without escort.
'Good evening,' I said in a matter-of-fact manner! 'If you will send your bully boy here into the alley, he can drag his unconscious brother within.'
As I sat down opposite the lawyer, I was delighted to note his startled reaction.
'Your attempt at strong-arm tactics was ridiculous, of course, since I'm here to have a word with you.'
'You are—what?' Chan was completely unnerved, and rattled to the Manchurian in Chinese. The wrestler left the room.
'Surely you don't think your clumsily baited trap would fool anyone but a child,' I stated contemptuously. 'Even the sometimes obtuse Inspector Lestrade would have laughed at it.'
Alarm had flooded Loo Chan's eyes, and I pressed on.
'Dear me, I can see clearly that you have overdramatized again. The open window, the sound of a voice, and the curiosity of the Anglo-Saxon will entrap him. Do you think me a dunderhead? Had you not been aware of my presence, would you have spoken in English? Surely not, but in your native tongue.'
I leaned back in the straight-back, regarding Loo Chan with disdain. In the alleyway this thought had not occurred to me, but the Chinese didn't know that, a knowledge gap that I hoped to preserve.
'Why . . . why then would you come here, on my footsteps, if you suspected a trap?' As he spoke, Loo Chan was mentally stumbling round, trying to regain firm footing.
'Because—in the patois of the American dime novel—the jig is up! Lawyers are reputed to be a cautious lot, and you had better get out now.'
Consternation and confusion fought a battle on his face. Since the best defense against a counterattack is to never let it get started, I continued to knife him verbally, all the while trying to preserve an icy facade.
'I can afford to be generous with advice. Surely, here, I am completely safe.' I indicated my dingy surroundings airily, as though I were seated in the commissioner's office at New Scotland Yard.
Loo Chan almost sputtered. In fact, he did. 'You, the intimate and associate of that devil Holmes, think you are safe with us?'
'Completely.' I leaned over the table, spearing him with an outstretched finger. A very effective gesture that, and one that I had seen Sherlock Holmes use to enforce a point.
'If Chu San Fu arrives tomorrow in Cairo, you cannot have him meet me. What might I tell him about the destruction of his London organization?'
Loo Chan's round face froze. He did not grasp what I was touching on, but the sound was ominous. His worried eyes were fastened on me with an unspoken question. I summoned an answer.
'You recall that the Limehouse Squad just happened to have a veritable blueprint of every part of Chu San Fu's operations in London. Where do you think it came from? Your files. Rather careless to have such information in your safe, don't you think? I'll wager Chu San Fu will.'
'My safe was not opened.'
'Wasn't it?'
'Furthermore,' he continued desperately, as though trying to forestall the fatal moment, 'none of my records were missing.'
I actually laughed. It wasn't easy, but I believe I pulled it off rather well.
'They were photographed.'
'But that's illegal.'
'So it is. You should have a good case. Let's see, who will you sue? The master cracksman who got into your office? The photographer?' I did not choose to reveal that Slim Gilligan had performed both jobs. 'Possibly, the man who planned the whole thing?'
'Holmes!' he exclaimed, and the taste of the word was gall and wormwood. Emotion twisted the Chinaman's face as he imagined disaster. Then the spark of cunning reentered his eyes.
'If you could not tell Chu San Fu—'
I used an upright palm to stem his words before he gained confidence by uttering them.
'You can't present him with a dead body. Do you think he would believe that you and those two gargantuans could not take me with ease? Impossible!'
The flicker of hope was erased from Loo Chan's face, and then the passivity of resignation settled over it.
'What is your thought?'
I had of late listened to so much of the history of Egypt from Holmes, Sir Randolph Rapp, and most recently Colonel Gray that I decided to make use of it.
'The ancients of this land made a habit of obliterating from history certain distasteful matters, which is why the reign of some of their pharaohs is hardly known at all. I suggest that tonight never happened. I was never here. If you can control the Manchurians, I see no problem.'
I could sense the lawyer trying this thought for size and searching it for a flaw. Evidently he did not find one, for he rose to his feet, indicating the window.
'So be it. Best you leave this way. I will take care of the Manchurians.'
While clambering out of a half-opened window in a dark alley in Cairo is not my idea of a dignified exit, all in all I felt that the matter had been well handled. True, I had consorted with the lawless, but surely this was better than filling a shallow grave in the shifting sands of Egypt. Or being the prisoner of Chu San Fu, whose feelings towards me were hardly benevolent.
As I scurried out of the alleyway and hastened back to Shepheard's, it jostled my conscience to accept the fact that I had played the role of the blackmailer. However, I was alive and free, so surely this transgression had been in a good cause.
If I could muster an alibi for my solo flight into dark doings in far-off places, I cannot, in conscience, deny a certain pride that provided me with great joy when I regained the lobby of the hotel only to run into an irate and anxious Colonel Gray.
'Good God, Doctor, where have you been? My men are searching the city for you!'
The high color of his face was more pronounced and the banality of his personality was a thing of the past, a mere cover, as I had already begun to suspect.
I regarded him with a cool manner, tinged with surprise.
'I was conducting an investigation of my own, Colonel. Please explain your concern.' It was but a little thing, and yet I shall always cherish it in my memory.
'You were what!' Gray verged on apoplexy. 'You realize that they would have handed me my head in London
