Читать книгу The Case of the Backward Mule - Erle Stanley Gardner - Страница 8

WHERE San Francisco’s Chinatown separates itself from the rest of the city, the line of demarcation is sharp. It is as though the Chinese, mindful of the fact that a Western author had observed that East was East and West was West and never the twain might meet, had endeavored to offer visible proof of the logic of that statement.

Terry Clane, emerging from the Stockton Street tunnel, found himself surrounded by the atmosphere of the Orient as effectively as though he had stepped from a ship to the wharf at Hong Kong.

Here were expensive shops, beginning to show once more in the windows those objects of Oriental patience which are so inconceivable to the Western mind. Here was a sampan carved from ivory beginning to turn with age, a sampan loaded heavily with sacks of merchandise, peopled with miniature ivory figures bent with the toil of a lifetime of labor, so cunningly fashioned they were complete even to the smallest detail. One could see the wrinkles about the tired eyes of the stooped man who worked the sculling-oar back and forth by the aid of a rope so arranged that it kept the blade of the oar turned at just the right angle to yield greatest efficiency. This ivory masterpiece had taken years of work by a clever craftsman. It was so marvelously complete that the observer looking at it might well have felt he was standing on a dock at the Huangpu, looking through the wrong end of a telescope at one of the typical sampans passing by. Yet the price at which it was to be sold was such that an affluent Westerner could well buy it, place it carelessly on top of the mantel as an ornament and forget about it, little realizing that in the capacity for taking such infinite pains over such a long period of time lay the key to China’s indestructibility.

Over these stores were offices, apartments, lodge-rooms where the various tongs held their meetings, and down the side streets one could catch glimpses of figures moving silently along the line of shops where merchandise was sold by Orientals only to Orientals Chinese drug-stores where one might find weird remedies concocted from various animals and reptiles grocery stores where one might find Chinese delicacies, birds’ nests for soup, son eou tow with its peculiar pungent inimitable flavor that is like nothing else on earth, “petrified eggs” which had been buried in mud until that had solidified into a dark jelly with a flavor that few Occidental palates could appreciate.

Terry Clane moved through these side streets, opened a plain, unmarked door which disclosed a flight of grimy stairs lighted by a dispirited bulb which seemed about ready to give up its inadequate struggle against the dark shadows that were forever closing in upon it.

Terry Clane closed the door behind him, walked with swift, sure steps up the dusty stair treads. He came to an upper hallway where his feet echoed from uncarpeted boards, where lines of solid wooden doors remained closed, somber and silent, masking whatever might lie behind them with the inscrutable secretiveness of the Orient.

Terry climbed another flight of stairs, moved down another corridor, paused at a door so old that the varnish on it had turned black and had granulated, a door which with age had collected all of the grime and dirt of a big city.

Uninitiated fingers could never have found the bell-button, which was to one side of the door, concealed in the shadows. Clane pressed the button twice. There was no sound of a signal from within.

Clane waited patiently. The noise of the city did not penetrate to this corridor. So far as any audible evidence was concerned, the building might have been entirely vacant, holding its breath, waiting for a victim to walk into its sinister embrace.

There was a faint, all but imperceptible sound as somewhere a sliding panel moved cautiously backward far enough to enable invisible eyes to appraise the visitor standing there in the dim light of the corridor.

Abruptly from the other side of the door came the sound of a heavy bar being slid back by some smooth-running, electrically propelled mechanism then the door swung inward on heavy ball-bearing hinges such as are used to support the weight of the steel door of a vault.

That door itself was as interesting and as deceptive as the other surroundings. Behind the layer of cheap, stained wood with its decomposing varnish was a layer of toughest steel, and on the inner side of this layer of steel was a surface of carved teakwood inlaid with intricate designs that were pleasing to the eye.

An old Chinese servant stood on the threshold. His motionless face might well have been carved from old ivory by the same artisan who had fashioned the sampan in the window of the expensive art shop farther down the street. Only the eyes of the old man showed emotion. They were dancing with pleasure.

He bowed deferentially, stood to one side.

“Will you deign to honor this dwelling?” he asked in Chinese.

Clane entered, dropped a hand affectionately upon the old man’s shoulder.

“My eyes are being feasted,” Clane said in Chinese.

The old servant made no reply, but under his hand Terry Clane could feel the frail body trembling with excitement and emotion.

Wordlessly the man turned, led the way down a corridor carpeted with an Oriental rug so soft and springy, that the visitor might well have felt that his feet were walking on moss. On each side of the reception hallway were chairs of dark Chinese wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl in artistic scenes of gardens, of figures posing in stately dignity on ornamental bridges across canals. Overhead lights scintillated through purest rock crystal, cut and polished into prisms that transmitted the light in deflected rays to each corner of the room.

The Chinese servant opened a door and stood back to one side. Sou Ha came to meet Terry Clane with outstretched hand and the calm, self-contained dignity of the Oriental. Half-way to him she lost her self-control and ran with a squeal of delight to fling herself in his arms, a trembling, vibrant bundle of silk-clad femininity.

“Terry!” she sighed, and then tilted her head back, her eyes closed. The long lashes swept her cheeks.

Terry Clane bent to the half-parted lips.

Behind them the aged Chinese servant quietly closed the door.

Sou Ha’s eyes opened. She smiled in Terry Clane’s eyes, then disengaged herself. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Couldn’t do what?”

“Couldn’t be Chinese. I tried, but I have lived here too long. My emotions got the better of me.”

“Meaning that the Chinese do not have emotions?” Terry taunted.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “The Chinese have emotions, but conceal them. They do not surrender to them. I tried to discipline myself and I lost. I am glad that I lost. The civilization of the Orient is superior to that of the West, but we have lost much by not learning how to kiss.”

She laughed up at him. “My father,” she said, “would be shocked. But after all, why did he send me to a California college if he didn’t want me to learn the ways of your country?”

“Why, indeed?” Clane asked, smiling.

She was pure Chinese. Her features held the classic lines which represented a cultured aristocracy that could trace its family back for some three hundred years. But superimposed upon this Chinese background was something that was distinctly Western, a certain jaunty independence, an ability to meet fate upon equal terms and to laugh at life.

“Where’s your father?” Clane asked. “And how is he?”

“He’s fine. He hoped you’d come tonight.”

“I’d have been here sooner,” Clane said, “if it hadn’t been for the police.”

“Over the escape of Edward Harold?”

“Yes.”

“But, good heavens, you just arrived from the boat. How could you be expected to know anything about that?”

Clane smiled at her.

“Oh well, I know,” she said. “I suppose I’d feel the same way if I were the police. Did they find out anything?”

“I hope not.”

“Did you know anything?”

He laughed. “Now you are like the police.”

“Terry,” she said, “tell me. Did you...did you engineer it?”

“You mean the escape?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“I thought perhaps you had. It was...it was done so adroitly.”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t know anything about it until after I was interrogated by the police. They told me.”

“Will they catch him?”

“I’m afraid so. They have his fingerprints. They have his photographs. They have suffered humiliation. They want him badly enough. I’m wondering if perhaps that don’t want revenge badly enough so that won’t catch him too soon, but will wait a while.”

“Terry, what do you mean?”

Clane said, “I’m not too certain about the police. Sometimes they are vindictive.”

“But I don’t understand what you mean about not catching him.”

Clane said, “He was convicted of murder. He had perfected an appeal. It might well have been that there were some holes in the case. The Supreme Court might have set aside the conviction. All right, he escapes. While he is a fugitive from justice he has no standing in court. The Supreme Court will dismiss the appeal on proper application.”

“You mean the police will try to have the appeal dismissed?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“And then after the appeal has been dismissed and it is too late for Harold to do anything to save himself, the police might find him. Then he would be whisked away to the death cell with no possible hope for a review of his case unless the governor should decide to give him executive clemency, and he’d hardly do that to a man who had made the police force lose face by engineering an escape.”

“Then the police know where he is and are just going through the motions of trying to catch him until after that can...oh, Terry, that seems terrible.”

“It’s just a thought that I had,” he said. “Something to be considered. It doesn’t fit in with the facts of the case—yet.”

She said. “Come. We must talk with father. He’s waiting. He’ll know you’re here.”

She led the way to another door. Turning at right angles, she stood slightly back and let him precede her through the doorway, saying, “Father, he has come.”

Chu Kee arose from the straight-backed chair in which he had been seated and hurried forward. The placid calm of his countenance was broken by a smile. For a moment only he paused to clasp his hands in front of his breast, shaking hands with himself in Chinese style. Then he too forsook the impassivity of the Orient to envelop Clane’s hands with long, sensitive fingers. “My son,” he said in Chinese, “it has been long.”

“It has been long, my Teacher,” Terry Clane said. “But absence has made the reunion all the more pleasant.”

“Pain,” Chu Kee admitted, “is but the appetizer which makes pleasure the more palatable.”

Clane laughed and said in English, “You have a proverb for everything. Don’t I remember that at one time you said pleasure was but the sleep of life, that progress was made through overcoming hardship and learning to endure pain?”

Chu Kee’s eyes twinkled. He continued to talk in Chinese. “The snow-capped mountain may seem a jagged crag from the north, while it looks as a soft snowball from the south. Yet it is the same mountain. Only the viewpoint has changed. Will it please you to sit down and tell me about what you did in China?”

Chu Kee escorted his guest over towards the row of ceremonial seats which graced the wall of the room; then suddenly smiled and said, “Perhaps you would be more comfortable in the cushioned chair?”

Terry Clane shook his head. “I have learned to enjoy the things of China,” he said, and permitted himself to be seated in one of the straight-backed inlaid chairs, chairs which to the average white man would have been unendurably hard and uncomfortable.

“Really,” Clane went on, “when you get accustomed to them, they’re much better than the cushioned chairs. You’re sitting upright in these chairs and with your back straight, not slouched down on the end of your spine. You are well, my Teacher?”

“Life has given this unworthy one health,” Chu Kee agreed. “And you, my son?”

“Never better.”

The servant brought tea in Chinese cups that were more like covered bowls nestling in doughnut-like saucers.

“You have accomplished that which you set out to do?” Chu Kee asked blandly.

“I am hopeful that my trip was a success.”

“Others thought it so.”

“Yes.”

“That is well.”

There was a period of silence during which they sipped their tea, then Chu Kee said abruptly, “Your friend, the Painter Woman, where is she?”

Clane looked at him with startled surprise. “You don’t know?”

“I do not know,” Chu Kee said gravely.

“But I thought...well, in a jam like this, I thought she’d come to you.”

“I too thought she would come to me,” Chu Kee said. “As one who is close to you, she also is close to me. That which is mine is at the disposal of a friend of yours.”

Terry Clane sat in silence, digesting that information.

“You have not heard from her? There has been no message?”

“There has been no message.”

“There will be one,” Chu Kee said in a tone of quiet assurance. “She knows what boat you were on?”

“Yes.

“She will read that it has arrived and will get some word to yon.”

“That would be extremely dangerous,” Clane said. “The police are looking for that very thing to happen. They will try to intercept any message she sends.”

“The Painter Woman is clever,” Chu Kee said as though that effectively dismissed the possibility of police intercepting her message.

They were silent for the space of several seconds. Then Chu Kee, picking up his cup of tea, held it in his clasped hands, letting the heat of the liquid warm his long, sensitive fingers. “There is gossip,” he said at length.

“About what?”

“The Eastern Art Import and Trading Company.”

“And what is the gossip?”

“I do not hear it all, but evidently there has been much loss and much profit. These men play at politics in the Orient.”

“I have heard they are interested in the Philippines,” Clane said.

“One hears many things,” Chu Kee murmured.

“This was supposed to be authentic.”

“Many profits and many losses,” Chu Kee went on almost dreamily. “First there was a great loss, then there was a period of recovery, and of late there has been a big, a very big, profit. These men are becoming powerful because one of them is shrewd.”

“One of them, my Instructor in Wisdom?”

“This Ricardo Taonon, the Eurasian,” Chu Kee answered obliquely after the Chinese custom, “is a man of great wile. His mouth says that he is a great friend of China.”

“Empty words?” Terry Clane asked.

“Words, certainly,” Chu Kee said gravely. “The significance of those words is not yet known. I have men who are investigating. They are shrewd men — and that are puzzled. The man is deep. He plays a game which does not appear on the surface.”

After that there was a period when there was no talk. Silence enveloped them in an aura of friendship where each drew strength and pleasure from the presence of the other, sitting there in a row on straight-backed cushionless chairs sipping the hot pale amber of tea which is only for the palate of the connoisseur.

This tea had been grown at a certain elevation above sea-level. A hundred feet higher or lower produced tea of a different quality. Only leaves of a certain tenderness were picked at, a very particular time, gathered by the most attractive maidens in the village, who selected each leaf with the care that a diamond merchant would bestow in choosing a stock of gems, inspecting each carefully for flaws and blemishes. To drink such tea rapidly is a crime against good taste. Such tea is to be sipped carefully in small quantities so that the delicate aroma penetrates to the nostrils. The flavor is nectar to the tongue.

The silence endured for three minutes, for five, for ten.

Clane finished his cup of tea. Sou Ha made a motion towards the tea-cup to refill his cup, but Clane bowed and smiled. “It is enough, Sou Ha. I have work to do.”

“There will be a message,” Chu Kee said confidently.

“And in a message is danger.”

“This Ricardo Taonon,” Chu Kee cautioned. “You knew him in China?

“I met him in Hong Kong, yes.”

“Did you learn, perhaps, anything of his connections?”

“No. He seems to know everyone, but he has no close friends. Apparently he’s on friendly terms with everyone, particularly the influential people, and there it ends.”

Chu Kee said, “My own men found him very difficult to appraise in Hong Kong. He is an interesting man. You will walk very carefully, my son, and keep to the middle of the street.”

Clane bowed his leave-taking, gently shook hands with himself after the Chinese custom. “I will walk slowly and carefully,” he said, “and keep to the middle of the road.”

Sou Ha showed him out, her soft, pliable hand resting on his arm. “It is better,” she said, “that you leave by another door than the one through which you entered.”

Clane nodded acquiescence.

She led him along soft Oriental carpets, rooms which flanked the long corridor, whose perpetually closed doors were merely a front of poverty to conceal the luxury of that which lay behind. “You will be careful, First-Born?” she asked.

“As careful as can be, yes.”

“My father thinks you are in danger.”

“Why?”

“He does not always confide in his daughter. Tell me, you have no idea where the Painter Woman is?”

“No.”

“Then she is with this man who has escaped,” Sou Ha said. “She has decided to live with him so long as he lives and to die with him when he is...I am so sorry, my friend, have I hurt you?”

“No.”

“You still love her?”

“I gave her her freedom when duty called on me to return to the paths of danger, paths that would take me far from civilization, far from the contact of mail.”

“And did she desire this freedom which you gave her so lightly?”

“I explained to her that it was out of the question for her to come with me, that I would be gone for years.”

“Oh, you explained,” Sou Ha said, and then laughed musically.

Clane looked at her.

She guided him to a door. “In my country,” she said, “there are many very wise men. You have studied under these men, First-Born. You have learned to concentrate, you have acquired much knowledge. And by meditation you have ripened that knowledge into wisdom.”

Clane looked down at her, his eyes questioning.

“Go on,” he said.

“But these wise men,” Sou Ha went on, “steeped in the lore of their wisdom, know nothing of women. Therefore, they can teach nothing of women.”

She pressed a button. An electric mechanism shot back steel bolts on the inside of the door.

“And how does one go about acquiring this knowledge of women?” Terry Clane asked.

Her eyes laughed up at him. She came close to him. “You may kiss me again.”

A few moments later Terry Clane stepped out of the quiet luxury of that sumptuous room into the carpetless poverty of a dusty corridor illuminated by a single unshaded incandescent which dangled down from twisted green wires, faded and fly-specked.

The door behind him swung noiselessly shut and Clane could hear the whirr of the electric mechanism as the heavy steel bars were shot home.

The kiss of the Chinese girl tingled against his lips. The touch of her hand was still warm upon his cheek and her words still ringing in his mind. These wise men with their knowledge which had been gleaned through the ages, their secrets of meditation by which knowledge might be transmuted into wisdom, could teach nothing about women because that knew nothing about women.

And how did one learn about women?

He saw once more her laughing eyes, the red of her warm lips. “You may kiss me again,” she had said.

And Terry Clane, sure of himself when he had been within the fastness of a monastery high in the seclusion of snow-capped mountains, suddenly felt the tranquility of his mind vanish into nothing as he walked along the bare boards of the corridor and descended the narrow flight of stairs towards the smelly side street of San Francisco’s Chinatown.