RE-ENTER GENERAL STEEL
The telephone rang again, and Chao Ku’s voice came over the wire, and, for all its even inflection, it rang of triumph.
“Have found residence of elusive Mr. Smith, known in French quarter as Monsieur Junot and wearing different face and clothes.”
Chao Ku rose to dazzling heights in Captain Hugh North’s estimation. “Good work. Anything else?”
“I talked to house boy, house boy says Mr. Junot expected back maybe six o’clock.”
“Where are you?”
“In shop on Boulevard Montigny. Can see Number 42 bis Rue Voisin through window.”
“Stay right there, Chao. There are two men from the Central Station on their way over—Inspector Fu and another man. Do you know them?”
“Inspector Fu is old friend, very competent man. What shall I do when they come?”
“Give them your information, then meet me at the Cafe Des Deux Hemispheres.”
“Yes, Tajên, I look forward to happy hour.”
“Any trace of heavy cases?”
“No, Tajên. Number one man of stevedore guild positive no heavy freight boxes got into French Concession this week and, more important, no heavy boxes leave.”
“I see. Good-bye.”
“Well,” Kilgour demanded, “learn anything important?”
“Yes, Bruce, the contraband arms were never unloaded in Shanghai, so they’re probably still aboard the Dong Hoi—wherever she is.”
For reasons of his own, North said nothing of the plan which was gradually taking shape at the back of his brain, but stood staring out of the barred window at the deeply blue afternoon sky.
“Well,” he presently announced, “I’m off for that talk with Ruby I spoke of. Maybe something will come of it.”
The Englishman looked uneasy. “You’re going to her house? Isn’t that like rushing in where the angels detour?”
“Nothing ventured…” was the Intelligence Captain’s dry retort. “Perhaps I can persuade Ruby to lure Smith to her house where I can nab him. Of course, the job will have to be very, very sub rosa, because if the French police catch us operating in their territory they’ll raise fifty kinds of hell.”
Over the Englishman’s rugged features swept a look of understanding.
“Getting that close to the end, eh?”
“I’m hoping so, but in this business ordinary rules don’t hold. In the meantime I’ve an easy, but special, job for you.”
“And that’s?”
“To scare up two hundred thousand dollars or the equivalent to a million gold francs.”
“Two hundred thousand red-hot devils!” gasped Kilgour open mouthed. “Are you out of your head?”
“Almost. However, I think if you suggest to the Chamber of Commerce that they’ll lose said amount many times over if Wang Kung takes the city, they’ll gladly raise it for you. In fact”—North consulted inwardly—“I think we’d better make it three hundred thousand.”
“Right—but I make no promises. Anything else?”
“Yes, go see Yuan; lie like a gentleman and tell him we have the case in the hollow of our hand; but, above all, impress on him that this panic must be stopped, or the first thing we know Wang won’t need any ammunition to take Shanghai, and that would be a touch of irony my delicate nature simply couldn’t stand.” The Englishman looked at North with something like awe in his eyes. With disaster looming at every turn, with the police disorganized, with panic ruling the Native Cities, and the vital arms shipment God knew where, Hugh North could still joke!
Putting out a half-smoked cigarette, the Intelligence Captain got up. “Well, Bruce, I’m off. Should see you here about half-past six or seven.”
“Right-o. I’ll move heaven and earth to get the money and keep Yuan encouraged.”
Lost in speculation on his impending interview with the famous coaster, North was striding along down Honan Road in the direction of the French Concession when a large black limousine swooped up to the curb and halted. Even while he wondered, a Manchu soldier in a dark-green uniform descended from his place beside the driver and crossed the sidewalk, grinning broadly.
“General say please get in car. Wanchee make talk.” Of all things North wished to avoid just now was an encounter with Steel, and he was still debating a flat refusal when someone stepped up behind him and firmly thrust the muzzle of a revolver against the small of his back. Though badly shaken, North accepted the hint with good grace and nodded to the flat-faced Manchu.
Damn! What if his carefully maturing plans were to be thwarted at the last minute? He keyed his perceptions to a still higher pitch of efficiency as he strode over the sidewalk and stepped into the limousine’s tonneau. Still devoid of expression, the soldier closed the door and resumed his place in front after covertly drawing a short-nosed automatic.
Harder and more menacing than ever did Steel’s profile seem to North’s impassive gaze when the car rolled forward.
“So,” snarled the gaudily uniformed mercenary, fingering a long-snouted Luger, “you thought you’d put one over on Sam Steel, eh?”
North merely said, “You seem so sure of it, I don’t suppose there’s any use in my denying it.”
“There ain’t. Look at that!” He thrust out his left forearm. The golden bracelet had been transferred to Steel’s right wrist, and above a tattooed snake was fixed a heavy white bandage. “Some Chink tried to knife me half an hour ago. Gimme your gat—butt first, too.”
“Too bad,” North murmured as he obeyed. “I gather he didn’t succeed.”
“Naw, I broke his damned yellow neck for him.” Steel commenced to jerk down the window shades.
“Just what makes you so sure I’ve double-crossed you?” North demanded once the car moved out into the swirling traffic.
“Whoever knocked me out went through my jeans first of all. When I came to he tried to knife me.”
“Oh, nonsense.” The Intelligence Captain’s acid tones bit into Steel’s reasoning. “You don’t suppose I was the only one on the Kiangsu who knew you ransacked Trenchard’s stuff?”
“How the hell did you know that?” The scarred features grew still more menacing, and North feared for a moment that he had gone too far.
“Your spurs scratched the varnish on the dresser, and you left some distinctive red clay from your spur chains in Trenchard’s cabin. A very careless job, Steel, very careless. Are we going far?”
“Yeh! You a damn sight further than me. We’ll start out along the Nanking Road.”
Covertly North estimated his chances of successful resistance and on finding them to be hopelessly negative took refuge in guile.
“You’re making the mistake of your life if you bump me off,” he announced. “However, if you’re not bright enough to—”
“Who says I ain’t bright?” Decoration and campaign ribbons on Steel’s broad chest glowed as the car whirled around a corner and a sunbeam briefly touched his gold buttons with a pencil of fire.
“I do,” North said with a polite smile that was somehow infinitely insulting.
“Why am I making a mistake?”
“Because I realize Yuan can’t be saved, and I’m ready to shift sides.”
Though the mercenary stared in silence, suspicion was still rife in his mind.
“Too late, Cap. My side’s going to win anyhow, and besides, I don’t trust you.”
“Oh, yes, your side will win, but not the way you want it to.”
General Steel, his pale brown eyes narrowed, sat straighter on the car cushions and faced his prisoner.
“What the hell you drivin’ at? Speak up and talk turkey, savvy?”
“All right, have it your way, Steel. I’m probably wrong, but I thought you and Wu wanted to grab that arms shipment for yourselves.”
The click of the mercenary’s jaws sharply shutting sounded loud in the closed tonneau. “What’s that?”
“It’s very simple, Steel, and I’m pained that you haven’t seen the possibilities yourself.” Almost mocking were the Intelligence Captain’s accents. Instinctively he knew that Steel and his master had long since decided on the course he was about to outline, but it amused him to assume that Steel was so thick headed as not to have seen it.
“You and Wu grab Wang’s ammunition, so Yuan annihilates Wang. But this annihilating job pretty well uses up Yuan. That’s where you come in. Having Wang’s ammunition and a fresh army, you come charging down from the north and lick Yuan to a frazzle. Then Shanghai is yours with no competitors in sight.
“Really, Colonel—er—General Steel, you disappoint me.”
“Umph,” grunted the martial figure, and the stubby fingers clutched less tightly the butt of the Luger lying ready in his lap. “You ain’t such a dumb egg—mebbe that’s why I don’t trust you.”
North ignored this last and carried on his campaign. “All right, Steel, suppose you carry out your plan and kill me—it’ll get you no nearer to that arms shipment.”
“Okay, okay—if you know where this blasted shipment is, mebbe we can do business after all. I got three hundred damned good men and the Korea and the Thibet—two of the fastest dispatch boats on the Yangtze—all set and ready to go.”
The Intelligence Captain’s heart count dropped a few beats, for his peril had been very great. “I don’t know myself, but I know someone who does; it’s someone who’s ready, even eager, to do business. Could you dig up a couple hundred thousand dollars on short notice?”
“American or Mex?”
North snorted in fine contempt. “American. This isn’t penny ante.”
“Well, who is it?’
North chuckled a wicked, low, delighted chuckle. “I’m not saying a damned word, Steel, until you order this car turned back, give me back my gun, and stop this stupid horseplay.”
A certain capacity for prompt decision was one of those qualities which raised Steel above the common herd of adventurers. He reached for the speaking tube and, in staccato Chinese, rasped an order, whereupon, to North’s infinite relief, the car slowed, made a U turn, and headed back towards Shanghai.
“Then you’re comin’ in with me?”
“Yes. I can read the handwriting on the wall almost as quickly as the next man.”
“How much do you want?” Eminently practical was Sam Steel.
“We’ll talk about that when we’ve got the arms shipment.”
The mercenary relaxed, extending long red-striped legs before him. “Well, what’s your ideas, Cap?”
“I talked with your friend Ruby this afternoon and guessed she was willing to sell out. But she wants two hundred thousand, she says. I couldn’t promise it—you know what governments are.”
“You’re tellin’ me?”
“Well, I stalled her off. I told her I thought maybe I could raise her price.”
“Yeah?” Steel’s pale, predatory eyes were very searching.
“Yes, I thought of our conversation this morning and was on my way to look you up. But there’s one thing we’ve got to do besides getting the dope on the delivery point.”
Suspicion reentered the mercenary’s features. “What’s that?”
“We’ve got to nail that Smith fellow. He’s a smart one.”
General Steel eased his Sam Browne belt a little and scowled at the chauffeur’s greasy neck. “Don’t I know it? Beat me out when I’d a dicker all fixed with a pal of his.”
North would have given his right hand to ask, as he deeply suspected, whether said “pal” was Greenway, but he deemed it unwise and so kept quiet.
“Yeah, dunno how that Smith guy caught on, but before his crooked pal could slip me the low-down he got bumped off.”
“You mean the man you dealt with was murdered?”
“That’s about the size of it,” the general said while the car hummed back on its course. “Went, up to see him, and there he was on the floor, cold as a sharper’s deck. I looked round but didn’t find nothing. Yep, that Smith fellow’s up on the gray matter. How we going to get him?”
The intricate engines of North’s imagination whirred and labored furiously. Now, more than ever, he must make no mistakes.
“Listen.” North faced his companion with an air of deep confidence. “I’ll go to Ruby and tell her I couldn’t scrape up the cash but that you can. I’ll tell her that you’ll come to see her around six-fifteen and that the deal’s off if you can’t talk to Smith.”
Steel shifted his uniformed bulk somewhat uncertainly. “Will she fall for it?”
“Fall for it? Listen, Steel, she’d sleep with a leper if you offered her enough. I know what I’m talking about.”
“How’d she convince Smith?”
“She can give the excuse that you’re Marshal Wu’s man and that you’ve got some last-minute news for his private ear. Sounds good?”
With his uninjured hand Steel steadied his wounded one when the limousine jounced heavily over a hole in the road. “Yeah. She oughtta fall for that—she ain’t too bright.”
“She’s not, or she’d never have approached me.”
“I get you. She gives Smith the come-on, and he shows up at her house.”
“That!’s right.” North for the first time seemed eager. “The minute he goes in I’ll follow, and if, between the two of us, we can’t put him out of business, it’ll be just too bad. We’ve got to get him, see? He’s the manager, promoter, and treasurer of this whole scheme, so with him out of the way and knowing the landing point, we’ll be all set!”
The noises of the Settlement grew loud outside the curtained windows, and the limousine paused more and more frequently in the traffic while Steel fingered first his jaw and then his battered nose, which, stenciled by the light, resembled the beak of a brooding eagle.
“’Tain’t a bad idea, Cap,” he admitted at length, “and it oughtta work. For your sake, I hope you’re on the level with me, for sure as God’s above I’ll have you boiled in oil if you double-cross me.”
Even North’s stout heart was chilled at the cold earnestness behind that promise. Steel could do it too, in all probability.
“I’m not double-crossing you,” North stated calmly. “I’m out for some real money.”
“Check, Cap. Then I’ll show up at Ruby’s at six-fifteen?”
“That’s right. And, for God’s sake, be on time. Come alone and bring the money. I’ll come back as soon as I see Smith go inside.”
“Where shall I let you out?”
“Where are we?—I can’t see through these damned curtains.”
“North Szechuen Road.”
“That’s good enough.”
Steel held out a horny right hand.
“Shake on it, Cap,” said he. “You and me are going to make history in these parts yet.”
Like a bear trap was the mercenary’s grip, but North’s was no less yielding, and Steel was first to relax his pressure. One had to descend to such elemental trifles with such a man.
The Intelligence Captain heaved a silent sigh of relief when the soldier on the box, who had sat facing side-wise with pistol significantly ready, jumped down and opened the door.
“So-long, Cap.” Steel grinned like a friendly wolf. “You’ve sure made a damn good bird dog.”
“Found the quail, eh?”
“Yeah.”
The door slammed, and the black limousine rolled smoothly away while North took out a handkerchief and gently mopped his brow. Quail was what Steel expected; but, well—life was full of surprises, and many of them were unpleasant.