Chronicles of the Secret Service Read Free Page A

him from going to those drinking places. Your investigations show that he came ashore at six or thereabouts, went straight to the Fan Tan saloon, where he stayed drinking for half an hour, sitting alone at one of the tables in the place. Leaving there, he went from one toanother, remaining in each about the same period of time. In all, he visited six saloons. At twenty minutes past nine, he was arrested on the Praya, where he was found to be drunk. The fact that he was there indicates that he was not on his way to visit another den, but was returning to his ship. From all this, I gather that, although his instructions were to avoid companions, he was expected to visit drinking saloons. In other words, the person who gave him the letter was to meet him in one or other of those places. The regularity of the period he spent in each shows clearly that he was working to a timetable. In order not to be too conspicuous he had to have a drink or more in each. As it happens, the fact that he remained so steadfastly alone did make him conspicuous, for which we have reason to be grateful, because I doubt if his movements could have been traced otherwise. Obviously his employers did not anticipate the possibility of his getting drunk. Perhaps he hadn’t a very strong head, or the fascination of samsui was too much for him and he was unable to resist taking more than he could hold. Anyhow that doesn’t matter.’
    ‘But,’ objected Winstanley, ‘the belief that he was met in one of those saloons doesn’t help us much.’
    ‘Oh, yes, it does,’ disagreed Sir Leonard. ‘We have narrowed the search down to one place. He undoubtedly received the letter in the last saloon he visited, otherwise the presumption is he would have gone to another. Had he received it in a previous one there would have been no point in his continuing his pilgrimage.’
    ‘By Jove! I can see now what you’ve been driving at, sir. The last place he went to was that new dancing and drinking hall, the China Doll.’
    ‘Exactly. That’s where he was met and given the letter.’
    ‘But why did he have to go to so many? Surely his appointment could have been made for one specific place.’
    ‘There may have been a hundred and one reasons. You must remember we have been very severe on wiping out Japanese espionage in this colony, and the agents here now have found it necessary to be ultra-cautious. The man who eventually met the sailor may be known to your men and, as a police watch is always kept on these drinking dens, he was forced to be rigidly careful.’
    Sir Masterson did not seem altogether satisfied with that.
    ‘Ransome’s Chinese are extraordinarily thorough,’ he remarked, ‘and have the patience of their race almost to an exaggerated degree. I don’t know myself how they did it, but they seem to have traced every movement of the sailor’s. Not once in their report, as you will have read in the transcription from my office, is there the suggestion that he may have met someone who passed something to him. It seems certain that he remained alone always.’
    ‘That means nothing,’ returned Sir Leonard. ‘It is perfectly easy to transfer an object like a letter from hand to hand unobserved when two persons are in the act of passing each other, or even from table to table – underneath, of course – when contiguous as they are in those places.’
    ‘Not so easy, when one of the parties as drunk as the Jap must have been by the time he got to the China Doll.’
    ‘There’s a good deal in that,’ nodded Wallace, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
    ‘Isn’t it likely,’ hazarded the Chief of Police, ‘that the agent who gave him the letter was an employee? A bartender or a waiter would entirely escape notice, if he passed it to him in the act of serving him.’
    ‘In that case, the man would be in one saloon only. There wouldn’t have been any reason for the seaman to visit six.’
    ‘No; that’s true.’
    They discussed the matter for