Exploits Read Free Page A

he said with no show of interest whatsoever.
    “Well, that's it. I'm done now, right?” I said. “I mean, you'll be waiting for him at the museum, and I can go off converting all you godless yellow heathen—no offense intended—and maybe build my tabernacle.”
    “Not that easy,” said Wong.
    “Why not?” I demanded.
    “Cannot make omelet without breaking eggs.”
    “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
    “So sorry,” he said. “Wrong proverb.” He paused and tried again. “Beauty only skin deep.”
    “Well, that explains everything,” I said.
    “Cannot capture Mr. Rupert Cornwall at museum where emerald reside,” continued Wong as he finished his soup.
    “I already told you what time he's going to show up.”
    “ He will not steal emerald. He will have underling do so. I do not want little fish while big fish lead horse to water but cannot make him drink.”
    “So what do you plan to do?”
    “Mr. Rupert Cornwall expect me to arrest you. I will not disappoint him.”
    “That may not disappoint him ,” I said, “but it'll disappoint the hell out of me .”
    He shook his head. “Just go through motions. Then catch him when he try to plant emerald on honorable son.”
    “What if he has a henchman do that , too?” I asked.
    “Almost certainly will. After all, home is where heart is.”
    “I don't think you understand me, Brother Wong,” I said. “What's the difference if you catch a henchman stealing the emerald or you catch one planting it on your kid?”
    “Much easier to trace emerald back to Mr. Rupert Cornwall after he has stolen it than before,” explained Wong.
    “And what happens to me?” I asked.
    “We arrest you with much fanfare in afternoon, release you when we apprehend henchman that night.”
    Then a particularly bothersome thought occurred to me.
    “What if he changes his mind and decides to keep the emerald?”
    “Then you have lied to me, I take full credit for capturing you, city give another medal to humble detective, and I apprehend Mr. Rupert Cornwall some other day.” He smiled. “You see, either way it all work out.”
    Well, I could see it all working out for Willie Wong and Rupert Cornwall a lot easier than it all working out for me, so me and the Lord decided that it was time to take matters into our own hands, and what we did was this: I went out shopping at a bunch of costume jewelry stores, and when I finally came to a fake emerald about the size of the lump of coal I was toting around in the little cloth bag, I bought it for twenty pounds and tucked it away in my pocket.
    Then I went over to Bonham Road and visited the Fung Ping Shan Museum a day early, found the Empire Emerald, and tried to figure out how to substitute my stone for the real one, but since I'm a God-fearing Christian missionary who ain't never had an illegal impulse in my life, I finally had to admit that while the trip wires and the lock on the front door wouldn't give me no problems, the alarm built into the case was a type I hadn't seen before and there was just no way I was going to be able to switch the emeralds without setting it off and waking up such dead as weren't otherwise occupied at the time.
    One thing I did notice, though, was that the guards were Brits and not Chinamen, so I waited until they locked up the museum and followed one of them home. I got his name off the mailbox, and early the next morning, right after he'd left for work, I called his wife and told her that my laundry shop had inadvertently ruined her husband's tuxedo, but that we would be happy to make amends. She explained that he didn't have a tuxedo, and I told her I was sure it was his but just to make doubly certain I needed to know the name of the establishment she did her business with, and as soon as she told me I popped over there and informed them I was a visiting relative who had been sent by to pick up any uniforms he might have left there. Sure enough, they had one, all bright and green and