The Case of the Backward Mule. Erle Stanley Gardner
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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