The Case of the Backward Mule. Erle Stanley Gardner
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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