“How did you get here?” I demanded.
“I went home after I left you, knowing what Yin Hung would say, because he had told me in the employment office, and when I got home—When I got home I decided to come here where I belong.”
“Nonsense!” I corrected her. “When you got home you found a message there from Chang Li Ching, asking you—ordering you to come here.”
She looked at me, saying nothing.
“What did Chang want?”
“He thought perhaps he could help me,” she said, “and so I stayed here.”
More nonsense.
“Chang told you Garthorne was in danger—had split with The Whistler.”
“The Whistler?”
“You made a bargain with Chang,” I accused her, paying no attention to her question. The chances were she didn’t know The Whistler by that name.
She shook her head, jiggling the ornaments on her headdress.
“There was no bargain,” she said, holding my gaze too steadily.
I didn’t believe her. I said so.
“You gave Chang your house—or the use of it—in exchange for his promise that”—“the boob” were the first words I thought of, but I changed them—“Garthorne would be saved from The Whistler, and that you would be saved from the law.”