good at all, mine ought to be highly valuable. You tell me what the deal was. If it’s halfway decent. I’ll promise you to crawl out of here and forget it. If you don’t tell me, I’m going to empty a gun out of the first window I can find. And you’d be surprised how many cops a shot will draw in this part of town, and how fast it’ll draw them.”
The threat took some of the color out of her face.
“If I tell, you will promise to do nothing?”
“You missed part of it,” I reminded her. “If I think the deal is halfway on the level I’ll keep quiet.”
She bit her lips and let her fingers twist together, and then it came.
“Chang Li Ching is one of the leaders of the anti-Japanese movement in China. Since the death of Sun Wen—or Sun Yat-Sen, as he is called in the south of China and here—the Japanese have increased their hold on the Chinese government until it is greater than it ever was. It is Sun Wen’s work that Chang Li Ching and his friends are carrying on.
“With their own government against them, their immediate necessity is to arm enough patriots to resist Japanese aggression when the time comes. That is what my house is used for. Rifles and ammunition are loaded into boats there and sent out to ships lying far offshore. This man you call The Whistler is the owner of the ships that carry the arms to China.”
“And the death of the servants?” I asked.
“Wan Lan was a spy for the Chinese government—for the Japanese. Wang Ma’s death was an accident, I think, though she, too, was suspected of being a spy. To a patriot, the death of traitors is a necessary thing, you can understand that? Your people are like that too when your country is in danger.”