Free Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha by Dorothy Gilman Page A

map through traffic that was, as Robin had predicted, fiendish, as drivers jockeyed recklessly for place and slipped in and out among the more sober travelers, their horns bleating a symphony of discordant notes. But they were not being followed, as she pointed out to Robin. “Do you think,” she asked him, “that your friend Marko is still waiting at the front entrance with the limousine?
    Robin shook his head. “No, by now he will have telephoned up to our suite—oh, we’re very elegant, we have a suite—after which he will have returned to the limousine looking petulant, and swearing noisily at the idle and impulsive rich, and after chatting with the otherchauffeurs and asking a large number of interesting questions about who they drive for, he will return the car to the garage.”
    “Poor Marko,” she murmured.
    “Don’t you believe it,” said Robin as they entered the tunnel that would take them under the harbor to Kowloon. “Not too long ago I swabbed decks and pulled nets on a fishing boat in the Mediterranean while Marko did nothing but sit on deck with binoculars, keeping an eye on drug smugglers nosing along the coast. My blisters were monstrous.” Emerging from the tunnel he called over his shoulder, “You can come out now, Mr. Hitchens, and just in time to see Hong Kong’s newest triumph, Tsim Sha Tsui East, most of it built on land reclaimed from the harbor.”
    Mr. Hitchens surfaced, and both he and Mrs. Pollifax stared at the enormous complex of hotels, malls, offices and restaurants before they swung into Chong Wan Road, which soon turned into Austin Road, and at last met with Kowloon’s famous Nathan Road, where the oriental and the old triumphed over the new.
    “Now that you’re visible and accessible,” Robin said to Mr. Hitchens, “what exactly did Alec Hao tell you about his father yesterday? You have the advantage of me there because I didn’t even know that his son Alec was back in Hong Kong until a few days ago, and by that time he was either not answering the door or the phone, or was never at home.”
    “He was probably out searching for his father,” said Mr. Hitchens. “He told me very little, only that his father had been an inspector in the Hong Kong police department, that his father had grown upset and angry a few weeks ago—something to do with his work—and had suddenly resigned to investigate something important,but he didn’t confide in Alec what it was. Then one morning his bed hadn’t been slept in, and no one could find him, and three days later Alec cabled and then phoned me in Massachusetts because the police were getting nowhere.”
    “Keep an eye out for Boundary Street,” Robin told Mrs. Pollifax in an aside. “And do the police know that you’re here?” he asked Mr. Hitchens.
    “Alec didn’t say. Our time together,” went on Mr. Hitchens, returning to the pedantic, “could be neatly divided into: first, mutual greetings; two, getting down to psychic work, which needed a few hours; three, our travels in the car, and four, our common effort to find the hut once we reached that area.”
    “How very precise,” said Robin weakly.
    “And there’s Boundary Street,” put in Mrs. Pollifax, giving him an understanding smile. “We leave Kowloon now?”
    Robin nodded. “Full speed ahead into New Territories, aiming roughly for Yuen Long. Find it on your map?”
    “Got it,” said Mrs. Pollifax.
    Their route lay along a coast road that skirted island-dappled bays on their left and steep mountains on their right, until at Castle Peak Bay they swung north to meet with Hong Kong’s farmland. And how lovely it is, thought Mrs. Pollifax, her eyes feasting on a soft lush green made even more tender by the volcanic texture of the rocky slopes that held it captive on either side. Every inch of the green fields looked manicured, the fields laid out in tidy squares or crescents or rectangles as far as the eye could see, interrupted only by lowslung