Free Chronicles of the Secret Service by Alexander Wilson Page B

discoveries from Carter – he had returned to the room in which Yumasaki lay under guard to find her still sitting where he and Sir Leonard had left her – she asked to be taken to the governor. The Japanese held up a protesting hand. He had been attended by a doctor, and was able now to think of other matters besides his wound.
    ‘It is useless,’ he remarked in his precise but sibilant English, ‘to hope to obtain from the governor the slightest consideration for me by pleading to him. He is made, I think, of steel.’
    To his utter astonishment, and that of Carter as well, the girl turned on him like a veritable spitfire. For five minutes, she spoke in rapid, angry Chinese, until the man on the couch positively wilted and, into his face, came an expression of such utter consternation that it was comical. The two Chinese policemen guarding him, grinned broadly, and nodded approval. Carter wondered what it was all about. When, at last, she ceased speaking, she turned her back on the prone and livid Yumasaki.
    ‘Will you,’ she asked Carter, ‘be so kind as to take me to His Excellency, please?’
    ‘Of course.’
    He led her up to the secret room in which Sir Leonard was still engaged with the Commissioner of Police, who had joined him, and a couple of interpreters.
    ‘This lady has requested to see you, sir,’ announced Carter.
    Sir Leonard smiled kindly at her.
    ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.
    She dropped a graceful little curtsy.
    ‘Will you be kind enough, Your Excellency,’ she begged, ‘to give me complete copies of all you have found in this room. I wish to send them to my government in Nanking.’
    ‘Copies will, in any case, be despatched to Nanking,’ Sir Leonard assured her. ‘Why do you particularly wish to send them?’
    She smiled.
    ‘I do not particularly wish to send them myself, please. So long as my government receives them, I am satisfied.’
    The five men were regarding her curiously.
    ‘You have my word for that,’ declared Wallace. ‘I gather, young lady, that you are not simply a dancer?’
    She smiled again, and shook her head.
    ‘I am of the Chinese Counter Espionage Service,’ she confided. ‘Dancing was merely a blind for my other work. Also my pretended love for Yumasaki, and the fact that I allowed him to make love to me, was only a means to an end, please. I had obtained his confidence – he even permitted me to carry out small functions for him. I, for instance, gave the letter to the Japanese sailor who had been sent from the ship. I also,’ she added, ‘delayed him and made him drunk so that he would fall into the hands of the police.’ A little murmur of admiration and approval broke from the men. ‘I had discovered everything,’ she went on, ‘but the contents of the secret room of Yumasaki – first it was in the China Doll, before he thought it safer to come here. My work is now finished. I return to my home in Nanking after sixteen months’ absence.’
    ‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Carter. ‘To think we almost considered arresting you as one of Yumasaki’s accomplices. And I made abet with myself that you were only mixed up in Secret Service work as a cat’s paw! Ah, well, Joy, I’m jolly glad we’re allies.’
    She smiled very sweetly at him. Sir Leonard rose, and extended his hand to her, which she took very timidly.
    ‘You deserve well of your country,’ he declared. ‘I will see that you convey the copies you spoke of to Nanking yourself. And Mr Carter will escort you.’
    ‘Oh, Your Excellency,’ she cried, ‘how kind you are. Thank you so much.’
    Carter chuckled softly to himself.
    ‘Sir Leonard,’ he whispered to Sir Masterson Winstanley, ‘is taking an awful risk of losing a bright young assistant.’
    The dour commissioner entirely lacked a sense of humour.
    ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed sotto voce . ‘You are not thinking of marrying the girl, are you?’
    The young man’s eyes twinkled, but he sighed.
    ‘For the first time