High Road to China

The head porter showed no surprise as Eve handed out her gun-case: it could have been that American ladies arrived every day at the Savoy with their guns, Annie Oakleys every one of them. He passed the gun-case on to a junior porter, then took the small lacquered wooden box which Eve pushed at him.

‘Tell them to be careful with that. My father would have my scalp and yours if what’s inside that box should be broken.’

‘Yes, miss,’ said the head porter, wondering if the father of this dark-haired beauty could be a Red Indian; but miffed at the suggestion that anything, other than perhaps the guests’ virginity, should ever be broken at the Savoy.

Going up in the lift Arthur Henty said, ‘I’m sorry your father couldn’t come with you. I was looking forward to seeing him after so long. It is almost seven years since I said goodbye to him in Shanghai.’

‘He hasn’t changed.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Henty ventured and was relieved to see Eve smile.

‘He still believes China belongs to him.’

Inside the suite Eve moved to the windows, opened one of them and looked out on the river, dull as unwashed quartz under the grey skies. It had stopped raining, but it was still a miserable day. A day for going to bed with a good book or a good man. She smiled to herself: her Boston grandmother would have commended her for the first thought and banished her for the second.

Henty studied her again, the heiress to the Tozer fortune, legatee of that part of China which her father thought belonged to him. Tozer Cathay had been started in Shanghai in 1870 by Eve’s grandfather, a windjammer captain from Boston turned merchant. Rufus Tozer had died in 1903 from a surfeit of bandits’ bullets while estimating a price for a repair job on the Great Wall of China: or so the company legend went. His son had run the firm ever since, had built it into the major competitor for trade in China of Jardine Matheson, the British firm that, until Tozer Cathay began to develop, had thought that it owned China.

‘How do you feel about China?’ Henty himself had loved it and its people, but he knew his leg would never allow him to go back there and take up his old job as a traveller. He had been grateful when Bradley Tozer had made him general manager of the London office.

Eve shrugged, turned from the window. The reflected light from the river struck sideways across her face, accentuating the slight slant of her eyes and the high cheekbones. Years before, Rufus Tozer had taken home a half-caste Chinese bride and Boston, already feeling itself invaded by the Irish, had resented this introduction of a possible further invasion, this time by the Yellow Peril. Since then, however, Pearl Tozer, having conveniently died at the birth of her son, had been forgiven and forgotten for her intrusion into decent Boston society: after all, her son had grown up to play quarterback for Harvard, gaining both All-American selection and a bride who was a distant cousin of the Cabots. Pearl’s granddaughter, grown to extraordinary beauty, was admired and, though given to such eccentricities as big-game hunting, piloting an aeroplane and smoking cigarettes in public, was still considered more acceptable than the Irish.

‘It’s not my cup of tea, if that’s the appropriate metaphor. I get upset by poverty, Mr Henty, and there is so much of it in China. I like to see happiness everywhere.’

He hadn’t thought she would be so shallow-minded and his voice was a little sharper than he intended it to be. ‘The Chinese are happy. Things could be better for them, but they are not un-happy.’

‘You think I’m shallow-minded for making such a remark, don’t you?’

Henty hung on to his eyebrows again. He should have recognized that she had probably inherited her father’s almost uncanny perception. But he was not a cowardly man: ‘Your remark did suggest that to me. I apologize. Perhaps we had better talk about something else. What are your plans while you are in London this week?’

Eve smiled, forgiving him. He was right, of course: she was shallow-minded. At least if that meant preferring happiness to misery. ‘I want to do some shopping at Harrods and a few other places. And Father wants me to order him some shirts at Turnbull and Asser’s. They have his measurements. How long will they take to make them?’

‘Two, three days, no more. I have tickets for the theatre every night – you can take your choice. Chu Chin Chow – ’ Then he, too, smiled. ‘But not if you don’t like China.’

She shook her head. ‘I’d like to see some of the new matinée idols. I’m mad about good-looking men, Mr Henty. Does that shock you?’

‘Not really,’ said Henty, wondering if she took her gun when she went in pursuit of good-looking men. ‘I understand it’s a perfectly normal thing with young girls.’

‘I adore you, Mr Henty. You try to sound like a stuffed shirt, but you’re not, are you? I read about a new leading man, Basil Rathbone. I’d like to see him, no matter what show he’s in.’

He held up a fan of tickets. ‘He’s in a new play opening next week, one by Somerset Maugham. I’ve included it amongst these.’

‘You’re perfectly slick, Mr Henty.’

He took it that that was a compliment: he was not up on the latest American slang.

Then the luggage arrived, supervised by Anna. She was a tiny Chinese who had been born in New York and had hated every moment of the three months she and her mistress had just spent in China. She had a New York accent but a Mandarin attitude towards servants less than herself. And in her book hotel porters were much less than the personal maid to a millionaire’s daughter. She clapped her tiny hands in tiny explosions and fired off orders with machine-gun rapidity. The two porters, silent and expressionless, Leyton Orientals, but boiling with thoughts about Yanks and Chinks who were mixed together in this midget witch, carried the trunks and suitcases into the main bedroom of the suite.

Eve took the small lacquered box from the page-boy who had brought it up and put it on a table. ‘When I left Father he was heading for Hunan to look for the companion piece to this. It’s a jade statue of Lao-Tze, the Taoist god. I believe there is one something like it in a museum in Paris, but Father says if he can get the pair of these, he’ll make all the museums and collectors sick with envy. You know what he’s like about his collection.’

Indeed Henty knew. On their trips into the Chinese hinterland all Tozer Cathay representatives were expected to keep an eye out for any items that might prove worthy additions to the famous Tozer collection.

‘Isn’t it risky, carrying it with you? Wouldn’t it have been safer to have shipped it straight home to America?’

‘That was Father’s original idea, but then he became afraid it might be stolen on the way. I persuaded him to let me bring it with me. I – ’ For the first time she looked embarrassed. ‘I wanted to prove I could be useful. I owe my father a lot, Mr Henty.’

Henty felt at ease enough to be frank: ‘I understand he thinks the world of you. So perhaps the debt is mutual.’

‘You’re perfectly sweet, Mr Henty.’ She smiled, then shook her head, nodding at the gun-case lying on a sofa. ‘He took me tiger hunting in Kwelchow this summer. He didn’t want to go, he was frightfully busy, but I wanted to go and he took me. He’s been doing that ever since my mother died, spoiling me terribly. He’s a kind man, Mr Henty, too kind. At least to me.’

Henty was glad of the qualification, though he couldn’t detect whether she had said it defensively. Bradley Tozer had no reputation in China for kindliness; he hunted business with all the rapacity of an old China Sea pirate. Henty guessed there would be few people in China who felt they owed Bradley Tozer anything.

He was saved from an awkward reply by the ringing of the phone. Eve, a lady who, despite the admonitions of her maternal grandmother, could never resist the temptation to answer her own telephone, picked it up. It was the reception desk.

‘A gentleman to see you, Miss Tozer.’

‘A gentleman? English?’ Basil Rathbone, perhaps? Eve was not so spoiled that she didn’t have girlish dreams occasionally. ‘Did he give his name?’

A hand was obviously held over the mouthpiece downstairs. Then: ‘Mr Sun Nan. A Chinese gentleman.’

Eve looked at Henty. ‘Do you know a Mr Sun Nan?’

‘No. Is he downstairs? I’ll go down and see what he wants.’

Eve spoke into the phone again. ‘Mr Henty will be down to see him.’

She put down the phone, but almost at once it rang again. ‘I am sorry, Miss Tozer, but the gentleman insists that he see you.’ The tone of voice suggested that the Savoy reception desk did not approve of the cheek of a Chinese, gentleman or otherwise, insisting on disturbing one of the hotel’s guests. The hand was held over the mouthpiece again and then the voice came back, this time in a state of shock: ‘He insists he see you at once.’

‘Send him up.’ Eve put down the phone once more and stopped Henty who, leaning on his stick, was already limping towards the door. ‘You had better stay. This Mr Sun evidently has something important he wants to tell me.’

‘If he’s selling anything or wanting to buy, he should have come to the office. Let me handle him.’

‘No, leave him to me,’ Eve said, and Henty suddenly and ridiculously wondered if Mr Sun, whoever he was, might meet the same fate as the unfortunate Mexican.

Mr Sun Nan was brought up to the suite by one of the reception clerks, as if the hotel did not trust pushy, demanding Orientals to be wandering around alone on its upper floors. He was ushered into the suite, a smiling li-chi of a man who seemed amused at the attention he was being given.

‘A thousand apologies, Miss Tozer, for this intrusion. If time had allowed, I should have written you a letter and awaited your reply.’ He spoke English with a slight hiss that could have meant a badly-fitting dental plate or been a comment on the barbarians who had invented the language. ‘But time, as they say, is of the essence.’

‘Not a Chinese saying, I’m sure,’ said Eve.

Sun smiled. ‘No. I only use it because you will be the one to profit by our saving time.’

Henty introduced himself. ‘If you have anything to sell or wish to buy, you should be talking to me.’

Sun smiled at him as he might have at a passer-by, then looked back at Eve. ‘It would be better if we spoke alone, Miss Tozer.’

Henty bridled at being dismissed and Eve stiffened in annoyance at the smiling, yet cool arrogance of the Chinese. ‘Mr Henty stays. If time is of the essence, don’t waste it, Mr Sun.’

‘I was warned you might resemble your father in your attitude.’ Sun gave a little complimentary bow of his head, then the smile disappeared from his face as if it had been an optical illusion instead of a friendly expression. ‘The matter concerns your father. He has been kidnapped.’