“It's anything from a million or two up, Tex,” she said coolly. “And my information comes straight. I'll prove it by taking the chance with you.”
He shook his head; half turned. “Where is it?” She smiled.
He left her abruptly then. And coolly she watched him go. It would take a little time for Tex's imagination to rise to it; and until the last moment he would try to bluff her down. It was just poker; they had played that game before, she and Tex. Once he had robbed her. But not this time--not, as she phrased it, if she saw him first.
The Kid came edging out of the social hall. “Will he do it?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Say--that's tough! I didn't think Tex would overlook a thing like that. What's the matter?” Dixie now considered this curiously useless man. Or useless he had always seemed to her. Now she was not so sure. “He makes it a condition that I tell him where the stuff is.”
“Well--Dix, you'd tell him that, wouldn't you?” The Kid was whining. “If you really knew yourself.”
“Of course I won't tell him, Jim. Not yet.”
His eyes sank before hers. He fumbled in a pocket; produced a tiny wrist watch of platinum. “Look here. Dix,” he remarked clumsily, “things ain't always been's pleasant as they might be between you and I, but I was wondering if you wouldn't put this on, for old times' sake, like.”
She took the gift, weighed in in her hand. “Thank you, Jim,” she replied. “That's awfully nice of you. Though perhaps I'd better not wear it here on the boat.”
“I suppose young Kane might ask questions, eh?”
“Nothing like that. I'll wear it. Here--you snap the catch, Jim.”
“I--I might wish it on, Dix, like the kids do.”
“Sure, Say, Dix, you won't mind the little place where the initials got scratched off inside the back cover. Nobody'll see that.”
At a little after midnight Griggsby Doane mounted to the boat deck and walked quietly aft past the funnels and the engine room ventilators. A half moon threw shadows along the bund and among the landing hulks and the moored silent sampans, lorchas, junks. The mile-wide river shimmered in a million ripples.
Hui Fei wore the black jacket and trousers of the lower class Chinese women below decks. Her head was uncovered, and her hair waved prettily down across the wide forehead. She should have oiled it flat, of course, to complete her disguise; this careless arrangement was charming in the moonlight but was neither Manchu nor Chinese.