But even more exasperating, since no largesse can cure it, is his national bent towards espionage. What does he do with his spare time, of which he has so much? He spends it in watching and listening to the hotel guests. He has heard legends of large sums paid for silence or for speech. There may be money in it, therefore, and there is always amusement. So the only housework which the _boy san_ does really willingly, is to dust the door, polish the handle, wipe the threshold;--anything in fact which brings him into the propinquity of the keyhole. What he observes or overhears, he exchanges with another _boy san_; and the hall porter or the head waiter generally serves as Chief Intelligence Bureau, and is always in touch with the Police.
The arrival of guests so remarkable as the Barringtons became, therefore, at once a focus for the curiosity the ambition of the _boy sans_. And a rickshaw-man had told the lodgekeeper, whose wife told the wife of one of the cooks, who told the head waiter, that there was some connection between these visitors and the rich Fujinami. All the _boy sans_ knew what the Fujinami meant; so here was a cornucopia of unwholesome secrets. It was the most likely game which had arrived at the Imperial Hotel for years, ever since the American millionaire's wife who ran away with a San Francisco Chinaman.
But to Geoffrey, when he broke up the gathering, the _boy sans_ were just a lot of queer little Japs.
Asako was lying on her sofa, reading. Titine was brushing her hair. Asako, when she read, which was not often, preferred literature of the sentimental school, books like _The Rosary_, with stained glass in them, and tragedy overcome by nobleness of character.
"I've been lonely without you and nervous," she said, "and I've had a visitor already."
She pointed to a card lying on a small round table, a flimsy card printed--not engraved--on cream-coloured pasteboard. Geoffrey picked it up with a smile.
Japanese letters were printed on one side and English on the other.
[Illustration: _S. ITO_ _Attorney of Law_]
"Ito, that's the lawyer fellow, who pays the dividends. Did you see him."
"Oh, no, I was much too weary. But he has only just gone. You probably passed him on the stairs."