Supper was wonderful. They all had as much shrimp as they wanted. “Hooray for Mr. Antonelli!” Lucy said. Not even Michael argued with that. Lucy asked her father, “What did you do for him?”

  “I put a radio direction-finder in his boat,” Father answered. “I hate to say it, but it’s a lot better than an ordinary compass.”

  “Why do you hate to say it?” Michael asked.

  “Because Chinese people invented the compass, a long time ago,” Father said. He made a sour face. “The direction-finder is a German gadget. It’s a good one, though. It does just what it’s supposed to do.”

  “How did you get hold of a German gadget to put on Mr. Antonelli’s boat?” Lucy asked. Michael looked angry, maybe because she’d beaten him to the question.

  “Well, sometimes you get to know people who will sell you things if the price is right, and who won’t ask a lot of questions about what you want to do with them.” Father winked. “The Germans are just like any other people. Some of them will do things like that. For this, though, it would have been too expensive. Getting my hands on the drawings was more complicated, but a lot cheaper. Then I made it myself. All the parts are right off the shelf. That’s one of the things I like about it.”

  “Wow,” Lucy said.

  Father only shrugged. He was a modest man. If he’d been less modest, he might have had more money. “It’s not that hard,” he said. “Anything ordinary people use, I can deal with and not have too much trouble.” He cocked his head to one side. “That was what drove me crazy about your friends from Curious Notions. Some of the things they had … Well, they worked. I saw them work. I’m still not always sure about how or why, but they did.”

  I know why they were strange. I know why they were different. Lucy wanted to tell her father. She wanted to, but she didn’t. Letting him know would make him happy—if he believed her and didn’t think she’d gone crazy. But letting him know could endanger Paul. The Feldgendarmerie had already grabbed Father once. They might come back. They might not just throw him in jail this time, either.

  Lucy didn’t like keeping secrets from her family. She wasn’t keeping Paul’s secret only from her family, though. She was keeping it from the whole world.

  One of the things Paul had learned in Crosstime Traffic training was to act as normal as he could. That wasn’t always easy, but it was good advice. As soon as he got away from the first two San Francisco policemen, he stopped running. People stared at someone dashing down the sidewalk. They remembered him. Some of them would give him away if the cops came by a little later on.

  But somebody sauntering along the street without a care in the world … Who noticed somebody like that? He might be on his way home from work, or off to visit a friend, or maybe just heading to the grocery store around the corner. Whatever he was doing, there were hundreds more just like him.

  A police car drove up the street past Paul. Its red dome lights spun and blinked. Its bell clanged. The cops inside had to be on the lookout for him, and for nobody but him. They didn’t give him a second glance. The car shot past and was gone.

  For once, coming into the Tenderloin was a relief. Policemen who came here had more criminals than him to worry about. He wouldn’t even have minded running into the young men from the Tongs. They wouldn’t give him to the Feldgendarmerie.

  What they might do to him themselves was an interesting question. They couldn’t be happy with him for giving them the slip. He might have made a good-sized mistake of several different flavors by showing he could get away.

  But he didn’t see any of his watchers when he got to the cheap hotel where he was staying. Had they fanned out all over San Francisco looking for him? If they had, they wouldn’t be very happy to find out he’d returned right under their noses. No, he probably hadn’t been very smart to show what he could do. He couldn’t stand being watched all the time, though.

  Too late to worry about it now. He went up the worn, grimy steps and into the worn, grimy lobby. The desk clerk sent him an incurious glance, then went back to his picture-filled story.

  Paul clumped up the stairs to his room. The elevator, he was convinced, would never be repaired. And when were the walls of the stairway last painted? They were a very peculiar color, halfway between dirt and fog. It was a color that had given up on itself a long time ago.

  The carpet in the hallway wasn’t as old as that sad, sorry paint, but Paul would have bet it was older than he was. The locks and dead bolts on his door, on the other hand, were shiny new. He took out his assortment of keys and worked them one by one. At last, with all of them unlocked, he turned the knob and went into his room. He let out a sigh of relief. This wasn’t much of a home. Such as it was, it was his castle.

  Bob Lee sat on the edge of the bed.

  Paul’s jaw dropped. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “How did you get in?” He still had the key ring in his hand. It felt useless for anything except perhaps throwing at the intruder.

  “Gomes, you are a lot of trouble,” Lee said.

  That didn’t answer either of Paul’s questions. Paul got the idea the Chinese man wasn’t going to tell him anything more, either. “Get out,” he said. “Get out or I’ll …”

  Lee laughed in his face. “You’ll what? Call the police? Go ahead. I’ll give you a nickel for the phone. Throw me out? You can try.” A small automatic pistol appeared in his right hand. One second, it wasn’t there. The next, it was. The man from the Tongs looked as if he knew what to do with it.

  As steadily as he could, Paul said, “Shoot me and you’ll never find out any of the answers you want.”

  “Not from you, maybe.” Bob Lee shrugged. “I know where someone else who’s got them is stashed.” He had a smile only a reptile could love. But the pistol vanished as fast as it had appeared. “You have some explaining to do. How did you get away from my … associates? They said you must have used some of your special tricks, because they were watching you all the time.”

  Now Paul laughed. Bob Lee’s eyebrows rose a millimeter or two. Paul said, “If I had as many special tricks as you think I do, would I be in the mess I’m in?”

  “Who knows?” Lee’s voice was hard and flat. “Anyone can have things go wrong—anyone at all. Now answer my question. How did you get away?”

  Paul thought about jumping him. Then he thought better of it. He said, “No special tricks, not like you mean,” and told what he’d done at the café.

  The man from the Tongs studied him. At last, Lee gave a reluctant nod. “Okay. I believe you. I think you caught them napping. I don’t think you’ll catch them napping again. You’d better not, or I’ll have some new associates.” He didn’t say what would happen to the ones who’d been watching Paul. Paul didn’t think they would just get a lecture.

  He said, “What are you going to do with what you get from my dad and me? I can tell you, it won’t be as much as you think it is. We don’t work miracles.”

  “Close enough,” Bob Lee said. “Some of the things you were selling …” He eyed Paul like an eagle eyeing a rabbit. After a moment, he went on, “What will we do? Some people have been in the driver’s seat here for a long time. Now, maybe it’s the turn of some other people.” He didn’t quite point a thumb at his own chest, but he might as well have.

  “How will you be better than the Germans?” Paul asked. “Will you be better than the Germans?”

  For a split second, naked surprise showed on Lee’s face. Plainly, being better than the Germans had never occurred to him. It probably hadn’t occurred to anyone else in the San Francisco Tongs or back in China, either. All they thought about was being on top. Paul wasn’t surprised. He couldn’t say he wasn’t disappointed.

  At last, Lee answered, “We won’t be the Kaiser. We won’t be the Feldgendarmerie. Is that enough?”

  “What do I know? I’m just the goose with the golden eggs, remember?”

  Lee’s laugh was anything but amused. “Some goose.”

  “Have it your way.” Paul shrugged. “Looks like you will anyhow. But if you put the Emperor of China where the Kaiser used to sit and the men from the Tongs move into the Feldgendarmerie offices, what’s really changed? Why should anybody who isn’t part of your gang even care whether you win or lose?”

  Would Bob Lee even understand what he was talking about? A lot of people who made revolutions made them for their own sake and thought no more about it. Lee, meanwhile, studied him again, this time with a different kind of surprise.

  “You think about these things, don’t you?” Lee said.

  “I hope so,” Paul answered. “Do you?”

  “I also hope so,” the older man said. “I know this, though: whatever I think doesn’t matter till we overthrow the Germans. If we don’t do that, if we can’t do that, nothing else matters. Nothing at all.”

  Paul would have liked to tell him he was wrong. He would have liked to, but he couldn’t. He said, “I’ll tell you what matters to me. Getting my father out of jail matters to me, that’s what.”

  Lee rose. “I think maybe we have to do that. If he talks to the Germans and you talk to us, nobody is better off. So all right, we take care of it.”

  He walked out of the room with no more good-bye than that. He wouldn’t be trying to free Paul’s father as a favor now. He’d be doing it because he saw an advantage for himself in the doing. That meant he was much likelier to get the job done.

  Lucy kept walking past Curious Notions every so often. No one in that neighborhood knew who she was. She strolled right by San Francisco policemen and Feldgendarmerie officers. Neither Americans nor Germans gave her any special notice. Why should they have? Whoever she was, she obviously wasn’t Paul Gomes.

  Sometimes the Feldgendarmerie men had their big Alsatians with them. The dogs took no notice of Lucy, either. She was glad of that. They were even meaner than most of the Germans who led them.

  Little by little, the Germans and their American stooges began to pay less attention to Curious Notions. Or maybe they just paid less obvious attention to the store. All Lucy knew was that she saw them less often. No, she knew one other thing, too: she didn’t miss them a bit.

  She’d just walked past a Feldgendarmerie sergeant with an Alsatian when the dog began to bark. The noise sounded like ripping canvas. Lucy jumped. When she turned around, the sergeant was tugging on the leash for all he was worth. “Nein, Fritz!” he shouted. “Nein!”

  Fritz wasn’t interested in Lucy. He was trying to get a marmalade cat. And the cat seemed ready for him. Its ears were flat against its skull, its back arched, the fur on its tail puffed out till it looked like a bottle brush. Its green eyes blazed. A snarl showed off needle teeth. That the Alsatian would have made a mouthful of it seemed to bother it not a bit. It would go down swinging.

  “Fritz!” the Feldgendarmerie man yelled again. He gave the leash a yank that must have almost choked the Alsatian. With a last growl and then a yelp, the dog came. The sergeant tipped his cap to Lucy. In accented English, he said, “Sorry if he scare you, miss. Dogs and cats, ja?”

  “Dogs and cats,” Lucy agreed. She liked cats better herself. The sergeant led the dog away. Lucy knelt by the red tabby. She didn’t hold her hand out. The cat had been ready to fight. It might bite or claw her. She just waited to see what it would do next.

  It eyed her. When she didn’t do anything, it started licking a paw and using the wet fur to wash its face. Then it washed its side for a while, and then started nibbling at the tufts of hair between its back toes. It also gnawed at one of its hind claws. She could hear the noise of its teeth. It sounded like a man biting his nails.

  After the cat finished taking care of its person, it looked up. It seemed mildly surprised to find Lucy still there. Now she did stretch out her hand towards it. She was ready to snatch it back as fast as she could. But the marmalade cat leaned forward till it seemed about to topple over. It didn’t, of course. It sniffed her fingers, then rubbed the side of its head against her hand and started to purr.

  “Hello!” Lucy said softly. “Hello!” She scratched behind its ears and stroked its nose. It purred louder. After a minute or so, though, it shook its head till its ears rattled. Then it trotted off, tail held high, as if it had just remembered it was late for dinner with a friend. It didn’t look back once.

  Lucy wished she could go where she pleased when she pleased. She wished she could make friends and forget about them, both in the blink of an eye. She wished she were a cat, in other words. She wasn’t, and she couldn’t do any of those things. She could only wish.

  When she got home, she went into the kitchen to help Mother with supper, the way she usually did. Instead of handing her a knife or a spoon or an eggbeater, Mother said, “There’s something in the mail for you.”

  “Is there?” Lucy said—that was always a small event, a break from routine. “Who’s it from?”

  “I don’t know. No return address.” Her mother paused and then added, “Whoever it is, he has very nice handwriting.”

  “Oh.” That disappointed Lucy, though she tried not to show it. She’d hoped the mail came from Paul, and his handwriting was pretty ordinary. You could read it, but you couldn’t say it was anything special.

  The envelope sat on the dining-room table. The handwriting was nice. It was so neat, it was almost elegant. The paper was much finer than what she usually saw, too. She thought she knew who’d sent the note even before she opened it. And she turned out to be right.

  If I could have the pleasure of your company at seven o’clock on the evening of the seventeenth, I would greatly appreciate it. Under the single sentence, Stanley Hsu had signed his name with a fancy flourish. The seventeenth was … day after tomorrow. The jeweler had made sure the invitation would get to her on time.

  She stuck it in her purse. She didn’t want Michael finding it and reading it. She didn’t know what sort of rude, nasty thing he would say, but she was sure he’d come up with something.

  “Well?” Mother asked when she went back into the kitchen.

  “It’s from Mr. Hsu,” Lucy answered. She wished for one more thing—that she had nothing to do with the Triads. She was no more likely to get that wish than to turn into a cat. “He wants to see me night after next.”

  “Does he say what it’s about?” Mother asked. Lucy shook her head. Mother said, “You’ve got to go.”

  “Yes, I know.” Lucy sighed. “I wish I didn’t.”

  “You can’t help it,” her mother said. “He’s being polite about things, but that can change.” She snapped her fingers. “It can change like that. You don’t want it to change. Believe me—you don’t.”

  Lucy sighed again. “I believe you. I’ll go.” She reached for a knife and started chopping up vegetables. Mother set a wok on the stove and put a little—just a little—oil in it. The vegetables and a bit of leftover chicken would go onto rice for supper.

  Lucy liked the wait before she saw Stanley Hsu about as much as she liked waiting before the dentist called her in. Her teeth were good. She’d had only two cavities. But getting them fixed hadn’t been any fun at all.

  Work was slow. That gave her more time to think, and to wonder, and to worry. She would almost sooner have been back at her sewing machine. But no sooner had she thought that than she heard Hank Simmons bellowing at somebody. Maybe he had reason to bellow, maybe he didn’t. He always did it, though, whether he had reason to or not. All of a sudden, being right where she was didn’t seem so bad.

  The evening of the seventeenth was cool and foggy. Car horns were everywhere, warning people—and threatening them, too. Lucy stepped off corners very carefully. Twice she came close to getting run over anyhow.

  Because of the fog, she almost walked past the jewelry shop, too. She stopped two paces past it, feeling foolish. She would rather have kept on walking. Maybe her feet were trying to tell her something. Whether they were or not, though, she couldn’t afford to listen to them. She opened the door. The bell above it rang.

  “Good evening, Miss Woo,” Stanley Hsu said from behind the counter. “And how are you today?”

  “I’m all right,” Lucy answered, “or I will be when I find out what you want from me.” She knew she was supposed to be polite to the jeweler. He was an important man with even more important connections. But it wasn’t easy.

  His smile said he didn’t even notice her rudeness. No—it said he noticed, but he was too nice a fellow to care. That kind of smile was almost always a lie. He said, “I have someone here I would like you to meet. Excuse me for one moment.” He ducked into the back room.

  When he came out again, Paul Gomes’ father came out behind him. Seeing a smile so much like Paul’s come out from behind that big mustache was a jolt. “Good to see you again, Miss, Woo,” Lawrence Gomes said. “Good to see anybody but Feldgendarmerie men again—you’d better believe it is.”

  “It’s great to see you free,” Lucy said. “Does Paul know you’re out yet?”

  Paul’s father glanced toward Stanley Hsu. Now the jeweler looked faintly embarrassed. “There is one slight problem with that. We hoped you might be able to help us, Miss Woo.”

  “What is it?” Lucy asked.

  “Paul … seems to be missing. We don’t know where he is. Do you, by any chance?”

  Helplessly, Lucy shook her head. “No.”

  Ten

  Paul’s escorts started sticking to him like glue. Whenever he came out of the lobby of his miserable hotel, they walked up to him as if they were old friends. Once, just once, he tried going out the back way, the way the trash went out. Two of them were waiting for him in the alley. They didn’t seem surprised to see him. He wasn’t very surprised to see them. He walked down the rubbish-strewn alley as if it were the street. They tagged along.