Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha by Dorothy Gilman Page B

and were staring at a roomswept by chaos: at a steel file cabinet battered open with a sledgehammer, at a desk whose drawers stood open with half their contents strewn across the floor.
    “I was afraid of this, damn it,” growled Robin. “With Alec out of the way someone had carte blanche here.”
    “They,”
echoed Mrs. Pollifax, beginning to feel a presence and wondering if a personality would eventually arrive, too. “Well, whoever they are they were certainly in a hurry. This must be how and where they found that slip of paper to use for a suicide note. What are we looking for?”
    “Anything with words written or typed on it—and we’re in a hurry, too,” said Robin grimly. “You take the desk, I’ll take the floor and the two filing cabinets.”
    “Treasure hunt,” murmured Mrs. Pollifax, and sat down at the desk to sift what remained in the drawers: a bottle of ink, an abacus, a snapshot album, a few pencils, loose photos and a thick stack of white typing paper.
    “Nothing,” said Robin angrily, slamming shut the last drawer of the file cabinet. “They took everything of any importance, damn it, and there are only bills on the floor.”
    Mrs. Pollifax had carefully exhumed the neat pile of typing paper from its drawer; now she gripped the sheets firmly at one corner and waved them back and forth to see if anything had been caught among them. A torn fragment from a newspaper fluttered to the rug, and putting down the sheaf of paper she picked it up and looked at it.
    “Good heavens!” she said in a startled voice.
    Robin was at her side at once. “What is it?” and then, “Good God!”
    It was the photograph of a man that had been roughly torn from a newspaper some time ago, for the newsprint was yellowed with age, and across the top of the clipping someone—undoubtedly Damien Hao—had angrily scrawled WHEN? The man in the news picture faced the camera squarely, as was the custom in prison photos, and there was an identifying prison number across his chest, but no name. The face was wooden, every feature sharpened by the bright lights bent upon it; there were no printed words included with the photo to explain the man but Mrs. Pollifax had recognized him at once. “Robin,” she said, “I know this man, but what is he doing in Inspector Hao’s desk drawer?”
    Robin turned and looked at her strangely. “You mean, of course, that you know who he is.”
    Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. “No of course not, I mean I just keep running into him.”
    “Running into him?” Robin gripped her arm, his voice incredulous and urgent. “What do you mean,
running into him?
Where? For God’s sake—”
    She stared at him in astonishment. “Why, he was on the plane with me from San Francisco—we flew into Hong Kong together, and yesterday morning I saw him in Dragon Alley when I was watching for the young man I was to contact at Feng Imports.”
    Robin said in a strangled voice, “Plane … Feng Imports … Mrs. Pollifax, I think it’s time you tell me exactly what your job is here in Hong Kong. This photo—this man—
this is Eric the Red
.”
    A chilly finger of shock touched the base of Mrs. Pollifax’s spine. “The terrorist? The head of the Liberation 80’s Group? The Cairo assassinations, the French hostage affair?” Her shock moved into horror as she remembered the latter: those endless agonizing days, themiscalculations that culminated in the escape of the Liberation 80’s Group and the bloody massacre they left behind …”
    “Let’s get out of here,” said Robin fiercely. “Let’s get out of here and
talk
. My God, Mrs. Pollifax, if Eric the Red is in Hong Kong—”
    He scarcely needed to complete the thought, Mrs. Pollifax had already slammed shut the desk drawers and was reaching for her purse. They fled, not speaking: down the stairs, out of the house and through the garden, into the street and to the car; and just in time, for as they drove away a police car turned into