The Ends of the Earth by Robert Goddard

us?’
    ‘You will be arrested on the same charge of murder if the police catch you. I advise you not to let that happen. Commissioner Fujisaki can delay the investigation for a few days. You should leave Japan as soon as you can.’
    ‘Leave?’ Malory shook her head. ‘We can’t abandon Schools and the other two.’
    ‘You must. You cannot hide here – or anywhere else – for long. If you stay, they will find you. Then you will go to prison also. What good would that do, Miss Hollander?’
    She pondered the question for a long, silent moment, then said quietly, ‘None.’
    ‘I have arranged for you to leave Yokohama tomorrow evening on a Dutch freighter bound for Shanghai.’
    ‘You want us to run away?’ asked Sam despairingly.
    With a solemn nod Yamanaka acknowledged that he did. ‘It is what I advise.’
    The night was hot and humid. A soft rain was falling like a murmur in the garden. After Yamanaka had left, Malory and Sam stood out on the verandah, smoking cigarettes. For a while, they did not speak. Then Sam said, ‘We should never have come to Japan, should we?’
    ‘It seems not,’ Malory admitted.
    ‘It’s all been for nothing. Max’s attempt to nail Lemmer. Our long journey here. Now Schools and Grover and Gazda are stuck in the clink. And we’re going to be smuggled out of the country like two barrels of contraband.’
    ‘I don’t think we can stay, Sam. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who’ve helped us.’
    ‘Schools would want you to leave, that’s for certain. Me too, probably.’
    ‘We could hire a lawyer in Shanghai and send him here to press for their early release.’
    ‘And wait in Shanghai to see what happens?’
    ‘I don’t know what else to suggest. We’re lucky to have the chance of going. If it hadn’t been for Monteith’s perverse brand of gallantry …’
    Sam groaned. ‘I’m trying to think what Max would do.’
    ‘He wouldn’t give up.’
    ‘No. But sometimes you have to.’
    Silence fell between them again. The rain continued to fall.
    ‘This is one of those times,’ said Malory, her voice catching.
    At Sugamo prison, Morahan slept fitfully but gratefully on a thin quilt in a twelve-man cell, wrapped in a threadbare red yukata . The heat that was such a trial for the other occupants of the cell was actually soothing for him, easing the pain from the bruises and weals on his back and buttocks. He did not want to move. He did not even want to think.
    Ward and Djabsu lay alongside him, Djabsu sporting a few cuts and bruises of his own after quelling attempts by some of their Japanese cell-mates to intimidate the newcomers. No one had told them anything they actually understood about why they had been transferred here from Kempeitai HQ. But clearly external pressure of some kind had told in their favour.
    ‘We’re not on our own, boys,’ Morahan had mumbled before falling asleep, and he had not been referring to the moody and malodorous prisoners they had been thrust in with.
    The thought greeted Morahan when he stirred and saw, through the gloom, the huddled sleeping shapes around him. He inhaled slowly, to avoid any jabs of pain. Then he exhaled, equally slowly.
    He was alive, breathing in and breathing out. It was not much to rejoice in. But he allowed himself a grim little smile. Everything had gone wrong. But all was not lost.

WITH THE DECISION to flee Japan taken, Malory and Sam spent the next day waiting in enforced idleness at Professor Nishikawa’s house until it was time to depart. The Professor himself left early to attend to commitments at the university. Malory managed communication with the two servants in her rudimentary Japanese. Sam, whose head no longer ached and whose wound was healing well, felt physically better than he had the day before, but could not shake off the sense that he had failed first Max and now Schools as well. Malory assured him that was not the case. In reality, they had little choice in the matter. But that was no