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By Root 4419 0

strikes in both sugar and pineapple. He had seven children in school, five in mainland colleges and two at Punahou, and for a while he considered abruptly cutting off their allowances and telling the boys to get to work and help pay taxes, but Nyuk Tsin would not hear of this. Her counsel was simple: "Every child must have the very best education possible. Every piece of land must be held as long as possible. If this means no automobiles and no expensive food, good! We won't ride and we won't eat!” The Kee hui was therefore on very short rations, and Hong Kong sent a form letter to all the Kees studying on the mainland--his own and others: "I will be able to pay only your tuition and books. If you are running an automobile, sell it and go to work. If you are faced by the prospect of spending two or even three more years in college under this plan, spend it, but for the time being there can be no more money from Hawaii!" The decision that hurt him most involved his youngest daughter, Judy. "You have to cut out private singing lessons," he told her, and it was sad to see her obey.

And then, when things were already difficult, Hong Kong surreptitiously heard that a well-known firm of mainland private detectives was investigating him. He picked up a rumor of this from one of the Ching clan who had been asked a good many questions about real-estate deals, and the interrogation had made no sense until a few days later when Lew Ching suddenly thought: "My God! Every one of those deals involved Hong Kong Kee!" And he felt obligated to lay this circumstantial evidence before his friend.

Hong Kong's first reaction was, "The income tax people are after me!" But reflection assured him that this was ridiculous, for certainly the government never used private detective agencies when they had such good ones of their own. This conclusion, however, left him more bewildered than ever, and gradually he came to suspect that The Fort had deduced that he might be overextended and was collecting evidence which would enable them to squeeze him out, once and for all. He judged that the mastermind was probably Hoxworth Hale.

His first substantial bit of evidence came, curiously, not from the Chinese, who were adroit in piecing together fragments of puzzles, but from his friend Kamejiro Sakagawa, whom he had helped establish in the supermarket business. Squat little Kamejiro bustled in one afternoon to announce bluntly: "Hong Kong, you bettah watch out, I t'ink you in big trouble. Dick from da mainland come to dis rock, ast me about you, how I git my land. Bimeby latah he go into da building H & H."

"This detective, he had no reason to bother you, Kamejiro," Hong Kong assured him. "Our deal is perfectly good." "Whassamatta, dey ketch you from taxes?" "Mine are okay. How about yours?" "Mine okay too," Kamejiro assured him.

"Then don't you worry, Kamejiro. Let me worry. This has to do only with me."

"You in special trouble?" the Japanese asked. "Everybody's always in trouble," Hong Kong assured him. But what precise trouble he himself was in, Hong Kong could not discover. In succeeding days he caught various reports of the detectives and their work; all aspects of his varied business life were under surveillance. He never spotted any of the detectives himself, and then suddenly they vanished, and he heard no more about them. All he knew was: "Somebody knows almost as much about my business as I do. And they're reporting to Hoxworth Hale." He did not sleep easily.

In another sense, these were exciting times, for unless everything that Hong Kong and his grandmother had concluded from their studies was false, Hawaii had to be on the verge of startling expansion. Airplanes, no longer required for warfare, were going to ferry thousands of tourists to Hawaii, and many new hotels would be required. On the day that the boom started, the builders would have to come to Hong Kong, for he had the land, and he felt like a superb runner on the eve of an Olympics which would test him against athletes whom he had not previously encountered: he was a good runner,