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By Root 2524 0

and Webb. You might wonder who could have been more suitable. Not so. The Langfields were the one family in business in the Straits with whom Walter would have no dealings (none, at least, that he could decently avoid, for he found himself obliged now and then to sit with a Langfield on this or that Government committee). What jubilation there would be among the Langfields when they learned of the disastrous outcome of the garden-party! It had been reported back to Walter that they had already been at work in Singapore insidiously suggesting that there was something vulgar about starting jubilee celebrations more than a year before the date of commemoration. Walter’s brows gathered at the thought of the unctuous, salt-rubbing letter of regret which he would receive from old Solomon Langfield in the morning. The old fox was probably hunched over it at this very moment, savouring its hypocritical phrases. He tugged angrily at the butterfly wings of his tie and the knot shrank to the size of a pebble. There was a knock on the door and Joan came in.

‘You wanted to see me?’ She stopped short at the sight of her father’s scowling face, and then came forward and took his arm: ‘Poor Daddy, you must be upset about Mr Webb. I forgot what a blow it must be after all these years.’

‘Eh? What? Oh yes, of course, it does come as a bit of a shock. He was certainly a fine man and the place won’t seem the same without him. Not that he’s dead yet, of course. Hm, but that’s not why I wanted to see you, Joan … What’s this your mother tells me about you throwing wine at Jim Ehrendorf?’

Joan smiled. ‘Has Mother been making a fuss? It was nothing. Really. He was just getting on my nerves. I’d already forgotten about it.’

‘But he’s a nice fellow,’ said Walter, looking at his daughter in surprise. ‘Everyone likes him, even though he is American. And he’s the least American American I know. And there’s no one more cultured and with better manners. I can’t see why you want to throw wine in his face.’

Joan looked out of the window for a moment with a sly, half malicious, half amused expression on her face which Walter had not seen before. She shrugged. ‘I don’t know why, myself. I suppose I wanted to see what he would do, whether he would get angry or something. He didn’t, of course. He’s always so reasonable.’ She added with a laugh: ‘Even if I kicked his shins he still wouldn’t do anything, except perhaps look rather pained and forgiving.’

‘Well, please don’t kick his shins at my garden-parties, or do anything else to him, if it comes to that. We have a position to keep up in Singapore. Promise?’

Joan nodded and smiled, peering curiously at her father at the same time, or rather at his neck. ‘What have you done to your tie, Daddy? It looks most peculiar. Here, let me tie it again for you. I’m expert at tying men’s bow-ties. I’ve had to practise so much on Monty.’

‘All right, but I shall sit down if you don’t mind.’ He held his chin up, gazing at the ceiling while Joan’s fingers played deftly about his neck. ‘There was something else I wanted to mention. Have you seen Miss Chiang recently? Does she still have a room at the Mayfair? I meant to ask the Major.’

Vera Chiang was the Eurasian girl whom Joan had seen arrested by the Japanese in Shanghai three years earlier and then met again on the boat to Singapore. Nothing had been heard of her for a couple of years during which Joan had wondered idly once or twice what had become of her … but after all she was just another tiny drop in the flood of Chinese immigrants, legal and illegal, who had been pouring into the Straits Settlements now for three decades. Then some nine months earlier Walter had been visited at his office on Collyer Quay by an official of the Chinese Protectorate. A young Eurasian woman, picked up in connection with the General Labour Union-inspired strike at the Singapore Harbour Board and faced with a deportation order, had given his name and Joan’s as credentials. As there was no direct evidence to implicate her personally with the Communist-infiltrated General Labour Union