“Yes,” she said shortly. “There could be worse neighbours than Yeh Ling.”
“You know him?”
He wondered if she would deny acquaintance or evade the question.
“Very well,” she said calmly, “he is the proprietor of the Golden Roof. I often dine there. You know him too?”
“Slightly,” said Tab, looking back at the unfinished house. “He must be rich.”
“I don’t know. One never really knows what money is required to build a place like this. The labour is cheap and it seems a very simple kind of house.”
And then with a wave of her hand, she drove on. She might at least have asked him to lunch, he thought indignantly.
A week went past, a drab week for a discontented Tab Holland, for now there was neither a likelihood of, nor an excuse for, a chance meeting.
A sedative week for hiding Walters. References to the murder seldom appeared now in the newspapers, and he had found a man who had offered to get him a job as a steward on an outward bound liner.
A week of drugged sleep for a besotted man, curled up on a mattress at the top of Yo Len Fo’s house.