"Yes, yes I have." Phillip Chen was uneasy talking to a stranger but now he had no option. He told Paul Choy the instructions he had been given.

"Just a moment, sir."

He heard a hand being put over the phone and again muffled, indistinct talking in Haklo dialect for a moment. "Everything's set, sir. We'll send a cab to your house you're phoning from Struan's Lookout?"

"Yes yes, I'm home."

"The driver'll be one of our guys. There'll be more of my uncle's, er, people scattered over Kowloon Tong so not to worry, you'll be covered every foot of the way. Just hand over the money and er, and they'll take care of everything. My uncle's chief lieut er his aide, says not to worry, they'll have the whole area swarminga Mr. Chen?"

"Yes, I'm still here. Thank you."

"The cab'll be there in twenty minutes."

Paul Choy put down the phone. "Noble House Chen says thank you, Honorable Father," he told Four Finger Wu placatingly in their dialect, quaking under the stony eyes. Sweat was beading his face. He tried unsuccessfully to hide his fear of the others. It was hot and stuffy in the crowded main cabin of this ancient junk that was tied up in a permanent berth to an equally ancient dock in one of Aberdeen's multitude of estuaries. "Can I go with your fighters, too?"

"Do you send a rabbit against a dragon?" Four Finger Wu snarled. "Are you trained as a street fighter? Am I a fool like you? Treacherous like you?" He jerked a horny thumb at Goodweather Poon. "Lead the fighters!" The man hurried out. The others followed.

Now the two of them were alone in the cabin.

The old man was sitting on an upturned keg. He lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply, coughed and spat loudly on the deck floor. Paul Choy watched him, the sweat running down his back, more from fear than from the heat. Around them were some old desks filing cabinets, rickety chairs and two phones, and this was Four Fingers's office and communications center. It was mostly from here that he sent messages to his fleets. Much of his business was regular freighting but wherever the Silver Lotus flag flew, his order to his captains was: Anything, shipped anywhere, at any time at the right price.

The tough old man coughed again and glared at him under shaggy eyebrows. "They teach you curious ways in the Golden Mountain, herbal"

Paul Choy held his tongue and waited, his heart thumping, and wished he had never come back to Hong Kong, that he was still Stateside, or even better in Honolulu surfing in the Great Waves or lying on the beach with his girl friend. His spirit twisted at the thought of her.

"They teach you to bite the hand that feeds you, heya?"

"No, Honored Father, sort"

"They teach that my money is yours, my wealth yours and my chop yours to use as you wish, heyal"

"No, Honored Lord. I'm sorry to displease you," Paul Choy muttered, wilting under the weight of his fear.

This morning, early, when Gornt had jauntily come into the office from the meeting with Bartlett, it was still before the secretaries were due so Paul Choy had asked if he could help him. Gornt had told him to get several people on the phone. Others he had dialed himself on his private. Paul Choy had thought nothing of it at the time until he happened to overhear part of what was, obviously, inside information about Struan's being whispered confidentially over the phone. Remembering the Bartlett call earlier, deducing that Gornt and Bartlett had had a meeting a successful one judging by Gornt's good humor and realizing Gornt was relating the same confidences over and over, his curiosity peaked. Later, he happened to hear Gornt saying to his solicitor, "a selling shorta No, don't worry, nothing's going to happen till I'm covered, not till about elevena Certainly. I'll send the order, chopped, as soon asa"

The next call he was asked to make was long distance to the manager of the Bank of Switzerland and Zurich that, discreetly, he listened to. "a I'm expecting a large draft of U.S. dollars this morning, before eleven. Phone me the instant, the very instant it's in my accounta"

So, bemused, he had put the various pieces of the equation to- gether and come up with a theory: If Bartlett has arranged a sudden secret partnership with Gornt, Struan's known enemy, to launch one of his raids, if Bartlett also takes part of the risk, or most of it by secretly putting large sums in one of Gornt's numbered Swiss accounts to cover any sell-short losses and lastly, if he's talked Gornt into being the front guy while he sits on the fence, the stuff is going to hit the On in the exchange and Struan's stock has got to go down.

This precipitated an immediate business decision: Jump in quickly and sell Struan's short before the big guys and we'll make a bundle.

He remembered how he had almost groaned aloud because he had no money, no credit, no shares and no means to borrow any. Then he recalled what one of his instructors at Harvard Business School had kept drumming into them: A faint heart never laid a lovely lady. So he'd gone into a private office and phoned his newfound friend, Ishwar Soorjani, the moneylender and dealer in foreign exchange whom he had met through the old Eurasian at the library. "Say Ishwar, your brother's head of Soorjani Stockbrokers, isn't he?"

"No, Young Master. Arjan is my very first cousin. Why?"

"If I wanted to sell a stock short would you back me?"

"Certainly, as I told you before, buying or selling I support you to the holster, if you have reasonable cash to cover any lossesa or the equivalent. No cash or equivalent so sorry."

"Say I had some red-hot information?"

"The road to hell and debtor's prison is flooded to drowning with red-hot information, Young Master. I advise against red-hot informations."

"Boy," Paul Choy said unhappily, "I could make us a few 100,000 before three."

"Oh? Would you care to whisper the illustrious name of the stock?"

"Would you back me fora for 20,000 U.S.?"

"Ah, so sorry, Young Master, I'm a moneylender not a money giver. My ancestors forbid it!"

"20,000 HK?".

Toot even 10 dollars in your Rebel Dixie redbacks."

"Gee, Ishwar, you're not much help."

"Why not ask your illustrious uncle? His chopa and I would instantly go to half a million. HK."

Paul Choy knew that among his father's cash and assets transferred from the Ho-Pak to the Victoria had been many stock certificates and a list of securities held by various stockbrokers. One was for 150,000 Struan shares. Jesus, he thought, if I'm right the old man might get dumped. If Gornt presses the raid the old man could get caught.

"Good idea, Ishwar. I'll call you back!" At once he had phoned his father but he could not reach him. He left messages wherever he could and began to wait. His anxiety grew. Just before ten he heard Gornt's secretary answer the phone. "Yes?a Oh, one moment pleasea Mr. Gornt? A person-to-person call from Zuricha You're through."

Once more he had tried to reach his father, wanting to give him the urgent news. Then Gornt had sent for him. "Mr. Choy, would you please run this over to my solicitor at once." He handed over a sealed envelope. "Give it to him personally."

"Yes sir."

So he had left the office. At every phone he had stopped and tried to reach his father. Then he had delivered the note, personally, watching the solicitor's face carefully. He saw glee. "Is there a reply, sir?" he asked politely.

"Just say everything will be done as ordered." It was a few minutes past ten.

Outside the office door and going down in the elevator Paul Choy had weighed the pluses and the minuses. His stomach twisting uneasily, he stopped at the nearest phone. "Ishwar? Say, I've an urgent order from my uncle. He wants to sell his Struan stock. 150,000 shares."

"Ah, wise wise, there are terrible rumors speeding around."

"I suggested you and Soorjani's should do it for him. 150,000 shares. He asks can you do it instantly? Can you do that?"

"Like a bird on the wing. For the Esteemed Four Fingers we will go forth like Rothschilds! Where are the shares?"

"In the vault."

"I will need his chop at once."

"I'm going to get it now but he said to sell at once. He said to sell in small blocks so as not to shock the market. He wants the very best price. You'll sell at once?"

"Yes, never fear, at once. And we will get the best price!"

"Good. And most important, he said to keep this secret."

"Venly, Young Master, you may trust us implicitly. And the stock that you yourself wished to sell short?"

"Oh thata well that'll have to waita until I've credit heya?"

"Wise very wise."

Paul Choy shivered. His heart was pounding now in the silence and he watched his father's cigarette, not the angry face, knowing those cold black eyes were boring into him, deciding his fate. He remembered how he had almost shouted with excitement when the stock had begun to fall almost immediately, monitoring it moment by moment, then ordering Soorjani to buy back in just before close and feeling light-headed and in euphoria. At once he had phoned his girl, spending nearly 30 of his valuable U.S. dollars telling her how fantastic his day had been and how much he missed her. She said how much she missed him too and when was he coming back to Honolulu? Her name was Mika Kasunari and she was sensed third-generation American of Japanese descent. Her parents hated him because he was Chinese, as he knew his father would hate her because she was Japanese except they were both American, both of them, and they had met and fallen in love at school.

"Very soon, honey," he had promised her ecstatically, "guaran- teed by Christmas! After today my uncle'll surely give me a bonusa"

The work that Gornt gave him for the rest of the day he breezed through. Late in the afternoon Goodweather Poon had phoned to say his father would see him in Aberdeen at 7:30 P.M. Before he went there he had collected Soorjani's check made out to his father. 615,000 HK less brokerage.

Elated, he had come to Aberdeen and given him the check, and when he told him what he had done he was aghast at the extent of his father's rage. The tirade had been interrupted by Phillip Chen's phone call.

"I'm deeply sorry I've offended you, Hon"

"So my chop is yours, my wealth is yours heya7" Four Finger Wu shouted suddenly.

"No, Honored Father," he gasped, "but the information was so good and I wanted to protect your stock as well as make money for you."

"But not for you heya?"

"No, Honored Father. It was for you. To make you money, and help repay all the money you invested in mea they were your shares and it's your money. I tried to ca"

"That's no fornicating excuse! You come with me!"

Shakily Paul Choy got up and followed the old man onto the deck. Four Finger Wu cursed his bodyguard away and pointed a stubby finger at the befouled muddy waters in the harbor. "If you weren't my son," he hissed, "if you weren't my son you'd be feeding the fish there, your feet in a chain, this very moment."

"Yes, Father."

"If you ever again use my name, my chop, my anything without my approval you're a dead man."

"Yes, Father," Paul Choy muttered, petrified, realizing that his father had the means, the will and the authority to put that threat into effect without fear of retaliation. "Sorry, Father. I swear I'll never do that again."

"Good. If you'd lost one bronze cash you'd be there now. It's only because you fornicating won that you're alive now."

"Yes, Father."

Four Finger Wu glared at his son and continued to hide his delight at the huge windfall. 615,000 HK less a few dollars. Unbelievable! All with a few phone calls and inside knowledge, he was thinking. That's as miraculous as having ten tons of opium leap ashore over the heads of the Customs boat! The boy's paid for his education twenty times over and he's here hardly three weeks. How clevera but also how dangerous!

He shivered at the thought of other minions making decisions themselves. Dew neh lob mob then I would be in their power and surely in jail for their mistakes and not my own. And yet, he told himself helplessly, this is the way barbarians act in business. Number Seven Son is trained as a barbarian. All gods bear witness, I did not wish to create a viper!

He looked at his son, not understanding him, hating his direct way of speaking, the barbarian way and not in innuendo and obliquely like a civilized person.

And yeta and yet better than 600,000 HK in one day. If I had talked to him beforehand I would never have agreed and I would have lost all that profit! Ayeeyahl Yes, my stock would be down all that fortune in one daya oh oh oh!

He groped for a box and sat down, his heart thumping at that awful thought.

His eyes were watching his son. What to do about him? he asked himself. He could feel the weight of the check in his pocket. It seemed unbelievable that his son could make that amount of money for him in a few hours, without moving the stock from its hiding place.

"Explain to me why that black-faced foreign devil with the foul name owes me so much money!"

Paul Choy explained the mechanics patiently, desperate to please.

The old man thought about that. "Then tomorrow I should do the same and make the same?"

"No, Honored Father. You take your gains and keep them. Today was almost a certainty. It was a sudden attack, a raid. We do not know how the Noble House will react tomorrow, or if Gornt really intends to continue the raid. He can buy back in and be way ahead too. It would be dangerous to follow Gornt tomorrow, very dangerous."

Four Finger Wu threw his cigarette away. "Then what should I do tomorrow?"

"Wait. The foreign devil market's nervous and in the hands of foreign devils. I counsel you to wait and see what happens with the Ho-Pak and the Victoria. May I use your name to ask the foreign devil Gornt about the Ho-Pak?"

"What?"

Patiently Paul Choy refreshed his father's memory about the bank run and possible stock manipulation.

"Ah, yes, I understand," the old man said loftily. Paul Choy said nothing, knowing he did not. "Then wea then I just wait?"

- "Yes, Honored Father."

Four Fingers pulled out the check distastefully. "And this for- nicating piece of paper? What about this?"

"Convert it into gold, Honored Father. The price hardly varies at all. I could talk to Ishwar Soorjani, if you wish. He deals in foreign exchange."

"And where would I keep the gold?" It was one thing to smuggle other people's gold but quite another to have to worry about your own.

Paul Choy explained that physical possession of the gold was not necessary to own it.

"But I don't trust banks," the old man said angrily. "If it's my gold it's my gold and not a bank's!"

"Yes, Father. But this would be a Swiss bank, not in Hong Kong, and completely safe."

"You guarantee it with your life?"

"Yes, Father."

"Good." The old man took out a pen and signed his name on the back with instructions to Soorjani to convert it at once into gold. He gave it to his son. "On your head, my son. And we wait tomorrow? We don't make money tomorrow?"

"There might be an opportunity for further profit but I could not guarantee it. I might know around noon."

"Call me here at noon."

"Yes, Father. Of course if we had our own exchange we could manipulate a hundred stocksa" Paul Choy let the idea hang in the air.

"What?"

Carefully the young man began to explain how easy it would be for them to form their own exchange, a Chinese-dominated ex- change, and the limitless opportunities for profit their own exchange would give. He talked for an hour, gaining confidence with the minutes, explaining as simply as he could.

"If it's so easy, my son, why hasn't Tightfist Tung done it or Big Noise Sung or Moneybags Ng or that half-barbarian gold- smuggler from Macao or Banker Kwang or dozens of others, heya?"