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Candron had no difficulty in playing the part. He had known many elderly Chinese, and he understood them well. Even the emotional control of the Oriental was simple to simulate; Candron knew what “emotional control” really meant.

You don’t control an automobile by throwing the transmission out of gear and letting the engine run wild. Suppressing an emotion is not controlling it, in the fullest sense. “Control” implies guidance and use.

Peiping contained nearly three million people in the city itself, and another three million in the suburbs; there was little chance that the People’s Police would single out one venerable oldster to question, but Candron wanted an escape route just in case they did. He kept walking until he found the neighborhood he wanted, then he kept his eyes open for a small hotel. He didn’t want one that was too expensive, but, on the other hand, he didn’t want one so cheap that the help would be untrustworthy.

He found one that suited his purpose, but he didn’t want to go in immediately. There was one more thing to do. He waited until the shops were open, and then went in search of second-hand luggage. He had enough money in his pockets to buy more brand-new expensive luggage than a man could carry, but he didn’t want luggage that looked either expensive or new. When he finally found what he wanted, he went in search of clothing, buying a piece at a time, here and there, in widely scattered shops. Some of it was new, some of it was secondhand, all of it fit both the body and the personality of the old man he was supposed to be. Finally, he went to the hotel.

The clerk was a chubby, blandly happy, youngish man who bowed his head as Candron approached. There was still the flavor of the old politeness in his speech, although the flowery beauty of half a century before had disappeared.

“Good morning, venerable sir; may I be of some assistance?”

Candron kept the old usages. “This old one would be greatly honored if your excellent hostelry could find a small corner for the rest of his unworthy body,” he said in excellent Cantonese.

“It is possible, aged one, that this miserable hovel may provide some space, unsuited though it may be to your honored presence,” said the clerk, reverting as best he could to the language of a generation before. “For how many people would you require accommodations?”

“For my humble self only,” Candron said.

“It can, I think, be done,” said the clerk, giving him a pleasant smile. Then his face took on an expression of contrition. “I hope, venerable one, that you will not think this miserable creature too bold if he asks for your papers?”

“Not at all,” said Candron, taking a billfold from his inside coat pocket. “Such is the law, and the law of the People of China is to be always respected.”

He opened the billfold and spread the papers for the clerk’s inspection. They were all there–identification, travel papers, everything. The clerk looked them over and jotted down the numbers in the register book on the desk, then turned the book around. “Your chop, venerable one.”

The “chop” was a small stamp bearing the ideograph which indicated the name Candron was using. Illiteracy still ran high in China because of the difficulty in memorizing the tens of thousands of ideographs which made up the written language, so each man carried a chop to imprint his name. Officially, China used the alphabet, spelling out the Chinese words phonetically–and, significantly, they had chosen the Latin alphabet of the Western nations rather than the Cyrillic of the Soviets. But old usages die hard.

Candron imprinted the ideograph on the page, then, beside it, he wrote “Ying Lee” in Latin characters.

The clerk’s respect for this old man went up a degree. He had expected to have to put down the Latin characters himself. “Our humble establishment is honored by your esteemed presence, Mr. Ying,” he said. “For how long will it be your pleasure to bestow this honor upon us?”