Meng wanted to go away. He backed, smiling, slapping his hand against his forehead again and again, but the Malay did not let him go. He rose from behind the desk, and with his companion advanced on Meng. ‘Come, come,’ he said, and Meng, resisting, was half-dragged, half-pushed inside the building. There was another Malay sitting behind a table, who said: ‘Speak or I will put you in prison.’

Meng was terribly frightened, and he stuttered: ‘Saya suka chakap orang jahat,’ which he intended to mean, ‘I like to come here to speak of bandits,’ but really what he said was, ‘I like to speak of bad people.’ Badness means communism in Malaya.

A smile widened on the face of the officer behind the desk. Tenderly he bent forward and said softly to Meng: ‘Are you then a communist?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Meng, a reflex action, because he always said ‘yes’ to a uniform, a stranger, in answer to a question not understood.

‘Come, then, with me,’ said the Malay, and two of them pulled him into another room, and then along a corridor, and suddenly he was pushed in a cell, the barred doors clanged behind him, locking him in.

‘Salah, salah! A mistake, a mistake!’ he cried and shook the bars, but the Malays laughed gently, and walked away. They were taking no chances. He might be an informer, he might be a surrendered bandit, he might be anything. They had him safe behind bars until the white man came back. The tuan would decide.

It was after curfew, which was at seven at night, when the tuan rang up to say he was back, and was there anything new?

‘A surrendered bandit, tuan,’ they told him.

‘Good God,’ said the police lieutenant, ‘surrendered? I’ll be there right away,’ and jumped in his Morris and was soon at the station.

Meng was brought out of his cell in front of him, a Meng terrified, terrorized, wordless with fear. When he saw the police officer, he wanted to kneel down to him, but was prevented.

‘Has he brought his gun?’

‘No.

‘Oh!’ The white man looked disappointed. ‘What’s his name?’

Meng sobbed, wrung his hands, gestured, screamed. It took an hour to make him talk, to say that he was a poor man weighing latex, come to the police station to ask for the address of a doctor. Meng had now decided to say nothing at all about the People Inside.

‘You are sure you didn’t speak about communists?’

No, no, all he said was he didn’t know anything about communists. The white man shrugged his shoulders. He was very tired. It had been a long hot day.

‘Oh hell,’ he said, ‘I can’t understand half of what he says, his Malay is even worse than mine and nobody here can speak Chinese, anyway. Obviously this is just a poor guy frightened out of his wits. Let him go.’