The fifth of a series of six stories called “The dramatic deaths of Dr. Kang”, originally published in the Evening Standard, the first five being reprinted in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Dr Kang is the quintessential 'wily oriental', and in each story he is engaged in some illegal activity, becomes the object of violence, but escapes by a combination of sharp observation and good fortune, while somebody else dies in his place. Later six more stories appeared in the Evening Standard under the title "The Return of Doctor Kang" in which Dr Kang becomes a police consultant.
Dr Kang has been acting as a freelance agent selling secret documents to Western and Soviet embassies. Having no further use for him, Sverdov of the Soviet Embassy in Paris is told to kill him with poisoned brandy. Will Dr. Kang drink it?
Evening Standard, Friday 24th February 1956. Page 17.
Reprinted in the Glasgow Evening Citizen on 2 March 1956,
and as "Death in France". Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #184, March,
1959.