Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

The Case of the Chinese Santa Claus by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

It had been a quiet Christmas Eve in Connaught Mews. Lady Sara attended church services with her mother, the Dowager Countess of Ranisford, and afterward returned to the Countess’s home in Connaught Place for supper and a sedate Christmas Eve party with a few of the Countess’s friends. Lady Sara’s two footmen, Charles Tupper and Rick Allward, were spending the evening with their families in their own apartments, which were next door to Lady Sara’s headquarters. All over London, families were gathered in anticipation of a joyful Christmas Day.

I had no family except my adoptive father, Old John Quick, who was Lady Sara’s coachman. He had driven her and the Countess to church and then back to Connaught Place, after which, since Connaught Mews is just behind Connaught Place and a quick walk, she dismissed him. We exchanged our gifts when he returned home; then, since he’d had a long day taking Lady Sara through the ordeal of last-minute Christmas shopping, he decided to retire early. I busied myself in Lady Sara’s office, bringing records of her extensive network of agents up to date.

Lady Sara returned home shortly after midnight. Neither of us had anything to report, so I wished her good night and was about to return to my own quarters next door when her door pull emitted a timid chime, almost as though it had decided to celebrate the arrival of Christmas Day in its own fashion.

Lady Sara and I exchanged questioning glances. “See what it is, Colin,” she said, and added, “if it is anything.” I opened the door. A bundle of clothing, noticeably smaller than adult-sized, flung itself out of the cold night into my arms. I exclaimed, “Why, it’s Madam Shing!”

The little Chinese woman was so elderly and small she looked like a shriveled monkey. She was panting in exhaustion, and her inscrutable face was, for once, scrutable. She was terrified. Lady Sara took charge of her and sent me to prepare hot tea. By the time I returned with it, she had helped Madam Shing to remove some of the robes that enveloped her, got her positioned comfortably on a sofa, and was massaging her arms and legs.

“Would you believe — she walked all the way!” Lady Sara exclaimed.

I echoed her astonishment. From Madam Shing’s Chinese neighbourhood in the East End to Connaught Mews was between six and seven miles as the crow flies and much further than that following London’s meandering streets, which no sensible crow would have attempted. On that frigid Christmas Eve, the woman had walked herself almost to death.

She kept trying to tell her story, and Lady Sara kept hushing her. “Have your tea first,” she said. After a time she was able to sit up and sip the hot tea I had brought and even munch on a biscuit. The tenseness gradually oozed out of her, but she still looked terrified. Lady Sara watched her patiently, keeping her attention on the tea until she had finished a large cup.

Madam Shing had once been a valuable Limehouse agent. She had conscientiously roamed a large area and made herself an important source of information. She was a well-known and highly respected character among London’s Orientals. Her innate dignity inspired a local rumour that the Dowager Empress of China was a distant connection of hers, and even Chinese who spoke no English called her “Madam Shing.”

For the past few years, old age had curtailed her wanderings and failing eyesight blurred her observation. Now she rarely left the single room she lived in, and the last report we had from her had come several years before. A son in China sent her a small stipend, and Lady Sara made it possible for her to live comfortably by continuing to pay her ten shillings a month. Each month she had to be persuaded to accept it. She knew she was doing nothing to earn it. Whoever was acting as Lady Sara’s paymaster would persuade her to take it on the grounds that something momentous might occur just outside her window, and she would once again become an invaluable source of information. Eventually she pretended to believe that and accepted the money.

Contrary to all of our expectations, something had happened, and it had frightened her severely. When she finished her tea and indicated herself ready to talk, she croaked, “I was looking out of the window, and I saw it.”

“Saw what?” Lady Sara prompted her.

“Man with ladder.”

We waited.

She corrected herself. “Man with a long white beard and ladder. He put a ladder against the building and climbed up.”

“The building across the street?” Lady Sara asked.

“Yes. Across the street.”

“And what did he do then?”

“He opened the window and climbed in.”

“Charlie Tang lives across the street,” Lady Sara said. “Was it his window the man climbed into?”

“Yes. Charlie Tang’s window.”

“Were the Tangs at home?”

“No. Gone to Liverpool.”

Charlie Tang had a brother in Liverpool who occupied a position similar to his in London. Both were leading merchants. Christmas was not a holiday among the East End Chinese except for the small community of Chinese Christians that patronised the Chinese Mission House run by the Reverend George Piercy. Both the Tangs had married English wives, however, and were thoroughly Westernised. They attended the Church of England, sent their bright, happy children to English schools, and associated with leading English merchants while maintaining all of their Chinese connections.

Obviously they were holding a family Christmas gathering in Liverpool, and if Madam Shing’s sketchy description was to be believed, during Charlie Tang’s absence someone had broken into his dwelling, which was above his shop.

That was as much as Madam Shing would say. Lady Sara questioned her at length, but she would not elaborate. She had described exactly what she had seen, or thought she had seen, and not a jot more: A man with a long white beard had placed a ladder against the building across the street and climbed into the first-storey window that was directly opposite to Madam Shing’s own window.

“What sort of clothing was he wearing?” Lady Sara asked.

Madam Shing hadn’t noticed anything special about his clothing. It was a cold night; she supposed he had a coat on.

“What happened to the ladder afterward?” Lady Sara wanted to know. “Was it still there when you left?”

Madam Shing gazed at her blankly. She hadn’t given any further thought to the ladder. She hadn’t looked out of her window again. As soon as she saw what was happening, she determined to tell Lady Sara about it. She bundled herself up, which took time, and when she reached the street the ladder was gone.

“When the man with the long white beard was climbing up, were there other men waiting at the foot of the ladder?” Lady Sara persisted.

Madam Shing had seen only the one man, the man who climbed the ladder. She watched him until he vanished through the window. It never occurred to her to look down at the street for other men, so she didn’t know whether there were any. The one man had frightened her enough.

I was pouring another cup of tea for Madam Shing. She looked as though she still needed it. Lady Sara said, “Colin, would you awaken Rick and Charles? Also, John. Give them my apologies, but there is work to do.”

That was as much instruction as she needed to give me. The fact that she asked for both of her footmen as well as her coachman indicated what she wanted done. She owned two taxi-cabs, a four wheeler and a hansom, for use in her investigations. One of the footmen would drive Madam Shing home. We couldn’t allow her to walk back such a cruelly cold distance, and if we gave her money for a cab, she certainly would walk anyway and save it.

The other footman would be driven in the second cab by John, Lady Sara’s coachman, so he could follow Madam Shing on foot if the need arose.

Madam Shing refused to elaborate her story a syllable beyond the bare bones of the facts she had already presented. Her voice was vibrant with truth and honesty — as it always had been when she reported to Lady Sara. We had never had a more reliable agent. This time, however, I had no intention of believing her until I had investigated every word carefully. Obviously Lady Sara felt the same way about it.

When the horses had been harnessed and the two cabs were ready — one of them was waiting out of sight — we bundled Madam Shing up again, Lady Sara gave her congratulations and thanks, added a few shillings to compensate her for her ordeal in walking so far in the cold, and assured her we would take action at once. I assisted her into the four wheeler Rick was driving, and she was whisked away. Rick was to take her directly home. As they turned into Edgeware Road, the hansom cab driven by Old John, with Charles as his passenger, hurried after them.

I returned to Lady Sara’s office with her. She sat down at her desk; I took a chair nearby. I said, “I would like to be present when you relate to Chief Inspector Mewer this Christmas Eve tale about a man with a long white beard climbing a ladder in order to break into the residence of a prominent Chinese merchant. If I’m not mistaken, men with long white beards are supposed to be able to visit homes on Christmas Eve without breaking in.”

“Do you believe her?” Lady Sara asked.

“I do not.”

“Has she ever told us a lie before?”

“Not that I know of. She always has been painstakingly exact and truthful. However, she may be so far gone in senility as to be imagining things.”

“That was a long way to walk on a cold night just to indulge her senile imagination.”

“If she really did walk that far,” I suggested.

“She certainly was cold and gasping for breath when she arrived,” Lady Sara observed.

“She could have achieved that by walking from Gloucester Place,” I pointed out. “After all, she is elderly.” Gloucester Place was a mere three squares away.

“She knows me well,” Lady Sara said. “Even in senility, I don’t believe she would attempt to fob a complicated lie onto me. Nor would she walk so far to do it. Further, in all of my dealings with her, she always has been an exact and factual witness. Her objectivity has never been disturbed by a ripple of emotion. Yet suddenly she has become a different kind of person. Even so, I think we must assume there is some truth in what she told us. She had an experience tonight that was genuinely terrifying.”

“I’m thinking about street lamps,” I said. “Also about Madam Shing’s poor eyesight. Large parts of the East End are not spectacularly well-lighted. West India Dock Road, in front of Charlie Tang’s shop, could be called dim, and Madam Shing lives around the corner on a dark side street. Even on a dark night like tonight, her poor eyesight might conceivably have recognized the general shape of a man climbing a ladder, but I refuse to accept the beard.”

Lady Sara shook her head. “I think we have to accept it. Madam Shing is not a person who can imagine things.” She chuckled. “The beard may be the most important clue she gave to us despite the fact that it is Christmas Eve. But we don’t have to believe she saw it from across the street.”

“We also don’t have to believe the burglar climbed in through a window,” I said. “Charlie Tang is a very savvy merchant. He not only would have locks on his windows, but he wouldn’t traipse off to Liverpool without leaving a capable watchman on his premises. So I conclude that Madam Shing’s story is largely fantasy.”

“I have a more telling objection,” Lady Sara said. “Consider this: She looks out, she sees a man with a ladder breaking into the dwelling across the street. She knows the dwelling’s owner has gone to Liverpool. Does she bundle herself up and walk halfway across London to tell Lady Sara? She does not. She tells her landlord and her neighbours — people close by who can do something about it while the burglary is still in progress. Her conduct is more remarkable than her story.

“On the other hand, the bruises on her arms were real and recently acquired. She may have other bruises on her throat — did you notice how carefully she kept it covered? Someone misused her badly and — perhaps — threatened to do it again. That was why she was terrified. It will be interesting to find out whether she actually lets Rick take her home.”

Rick Allward returned first with a strange tale to tell. When he reached Limehouse, workmen had part of the pavement up on Commercial Road near West India Dock Road. Traffic in both directions had to use a single, narrow lane alternately. He was trapped there for several minutes, and while he was waiting Madam Shing flung the door open and leaped out. She fell heavily, and he feared she had injured herself, but before he could climb down she scrambled to her feet and ran off faster than he would have thought possible. She darted out of sight down a side street.

Old John, driving Charles in the hansom several vehicles behind him, had seen what had happened. He skillfully maneuvered out of line and followed her. By the time Rick’s turn came to move on, both hansom and fleeing woman were out of sight, so he returned to Connaught Mews.

Charles returned several hours later. Old John had overtaken the hurrying woman and driven past her like a cab driver on an urgent errand. He turned at the next corner, and Charles scrambled out. He had already outfitted himself with multiple disguises. He boldly strode back along the side street and met Madam Shing without giving her a glance. She hurried on; he turned, altered his appearance slightly, and followed her. The squalid neighbourhood just east of the Limehouse Basin of Regent’s Canal contained a confused warren of streets. Obviously she knew it well. From her wanderings as Lady Sara’s agent, she probably knew the entire East End well. She followed a zigzagging path through the dark streets and marched unerringly to her destination, where she knocked, and was recognized the moment the door was opened, and made welcome. Evidently it was the home of friends.

Charles watched the house for some time. When it became obvious that everyone had gone to bed, he found the homes of two of Lady Sara’s agents, roused them out — a considerable achievement on Christmas Eve — and established a watch on the house Madam Shing had fled to. Then he rendezvoused with Old John and returned home.

Lady Sara had one question for Charles. “Were there signs of anyone else trying to follow her?”

“None,” Charles said confidently.

“She has found a refuge of her own choosing,” Lady Sara said. “We can assume that she is in safe hands for the present. However, we may need her again, and I must know where she is. I’m sorry to spoil Christmas morning for you, but early tomorrow I want you to make arrangements to keep the house under watch day and night and follow her if she leaves. Find agents who know her well and will recognize her.”

In the morning, Lady Sara left a message at Scotland Yard for Chief Inspector Mewer, informing him that she had a question for him and asking him to telephone her at his convenience. The message was relayed to him at home, and he left at once — on Christmas morning — to call on her. From past experience he knew all about the far-reaching implications Lady Sara’s questions could have.

Once he heard Madam Shing’s story, he reacted very much as I expected. He stared for a moment, mouth agape, as though he thought he hadn’t heard Lady Sara correctly. “A man with a white beard broke into a house on Christmas Eve?” he demanded unbelievingly.

“My question,” Lady Sara said dryly, “was whether you have any information about internecine feuds among London’s Chinese population.”

“None,” the Chief Inspector said. “They police themselves very effectively. They aren’t like the American Chinese, where Tong wars seem to break out with monotonous regularity. We would stomp hard on them if there were any signs of that here. They know we would; that’s why they are so careful to maintain order among themselves. Sometimes an individual rages out of control because of opium, or hashish, or that devil’s blend of them, majoon, but few of those cases reach the police. His companions, or the persons he bought the drugs from, take him in hand. What does this have to do with your bearded burglar?”

“I’ll tell you when I find out,” Lady Sara said. “Do you have such a thing as a Chinese constable on the force?”

The Chief Inspector paused to reflect. A police officer of his lofty rank couldn’t be expected to know all the constables in London personally. “I’ll have to ask,” he said.

“Please do,” Lady Sara said. “If you have one, I would like to borrow him for a day or two.”

There were very few Chinese policemen, but the Chief Inspector did manage to find one for Lady Sara. He was a young uniformed constable named Harry Kung, extremely polite as well as bright and alert. After he came to know us better, he confessed that his Chinese name was Kung Wu. We went with him directly to the emporium of Charlie Tang, which every London Chinaman knew well. It was the largest of its kind, occupying two connecting two-storey buildings on West India Dock Road. The front was splashed with Chinese characters. As I already mentioned, Tang and his large family lived above the shop. Tang dealt in every imaginable Chinese product that local residents could desire, imported directly from China: rare food delicacies; medicines and drugs, including pills for counteracting the effects of opium; soys, condiments, gingers, and curries; oil for sacred Chinese lamps; bars of a special soap that no English lady would have allowed into her house or even her barn; ravishing silks and finished clothing. Tang also sold such items of English origin as Oriental residents of London were likely to want or need.

A sign on the door announced, in Chinese characters, that Constable Kung translated for us, the days the shop would be temporarily closed.

“Of course he left someone to guard his home and shop during his absence,” Lady Sara suggested.

“Naturally,” Constable Kung said with a grin. “Charlie Tang was not — as you English say — born yesterday. In fact, he left his assistant, Wong Li.”

“Do you know that to be a fact?” Lady Sara asked.

“Wong Li told me so himself. He had hoped for some free time to spend with his own family, but Charlie Tang promised him a few days off later if he would guard the shop and residence while the Tang family was gone.”

“Excellent,” Lady Sara said. “Perhaps this problem can be resolved quickly. All we need to do is ask Wong Li if anything untoward happened last night.”

Constable Kung tried the front door. To no one’s surprise, it was locked. He knocked firmly; there was no response. We walked around to the street that ran alongside the building. On the opposite side was the building where Madam Shing paid an extra shilling a week so she could enjoy a front room. It was a shabby street, and the drab fronts of the buildings, mostly dwellings, were entirely unlike the bright, businesslike frontages we had just left. There were two side doors to Charlie Tang’s building. One opened into his shop. Constable Kung knocked on it resoundingly; again there was no response.

We moved on to the other side door, which opened onto a stairway leading up to the Tang family’s living quarters. When the family was at home, it would be left unlocked, and callers would knock or otherwise announce their presence at a second door at the top of the stairs. Now it was locked. Constable Kung knocked loudly.

There was no response.

He tried again. And again.

“Perhaps Wong Li stepped out for a few minutes,” Lady Sara suggested.

Constable Kung shook his head. “He would not. He would have no reason to. Anything he might need or want is there in the shop. Besides, his employer left him to guard the establishment, and that is a sacred trust. We Chinese take such things seriously. No. He is there — either upstairs or in the shop. He must be there.”

He tried again. Again, there was no response.

“Perhaps we should enquire of the neighbours whether Wong Li has been seen since the Tang family left,” Lady Sara suggested.

As I already mentioned, Christmas was not widely celebrated by London’s Chinese. The shop next door to Charlie Tang’s was open for business. It was a cookshop, but my knowledge of Chinese customs was too inexact for me to determine whether the dozen customers we saw there were having late breakfasts or early lunches. What they were eating did not look appropriate to either occasion.

Constable Kung interviewed the proprietor, a muscular Chinaman of medium height wearing an apron that probably had at one time been white. After a jumbled exchange of Chinese — it sounded like a jumbled exchange — Kung turned to us. “Wong Li was left in charge of the premises. He would not leave them until Charlie Tang returned, so of course no one has seen him.”

Lady Sara said thoughtfully, “All we really know is that Charlie Tang intended to leave Wong Li in charge. We don’t know that he actually did so. No one knows that he did so because no one has seen Wong Li since the Tang family left. Isn’t that so?”

Harry Kung pushed his helmet back and scratched his head fretfully. To him, the fact that no one had seen Wong Li was proof that Wong Li was ensconced within his master’s premises and overseeing them watchfully. He had difficulty grasping that this proposition had another side to it. If no one had seen Wong Li, perhaps Wong Li wasn’t there.

Except that he had to be there. Wong Li himself had told Constable Kung that he would be there. Both he and his employer, Charlie Tang, had told others the same thing. The entire neighbourhood knew that Wong Li would oversee Charlie Tang’s premises during the Tang family’s absence. So he had to be there. But in that case, why didn’t he answer the Constable’s knocks?

Back we went for another try at the side door and then for a try at the front of the shop. The Constable’s knocks became violent. There still was no response.

Three Lascars, Indian seamen, came along the street. They were large, husky, dark-skinned men, and their size made both Constable Kung and me look like children. Asked in English about Charlie Tang and Wong Li, they gazed at the Constable silently for a moment, shrugged, and walked on. They would have their quarters somewhere nearby, perhaps a darkened room in a disused shop, crowded with beds, sofas, or even mattresses spread on the floor. They did not mind sleeping ten or twelve to a room. Probably they had done so all of their lives.

A middle-aged Chinese man followed them. Constable Kung discoursed briefly with him. He had heard that the Tang family would be away and that Wong Li would watch the shop. Beyond that, he knew nothing. He had not seen Wong Li, nor had he seen any sign of activity in the building since the Tangs left the previous morning.

A young Chinese man came along from the other direction. He was a tradesman of some sort; he wore an apron and carried a bag of tools. He did not live nearby. He knew who Charlie Tang was — everyone in the East End knew who Charlie Tang was — but he knew nothing about his plans for Christmas.

We walked along the side street for a short distance. I eyed Madam Shing’s window and wondered just how much she could have seen on a dark night. Two young Chinese men — they both looked surly and disreputable — approached on the opposite side of the street. Constable Kung called something to them; they answered, and suddenly he seemed excited. After another exchange, they crossed the street and joined us.

The Constable interrogated them at length before he bothered to translate. “They say,” he said finally, “that they saw Wong Li early yesterday morning. He was arguing with Charlie Tang just outside the shop’s side door. It was something about Wong Li staying to look after the shop, and both men were angry. Li wanted time at home like Charlie’s other employees.”

“How did it end?” Lady Sara asked.

“They don’t know. It was none of their business. They were just walking past, and they kept on walking.”

“It might be wise to write down their names and addresses just in case their testimony becomes important,” Lady Sara said. “The next step would be to call at Wong Li’s home and find out whether he is there. Do you know where he lives?”

The constable knew. We walked down the side street for a short distance to a shabby brick building that housed an odd, dusty shop dealing in amulets and charms on its ground floor. Wong Li, along with his wife and three small children, occupied a single second-storey room. His wife, a young, highly attractive Chinese woman, was bewildered at our questions. Li’s employer had gone to Liverpool, and Li was guarding the premises during his absence. When the Tangs returned, Li was to have an entire week off, and they would go to the southwest of England where, she had heard, it was warmer. All that was agreed. Charlie Tang was a wonderful employer. No, he and Li never disagreed about anything. Li felt lucky to have such an employer.

This, rendered in Chinese and then translated, took some time. In the end, we had not advanced our knowledge except for establishing that Li was not at home and that the person who should have known him best, his wife, thought he was guarding the Tang premises.

Back we went to Charlie Tang’s shop. “Madam Shing’s story, along with the certainty that Wong Li is supposed to be here, suggest that drastic measures are in order,” Lady Sara said. “Is there any legal way to break in?”

Constable Kung was shocked at the thought.

“Supposing a chief inspector ordered you to do it?” Lady Sara asked.

“Oh, well, if a chief inspector ordered it...”

“But I don’t think we have come to that yet. Does anyone in the neighbourhood own a ladder?”

Constable Kung meditated, finally remembering one Samuel Godson, who washed windows for a living. He had customers all across London, wealthy customers, and — for the East End — his was a profitable business. He owned several ladders that he and his employees used. We marched in a procession to the Godson home, which was located in a street that seemed like a veritable oasis amidst the general squalor of the East End. The houses adjoined each other in the usual crowded fashion. Like the buildings in nearby streets, they were old, run down, and in need of repairs, but here the four or five rooms of each house were occupied by a single family. The heads of the houses were tradesmen or small proprietors who were even able to afford a slavy — a young girl who performed the rough housework.

The days of such a street were numbered. Very soon — probably the moment their present leases expired — those single families would be replaced by people who would elevate rental values astronomically by their willingness to live with one or two families in a room. Thus the houses would bring in several times their present income, and the tradesmen and small proprietors would be forced to live elsewhere and probably settle for something far shoddier.

Sam Godson was celebrating Christmas with a houseful of children, his own and those of his employees. He was a plump, jolly, gregarious Englishman who was grateful to life for giving him his own business through which he was able to provide his family with necessities and even an occasional luxury. He knew Constable Kung, and he greeted Lady Sara with proper deference when the Constable introduced her.

Lady Sara proceeded to make the Godson family’s Christmas far more joyous than the window washer had anticipated. She offered him a pound for the temporary rental of a horse, a cart, and a ladder long enough to reach Charlie Tang’s first-storey windows. The family had been ready to sit down to their Christmas dinner, but in consideration of Lady Sara’s status and the pound that had been offered, Mrs. Godson was willing to keep the dinner warm long enough for Sam to accompany us to his business premises — a shed in a mews behind the buildings in the next street — and outfit us with a horse (he had two), a cart (he also had two), and a ladder (he had half a dozen of various lengths). As window washing enterprises went, his was a large one, lavishly equipped, but neither horses, nor carts, nor ladders were very good. He had salvaged what he could, wherever he could. I made my own selection of a ladder, taking the best he had. I intended to climb it myself, and I didn’t care to risk my life on one of the more rickety specimens.

I drove the cart back to Charlie Tang’s premises. Constable Kung and Lady Sara walked and had no difficulty keeping up with Sam Godson’s elderly, plodding horse.

When we reached Charlie Tang’s place, I hired a boy to hold the horse for me. Then, with Constable Kung’s assistance, I raised the heavy ladder to the window opposite the room occupied by Madam Shing. I climbed up cautiously, but the ladder proved sturdy enough. When I reached the top, I looked into a dimly lit bedroom. There was nothing Chinese about it. Clearly Tang’s English wife had charge of the household furnishings. Otherwise, there was nothing of interest to be seen inside, but I busied myself for a few minutes with the window. Then, just in case Wong Li was somewhere out of sight either asleep or lying in a drunken stupor — though Constable Kung was indignant when I suggested this, which would have been a betrayal of Charlie Tang’s trust — I knocked vigorously on the window. There was no response, so I descended.

I said to Lady Sara, “The window is locked securely, and no one has been meddling with it. Certainly no one has opened it recently from the outside. So much for the white-bearded burglar.”

“Try the next window,” she suggested.

It was all of twelve feet away, but perhaps Madam Shing had been so startled by what she saw that she got the window wrong. Constable Kung and I moved the ladder, and again I climbed it. It was another bedroom, this time obviously a children’s room. It was as neatly English as the first bedroom and just as unoccupied. This window, too, had not been opened recently. I rained another fusillade of knocks on it before I descended.

“We might as well try all of the windows,” Lady Sara said.

“Even those in front? Madam Shing could possibly have confused the two side windows, but she certainly couldn’t see around the corner.”

“Nevertheless, as long as we have the ladder...”

We moved around to the front of the building. Fortunately there was little traffic on West India Dock Road on Christmas Day. Constable Kung and I again raised the heavy ladder, and again I climbed it. This time I gazed into the Tang version of a sitting room. As before, the furnishings, as well as the look of the room, were typically English, and the room was as crowded with furniture and bric-a-brac as any middle-class English sitting room. There was a display of Chinese ornaments on one wall, but there was nothing un-English about that. Many middle-class English homes used items from India or the Orient to supply an exotic touch. The well-padded chairs and sofa were what London’s middle class thought London’s upper classes were using, and the books and sheets of music on the new-looking upright piano that stood against a far wall suggested that the Tang children were being marched unwillingly to a piano teacher.

I took all of that in with a glance before directing my attention to a startling item that lay on the floor in the center of the room. It was a man in Chinese costume lying face down with the strangely carved handle of a dagger protruding from his back.

I didn’t bother to rap on the window. Even from a distance of six or eight feet, I could see that the room’s one occupant wasn’t going to respond. I descended slowly, maintaining an unsuitable calm all the way. Then I described what I had seen.

“Was it Wong Li?” Constable Kung demanded.

“I have never met Wong Li,” I said. “Even if I had, I wouldn’t have recognized him, because this character is lying face down with his feet toward the window. Even so, on the basis of everything I have heard this morning, I think we now know why no one has seen Wong Li recently and why he didn’t respond to our knocking.”

Constable Kung climbed the ladder to assure himself that there really was a corpse there. Lady Sara was willing to take my word for it. She observed grimly, “This may be the result of a sordid squabble over drugs or a woman — the kind of thing that local police could be trusted to handle competently — but a murder on the premises of a leading Chinese merchant could have political implications, and that is ample reason for interrupting Chief Inspector Mewer’s Christmas dinner.” She went to find a telephone.

Scotland Yard took the discovery of a corpse in the sitting room of a leading Chinese merchant very seriously indeed. Not only did Chief Inspector Mewer leave his Christmas dinner to investigate, but he brought with him the head of the Criminal Investigation Department. Assistant Commissioner Edward Henry had been Inspector-General of the police in India. During that tenure, he developed a system of fingerprinting and used it with great success. Because of that, he had recently been made Assistant Commissioner and head of the CID, and he was in the process of establishing his fingerprinting system in England.

With them, arriving a few at a time, came a full platoon of members of the CID, also called from their Christmas dinners. Sam Godson’s ladder came into far more use than we had anticipated as one officer after another, beginning with Chief Inspector Mewer and Assistant Commissioner Henry, climbed the ladder to stare into the Tangs’ sitting room.

Assistant Commissioner Henry coveted the dagger the moment he saw it. By that date fingerprints had enabled police to solve crimes and convict criminals with spectacular success in India and South America, but they still had not been used in England. Henry was patiently building his file and waiting for an opportunity. He sensed that one had arrived, and he issued strict orders that no one was to touch the dagger.

The police were waiting for a warrant that would give them authority to break into the premises. It promised to be a long wait. Magistrates were difficult to find on Christmas Day.

Lady Sara plucked at my sleeve and signalled to Constable Kung. “All of this police authority standing around and doing nothing will not advance our case an iota,” she said to the Constable. “What we need right now are more witnesses to that argument between Charlie Tang and Wong Li. Will you see if you can find any?”

He hurried away. Lady Sara led me along West India Dock Road to the Chinese Mission House. It was a two-storey, white-painted brick building situated comfortably between a slop shop, an establishment selling used clothing and cheap sailors’ togs, and a Chinese shop whose proprietor had an unlikely English name. The dazzling white front stood out starkly from the dark, weathered bricks of the buildings on either side. A sign in English across the top of the building read CHINESE MISSION. Above the door, four large Chinese characters probably proclaimed the same thing.

In the dim interior, the Reverend George Piercy seemed to be getting ready for a party. A table was laid for more than a score of guests. The fare was to be simple: tea, bread and butter, cakes, and biscuits. On the evenings of Sundays and holidays, Piercy was accustomed to entertaining young Chinamen who needed advice on personal problems or merely enjoyed the fellowship such a gathering supplied. He had lived for thirty years in China, and the London Chinese considered him their friend and adviser.

He was so slender he looked as though he had spent his life fasting. He was gentle and friendly, and he was instantly sympathetic to any problem. He greeted Lady Sara with a shy smile, got both of us seated, and asked how he could help us.

Lady Sara told him what had brought us to Limehouse and what we had discovered.

“Wong Li murdered?” Piercy exclaimed.

“The body won’t be positively identified until the police obtain a warrant and force entrance to the building, but I think we can safely assume that it is Wong Li.”

“How unspeakably sad! He has a wife and three young children — I must begin immediately to see what can be done for them.”

“When the identification becomes official, we will need a sympathetic Chinese woman to carry the sad news to Mrs. Wong. I thought you would best know how to manage that.”

“Yes. Of course. Please excuse me. I’ll send for someone.”

“Charlie Tang himself will be the principal suspect,” Lady Sara told him when he returned. “Witnesses heard them quarrelling yesterday morning before the Tangs left.”

“But that is totally unacceptable and impossible! They were both men of high character, and they held each other in the highest esteem! I would as soon believe that Her Majesty had stabbed her Prime Minister as believe that Charlie Tang and Wong Li would quarrel!”

“Nevertheless, I feel certain that Charlie Tang will be the principal suspect unless something is done quickly to counter that. I have doubts about this myself, and I need to know who else could have done it. Does Charlie Tang have any enemies?”

“Of course,” Piercy said. “He is generous, he is kind, he is popular, and he is extremely successful. There are always some who envy the person who is any of those things, and he is all of them.”

“Rival businessmen?” Lady Sara suggested.

“That would seem unlikely to me. They, also, are men of integrity.”

“An employee of one of them thinking to do his employer a favour?”

“I suppose that is possible, but I would have difficulty believing it.”

“An employee acting on a suggestion from his employer?”

“That is flatly impossible. All of Charlie Tang’s principal rivals are successful men. They might envy him a little because he is a bit more successful than they are, but surely not to the point of involving him in murder!”

“Was he resented because he has an English wife and has adopted English ways?”

Piercy shook his head emphatically. “The Chinese are far from home. Chinese women are in short supply. It is so common for Chinese businessmen to take English wives that I would have difficulty understanding why Charlie Tang would be singled out.” He smiled. “In my opinion, the Chinese are the East End’s finest citizens. They also are far kinder and far more considerate to their wives and children than most English husbands. The one thing that might have aroused enmity was Charlie Tang’s crusade against the smoking of opium and majoon. He considered this destructive of many potentially fine young men, and he sponsored meetings to discuss the steps that should be taken to close those shoddy establishments that are misnamed ‘opium parlours.’ How that could have resulted in the murder of Wong Li, who surely had nothing to do with it, is more than I could say.”

“Does a directory of those opium parlours exist?” Lady Sara asked.

“Not to my knowledge. Those who patronise them always know where they are — even the ones that change their addresses frequently. Of course, there are a few that occupy better premises and have their own special clientele. In their own fashion, they resemble the gentlemen’s clubs in the West End. If you really want to know something about them, I can introduce you to a merchant who has a shop next door to one of them. He would be pleased to see it put out of business.”

“That would be difficult as long as our laws permit it,” Lady Sara said. “But I would like to meet him. Is there a Joss House in the East End?”

“Ah! There is much mystery as to whether a Chinese Joss House, or temple, exists here. The Chinese themselves say there is none, but they prefer to keep their own secrets, and they resent having their ancient customs ridiculed. If there is a Joss House, they would not even tell me about it.”

Leaving a politely smiling Chinese youth in charge of the Mission, Piercy came with us to introduce Lady Sara to another Li, Chung Li, a well-known Chinese businessman.

Chung Li’s establishment was not as extensive as Charlie Tang’s. The building was smaller, and he offered only Chinese products. Much of his stock seemed to consist of foods and medicines imported from China. At Piercy’s suggestion, he retired with us to a back room, and he and Piercy talked for a few minutes in hushed tones. Then Chung Li nodded. He was a plump, smiling Chinaman with a mouthful of gold teeth that he flashed at us repeatedly.

“I’ll show them,” he promised Piercy.

Having received our thanks, Piercy took his leave of us. Chung Li began an explanation, and at first, until we became accustomed to his elided R’s, he was extremely difficult to understand. Eventually he made himself clear.

At one time the building that housed his shop had an additional front entrance, a door between the shop and the opium establishment next door that opened on a stairway leading to the flat upstairs. The proprietor at that time also owned the building and ran the opium parlour as well as the shop. He liked to display merchandise on the pavement outside. Traffic to the crowded flat upstairs interfered with this, so he had an outside stairway built at the rear of the building, removed the front stairway, and bricked up the front entrance that had led to it.

This left him with a long, narrow room between his shop and the opium parlour. He used it for storage, but he also found another use for it. A platform was erected the full length of the wall, and holes bored through the wall, making it possible to spy into the opium parlour.

Chung Li thought the former proprietor had used it to identify the better class of opium patrons. When they arrived, often at night and always with their faces covered by a convenient scarf, it was difficult to recognise them. Once inside, they felt safe and removed their disguises. The occasional opium addict from high society, or politics, or the theatre, or any other form of public life who had the misfortune to be recognised, quickly became a blackmail victim.

Chung Li paid as little attention as possible to the opium parlour, but he was willing to show us the platform the previous owner had used for spying. Lady Sara, who already knew all about opium parlours from numerous interrogations of addicts, deferred to me, telling me to look for anything that might be useful to us.

I mounted a ladder to the long platform and gingerly made my way to the front of the building. There was no railing. I returned slowly, using the spyholes along the way. I failed to see how this would advance our case, but I had never visited an opium parlour, and I was curious.

There was nothing on display in the front windows, which were heavily curtained with a drab-looking material. The curtains concealed a nondescript shop with a counter and a few items like tobacco, cigars, and sweets offered for sale. On the counter was a small pair of scales. A young, bespectacled Chinese man sat behind the counter reading a book.

The back room was separated from the shop by a partition with a dingy yellow curtain in the doorway. This was the opium-smoking room, and I counted seven customers. The room was furnished with several comfortable chairs, two settees, and an odd wooden structure, a low platform that supported three large mattresses. The opium smokers had their purchases measured out for them in the front of the store and then went to the rear to sit or recline comfortably while they smoked opium, or if majoon, the blend of opium, hemp, and hellebore, was their preference, smoked, chewed, or ate it.

It was a pernicious habit, and it couldn’t be justified, as some tried to do, by the excuse that the user harmed only himself. Heads of families were destroyed; wives and children were left in poverty. Even so, I failed to see what connection it might have with the murder of Wong Li.

Chung Li was unable to tell us where other opium parlours were located. There were a number of them in the East End, he said, and they were easily identified by their curtained front windows, but he paid very little attention to them.

We returned to the emporium of Charlie Tang, where the congregation of police was drawing a crowd. The boy I had hired to hold the borrowed horse was still exercising patient diligence, and he flashed a smile when he saw me. He deduced, rightly, that his long ordeal would be properly rewarded.

Sam Godson had joined the bystanders to see what use we were making of his property. While I was talking with him, the warrant finally arrived. With it came a locksmith. The Chief Inspector had decided — in consideration of the corpse in the sitting room — that he was fully justified in breaking in, but because the premises were the property of a prominent and influential Chinese merchant, he thought it might be wise to do so with finesse.

When I looked around, Lady Sara had vanished. I finally located her in the middle of West India Dock Road headed diagonally across it, and I had to hurry to catch up with her. Facing the side street was a short row of shops. In one of them could be seen the tell-tale curtains that marked an opium parlour. It was the shop next door that she was headed for, however. One glance and I saw why. Above the door was the proprietor’s name in English, W. Shing, accompanied by Chinese characters that probably said the same thing. I had been in the neighbourhood numerous times to call on Madam Shing, but I had never noticed that particular shop.

On the outside it was totally nondescript; on the inside, it was a fairyland. It was a shop offering Chinese objects made of brass — platters, bowls, tureens, goblets, beautifully fashioned art objects, gongs, bells, canisters, tea services, Buddhas of various sizes. Some of the items were wonderfully engraved. Some were genuine works of art.

But the contents were incidental, and the name of the proprietor — a common name among London’s Chinese — could have been a coincidence. The thing about the shop that had seized Lady Sara’s attention the moment she looked in that direction and now arrested mine was the proprietor himself. He stood in the doorway looking curiously at the confused intermingling of police and bystanders that surrounded Charlie Tang’s shop. He was elderly, he wore an ornate Chinese hat and Chinese robes, and he had a long white beard.

For all I knew, white beards were commonplace among the elderly Chinese — one saw them often enough in the East End — but this one was interesting because of the owner’s name and because he was located so conveniently close to Madam Shing’s residence.

Lady Sara was playing the role of an innocent tourist. She admired the brass works of art, exclaiming with delight each time her gaze fell on something new. Finally she selected a small vase. She took it to the front of the store, where the light was better.

“Lovely,” she exclaimed. “Let’s see if it takes a polish.” She went to work on it with a silk handkerchief, then held it up again. “Lovely. I’ll take this.” She smiled at the proprietor. “If it matches my decor, I’ll need several more.”

He bowed gracefully and took the vase from her with a smile. “It is a simple design,” he said — his English was impeccable — “but one is less likely to tire of simplicity.” He wrapped the vase in a piece of newspaper bearing Chinese characters and handed it to her. She paid him — a stiff price, it seemed to me, four pounds — and he accompanied us to the door.

He resumed his position in the doorway, again turning his attention to the chaos around Charlie Tang’s shop. “What is happening?” he asked.

“During the night there was a report that Charlie Tang’s residence had been broken into,” Lady Sara said. “But there seems to be no sign of any disturbance, and all the doors and windows are locked. I don’t know what the police are doing now.”

“But where is Wong Li?” Mr. Shing asked. “He was to guard the store during his master’s absence.”

“The police say there doesn’t seem to be anyone inside,” Lady Sara said. “No one we have talked with has seen Wong Li recently. Have you?”

The old man meditated for a moment. “I saw him night before last — the night before his master left for Liverpool. I sometimes import small items of brass for Charlie, and I had just had a new shipment. I took him the twenty small Buddhas he had asked for. Wong Li was there. He was always there during the hours the shop was open. I also presented Charlie with a bottle of sake, which is a Japanese liquor he is fond of, and the three of us, Charlie, Wong Li, and I, drank a toast to Charlie’s trip.” He smiled. “It was a very English occasion. But I can’t believe there is no one inside the store. Charlie told me himself that Wong Li would stay there during his absence.”

“Your English is excellent,” Lady Sara said. “How long have you lived in England?”

“All my life,” the old man said with a smile.

We thanked him, he thanked us, and we took our leave of him. As we walked back across West India Dock Road, I muttered to Lady Sara, “Just in case you are thinking you have found the white beard Madam Shing saw climbing a ladder, I’ll remind you that she also thought she saw it climb through Charlie Tang’s window, which certainly never happened. She would make an impossible witness.”

“She will never be called as a witness for the simple reason that she didn’t see anything.”

“Didn’t see — but she must have seen something! If she hadn’t come to you last night, we wouldn’t have found out that Wong Li was murdered. Do you mean she made it all up?”

“Not all of it,” Lady Sara said. “The one accidental grain of truth in her testimony is what gave us our case.”

“We have a case?”

“Yes. There are a few points that still need verification, but Assistant Commissioner Henry will take care of that for us.”

The crowd was still gathered around Charlie Tang’s shop, but the police were no longer in evidence. The locksmith had done his job, and the investigation had been moved inside. At the back of the shop we found Constable Kung with four more Chinese who had witnessed the quarrel between Charlie Tang and Wong Li. A police sergeant was taking down their testimony.

Chief Inspector Mewer loomed up suddenly in the dim interior of the shop. He said to Lady Sara, “You did a good piece of work.” As was usually the case when he actually paid her a compliment, he sounded resentful. “Whenever we got to the next step, you had already taken it. Have you figured out how the Santa Claus with a ladder fits in?”

“I believe I have,” Lady Sara said.

“He certainly didn’t break into the house,” the Chief Inspector said. “By last night, when he is supposed to have made his climb, Wong Li had been long dead. Everything indicates that he died shortly before the Tangs left yesterday morning. We think we have things pretty much figured out. Wong Li resented being left to watch the shop. He and Charlie Tang quarrelled about that. Yesterday morning, shortly before the Tang family left, they were seen standing outside the side door arguing violently. Thanks to you, we have six witnesses to that. Tang and Wong Li went inside and resumed the quarrel there, and Tang stabbed Wong Li in the back with a dagger that had been displayed on the sitting room wall with an assortment of Chinese knickknacks. Charlie Tang had to leave almost at once with his family, so he left Wong Li’s body lying there. But we’ve just learned that he intended to return alone tomorrow, leaving his family in Liverpool for several more days. Obviously he planned to dispose of the body before his family returned. We’ll have an unpleasant Christmas surprise for him. He’ll be arrested in Liverpool as soon as we can obtain another warrant. Can you improve on that?”

“I think I can,” Lady Sara said. “Where is Assistant Commissioner Henry?”

“Upstairs with his fingerprint people,” the Chief Inspector said. “Fingerprinting adds a lot of fuss to an investigation. Waste of time, I say.”

“I say wait and see,” Lady Sara said.

We climbed the stairs with the Chief Inspector clumping after us. The Assistant Commissioner met us at the top. “Almost finished,” he announced.

“Were there fingerprints on the dagger?” Lady Sara asked.

“A lovely set.”

“What do you intend to do with them?”

“We’ll check our files. Unfortunately, the files aren’t very extensive as yet. Probably we don’t have the murderer there. But if we ever lay our hands on him for another offence, we’ll have him for this murder as well.”

“And if you never lay hands on him?” Lady Sara asked.

The Assistant Commissioner shrugged. “There are no shortcuts to law enforcement. Fingerprints have to be compared with the fingerprints of suspects or known offenders.”

“Have you found a bottle of sake anywhere on the premises?” Lady Sara asked.

They looked at her strangely. No one had noticed.

“Look for it,” Lady Sara said. “It should be here. But when you find it, don’t touch it. Examine it first for fingerprints. I’m testing the reliability of a witness.”

They found the bottle of sake and turned it over to Assistant Commissioner Henry’s fingerprinting crew. Only a small amount of the sake had been consumed — just about enough, I thought, for three men drinking a toast. Thus far, W. Shing had proved to be totally reliable.

Lady Sara next wanted to know whether there were twenty small brass Buddhas for sale in the shop downstairs. They were not to be touched. They, too, had to be checked for fingerprints and then counted.

The counting was done first. There were twenty, another point for W. Shing.

“Excellent!” Lady Sara said. “Now my case is complete.” She handed the vase with its Chinese newspaper wrapping to Assistant Commissioner Henry. “Handle it carefully,” she said. “On this vase, you will find the fingerprints of the murderer. You also should find them on the bottle of sake and on the Buddhas — perhaps along with the fingerprints of Wong Li. You will not find any fingerprints of Charlie Tang, which proves his innocence.”

A perplexed group of police officers went to work on the vase. Lady Sara stepped around the corpse of Wong Li and took a seat in the sitting room. I joined her. She smiled at me.

“Are you hungry?”

“It just now occurred to me that I haven’t eaten since early this morning. Yes, I’m hungry. Food is no further away than the cookshop next door, but I would rather pass on that. I like to know what it is that I am eating.”

“An excellent Christmas dinner will be waiting for us in Connaught Mews. I’m looking forward to it. Food always tastes better when one has just finished a good job of work.”

Assistant Commissioner Henry joined us. He moved a chair toward us and sat down. Chief Inspector Mewer, who had trailed after him, remained standing. The Assistant Commissioner was experiencing a strangely subdued triumph. For the first time in the history of English criminal investigation, he had used fingerprints to identify a murderer, but he had no notion at all as to the murderer’s identity.

“Who is it?” he asked.

Lady Sara pursed her lips thoughtfully. “There probably are several hundred hiding places in this neighbourhood for a Chinese refugee. It might be wise to arrest him quickly before he knows he’s a suspect. Here is what you should do.”

We watched from the window. The elderly shopkeeper was still standing in his doorway looking in the direction of Charlie Tang’s shop. A detective in street clothing strolled over and engaged him in conversation. He was asking questions about the meeting with Charlie Tang and Wong Li that the Chinaman had told Lady Sara and me about. Another detective joined them. Then a third. Lady Sara had estimated that three would be enough. They were. The old man was seized before he quite knew what was happening.

“But what was the motive?” Chief Inspector Mewer demanded. “They weren’t business rivals. There is almost nothing in common between the two shops.”

“The shop next door to Mr. Shing’s is an opium parlour,” Lady Sara said. “Shing operates them both. The brass shop is his labour of love. The opium parlour is his bank — he probably makes huge profits. Charlie Tang was crusading against opium parlours. The motive was as simple as that. The case, however, is extremely complicated. If you will call at Connaught Mews this evening, I’ll be glad to expound it for you. Right now, Colin and I are hungry.”

She expounded the case for me over our Christmas dinner. “Mr. Shing felt he had to do something to stop Charlie Tang’s anti-opium crusade. He decided that murdering Charlie would be too dangerous. The murder of a mere employee of Charlie’s would be far less risky. If Wong Li’s murder could be arranged so that the obtuse English police would think Charlie did it, Mr. Shing’s problem would be solved.

“Since he has lived in England all of his life, he certainly knows a great deal about police procedures and the way the English justice system works. First there had to be a motive. Witnesses were provided who would swear they saw Charlie Tang and Wong Li quarrelling just before the Tang family left yesterday morning. Those witness probably did walk past at exactly the time they said they did. Of course they actually saw nothing. Their testimony was supplied by Mr. Shing.

“Immediately after the Tang family left, Mr. Shing called on Wong Li. He brought with him the twenty Buddhas he claimed Charlie Tang had asked him to order. Whether Charlie actually did so is unimportant. Probably he did occasionally obtain brass items through Mr. Shing, and the order seemed reasonable enough to Wong Li. Wong Li accepted the Buddhas.

“Or perhaps Mr. Shing never mentioned the Buddhas to Wong Li. He placed them in the shop himself after the murder. One thing we can be certain about is that Mr. Shing took the bottle of sake with him when he called. Perhaps it was Wong Li who was fond of the Japanese liquor. Mr. Shing presented the bottle and suggested that they drink a toast — to anything at all, maybe the English Christmas. They did so in the Tang sitting room, and when Wong Li left the room for a moment, Mr. Shing took the dagger from the wall and used it at the first opportunity after Wong Li returned. Being thorough, he may have poured out one more toast from the sake bottle to make sure the police would believe his tale of three toasts.

“Then he left, locking the shop after him with Wong Li’s keys, which you may be certain he quickly disposed of where they will never be found.

“He had set the stage perfectly. Witnesses would claim to have seen Charlie Tang and Wong Li quarrelling. Wong Li was murdered shortly after that, and the police would think Charlie Tang did it before he and his family departed and then locked both shop and living quarters with his own keys when he left.

“Mr. Shing has the temperament of an artist, and the case he constructed was artistically complete. His downfall came because he assumed that Charlie Tang’s morals were similar to his own. That night it suddenly occurred to him, to his horror, that when Charlie Tang returned from Liverpool and found himself confronted with Wong Li’s corpse, he would simply get rid of it. Charlie Tang has a reputation of being a very sharp individual. He would know that a dead employee could cause him endless inconvenience. Further, the Chinese distrust the police and try to do their own policing. Charlie Tang would deftly dispose of the corpse and perform his own investigation, which might prove highly dangerous to Mr. Shing.

“This is what Mr. Shing would have done, and he assumed that Charlie Tang would do the same. He decided that he must somehow let the police know about the murder before Charlie Tang returned. But now there was no way anyone else could get into the house to discover Wong Li’s body.

“Then he remembered Madam Shing, who perhaps is a relative of his. He has lived in the neighbourhood longer than she has — long enough to know all about her — including the fact that she once was an agent for the Lady Detective who works with the police. So he called on her and asked her to go at once to the Lady Detective and tell her she had seen a man climb a ladder and break into Charlie Tang’s residence. Madam Shing would have no part of such a prevarication. Just as Wong Li felt that the responsibility for his master’s property was a sacred trust, Madam Shing would have felt that truth was a sacred trust in her relation with me. She flatly refused. So Mr. Shing used force — remember the bruises on her arms and perhaps on her throat — and finally terrified her so with fear for her life that she consented. He or one of his employees certainly took her most of the way in a cab and then followed her all the way to my door.

“So she arrived in a panic and told me what he wanted her to — but she added the one touch of truth that destroyed all of his plans. When she described the man climbing the ladder, she put Mr. Shing’s beard on him. Probably she did it without thinking because the beard had terrified her and was foremost in her thoughts. Then, when I arranged to have her taken home, she pretended to go willingly, but she knew Mr. Shing would be waiting for her if she failed. At the first opportunity, she escaped to friends who would protect her.”

“You keep saying she won’t be called as a witness, but she is the only one who can connect Mr. Shing with the murder,” I said.

“Mr. Shing’s fingerprints connect him with the murder. Madam Shing won’t be called unless the police should decide to charge Mr. Shing with assault — but why would they bother? A murder charge is inclusive enough, and as I told you, she didn’t see anything. No one climbed a ladder, and she probably was asleep when Mr. Shing called on her.

“As for Mr. Shing, no Oriental would talk as confidentially to a stranger as he did to me in describing that touching scene where he drank toasts with Charlie Tang and Wong Li. It was information important to the case against Charlie Tang, and he wanted to make certain the police got it. Why did he confide in an Anglo-Saxon woman who was merely browsing for knickknacks in his shop? Because he knew who I was. He had terrified Madam Shing into calling on me and telling his lie for him — he knew the ploy had worked, because it got both me and the police there — and he wanted to make further use of me. He didn’t realize, when he told me that little tale about drinking a toast, that I was hearing it as a confession.”