Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 3, August 1959

The Toy-Head Man by Franklin Gregory

The murder was toyland strange. And Japanese customs made it stranger still.

Murder that glorious April morning was farthest from Peter Ragland’s mind as he explored the miniature park outside the inn. Near the footpath, under a pink-white cloud of cherry bloom, stood a hewn stone bench. On this, a plaque proclaimed, the great Japanese Emperor Meiji in the year of his victory over the Czar had paused to rest the imperial bottom. The present occupant was neither royal nor Japanese.

He was, the approaching Peter observed with dismay, a fellow countryman. He was plump. He was of middle age and conservative dress. And for all the festive scene about him, he presented a picture of woe as he stared bleakly across the valley at the distant splendor of Mt. Fuji. In his lap rested a small carton and its torn wrapping of bright paper.

Not until Peter was nearly upon him did this dejected man glance up, and then with a start. If he seemed about to withdraw his gaze, he reconsidered; perhaps because of Peter’s manifest American look; perhaps because of inner need.

“Oh,” he said uncertainly, “was that you singing in the bath this morning?”

Peter’s frown was almost perceptible. At this remote inn, with its kimonaed maids and sliding doors of paper and wood, he’d hoped to enjoy just one holiday without tangling in the affairs of others.

Still, he mustered the civility to assent. “If you’re kind enough to call it that.”

“You carry a good tenor,” the man acknowledged. “But damn if I see what you had to sing about. Confounded Jap bath’s too all-fired hot. And privacy! Isn’t there any privacy in this wretched country?”

Peter, who did not think Japan at all wretched, replied: “Not very much. It’s pretty crowded, you know.”

He had the feeling the man was avoiding some more vexing problem.

“It’s worse than Times Square,” the stranger complained. “Hang it! Here I was soaking when this female traipsed in, dropped her kimona — stark naked, mind — and started soaping herself calm as you please. What are these people, immoral heathens?”

There was perplexity as well as anger in the question. Peter suppressed a grin.

“Oh, no. Amoral, perhaps. It’s just... well, to her you didn’t exist. And she imagined she didn’t exist for you.”

The stranger’s gray eyes lost some of their bleakness. “What kind of make-believe is that?” he demanded. “Can’t they face up to reality?”

Peter hesitated. It was always difficult to explain the Japanese character to Americans; especially to successful American businessmen who stood for no nonsense.

“Not reality as we know it,” he said. “But they’re very good at seeing what isn’t there.” As the man frowned, Peter added: “Look at it this way. They’ve spent centuries under harsh, suspicious masters. So naturally they’ve built up defenses — with evasion, deceit, Noh masks, what have you — until now it’s second nature. They don’t expect anybody to tell the truth.”

The man leaned forward, his veined hands gripping the edge of the bench.

“Good God!” And half to himself, hoarsely: “I wonder — was that why John was killed?”

Peter stared at him. But the story, front-paged in the Tokyo press the day he arrived from Taiwan, had carried the dateline of an obscure village he hadn’t recognized. He said quietly: “Then you’re John Porter’s father?”

The other, still possessed by his thought, nodded abstractedly. “Henry Porter, yes.”

When he spoke again, it was not to say anything remarkable; hardly more than the papers had printed. But in the jettisoned words, Peter got an impression of man baffled and confused, fighting for self-control.

“Toys,” he said. “But John — in the Occupation, y’know, Marine captain — liked Japan and wanted to open our own plant here.” His jaw set, reflecting original displeasure. “It’s over in the next village. Happy Delight, it’s called. Ha! But back home of course we’re Porter Play. Perhaps you’ve heard of us.”

As who hadn’t, Peter thought. In the front rank of toymakers, Porter Play, along with Marx and Gilbert. Vaguely he recalled a mention in life last Christmas — something to do with dolls.

He ticked off what the stories had said: John Porter, 27, strangled, neck broken, found in a ravine not far from the factory. Last seen by his young wife, Minerva, leaving their home on an unannounced errand at nine the preceding evening. Mr. Porter had flown out right away; sent the body and the young wife home only last Sunday.

“A man was arrested,” Peter said.

“Tanizaki Hajime,” said Mr. Porter. “The superintendent. Of course he denied it, but he won’t say where he was. But he wasn’t home.” He added surprisingly: “A likable little cuss when John brought him to the States last year to learn our methods. And quite a lady’s man. Damn if I see him doing it. John was as big as you.”

He appraised Peter’s six feet of elastic strength with approval. “Still,” he added, “I’m told they all learned judo in the Nip army. And if he took John by surprise—”

Peter said nothing. He had his own views, gained from enough college boxing and battle combat, about a good big man being better than a good little one. But John Porter may not have been a good big one.

“And I’d had such great hopes for him. I was retiring soon. Now, well, I guess I got to take over and save what I can.”

He seemed tired, very tired.

“I’ve been over there twice. Never saw such a mess. Production way off, which might be natural enough with one boss dead and the other in jail. But I think I know a calculated slowdown when I see one. And there was that strike last summer.” He added hastily: “Not over wages. We pay well enough.”

“Who’s in charge now?”

“The oyabun. I guess you know what an oyabun is. A union leader.”

Peter glanced sharply at Mr. Porter. Was it possible he did not know, or John hadn’t reported, that an oyabun was so much more?

“Big fellow named Morita Ton,” Mr. Porter was saying, and now a faint bell sounded in Peter’s memory. He was sure the name had not been connected with labor circles.

He was still trying to place it when Mr. Porter, with a snort of savage disgust, said: “Then, just this morning, this camel”

Lifting the carton from his lap, he removed the lid. Revealed was a plastic Danjuro doll — fat and egg-shaped, the sort with weighted bottom which, when tipped over, bobs up again. Some four inches high, its body was painted to represent an exotic costume of the popular Kabukiza theatre.

Peter remembered a silly. Japanese joke which labeled some geishas Danjuro because they were push-overs. Then he noticed that tills doll was not of traditional type. Instead of being sealed at the stomach where the halves joined, the two half-eggs screwed together. Even more radical was the departure in the face. Instead of Danjuro’s, the famous actor, the expression was outrageously comic: squint-eyes, mouth drawn at one comer in a leer which, for all its grotesquery, yielded a tender human appeal.

“Porter Play’s Best-Seller.” That was how life had described it.

“Only damn thing in normal production,” Mr. Porter grunted. “But that’s not the point.” Lifting the doll from its box he touched the head. It had been twisted off, then taped back at a crooked angle to appear as a broken neck. In the box was an unsigned warning: Mr Poter go hom.

Peter whistled softly. Unconsciously, Mr. Porter was massaging his throat. At last he said: “I’m no coward. I was in war myself in Seventeen. But when you come up against something you don’t understand, that’s when you worry. And you can’t do a blame thing. I’d already the queerest feeling I wasn’t welcome. In my own plant, mind! But until this came I thought it just could be my imagination. Strange land, and forced to depend on an interpreter who might or mightn’t be reliable.” He eyed Peter with speculation. “Say, didn’t I hear you talking Jap to the maids?”

This, Peter recognized, was an oblique invitation. And far from resenting it, he smiled at his own self-deception in thinking that ever he could survive a quiet holiday. Truth was, he sensed a much more extraordinary story than had yet appeared in print.

“Oh, yes,” he said comfortably, “I know Japanese. It’s a rather chameleon language, quite like the people and loaded with double meanings. If I could be of help—” He produced his card.

Most strangers, on learning Peter Ragland’s identity as the famous foreign correspondent for the North newspapers, were properly impressed. It was possible Mr. Porter was, too, but sheer relief outweighed his curiosity.

“Would you?” he said, the worry receding before a pathetically eager smile. “Would you really? You can’t know what it would mean — another American who knows the score back-stopping me.”

The drove, in Mr. Porter’s company sedan and at Peter’s wish, to the National Rural Police jail where Tanizaki Hajime was held.

“Though I don’t see what good it can do,” Mr. Porter objected, parking the car. “I was here myself, you know, and he wouldn’t even see me. Sent out word he hated our guts.”

He switched off the ignition. “A fine thing, after all John did for him. The trip to America, good job, good pay, bonus at New Year’s, favors for his family. Damnit! How can a man be so thankless as that? And yet it’s just the reason the police think he killed John.”

“The hate?” Peter had his hand on the door handle.

“More what led up to the hate. Because he’d done so well with us. They said John was Tanizaki’s ‘on-man.’ Now what sort of stuff is that?”

Peter relaxed in the seat. This would take some explaining.

“Have you ever,” he asked, “heard of Lafcadio Hearn?”

“Writer fellow who married a Nip? Oh yes.”

“It was his idea that to understand these people you have to learn to think all over again; backward, upside down, inside out.”

“Hmph. I’ll buy that.”

“But perhaps John didn’t,” Peter said. “Or he’d have been less likely to heap favors on Tanizaki. You see, they’re an abnormally sensitive lot. They think that when they’re born they inherit a stupendous debt from the past — to their ancestors, parents, the whole world. Then, as they go through life, these debts increase — to teachers, friends, employer, whoever helps them along. No such thing as a self-made man in Japan. Life’s a joint enterprise.”

“Ha?” Mr. Porter, as a self-made man himself, scoffed at a concept so utterly alien.

“These debts are on,” Peter continued. “And to be a really virtuous man, you have to spend your life sacrificing everything you’d rather do to pay back. So naturally when somebody comes along and does you a gratuitous favor, as John did, it’s that much more load to repay and you resent it.”

“My stars! You don’t mean it could reach the point of murder?”

“It’s a pretty terrible thing,” Peter said thoughtfully, “when a Japanese at last realizes he can never pay off. It’s loss of face, end of the line. On is their guiding force. Debt. Burden. Sacrifice. You owe. You owe it to your name, for instance, to keep it spotless. That’s why it’s a Japanese virtue to revenge insult. And one insult is to be given something you can’t pay back.

“Tied in with that is the fact you’re not supposed to change stations in life. You owe it to your name to stay put. So it’s just possible that, besides feeling insulted, Tanizaki figured he was getting above himself and blamed John for it.”

An austere old man in black kimona, with the thinning white beard and high black skull cap of a patriarch, appeared from the jail and walked slowly down the steps. On seeing the company car, he paused in recognition and a fierce expression darkened his face. Then, abruptly, he turned and moved off.

“Tanizaki’s father,” Mr. Porter said. “Damnit! I can sure feel for him!”

Peter watched the old man out of sight. He had seen the type often — hard-bitten traditionalists who ruled their families with an iron fist, picking wives for the sons and husbands for the daughters.

“Tanizaki lives with him? Of course. It’s the on he owes. And because of it, he must always obey his father’s every wish.”

Mr. Porter was incredulous. “A grown man like Tanizaki? It must drive these people nuts.”

Peter was grinning as he stepped out of the car. “Yes, but like everywhere else, there are always backsliders.”

He recalled his little lesson a few minutes later when Tanizaki, gravely accepting a cigarette, murmured “Arigato.” One of the innumerable terms for “thank you,” but it also meant: “How difficult for me to become indebted to you for this; I am ashamed.”

Peter knew that; the solemn-faced Tanizaki also must be desperately ashamed of being under arrest. Haji, this shame was, a far greater punishment than death itself. For in death, there was nothing; finis, no hell, no heaven. But the shame was now and lay heavily on his honor.

Which was why Tanizaki’s reaction surprised Peter when he urged: “But why not say where you were that night?”

Six unaccounted hours, for from the factory Tanizaki had not reached home till midnight.

“Odawara?” suggested Peter. “Maybe you have a geisha in Odawara?”

After all, if a prosperous young Japanese wanted to keep a geisha, who cared? But Tanizaki merely stared at the cell wall.

“Don’t you know,” Peter persisted, “that it would be so much easier if you explained where you were?”

“Then I would be let free,” Tanizaki said.

“Certainly, if you proved you were somewhere else.”

“In such case, no, I stay here,” Tanizaki said flatly. Was there a glint of fear in those dark, slanted eyes? Fear so strong of something on the outside that it compelled him to accept the shame of arrest? Unable to penetrate the expressionless mask of this young Oriental face, Peter — quite in Japanese fashion — approached the problem sideways.

“You don’t think for a moment I believe that you, a modern Japanese, would kill John-san just because he was your on-man?”

For the first time, Tanizaki showed interest. “Ah, so?” he said in English. “You know on?”

“Of course I know on,” Peter replied. “I’m no dumb Amerika-jin. And I know you’re an honorable man. And of course you were upset because you didn’t think you could ever repay John-san. But listen! There are other ways of repaying.”

Tanizaki’s mood seemed to alter with establishment of this first suggestion of rapport.

“Ah, so?” Tanizaki said again. What he was really asking, and what he was too proud to utter, was: “How?”

“By telling what you know.”

This was a new concept to Tanizaki, repaying gifts of substance with something so insubstantial as information. And yet this American who seemed to understand Japan said it was true. There was relief in his voice when he said: “John-san insult me.”

Thunder! Was he really trying to cook his goose?

“John-san refuse my advice,” Tanizaki went on. “I say no, not hire the man. But there was strike, and he hire him.”

“What man?”

Tanizaki put his fist to his mouth.

“I say too much. No more, thank you, please.” Again the glint of fear in his eyes, and nothing Peter could say would move him. Still, as he was leaving the cell, Tanizaki spoke once more.

“I think,” he said, “the devil get in after all.”

Not till they reached the factory and passed through the gate did Peter catch the significance of Tanizaki’s remark.

“What a confounded time John had building it!” Mr. Porter growled, glaring at the long, one-story building. “You see where the well house is? On the south, though the American engineer insisted there was a better water supply to the west.”

“Oh, yes,” smiled Peter, “the south is the Prosperity side.”

“So John wrote. But what’s worse, the building itself should face northeast for easier access to the road. But when John objected, the contractor refused. Said if a building fronts northeast, it lets in the devil. If you ask me—”

Peter chuckled. “Just what Tanizaki meant.”

They entered the plant by a wide door at the receiving platform and came into a room stocked with metal and plywood, fabric and paint — the raw stuff of the Santa Claus business. But it was a queer collection of Santas helpers they found in the assembly shop farther on where some three hundred plump, round-faced girls in Hollywood slacks stood sullenly at long benches.

Stalled completely was a production line of toy bulldozers and fire trucks; while no battle of childish imagination would ever have gotten won were it forced to depend on the flagging output of Porter Play’s jet fighters and tanks. Only the line producing the Danjuro dolls was keeping a normal pace. But even with the two dozen nimble-fingered girls at this work, the black mood prevailed, so abnormal, Peter knew, among Japanese workers. Happy Delight was not a happy factory.

From a compression moulder in one corner, a conveyor slowly delivered to the girls’ benches plastic half-eggs — the dolls a-borning. Deftly the girls painted them, sent them through fast-dryers, inserted small rounded weights in the base, screwed the halves together, and attached the ridiculous leering heads. Finally, listing and tilting like so many drunken clowns, the dolls rode a terminal belt past inspectors and into the shipping room.

“Never had an item sell so fast,” said Mr. Porter. “Why, the demand kept right on even after Christmas.”

“Who designed it?” Peter inquired.

Mr. Porter’s mouth set. Without a word he led Peter beneath a hanging fire door of steel slats into the shipping room. At a desk, and glancing up as they entered, sat a little, hunch-backed man — his neck supporting, but of human dimensions now, the same grotesque doll’s head with squint eyes and lopsided leer.

“I guess,” Mr. Porter said quietly, “that Nature did.”

Peter got the story as they walked through the plant to the main office. A puppet-maker from Kobe, one Nogami, had turned up at the factory soon after it had opened to show John Porter a model of the doll. Sensing its possibilities, John snapped up the production rights.

No thought then, of course, that the queerly appealing face was spit and image of a living human being. That little bombshell exploded some months later — after the showing of samples at the American trade shows and when it was too late to recall shipments — with the appearance of Mr. Ko.

Mr. Ko was the toy-head man.

“Libel,” murmured Peter.

“Libelous as hell,” rumbled Mr. Porter. “He had Morita with him, claiming the doll made him a laughing stock. Insult to his name, how’d you say it? Something like that, John wrote. And of course they were dead right. But when it came to settling, Ko wouldn’t take cash. Instead, he demanded the job of shipping foreman.”

“Why shipping foreman?”

“Oh God, I don’t try to understand. John thought the fellow got some sort of masochistic pleasure just being around the dolls. Of course John balked. What? Put a totally inexperienced man in charge of an entire department? So Morita pulled the strike and John gave in.”

They had reached a room where girls in American dress listlessly pecked at American typewriters. As Mr. Porter pushed at a door labeled Private, Peter was saying: “I’d like to meet this Morita Ton.”

It was not Mr. Porter who answered. “Ah, s-s-so?” The sibilance of a Japanese having the usual trouble with s’s. “Him meet now, ne... Mist Ragran’?... Yes?”

Peter turned quickly to confront, flanked by two diminutive Japanese, a great ox of a human, his breadth just short of his height. And at once he knew where in time past he’d come across not only the name, but the man himself.

They regarded each other, this monster with a sleepy grin on his full-moon face, and the tall, cooleyed American. It was the same deceptive grin Peter remembered when last he’d seen the man as runner-up in the National Sumo Wrestling Championships at Tokyo. He had seemed like a beast then, crouching on all fours, circling and being circled by another wary gorilla before tangling in the flash match.

Reared from infancy for the sport, fattened like a steer, hardened by exercise until the muscles were corded iron — that was the life of these brutes. And now Morita Ton was an oyabun; so much more, really, than the labor leader Mr. Porter supposed him. More gangster and strong-arm man, more the padrone, recruiting the workers and selling their labor to the factory, handling their money himself. And with all this, always a power in the local politics. That was the oyabun, and the mere fact of Morita’s presence testified to John Porter’s acceptance of this still common feudal system.

“I think we can talk Japanese,” Peter said pleasantly.

“Ah, s-s-so?” hissed Morita. “But if me rike spek Engrish, ‘Mist Ragran’?”

If you could, fine, Peter was tempted to say. But one is never that impolite in Japan. Instead, he said with a shrug: “Yoroshii, have it your way.”

As for the ‘Mist Ragran’, it was perfectly obvious the police at the jail had lost no time warning of the American’s interest in the case.

Morita Ton turned to Mr. Porter. “You come time just right,” he grinned amiably, and nodded toward his two companions. “These good bizmen, just now we talk. We say, Happy Deright not do good. We say, may be Mist Poter rike sell. We say, we make good offer.”

Mr. Porter shot a glance at Peter. “Sell out, you mean?”

Morita Ton wagged his gigantic head. “Amerika-jin not know Japan way. We make good sing. We say, we keep make toy. Poter P’ay keep sell in U.S.A.”

Mr. Porter, wondering where the catch was, sat down at a desk and eyed Morita with wary speculation. God knew, he’d had little enough stomach for this foreign venture. And so much less, now, with John dead. He rubbed his neck. Funny how it ached at the mere thought of that sinister warning. Reaching for pad and pen, he jotted some figures. For a moment he studied them, then turned back to Morita.

“What d’ya offer?”

Mr. Morita had left off smiling. His heavy lids half-veiled his eyes. “We sink, yes-s-s, two million yen, ne?”

As long as he lived, Peter would never forget Henry Porter’s reaction. Slowly the blood rose in the veins of his thick neck, then spread out to suffuse his entire face. His mouth worked, his eyes bulged. Until finally, a human missile fueled by all of his recent troubles, he shot to his feet.

“Two million yen!” he exploded incredulously. “Two million lousy yen for a brand-new plant that cost eighty? Hell, that’s not even six thousand dollars!”

He stepped forward and thrust a pugnacious chin into Mr. Morita’s face. “So that’s your game? A slowdown to soften the old boy up! Blackmail! Two million yen! Get out! Get out of my factory! You hear me? Get the hell out of here! And if I see you around again, I’ll tear you limb from limb!”

And — not too curiously, perhaps, because never before had they seen a rugged American business-man in action — Mr. Morita and his henchmen decamped.

For a moment Mr. Porter glared at the door. Then, turning to the admiring Peter, he said glumly: “Well! I guess we close down for good now.”

Peter Ragland paid two calls that evening: to a toy shop near the inn, and to the home of Tanizaki Hajime. With, Mr. Porter, he then dined at the inn on octopus, eels, rice and bean cokes. But, though they are the greatest of delicacies, Mr. Porter firmly rejected the fish eyes. Their accusing stare as they approached his mouth, that adamantine gentleman swore, reminded him too much of Mr. Ko.

At midnight, alone, Peter returned to the factory. Admitting himself with Mr. Porter’s key, he made his way through the darkened store room. He moved quietly to avoid awakening the night watchman. And if this sounds odd, it must be recorded that such are the happy relations between labor and capital in the Land of the Rising Sun that watchmen are provided with beds instead of watch clocks.

Reaching the gloom-shrouded assembly shop, Peter was not too surprised to find a rectangle of light falling through the doorway — it was surmounted by the rolling fire door — from the shipping room. Approaching cautiously, he peeked into the room and saw—

Mr. Ko, busy as a little beaver at a bench populated with dozens of Ko-headed dolls.

Fascinated at the soundness of his own reasoning, Peter watched for several moments. Then, hearing no other sound, he advanced.

“Tachi!” he ordered.

And Ko stood. He stood in an attitude of rigid fright.

Peter’s mistake, without doubt was the same that had doomed John Porter: he stepped into the room for a closer view of the operation. Instantly the rolling door crashed down behind him, blocking retreat. But where John Porter perhaps failed to fix his attention on Ko, Peter did not compound the error. Though tempted to glance back, he kept his gaze on the dwarf’s peculiar eyes.

They seemed, but only seemed, to stare directly at him. Wheeling to follow their true drift, Peter found — creeping quietly toward him from out of the shadows — the immensity of Morita Ton. He had only time, as Morita sprang in his famous flash attack, to dodge aside.

Skilled in the art of fall and tumble, Morita scarcely had touched the floor than he bounced, pivoted lightly and, again on all fours, watched warily for a second opening. Peter, orthodox stand-up boxer, wondered how in the devil you countered an attack like that.

Nor was Morita his only peril. Dancing about him, the pint-sized Ko pulled at his clothes, pushed, scratched, tried to trip him. And always Morita was moving in, teeth bared in a fiend’s grin, ready again to spring and grapple; and Peter, carefully side-stepping, well knowing that once those powerful hands gripped him they would never let go.

His one hope was to get the man to his feet. Not for a good three years had Morita Ton wrestled professionally; and there was just the chance his great stomach had softened.

Again Ko rushed at his legs, biting, clawing. As one brushes away a gnat, Peter reached down and fetched the dwarf a cuff that sent him sprawling against the bench. The bench toppled. Dolls cascaded to the floor. A cloud of obscuring yellow dust exploded in Peter’s face.

Pain whipped at his eyes. In transient blindness, he strove to keep his balance. The dust was stifling, tormenting. He fought to suppress a betraying sneeze, failed, and was aware from somewhere close by of an answering curse.

The dust settled. Swimming, tear-blurred vision revealed that the table had fallen athwart the crouching Morita. Belching, red-eyed, Morita half-rose to thrust the barrier aside. And his ballooning belly formed a perfect target for Peter’s looping right.

“Umph!” grunted Mr. Morita.

It was Peters solid left that finished him.

Morita and Ko were in jail, and Tanizaki was free. But urgent messages were still flashing between Tokyo and Washington when a small group gathered next morning about the tired Peter.

“A lot of things,” he was saying, “didn’t quite add up. John Porter was dead, Tanizaki in jail. So if there’d been a mere personal grudge, as the police seemed to think, everything should have been fine at the plant. Which it wasn’t.”

Inspector Watanabe of the National Rural Police put his hand to his mouth to suppress an embarrassed giggle. But Peter was addressing Garner, the American undercover agent from Yokohama.

“There was the slowdown, the warning to Porter to go home. And yet—” He picked up a doll. “—there was no slowdown in this. Why not? Obviously, the same people who were trying to freeze Porter out had a special stake in this one item.”

From his pocket Peter produced another doll, a Danjuro with the traditional actor’s head.

“But that’s not ours!” Mr. Porter protested.

“No, as they say in the trade I did some comparison buying last night. You see, here the two halves are sealed at the stomach. But Porter Play’s are screwed together. So another big question was: why design ’em to open at all? Well, you’ve got your answer right there.”

He nodded toward the work bench where a police assistant was still unloading the dolls: removing first the weights and the small cellophane sachets beneath them; emptying the sachets, and pouring the pure, rough-textured heroin into a container. The stuff was light tan in color.

“Practically China’s trademark,” Garner said. “They smuggle it in by fishing boat. But Japan’s only a flag stop. There’s damn little market here and the comrades need the hard currency. The trick’s to get it past customs into the States.” He selected a sachet. “About hall an ounce in each, I’d say.”

“Worth?—”

Garner shrugged. “Not really much in Japan. Five bucks maybe just now. But when you get it Stateside and cut it with milk sugar and it gets to your junkie at three bucks a capsule—” His hand made a soaring gesture. “Three or four thousand at least!”

Henry Porter sat down heavily. “My God, my God! No wonder our sales kept increasing!”

Peter regarded him soberly. Such a rotten thing, using a child’s toy. And what a black eye for Mr. Porter’s firm. He could wish now he’d torn Morita apart. Still, there were others above Morita — Stateside — the big shots who’d moved in remorselessly on Porter Play’s distribution setup; men whom Federal agents just as remorselessly were already tracking down through orders, invoices, bills of lading. Not until they’d nabbed every last man could Peter file his story.

“Do you think,” Mr. Porter asked, “that John suspected?”

“Something at least. And nosing around, he must have walked in on Ko and Morita just as I did. Which was why he was killed. But it was all planned from the start, of course: Nogami modeling and planting the doll with John, to ease Ko into the shipping job. So Ko could load the dolls nights and code the cartons for their men in your home factory. It all fits.”

Mr. Porter smiled wanly. “All but one thing,” he said. “On.”

Peter grinned. “Even that, if a bit in reverse. Certainly the police were right in thinking Tanizaki was worried about his debt to John. But not to the point of murder. His big worry was about something else. Where the local police were blind — if they really were — was in not seeing that Ko and Morita were the real backsliders. The moment I met them, I knew they were deep in some racket.”

Mr. Porter looked puzzled.

Peter explained: “Or Ko never would have submitted to such shame, and Morita would never have changed stations.”

“Umm,” said Mr. Porter. “Good lord, I could really use Tanizaki now.”

“I’ve talked to him,” Peter said. “I think he’ll come back. I think he sees it’s the only way he can ever repay his on to you. But you must never embarrass him by letting him know.”

“Know what?”

“That you know,” Peter chuckled, “where he was that night.”

“But I don’t.”

“He was at a wedding.”

“A wedding? Why the devil couldn’t he say so?”

“It was his own. And the girl was a geisha. There are geishas and geishas, and this one happens to be a nice one. But you’ll never convince Tanizaki’s strait-laced old papa of that.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Porter. And he did comprehend. Only a father could, who’d had such great hopes for a song.