Murder Up My Sleeve

7

Terry Clane noticed with satisfaction that the light delivery van was no longer parked at the curb in front of his apartment. He found Sou Ha waiting for him in the lobby.

“Been here long?” he asked cautiously.

“Not too long. Why?”

“There were some detectives watching the place,” he said solicitously.

Her laugh was light-hearted. “Oh,” she said, “you mean the van which was parked at the curb? I waited across the street until it drove away.”

“How did you know they were detectives?” he asked.

“I didn’t, but I saw the paneled delivery van with no signs painted on the sides, and the licence plates weren’t those of a dealer, so I thought it would be best to wait. You see, Oh First Born, I come of a cautious race.”

And she laughed again.

“Yat T’oy back?” he asked.

“No one answered my ring. Where did he go?”

“A man stepped from the delivery van and took Yat T’oy with him.”

She said, “He’ll soon be back.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Getting information from Yat T’oy is like trying to squeeze water from a dry sponge,” she said.

Terry entered the elevator with her, took her to his apartment, opened the door, switched on the lights and realized almost at once that the place had been thoroughly ransacked. Not that they had been crude about it, but there were little things which Terry saw at once — the stone lions of Peiping had been shifted in their positions on the mantel; the huge bronze incense burner showing the three sacred Chinese symbols had been turned so that the dragon faced to the north.

Terry gave Sou Ha no sign of what he had seen, but indicated a seat for her and said, “Which will you be — Chinese or American?”

She raised delicately arched eyebrows.

“In other words,” he said, “shall I bring you melon seeds and tea, or Scotch and soda?”

“I’ll be Chinese,” she told him, “and since the Little One is not here I’ll make the tea.”

Together, they entered the kitchenette. Clane produced a package of Loong Soo Cha, the “Dragon-Tongue” tea of China. Gravely, he removed the cover, disclosing individually rolled unbroken tea leaves tied with silken thread into cigar-shaped bundles.

Terry placed water on the stove, and with the sharp blade of his knife cut the silken cords which held one of the packages together. Sou Ha carefully selected the number of leaves she wished to use. Clane filled two small saucers with dried melon seeds. He fitted Chinese cups into the holes of circular-shaped saucers. When the tea had been made, they returned to the living-room.

Sou Ha nibbled at the melon seeds with the skill of a canary. In between nibbles, she sipped at the clear, golden fluid. She said nothing.

Terry Clane matched her silence. He had, after a fashion, learned the Chinese language, but no white man can ever quite master the art of eating dried melon seeds, which must be held edgewise between thumb and forefinger, and cracked by a gentle pressure of the teeth. When the edges have been sprung just far enough apart, the tip of the tongue delicately extracts the meat. The slightest moisture upon the fingertips causes the dried seed to become as elusive as a wet eel. Too much or too little pressure upon the edges is likewise fatal.

Sou Ha watched him with appraising eyes.

“Excellent!” she said, finally breaking the silence.

Clane bowed his head in acknowledgment of the compliment, sipped his tea.

“You’ve not asked me why I came,” she reminded him.

He answered her in Cantonese, saying, “One does not question the reason for the rising sun, but is content to bask in the warmth of its rays.”

Abruptly, she pushed away the saucer of melon seeds, crossed her knees and said, “Let’s forget the Chinese stuff. It’s too tedious. I should have had a highball and been American.”

“It isn’t too late,” he remarked.

“No. The tea has been refreshing. But let’s quit beating around the bush.”

“Have we been beating around the bush?”

“You know we have.”

“Since when?”

“Since this morning when you were talking with my father but watching me. That made me furious. I hated you when you left.”

“The district attorney,” he told her, “questioned me, trying to find out if I knew the identity of the Chinese girl who had called on Jacob Mandra.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Practically nothing.”

“And why suspect me?”

“I didn’t, particularly.”

“You acted like it.”

“I was,” he informed her, “simply looking for some clue... By the way, have you seen Juanita since Mandra’s death?”

“No. I had intended to...”

She broke off abruptly and her eyes, black as pools of ink, moved restlessly, then returned to meet his.

“Was that a trap?” she asked.

He said, “Yes, Sou Ha, it was a trap.”

She made no attempt now to conceal her feelings. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Is it necessary, then,” she asked, “that you must sacrifice my friendship upon the altar of your love?”

He said slowly, “Don’t misunderstand me, Sou Ha. Mandra was killed with my sleeve gun. The district attorney now has the weapon. It was found concealed in the cushions of a chair in which I had been sitting when I was questioned.”

“Bear witness,” she said softly, “that I came to you voluntarily. This morning when you sought to surprise information from me, I withheld it. That is the nature of my race. This evening, when you need my friendship, I have brought it to you. I was the Chinese girl who went to Jacob Mandra’s apartment.”

“Why did you go?”

“I went to warn him.”

“Of what?”

“I wished to warn him that the opium traffic must cease.”

“You knew that he was the head of it?”

“Yes.”

“And your father knew?”

“Yes.”

“You received the information from your father?”

She nodded her head.

“Why did you want to warn him? Did you know him?”

“No,” she said simply, “I knew the woman he loved.”

He became conscious of the boring interest in her eyes and tried to hold his features so they would show no expression when she should mention the name of that woman. Yet, almost at once he realized the futility of trying to evade those probing eyes which were for the moment so smoothly dark it was impossible to distinguish between pupil and iris.

“No, First Born,” she said slowly, “it was not the painter woman.”

“Who was it?”

“Her name is Juanita. She is a dancer.”

“And because of her you warned Mandra?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you let her warn him?”

“Because I could not find her, and it was necessary to take quick action.”

“Was your warning too late?”

“My father did not know of his death until you brought the news this morning.”

“What happened when you went there?” he asked.

“I explained to the Negro that I must see him at once; that I came because I was a friend of Juanita. He opened the door and I entered.”

“What time was this?”

Her sudden lapse into Chinese warned him that the answer to his question was, for some hidden reason, taxing her thought process so that speech became for the moment a mechanical reflex of thought. “At three characters past the second hour of the Ox,” she said, in Cantonese.

“When did you leave?”

“I was there for fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“What happened?”

“I found Mr. Mandra a very wise man. I talked with him and he listened. He knew who I was. He had heard Juanita speak of me.”

“Can you take me to this Juanita?” he asked.

She brushed the question aside.

“While Mr. Mandra talked with me, he held in his hands a sleeve gun. He asked me if I knew of some Chinese artisan who could make a duplicate of the gun so cunningly that the imitation could not be told from the original. When I took the sleeve gun in my hands to inspect it, a current of air blew one of the doors partially open. Mandra went to the door and closed it, but not before I had seen that which was within the room.”

“What was it?”

“The painter woman was lying asleep upon a couch.”

“You mean Alma or Cynthia?”

“It is the one with the hazel eyes and the upturned nose, with whom you had a Chinese dinner in the Blue Dragon. Her hair is the color of copper clouds at sunset.”

“That was Cynthia,” Terry said, “go on.”

“Mr. Mandra listened to me courteously. Before I left, he promised me that he would withdraw from the opium business. There was that about him which I liked. He was strong. He was dishonest, and he was cruel. But he did not lie.”

“Sou Ha,” he said, “it is important that I see this woman, Juanita, and talk with her.”

Her eyes showed the pain in her soul.

“Would you,” she asked, “do as much for me as you do for this painter woman?”

He crossed to her side and said, “Perhaps, Embroidered Halo, that which I am doing is as much for you as for the painter woman.”

She raised her face in silent interrogation.

“When the district attorney hears your story,” Terry explained, “as sooner or later he must hear it, he will realize that there were two people who last saw Mandra alive. One was an American and one a Chinese. Mandra was killed with a Chinese weapon,”

“You mean,” she asked, “that he must have been killed either by your painter woman or by me?”

“I am talking about what the district attorney will think.”

Her face was utterly inscrutable. “Suppose that I did kill him” she remarked tonelessly, “and the only way I could save your painter woman from being convicted of that murder was by coming forward and sacrificing myself? Would you ask me to do that, First Born?”

He stared at her intently.

“Tell me,” she said with sudden savage insistence.

“Why do you ask me that question?” he countered.

“A mother,” she said, “might scar her soul to save her child’s doll, knowing that it was but a toy, yet knowing also that it was loved by her child.”

He passed it off with a laugh, saying, “But I am not a child, you are not a mother, and the painter woman is not a doll. Come, let us start.”

Without a word, she walked to the mirror, adjusted her hat, took a compact from her purse, touched up her cheeks, and applied lipstick with the tip of a deft finger. During all this time she made no comment. When she had quite finished, she turned to him and said, “I am ready.”

They went in Terry’s car. Sou Ha guided the way into that maze of nondescript streets which lie to the north and west of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

“Turn to the right,” she said, “and stop at the curb.”

Clane spun the steering wheel, braked the car to a stop. Sou Ha opened the door and jumped to the sidewalk before he had switched off the lights and ignition. When he joined her, she slipped her hand possessively through his arm and said, “Remember that on this occasion you are my friend, and only my friend.”

They climbed two flights of narrow stairs. Smells of garlic and sour wine assailed their nostrils. Odors of Spanish and Italian cooking clung to the corridors. They turned to the right at the head of the stairs on the second floor and walked down a dimly lit passage. The apartment indicated by Sou Ha was at the back of the house. Her fingers tapped gently on the door.

Almost instantly it was opened.

Terry Clane gazed into eyes which thinly concealed hot emotions, as the crust of cooling lava still holds a reddish warning of that which lies beneath. She was young, he saw, well formed, dusky of skin, black of hair. She might have been a gypsy, or perhaps part Spanish or Mexican. She showed no surprise. Her eyes flitted from Sou Ha to him, back to Sou Ha.

“My friend,” Sou Ha explained, “I call him ‘Sin Sahng’, which is Chinese for ‘First Born’, and is applied to teachers. And this,” she said to Clane, “is Juanita...”

“Mandra,” the other interrupted, as Sou Ha hesitated for a moment.

Sou Ha asked a question with her eyes.

“We were married,” the woman said, flinging out the words defiantly, “secretly married. There is no longer reason for concealment. I now take my rightful name.”

Terry bowed acknowledgment of the introduction, and his bow was completely wasted. Juanita didn’t so much as glance in his direction. Her eyes, hot with sudden emotion, were fixed upon the Chinese girl.

“I knew,” Sou Ha said simply, “that you loved him. After all, does anything else matter? The fire started by a match is no hotter than that which starts from a bolt of lightning.”

“Come in,” Juanita invited.

They entered the softly lit apartment. The hot vitality of this dusky-skinned young woman filled it, as the vibrations of a temple gong fill a room with a resonant sound, searchingly insistent, but not loud.

The room held too many objects, yet each one of those objects in some way reflected the individuality of the woman who had selected them. A floor light filtered diffused rays through rose silk. Outside, the cold fingers of drifting fog beaded the windows. The mournful cadences of fog signals from the bay sounded a soul-chilling chorus of drab monotony. An electric heater in a corner of the room threw a warm splotch of orange light along the floor.

Juanita indicated chairs.

Sou Ha deftly crossed the room so that she seated herself in the chair which Terry Clane had been about to take. Nettled, yet trying to keep from appearing awkward, he crossed to another chair, started to lean back against the cushions and suddenly stiffened to startled attention.

In the corner, directly in front of his eyes, standing behind a table upon which were stacked newspapers, ornaments, half-filled ash trays, and a cigarette case, was an unframed canvas some three feet long by two and a half feet wide.

The dark background of the portrait matched perfectly with the deep shadows which were behind it. It was all but impossible to tell where the sombre background of the canvas melted into the shadows of the corner.

The face of Jacob Mandra stared with mocking insolence from the canvas. The dominant feature of the painting was the eyes, eyes which held at once an expression of cynical distrust and a yearning desire for that which the very cynicism of the man had thrust from his life. In some unexplained manner, then, this portrait must have passed from Alma Renton to the woman who claimed to be Mandra’s widow.

“You will,” Sou Ha was calmly asking, “claim your rights as his widow?”

Juanita’s eyes were sullenly defiant. “I have taken the bitter,” she said, “and now I will have the sweet.”

“There will, perhaps, be a lawsuit?” Sou Ha asked.

“With whom? He left no relatives and no will.”

“You are certain — about the relatives?”

“Yes. He had many mistresses, but only one wife.” She beat her chest with a passionate palm. Her voice rose as she half-screamed defiantly. “You hear me, Sou Ha? He had but one wife!”

Sou Ha, without seeming to shift her eyes, managed to glance significantly at Terry Clane.

“Many mistresses?” she inquired.

“Many mistresses. There was a rich woman who came to see him twice a week, painting his picture. Bah! There was the cashier in the restaurant; the blonde usherette of the movie theatre. He didn’t fool me. I knew them all, from the young woman whose father’s chauffeur drove her from Communist meetings to the arms of my Jacob, down to the cigarette girl in the night club. He hypnotized women. He mocked them, laughed at their weaknesses — and he married me!”

She faced Sou Ha and said, speaking so rapidly the words rattled in a fierce crescendo upon the ear drum: “Do you know what attracted women to him? It was because he was lonely, and after they had given themselves to him he remained more lonely than ever. They were fascinated by this, as a bird is fascinated by a snake. The vanity of woman makes her feel that the spell of masculine loneliness must dissolve in the warmth of her favors. They came to him. He did not go to them.

“At first I was no different to him than the rest. But I am different now. I was his wife! I am his widow! Let the mistresses come into court. Let them fight me! Now there will be no more slipping up the back stairs while a liveried chauffeur waits in front. Now there will be no excuses of portrait painting. Now they will have to come out in the open and fight!”

Sou Ha did not nod; only her eyes showed she had heard. “Who killed him?” she asked.

Sheer surprise showed for a moment on Juanita’s face. “Why, I thought you knew. It was the mistress who painted his picture!” She spat out the words with a venom which surcharged the air with hatred.

Sou Ha arose slowly. “Perhaps it is fitting to leave you alone with your grief.”

Juanita laughed bitterly.

“My grief... He would have broken my heart had he lived. He was going to divorce me! I am like a moth when the light is snuffed out. Had it not happened, I would have burnt off my wings. But I loved him! I alone really loved him, because I alone really understood him. It is the nature of my race to understand those whom we love... My race you ask? Ha! No one knows it. There are children who have no fathers. I am not only fatherless, but motherless... I alone know my race, just as Jacob alone knew his.”

She sighed, went on in a lower voice. “It was nice of you to come, but I can’t talk calmly. I had a lover once who had his arm shot away in battle. He told me that when he looked down and saw that his arm was gone, he felt no pain. He was a fool, this lover. He told me of his war experiences, in the moonlight, when words could have been employed to better advantage. Perhaps it was because I was very young and very angry with him for this talk that what he said made such an impression upon me. I can never forget it. And now I am like that: my lover is gone and the pain is too great for me to feel. Later on I will feel the pain, and then I will throw myself through that window.

“Do I shock you, my friend? Do I shock this man who is with you? I am not sorry. You came to see me. I did not invite you. I am glad that you came, but I will not suppress myself. I have never done so, and I will not begin now. Woman was made for emotion. I know your race pretends it is not so. You talk of learning and say nothing of emotion, yet beneath your veneer you bubble and boil like water in a covered pot.”

Sou Ha caught Terry’s eye and nodded. In the doorway she gave Juanita her hand. “Good-bye,” she said.

Juanita flung out both arms and crushed the Chinese girl to her, then stepped back and tossed her head in a gesture of abandon.

“Come and see me again,” she said, “and if the window is smashed, look for me in the yard below!”

The slamming door punctuated her farewell.

Sou Ha turned to Terry Clane. “You saw the portrait?” she asked, in a low half-whisper.

Somberly, Terry Clane nodded.