The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Walter C. Brown, a Pennsylvanian, quit his job as a bookkeeper to become partner in a bookshop, then acquired an extensive collection of criminological information, much of it unpublished. From these files, as well as a dedicated reading of mystery and detective fiction, he had sufficient material to make the decision to write mysteries himself.

His first short story, “The Squealer,” was published in the pulp magazine Clues in 1929, the same year in which his first novel, The Second Guess, appeared. He went on to write two more mystery novels, Laughing Death (1932) and Murder at Mocking House (1933), as well as dozens of stories in the 1930s and 1940s for such pulps as Argosy, Blue Book, Detective Tales, and Black Mask, as well as such higher-paying slicks as Liberty and The Saturday Evening Post.

Several of his short stories were adapted for early television series, and his novella “Prelude to Murder,” first published in the October 1945 issue of Blue Book, served as the basis for the highly suspenseful, if largely unknown, British motion picture House in the Woods (1957). It is the chilling story of a couple, played by Patricia Roc and Michael Gough, who seek solitude and rent an isolated house whose landlord, played by Ronald Howard (the son of Trevor Howard and once the star of a 1950s Sherlock Holmes television series), is an artist and very weird indeed. It was directed by Maxwell Munden, who also wrote the screenplay.

“The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk” was published in the January 1942 issue.

Sah-jin O’Hara, Blue Coat Devil of the Chinatown Squad, had been handed some queer crime clues in his dealings with the slant-eyed Sons of Han, but never a plastered parrot that wouldn’t talk — not even to utter the three little words that held the key to a fabulous fortune.

Chapter One The Purloined Parrot

The parrot is known by many names, but call it perico, papagei or perroquet, it is still a remarkable bird. Bespectacled professors describe it as a zygodactyl of the order Psittaci; howling black savages of the Congo speak of it as The Talking Ghost — and down in Chinatown the slant-eyed Sons of Han call it The Feather Devil.

But mention the word “parrot” to Sergeant Dennis O’Hara of the Chinatown Squad and you will hear a shorter and stronger name for the species, for the Red-Hair Sah-jin, as the Yellow Quarter calls him, is not likely to forget the mystery of The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk.

“That’s the kind of breaks you get in Chinatown,” O’Hara said. “Everywhere else the parrot is famous for imitating the human voice — so I get stuck with one that wouldn’t talk. We didn’t want a whole speech, either — just three little words, but drunk or sober, that blasted Feather Devil kept its beak shut.”

Then O’Hara grins at you. “Never heard of a drunk parrot, eh? Well, this one was plastered, all right — wobbling on its feet, and making noises like hiccoughs. Yes, sir, I’ve been handed some damn queer clues in my time, but that liquored parrot tops ’em all!”

It happened that the mysterious chain of events began one quiet evening as Yun Chee the tea merchant sat in his favorite bamboo chair, reading aloud from the poems of Li Po. Behind him, on a pedestal-stand near the open window, was a green parrot called Choy.

“Rawk-awk!” squawked the parrot, stirring restlessly.

“Silence!” Yun Chee commanded, frowning, then began Li Po’s famous Moon Poem in a sing-song chant:

“Awk!” shrilled the parrot, and there was a swift sound like the rustling of feathers.

In rising anger Yun Chee twisted his head around — then his jaw dropped, and the wooden-bound volume of poems clattered to the floor, for a long arm had darted in through the open window, snaring the parrot in folds of black cloth. And before the startled merchant could spring to his feet, the pedestal was empty — the parrot gone!

“Hai! Thief! Thief!” Yun Chee yelled, dashing to the window in time to see a dark figure racing through the back garden. Snatching an antique Mongol dagger from the wall, Yun Chee dashed out to corner the brazen thief.

The marauder was halfway up a narrow ladder set against the high, spiked wall, when the merchant leaped forward and seized him by the legs, pulling him to the ground. As Yun Chee struck with his antique blade, his knife hand was seized in a grip of iron. There was a brief, sharp scuffle — a scream — a groaning fall.

Wei Lum, the merchant’s servant, hearing his master’s cries, came running through the back door as the black silhouette of the thief was poised atop the wall, hauling up his ladder, then making a headlong leap into the darkness.

“Ai-yee!” Wei Lum wailed, crouching down beside Yun Chee’s prostrate body to strike a match. The spurt of yellow flame revealed the antique dagger which was buried to the hilt in Yun Chee’s chest.

“Mask — thief — steal — Choy!” Yun Chee gasped, then gave a bubbling cough, shuddered, and subsided into limp silence.

“Poh-liss! Poh-liss!” Wei Lum screamed to the arousing neighbors, and dashing into the house, pounded out shivering crashes on a gong which hung in the hall.

Detective Driscoll of the Chinatown Squad came on the run from Mulberry Lane, but Yun Chee was already dead when he arrived. He was busy questioning the servant when Sergeant O’Hara reached the scene in a red prowl car.

“Yun Chee — stabbed to death,” Driscoll reported. “This is gonna be a tough nut to crack, Sarge. The guy made a clean getaway. We’ve got the knife, but it belonged to Yun Chee himself, and worse luck, Wei Lum pawed it over, trying to pull it out of the wound. That kills our chance of getting decent prints.”

“Hell!” was O’Hara’s brief comment. He stood outside the window through which the parrot had been snatched, his glance taking in the details of the richly furnished room. A red-and-gold lacquered cabinet stood just inside the window, holding a jade figure of Kwan-Yin and a vase with a plum blossom design.

“Look at the stuff on this cabinet, Driscoll. Here’s a Kwan-Yin in mutton-fat jade. And this vase is genuine Ming. A thousand dollars’ worth of loot right under the thief’s hand, and he steals a five-dollar parrot! Does that make sense?”

“Maybe he didn’t know it was a Ming vase,” Driscoll suggested.

“Could be,” O’Hara conceded, “but show me a Chink who doesn’t know mutton-fat jade when he sees it.”

Driscoll rubbed his chin. “Look, Sarge, the parrot he stole wasn’t even worth five dollars. For five bucks you can get a talking bird, and this one was just the squawky kind. Even so, it’ll be enough to put a rope around that killer’s neck — if he holds on to it! That’s the catch. If the guy has ten cents’ worth of brains, he’ll wring the bird’s neck and toss it into the first ash can.”

“I don’t think so, Driscoll. This looks like a planned job to me. I think this fellow wanted Yun Chee’s parrot — and nothing else.”

“But why?” Driscoll argued. “Why kill a man for a dumb, no-account bird like that Choy? There’s the Ming vase — and the jade. Either one would buy a boat load of parrots.”

“Well, screwy things happen in Chinatown,” O’Hara replied, “but there’s always a reason behind it, and I’m betting this is more than just a sneak-thief job. We’ll see, Driscoll. As the Chinks say: Time holds the key to every lock.”

“I’d say the parrot was the key to this one,” Driscoll replied. “How’s chances of tracing it?”

“No dice,” O’Hara growled. “There are dozens of those damn green parrots in Chinatown. The Chinks buy ’em from sailors along the waterfront. Some are kept for pets, others make parrot stew. If we start a systematic search, the news will be all over the place inside of five minutes. Our man simply gets rid of the bird, and we blow our only chance.”

But the Blue Coat Devils were not the only ones in Chinatown concerned over the deed of violence which had sent Yun Chee to join his honorable ancestors. The tea merchant had been a high official of the Tsin Tien Tong, which would suffer a Number One “loss of face” if his death went unsolved and unavenged.

Soon it was rumored that the Tsin Tien Tong offered a reward of five hundred Rice Face dollars for the capture of Yun Chee’s murderer, and that the tong council had already voted upon the punishment to be visited upon the guilty man. He would not be delivered to the Rice Face Law — no, by Tao! He would be taken to a secret place to hear his doom. Death — death by the split bamboo!

“Aye, a life for a life!” the yellow men whispered. “The Scales of Justice must be evenly weighted.”

“It’s a race, Sarge,” Driscoll said, reporting the rumors. “If that Tsin Tien crowd get their hands on the killer first, he’s a dead pigeon.”

“All right, then, it’s a race,” O’Hara replied. “But I’ll give you odds that their five-hundred-dollar reward goes begging.”

But while the two greatest powers in Chinatown pursued their grim manhunt in relentless rivalry, little Wei Lum, faithful servant of the murdered tea merchant, had his own ideas for tracking down the killer. Let the Blue Coat Devils hunt with death-dealing pistols, let the great tong bait its trap with silver. Wei Lum had a potent weapon of his own — music!

Every night the little servant went wandering through the crooked streets, pausing here and there in the shadows to play a Cantonese tune on his bamboo flute — a musical signal designed to catch the ear of Choy, the stolen parrot.

“In the house of Yun Chee,” Wei Lum explained to O’Hara, “Choy always make a noise like whistling when I play the flute for the Master. Wah! Now I make music in the streets. If Choy hear my flute, he will whistle, wherever he is prisoner, and so I find him.”

“That’s a damn smart trick,” O’Hara replied. “Keep at it, boy, but remember — if you’re lucky enough to trace the parrot, don’t try anything single-handed. This fellow’s a killer. Just mark the house and come for me chop-chop.”

So Wei Lum played his squeaky little tunes in Half Moon Street and Paradise Court and Mandarin Lane, in Pagoda Street and Peking Court and Long Sword Alley — and when he had finished he would search the night hush with ears alert for the faintest reply from the captive Choy.

Then one night Wei Lum came racing breathlessly into the precinct station, crying out for instant speech with the Red-Hair Sah-jin.

“I find stolen Choy!” he panted to O’Hara. “Tonight, when I make my music in Lantern Court, I hear him call out. Sah-jin, the Feather Devil is a prisoner in No. 14 — in the house of Chang Pao!”

“Chang Pao!” O’Hara exclaimed. “You must be crazy!”

O’Hara’s astonishment was twofold. In the first place, Chang Pao was quite wealthy — Chinatown’s most famous silversmith until he had been forced into retirement by a paralytic stroke which had left him with a crippled hand.

And to make Wei Lum’s accusation even more fantastic, Chang Pao was at that very moment on his deathbed, speechless and completely paralyzed. O’Hara had the word of Doc Stanage, the precinct medico, for that.

“Chang Pao’s had another stroke,” Stanage had reported. “I stopped in to see him, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s just a question of time. He may linger this way for weeks, but the end is certain.”

O’Hara placed these indisputable facts before Wei Lum, but the yellow man held stubbornly to his assertion that the stolen parrot was hidden away in No. 14 Lantern Court.

“Sah-jin, if there were a thousand Feather Devils in dark room, I will pick out the voice of Choy without fail!”

And Wei Lum’s words rang with so much confidence that O’Hara was impressed. After all, there were two other persons in Chang Pao’s house. There was his nephew, Chang Loo, who had been summoned from a distant city when the old silversmith’s condition became worse — and there was his servant, Tai Gat, the limping mafoo.

But Tai Gat the mafoo was something of a Chinatown hero, noted for his unswerving devotion to his master. And as for young Chang Loo, a stranger to the quarter, was it conceivable that he would go about stealing worthless parrots on the very eve of inheriting a great fortune?

Nevertheless, Sergeant O’Hara reached for his hat. “O.K., Wei Lum, we’ll go around to Chang’s for a look-see.”

In the darkness of Lantern Court, the silversmith’s house at No. 14 had the frowning air of a fortress. Lights shining behind the drawn shades of the upper floor revealed the tracery of iron bars, while all the windows of the ground floor were covered by solid wooden shutters, for Chang Pao had developed a fear of thieves that amounted to a phobia.

O’Hara’s brisk rapping was answered promptly by a grim-faced mafoo wearing a shaam of dark blue denim.

“Hola, Tai Gat,” O’Hara greeted.

“Ala wah, Sah-jin,” the mafoo replied, bowing gravely. He walked with a heavy limp, memento of his courageous battle against two armed thugs who had invaded his master’s house some years before.

“Sah-jin, you come for see Master Chang?” Tai Gat inquired.

“Yes,” O’Hara answered, “but first there’s another little matter. Tai Gat, do you have a parrot here in the house?”

“Yiss,” the mafoo replied, without the least trace of hesitation or surprise at the question. “Master keep Feather Devil long time.”

“Well, I’d like to have a look at it,” O’Hara said crisply. “This man — Wei Lum — is searching for a parrot that was stolen.”

“Stolen!” Tai Gat cast a disdainful glance at Wei Lum. “Tsai! Is this a house of thieves? Wei Lum is gila — crazy!”

“You lie, mafoo!” Wei Lum retorted angrily, roused by the measured scorn in Tai Gat’s voice and bearing. “The Feather Devil we seek is here — here in this very house! With my own ears I have heard it.”

“Pipe down, Wei Lum!” O’Hara commanded. “Tai Gat’s offered to show us the honorable Chang Pao’s parrot.”

“Words of wisdom, Sah-jin,” Tai Gat declared. “One glance of the eye tells more than an hour’s talk.”

Chapter Two The Poh-Liss Take Over

O’Hara looked about him with interest as he followed the limping mafoo toward the stairs, for the house of Chang Pao was a corner of the Orient magically set down in the very heart of the White Devil’s city, and he had not been inside No. 14 Lantern Court since the night, several years before, when Chang Pao’s shrill voice had screamed, “Robbers! Robbers!” from an upper window.

Smashing his way in at the front door, O’Hara had found Tai Gat waging a desperate battle against two night robbers, and holding his own against them despite a badly hurt leg from a headlong tumble down the stairs, an injury which had left the faithful mafoo with his heavy-footed limp.

But the attempted robbery had left its mark on Chang Pao as well. Grown secretive and suspicious, the silversmith lived in a hermit-like seclusion, fortifying his house with barred and shuttered windows, lining his doors with sheet-iron strips, so that they swung open as slowly and ponderously as the gates of a prison.

Tai Gat’s slippered feet were noiseless on the stairs, but O’Hara chanced to stumble, and at the sound a door opened suddenly above, and a young Chinese in a gaudy house-robe of yellow silk moved quickly to the upper railing.

“Hai! What name you? What you want?” he demanded, peering down at them with sharp-eyed suspicion.

O’Hara knew this must be Chang Loo, nephew and heir to the dying silversmith. But before he could reply, Tai Gat’s voice cut in swiftly, naming the visitors.

“Poh-liss!” young Chang hissed, plainly startled. He straightened up stiffly, his right hand creeping into the folds of his yellow sleeve.

Tai Gat’s voice went on in explanation. A Feather Devil had been stolen, and the Red-Hair Sah-jin merely wished to make a look-see at the Master’s parrot.

The mafoo’s words seemed to banish young Chang’s momentary tenseness, although the sharp arrogance remained in his voice.

“Feather Devils!” he echoed haughtily. “Shall we be plagued with such trifling matters in the hour when my venerable uncle stands on the threshold of the Shadow-world? Poh-liss — tsai!” Young Chang spat over his shoulder and made a quick sign with his fingers. “Bid them begone till a more seemly hour!”

O’Hara’s jaw settled into square lines, not liking the arrogant tone of this silk-robed upstart who made the “finger curse” as he mentioned the name of police.

“That trifling matter, Chang, happens to be a murder — Yun Chee’s murder. I want to see that parrot — and right now!”

For a few moments their glances met and held in a tug-of-war — O’Hara’s eyes of frosty blue, Chang Loo’s shoe-button eyes of cold jet, with reddened lids that checked with the sour smell of rice-wine about him.

Then Chang Loo stood aside, sullen and silent, but as the mafoo brushed past he seized hold of his robe and pushed him against the wall. “Brainless fool!” he snarled. “Must you open the door to all who knock?”

So saying, he turned on his heel and stalked back into his uncle’s chamber, while Tai Gat led them to a small room on the top floor — a room hung with plum-colored draperies and fitted out as a prayer shrine. There was an altar with jade bowls and the Chang ancestral tablets, and a gilded wooden statue of Kwan-Yin, but O’Hara had eyes only for the green-feathered parrot perched on a shining steel hoop.

“Hai! It is Choy!” Wei Lum cried out, pushing forward, but the parrot gave no sign of recognition, merely staring at them with drooping, cynical eyes.

O’Hara caught the first dawning of doubt on Wei Lum’s face as the yellow man scrutinized the green bird more closely — then saw the doubt deepen into reluctant conviction.

“I make mistake, Sah-jin,” Wei Lum confessed. “This Feather Devil same for size and color, but it is not Choy.”

“His name Shao,” Tai Gat put in, and the green Feather Devil, cocking its head and crisping its claw, burst into sudden angry clamor with a raucous repetition of “Shao! Shao! Shao!”

“Shao — that means fire or flame,” O’Hara remarked. “He should have some red feathers with a name like that... Well, sorry to have troubled you, Tai Gat.”

The mafoo made a polite bow. “You likee stop see Master Chang? Maybe you not see him again. Doctor Meng say Master go soon to join honorable ancestors.”

On the way downstairs they stopped briefly at the room where the stricken silversmith lay silent and motionless on his k’ang, as though Yo Fei the Dread One had already tapped his shoulder.

Young Chang Loo stood at the window, smoking a cigarette. Doctor Meng the apothecary kept watch beside the k’ang, eyes fixed on Chang Pao’s withered face. The gray-bearded tuchum of the Five Tongs Council was also present, and Sang Lee the scrivener, busy painting the prayers that would be burned the moment old Chang “mounted the Dragon.”

They all bowed gravely at O’Hara’s entrance, all but young Chang, who only turned his head far enough for a sullen, sidelong flicker.

O’Hara stood beside the k’ang, looking down at the unconscious silversmith. “Has there been any change?” he asked Meng.

The apothecary held a silvered mirror above Chang’s nostrils and examined the result, peering through iron-rimmed spectacles which were without lenses. “Sah-jin, the Breath of Life grows weaker with every hour.”

“I’m sorry,” O’Hara said gently, for he regarded Chang Pao as an old friend. The Death Watch bowed gravely again as O’Hara turned toward the door, but out of the corner of his eye he saw young Chang scowl and make the same furtive “finger curse.”

“Well, Wei Lum, we struck out on that clue,” O’Hara remarked to the crestfallen yellow man when they were outside. “Are you sure you picked the right house?”

“Sah-jin, I play twice on the flute, and listen twice, to make sure it is Choy,” Wei Lum declared.

O’Hara shook his head. “I suppose a couple of green parrots that look alike, sound alike, too. Don’t give up your search, Wei Lum. Maybe you’ll have better luck next time.”

“Kwei lung — devil dragons!” Wei Lum muttered as he tucked the bamboo flute into his sleeve and padded off into the darkness of Lantern Court.

O’Hara glanced up at the lighted windows of Chang Pao’s room. A distorted shadow slanted across the drawn shades — Chang Loo the lucky nephew, smoking his White Devil cigarettes, watching beady-eyed for the dawn of his Day of Riches.

And young Chang did not have long to wait, for the old silversmith died that night. Still unconscious, he breathed his last during the hour of the Tiger, which is between four and six a.m. by White Devil reckoning. O’Hara learned this from Doc Stanage, who had issued the death certificate.

O’Hara knew what routine steps would follow Chang Pao’s demise. After prayers had been burned and the death candles lit, Chang’s body would be placed in its ironwood coffin and conveyed to the Hall of Sorrows in the Plum Blossom Joss House.

Then the tong tuchum, with the proper witnesses, would seal the doors of Chang’s house with paper strips bearing the tong insignia — seals which would not be broken until the silversmith’s will had been read and his lawful heir placed in possession.

Later in the day O’Hara and Driscoll attended that brief ceremony in the silk-draped office of Lee Shu the Chinese banker. Lee opened his iron vault and brought out Chang’s sealed will, which had been in his keeping for several years. It turned out to be a short, concise document, leaving his entire estate, without condition, to his nephew, Chang Loo.

So Chang Loo presented his credentials for formal inspection by Lee Shu and the tong council, and became master of No. 14 Lantern Court and its sealed riches.

“That guy was born with a horseshoe in each fist!” Driscoll remarked. “Chances are he never had one dollar to rub against another, and now look at him. I hear old Chang left a shelf-ful of ginger-jars filled up and running over with Rice Face cash. But I bet young Chang’ll empty ’em quick enough. You can see he’s just itchin’ to step out high, wide and handsome.”

O’Hara nodded. “Funny, how Wei Lum’s tip on the parrot brought us to Chang’s house. When I caught young Chang making the ‘finger curse,’ I thought maybe we had something.”

“Listen, Sarge.” Driscoll grinned. “If we started hauling in all the Chinks who hate cops, we’d run out of cell-space in half an hour.”

“But there was a parrot in the house,” O’Hara declared.

“So what?” Driscoll argued. “Wei Lum looked it over and told you it wasn’t Choy. What more do you want?”

O’Hara made a restless gesture. “I don’t know, Driscoll, but I have a sort of hunch that I’ve overlooked something — somewhere.”

Then came the night when Sergeant O’Hara learned that stronger names than Feather Devil could be applied to a parrot. It was a night of lowering blue fog that turned the neon lights of Mulberry Lane into gaudy strings of smoldering jewels.

O’Hara, pursuing his usual rounds, paused at the gilded doorway of a tong house to put on the black slicker he had been carrying on his arm. The misty fog was changing rapidly to a steady, cold drizzle, and the few Celestials who were abroad drifted past like blurred shadows.

The iron bell of St. Mary’s steeple tolled out ten solemn strokes — the hour of the Fox — as O’Hara came within sight of the glass lantern hanging beside the doorway to the Plum Blossom Joss House — a deep blue glow which floated in the smoky void like a sinister moon.

A globular shadow loomed up on O’Hara’s left, bobbing along toward the brownstone steps of the joss house, and as the bulky figure passed under the peacock-blue lantern O’Hara recognized Mark Sin, Chinatown’s Number One gambler.

He watched the slant-eyed master of gaming disappear through the Plum Blossom portals. Mark Sin’s visits to the joss house were for one purpose only — to burn silver-paper prayers at the shrine of Liu Hai the Money God. Which meant there would be another “floating” fan-tan game tonight somewhere in Paradise Court.

“And just try to break it up!” O’Hara muttered, with the wry smile that came of long experience with the cunning ways of the Yellow Quarter.

O’Hara even knew who would be the principal players around Mark Sin’s gaming table. There would be Wing Lung the silk merchant, Kim Yao the goldsmith, Meng Tai the apothecary, Long Jon of the Tea House — and yes, no doubt young Chang Loo, the two-handed spendthrift who was treading a silken path since he had fallen heir to the wealth of his uncle, Chang Pao.

“Beggar on horseback!” O’Hara growled, recalling the many stories about young Chang’s unceasing round of carousing and drinking and reckless gaming. Chang Loo had not even made a pretense of mourning his dead uncle — no white sorrow-robes for him, no period of fasting and seclusion, no ancestor joss burning in the Plum Blossom.

Moving like a black shadow, O’Hara proceeded through Half Moon Street and into Lantern Court. In passing, he glanced at the shuttered windows of No. 14, standing dark and silent as a Ming tomb.

“I wonder what old Chang would say if he knew how his hard-earned money was being thrown around,” O’Hara thought to himself. Well, when young Chang’s follies had eaten up all the Rice Face dollars, he could replenish his purse by stripping the old house of its valuable antique furnishings and start all over again.

“If Chang Loo lives that long!” O’Hara thought. For the slant-eyed upstart was arrogant and quarrelsome in his cups, conducting himself with the haughty insolence of a red-button mandarin.

There was a whispered tale of a rash insult to a certain tongster — one of the dreaded Red Lamp men — a deed which might well have cost Chang Loo his shadow had not Tai Gat the limping mafoo come to his rescue. But instead of being grateful, young Chang had screamed drunken curses at his uncle’s servant, and hurled a stone wine-bottle at his head.

“Guess I’d better give that blasted fool a talking-to, before he gets a knife between his ribs,” O’Hara said to himself as he groped his way across Lantern Court. The slow rain was beginning to drip eerily from hidden eaves, and somewhere in the darkness an unseen musician was playing a moon-fiddle.

Presently O’Hara found the narrow opening to Mandarin Lane, and so came out upon Canton Street. He walked past the dark houses, peering up at an occasional lighted window. Then O’Hara felt cobblestones under his feet; and knew that the bleary yellow glow to his right was the lamp-post at the entrance to the three-sided Court called Manchu Place.

And O’Hara stopped dead in his tracks, for in the murky depths of Manchu Place a tiny light winked on and off, on and off — and his ears caught a whistled signal, low and toneless and continually repeated.

Following the sidewall with outstretched hand, O’Hara moved toward the mysteriously winking light. “Flashlight!” he decided, and tried to make out the vague, blurred figure directing the beam.

The winking light focused briefly on the shuttered window of a house, clicked on again, centered now on a doorway above five brownstone steps. The toneless whistle sounded again.

O’Hara, quietly moving his gun to the pocket of his slicker, crept nearer the winking beam, closing in at an oblique angle.

“What goes on here?” he demanded sharply. “Don’t move, you! Stand there, and hold that light steady! I want a look at you!”

The beam steadied and seemed to freeze into rigidity as O’Hara stepped forward, but as he reached the brownstone steps he broke out with a muttered oath, for there was no one behind the light! At his challenge the quick-witted shadow had simply placed the flashlight on the top step and slipped away into the shrouding fog.

O’Hara snatched up the flash and swung the beam to and fro in a half circle, then clicked it off while he stood motionless, listening. His ears picked out the faint pad-pad of slippered feet — a whispering sound that fled and died.

“A flashlight in a fog,” O’Hara muttered. “Now what in thunder would he be hunting for?”

As if in answer to his question, a muffled cry shrilled through the murky dark — the raucous “Awk-awk!” of a parrot!

O’Hara whirled toward the sound, and when the squawk was repeated, his flash beam picked out the parrot. The Feather Devil was perched on the windowsill of a vacant house, seemingly hypnotized by the glare of the electric eye turned upon it, for it made no effort to escape O’Hara’s reaching hand.

“Awk!” said the parrot plaintively, and snuggled down in the crook of his arm. It was cold and wet and bedraggled, and one wing appeared to be injured. But it was green, this Feather Devil — all green — and a startling thought leaped into O’Hara’s mind.

Could it be Choy, the parrot stolen from Yun Chee’s house? Had it somehow managed to escape from its captor? And if this were so, the man with the flashlight might have been the masked killer of the tea merchant.

“And I let the guy run out on me!” O’Hara groaned. “Me, with a gun in my fist, and him not ten feet away! But at least I’ve got the parrot, and believe me, this Feather Devil gets a Number One going-over!”

Unconsciously O’Hara’s hand had tightened on the bird, and he felt something soft under his fingers, something that made him quickly focus the flash beam. There was a tight little scroll of cloth wound around the parrot’s leg!

Steadying the flashlight under his arm, O’Hara unwound the ragged strip of cloth, eyes glinting as he saw that it was covered with ragged columns of Chinese writing in a deep red tint.

“Blood!” O’Hara exclaimed. “It’s written with blood!”

With the precious scroll tucked away in his pocket and the Feather Devil nestled inside his slicker, O’Hara hurried back to the precinct station. “Hey, Driscoll!” he called, sticking his head in at the Squad Room door. “Get Sang Lee the scrivener! And take it on the jump!”

O’Hara went into his office and put the green-feathered bird on the edge of his desk while he closed the door and pulled down the windows. “All right, birdie, let’s have a good look at you. Sort of mussed up, eh? What’s your name — Choy?... Come on, speak up. Choy?”

“Awk!” the parrot said, and made a clumsy swoop to the top of the desk lamp. It swayed there for a moment, preening its ruffled feathers, then slid off awkwardly to the desktop.

“Hey, keep your tail-feathers out of the inkwell!” O’Hara exclaimed. “What’s the matter — got a lame foot? You’re wobbling around like you were drunk—”

O’Hara broke off short on that word, and leaning over the bird, sniffed. There was an odor, a most unmistakable Oriental odor.

“Samshu!” O’Hara burst out. “By God, it is drunk! A drunken parrot! What in hell’s going on here, anyway?”

Chapter Three A Plastered Parrot

The parrot wobbled along the edge of the desk, swaying. Its beak opened and a gurgling sound like a hiccough issued from its throat. Then it rustled its feathers and trumpeted, “Shao! Shao! Shao!”

“What’s that?” O’Hara stiffened alertly. “Say that again! Go on, speak up!” and he jostled the bird with his finger.

“Shao! Shao! Shao!” The raucous word rattled out like machine-gun fire. The angry parrot sidled away, hiccoughing.

O’Hara sat down, slowly, not taking his eyes from the bird. Not the murdered Yun Chee’s Choy, after all. This was Shao — Shao, old Chang’s parrot! How had it escaped from the silversmith’s house in Lantern Court? And what desperate message needed writing in blood, to be sent out into the night with a drunken parrot as its fantastic messenger?

Unrolling the torn strip of cloth, O’Hara stared at the jagged red symbols as though he would tear out its meaning by sheer will power, but his limited knowledge of the “broken stick” writing was of no avail.

“Rawk!” The parrot made an awkward flight to the top of a filing cabinet as the phone whirred. O’Hara lifted the receiver. It was the switchboard man, telling him that Driscoll had returned with Sang Lee the scrivener.

“I’ll be right out!” O’Hara replied, and hung up. The parrot was still perched, droopy-eyed, on the filing case as he carefully closed the office door behind him.

“Hola, Sah-jin,” Sang Lee greeted him in the Squad Room.

“Can you read this?” O’Hara questioned, thrusting the cloth message into the scrivener’s hands.

“It is Number One poor writing,” Sang Lee commented, squinting at the scroll. Then his breath hissed and his eyes grew round as jade buttons. “Sah-jin, hearken!” he gasped, and began to read the scarlet text.

“Chang Loo — a prisoner!” O’Hara gasped in a startled voice. “In a narrow street, 150 paces from No. 14! That must be Mandarin Lane. But why in hell doesn’t he say Mandarin Lane?”

“Maybe he was taken there blindfolded,” Driscoll suggested.

“If he was — how would he know it was the fifth house?” O’Hara replied. “But we’re wasting valuable time. Get your hat and coat, Driscoll — and your gun. This is likely to turn out a shooting job.”

“How about tools, Sarge?” Driscoll inquired.

“Bring a pinchbar and a raiding ax,” O’Hara directed, and hurried back to his office for his hat and slicker. But as he flung open the door, he stood rooted on the threshold, then let out a roar of angry surprise that brought Driscoll on the run.

“The parrot!” O’Hara fumed. “It’s gone! Stolen again! I’ll be damned!” He strode over to the open window, peering out between the wide bars. “This window was closed when I went out. That fellow must have trailed me from Manchu Place—”

O’Hara felt something crunch under his foot. He looked down, and found a number of melon seeds scattered on the floor by the window. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “This fellow opened the window and used melon seeds as bait to bring the parrot within reach of his hands. Then he pulled it out through the bars and ran—”

“And we’d better do some running of our own,” Driscoll broke in. “Forget the damn parrot, Sarge. If that fellow gets to Mandarin Lane ahead of us, we’re likely to find Chang Loo with his toes turned up!”

O’Hara commandeered one of the prowl cars and they sped to the Canton Street entrance to Mandarin Lane, picking up Detective Burke as they crossed Mulberry Lane. Leaving their car parked on Canton Street, the three men plunged into the darkness of Mandarin Lane.

“There’s the fifth house!” O’Hara whispered, and they came to a halt, scanning their objective. It was not really a house, but a two-story structure which had originally been a stables, later a garage, and finally abandoned altogether, judging by its neglected appearance and the planks nailed across its doors.

“No light showing,” O’Hara declared, stepping back to scan the grimy upper windows, black and staring as blind eyes. The original pulley bar of the hayloft still protruded between the dormer windows, like a hangman’s gibbet. A separate door set in the sidewall led, apparently, to the upper floor of the building.

“O.K., Burke, stand guard here in the lane,” O’Hara ordered. “Come on, Driscoll, we’ll crash this side-door and — hello, it’s not even locked! That’s funny—”

Driscoll’s flashlight lanced the darkness of a flight of narrow, dusty stairs, ending at another door. They went up cautiously, O’Hara’s hand slowly turning the knob of the upper door, then flinging it wide as Driscoll sent his beam sweeping over a bare, atticlike room festooned with cobwebs, its windows covered with heavy sacking.

The moving beam picked out piles of rusty and dusty junk — then focused suddenly on a broken-down armchair to which a Chinese was bound hand and foot. The Oriental writhed and wriggled in his bonds, trying to call out through a cloth bag.

“Cut him loose, Driscoll,” O’Hara ordered, and struck a match to light an oil lantern which stood on an upturned box.

“Blue Coat Men! Praise be to Tao!” the yellow man gasped as soon as the gag was removed.

O’Hara straightened up, staring at the young Oriental. “What name you?” he demanded. “You’re not Chang Loo!”

Then it was the Oriental’s turn to stare. “Who say I am not Chang Loo?” he challenged. “Take me to my uncle Chang Pao the silversmith — he tell you chop-chop that I am his brother’s son!”

“Hey, what is this!” O’Hara exclaimed. “I’ve seen Chang Loo a dozen times — I looked at his papers, his huchao, his chock-gee, when Chang Pao’s will was read—”

“Chang Pao is dead?” the yellow man broke in excitedly. “Hai! Now it is as plain as black writing on rice paper! Tajen, I am Chang Loo! This other one is a thief who has stole my name, my papers — and now he steals my dead uncle’s wealth! Hearken, Tajen—”

And speaking in a staccato jabber that was half English and half Cantonese, the young Celestial poured forth as strange a tale of evil plotting as Sergeant O’Hara had ever heard in this devious quarter where the bizarre and the fantastic are a daily commonplace.

Chang Loo told how he had received a telegram advising him of his uncle’s grave condition and had at once set out on his long journey to reach his dying uncle’s bedside.

Arriving in the late evening, he had inquired his way to Lantern Court, but even as he set foot upon the steps of No. 14, a figure had loomed up behind him, jabbed a gun against his back, and growled a command to walk straight ahead and keep his tongue behind his teeth.

One hundred and fifty paces he had counted in the darkness, to this fifth house of the narrow street whose name he did not know. Still at gun-point, he had been forced up the dark stairs to this dark attic, where he had been tied into the chair and then gagged, by a man who wore a black cloth mask over his face.

“You’ve been a prisoner in this room ever since?” O’Hara asked.

“Aye, Tajen,” the young Chinese replied. The masked man had searched him thoroughly, taking away all his possessions, even a little jade luck piece with the seal of Wan-teh.

He added the other details of his strange captivity. Once a day the masked man appeared to give him food and water and a few minutes’ exercise walking to and fro, but always with bound hands. The masked man never spoke, only raising his pistol in a gesture that threatened instant death if the prisoner tried to summon help.

O’Hara and Driscoll exchanged swift glances. Beyond all doubt this young Chinese was the true Chang Loo — he had names, dates, facts at his command; he described with minute accuracy the very papers which O’Hara had examined in Lee Shu’s office, even to a small piece torn from the corner of his official chock-gee.

The other Chang Loo — the arrogant, wine-drinking, fan-tan-playing Chang Loo, was a daring impostor who had engineered a brazen and spectacular theft of the old silversmith’s house and fortune!

“There’s cool nerve for you!” O’Hara exclaimed. “But this phoney nephew must have had help to pull off a job as slick as that.” He turned to the young Oriental. “This masked man — did he walk with a limp?”

“No, Tajen, no limp.”

“Hell!” O’Hara said. “I was sure it was Tai Gat.”

“Well, it could be a single-handed job, Sarge,” Driscoll declared. “Chang here says he hasn’t visited his uncle since he was a small boy, so it wouldn’t be much of a trick to fool Tai Gat. How could he tell it was a phoney?”

“I think the mask man is gila — crazy!” Chang put in suddenly.

O’Hara turned quickly. “Why?”

“Because of the parrot, Tajen. Always he bring this green Feather Devil with him, hidden under a black cloth. He tie the bird’s foot to the floor, then he give it liquor to drink and poke it with a stick until the bird scream with anger. All the time the mask man mutter curses, and one time he kick the bird and hurt its wing—”

“Sounds crazy to me,” Driscoll declared, but O’Hara said nothing, his forehead knotted in thought.

“I think he is gila,” Chang continued, “but it is Number One good luck for me. Tonight he bring the parrot with him, like always. He push it with stick, make it drunk. But while he is here there is big noise of bells and horns as the fire-wagons come close by the street—”

“That’s right, Sarge,” Driscoll confirmed. “There was a fire in the next block.”

And young Chang gave the details of the sudden opportunity which had led to his rescue. The masked man, uneasy over all the commotion outside, slipped out to see if the fire threatened Mandarin Lane, leaving his prisoner bound to the chair.

But Chang had learned how to wriggle his arms free, although he could not release his feet, for the rope was knotted behind the chair. And since he had first seen the parrot he had worked out a plan for sending a message.

Coaxing the parrot within reach of his hands had been the hardest part, Chang declared. After that, everything had been easy. A feather from the parrot’s wing gave him a quill pen, a scratch across his wrist drew blood for ink, a torn piece of cloth served as paper.

With the message hastily written and tied to the bird’s leg, he had inched his chair over to a long-handled rake in the dusty rubbish. Perching the parrot on the rusty tines of the rake, he had lifted it up to a small air-vent under the roof.

“A push, Tajen, and the Feather Devil is on his way,” Chang went on. “But I have just finish when the mask man returns. He make an angry shout and hit me. Then he tie my hands quick and run out, and I say a thousand prayers to Kwan-Yin that the Feather Devil will escape from him.”

“That was a smart piece of work, Chang,” O’Hara commended, “but you’re lucky it didn’t cost you your life.”

“The fellow was too busy trying to catch the parrot,” Driscoll suggested.

“Yes — the parrot,” O’Hara said slowly. “We’re always running up against a Feather Devil. Look, Driscoll, the man who murdered Yun Chee passed up a thousand dollars’ worth of easy loot to steal a worthless parrot. Why? And Chang’s masked man, with a fortune at stake, risks everything to recapture Shao. Again, why?”

“That’s easy,” Driscoll replied. “He wanted to destroy that message.”

“All right, then, let’s see how he went about it,” O’Hara said. “He chased the parrot along Mandarin Lane to Canton Street and then into Manchu Place, where I chased him away. O.K.?”

“O.K.,” Driscoll said.

“I pick up the parrot and the message. That leaves the masked man with three choices of action: he can drop everything and take it on the lam, he can go back to Mandarin Lane and kill Chang Loo to silence him, or take him away to a different hideout. So what happens? He follows me back to the precinct and snatches Shao from my office. Why? What value has the parrot, after its message is in the hands of the police?”

“I don’t know,” Driscoll admitted, “unless the guy is gila, like Chang says.”

O’Hara shook his head. “Well, we’ll know more about that when we finish with No. 14 Lantern Court. Let’s go!”

“We’ll find nothing but an empty house,” Driscoll predicted. “By this time that phoney nephew has packed up all the loose dough and skipped.”

“And what about the parrot?” O’Hara queried. “Does the parrot go with the rest of the loot?”

“Oh, damn the parrot!” Driscoll snorted.

“Not so fast, Driscoll.” O’Hara grinned. “There’s a wild hunch floating around in my head, and if I’m right — there’ll be a surprise waiting for us at No. 14 Lantern Court!”

Thus it came about that the real Chang Loo retraced the one hundred fifty paces which had deprived him of his rightful inheritance, with three Blue Coat Devils walking by his side, armed and ready to enforce his lawful claim to the riches of No. 14 Lantern Court.

Chang Pao’s house was as dark and gloomy-looking as it had been earlier in the evening, although the lifting fog had taken away its ghostly aspect. O’Hara went up the brownstone steps and hammered a brisk tattoo on the door.

There was no response, and he pounded again, while Driscoll watched with a smile. “I told you it’d be an empty nest, Sarge.”

Then Burke called out from the rear: “There’s somebody inside, Sarge! I saw a face at the upstairs window!”

“O.K., then, we’ll waste no more time,” O’Hara said. Jabbing the pinchbar into the crack of the door, he gouged out an opening, then began to wrench. With a crackling of wood and a snapping of metal, the lock surrendered and the door creaked inward.

Gun in hand, O’Hara stalked into the hallway, where a silk-shaded light was burning. “Hey, Chang Loo! Tai Gat!” he shouted. “Come on down! Police!”

Then O’Hara scrambled for cover as Chang Loo’s bright yellow robe moved in the darkness at the head of the stairs, and a long arm clutching a pistol reached snakily over the railings.

Flame spurted from the black muzzle, and the dark stairwell echoed and re-echoed with the explosive reports. The glass panes of the vestibule door fell with a tinkling crash — a bullet skittered wildly from the face of a bronze gong, adding to the roaring clamor.

“It’s no use!” O’Hara shouted up the dark staircase. “We’ve got you cornered! The house is surrounded! I’m giving you ten seconds to throw down that gun — or we come up after you, shooting!”

A harsh laugh was the answer, and a bullet that tore a long furrow across the wall just missed Driscoll’s head.

“O.K. — you asked for it!” O’Hara shouted as he sprang toward the stairs, with Driscoll right at his heels, both pumping bullets into the upper darkness to clear their path.

The yellow robe whisked from sight as they raced up the staircase. They pounded in hot pursuit up the next flight of steps, but as they gained the upper hall a heavy door boomed shut and a cross-bar rattled into place.

O’Hara hurled his weight against the door. “Damn! It’s like iron — must be lined with sheet-metal.”

Driscoll hammered on the armored door with his pistol butt, calling out. “Better give up, Chang! This is your last chance! You catch bullet chop-chop!”

For a few moments he kept his ear against the door, listening, then shook his head. “No answer, Sarge.”

O’Hara nodded. “Bring the tools — we’ll smash our way in... Burke, cover the outside of the house... Chang Loo, keep back there on the stairs. There may be more shooting.”

Sergeant O’Hara was an experienced hand with a raiding ax, but it took him nearly twenty minutes of furious hacking before the metal-shod door yielded to his attack. With the final blows, Driscoll moved forward, finger tense on trigger, but when the shattered door sagged back there was no need for shooting.

The impostor who had masqueraded as Chang Loo lay dead on the floor of the room, a pistol clutched in his hand, his bright yellow robe splashed and stained from the pool of blood collected around his head.

“What a mess!” Driscoll breathed, kneeling down beside the body. “Put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger! Blew out the back of his head... Hey, Sarge, look! There’s the parrot!”

The green Feather Devil was perched on the back of a chair, glaring at them with hostile intensity. “Rawk-awk!” it trumpeted, crisping its claws and ruffling its feathers.

“And look — the table!” Driscoll cried, pointing. “We were just in time! He was gettin’ ready to take it on the lam, with what’s left of the loot.”

O’Hara looked at the preparations for flight — at the disorderly heap of crumpled bills turned out, apparently, from two ginger-jars which lay empty on the floor, at a small camphor-wood casket packed with choice jade carvings in mutton-fat and fei-tsui and ornaments of gold and silver set with precious stones.

“Well, this guy was no piker,” Driscoll commented. “It was all or nothing, and he sure gave us a run for our money. You’d think a smart guy like him would’ve fixed himself for a fast getaway. This room’s like a jail-cell — bars on the windows, iron on the door.”

“They all make mistakes,” O’Hara said. He went over to the windows and tapped his finger against the metal bars, then opened a closet and sounded the walls briefly. Frowning in thought, he stood looking down at the dead man. “Funny we didn’t hear the shot.”

“Through that iron door?” Driscoll scoffed. “Say, he could have kicked off with a cannon while you were banging away with the ax.”

“Too bad we didn’t get him alive,” O’Hara remarked slowly. “There are a lot of questions I’d like to ask.”

Driscoll was busy searching the dead man’s clothing. “Look, Sarge, here are the identification papers he stole from Chang Loo, even the little jade luck piece... Recognize it, Chang?”

“Yiss, yiss!” young Chang cried, darting forward to clutch his luck piece, while O’Hara examined the papers — the telegram which had summoned Chang Loo, his chock-gee and hu-chao.

“Hello — what’s this!” O’Hara exclaimed, smoothing out a strip of red paper. “Chinese writing. Is this yours, Chang?”

Chang Loo ran his eye over the “broken stick” symbols, and his voice quivered with excitement as he said, “Not see this writing before, Tajen, but it is for me — a letter from my dead uncle Chang.”

For a few moments there was absolute silence after Chang Loo’s voice was still; then Driscoll burst out excitedly: “There’s your parrot clue, Sarge! Now we know why this phoney Chang hung on to the parrot through thick and thin! He wanted to get at old Chang’s hidden treasure, and he couldn’t make the parrot talk! That’s why he poked it with a stick and made it drunk with samshu — he wanted to make it speak those three words!”

“Hoya!” young Chang Loo exclaimed. “It is plain as the rising sun!”

“Yes, and it’s also plain that he never did get those three words out of Shao,” O’Hara put in. “He was still working on that parrot tonight, when Chang Loo sent out his message. So the treasure is still hidden where old Chang left it, and the parrot still has the secret!”

Chapter Four Triple Fire

With a single motion they all turned to face the green Feather Devil, sidling along its perch, staring back at them with a sullen hostility, as if defying them to wrest its secret by fair means or foul.

“Come on, Feather Devil, speak up!” Driscoll coaxed, scratching its crest. “Give us those three little words!”

“Rawk-awk!” said the parrot, and drew blood from Driscoll’s finger with a nip of its sharp beak.

“Nice birdie!” Driscoll said soothingly. “Give us those three little words — so I can wring that blasted neck of yours!”

“You’ve got a job on your hands,” O’Hara said. “Shao’s been worked on by experts.”

While Driscoll went on trying to coax the precious words from the stubborn parrot, O’Hara heard Burke’s voice shouting up to him excitedly from downstairs.

“Hey, Sarge! Here’s Tai Gat!”

“Send him up!” O’Hara called back, and the limping mafoo came hurrying up the stairs, bursting with excited questions about the broken doors, the bullet-scarred halls, the Blue Coat Man’s tale that the New Master was lying dead.

With grim brevity O’Hara pointed to the sprawled body lying there on the stained floor, and recounted what had taken place in crisp, terse sentences that left the mafoo gasping with astonishment.

“Chang Loo not real Chang Loo!” he stammered. “Can there be two moons in the sky? Ai-yee! It is a devil work past all belief! Sah-jin, I leave house after rice-time to burn prayers for Old Master at Plum Blossom Joss House. Young Master say he go to fan-tan game — now he is gone to ancestors. Hoya! The ways of the Lords of Destiny are hidden from the eyes of men.”

O’Hara questioned Tai Gat about the arrival of the false Chang Loo. The mafoo replied that the impostor had simply rung the bell and presented the telegram as introduction. The silversmith had already lapsed into the coma which endured until the hour of his death, and Tai Gat declared that he had observed nothing to arouse suspicion about the stranger’s identity.

Regarding Chang Pao’s hidden treasure, Tai Gat professed complete ignorance. The Old Master had grown secretive and suspicious in his later years, and kept most of the rooms locked up, day and night. The mafoo was forbidden to enter his master’s private quarters, unless summoned by the gong.

“Didn’t you look after the parrot Shao?” O’Hara asked. “Feeding him, and so on?”

“No, Sah-jin,” Tai Gat answered. “Shao live in Master’s room until he fall sick. Then I move him to Kwan-Yin room so his noise not wake Master from sleep.”

“Did you ever hear the parrot talk?” O’Hara questioned. “Did you ever hear him speak anything except his name?”

“Not listen, Sah-jin,” Tai Gat replied. “Me not likee Feather Devil. Young ones good for eating, but old ones good for nothing but make noise.”

“Well, you’re wrong about Shao. Shao happens to be the most valuable parrot in the world.” Abruptly, O’Hara turned to Driscoll, who was still trying to wheedle the magic words from the obstinate Feather Devil.

“Give it up, Driscoll,” O’Hara said. “You’re only wasting your time. You won’t coax those three words out of him, not if you worked on it the rest of your life.”

“Why, what do you mean, Sarge?”

“I mean that this parrot isn’t Shao — not old Chang’s bird at all! And it’s not the parrot I picked up in Manchu Place, either!”

Driscoll straightened up, astonishment on his face. “But look, Sarge, how do you figure? Here, you can still smell the samshu on the bird, and here are the ink-stains on its feathers, from the inkwell on your desk.”

“Yeah, take a good look at those stains,” O’Hara replied crisply. “Those marks were made with black Chinese ink, thick as paint! Since when do I have Chinese ink on my desk?”

“Then... then there must be two parrots!” Driscoll exclaimed.

“Exactly! There’s been a switch. This parrot is only a stand-in for the real Shao! But I haven’t finished yet with the Chinese ink. Very interesting, that Chinese ink. It’s going to tell us a lot of things, because the man who painted those marks on the phoney parrot spilled some on his own hand!”

O’Hara swung around suddenly, seized Tai Gat by the arm and twisted his hand into view, revealing a telltale smudge along the edge of the palm. “Now, Tai Gat, suppose you tell us how you got that stain on your hand!”

“Not know!” the mafoo declared with hissing breath, trying to jerk his hand away, but O’Hara only tightened his grip, pushing him against the wall.

“Where’s that other parrot, Tai Gat? Where’s the real Shao? You know! You’re the one who made the switch tonight!”

The mafoo glared at him, sullen as a cornered animal. “Tai Gat know nothing about Feather Devil,” he insisted.

O’Hara straightened up, frosty-eyed. “So you spent the evening at the Joss House, burning prayers, eh? Well, we’ll soon check up on that. The bonze will tell us if you were there, and how long you stayed. But I know you’re lying, Tai Gat! You were in Mandarin Lane tonight — in the house where you kept Chang Loo prisoner! You were in Manchu Place, hunting for Shao with a flashlight! You followed me to the precinct to snatch back the parrot — then you came back here, back to this house, and murdered this fake Chang Loo!”

“Hey, Sarge!” Driscoll exclaimed in protest. “You’re way off the course! This was suicide. Didn’t we chase this guy up the stairs, didn’t he shoot at us?”

“What we saw was a yellow robe,” O’Hara replied, and leveled his finger at the dead impostor on the floor. “This man was dead before we set foot in Lantern Court. I could tell by the way his blood had soaked through the straw matting.”

“I still think you’re shootin’ wild, Sarge,” Driscoll said. “If this was murder, how did Tai Gat get out of this room? Look at it — door bolted, windows barred.”

“I don’t know how Tai Gat got out,” O’Hara replied, “but I know he was inside. I can prove it. Look at this letter of Chang Pao’s about the parrot. Here’s that Chinese ink again — a fresh smudge, right across one corner. Tai Gat handled this letter within the past hour!”

“Not so!” the mafoo cried out. “It is a Number One lie!”

“I still don’t see it, Sarge,” Driscoll argued. “If you’re right, why didn’t Tai Gat keep this letter for himself, or else destroy it? It’s the key to the whole thing.”

“Wrong!” O’Hara corrected sharply. “The parrot is the real key. What’s the letter worth if you haven’t got Shao — the real Shao — to give you the three words?”

O’Hara eyed the mafoo in cold appraisal. “Your little game is all washed up, Tai Gat. You’ll do no more hunting for Chang Pao’s treasure, because you’re going to jail for a long, long time. So you might as well hand over that other parrot. I know you’ve got it hidden somewhere in this house, and I’ll find it, if I have to take the place apart brick by brick.”

Tai Gat’s tongue moved uneasily across his lips, his eyes darting here and there as if seeking an avenue of escape. But as O’Hara’s hand gripped him in warning, his momentary panic passed; his slant-eyed face settled into the imperturbable mask of the Oriental.

“The Lords of Destiny frown upon me. Wah! I strive no more against the tide of evil fortune. Release your hands, Sah-jin, and I will deliver the true Shao into your keeping. He is hidden in the Kwan-Yin room.”

“No more tricks!” O’Hara warned, alert for a treacherous move as he followed the limping mafoo into the little prayer-room. Tai Gat lifted the gilded statue of Kwan-Yin to the floor, and then pulled away the black cloth which covered its pedestal. And there, under the stand, prisoned in a square wire cage, sat Shao — the real Shao — bound to silence by an ingenious wire gag fastened over its beak!

Tai Gat took out the bird and perched it on his forefinger. “Shao not talk for me — not tell me the three words of wealth,” the mafoo said softly, then his face contorted with sudden rage and his voice rose to a snarling screech. “Now I fix so he tell no one!”

And Tai Gat seized the parrot by the neck, twisted its head around with one vicious swirl and hurled the dead Feather Devil at O’Hara’s head.

“Wang pu tau!” the mafoo snarled, wrenching free from O’Hara’s clutching grasp and springing for the door, no longer the limping mafoo, but a frenzied killer darting toward escape with full-striding vigor, twisting away from Driscoll, hurling Chang Loo aside, slamming the door behind him to delay pursuit.

“The stairs!” O’Hara shouted, wrenching open the door, gun in hand. But Tai Gat was not racing down the steps. The wily mafoo had darted into the room where the false Chang Loo lay dead and flung up the sash of the far window.

The two detectives reached the battered doorway in time to see Tai Gat lift one foot to the sill as the seemingly solid web of iron bars swung outward in their wooden frame, like a grilled gate.

Driscoll fired and missed, but Tai Gat turned at bay, snarling, reaching for a shelf that held an array of bottles and drinking-bowls. With the fury of a madman he hurled stone bottles and porcelain cups and pottery jugs in a crashing barrage that filled the air with flying splinters and the rising fumes of rice wine and white Chinese whiskey.

O’Hara stumbled backwards as a stone bottle caught him on the shoulder, while Driscoll crumpled and fell under the impact of a blue-glazed samshu jar, his second shot plowing wildly into the ceiling.

Tai Gat took advantage of the momentary confusion to scramble out over the sill, and by the time O’Hara reached the window, the mafoo had left the narrow outside ledge and was crawling up the steep slant of the shingled roof.

“Come back here, or I’ll shoot!” O’Hara warned, leveling his .38.

Tai Gat turned his head, spitting curses as he glared down at the detective. Then his handhold slipped—

O’Hara leaned far out, snatching at the blue shaam as Tai Gat slid past, but the cloth tore away from his straining fingers. For one sickening moment the mafoo held fast to the rain-spout, then the frail metal sagged and snapped off.

O’Hara’s ears rang with the mafoo’s last wild cry — he heard the dull thump as the body landed on the hard brick pavement three stories below. He saw Burke come running from the house, his flashlight probing the darkness, but he knew that Tai Gat was dead even before Burke’s terse shout reached up to him.

By that time Driscoll was stirring again, brushing aside the broken pieces of blue pottery.

“Are you all right?” O’Hara asked.

“I’m O.K., Sarge.” Driscoll managed a crooked grin as he tenderly explored the lump on his head. “Hey, what about Tai Gat? Did he get away?”

“A permanent getaway,” O’Hara replied grimly. “He slipped and fell from the roof. Not a bad little trick, this window with the phoney bars. Now you see how he made that other getaway, earlier tonight.”

Driscoll shook his head. “White or yellow, Sarge, they don’t come any slicker than Tai Gat. Everything phoney — phoney parrots, phoney nephews, phoney suicides — yes, even a phoney limp. And the guy hooked us at the end, too. There’s Shao, dead as a doornail. That damn mafoo! Now we’ll never get those three words!”

O’Hara turned to young Chang with a wide gesture that took in the cash and jades and jewelry spread out on the table. “Well, Chang, there’s what’s left of your inheritance. And of course, you’ll have the house and the furnishings, so you won’t exactly starve.”

“Kan hsieh, Sah-jin,” young Chang said, with a grateful bow. “What remains is wealth far beyond my simple needs.”

“That’s the spirit,” O’Hara commended. “With the parrot dead, perhaps we’ll never find the rest of your uncle’s money.”

“Yes,” Driscoll agreed. “Parrot or no parrot, you can bet Tai Gat and his pal gave this house a Number One going-over — and no dice.” He went over to the table and stood looking at the heaped-up valuables.

“The way I figure it, Sarge, they got the jitters when the parrot escaped with Chang’s message and started packing up to take it on the lam. Then Tai Gat got the bright idea of bumping off his pal and letting the dead man take the rap.”

“I think it goes even deeper than that,” O’Hara put in. “I believe that this false nephew was only a stooge for Tai Gat’s scheming. I doubt if he knew anything about the parrot, or the hidden treasure.”

“But Chang Pao’s letter!” Driscoll exclaimed. “We found it in his pocket!”

“Yes, but don’t forget the smudge of China ink from Tai Gat’s fingers,” O’Hara replied. “I’ll never be able to prove it now, but I’d bet Tai Gat planted that letter after the murder, to make the job look even more complete. He’d still have the inside track, so long as he had the real Shao under cover.”

O’Hara opened out Chang Pao’s fateful letter, and stood staring at it for a moment. “I’m convinced that Tai Gat engineered this whole job, from start to finish. Very likely he got hold of this letter when Chang Pao had his second stroke, and started the ball rolling by stealing Yun Chee’s parrot as a stand-in for Shao.

“But the parrot wouldn’t talk, and old Chang was obviously on his deathbed, so he cooked up his scheme to install a false heir while he went on searching for the hidden treasure. However, his stooge got out of control — drinking and gambling and quarreling — throwing away the money too fast to suit Tai Gat, so when the parrot got away from Mandarin Lane with the message, he saw a chance to eliminate his partner.

“His first job was to get Shao back in his possession. With that done, he scurried back to Lantern Court, fixed up the phoney parrot with China ink and samshu, and then disposed of his pal — by treachery, no doubt. He put on the yellow robe to fool us, fired a volley, then dashed in here, bolted the door, put the yellow robe back on the dead man, and made his getaway over the roofs. That’s my line on what happened.”

“It sounds O.K. to me, Sarge,” Driscoll agreed. “That joss house alibi will turn out to be as phoney as Tai Gat’s limp... Phew! Smell the samshu, Sarge? I’m splashed all over from that damn jar. If I don’t get these clothes off quick I’ll get a drunk on just smellin’ the stuff.”

O’Hara pointed to the dripping stain on the wall where the blue jar had smashed. “You’re lucky Tai Gat didn’t aim a couple of inches lower, Driscoll, or you’d have been a gone goose... Hey, what’s this?”

O’Hara bent down and picked up a lustrous pink globule from the debris on the floor, and as he held it between thumb and forefinger his eyes lit with excitement.

“A pearl!” he exclaimed. “A big one — a beauty! And look, here’s another one, and another!”

By that time Driscoll and young Chang had joined the hunt, eagerly turning over the jagged fragments of the samshu jar. They found more pearls, many more, some rolling free, others imbedded in a kind of waxy tallow which still clung to the broken jar.

“Pearls! A fortune in pearls!” O’Hara exclaimed, when they had finished their searching and young Chang Loo’s hands held the gleaming heap of lustrous sea-gems. “Old Chang Pao dropped them into this samshu jar, then poured wax over them to seal them to the bottom. It’s his hidden treasure.”

“I’ll say it was hidden!” Driscoll put in. “Why, even if you poured out the liquor and looked inside the jar, you wouldn’t notice anything. Unless you smashed the jar, you’d never find ’em!”

And suddenly the solution to the strange riddle of the old silversmith’s parrot flashed into O’Hara’s mind. He turned excitedly to Chang Loo.

“Listen, Chang, the parrot’s name was Shao, wasn’t it? And Shao is the Chinese word for fire. But the parrot always squawked out its name three times — Shao! Shao! Shao! Get it? The three-word key to your uncle’s hidden treasure wasn’t three different words, as Tai Gat thought, but only one word, repeated three times — fire, fire, fire! Follow your uncle’s directions, make one word of the three, and what do you have? Three times fire — triple fire.”

“Hai!” young Chang exclaimed. “Triple fire — it is the name for samshu!”

“Exactly!” O’Hara said. “Samshu is a powerful liquor, distilled three times. It’s as clear as crystal, once you get on the right track. Perhaps the parrot always squawked its name three times, and that’s what gave your uncle the idea for hiding the pearls in a samshu bottle.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Driscoll exploded. “Think of that! Tai Gat prodding the parrot for its secret, and the bird screaming the answer at him all the time! And maybe the samshu he gave it was poured from this very jar!”

“Yes, it’s strange the way things work out sometimes,” O’Hara said thoughtfully. “You know, Driscoll, sometimes I almost believe those invisible Lords of Destiny the Chinks are always talking about do take a hand in things!”