The Black Mask (Vol. 2, No. 2 — November 1920)

I

During his world tour, undertaken at the behest and at the expense of the Chinese Government, Song Kee found much to admire. In this country, for example, he was impressed by a multitude of our ways and customs. And he frankly admitted their superiority over the Chinese equivalent or substitute of much that is distinctly American. In one respect, however, he contended that America was deficient in comparison with his own country. This was in the detection of crime.

“The Occidental detective,” he stated one night in his precise, smoothly-spoken English, “is quite competent to deal with crime of the ordinary variety. It is when he approaches the unusual, the delicately subtle, that he is lost.”

“And his inability,” he went on, “to handle successfully the extraordinary crime is due for the most part, I think, to his inability to believe in the unbelievable.”

Police Commissioner Oglethorpe, who was one of the half dozen men lounging in the smoking room of the Travelers, smiled.

“It would seem to me,” he said, and his voice was mildly sarcastic, “that detection of crime depends less upon the detective’s powers of belief than upon his powers of observation and his ability to uncover facts.”

Song Kee shrugged his shoulders.

“Facts, my dear Commissioner,” he replied, “are the bane of your Western civilization. You are a very young people. It will be several centuries before you learn that facts are not necessarily truths. Had I a secret, I would hide it — not under a bushel of lies—but under a bushel of facts.”

The Commissioner turned away.

“Yet Judges and juries have an odd predilection for facts,” he murmured.

“Which they, too, often mistake as sign posts towards Truth,” was Song Kee’s parting shot.

It was some weeks later that New York was startled by the murder of Irene Grenville. She was an actress who had attained an unusual prominence partly because of her real histrionic ability and partly because of the strange tales of her private life which circulated throughout the city.

Always there had been stories about her. Even in her early days, when she had played small parts in an uptown stock company, whispers about her wildness and depravity had crept to the ears, of those who knew her. As she climbed higher on the professional ladder the whispers had become louder and reached a greater audience. When at last she reached stardom she was known from the Battery to the Bronx as the wickedest woman on Broadway, that street popularly supposed to be a cesspool of iniquity.

Now she had been found dead in the public hall of the hotel she had called home. A knife had been thrust into her lovely bosom. And all New York clamored to know the identity of her murderer.

The essential facts brought out at the coroner’s inquest were as follows:

Sophie Mallory, a chambermaid in the Ralston Hotel, where the deceased had lived, stated that at seven-fifteen on the night of the murder she had been standing at one end of the public hallway on the fourth floor. She was occupied at the time with the sorting of soiled linen preparatory to sending it downstairs to the laundry. She had seen Miss Grenville leave her rooms. Closing the door of her sitting-room, which was near the end of the hall where the deponent was working, the actress walked rapidly down the hall toward the elevator.

Question by the Coroner:—Except for yourself, was the deceased alone in the hall.

Witness:—No, sir. A man was coming toward her from the other end of the hall? ~

Question:—How far apart were they when you last saw them?

Witness:—About five or six feet apart, sir.

Question:—At that time had the man reached or passed the deceased?

Witness:—Neither, sir.

Question by the Foreman of the Jury:—Did you recognize the man?

Witness:—No, sir. Not then.

The chambermaid went on with her story. This was to the effect that she had resumed her task of sorting the linen, turning her back on the hall where Miss Grenville and the man were walking. But hardly had she turned and started her work before she had been startled by a shriek of agony. Terror-stricken, she had turned back to the hall. There she saw the deceased lying on the floor. The man was bending over her. She had run to them and found Miss Grenville dead—stabbed through the heart. And the man bending over the body she had recognized as Mr. George Grover, a young man who had a suite on the floor above.

Question:—Did Mr. Grover say anything to you?

Witness:—No, sir. Not to me directly, sir. But he kept repeating over and over, “Good God! She’s dead! She’s dead!”

Sophie Mallory was excused. The next witness was Detective Sergeant Delaney of the Branch Detective Bureau.

Delaney spoke in the calm, unemotional tone of a man to whom giving testimony in court is an ordinary occurrence. He stated that he had gone to the Ralston Hotel on the night of the murder in response to a telephone call from the management. He had found Irene Grenville dead. She had been stabbed through the heart. The dagger was still sticking in the body. Among the people gathered around the dead woman he had spoken to Sophie Mallory and to George Grover. After he had heard the chambermaid’s story, he had arrested Grover on suspicion.

“And besides,” he volunteered, “the man looked like he had done the trick. He was white and shaking like a leaf.”

Further he testified that with the permission of the coroner he had removed from the body of the deceased the fatal dagger and taken it to headquarters to be examined for finger-prints.

Question:—Were there finger-prints on the dagger?

Witness:—There were.

Question:—Can you state whose?

Witness:—I can. They were the finger-prints of George Grover.

The next witness was Marie Thibault, an excitable Frenchwoman who for many years had been made to Miss Grenville. All that she had to tell was that George Grover had been acquainted with her mistress and that there had been some bad feeling between them.

“I cannot say what was the matter,” she said. “All I know is that the last time Monsieur brought Mad’moiselle home from the theatre, Mad’moiselle, she say to me, ‘Marie, nevaire let me see that crazy man some more’.”

A hush fell over the court-room when, accompanied by a uniformed policeman, George Grover entered. He was a young man of rather pleasing demeanor, carefully but quietly dressed. In normal circumstances he would have passed anywhere without causing remark. Now his face was pale and his eyes gleamed with a feverish excitement. His suppressed emotion gave to his not distinctive features an expression interesting and at the same time provocative of sympathy. As he took the witness stand a woman in the rear of the court-room cried out faintly.

He gave his testimony in a quiet, subdued manner, speaking without emphasis or intonation like a man talking in his sleep. After answering the usual formal questions as to name, address and occupation, which last he gave as student of Oriental languages, he said that on the night of Miss Grenville’s murder he had gone down the stairs from the fifth floor to the fourth of the hotel to keep an appointment he had had in the apartment of Mr. Sito Okawa, an attaché of the Japanese embassy. Mr. Okawa had promised to lend him a book on certain Japanese myths. Yes, he had seen Miss Grenville arid had bowed to her.

“What happened then?” the coroner asked.

“I passed her.”

The coroner smiled incredulously.

“You passed her?”

“Yes, I passed her. I had just taken a step or two when she cried out. Before I could turn she had fallen to the floor. She was dead.”

The coroner hesitated a moment, regarding Grover steadily before he asked his next question.

“Did you touch the dagger with which she was stabbed?”

Grover shuddered.

“I did not,” he stated in the most impressive tone he had used thus far.

“Then how,” the coroner leaned far over the desk to ask the question, “do you account for the undeniable fact that your finger-prints are on the handle of the dagger?”

With bated breath the occupants of the court-room awaited his reply. It came in a low, despairing voice.

“I cannot account for it,” the witness answered.

The coroner leaned back in his chair. When he spoke again it was almost indifferently, as though he were asking the question as a matter of form. “Had you and the deceased quarreled?”

The witness shook his head.

“Quarreled, no,” he answered. “Once I ventured to suggest to Miss Grenville that she was ruining herself by the kind of life she was leading. She resented what she called my interference and told me that she did not want to see me again.”

Slowly, almost languidly, he left the witness stand.

One more witness remained to be examined. This was the Mr. Sito Okawa with whom Grover claimed to have had an appointment. He was a short, dapper Japanese of the extremely intelligent type, suave, polite to the verge of the ridiculous.

After bowing low to the court and to the jury he took the witness stand. He stated that on the night of the murder he had indeed had an appointment with Mr. Grover. To the best of his belief, however, the time when they were to have met in his rooms had been eight-fifteen rather than seven-fifteen.

Then the coroner sent the jury to their deliberations. These did not consume a great deal of time. In less than five minutes the twelve men were back in their places, the foreman ready to recite their verdict. It was what everyone had expected. Irene Grenville had come to her death from the blow of a dagger driven into her heart by one George Grover, whom they recommended should lie held to await action by the Grand Jury.

Two days later the Grand Jury indicted the unfortunate young man. He was taken to the Tombs to await trial. And after a week or so New York forgot all about him, being concerned with matters of newer and greater importance. The baseball season opened—and a quite scandalous performance, the work of a degenerate French playwright, was being run at one of the largest theatres.

II

Song Kee’s participation in the Grenville murder case came about in a singular manner. One night as he entered his club for dinner after an afternoon unprofitably spent in investigating the administration of the city’s poor-laws, the doorman told him that a visitor was awaiting him in the Ladies’ Room.

“A visitor for me?” Song Kee inquired, lifting his eyebrows.

“Yes, sir. A lady, sir.”

Song Kee turned slowly and entered the Ladies’ Room. There, standing before the onyx fireplace of which every member of the Travelers, is justly proud, stood a woman. She was young, handsomely gowned and beautiful. Her loveliness was not of the gorgeous, riotous sort which startles one into instant admiration, but gentle, modest like the beauty of a wild-flower, appealing not to the many but to the appreciative few. Song Kee bowed low before her.

“You wish to see me, madam?” he asked with smiling courtesy.

“Are you Mr. Song Kee?” The woman put her query in a voice of amazing fulness and depth.

“At your service, madam.”

Again Song Kee bowed almost to the floor.

The woman stood silent before him. She seemed on the verge of speech, but hesitated as though in search of adequate words. Then:

“Mr. Kee, I am in frightful trouble. I— I have come to you to ask your help.”

“My help, madam? Why I—”

“I know,” she interrupted, “you do not even know who I am. Still,” she paused, “I am Sylvia Granger. I was engaged,” she threw her head up proudly, “I still am engaged to marry Mr. George Grover.”

Song Kee’s brow puckered into a puzzled frown.

The woman looked at him in amazement.

“Surely,” she said incredulously, “you must have heard of Mr. Grover. He is accused of the murder of Miss Grenville”

A look of comprehension dawned in Song Kee’s face.

“Ah, yes,” he said, “the actress in the Hotel Ralston. I read of the case in the newspapers.”

A wave of emotion swept over the woman.

“Oh, Mr. Kee!” she cried. “He didn’t do it. He couldn’t have! I don’t care what they say—he couldn’t have!”

She brushed her hand across her forehead, swaying backward. Song Kee sprang forward and helped her into a chair.

“Now, Miss Ganger,” he said gently after a moment during which she had regained her self-control, “please tell me as calmly as you can why you have come to me and what it is that you wish me to do.”

The woman looked him full in the eyes.

“I want you to help me to prove George Grover innocent,” she said. And then she hurried on as though to forestall any possible refusal from Song Kee. “Do you remember some weeks ago here in this club, you and Mr. Oglethorpe had a discussion about the detection of crime? You stated your belief in the superiority of the methods of your own people. My brother happened to overhear the conversation. He repeated it to me. And I am here, Mr. Kee, to beg, to implore you to use those methods in which you believe to investigate this frightful crime which has drawn into its net someone whom I hold dear. You,” her voice was tremulous with despair, “you are my last hope.”

For a little Song Kee remained silent, staring contemplatively at the floor.

Then he rose and began to pace the room.

“Miss Granger,” he said at last, pausing before the woman whose eyes did not falter beneath his steady gaze. “In China men are taught to respect certain things as sacred. One of these is the faith of a good woman. I respect your faith in your fiancé’s innocence. I am inclined to do my small best to help you justify it. But tell me what it is that makes you so sure of Mr. Grover’s innocence. As I recall the evidence brought out at the inquest, it was strongly against him.”

With the Chinaman’s words a gleam of hope had come to Sylvia Granger.

She leaned forward eagerly.

“I have no facts to justify my faith, Mr. Kee,” she said, “but I have what is worth innumerable facts—my knowledge of the man I love. You have said, or implied, that I am a good woman. I believe—I hope I am. But this I know. I know that in my heart no man, were he ever so clever, could have reached the place George Grover holds were he capable of imagining, let alone committing, the dastardly crime of which my fiancé is accused.”

Song Kee had listened carefully to her. When she had finished he resumed his pacing to and fro, stopping from time to time before her and gazing down at her with unseeing eyes. He paused at last with the manner of one who has arrived at a decision. Sylvia Granger breathed — “You will help me?” It was more a prayer than a question. Song Kee wrenched himself away from the thoughts which had absorbed him.

“Yes,” he said, “I will help you. But do not expect too much. All that I can do is to promise that I will look into this case as thoroughly as my poor abilities will permit.”

Sylvia Granger sprang to her feet.

“Thank you! Thank you!” she cried. “And whether you succeed or whether you fail to save George, please know that you will always have my gratitude and my friendship.”

“Which should be more than enough reward for any man,” Song Kee said, smiling as he bowed her out of the room.

III

The man who left his rooms on a side street off Madison Avenue was a far different Song Kee from the quietly dressed, well-poised man of the world who had promised help to Sylvia Granger at the Traveler an hour or so earlier. His clothes, his linen, his hat—a brown derby with an exceedingly curly brim — were of the fashion of Broadway rather than of Fifth Avenue. His shoes were of a gorgeous tan, contrasting gaily with pale lavender socks.

And in keeping with his clothes, the man himself had changed. The dignity which ordinarily characterized his manner and expression was gone. In its place was a sort of childishly good-natured meekness, not unattractive but in a way almost ridiculous.

He hurried westward until he had crossed Eighth Avenue. Midway in the block he paused before the doorway of the-Branch Detective Bureau. He looked up at the lighted windows and smiled to himself. Not long ago when his study of American customs and methods had led to an examination of the Police System, he had been a familiar and not unpopular figure in and around the old brownstone building. Often since then he had looked back with pleasure to the nights spent in the back room where the boys gathered and passed the time in spinning yarns of their experiences.

A moment later Song Kee entered that back room. He was greeted clamorously by its occupants. Laughing and joking he crossed to the table where a big man sat, his chair tilted back against the wall, his hat pulled forward over his eyes.

“Hello, Mr. Delaney,” Song Kee said in purring, good-natured tones.

The big man looked up.

“Well, dog-gone it, if it ain’t a Ching-a-ling! How’s your soul, you yeller heathen? Wha’d’y’ want around here?”

Song Kee took the man’s rough greeting in good part.

“What do I want?” he laughed. “Maybe I want to hear Mr. Delaney tell about the Grenville murder.”

Delaney glanced at him suspiciously.

“Say, what’s your interest in the Grenville case?” he asked belligerently.

“Oh, nothing much. I just promised a friend I’d look into it.”

Delaney spat disgustedly.

“Well, you’ll be wastin’ your time. The case is an open and shut thing. Grover’s the guy, and we got him. That’s all there is about that.”

“I thought perhaps—” Song Kee began.

“Aw, fergit it.” Delaney interrupted. “The Grenville dame was croaked and Grover done it. He was caught with the goods, wasn’t he? Didn’t the chambermaid see him?”

“Well, according to the papers she didn’t actually see him stab the woman.”

“Naw. But she seen him near the woman just before she was stabbed and that’s enough for me. Besides, didn’t we find his finger-prints on the dagger and he himself says he never touched it after it was in the woman. Then he must have touched it before, mustn’t he?”

Song Kee shook his head meditatively.

“I— I suppose so,” he said, “still—”

Delaney pushed back his chair violently.

“Aw, say, you! You make me sick — always buttin’ in where you ain’t wanted. You—” he paused. Then his manner changed.

“Say,” he went on, “some of the boys around here think I’m sore on you because of that little mess we had awhile ago. Now just to show ’em the kind of guy I am I’ll make you a proposition. If you think you can get anythin’ out of this here Grenville case I’ve missed, go to it! Go as far as you like and I’ll help you.”

Song Kee’s mild eyes gleamed with excitement.

“You mean that, Mr. Delaney?”

“I said it, didn’t I?”

Song Kee pulled up a chair and for a quarter of an hour the two men talked in whispers, Song Kee speaking quickly and excitedly, Delaney listening and making replies in the tolerant manner one uses toward a child. Then they got up and left the building.

They took the Subway downtown to Headquarters, where on Delaney’s authority Song Kee was permitted to examine the dagger throught the agency of which Irene Grenville had met her death.

It was an oddly shaped weapon, with a long handle roughly carved, tapering toward the blade. There was no guard dividing handle and blade. The blade was of an unusual narrowness, shaped like an enlarged bodkin, very sharp at the point, duller at the sides.

With Delaney standing impatiently by, Song Kee favored the deadly instrument with a long examination. Twice he laid it back on the table and turned away from it. But something about it seemed to fascinate him and he returned to it. At last he drew a small rule from his pocket and measured it with great exactness, noting down the measurements on the back of an envelope upon which at the same time he made a most detailed drawing. Then he said to Delaney—

“Is there any proof that this dagger belonged to Grover?”

“Not as I know of. We didn’t bother about that. The finger-prints were enough for us.”

“What did he say about it?”

“Aw, of course he denied ever seein’ the thing before.”

“Yes, he would do that,” Song Kee said.

He picked up the dagger again, holding it by the blade, the end of the handle thus pointed at the detective.

“I wonder,” he said, “why there should be all those little notches along the top of the handle?”

Delaney glanced at the weapon indifferently.

“Why shouldn’t there be? Ain’t it carved all over?”

“Yes, but—”

Song Kee stopped and smiled at the detective.

“Maybe I’m just imagining things, Mr. Delaney,” he said, leading the way from the room.

Before the doorway of Police Headquarters Song Kee paused.

“Delaney,” he said, “did you find any motive for the killing of this Grenville woman either by Grover—or by anyone else?”

Delaney puffed at a cigar he had just fired.

“Well, I figure it this way. Grover was in love with the dame. And he was what I call a ‘one-woman-guy.’ But the ‘one-woman-one-man’ stuff didn’t go with Irene. Anything that wore pants and packed a wad of bills looked good to her. Grover got sore and—woof!” Delaney made an expressive gesture.

“But Grover said—”

“Fergit it, kid. I know what Grover said — but — well—” And Delaney winked broadly.

The next day Song Kee devoted to the curious pursuit of reading old newspapers.

From publication office to publication office he went, going through the files of the morning and evening dailies. He himself could not have told exactly for what he was searching. But he kept on looking, and toward nightfall in a journal noted for its news of the theatrical world he found an item which intrigued him. Surreptitiously he cut it from the paper, and preserving it carefully in his pocketbook, quietly hurried away.

He journeyed uptown to his rooms. For a long time he sat motionless by the window staring unseeingly into the street. His face was as devoid of expression as that of a wooden Indian. Only his eyes were alive and they shone with a lively interest and an intense concentration. Suddenly an exclamation broke from his lips. He jumped to his feet and with the quickness of thought changed into a dinner jacket and left.

He took a taxi to the Ralston Hotel and sent up his card to Mr. Sito Okawa. After a few moments’ wait, he was asked to ascend to the apartment of the Japanese attaché.

He found the room to which he was admitted in some disorder. Open suitcases were on the floor. A half-packed English kit-bag stood on a chair against which leaned a strapped bundle of umbrellas and canes. In the centre stood Okawa in an embroidered jacket, smoking as he directed his valet in the business of packing. He came forward to greet Song Kee.

There ensued an exchange of courtesies in which only two Orientals could seriously indulge. Then—

“My business, Mr. Okawa,” Song Kee said, “is of small importance—a question about a Mr. Grover whom I believe you knew.”

Sito Okawa made a gesture of sadness.

“Ah, that poor young man,” he said in tone of deepest melancholy.

“You believe him guilty then of the killing of this dancing woman?”

“I?” Okawa shrugged his shoulders. “I believe nothing, really. How should I? All I know is what the papers printed about the unfortunate affair. But your question, my dear friend?”

“Quite so,” Song Kee answered briskly. “It is about the appointment he is said to have had with you on the night of the murder. Are you quite sure it was for eight-fifteen rather than seven-fifteen as he has stated?”

Okawa contemplated the end of his cigarette consideringly.

“Sure, Mr. Song Kee?” he said at length. “How can we be sure of anything in this most remarkable world? Still, I have the distinct impression that the hour set for our meeting was eight-fifteen.”

“When did you make this appointment?”

“That same day at luncheon.”

Song Kee sighed deeply.

“The poor fellow,” he said. “I’m afraid there is nothing one can do for him. I have tried, but—” he sighed again.

Then he pulled himself together and extended his hand.

“It is most good of you to have received me so kindly. I will relieve you now of my troublesome presence, as I can see that you are busy.” He pointed to the half-completed packing. “You are leaving town?”

“Tomorrow or the next day,” Okawa replied. “My duties at the legation will require my presence in Washington. And I prepare for the possibility of a sudden start.”

Song Kee made his adieux. He bowed low and still lower backing toward the door. In his passage he stumbled against the bundle of umbrellas and canes leaning against the chair and knocked them with a clatter to the floor.

His apologies for his awkwardness were absurdly profuse. He picked up the things he had knocked down and stood fingering them nervously while he called himself several kinds of a clumsy, ungainly fool.

Okawa smilingly waved the apologies aside and relieving him of the bundle accompanied him to the door.

Song Kee looked out into the hall.

“It was just here in front of this door that the tragedy occurred, was it not?” he asked.

Okawa shook his head.

“No, my friend. A few feet further toward the elevator. There—just beneath that electric globe.”

Song Kee advanced to the spot indicated. Slowly Okawa followed him.

The Chinaman stood silent for a moment.

“So,” he said finally, “the dancing woman was about here, going in the direction of the elevator?”

“And Mr. Grover came along about here,” Okawa turned around so that he faced Song Kee.

The little Chinaman seemed to have forgotten Okawa’s presence. His eyes traveled slowly, as though measuring distance, down the hall. They stopped at a point on the wall perhaps twenty feet away. Then he smiled contentedly as one quite satisfied with the progress of events.

A discreet cough from Okawa brought him to himself. He turned and again thanking the Japanese for his courtesy, hurried off down the hall.

At the desk downstairs he drew the clerk aside and presented a card bearing Delaney’s name and a request to the hotel management to give the bearer what assistance he might require.

“Tell me,” he said, “who occupied the room four doors down the hall from Mr. Okawa on the night Miss Grenville was killed?”

The clerk consulted the guests’ list.

“That will be room four-thirty-eight. The room was empty that night,” he announced.

“And when rooms are empty are they left unlocked?”

“As a rule, no. But the maids are sometimes careless. We cannot watch all the time.”

“And the room opposite?” Song Kee asked,

“Let’s see. That is Count Angellotti’s bedroom.”

“Thank you,” Song Kee said as he turned away.

It was a smiling and somewhat excited Song Kee who stood at the entrance of the hotel and consulted his watch.

He hurried to a little Chinese restaurant on Fourth Avenue where he indulged in strange dishes with stranger names never printed on a Chinese-American menu. Then he dashed into the Subway and was borne swiftly southward.

He came to the surface of the Bridge. He journeyed north on Park Row until it changed into the Bowery. Then he turned into a side street leading through a ravine of ill-kept tenements toward the East River. At a house not far from the corner he stopped. He descended into the basement and knocked vigorously on a black, greasy door.

A minute or so later, the door was opened ever so slightly and from out of the darkness gleamed a pair of slanting eyes.

Song Kee said a few words in a southern Chinese dialect and was admitted to the house.

“Take me to your most respected master,” he said in the same tongue.

His guide led him along an evil smelling hall, up a flight of rickety stairs ending in a sheet metal door. With a key which dangled at his waist the guide opened the door and drew aside for Song Kee to pass.

The room Song Kee entered seemed only an ante-chamber to still another apartment. It was empty, but through a door at the rear could be heard the sound of many voices.

“Wait here,” the guide said with great respect, “and I will call my master.”

He disappeared into the inner room, returning shortly with another Chinaman. He was a man of many years whose emaciated frame was accentuated by the long plum-colored robe which hung in loose, rich folds from his shoulders. When he recognized his visitor he bowed almost to the floor.

“You do my poor house great honor,” he said in a thin, quavering voice.

Song Kee drew near and spoke in low, peremptory tones.

The aged Chinaman bowed again. Then he turned to the servant.

“Go,” he ordered, “to the barbarian they name the ‘Rat’ and say to him that I would borrow the tools of his trade for an evening.”

Fifteen minutes later Song Kee left the house carrying in his pocket a ring of strangely shaped keys.

He returned to the Ralston Hotel. This time he did not enter through the main doorway which faced the Avenue but through a lesser entrance on the side street. Unconcernedly he strolled through the corridors until he reached a stairway leading to the upper floors. When he was quite certain that he was unnoticed by any of the hotel employees he ran quickly up this stairway until it curved around the elevator shaft and he was free from observation. Then he made his way more slowly until he reached the fourth floor.

Down the hallway in which Irene Grenville had been killed he moved cautiously until he reached a certain doorway. A great sigh of relief came through his parted lips as, looking up, he saw that the transom was dark. As quickly as though he were a professional thief he drew the ring of oddly shaped keys from his pocket and tried them one by one until the lock beneath his hand turned. Softly as though stealing into a chamber of death he stole into the room.

His errand within took him no more than five or perhaps ten minutes to complete. Then as silently and as cautiously as he had entered, he withdrew, relocking the door behind him.

But he did not come away empty banded. Under his loose coat he clung firmly to something, holding it eagerly as though it were of great value to him.

Not caring now whether or not he were seen, he walked boldly down the hall and waited for the elevator, which a moment later bore him to the main corridor below.

Now his hurry and excitement were over. What he had set out to do he had accomplished. Leisurely he turned his steps homeward. At a corner drug store he stopped, and spent a few moments telephoning. A half hour later he was in bed sleeping as quietly as a tired child.

IV

The next morning at eleven o’clock five people were gathered in Police Commissioner Oglethorpe’s office at headquarters awaiting the coming of Song Kee. The Commissioner himself sat at his desk going through his morning’s mail. Detective Sergeant Delaney stood beside the window looking down into Centre Street and talked in subdued whispers to a representative from the District Attorney’s office. In a far corner sat Sylvia Granger beside her fiancé, Grover. They did not talk, but just sat there hand in hand waiting expectantly.

At five minutes after the hour, Song Kee was ushered into the room. He was immaculately garbed in morning coat, striped trousers and patent leather boots. In one hand he carried a silk hat in the latest mode, in the other a cane. When Delaney saw him he gasped. In dress and manner he was so different from the little Chinaman who used to lounge in the backroom of the - Branch Detective Bureau, tolerated for his good nature and his generosity in the matter of fairly good cigars. His surprise was changed to awe when he saw the Commissioner rise and greet the Chinaman with the respect one shows to an equal.

Song Kee bowed low to Miss Granger and the Commissioner. He greeted Delaney with a genial wave of the hand. Then he hung his hat on the Commissioner’s rack and leaned his cane carefully against it. These details attended to he seated himself comfortably in the centre of the room.

“I must apologize for keeping you all waiting,” he said, “but my taxi was delayed—a little argument between my driver and one of your excellent traffic policemen. But now that I am here we can proceed at once with the matter in hand.

“You are all here,” he continued, “at my request. Be assured, I would not have sent for you had the affair not been urgent. I have done three things — proved the validity of certain statements I once made to you, Mr. Oglethorpe; given Miss Granger the help she asked for, and taken advantage of Mr. Delaney’s offer to ‘go to it’ if I thought I could discover anything he had overlooked in the Grenville murder case.”

A half suppressed snort from Delaney interrupted him. He turned.

“Yes, Mr. Delaney,” he said gently, “I have found several little things which you overlooked—one of which is the real murderer of Irene Grenville.”

Sylvia Granger started from her chair.

“Then— then—” she began, but words failed her and she sank back beside Grover, her eyes fixed doubtfully upon the Chinaman.

“Miss Granger,” Song Kee said smiling across the room, “Mr. Grover is as innocent as you or I of the Grenville woman’s death. In a few moments I think I shall be able to convince these gentlemen of that fact.”

“Well, you’ll have to go some, young man,” the rather officious Assistant District Attorney put in. “The evidence we have—”

“Would be enough to convict the Commissioner himself,” Song Kee laughed, “if wrongly applied.” He paused.

“I can see that you, like Mr. Delaney, have been taken in by facts. And as I told Mr. Oglethorpe once when we discussed these matters, facts are not always sign-posts to the truth. The clever criminal will conceal his crime beneath misleading facts, rather than lies. In this case the criminal chose to create facts pointing to the guilt of another. And to use a phrase of your delightful slang, ‘you fell for it’.”

“Aw, fer the love of Mike, get on.” This from Delaney, sotto voce.

Song Kee overheard him. “Very well, Mr. Delaney, I will ‘get on’.” He turned to the Commissioner.

“Mr. Oglethorpe, you will recall that my complaint about the Occidental detective concerned his inability to believe in the unbelievable. That applied in this case. Mr. Delaney here, who, by the way, is an efficient man, was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that Mr. Grover was guilty of the murder of Irene Grenville. He was taken in by the facts presented—the ‘almost’ eye-witness to the act—the finger-prints on the dagger. When I suggested to him that perhaps another might have killed the dancing woman, he laughed at me. The idea was beyond belief and as such he would not believe in it.”

Delaney clenched his unlighted cigar more firmly between his teeth and muttered, “Yes, and I’d like to see the guy that could.”

“Now, I’ll admit,” Song Kee continued, paying no attention to the interruption, “that Mr. Delaney did not have the incentive that I had to believe in the unbelievable. He had not had the pleasure of meeting Miss Granger nor had he drawn inspiration from her faith in her fiancé’s innocence. So—

“But to go on. I started to work from the point of view that the accused man was innocent. Therefore someone else must have committed the crime. But who? To find that out was my task. And at the outset I was very much at sea.

“I went to see my friend, Mr. Delaney, But he could do little to help me. His opinion, you see, was—well, prejudiced. However, through his kindness, I found out the names and all there was to know about the occupants of the rooms on the floor where the dancing woman had lived. Then, this information was of little use. One and all they were beyond suspicion. Then Mr. Delaney brought me down here and showed me the fatal dagger.

“Here was something interesting, and, it seemed to me, important could I but see it. It was a queer knife—very long with a straight handle running into a needle shaped blade. And there was something else peculiar about it. The top of the handle was carved with little notches and they were not in keeping with the carving on the rest of the handle. Also they were newly cut. Why? I could not answer—then.”

Song Kee paused. His audience was silent, tensely, eagerly waiting for him to continue.

“My next clue, I found iii the files of one of your daily papers.” he went on. “I knew of no other place to seek the identity of someone who might desire Miss Grenville’s death. But I reasoned that in some column of stage and Broadway gossip I might find something to put me on the track. I did. It was only a tiny paragraph, but it gave the reason why someone—someone I knew of — might kill the dancing woman. It merely related the return to his own country of a young foreigner whom she had ruined — in honor as well as in pocketbook. This young foreigner came of a family that holds its honor very dear. And by a strange coincidence, the young man’s brother had an apartment on the same floor with the woman who had dragged in the mud the honor of his family.”

“Say, you don’t mean the dago count, Angellotti?” Delaney shouted.

Song Kee held up his hand.

“Patience,” he said; “we’ll come to that later.”

“In China,” he resumed, “we have a saying to the effect that truth grows out of thought and concentration. I applied it. In my rooms I gave myself over to meditation. I had found someone who might have desired the death of the dancing woman. If I could discover a way in which he could have killed her, I might be making progress. And after a little, I did discover a way. From out of the realm of my subconscious mind there flashed an idea. What if the Grenville woman had not been stabbed at all — but shot? What if the instrument were not a dagger—but an arrow? Then I remembered that the people from whom the foreigner was sprung had been the world’s greatest archers, since the tenth century. Also I remembered the freshly cut notches on the handle of the knife—notches, which might be used to catch in the string of a bow.”

He stopped and glanced around the room. The impression he had made on his hearers was one that would have satisfied an actor most avid for attention. Oglethorpe and the Assistant District Attorney were listening intently. Sylvia Granger and her lover, whose hand she still held, were leaning forward, their eyes glowing with excitement. Even Delaney, the skeptic, had dropped his pose of indifference.

Song Kee continued.

“My next step was to visit the scene of the crime to discover—well, if the thing could have been done as I had imagined. And incidentally I paid my respects to Mr. Sito Okawa, a most courteous gentleman. That visit was productive of several things. One was the knowledge of exactly where the dancing woman had been when she was killed. And standing where she had been, I saw the place from which an arrow could have been shot. Mr. Delaney had given me the approximate angle at which the knife had been driven into the body and this angle corresponded to that which would have obtained had the woman been killed by an arrow shot through the open transom of a room twenty-five feet down the hall.

“I left Mr. Okawa and questioned the clerk of the hotel. He told me that on the night of the murder the room in question had been unoccupied. The room opposite was the bedroom of Count Angellotti.”

“Then it was the dago you suspected?” Delaney again broke out.

Song Kee smiled softly upon the now thoroughly excited detective. He seemed about to answer him. Then he changed his mind and said, “Will you pass me my cane, Mr. Delaney?”

“Mr. Grover,” he said when Delaney had handed him the cane, “have you ever seen this cane before?”

He held out the bamboo stick.

Grover started in surprise. The seeming irrelevance of the question dazed him for an instant. Then he looked closely at the cane.

“Why, yes, I think so,” he said hesitatingly. Then: “Yes, yes, I remember. It’s—”

But Song Kee stopped him.

“Sh!” he said quickly. “Would you mind writing the name of its owner on that slip of paper on the desk beside you?”

As Grover obeyed, he went on.

“Now, gentlemen, I must confess to a slight infraction of your laws. The next thing I did was to provide myself with some skeleton keys. Armed with these I again visited the fourth floor of the Ralston Hotel. In the room I unlawfully entered I found that for which I searched. I found the bow that had driven the arrow into Irene Grenville’s breast.”

He answered the question in their eyes.

“You are wondering what I did with it. I brought it here. It is here.”

He held out the cane.

“Look!”

With a deft movement he pulled at the handle. It came out of the bamboo stick. And the handle was the hilt of a long, evilly shaped knife, the blade of which had been hidden in the hollow of the bamboo.

“This,” he said in explanation, “is the arrow which brought death to the dancing woman. Through the kindness of Mr. Delaney I was able to borrow it this morning. And this,” he bent the long stick of bamboo, “is the bow. String it with a piece of cord beyond the joints at either end and you have a deadly and effective weapon.”

“Wait a minute—wait a minute,” Delaney shouted. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Commissioner, but let’s get this thing straight. D’ye mean to say Mister Song Kee, that some guy who had it in for the Grenville woman hid in the vacant room and potted her when she went down the hall?”

“Exactly.”

“Pretty fishy! But we won’t say nothin’ about that. Maybe though you won’t mind tellin’ me, if this cock and bull story of yours is true, how Grover’s finger-prints come to be on the knife?”

Song Kee smiled patiently.

“How did your own get there?”

“Mine—they never were there!”

Song Kee smiled again, but less patiently.

“Listen, Mr. Delaney. Just a few moments ago I asked you to pass me my cane. You did so, giving it to me by the handle. Now, providing someone who touched it after you, wearing gloves and touching it only at its very end, had pulled it from its sheath and using it as an arrow had shot it into a body — whose finger-prints would then be on it?”

He laughed outright at the expression on Delaney’s face.

“I don’t blame you,” he said, “for your surprise. We are dealing in this case with a man who was very subtle—a man who manufactured, not lies, but facts, to cover his crime. One must marvel at him. Patiently he waited and studied the habits of the woman he had come to kill. He found that she invariably left her apartments on her way to the theatre promptly at seven-fifteen. He arranged that someone should be in the hall at that time on the night he intended to murder her. He even arranged that the finger-prints of that person should be upon the weapon he was to use. This he contrived by the very simple method which I have just now used to convince the skeptical Mr. Delaney. Read, Mr. Grover, the name of the murderer on the slip of paper you are holding in your hand.

In a trembling voice Grover read the name he had written in compliance with Song Kee’s request that the identity of the owner of the cane be set down on paper rather than spoken.

“Sito Okawa.”

“Now tell us when and where you last saw Mr. Okawa’s cane.”

“In the restaurant at luncheon on the day of the murder. It was the occasion upon, which we made the appointment to meet in his rooms that night. He was leaving without it. When he remembered it, and as I was nearer to it than he, he asked me to hand it to him.”

“Which you did—and left your fingerprints on the handle.”

Song Kee rose and bowed like a showman finished with his exhibition.

At once everyone in the room began to talk, plying him with questions. The jangling of the telephone brought a tardy silence. Commissioner Oglethorpe answered it.

“Yes? Good God! Go on, go on! He, left a note? Read it.”

Oglethorpe hung up the receiver with a bang.

He turned to his companions and said gravely:

“Sito Okawa killed himself in the Ralston Hotel last night. A note was found beside his body saying that he had killed Irene Grenville to avenge the dishonored name of his family.”

Everyone except Song Kee and Delaney stared fixedly at the Commissioner, Delaney was watching the Chinaman, who was standing unmoved and unperturbed, looking out of the window.

“Say, Mr. Song Kee,” the detective said grimly. “What did you have to do with this last?”

Song Kee shrugged.

“Perhaps nothing—perhaps everything,” he answered. “I don’t know. Last night when I went to his room I left a message. It was to the effect that it would be unfitting that the person of one of the Samurai be held in bondage and punished by foreigners even in the enforcement of their laws... It may be that he understood.”