The Blonde in Lower Six

Chapter One

It was a night when swirling fog scurried over the high peaks of San Francisco, to settle down in the comparatively windless tranquillity over Chinatown. Having hurried in from the ocean, the fog now became leisurely, settling down slowly upon the carved dragons, the distinctive roofs with their peculiar upturned corners — down to the level of the second- and third-story windows — and stopping.

As I emerged from the Stockton Street Tunnel, I couldn’t help noticing this vagary of the fog and wondering about the reason for it. So many nights I had seen the fog rush breathlessly in over the peaks, pause to hover over Chinatown, then settle to a point where the red neon signs gave it the appearance of fine blood particles suspended in the air in little ominous eddies — and down on the sidewalks there would be no fog at all, only a peculiar hush, a dampness — and a menace.

Behind me, lay the city of San Francisco, modem, up-to-date, plagued with those problems which are brought about by the complexities of civilization. Ahead of me was a section which, so far as the eye could tell, might well have been eight thousand miles away — a section of old Cathay. San Francisco’s Chinatown is like that, and the line of demarcation is as sharp as though it had been etched with the blade of a keen dagger.

When one is being used by the police as a convenient scapegoat upon whom to blame unsolved crimes, it behooves one to be careful. And when one has, moreover, incurred the enmity of the organized underworld, it behooves one to be doubly careful. But tonight I had an even greater incentive to seek the dark byways. I was calling on Soo Hoo Duck, the king of Chinatown.

There was a time when one who had the proper credentials needed only to pass the point where San Francisco’s ornamental street lights became crested with dragons, the sign of the beginning of Chinatown, to go about carrying on the business of Soo Hoo Duck with absolute impunity.

Now, with the war, there were spying eyes and listening ears. There were those who would give much to learn, even to within a block, the nerve center from which the activities of organized Chinatown are conducted. One bomb dropped from a submarine-borne airplane, or perhaps skillfully planted in an adjoining building would have done much to wreck the Chinese espionage system.

I entered a narrow alley. Only too well I realized the dangers which might lurk here, but I realized also that no one could follow me into this alley without my knowing it.

I walked half the length of the alley and waited.

The fog-filled silence was broken by the occasional moaning of fog signals from the bay. The muted noises of the city, merged by distance into a continuous murmur of sound, were not loud enough to be audible unless one deliberately listened.

As the sound of my breathing became more quiet, I could hear the steady, monotonous drip... drip... drip of moisture from the eaves of the houses.

There was no sound that would indicate the presence of any other human being.

Years of practice in threading my way through the darkness stood me in good stead. Long before any of us knew what vitamins were, the eating of carrots to enable one to see at night was one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the underworld. I counted doorways, paused before an innocent-appearing door, opened it and entered a smelly little passageway. The door swung shut behind me and I was in darkness so intense that it was difficult to keep even a sense of direction. I waited a full five minutes. Then I walked slowly through the smelly darkness, perhaps a hundred feet. Again I waited cautiously.

When I opened the door that was now barring my way, I was in a crowded anteroom, merely one human atom in a composite whole, a stream of packed humanity that was flowing ever forward toward the lighted stage of a Chinese theater.

Cymbals clashed.

A thin, reedy note of a Chinese flute snarled at the auditory nerve, screaming, at times, into a pitch of sound so high that it was all but inaudible.

The stage at the front of the theater held no curtain, no scenery. It was merely a raised platform containing three or four chairs, a large table, a small table and a couple of stools. The Chinese feel that imagination is a rare attribute, something to be cultivated, and so they refrain from giving an audience all the facilities the occidental theatergoer has learned to require before his imagination can visualize that which is happening on the stage in terms of actuality.

The Chinese flute skirled into a new ecstasy of sound. The cymbals clashed again.

A player walked out on the stage, strutting with that exaggerated swing which characterizes the Chinese actor. He was portraying a military hero.

A hand touched me on the shoulder.

An old Chinese, stooped and palsied, let his yellowed talon slip carelessly down my arm, then turned and wormed his way through the crowded darkness. I followed, taking advantage of that moment when the attention of all spectators was on the stage.

A few seconds later, I was groping through dark underground passageways. Doors opened and closed. Sliding panels moved back so that shrewd eyes could size me up as I passed, until I came at length to that familiar flight of stairs with the door at the top — a steel-cored door that seemed to be a particularly flimsy portal of checked wood, the varnish dark with age and grimed with dirt.

The door swung open on massive ball-bearing hinges and Ngat T’oy was waiting on the threshold to greet me.

“Ed Jenkins!” she said. Just two words, but the tone of her voice spoke volumes.

I entered. The door whooshed shut behind me.

She gave me her hand, a hand so long and slim and fragile that instinctively one touched it as one would hold the petal of a flower.

“It’s been a long time,” I said.

“Too long,” she told me.

For a moment, her face held that inscrutable expression of oriental impassivity which is the property of a race that can mask its feelings; then she was laughing up at me. Full red lips parted to show teeth that were as pearls in a setting of rare old ivory, eyes that might have been covered with black lacquer — eyes that glistened with vitality. “It was nice of you to come. Must you wait for a summons?”

“My presence brings danger, Little Sun,” I said, using the American translation of her name.

“Danger!” she said scornfully. “Since when,” she asked, “has Ed Jenkins become afraid of danger?”

“My fear,” I said, “is for you.”

Of a sudden, the smile faded from her face. “My race does not fear danger, because it has never had security. For centuries your people have basked in security and therefore fear danger. But as for us — we have never known anything but danger — floods, famine, pestilence, marauders, conquerors. Death is always jeering at our elbow. Therefore, we do not fear danger — nor do we fear death.”

And she was right. One never knows a Chinese to worry. That is because, as a race, they are threatened with so many potential misfortunes it would be impossible to catalogue them all, let alone fear them, and worry is but an attenuated fear, long drawn-out, clutching constantly at the mind.

“What,” I asked, “is new?”

“Father wants you to do something as a favor to him. It is something very, very important.”

“So far as I am concerned, it is done,” I said.

“Wait until you hear what it is.”

“Do you know?”

Her eyes were mischievous. “I do but I’m not supposed to tell.”

“Give me a hint, Ngat T’oy.”

“To do that would rob my father of the pleasure of asking for himself,” she said, and her face was suddenly the inscrutable, demure countenance of a dutiful Chinese daughter.

Ngat T’oy was like that. Educated in California, she was pure Chinese beneath the flippant veneer of Western civilization and casual slang. Her mind was just like that, a mysterious well of oriental mysticism beneath a layer of the Occident. There could be no mixture of the two. At times, she was merely a casual American girl with breezy informality and a mischievous give-and-take of repartee. Then, when the going got tough, she became as Chinese as Cathay itself.

“Come,” she said, “and bring your ears and your wisdom to the house of my father.”

Chapter Two

Soo Hoo Duck had the air of benevolent wisdom which comes with age. The eyes that peered out at the world from behind horn-rimmed spectacles were kindly, shrewd and penetrating.

Dressed in a loose Chinese costume with baggy sleeves and wearing those awkward Chinese shoes which shuffled along the floor as he walked, the man, nevertheless, had that about him which made his carriage solemnly dignified.

The older Chinese prefer to shake hands with themselves rather than with you. And it is etiquette to clasp your own hands over the heart, agitate them gently, and bow.

I returned Soo Hoo Duck’s courteous salutations.

“It is as though warm sun gladdened my heart on a winter morning,” Soo Hoo Duck said in Cantonese. “I was stumbling in the dark, but now with your presence, warmth and light illuminate my path. My feet are to follow.”

“I am but a mirror,” I said. “The light which you see comes not from me, but is the reflection of your own wisdom illuminating the pathway the Gods have selected for your feet.”

“You have the modesty of wisdom,” Soo Hoo Duck said. “It has been written that only the very wise are very humble. It is the stupid man who has the loud voice. Will you join me in a cup of tea?”

Soo Hoo Duck, bowing again, escorted me across deep Oriental rugs that seemed to the feet like a springy mat of pine needles in a virgin forest. Overhead, chandeliers of cut and polished crystal glittered in myriad coruscations. The furniture was of teakwood and Chinese mahogany inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Suspended from the walls were wide banners of silk on which had been embroidered the words of various prominent scholars, black ideographs against a red silk background.

We seated ourselves on those straightbacked chairs which only the disciplined spines of the Chinese can find truly comfortable. A servant brought tea, melon seeds, thick, sweet almond cakes, placed them on the carved, inlaid table and departed noiselessly. Ngat T’oy placed cigarettes and matches at my elbow.

Soo Hoo Duck glanced at his daughter. “You will interpret for our distinguished visitor,” he said.

My knowledge of Cantonese is such that I can follow ordinary conversation and reply in kind, and I happen to know that Soo Hoo Duck has an excellent knowledge of English. Yet when he wishes to be doubly certain that he says what he intends to say and to scan closely the replies of his visitor, he presses Ngat T’oy into the job of interpreter, which gives him the advantage of listening to his own statements after he has uttered them, as well as hearing the replies of his visitor twice.

Recently, however, Ngat T’oy was becoming inclined to take liberties with the utterances of her father, masking her short cuts by the use of slang which, being completely foreign to Soo Hoo Duck’s vocabulary, left him very much out on a limb.

“Tell him,” Soo Hoo Duck said, “the preliminaries.”

Ngat T’oy said, “You know, Ed, these days, you never can tell what you’re up against. You’ll get what looks like a live lead and it will turn out to be a dud. Then something will come along that looks like an absolute washout and it will be the real goods. That’s what’s bothering the paterfamilias. He’s in touch with a jane by the name of Betty Crofath who has something he can’t afford to overlook, if she has it.”

I glanced at Soo Hoo Duck.

The old men’s eyes were puckered in puzzled bewilderment as he listened to what his daughter was saying. She paused and he said to her sharply in Cantonese, “What is this language you are using?”

She met his gaze guilelessly. “The language of the white barbarians.”

“Truly it is barbarous,” the old man sighed. “Go ahead.”

“Okay,” Ngat T’oy said to me. “This jane tries to make a build-up without first putting an ante in the jack pot or letting us know how many cards she wants to draw. She writes Dad a letter that she’ll be in San Francisco day after tomorrow at the Pelton Hotel. She has certain information which is definitely authentic and which she wants to turn over gratis.

“That’s the payoff, Ed. That Annie Oakley business. You know, we get all sorts of propositions from people who want to turn over information for a payoff. We have certain definite ways of playing them, but this jane is different. It’s a purely voluntary contribution to the cause as far as she is concerned. There’s only one condition. She has to deliver the information to my father personally.”

“What,” I asked, “is the general nature of the information?”

Ngat T’oy said to her father in rapid Chinese, “How much am I at liberty to tell him about this information?”

Soo Hoo Duck’s face was utterly without expression. “To this man,” he said, “I bare my soul.”

Ngat T’oy said, “Secret data on the entire construction program of the Japanese Navy, and the exact location of the different yards where carriers, cruisers, destroyers and other ships are being constructed.”

I gave a low whistle.

“And,” she went on, “that isn’t all. It seems that just as everyone misjudged the Japanese before Pearl Harbor, they are now making the mistake of misjudging them afterward. There has been a lot of talk that, according to the true oriental concept of things, the Japanese will never make a peace at which they will lose face; that they will go on butting their heads against a stone wall — that if they can’t win, they will commit military hara-kari by fighting to the last soldier.”

I nodded.

“It is,” she said, “sound psychology except for one thing.”

“What,” I asked, “is that?”

“There is a very strong amount of evidence dead against it.”

“Evidence that can be believed?”

She nodded. “The Japanese have absorbed much from their contact with occidental civilization. The Japanese would be extremely reluctant to admit defeat and taste the bitter dregs of the cup of humiliation.”

“I can well understand.”

“But,” she said, “Japan is cunning. Japan remembers what happened to Germany in nineteen-eighteen. In place of carrying on until the Allies trampled her so completely in the dust she could never rise again, Germany accepted the best terms she could get, pretended an external docility, and within twenty years, was in a position to try again. And that time, she came within an ace of doing it.

“There is some talk in Japan that it would be better to accept even humiliation and an apparent loss of face for another quarter of a century and then conquer the world, using the hard-earned knowledge gained in the present war, than to carry on until the last gun is fired. Because the smart ones in Japan realize now that when the last gun is fired, it will be pointed at Japan’s heart and secret bombs will be used that will leave nothing in Japan for the Allies to shoot at.”

“And so?” I asked.

“And so,” she said, “we do much speculating about Betty Crofath. The information which she has is vital if it is true. It is deadly dangerous if it is untrue. If it is true, it could only have been obtained in one way. But there is one other piece of information she has that bothers us,” Ngat T’oy said, an anxious expression on her face.

“The fact that she got in touch with your father?”

Ngat T’oy nodded. “To a few of the influential Chinese, my father is well known. To the mass of Chinatown, he is but a name — yet even the name is well guarded. Go into any place in Chinatown and ask for Soo Hoo Duck, and the person whom you ask will look at you with the peculiarly courteous disinterest at which my race is so adept. But thereafter, just try and leave Chinatown without being shadowed; try and conceal yourself so well that within twenty-four hours we would not know all about you — all about your background and how you had learned of the name, Soo Hoo Duck.”

I nodded.

“And now,” she said, “out of a clear sky, a woman writes from Buenos Aires a letter addressed to my father at the post-office box where he receives his mail under the name of Tai Yat. If our enemies have that information, it is important to know where they got it.”

“And what,” I asked, “do you wish me to do?”

“Are you free to do it for us, Ed?”

I merely nodded.

“No, please, tell us. We know it will be doubly dangerous for you, but there is no one else.”

“What I can do,” I told her, “I am glad to do.”

She said, “Betty Crofath is on a train that will arrive in Tucson at midnight tonight. She is in lower six of car four. She will be suspicious of anyone with an oriental background. But an attractive white man who is traveling with her could get a lot of information about her, which we need.”

Soo Hoo Duck interposed once more in Chinese. “A man,” he said, “who has that bearing that is attractive to women, who can charm the heart so that the ears hear his voice as the tinkle of running water; a man who has the power to draw women to him as a magnet draws iron. Tell him all of this, Ngat T’oy.”

Ngat T’oy turned to me. “A guy who is lousy with S.A.,” she said.

Soo Hoo Duck looked with surprise at his daughter as she ceased talking. “You have told him this?” he asked.

“I have told him that.”

Soo Hoo Duck sighed resignedly.

“Are you trying to flatter or to kid me?” I asked Ngat T’oy.

“Neither, Ed. You can do it.”

“Where do you get this Clark Gable stuff?” I asked her.

“How do you know what you do to a woman’s heart? Peace now, and let us plan what we are to do. Can we count on you?”

I nodded.

Ngat T’oy clapped her hands. A servant appeared in the doorway. Ngat T’oy asked him in Chinese, “You have a report?”

He came forward, bowing, and laid a plain Manila paper envelope on the table. Then he bowed and withdrew.

I opened the envelope.

It contained a plane ticket from San Francisco to Tucson — a railroad ticket from Tucson to San Francisco via Los Angeles — and a Pullman ticket for lower seven, car four, Tucson to Los Angeles.

Soo Hoo Duck’s sharp eyes slithered over the contents of the envelope as I pulled out the colored strips of paper.

“It is well,” he murmured approvingly. “Time has been short.”

There flashed through my mind some idea of what those tickets on such short notice must have meant, the pre-emption of outstanding reservations, the frenzied telephone calls, embarrassed official explanations. And it had all been done with the swift efficiency of an organization that ran as smoothly as a piece of high-speed machinery.

I put the tickets back in the envelope, and the envelope in my pocket.

A look of serenity established itself on the face of Soo Hoo Duck. “The problem is now gone from my mind,” he said, “as the morning mists leave the lake.”

I wished I had shared his assurance. Problems were being turned over in my own mind, problems that presented many angles. “You and I will have to arrange a few details,” I said to Ngat T’oy.

Her eyes laughed into mine. “Your words,” she said in Chinese, “have ever been the masters of my ears.”

Soo Hoo Duck beamed at us. So far as he was concerned, the matter was all disposed of and his mind could devote itself exclusively to the things of beauty in the world.

So for some ten minutes we split dried melon seeds, sipped tea and discussed the thought processes by which the sweeping curves of conifer bows had been translated into the Chinese architecture, which gives to its eaves that peculiar concave sweep.

At the end of that time, I made my farewells, giving a glance at Ngat T’oy as I bowed myself out of the room.

She joined me in the corridor beyond the heavy door.

“It’s going to be up to you to make the contact at the hotel, on behalf of your father,” I told her. “I’ll find out what I can. She must have a reservation at the Pelton Hotel. See if you can get a room across the corridor, or perhaps an adjoining room. Her train should arrive about nine. At eleven o’clock on the dot, you are to knock on the door of her room. But if, for any reason, anything should have gone wrong — if she doesn’t check in, for instance — you are to meet me at the Golden Lotus Petal at exactly ten-thirty. Do you understand?”

“At eleven,” she said, repeating after me, Chinese fashion, “I am to knock on the door of her room, if everything has gone without a hitch, if she registers at the hotel and there are no suspicious circumstances. Otherwise, I am to meet you at the Golden Lotus Petal at ten-thirty. Right?”

“Right.”

“And why it is so important that I get a room near hers?” she asked me.

“Because I don’t want anyone to know that you have gone to her room — anyone who might be waiting in the lobby. And when and if we decide she is to meet your father face to face, you will only need to spirit him into your room, then take a few quick steps across the hall. Under no circumstances is this girl to know that you are registered in the hotel. Understand?”

“Yes. Where will you be, Ed?”

“Around.”

“Okay.”

I patted her shoulder. My arm dropped to her waist. She abruptly came close to me with a lithe, cuddling motion, then swiftly twisted free.

“Good-by, Ed, and good luck! And don’t worry about not having the S.A.”

I left immediately to make my plane connection for Tucson.

Chapter Three

Dry desert heat held the nightdarkened city of Tucson in an inexorable grip. This heat was different from the high-humidity, smothering heat of the tropics. It was a heat in which perspiration evaporated so fast that the skin felt dry while the body suffered from dehydration.

Fine particles of abrasive desert dust seemed to be suspended in the air — particles so small as to be invisible, yet making the clothes seem harshly abrasive to the skin. A few months later this air would be as invigorating and almost as intoxicating as wine. Tourists would flock from the snowbound East to soak up the dry sunlight, the tang of the pure air. But now, for a period of six weeks, heat held sway in the desert.

The train was late, and no one seemed to have any very definite information as to when it could be expected.

The railroad depot was crowded with tired, dejected bits of human flotsam, some of them people who had been trying in vain to get on trains for nearly twenty-four hours, sprawled wearily in postures of dejection, getting up when they heard the sound of an approaching train, picking up their baggage, plodding wearily out to the platform, standing in long lines, being pushed and jostled, hearing the discouraging voice of a tired conductor, the slam of a vestibule door, and then trudging wearily back to the depot to resume another period of waiting.

I preferred to wait in the fresh air out on the platform — air which had no sign of a breeze, yet into which almost imperceptibly was beginning to creep that before-dawn freshness that gives tired mortals the courage to face another scorching summer day.

The block signed changed. I heard the distant “who-o-o-o” of the train. Then, a few minutes later, the long, weary line of cars rumbled tiredly into the station.

The conductor looked at my reservation, turned me over to a porter, and a few minutes later, I was walking down the green-curtained Pullman aisle.

I sat down on the edge of lower seven and looked across at the buttoned green curtains of berth six. In all probability, the girl would sleep late in the morning, but I couldn’t take any chances. I needed to be on deck as soon as she was stirring.

I slipped out of my clothes, relaxing already in the cool, air-conditioned train. By the time the long line of coaches creaked into protesting motion once more, I was sliding down between the sheets. I raised the curtain on the windows so that I would be sure to waken at daylight.

It seemed that I had no more than closed my eyes when light stung them awake. It was just about sunrise and the desert clicking past the window was a disorderly procession of saguaro, ocotillo, cholla cactus and the lacy branches of smoke trees.

There was only one other man in the washroom. He looked me over speculatively, laughed, and said, “I don’t know what your hurry is. We’re not going anywhere — at least we’re not getting anywhere.”

I sized him up — a man in his forties, jelly-jiggling fat, good-natured, moonfaced and bald. In the nineties, he would have been a drummer with a fund of naughty stories and an air of worldly wisdom. As it was, I couldn’t place him. A fat man who liked the creature comforts of food, drink and sleep. Yet he was up in the early morning, shaved, dressed, and waiting. For what?

“Lost more time?” I asked.

“Another forty-five minutes during the night.”

I said, “I hate crowded washrooms.”

“Same here. I can’t shave with other people jabbing me with elbows, jostling me with bags and suitcases. Going to Los Angeles?”

I nodded.

I let him see that I was too occupied with my shaving to care about engaging in further conversation.

He was still sitting there as I left.

There was no sign of motion in lower six when I checked.

The dining car wouldn’t be open for more than an hour, so I walked out to the vestibule for a couple of cigarettes. The porter found me, expressed surprise that I was up so early, tactfully mentioned that he couldn’t make up the berth until the person in the upper berth got up, and then went straggling off in the direction of the dining car.

I stood in the vestibule until my legs got tired. I went back to the smoking room. A couple of other early risers were there, also the man with whom I had spoken earlier. He was engaged in some sort of an argument with one of the men. He looked up, saw me and, for a moment, his voice seemed to undergo a change of pace. Then he was back in his verbal stride, hardly giving me a second glance.

I went back to stand in the swaying vestibule.

The man who had slept in the upper over my berth rang for the porter. As the porter brought the ladder for him to use in getting down. I saw the curtains billow into motion on lower five. An attractive young woman with unruly golden blonde hair pulled a robe around her and scurried for the washroom. Still no sign of motion from lower six.

I waited fifteen minutes, then strolled through to the men’s room. It was now a crowded mass of humanity. I went back to my station in the vestibule.

Some ten minutes later, the car door opened. I glanced around casually. The unruly blonde hair had now been carefully combed and brushed. Wide, frank blue eyes regarded me with just the right twinkle of good nature. The girl who had slept in lower five said, “I came out here for a before-breakfast cigarette. The dressing room is a mess. I hope you’re not going to object to smoke.”

“I’ll join you,” I said. “Or perhaps you’ll have one of mine.”

She took one of mine.

“Beastly, isn’t it,” she said as I held a match for her.

“It could be worse.”

“Not without concentrating on it.”

The sun was now beginning to pack a wallop. We moved over to the shady side, stood there smoking.

“Do you know if the dining car is open?” she asked.

“The waiter just started through for the first call.”

“Ouch! I suppose that means I’ll have to stand in line for coffee.”

I took a glance back into the aisle of the car. The porter was making up berths. There was still no sign of life from lower six.

I decided I’d have time for a quick cup of coffee before she could possibly get up. I felt that coffee would just about save my life.

“I’m going up,” I told the girl from lower five. “Want to trail along as I open doors?”

She nodded.

It was a long, interminable journey but there was a pleasant surprise at the end of it. The dining car wasn’t as yet completely filled. The steward saw me coming, held up two fingers and motioned us to a single table.

“This,” I said, “is luck.”

“A gift from the gods,” she announced. “You’ve really no idea what coffee does to my disposition.”

She was watching her figure. Grapefruit, black coffee, dry toast, fresh strawberries with a bare sprinkle of sugar and just a touch of cream.

With the train so crowded, I knew I could count on quick service. I had a rush order of ham and eggs, toast and coffee, and was ready to go back by the time she had finished her light breakfast. The strain of the heat and the grime of dust and travel seemed to have eased. I felt much better. The blonde’s name was Hazel Deering. She was from the South and going to San Francisco. She led me to believe, in a vague way, that she was going to San Francisco to be near a boy friend who had been stationed at the Presidio. It was nothing definite that she said, merely a casual impression I derived from a lot of little things.

Lower six was still sleeping.

My section had been made up, so Miss Deering settled down with me when we returned. The man who had the upper was in at breakfast.

We talked about the desert, about the South, about the war, about politics. She had a quick mind, a way of making herself thoroughly at ease, and, as became a traveling acquaintance, was completely casual in her manner.

It was eight-thirty when the porter came and tugged at the green curtains of lower six.

“Eight-thirty, ma’am,” he said.

He stood by the curtained berth, waiting for a few seconds. Then he reached his hand down between the curtains, caught the blankets and started jerking them. “Eight-thirty, ma’am.”

Hazel Deering and I were both watching him. He flashed white teeth at us, shook the mattress violently. “You wanted to be called at eight-thirty, ma’am,” he said, raising his voice.

There was no answer.

The porter hesitated, glanced at us, apparently to see if we were the type that would disapprove, then having reassured himself, parted the curtains and peered very discreetly through the opening. A moment later, he was clawing the curtains apart, then, with a face the color of raw liver, trying to get them back together again.

“Fo’ Gawd’s sake! Call de conductor. She’s daid!” he screamed.

Chapter Four

The conductor was sympathetic, overworked, and immersed in so many troubles that the death was merely one more straw on an overloaded camel’s back. They found a vacant drawing room into which they could move the body temporarily and then, some time later, unloaded it at Indio.

The passengers gathered in morbid little groups, huddled against the terror of a death which had appeared in their midst, very much as young chickens scuttle for safety at the threatening shadow of an approaching hawk.

Hazel Deering seemed particularly influenced by what had happened. She kept very much to herself, staring moodily out of the window at the gray monotony of the desert as it clicked by.

My genial, paunchy friend, on the other hand, became even more talkative, made it a point to accost me when I entered the men’s room.

“Tragic, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“Very.”

“Beautiful, young girl. Noticed her particularly at dinner last night.”

“Did you?”

“You weren’t aboard the train last night, were you?”

“No.”

“Got on sometime during the night?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Tucson.”

He chuckled. “Lucky thing for us it wasn’t a violent death.”

“Why?”

“Because you and I were the first up this morning. Everyone else was sleeping. You know, ample opportunity and all that. Damned nuisance to be questioned by the police.”

“It was a natural death?” I asked.

“Apparently. Heart failure or something.” He pushed his hand out at me. “Name’s Rendon,” he said, “Herb Rendon. Real estate.”

I shook hands gravely. “Glad to meet you, Herb.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Sabin.”

“Los Angeles?”

“San Francisco mostly.”

“Terribly tragic. Can’t get over it. Keep thinking about it. Lucky for us it was a natural death. Hate to be questioned by the police, myself,” he said, shaking his head solemnly.

“I can imagine it might well raise the devil with a man’s plans,” I said, and escaped back to the silent companionship of Hazel Deering.

The last part of the trip seemed interminable as the long line of tired Pullmans snaked its way through the pass between San Gorgonio and San Jacinto.

Then, almost immediately, the character of the country changed. The train picked up speed as it started on the long down slope toward Los Angeles. The desert gave way to well-kept orange groves where golden fruit and snowy blossoms splotched against the dark green of glossy leaves, with snowcapped mountains seeming to hang suspended in the blue distance like well-rounded dishes of celestial ice cream.

When we were pulling into Los Angeles, I managed to avoid both Hazel Deering and Herb Rendon by moving up three cars. I caught the Lark for San Francisco that night. And, after a leisurely breakfast, strolled into the Golden Lotus Petal for my appointment with Ngat T’oy.

I wasn’t certain whether Ngat T’oy would read of Betty Crofath’s death in the paper, but when Betty Crofath failed to register at the Pelton Hotel, that would be Ngat T’oy’s signal to meet me at the Chinese restaurant. So I ordered a bowl of tea and some of the bent rice fortune cakes and settled back to a period of waiting, knowing that Ngat T’oy would be right on the minute.

But Ngat T’oy wasn’t right on the minute. I frowned at my watch as she became five minutes, then ten minutes late. Surely something was wrong.

I waited anxiously for another five minutes. Then I thought for the first time to send a boy out to a stand where I knew he could get a Los Angeles paper.

It took me a few minutes search to find what I wanted. I located it on a third page under the heading “TRAIN DEATH MAY BE SUICIDE.”

From this account, I learned that the death of a young woman found in a Pullman train between Tucson and Indio had apparently been caused by an overdose of sleeping tablets. The body had been tentatively identified as that of a Miss Daphne Strate of New Orleans.

Miss Strate had, it seemed, left New Orleans rather hurriedly and under somewhat suspicious circumstances. She had been employed as secretary for a wholesale chemical company. The manager of her department had admitted to police that Miss Strate had left there without any notice whatever. More than that, he declined to say. He did state, however, that it came as a distinct surprise to him to learn that she had taken a west-bound train. Other employes in the office had remembered that, for a few days, Miss Strate had seemed rather moody and preoccupied.

I rushed through the few paragraphs in the newspaper, then made a dash for the Pelton Hotel.

“You have a Miss Crofath registered here?” I asked.

“Yes, in 309. Shall I ring?”

“She’s expecting me,” I said. “Tell her Mr. Smith is on his way up.”

I left the elevator, walked down the third floor, tapped on the door of 309.

“Who is it, please?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Smith,” I said, keeping my voice low and guttural.

Hazel Deering opened the door and then recoiled with a gasp of startled surprise as she saw me standing there.

“Good morning,” I said, and moved on past her into the room.

She moved back to let me by, leaving the door swinging wide open, her eyes, wide with consternation, following my every move. There was no sign of Ngat T’oy in the place. A small trunk was in the middle of the room, a suitcase on a baggage stand.

“Close the door,” I said.

She hesitated a moment then closed the door.

“All right, Hazel, why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Kill Betty Crofath.”

“Kill her!” she exclaimed. “I kill her? You’re crazy. I’m Betty Crofath!”

“Then why the Hazel Deering?”

“It’s a name I took so I wouldn’t be annoyed while I was traveling.”

“Let’s see your driver’s license.”

“I don’t have to.”

I simply stood, waiting, exerting silent pressure on her.

She hesitated a moment, then went to her purse, opened it with hands that were trembling, took out a driving license and handed it to me with an air of proud defiance.

The description fit. Betty Crofath, age twenty-seven, height five feet four and a-half, weight a hundred and thirteen pounds, eyes blue, hair light.

I said, “All right, so you’re Betty Crofath. You pulled a slick dodge. Now, what do you want?”

“What do you want? Why did you come here?”

“On business.”

“What sort of business?”

I kept my back to the door, trying to hurry through this before Ngat T’oy’s knock would complicate the situation. “You came here to meet someone, didn’t you?” I asked.

“What if I did?”

“I’m the person you were to meet.”

“You can’t be.”

“I am to take you to that person.”

“You’ll have to show me.”

“Okay, but first I’ll need something more than this,” and I indicated the driving license I was still holding.

“You will! I’m the one to be shown.”

I merely smiled.

She said, “You’ve had some preliminary contact with me. Tell me just what it was. Describe all the details.”

I kept smiling and let it go at that.

“What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

“Everything.”

“Tell me one thing that’s wrong with it,” she insisted.

“It won’t work.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. You aren’t the proper person for me to talk to. You’re simply — simply chiseling, simply homing in on this thing. You... you followed me here to this hotel. You met me on the train and followed me.”

I heard a couple of faint sounds, the sort someone might make by pounding on a wall.

The girl got up, dashed over to her trunk, jerked out a tray and banged the lid shut.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

She stood there for a moment, then threw the lid back, started rummaging around among the contents, dumping quantities of books, shoes and clothing out on the floor.

“What’s the idea?” I asked.

“I’m looking for something.”

“What?”

“Something to show you, to prove I’m the person you think — and something that will enable me to identify you.”

I heard another thud. She impatiently slammed a book to the floor.

I said, “I think it came from the closet.”

“What did?”

“The noise you’re trying to keep me from hearing. You slam things around in the trunk every time it happens. Shall we look?”

Her hand had been down in the trunk. It came up carrying a businesslike revolver. “Suppose you take a look at this instead.”

I sat very still. “I’m looking at it, Hazel,” I said.

“Betty.”

“All right, Betty. I’m looking at it.”

She said, “Raise your hands above your head, walk over against that wall and turn your back.”

I sat perfectly still.

“Go on.”

I shook my head.

“I’ll shoot!”

“That would be very, very messy — not a nice, clean job like you made on the train.”

Watching her eyes, I put my hand on the arm of the chair, made as if to rise. It was well past the time for Ngat T’oy to show up. I didn’t want her to run into this.

The gun snapped to a rigid steadiness.

I settled back in the chair.

“Called your bluff, didn’t I?”

I kept looking at her.

“Get your hands up.”

I shook my head.

“I will shoot. I really will!”

She started circling the room away from the window. Abruptly she jerked open the door of the room and left.

I got up out of the chair, walked across the room, locked the door and opened the closet door.

There was nothing in there except a few clothes.

I heard the peculiar thudding noise again. As I stopped to listen, the knob of the corridor door turned slowly. I stood perfectly still, making no sound no slightest motion.

The thudding sounds were more rapid now.

Knuckles were tapping gently on the outer door.

“Hoh shai kai mäh?” I said in a low voice — the greeting of certain types of Chinese, meaning literally, “Is the whole world good?”

Instantly, Ngat T’oy’s voice answered. “Hoh shai kai” — “the whole world is good.”

I unlocked the door and let her in.

“What is it Ed?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. You’re late.”

“I was just opening my door to come over here when I saw you entering this room. I thought something was the matter, so I waited. Then I saw her go out, pushing a gun down in her purse as she walked toward the elevator, so I came. Is anything wrong?”

“Plenty. I...”

More poundings interrupted me.

“Let’s take a look in the bathroom Ngat T’oy,” I said.

She moved to my side. “You want me with you?”

“I... yes. Come along.”

She was a step or two behind me as I opened the bathroom door.

A man, a Negro, was lying in the bathtub. His shoes had been removed. A gag had been tied in his mouth, and his hands and feet were tied. He was making noise by pounding his bare heels down on the porcelain of the tub. He rolled his eyes up at us as I opened the door.

For a moment the gag which virtually covered the lower part of his face made it impossible for me to recognize him, but there was something familiar in the livid fear, as well as in the rolling whites of the panic-stricken eyes that tugged at my memory. Then I knew who he was — the porter of the Pullman car — the one who had found the body in lower six.

I bent over him and untied the gag — a woman’s nylon stocking holding in his mouth a wad of lingerie.

He was too frightened to talk.

I sat down on the edge of the bathtub, said reassuringly, “How about a cigarette?” and took out my cigarette case. I didn’t make any move to untie his hands or feet.

He rolled his head from side to side in a gesture of refusal, moved his tongue around in his mouth, glanced apprehensively over my shoulder at Ngat T’oy, took a deep breath, and said, “Hones’ to Gawd, boss, if’n yo’ let me loose and doan’ kill me, ah won’t ever tell nobody you killed dat girl in the Pullman.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said abruptly. “I didn’t kill her.”

I saw that my words simply didn’t register with him. He was looking at me with pleading and panic in his eyes.

I said, “Who tied you up, George?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t know. Who did it?”

“Ah’m promis’n, you square, boss. If’n yo’ let me out of here, ah won’t tell nobody.”

I said, with a trace of irritation, “I’m trying to help you, you fool.”

“Untie me then and lemme out o’ here,” he answered.

I said, “Don’t be silly. If I untie you now, you’d dash out of that door screaming bloody murder, and I can’t afford to have that. I only have a few minutes leeway and can’t wait. Now, when did you get here?”

He took one look at me, opened his mouth and sucked in a prodigious breath. I knew he was going to yell. As he threw his head back, I clapped the gag back into his mouth, whipped the stocking into place and tied it in a swift knot.

The porter in the bathtub was so frightened he all but passed out. Once he realized I had slapped the gag back into his mouth, he twisted and squirmed around in the tub like a trout that has wiggled free of the hook to fall on the stream’s edge.

I stepped back out of the bathroom, said to Ngat T’oy, “Come on. Let’s take a look. We can’t tell when she’ll be back.”

“Can’t we turn him loose?”

“Definitely not. He’d tear the door off its hinges getting out of here and have the place around our ears before we could get out. Tell you what you can do. Turn on the water in the bathtub. He can keep his head above the water, and by the time it overflows and starts trickling through the ceiling of the room below, the hotel will send someone up to find him. By that time, we’ll be out.”

Ngat T’oy went into the bathroom. As I heard the water start running in the tub, I dropped down on my knees in front of the open trunk in the middle of the floor.

It was Betty Crofath’s trunk. There were books dealing with the Orient — books that an ordinary person wouldn’t have; books on Chinese temperament, customs and language published by Kelly & Walsh of Hong Kong and Shanghai; maps and guides of Japan, “The Symbology of the Shinto Religion,” “The Essence of Buddhist Philosophy,” a little pamphlet dealing with a dramatized story of the forty-seven Ronin.

I turned to the front of these books. Those dealing with Japan were all inscribed: “To Betty, so that she may learn more of the dignity of my country and the significance of its customs. With love, from Numatsu.”

Ngat T’oy came to stand behind me, peering down over my shoulder.

“He can keep his head up all right?” I asked without looking up from the books.

“Yes. If he doesn’t faint from fright. I was most considerate. I regulated the temperature of the water so it’s just right to be comfortable. He can push his foot against the overflow outlet. As long as he holds it there the water will run over the tub — as soon as it reaches the top. If anything happens, and he faints or anything, he’ll automatically remove his foot and water won’t overflow. Are you finding anything interesting, Ed?”

“Interesting but not vital — so far. You’ve got to get out of here, Ngat T’oy. Meet me at nine o’clock at the Dragon Tooth night club. I simply can’t afford to have you taking these chances.”

“Nonsense. I can take them if you can,” she said.

“In just about ten seconds, as soon as I reach the bottom of this trunk,” I told her, “I’m going to take a look out at the hallway. If it’s clear, out you go.”

I found several yards of Oriental silk, a Japanese pigeon-blood cloisonné vase, the usual assortment of feminine wearing apparel, and down near the bottom of the trunk, a nineteen-forty-three diary.

The diary had been kept in a neat feminine handwriting in an expensive leather-backed book just the size to fit the side pocket of a man’s coat.

I put the diary in my pocket.

I said to Ngat T’oy, “You’ve got to get out of here — in fact, we both have.”

“You go first,” she told me, “for your way is the more dangerous. I have but to cross the hall and be in my room.”

I shook my head. “You first. I’ll have to make certain the corridor is clear. I’ll do that, then come back.”

From the way she twisted her eyebrows, I saw she didn’t understand what I meant.

I pointed toward the door. “The way the hinges are hung, the door opens outward. Once you open that door, you’ve got to step all the way out into the corridor. You don’t dare to just poke your head around the door and then step back in, in case there’s someone in the corridor. We don’t know what the girl in here has done. If she wants to clear herself of responsibility, she’ll go out and telephone the desk, telling them she’s forgotten to turn off the water or something and ask to have a bellboy sent to the room. Get me?”

Ngat T’oy nodded.

As we stood there, I heard the first faint splashings of overflowing water from the bathtub.

“All right,” I told her. “I’m going out now and explore the hallway. If there’s anyone in the hall, I’ll say something to him — even if it’s nothing but a good morning. When I get to the elevator, if the corridor is clear, I’ll cough twice. You keep the door partially open, wait and listen. When you hear my cough, slip out and go to your room — fast. All ready now?”

She nodded.

I approached the door.

“Open it gently, Ed,” she whispered.

I laughed at her. “That’s the worst way on earth to leave a hotel room. It looks furtive. Jerk the door open, march boldly out in the corridor as though you owned the joint. And if you meet someone, give him a casual glance. Listen for my signal at the elevator,” I told her.

I unlocked the door, jerked it open, stepped out into the corridor, turned boldly toward the elevator — and found myself face to face with the house detective.

He was walking toward the room I had just left, carrying a slip of paper in his hand. And I didn’t need to be a mind reader to tell either that he was the house detective, or that the number on the slip of paper he was carrying was the number of the room I had just vacated so boldly.

I had approximately half a second to size him up and decide what could be done about it while he was getting ready to approach me in just the right manner.

I beat him to the punch. “You’re the house detective here, aren’t you?”

I saw that he was a bit taken back. These chaps like to kid themselves into believing no-one can ever spot them. They are usually just a bit past middle age, inclined to an oily firmness, a certain fastidiousness of dress, usually with a bald spot over which hair has been carefully trained to cover just as much of the dome as is physically possible. Most of them are inclined to be paunchy, but all of them have a certain self-effacing manner that is a synthetic mask they throw up to hide an underlying firmness. Don’t ask me why they should run to type this way. I only know they do.

He cleared his throat. “May I have your name, please?”

I grabbed him by the arm. “I’m with the Motor Vehicle Department. I’ve just taken up a driver’s license.”

I slipped my fingers down into my inside pocket and jerked out the driver’s license that I had neglected to give back to the girl.

“Betty Crofath,” I said. “Three-oh-nine. I was going to look you up when I got downstairs. Let’s go talk with the manager.”

He har-r-r-umphed and said, “I was on my way to see Miss Crofath. And I sized you up as a State man as soon as I saw you.”

“The devil!”

He nodded.

I let admiration come in my eyes. “Say, there’s not much gets past you birds, is there?”

He smiled. “You might like to go in the room with me.”

“Not me,” I told him. “I just came out, and once is enough.” I lowered my voice, “You’d better talk with me, however, before you go in.” I glanced back over my shoulder at the door, took his arm and led him gently toward the elevator.

“We can talk right here,” he said.

“No,” I said firmly, “what I have to say is not alone for your ears, but for those of the manager as well.”

He didn’t argue any more after that. We went down in the elevator and he piloted me into the office.

The manager was a disillusioned individual with tired gray eyes, pouches under them, and a general air of misanthropic skepticism.

The house detective did the talking. “I met this man up on the third floor just coming to the elevators,” he said sapiently. “I spotted him just as soon as I saw him — figured he was from one of the State departments. I asked him, and he said it was Motor Vehicle.”

“How’d you spot him?” the manager asked warily.

“Just the manner — the way he was walking. I don’t know exactly how,” the house detective said with a certain synthetic modesty as though trying to belittle something which was a very smart piece of detective work indeed.

The manager looked at him, started to say something, then turned to me.

I said, “I’ve been up taking Betty Crofath’s license. She’d been in trouble before and made a lot of false statements. I thought you ought to know.”

“I didn’t know you had the right to go up to any person and take his license,” the manager said.

I showed surprise. “You didn’t know that?” I asked.

“No.”

“You’d better keep up with changes in the motor-vehicle law. We’re adding to it all the time, trying to make conditions better for drivers.”

“They’re passing laws so fast these days,” he said, “you can hear them whiz by, but you don’t have time to read them. That’s a hell of a law.”

“On the contrary,” I told him, “it’s the only sensible law. That places the authority in the hands of the people who have the responsibility — the Motor Vehicle Department.”

“I’d hate to have some guy just come walking up to me, flash a badge, say he was from the Motor Vehicle Department and demand a surrender of my license without a hearing.”

I looked authoritative. “Don’t violate the vehicle law and you won’t have any trouble. Now, in case this young woman gets into a car, I want to know it. If you see her getting into a car, get the license number, pass the word to your bellboys and whatever clerk comes on duty. Just telephone the Motor Vehicle Department and leave a message for the field representative, Mr. E. L. Dickers. By the way, she tells me she had a reservation here. How did she make it, by letter or wire?”

“Wire — relayed on through a New Orleans hotel.”

I started for the door. “Well, if you fellows have any trouble with your motor-vehicle stuff, let me know. Glad to do anything I can, and lots of times I can do a great deal — renewal of licenses and stuff of that sort. And be sure and let me know if Miss Crofath so much as sets her foot in an automobile unless there’s a chauffeur at the wheel.”

I bowed and swung around to the door which led from the office to the lobby, gave them an affable grin and headed for the street.

As I passed through the lobby, a chunky figure suddenly held up an open newspaper in such a way that it concealed his face.

The man might have found something in the paper that greatly interested him, or he might have been trying to keep me from seeing him, or from letting me know that he had seen me.

My only way of identifying him was from his clothes. It was the same suit of quiet brown with a white pin stripe that my jovial friend, Herb Rendon, had been wearing.

I pushed through the exit door and turned right, noticing from the corner of my eye as I hit the sidewalk that the newspaper had been abruptly jerked down from Herb Rendon’s face.

No-one followed me from the hotel.

Back in the modest little apartment which served as my headquarters, I settled down to read the diary of Betty Crofath.

I would have given much if the diary had gone back for a full year, but it didn’t. Starting on January first, nineteen hundred and forty-three, I picked up Betty Crofath in Buenos Aires. I didn’t know what she was doing there, how long she had known the people whose names appeared so casually in her diary, or, except by inference, how she felt toward them, or what her past had been with relation to these men.

There was a German, Karl Wilkers, a man by the name of Ramon, whose last name never appeared in the diary. Also one named Jose, who was also only a first name. Then there was an N. K. who appeared only as initials. However, the name Numatsu appeared once or twice and once the name N. Kamchura, which gave me the name, Numatsu Kamchura to stand for the N. K. There was a girl named Felice, and another named Mae. And there were scores of references to people and initials who came and went casually across the pages, but Karl, Ramon, Jose, Felice, Mae and the mysterious N. K. seemed to dominate the book.

I started to get acquainted with the girl of the diary, beginning with the first entry on January first, nineteen hundred and forty-three. There were two separate entries for that day. The first one, in a somewhat scrawling writing was:

The second entry seemed a little shaky. “Oooo, Diary! Mama shouldn’t have done it!”

That was all for the first day of 1943.

I couldn’t be certain whether the argument with Ramon was over the obvious, or was related to some other matter which was locked away in the nineteen hundred and forty-two diary.

Nor could I get any clue as to the real feelings of the writer of the diary. She referred at times to the Japanese, the British, the Germans and the Italians with no prejudice whatever. If one could judge from the pages of her diary, she didn’t think of herself as a citizen of the United States, but regarded the moves of the various warring nations as a spectator would review a gridiron struggle — not without emotion, not without appreciation of the terrific fight that was being waged, but definitely without becoming identified with either of the teams. Was this because she was afraid her diary might be read by someone who would try to accuse her of espionage? Was it because she had been on relations of close friendship with a Japanese, or was it because her nationality really wasn’t an “Americano del norte?”

Apparently she considered herself as holding the status of citizenship in a neutral country.

One thing I did definitely conclude. The girl I had met in that room, the one who had told me on the train that her name was Hazel Deering, had never written the pages of that diary. The entire style of writing, the very detachment in mental outlook simply didn’t fit in with Hazel Deering. Was it possible then that the dead girl on the train was in reality Betty Crofath and that Hazel Deering was in reality the Daphne Strate who had left New Orleans so abruptly and under such strange and suspicious circumstances?

On January twenty-first, Karl had made her an offer to “go to work,” saying that she possessed the qualities of resourcefulness and daring which were required by his “superiors” whom he wanted her to meet. She had chronicled his proposition, but not her answer. After making brief mention of the compliments Karl had paid her resourcefulness, daring and mentality, she had added as a humorous afterthought, “and during all of the time he was bestowing such lavish praise upon my intellectual attainments, he said nothing whatever about my figure — the beast!”

The mysterious N. K. seemed to have been well established as a friend at the time the diary opened. He was, I gathered, rather an interesting personality, filled with racial ideas of the destiny of his people, their invincibility in combat, and a sublime faith in the outcome of the struggle. On February twentieth, she had written: “N. K. has such a peculiar mentality. Even now, when the most ardent and patriotic enthusiast at home must be assailed with doubts, N. K. still retains his sublime faith. But the man is unbelievably cunning and resourceful. He doesn’t minimize the bad news, simply adopts the position that his work will be that much more difficult. It is fascinating to watch him, and yet — I am terribly afraid of him.”

In April, she had been to the races and “had the uneasy feeling which comes from being followed. It was impossible in that crowd to tell whether any one person had singled me out for attention, but I certainly had the feeling all afternoon and evening that such was the case. Ran into Karl in a nightclub lounge. We had a dance together and he asked me how I was feeling. I told him of my uneasiness. I will never forget how he looked. His face was a mask of cold fury. He tried to keep up the small talk, but I could feel him stiffen to a rigid military efficiency. Trying to make his voice sound casual, he asked me if I had seen Numatsu. It was a ghastly job of acting. The man looked as though he had been ordering an execution. I noticed that he left the club a few minutes after we danced. And, strange to say, from that moment on, I lost all feeling of being under surveillance. Is there some connection — I wonder?”

One thing about the woman, one peculiarity, furnished a key to her character. She seemed to have a certain flair for interior decorating. Whenever she saw a room which impressed her as being beautiful, she would go into enthusiastic details in her diary. I began to wonder if she might not at one time have been connected with interior decoration, or if perhaps this might not account for her presence in South America.

However, aside from that one clue, although there was a period of some six months covered in the diary, there was no word which would tell me anything of the woman’s nationality, her occupation, if any, the manner in which she received her funds, or the reason for her trip to the United States. On the first of May, there was an entry saying, “I am to go on one of the coffee boats. It has been all arranged. I will arrive in New Orleans, and it will be such a pleasure to see that city again. Yet, definitely, this is not to be a pleasure trip. What will be its outcome? I wonder.”

She did well to wonder. Lying cold in death, one couldn’t help but speculate whether she had ever had any premonition that, before the year was finished, the hand that had penned the entries in the diary would lie cold and still while another girl would have usurped her belongings and tried to take over her identity.

Or was this woman dead? The body on the train had been that of a blonde girl. Betty Crofath’s license showed that she had light hair. But Betty Crofath seemed to be a citizen of the United States. Surely no girl who had been born in the United States would have been on terms of friendship with the Japanese and the Germans. Was the identity of Betty Crofath a mask?

I spent the entire afternoon studying the diary, then shortly before nine o’clock, taking due precautions to see that I was not followed, went to keep my appointment at the Dragon Tooth night club with Ngat T’oy.

Chapter Five

The jazz orchestra squeezed out a syncopated rhythm of popular music. Very few people tried to listen. All about was the sound of conversation. Some woman, her voice keyed up with alcohol until it had all the strident insistence of a locomotive’s whistle, kept shrilling above the other voices. Over at the table next to mine, a man was telling a low-voiced story. The women of the party were waiting for the proper moment when they could be moved to shrieks of laughter by a story they had probably heard somewhere or other at least six months ago.

Over on the right, a middle-aged man was talking insistently, persuasively to a woman half his age, who was beginning to become bored. The man kept pouring out words.

At the table behind me, two rather quiet, reserved men sipped sparingly at liquor and exchanged occasional words. Their manner indicated that they had some joint purpose, some sort of perfect understanding.

I shifted my position slightly so that I could give them the benefit of an oblique scrutiny. Situated as I was, I could never afford to overlook those about me, even for a moment. These men seemed not in search of entertainment. Definitely they were not on the prowl. They...

And then I was pushing back my chair, for Ngat T’oy was coming toward me. These public meetings in Chinatown were risky for us both. She knew it as well as I. Yet the danger was only to ourselves, whereas if I went to see Soo Hoo Duck too frequently, the danger would involve not only a great man, but a cause as well. Therefore, for necessary conferences, Ngat T’oy and I met as we could. One thing I had long ago learned, an Occidental and a young, attractive Chinese girl may mingle without attracting too much attention in a Chinese night club or a Chinese restaurant — and nowhere else.

I held Ngat T’oy’s chair for her.

A woman who tries to be seductive usually merely flaunts herself, just as a woman who dismisses sex from her mind tends to become a biological nonentity. Occasionally, some woman manages to strike just the right note. Such a woman will never be whistled at but every masculine eye will follow her across a room, and when she is seated, an almost audible collective sigh will go up from the onlookers.

I could all but hear the sigh as I seated Ngat T’oy and went back around the table to seat myself opposite her.

“We would give much to have known more of this woman,” she said. “Did you find out anything at all?”

“A very little. I have clues.”

A waitress appeared to take our orders, and we ordered ’ng ga pay, that spiced oriental cordial which has the tang of herbs, a flavor as distinctly pungent as that of a dried litchi nut, and the kick of a mule.

At that moment, a gong filled the room with strident sound. The lights dimmed to a purple and all conversation ceased as though the flow of words had been cut sharply off with a knife.

Oy Ching Wong bounded to the little stage.

Various races have different standards of beauty. And there is a world of difference between the Orient and the Occident, but I have yet to meet any competent judge who has had the advantage of walking the streets of Shanghai in the evening after the theater hour who has not been willing to admit that China produces some of the most beautiful women in the world.

Oy Ching Wong was from Shanghai. She had that peculiar lithe grace and the smooth, flat stomach which is the heritage of rice-eating peoples the world over. Her dance was a combination of tawny-skinned nudity, oriental mysticism, and that rhythm of motion which makes it seem as though the body is writing poetry.

One could hardly hear a sound in the entire audience while the low strains of music pulsed through the half-darkened room and the lithe young body on the stage, with its smooth, old-ivory skin, held the audience in a trance.

When it was over, when Oy Ching Wong had gone, and after that first dazed moment during which the audience was coming back to earth, and before the roar of applause beat against the confines of the small room, I saw one of the two men at the table behind me move unostentatiously over to the telephone booth.

Then, for as much as a half a minute, everything at the night club was at a standstill. The audience went wild with enthusiasm, beat the applause up to a crescendo, begging for an encore.

But Oy Ching Wong — like one of those priceless adventures of life itself which are so frequently encountered unexpectedly — gave no encores.

When things had quieted down, I said to Ngat T’oy, “There are two men at the table behind me. It is difficult for me to watch them. One of them is telephoning. Do you know the other?”

I waited for her inscrutable black eyes to shift over to the other table — and I waited in vain. She said, without taking her eyes from mine, “I have never seen either of them before, Ed.”

I smiled as I realized that Ngat T’oy would no more have seated herself at my table without having first appraised the persons around me than she would have thought of crossing a busy street intersection without looking at the traffic.

The Chinese waitress hovered around our table ostensibly putting down our glasses. “The man in the telephone booth,” she said in Chinese, “is talking to someone, and his eyes keep shifting to this table. He has taken a newspaper clipping from his pocket.”

The dance orchestra struck up music. I raised my eyebrows in a question to Ngat T’oy.

She smiled her assent, said casually to the waitress, “In the office. Have an evening paper for us.”

We moved out onto the dance floor.

Ngat T’oy had that peculiar something which makes dancing seem a music-filled dream, and we floated along just over the floor, not quite touching it with our weight, but having just support enough to use our feet for guidance. For the moment, wars and murders were distant, remote things that peopled an outside world of grim nightmares while we were drifting smoothly along a stream of music headed toward the stars.

All too soon, the dance was over. We were back in the realm of reality, my arms still tingling with the feel of Ngat T’oy’s warmth, but the ice-cold realization of danger stinging my brain into action.

The manager’s office had been fixed up as a background for interviews with influential customers, publicity agents and sight-seers. It contained carved wood, deep rugs, crystal chandeliers, an elaborately carved, massive incense burner and several of the wooden figures of Longevity which the Chinese like to keep for good luck. The place was heavy with cloying incense. A green-shaded desk light threw white illumination on the pages of an evening newspaper lying on the desk.

Nor did it take us long to find that which we felt was significant. In the lower right-hand corner of the front page appeared in a small headline: “PULLMAN DEATH MAY HAVE BEEN MURDER.”

Below that was a very brief dispatch under an Indio date line:

Ngat T’oy looked at me, a puzzled frown creasing her forehead. “Was the dead woman Betty Crofath or Daphne Strate?” she asked.

I studied the paper. “Betty Crofath, I think. But I don’t see just how this fits in. Those two men behind us were waiting and watching. They took no great interest in me when I entered, nor in you when you entered, but when you came to my table, when you joined me, that’s it! They were planted there, looking for a Chinese girl in the company of an American man. Quick! Let’s see that paper!”

I spread the paper out on the desk, turned back to page one, and then over to page two.

Headlines struck me with the force of a blow.

“What is it, Ed?”

I pointed.

Together we read the story which had all but escaped our attention in turning hurriedly to continue the story of the death on the Pullman car.

Headlines stretching across four columns read: “NEGRO MURDERED IN GIRL’S BEDROOM.”

Down below that appeared headlines in smaller type: “WEIRD CRIME UNCOVERED IN HOTEL ROOM OCCUPIED BY BEAUTIFUL BLONDE.”

Below these headlines was the story:

I looked up from the paper to meet Ngat T’oy’s eyes.

“How long were you in the room after I left?”

“I left the moment the elevator door clanged shut. I went down to my room, waited for perhaps five minutes, then went down in the elevator and out to the street.”

“When you left, did you notice a man in a brown, double-breasted suit with a white pin stripe sitting in a chair near the plate-glass window in the front of the lobby reading a newspaper?”

“No.”

“You didn’t notice him?”

“He was not there.”

I drummed nervously on the corner of the desk. “The water,” I said, “had begun to run over the bathtub before I left the room. That was because the Negro was holding his foot against the overflow escape. But not much water ran on the floor. That means he was murdered almost immediately after you left, Ngat T’oy.”

“Those two men in the night club?” she asked. “They suspect?”

I said, “We walked into a trap. Those two men are simply typical of two headquarters men who are waiting tonight in every Chinese café, every night club, every cocktail lounge. They have been instructed to watch for a couple — an American man and a Chinese girl. The man at the telephone was reporting to headquarters. He was checking our descriptions against the newspaper clipping he had taken from his pocket. You know what that means? The place is probably being surrounded right now.”

She nodded.

“Is there,” I asked, “some way out of here other than by the entrance?”

Her hand came over to rest on mine. “Ed,” she said softly, “when you are in Chinatown, there is always a way out — for you.”

Chapter Six

The greatest danger to Ngat T’oy was my presence. The greatest danger to me was hers. We came to a parting of the ways at a drab little door in an alley where we had been taken by secret passageways from the office of the night club.

Her hand touched mine lightly. “ ’Bye, Ed,” she said.

“Keep your chin up, Little Sun,” I told her.

Impulsively, she raised my hand, brushed the back of it against the smooth skin of her cheek. Then she was out in the alley, moving with swift steps on feet so light that they hardly tapped an echo from the fog-shrouded buildings on the side of the alley.

I gave her thirty seconds. Then I slipped out the door and walked down the alley in the other direction.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard the sound of a siren. A police car roared past as I turned the corner. Aside from that, there was no trouble gaining my dingy little room, and making myself comfortable, awaiting the first move which would be made by Soo Hoo Duck when Ngat T’oy had told him the news.

While I was waiting, I turned on the radio, both the short wave set which was tuned to police calls and the conventional long-wave outfit that brought in the news every hour.

I learned that police had by now identified the dead colored man as George Bronset, the Pullman porter. That, in turn, reopened the case of the dead woman in lower six whose body had in the meantime been positively identified as that of Betty Crofath of New Orleans and Buenos Aires.

And since New Orleans police were making frantic inquiries concerning the whereabouts of Daphne Strate, broadcasting descriptions and photographs of her, it looked as though Miss Strate was mixed in something a little more sinister than a pleasure trip to the West Coast.

From the police description of Daphne Strate, I recognized her as the girl I had met on the train — the one who had first given me the name of Hazel Deering, then, later on, had posed in the hotel as Betty Crofath.

An employe of the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing & Supply Company, Daphne Strate had, it seemed, simply disappeared into thin air. At the same time, a shortage of some six thousand dollars had been discovered on the books of the corporation. From the manner in which the coincidence was announced, it was plain that the police were not as yet definitely ready to pin that six-thousand-dollar shortage on Daphne Strate, but they were very anxious indeed to locate Miss Strate and ask her some questions.

The ticket seller remembered a young woman of Daphne Strate’s description who had purchased a ticket to Los Angeles. A check-up on the Pullman space had disclosed that Miss Strate occupied lower five, while Betty Crofath had occupied lower six. The police let it go at that, merely commenting on the numbers of the Pullman berths, and mentioning also that George Bronset, the Negro whose body had been discovered in the room apparently rented by Daphne Strate under the name of Betty Crofath, had been the porter on that car — the very one who had discovered the body.

No-one needed to say any more. The whole thing made a series of damning coincidences that built up into a wall of circumstantial evidence. The only trouble was that I had been trained to distrust circumstantial evidence. I had seen too much of what it could do.

Minutes ticked away while I waited for the hand of Soo Hoo Duck to show itself.

A knock sounded on my door.

“Who is it?” I called in Chinese, and I flatter myself that no detective on the force would ever have suspected it was a white man calling the question.

I thought I recognized the voice, but I could not be certain. “You order food from restaurant,” came from the door in the singsong of the say yup variation of the Cantonese dialect. “I bring food. Open the door so food does not get cold, please.”

I stepped over to the wall and placed my eye to the little periscope device I had installed. What I saw reassured me. The lone Chinese who was standing in front of the door clad in a loose-fitting blouse, light blue trousers, and embroidered Chinese shoes was Yat Sing.

Yat Sing was virtually the head of the Chinese Secret Service in San Francisco. He was a man of uncertain age, his moon face perfectly round and cherubic in its expressionless innocence, his eyes glittering with the concentration of attention, and his mouth schooled in silence.

On a first meeting, one never knew whether Yat Sing understood everything that was said to him, because he merely listened. He seldom spoke, asked very few questions, did not nod. He merely listened to what was said and then went out and did what was required. Anyone familiar with the results Yat Sing obtained never had any doubts whether he had understood what was said. Only at the first meeting could there be any question.

Yat Sing not only invariably carried out the missions he was called upon to undertake, but he usually added little artistic finishing touches, so dear to the heart of the true oriental diplomat.

I opened the door.

Until the door was safely closed once more, Yat Sing never once departed from the part he was playing of a gruff, good-natured but somewhat crude and inexperienced waiter.

“Get out table,” he said. “The belly makes complaint at cold food. Cash in advance, please.”

And Yat Sing had brought me a real meal — fresh fried shrimp with that peculiar Chinese sauce, made of catsup, with a little island of red hot mustard on top, hot fried rice, tea, chicken-almond chop suey and those delightful little pickled leeks the Chinese call son kieu tau. He brought all these on a series of trays, one atop the other, the whole expertly balanced. Had any detective stopped him, Yat Sing would have been able to show a complete Chinese meal. And, if he was not molested, he would be bringing me sufficient food so I need not run the danger of leaving my room for a full twenty-four hours.

I was hungry and the food looked good to me.

I pulled out a table, as he suggested, and closed the door.

Yat Sing sat and watched me while I ate, and talked in between mouthfuls.

“The secret of that girl in the hotel,” I told him, “is the key to the whole business. If Daphne Strate were merely an innocent bystander sucked into the vortex of events, she ceases to have any real significance, unless Betty Crofath gave her something to keep for her — something that, to a girl such as Daphne Strate, would seem to be a trivial article of no particular importance. If she is not an innocent bystander, then her connection with the case is of the greatest importance.”

I stopped to dip a fried shrimp into the tomato-mustard sauce and see how Yat Sing was taking it.

His eyes were bright with attention, his face merely a round frame for eyes, nose and mouth.

I said, “The police will cover the hotels, the rooming houses, keep an eye on the outgoing buses and trains. All that is routine, as you probably know.” My chopsticks scooped up the chicken-almond chop suey.

Yat Sing said nothing.

“Daphne Strate,” I said, “worked for the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing & Supply Company. She is supposed to have been short six thousand dollars in her accounts. Let us suppose she was. What did she do with the money?”

Yat Sing might not have heard the question.

“There is,” I said, “one answer, and only one answer. When a girl of that type is short six thousand dollars in her accounts, the money has gone to some man — either a ne’er-do-well brother or a glib-tongued lover who is short of cash and gets her to sacrifice everything in order to get him money.

“If, on the other hand, the girl is not guilty, then why did she run away? Why would the New Orleans chemical company feel that it had enough evidence to go to the police?

“Now then, in either event, she came to San Francisco. She had some reason for coming to San Francisco. I want to find out what that reason is. I want very much to find Daphne Strate before the police do.”

I poured a little of the dark Chinese soy-bean sauce — which the Chinese call shee yeu but which is known virtually in every Chinese restaurant as “bettle juice” — over my fried rice.

The police are not dumb. Yat Sing, no matter what people may say about them. They will search for the reason Daphne Strate came to San Francisco. The obvious assumption is, of course, that Daphne was running away from the New Orleans police, that she learned in some way of Betty Crofath’s death and, by taking possession of her purse, thought she could assume the dead girl’s identity. As far as the baggage is concerned, having acquired a purse containing a trunk check, Daphne Strate had the trunk delivered.

“But suppose there is another explanation. Suppose, before Betty Crofath went to bed that night, she arranged to change identities with Daphne Strate. Suppose Daphne Strate was asked to come to San Francisco in connection with Betty Crofath’s mission. Suppose her pretense on the train was not merely a coincidence but the result of carefully laid plans.”

I stopped talking and looked intently at Yat Sing.

He slowly blinked his eyes.

I said, “I want to know all about the background of Betty Crofath in Buenos Aires. I want to know about a Karl Wilkers. I want to know who is the Ramon and who is the Jose in her life. I want to know all about Numatsu Kamchura. And,” I went on, “the hell of it is, I want to know all of this before the police can possibly find Daphne Strate. I want to know it by tomorrow evening.”

Yat Sing merely picked up the empty dishes. “All right,” he said. “Can do. Maybe-so, can do.”

I put in the biggest part of the night and most of the next day getting acquainted with Betty Crofath through her diary. Not only did I have the things she had written as a measure by which to gauge her character, but I had the things she had not written. For instance, I noticed there was never a word of complaint in the diary. On New Year’s day, she had apparently been suffering from pretty much of a hangover, but she had made no complaint. She had made whoopee the night before and was paying the price. She paid it without comment other than one humorous line.

And there was a certain whimsical philosophy which ran like a thread of gold through the entire diary, connecting all of the incidents — a thin thread on which the events were strung into a necklace draped around the personality of a dead girl.

Then, abruptly, realization dawned on me that I might have in my hand a possible key to some of the problem I propounded to Yat Sing.

I ran through the diary, locating the date the coffee ship had docked in New Orleans. The entry was innocent enough on its face, yet, in the light of after events, it became significant:

I debated over that entry. She had settled into a long sleep all right, poor girl. She had been apprehensive. Yet she had anticipated safety when she was once on the train. Why? Why would the train with its swaying, crowded Pullmans have offered more safety than her locked room in the New Orleans hotel?

She had gone to dinner with a certain D. That could have well been Daphne Strate. Some agreement had been reached — perhaps an agreement to switch identities. When I had first glanced through the diary, I had thought her statement that, since the ticket had already been purchased, she would do nothing about it, meant she had decided it was not necessary to secure any validation. It was, however, quite possible that if she made some agreement to switch identities with Daphne Strate, she had decided not to do it until after they were on the train.

Yat Sing showed up at eight o’clock with roast-pork chow mein, spareribs with bittersweet sauce, tea, almond cakes and rice. He had information to impart so he talked — a peculiar combination of Chinese words, pidgin English and motions.

“Numatsu Kamchura velly impo’tant. Die already.” And Yat Sing clinched his hand as though holding a knife, and drew it rapidly across his abdomen from left to right.

“Same thing, Jee saht. Karl Wilkers alla same German man. Him boss send for him come back home, chop-chop.”

“How go home?” I asked.

“Chiemm soey taung.”

“You’re certain he go by submarine?”

Yat Sing repeated with dogged persistence, “Am certain for sure. He go chiemm soey taung.”

I waited for more.

“Betty Crofath alla same catchum one cousin, liv’em apartment house tai fow. I write ’em down paper.”

Yat Sing handed me a piece of paper. On it written in a pencil scrawl: Genevieve Hotling, 632 Medville Arms.

I waited to see if there was any more.

“Betty Crofath write letters New Orleans. People no savvy much her pidgin. Keep alia same shut up. Ramon — Jose — too damn many. No can do.”

Yat Sing ceased talking.

“Anything else?”

“No more.”

I ate my dinner in silence and Yat Sing watched me in silence.

“Maybe-so by-and-by you find out more?” I said when I had finished.

He put the dishes back in the suitcase. “Maybe-so,” he said as he started out of the door, which was loquacious indeed for Yat Sing.

Chapter Seven

When a man is on the lam, there are certain elemental things he must remember if he has to go out in public. He must never seem to avoid other people. He should mingle in crowds as though unconscious of them, should neither try to hold the eyes of persons who look at him nor to avoid their glances. He should not hurry. He should not loaf. He should be just an average citizen going somewhere. And, most important of all, he should never, under any circumstances, glance back over his shoulder.

The amateur tries to avoid crowds, tries to keep off the beaten path, acting on the theory that the more people with whom he comes in contact, the more eyes there are watching him. As a matter of fact, the exact opposite is the truth. The more people who are about, the more faces there are for eyes to see, the more weary the eye gets of seeing them.

Which was why I went by streetcar to the Medville Arms rather than by taxicab.

There was a list of names and a row of buttons to the left of the door. I didn’t bother with any of them. I had the number I wanted, and the electrically-controlled lock on the street door was definitely not an obstacle to a person who knew anything about locks. It was not even an inconvenience.

I opened the door and entered the automatic elevator, whizzed up to the sixth floor and found 632 without any difficulty.

Noiselessly, I tried the knob of the door. It was locked.

I knocked.

I thought I heard surreptitious motion from inside the room, but I couldn’t be certain.

I knocked again.

A feminine voice on the other side of the door sounded distinctly frightened. “Who... who is it?”

“Telegram, Miss Genevieve Hotling,” I said, making my voice sound weary and without expression. “Charges, twenty-five cents.”

“Oh,” the voice said with relief.

The sound of a lock snapping back preceded the opening of the door.

I pushed forward.

Daphne Strate — alias Hazel Deering — fell back with panic-stricken eyes.

I kicked the door shut behind me.

“It’s time for you and me to have a little talk,” I told her.

She couldn’t get her lips together. She backed three steps to the edge of a studio couch and dropped down on the cushions. “What... Who...”

I said, “Let’s come clean for once. You doubled back to your room after I left. You found George Bronset, the Pullman porter, still in the bathtub with the water running. You cut his throat.”

“I did nothing of the sort. You’re crazy! Why should I have killed him?”

“We’ll talk about that, too. You killed him, all right.”

“I certainly did not! You’re the one who killed him!”

I kept my eyes on hers. “It had to be you. He had something on you. He came to blackmail you. You pulled the gun on him and scared him to death. You didn’t know what to do next. You tied and gagged him and put him in the bathtub. Then you realized that didn’t help any. The gun had frightened him stiff, but he was still a blackmailer and sooner or later you’d either have to turn him loose or else leave the place and let someone else turn him loose. In either event, you were no better off than when you started — worse off, in fact. You can’t stop a blackmailer by tying him up. You either have to pay up, tell him to go to hell, or kill him. You realized that, after a while. That’s why you came back and killed him.

“You were just debating what to do with him when you heard my knock on the door. You were in a blue funk. You finally decided that the porter was all right in the bathroom for a while, so you opened the door... Then the prisoner started making a noise, and you had to go out — until after you saw me leave; then you went back, with a knife.”

I waited for her to speak, and it was a long wait.

“No,” she said at length, “I didn’t. It wasn’t like that at all. You make it sound true, but it isn’t.”

“What did he have to blackmail you about?” I asked.

“Don’t be silly! He didn’t have a thing on me.”

I laughed.

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“In the first place,” I said, “you had the berth next to Betty Crofath. Betty Crofath was poisoned. You go to the hotel where she had made a reservation, register under her name. You show up with her baggage checks, claim her baggage, have it sent up to your room, open it and go through it. Come on, sister. Let’s at least be reasonable.”

She looked as though I had hit her in the stomach.

“And don’t take it out in bawling,” I said. “We haven’t any time for that.”

“I don’t cry. I’m not that kind. What do you want?”

“Suppose we try the truth for a change,” I suggested.

She was silent for a few seconds, thinking. I didn’t crowd her any, I simply sat there, waiting.

In that silence, the sound of a key in the lock sounded inordinately loud. I jumped to my feet and whirled.

The latch on the door clicked back. The girl who stood on the threshold was neat, trim, twenty-two or twenty-three, and cool as a test pilot. She looked at me with hazel eyes that held frank curiosity and not a trace of panic. Her hair, neatly combed along the sides of her head, was dark and glossy. The skin was of tawny smoothness.

“Hello,” she said, and smiled. “Who are you?”

“You’re Genevieve Hotling?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Related to Betty Crofath?”

“Yes. Are you a newspaper reporter?” she asked.

Daphne Strate said, “He’s... he’s... You know who.”

Genevieve’s eyes didn’t waver. “Oh,” she said, “like that, eh?”

I saw her gloved hand grope back toward the doorknob.

I said, “It’s too late for that. You can’t get out now. Come in and join the party, Miss Hotling.”

She sized up the situation, said suddenly, “Very well, I will.”

She slipped out of her light overcoat, started taking off her gloves with a certain calm precision.

I said, “I’m trying to talk some sense into this girl. Perhaps you can help.”

I liked the way she moved, liked the way she wore her clothes — a smooth, unwrinkled trimness about the way her garments fitted over the curves of her very good figure.

“Let’s hear what you have to say first,” she said, and seated herself over by the reading light. “Why did you kill the man?”

“Cigarettes?” I asked. “I didn’t kill him, Miss Hotling.”

“Yes, thanks. One would hardly expect you’d admit it.”

I handed her a cigarette, offered one to Daphne Strate. Daphne drew back as though my hand had held a knife.

I reached for a match, but Genevieve had one going before I scraped mine into flame. She lit her cigarette with a steady hand, settled back in the chair, crossed her knees, said, “As I gather the situation, you’ve located Daphne. You’re holding her a prisoner. I blundered in, so you’re holding me.”

“It’s not quite that bad.”

“Well, am I free to leave here?”

“No.”

“Is she?”

“No.”

“That makes us prisoners, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s call it material witnesses.”

“Why did you make me come back?”

“I thought you might be going to call the police.”

She glanced at Daphne.

Daphne said, “He killed the man, Jen, he must have killed him. He was starting for the bathroom when I left. If he’d going to... well, just find out who was making the noise in the bathroom, he’d have turned the man loose. He didn’t. He turned on the water and cut his throat... Ugh!”

Genevieve Hotling looked at me with a certain impersonal appraisal. “Yes,” she said, “you’d have turned the man loose if you hadn’t — done that other.”

“Want to try listening to me for a while?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

I said, “I met Daphne on the train. She gave me an assumed name. I located her in San Francisco after Betty Crofath was found dead. Daphne drew a gun on me and got out of the room. I found this porter bound and gagged in the bathtub. I took the gag out of his mouth and asked him questions. He was too frightened to talk. When he started to yell, I shoved the gag back in his mouth. I turned on the water so the room below would telephone in to the office and they d investigate. That would give him a chance to get out, after I d got in the clear.”

She glanced at Daphne but didn’t try to interrupt.

I said, “It didn’t work that way. I walked out of the room and smack into the arms of the house detective. I had to think up a good stall, and had to think it up quick. I had Betty Crofath s driving license. I beat the house detective to the punch by pretending to be from the Motor Vehicle Department.”

Her eyes met mine steadily. “And just how do you happen to be so interested in the girl who was my cousin? Why were you on the train? Why did you follow Daphne to the hotel?”

“I didn’t follow Daphne to the hotel. I went there to see Betty Crofath. I didn’t know the woman who was found dead on the train was Betty Crofath. I only knew Betty Crofath had reserved a room in the hotel and had registered and gone to that room.”

“Then you must have — wanted to see Betty,” Genevieve said.

“I did.”

“On the business that brought her up here?” she asked.

“You might put it that way.”

Daphne said, in sudden panic, “Then why was he on the train, Jen? He must have gone there to... kill her.”

“Or to protect her,” I said.

“You didn’t do a very good job,” Genevieve flashed back at me.

“The train was late. I didn’t have a chance. Daphne had already slipped her the poison. She was dead when I boarded the train at Tucson.”

Genevieve looked speculatively at Daphne.

“Damn you!” Daphne said to me.

I took a drag at my cigarette.

“You don t know Daphne — or her relations with my cousin,” Genevieve said. “If you did, you wouldn’t make accusations like that.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Tell him,” Genevieve said to Daphne.

“Damn him! I’ll tell him!”

“Tell him,” Genevieve interrupted her insistently.

Daphne hesitated, met Genevieve’s eyes and started talking.

“I first got acquainted with Betty two years ago. We were working in the same office. Betty wanted to go places and do things. She went. I stayed on and worked. Betty wrote to me from time to time. She wrote she was coming back from South America and wanted to see me.”

I met her a short time after she docked in New Orleans. She told me she had something very important that I could do, something that would fix it so I didn’t have to keep on working in the routine of an office job. She made it sound very fascinating. She looked exceedingly prosperous and well-dressed, and had acquired a certain poise and polish. It made me feel I’d been missing a lot. So I told her I’d go along with her.

“On the train, she told me for the first time what she wanted. When we got to San Francisco, I was to take her identity, go to the Pelton Hotel, get her baggage, wear her clothes.”

“Suppose you met someone you knew?” I asked.

“She didn’t know a soul in San Francisco — except Jen.”

“And what were you to do?”

“She was to give me instructions from time to time.”

“How did you get her purse?”

“She gave it to me.”

“When?”

“That night on the train. We exchanged purses. I took hers and she took mine. We kept out, of course, the personal things we wanted — lipstick and things of that sort — but we exchanged everything that would identify us.”

“When did you see her last?”

“That night about eleven o’clock.”

“What time did she go to bed?”

“That was when she went to bed — when we had that conversation.”

“Did you know she was going to take a sleeping tablet?”

She hesitated. “Yes,” she said.

“Did you see her take it?”

“Yes.”

“Were you near her when she took it?” I wanted to know.

“Yes. We stood at the water cooler. We both had a drink. She...”

“Go on,” I said, as she hesitated.

“The sleeping tablets had been left by mistake in her purse — the one she’d given me. She said she needed them, that she forgot to take them out. So I took them out. She drew a glass of water and held out her left hand. I unscrewed the top of the bottle and tapped one of the tablets out of the bottle into the palm of her hand. She took it and washed it down with the water that was in the glass.”

“Then what happened to the bottle?”

“I gave it to her. She dropped it in her bag — really my bag, you understand.”

“And where was the porter when this was taking place?”

Her eyes faltered.

“Where was he?”

“He was... there.”

“Near the water cooler?”

“Yes.”

“He saw you give the tablets to Betty Crofath?”

“I guess so, yes.”

“Did he tell you he had — later?”

“No. I never talked with him.”

“Not in your room at the hotel?”

“No. I went out to get some things. I had arranged to have the baggage sent up. When I came back, the baggage was there. Then, as I was opening the trunk, I heard those funny noises in the bathroom. I looked in. He was there, in the bathtub, tied and gagged. I screamed. He rolled his eyes. I took a step toward him... and then you knocked on the door... I felt I had to answer... I went to the door. It was you.”

I said, “You must realize how that would sound to a jury.”

She didn’t say anything.

“That porter saw you giving poison to Betty Crofath. He came to your room. He’s found with his throat...”

“Stop!” she screamed.

I ground out my cigarette in the ash tray. She wasn’t crying, but she was trembling.

“Why did you tell me your name was Hazel Deering?” I asked.

“Because it was the first name that popped into my mind. I didn’t know just what name to give you. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be Betty Crofath before we got to San Francisco or not. I hadn’t asked Betty about that. I thought if I gave you my name as Daphne Strate and then you met the other girl and she gave you the same name it would be ridiculous. And, of course, the same thing would have been true if I had given you the name of Betty Crofath. So I compromised. I thought I could square it afterward if Betty wanted me to start in right away using her name.”

“You had no idea she was dead until the body was discovered?” I asked her.

“None.”

“Why did you come on to San Francisco after her death?”

“Because, for one thing, Betty had all my baggage and I had hers. The trunks had been checked through to San Francisco. I had to come here to get hers. And then — well, I heard from New Orleans.”

“About the shortage in the company where you’d been working?”

“Yes.”

“You hadn’t embezzled anything?”

“Of course not.”

“You weren’t short in your accounts?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“You didn’t see Betty in New Orleans, tell her you were in a jam — that you were short in your accounts and didn’t know what to do and she advised you to come with her and take her name?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“Any other reason for coming to San Francisco?”

“The president lives here.”

“Who’s the president?”

“Mr. Ruttling.”

“You mean the president of the chemical company?”

“Yes. He’s quite a big shot, Benjamin Colter Ruttling.”

“Seems to me I’ve seen the name in print. Did you think you could get in touch with him; get a personal interview or the like?”

“I feel certain of it.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Well...” she hesitated and shifted her position.

“Go ahead.”

“Well, I don’t know just how the company is organized. It’s a national organization, but the different state units are incorporated separately, and then, there’s some holding company or something that co-ordinates all the activities of the state companies, and Mr. Ruttling is the president of this company. They put on a contest between the different companies and the different states for a certain type of efficiency. And, while the Illinois company won first place, the New Orleans company was second; and there was a banquet in New Orleans and some speech-making and dancing — and the president was there.”

“And you met him?”

“Yes.”

“You mean there was a little dancing and some joke-cracking, — and the president thought you were attractive and danced with you and handed you a line?” I asked.

“Well, in a way, yes.”

“And you thought he’d remember you?” I asked.

“I’m quite certain he would.”

“Why?”

“Well... after the formal part of it was over — the dinner and the speeches and that stuff — the president told me he was bored stiff with so much formality and said he’d heard a lot about New Orleans and some of the more unconventional night clubs, and wanted to know if I knew any of the spots and I told him I knew where they were. So he suggested that he’d like to go and look around. He didn’t want to go alone and wouldn’t I break away and go with him.”

“So you did.”

“I certainly did. I’d been curious about some of those places myself. One or two of them I’d been in, and there were others I wanted to go to. And then, of course — well, the president.”

“I see. So you and the president went out and looked the town over?”

“That’s right.”

“And he told you that you were a very smart girl, and a very clever little girl, and a mighty good-looking little girl; and didn’t you think, perhaps, you were wasting your talents working for one of the state companies in New Orleans, and that if you came to San Francisco didn’t you think you might be able to better yourself...?”

“Why, yes. That was almost exactly what he said. He said that he thought he could get me a position in the parent company where there was a chance for advancement.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Oh, perhaps four or five months.”

I said, “It’s a fifty-fifty bet whether he’ll remember you. What is he, a pompous old stuffed shirt?”

“No. He’s... he’s nice.”

“And you came up here to see him?”

“Well, in a way, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought he might do something about that New Orleans situation and keep the company manager down there from telling a lot of lies about how I was short in my accounts.”

“Are you bonded?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did any bonding company guarantee that you wouldn’t be short in your accounts?”

“Why, I don’t think so.”

“No application for a bond was made when you went to work for the company?” I asked.

“Noo that I know of.”

“You haven’t seen the president since you came here?”

“No.”

I said, “All right, now, let’s get down to brass tacks, Daphne. There was money in the purse Betty Crofath gave you, wasn’t there?”

She nodded.

“How much?”

“Quite a little.”

“How much?”

“A hundred or two hundred dollars.”

“How much?”

“Over four hundred dollars.”

“How much?”

She got mad again. “Four hundred and fifty-eight dollars and thirteen cents — if it’s any of your damn business.”

“And there was no money in the purse you gave her?”

“She told me to take my money out and put it away, and that I was to use her money for expenses.”

“Then she must have had some more money?”

“I guess so.”

I said, “Let’s look at it the other way. You were short in your accounts in New Orleans. You were trying to get away. You knew that the officers were hot on your trail. You took the name of Hazel Deering. You got on the train and noticed the girl in the next section looked a lot like you. You noticed she seemed prosperous. You wished you were in her shoes. Then the idea occurred to you that you might get in her shoes. In your purse, you had some poison that you’d picked up through the chemical company where you’d been working. You decided that you’d never go to jail. If the police caught you, you’d take poison. Then the girl you’d been looking at came to you and asked you if you had any sleeping medicine. You said you had. You started to give her some. Perhaps by accident, perhaps deliberately you gave her the poison. If by accident, you happened to wake up along toward morning and realize you might have given her the wrong tablet. You went to her berth to see if she was all right. She was dead. The car was quiet; everyone was asleep. You switched identities with the dead woman. Later in the morning, the porter discovered the body. At the time, everyone thought it was a natural death. Later on, when the question of poison entered into it, the porter remembered what he’d seen. He didn’t go to the police. He went to you. He wanted more than you were willing to give. You pulled a gun on him, tied him up, gagged him, and were wondering what to do with him when I knocked. Later on, you went back and killed him. It was your only way out.”

“I did nothing of the sort,” she said. “I was so frightened, I never went back to that room.”

“What did you do?”

“Betty had told me about her cousin here. I walked the streets for a while — after I got out of the room in the hotel by pointing the gun at you. Then I remembered about Jen. I came up here and told her — everything.”

I looked across at Genevieve.

“Check,” she said.

“If I’d done the things you said,” Daphne went on, “I wouldn’t have known anything about Jen.”

“Unless you got her address from a book in Betty’s purse.”

Genevieve said, “I don’t think she did. I think Betty told her about me.”

I asked Daphne, “Did you ever meet a man named Herb Rendon?”

“No — not that I know of.”

“He was on the train, a heavy-set chap in a double-breasted brown suit.”

“Oh, I remember. No, I didn’t talk with him, but I remember seeing him in the hotel lobby as I went out.”

I asked Genevieve, “Did your cousin tell you anything about what she was doing in South America?”

“No. I’m a poor correspondent, and so is she. We only exchanged short letters. She sent me some postal cards.”

“What’s her nationality?”

“American.”

“Her mother living?”

“No.”

“Did Betty speak German?”

“No. She spoke Swedish. Our ancestors were Swedes.”

I turned back to Daphne. “You haven’t been in touch with Ruttling, haven’t let him know you’re here or made any attempt to get into communication with him?”

“No.”

I got to my feet. “Well,” I said, “I’m going to take a chance. The only thing in your story that supports your statement is that you may have actually been too frightened to have doubled back to your room.”

“I’ve been telling you the truth,” she said, “the absolute truth.”

Genevieve Hotling studied me for a few seconds, then asked, “Could I help any if — if I went along?”

I moved out into the corridor, said, “No,” almost closed the door, then turned, pushed it open and added, “thanks.”

I heard her say, “You’re welcome,” as the door closed.

Chapter Eight

The home of Benjamin Colter Ruttling sat high on a ridge where, on a clear day, the eye could range out across the ribbon of blue water, looking over Alcatraz Island on the right, out through the Golden Gate on the left. On days when it wasn’t clear, the house was a cold, bleak monument wrapped in chill uncomfortable fog.

At the rate at which real estate sold in the neighborhood, one could almost do mathematics with the weather statistics and tell exactly how many thousand dollars an hour the view was worth on those days of the year when it was available.

Tonight it was wrapped in somber mist — a thick, wet blanket that muffled sounds, distorted the perspective, and suited my purpose admirably.

I rang the bell and waited.

A Filipino who was no longer a boy, but a man nearing middle age, answered the bell.

I didn’t waste any time with him. “I’m a private detective,” I said. “My name is Sabin. I want to see Mr. Ruttling personally on a business matter which is important and which can’t be put off. Tell him it has to do with his last trip to New Orleans and that it won’t take over fifteen or twenty minutes to discuss.”

The servant ushered me into a reception hallway, asked me to please be seated, and left.

The house was evidently air-conditioned. The reception hallway, illuminated with an indirect lighting that gave a uniformly gentle glow, was regulated as to temperature and humidity so that there was nothing to indicate that just just outside the door, a chill, wet fog blanket was blowing along the street or dripping monotonously from the eaves.

Somewhere in a distant part of the house, I could hear the occasional mumble of voices, and once or twice, the distant sound of laughter. Then the servant was back. Behind him came a tall, thin gentleman in evening clothes who looked as though he’d been laughing at a funny story before he entered the room, but was striving now to compose his features into a mask of cold, efficient business.

“I am Mr. Whitney, Mr. Ruttling’s confidential secretary,” he said, and waited.

“Good evening, Mr. Whitney,” I said.

“I take it you can tell me something of the nature of your business?”

“Oh, certainly. First, I would like to ask a question about Mr. Ruttling.”

His educated eyebrows indicated that this was not quite the conventional manner of doing business.

“Mr. Ruttling, I take it, has a sense of humor?”

“Oh, yes.”

“If it should appear that the shortage in Mr. Ruttling’s New Orleans office is laid at the door of the attractive female employe with whom Mr. Ruttling went out to see the town, that wouldn’t bother him in the least?”

“I can see no reason why it should.”

“Or if the most sensational tabloid newspaper in the country is offering the young lady in question a large amount of money for diary concerning the night Mr. Ruttling made his visit to New Orleans...”

“Just whom do you represent?”

“No one at present. I’d like to represent the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing and Supply Company.”

Whitney said, “If you’ll get in touch with me at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, I think I can give you an answer.”

“Doubtless you could,” I told him. “Between now and tomorrow morning, I could get in touch with half a dozen other people who could also give me definite answers.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “You damn fool, I mean that I have the diary.”

“Oh,” he said. “Wait here just a minute, please,” and walked out.

He was back within five minutes, evidently acting under definite instructions. “This,” he said, “sounds omniously like blackmail.”

“Perhaps it does to you. To me, it sounds like business.”

“Do you have any proposition you would care to make — to me?”

“No.”

He said, “Step this way, please.”

I followed him through a door, up a flight of stairs and into a room that was evidently fitted up as a species of supplemental office with some filing cases, a couple of secretarial desks, typewriters and built-in cases.

“Just a moment, please,” Whitney said, and crossed the office to knock at a massive walnut door.

After a moment, he opened the door an inch or two, peeked inside, then he eased his lath-like figure through the opening. He called back over his shoulder to me, “Just a moment, please,” and closed the door gently behind him.

I stood there waiting, very careful not to touch anything, feeling certain that appraising eyes were watching me from concealed peepholes.

At the end of some three or four minutes, the door opened again and Whitney jackknifed himself into the room. His face was twisted into a smile that was evidently meant to be cordial.

“Step right this way, Mr. Sabin,” he told me.

He opened the door wider this time and stood to one side, ushering me into the presence of greatness.

Benjamin Colter Ruttling sat in a room that was a cross between a den and a private office. He was at his ease in a deep-cushioned, russet leather chair that matched the bindings of rare books that filled the bookcases. He was an expansive, genial gentleman with merry, twinkling eyes, a neck that was slightly inclined to washboard, a forehead that was high and round, with the hair thinning just a bit. The eyebrows were well shaped, and if the man had taken that jovial grin off his face he could have looked deadly and dangerous.

He was wearing a dinner jacket with a black tie, a pleated white shirt, and he exuded an air of well-fed prosperity.

“Ah, yes,” he said, “Sabin, a private detective. Sit down, Mr. Sabin, and tell me what I can do for you.”

I said, “Apparently there’s been a shortage of six thousand or so in your New Orleans office.”

“I’m afraid I don’t keep up with the details of things, Mr. Sabin. I leave the minor matters to my local managers, who are capable of handling them.”

“And,” I said, “the girl the newspapers are going to play up in connection with the shortage is a Miss Daphne Strate — and when you were in New Orleans, you and Miss Strate went out to see the town.”

“There is the matter of a diary?” he asked — not of me, but of Whitney.

“So this man says.”

“Naturally,” I said, “Miss Strate considered that evening as the highlight of her life. She was flattered, excited and intoxicated. She came back home and confided to her diary.”

“Dear, dear,” Ruttling said deprecatingly, “such a naïve habit!”

“Isn’t it? You can, of course, get the picture of a young woman completely losing all perspective, thinking that Mr. Big was paying quite a bit of attention to her, and she might well have an opportunity some day to preside over the destinies of Mr. Big’s household if she just played her cards right. She wanted money for culture, for clothes — and for traveling expenses to San Francisco.”

“And so she dipped into company funds?” Ruttling asked.

“Exactly.”

“Hardly an auspicious way to advance her career,” Ruttling said. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t make a very convincing story, Sabin.”

“Expecting,” — I went on as though he hadn’t said anything — “to be able to pay it all back. Then, when sudden financial misfortune overtook her, and she realized she was trapped, her last forlorn expedient was to come to San Francisco and throw herself on the mercy of the man she had learned to really love.”

Ruttling frowned.

Whitney said virtuously, “One, of course, can’t be held responsible for the adolescent emotions of those with whom one comes in casual contact.”

“Which,” I said, “is precisely why much hinges on what is in the young woman’s diary. It depends so much on what you mean by a casual contact.”

That brought them up with a jerk.

“Precisely what is in the diary?” Whitney asked.

I smiled at him.

“What,” Ruttling asked, “is your proposition?”

“I want some information.”

They exchanged glances. “What information?”

I said, “Let’s suppose, for the moment, that Daphne Strate didn’t take the six thousand from the New Orleans company. Who did?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

I said, “Let’s concede, for the moment, that six thousand dollars has been taken from your New Orleans company. It just didn’t get up and walk out by itself, did it?”

“Naturally.”

“How do you know Daphne Strate took it?” I wanted to know.

“My New Orleans manager has charge of all such details. I wouldn’t know. I’d have to ask him.”

“Get him on the phone and ask him.”

He frowned, then said, “No, I don’t think I’d care to do that — not as yet, at any rate. You haven’t shown your hand, as yet.”

“You’ve seen all you’re entitled to see — the backs of the cards, my ante and the chips I’m putting in.”

“The backs of cards all look alike.”

“I’ll put them on the table when someone calls for a showdown.”

“I’m calling for a showdown now.”

“Oh, no, you aren’t. You haven’t called my bet yet.”

“What’s your bet?”

“I want this information.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “The manager of the New Orleans office is a very responsible individual. We have quite a large business out of Louisiana. He wouldn’t make such an accusation if it weren’t fully substantiated.”

“What’s his name?”

“Randolph Holaberry.”

“You do quite a business out of New Orleans?”

“Yes.”

“Foreign trade?”

“To South America, yes.”

“Fool around any in international politics?” I asked.

“Absolutely not.”

“Don’t care a hang about who runs those South American countries, about what party is in power?”

“Certainly not.”

I got to my feet. “When will you be able to get in touch with Holaberry?”

“I don’t know. I’ll... I’ll put through a call for him.”

“By the way,” I said, “would it make any difference to you who happened to be in power in Argentina, for instance?”

“Absolutely not,” he shot back, the words snappy as musket fire.

“Or,” I asked, “do you have any foreign competitors — perhaps the Japanese, for instance?”

He smiled. “No Japanese competition. The only Oriental competition we have is Chinese.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“The Bak Shui Wong Company,” he explained. “They undersell us on certain competitive lines in some foreign countries, but our products are worth the extra price.”

“And you don’t know anything about a Miss Betty Crofath?”

“I never heard of her.”

“You have agents in Argentina?”

“We do business through local distributors in the South American countries. Of course, we keep in close touch with those distributors, but... I think you have everything you are entitled to, Mr... er... er...”

“Sabin,” his secretary supplemented.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Sabin,” Ruttling said, smiling an affable smile of dismissal. “I’ll get in touch with my New Orleans manager, just to see what he can tell me about this girl, this Miss...” He looked at his secretary.

“Strate,” Whitney said.

“Oh, yes, Miss Strate. I want to find out about her. I don’t think I remember her, Mr. Sabin. And, as far as the diary is concerned, I don’t think I’m interested. You said some newspaper was interested? Well, I think I’ll let you deal with this newspaper.”

I frowned at him. “Yet when Whitney told you about me, you left a dinner party to see what I had to offer.”

“Perhaps that was merely curiosity.”

“And now you’re no longer curious.”

“Perhaps my curiosity has now been satisfied.”

I walked out of the room, down the stairs, the footsteps of the secretary pattering along behind me. The Filipino opened the door and I went out. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell where I had said the wrong thing, but I’d stubbed my toe somewhere.

Where had I missed my cue? Ruttling had been jarred enough and frightened enough to leave his dinner party and see me. Then he’d recovered his assurance. He didn’t give a damn what I did now. Where had I said the wrong thing — or failed to say the right thing?

I kept going over and over the conversation in my mind. Suddenly I got an idea. I walked down to a drugstore and called Genevieve Hotling.

“Don’t say anything that would tell anyone who might be listening who this is, but...”

“There’s no-one here,” she said. “I’m all alone.”

“How long since Daphne went out?” I asked.

“About twenty minutes. How did you come out in your interview?”

“I came out,” I said, “the same way I went in — through the front door.” And I hung up the receiver.

Chapter Nine

Soo Hoo Duck wore a wide-sleeved Chinese coat embroidered with fanciful dragons, crawling and squirming about the silk background, chasing always the elusive pearl of wisdom which is shown just in front of their gaping jaws. The long nails of his hands were incased in sheaths of wrought gold in which jade had been inset and cunningly carved. The sheaths protected his nails against breakage, but made a peculiar rasping sound as his hands trailed across the map of South America which lay spread on the table before him.

He looked across at Ngat T’oy and his right hand swept over Argentina in an inclusive motion which brought the gold and jade nail sheath on the right index finger against Buenos Aires.

He glanced up at Ngat T’oy.

Ngat T’oy turned to me. “He wants to know what you think, Ed.”

“I have told him the facts,” I said.

Soo Hoo Duck’s eyes stared steadily at Ngat T’oy. He didn’t speak.

“My father says,” Ngat T’oy went on, “that facts are food for thought which the mind of the truly wise man digests into wisdom.”

I said, “I’m afraid my digestion is not too good.”

She said nothing, merely waited.

“Oh, well” — I surrendered — “Betty Crofath was on the trail of something big. She was afraid. She got in touch with Daphne Strate because she was afraid. Daphne has lied to me. I don’t know where the truth leaves off and the lies begin. Daphne has some hold on Benjamin Ruttling, the president of the chemical company. She knew I was going to see Ruttling. I delivered my message to Whitney, Ruttling’s secretary. It brought Ruttling to me on the run. But, before I reached him, something happened. That something must have been a telephone call from Daphne herself. Ruttling played with me as a cat plays with a mouse. And Daphne gave me the double-cross.

“Betty Crofath had something. She was playing a shrewd game, evidently posing as a neutral, possibly Swedish. She was on the trail of something that was carefully developed for months. There must have been something — some map, some clue, some documentary evidence. Daphne Strate must have that. She must know its value, and she is going to use it to feather her nest. She may offer it to us, but not until she sees how much the other side will pay to get it back... Unless Genevieve Hotling is the one who has it, and the one who telephoned Ruttling.”

Ngat T’oy translated.

Soo Hoo Duck mumbled in Chinese, “The cat which has eaten the canary always starts purring.”

Ngat T’oy said, “Which one of the women will be the first to buy new clothes, Ed?”

I said, “It isn’t that. It’s bigger and deeper than that. I don’t think the canary has been eaten — not yet. The person who got the information Betty Crofath had hasn’t been able to use it. That may be just a hunch, but it’s my best guess.”

“What makes you say that, Ed?”

I said in Chinese, “When the canary cage is open and none of the cats are purring, it is a good sign the bird has flown out the window.”

I felt Soo Hoo Duck’s shrewd eyes fastened on mine, probing my thoughts.

I said, “I have looked up The Bak Shui Wong Chemical Company. It had headquarters in Shanghai. Ostensibly, it is still Chinese, but you know what must have happened to the control of that company. It has extensive trade in Argentina. Large stocks were piled up there for distribution before transportation difficulties developed.”

Ngat T’oy flashed a glance at her father. “You have a plan, Ed?”

I nodded. “I will be the canary,” I said, “and see which cat tries to pounce upon me when I am not looking.”

There was a moment of silence, then Soo Hoo Duck’s hands moved once more over the map. The nail sheaths made his motions slightly awkward as he fumbled over a carved ivory rosebud in the decorations of the inlaid table.

His thumb joint pressed down. I heard a metallic click, and the drawer slid open. It was filled to the brim with currency. Soo Hoo Duck said nothing.

Ngat T’oy’s delicate fingers scooped out the large denomination bills. “You will,” she said, “need the sinews of war. As a canary, you must have golden feathers, Ed.”

Chapter Ten

A full moon riding high in the heavens turned Lake Pontchartrain into a pathway of gold. The New Orleans airport loomed ahead and the plane dipped its nose.

The stewardess came by, adjusting the dark curtains over the windows. “Sony,” she apologized, “but we have to come down with the passengers blind.”

I said, “You got my wire off to Mr. Holaberry?”

“Oh, yes. That went hours ago,” she assured me.

The motors gave forth that peculiar swishing sound which is so characteristic of a big plane coming down. A few moments later, a series of faint, muffled jolts running up through the plane indicated that we had landed.

It was still a long, tedious ride to the city, but when I arrived, my reservations were waiting for me. I had just finished with the luxury of a good tub bath when the telephone rang and Randolph Holaberry was on the line.

“Is it too late to run up for a chat, Mr. Sabin?” he inquired.

“No. I was rather hoping you’d call. You got my wire?”

“Yes. I’ll be right up.”

He was a brisk, alert chap in the late forties, with the restrained, jovial manner of a man who wants to be the perfect host and furnish just the right entertainment, but is carefully feeling his way.

“You’re familiar with New Orleans?” he asked.

“I’ve been here several times.”

“We have some unique night spots in the Vieux Carré.”

“I know you have.”

“Some of the atmosphere has been ruined by the influx of such a large number of people — conditions due to the war and all that — but you can still find — well, just about anything you may be looking for.”

His eyes, slate-gray, prominent and alert, twinkled at me from behind rimless spectacles.

“So I understand. I’m afraid I won’t have time to do much prowling. I’m leaving almost immediately.”

“Your wire said you were interested in detergents?”

“That’s right. In quantity, delivered at Buenos Aires.”

“I think we could make you a very attractive offer.”

“You have an agency there?”

“A distributor. We, of course, would work very closely with our distributor on matters of this kind.”

“My purchases,” I said, “would run somewhere around twenty-five hundred dollars a month — in gold.”

“Could you tell me something of the nature of your business?”

“Not now. I want to know just what you manufacture, and get your prices first. I presume you’d want to get in touch with your South American distributor,” I said.

“Well... well, yes and no. However, I can give you approximate data.”

He was fumbling with the snaps of a brief case as he talked. Once the fastenings came off the case, he was the suave, persuasive manager of an important business. He took out illustrated folders, showed me his line, showed me testimonials, gave me interesting information on competitive prices, on local conditions, on shipments and deliveries.

“I see,” I said at length, “that your line is most complete. Have you made any attempt to segregate those chemicals that are dangerous?”

“What do you mean by being dangerous?” he wanted to know.

“Poisonous.”

“No. Many of them are very deadly to man. We, of course, see that purchasers of those chemicals are duly warned.”

“There isn’t anything then in the shape of tablets that might be confused with...”

“Oh, no. Our stuff is in bulk. Wait a minute — we have one chemical that is put up in small, white tablets that is — well, it could be...”

“Poisonous?”

“Well, yes.”

“In small doses?”

“Yes.”

“What would the symptoms be?”

“Something similar to an overdose of sleeping medicine, I believe. And, of course, there are some of the cyanides... But surely, Mr. Sabin, you aren’t apprehensive that...”

“I am,” I interrupted. “I insist that any company with which I do business shall take all responsibilities in connection with labeling. The laws of various countries differ, and I am not familiar in detail with the laws of Argentina in this respect.”

His face showed relief. “Have no fear, Mr. Sabin. We will assume all responsibility.”

An hour later, he extended his hand and clasped mine in a cordial handshake. “That will give you a general idea,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow around ten o’clock. By that time, you’ll have had a chance to think things over.”

“By tomorrow morning,” I said definitely, “I’m going to reach a decision. Good night.”

I followed him out into the corridor, went down as far as the elevator with him, then went back to my room and sat down and waited.

If that particular cat had been eating any canaries, he had given no indication of the fact. But, perhaps he was too shrewd to be caught licking his chops.

I waited ten or fifteen minutes, then went out to stroll along the narrow, uneven paving blocks of Royal Street.

Everywhere, the night life of the French Quarter was going full-blast. The narrow streets were crowded with people who were there for pleasure — the warm, tropical air, heavy with the scent of lush greenery; the round moon riding toward the meridian; the carefree tinkle of feminine laughter; the low pitched insistence of masculine voices; couples strolling casually from place to place or standing in the narrow doorways talking in low tones; curious sightseers from out of town; the little friendly bars crowded with people chatting back and forth as though they’d known one another for years. It was all a part of the gay Bohemian night life distinctive to the New Orleans French Quarter and for the moment, I all but forgot the grim nature of my errand.

I dropped in at a corner bar for a drink. A young chap who was there with two attractive young women started talking to me. In no time at all, we were a foursome. And, despite my intentions, it was after three o’clock in the morning before I finally re-entered the hotel and asked for my key.

A swarthy gentleman seated over near the cigar stand casually arose and approached me. “Mr. Sabin?” he said.

I didn’t need to simulate surprise. My emotion was genuine.

“I know that it’s very late, and yet here in New Orleans we so frequently take advantage of the cool of the night. If I could talk with you for five minutes — perhaps ten?”

I glanced at the clock. “About what?”

“About chemicals.”

“What about them?”

“Permit me to introduce myself. I am Señor Ramon Vasquo Gomez. I am what you would call a citizen of the world, but I am exceptionally familiar with the South American countries and the problems confronting one who would engage in business there.”

I gave him my hand, bowed low, with a politeness that matched his own. At the moment, my first thought was to determine whether he was the Ramon referred to in Betty Crofath’s diary.

“As you say,” I observed, “where the days are hot, the cool nights seem to hold back the hands of the clock.”

“Exactly.”

He was olive-skinned, unusually dark of eye, and it was hard to place his exact age. I put him somewhere in the late thirties, a well-knit, wiry little chap who had just that selfish veneer of suave polish which would enable him to send a girl orchids one night and stab her in the heart the next.

“You intend to establish a business in South America?” he asked.

I was cautious. “At present,” I told him, “I am merely traveling.”

“In certain South American countries,” he said, “business is done upon a more intimate — more personal basis than here in North America. A person’s contacts can do him much good, or...”

“So I understand. I have certain South American contacts.”

“Are they tentative, or shall we consider that they are absolutely permanent and irreplaceable?” he wanted to know.

“It might be better to call them tentative,” I told him.

“Ah!” he said, and his exclamation was velvet-smooth in satisfaction. “It is quite possible that I can be of assistance. I have heard very indirectly, Señor Sabin, that you are looking for certain commercial chemicals. Here in this country, where you have tariffs and trade restrictions, it is unusual to consider Oriental products. But in South America, I can assure you it is not. The Bak Shui Wong Company, as I happen to know, is in a position to furnish any quantities of commercial chemicals at the right prices.”

“Indeed,” I said. “That is most interesting.” I started to say something else, then suddenly caught myself and snapped my fingers. “Now I’ve got it.”

“What?” he asked.

“I have seen you before,” I said. “Let me think. Buenos Aires... January first, nineteen hundred and forty-three. There was someone with you — an attractive young woman. It was shortly after daylight. You were talking in front of a hotel... an argument.”

“It is,” he announced, “quite possible. I was in Buenos Aires on January first, nineteen forty-three — and surely, Señor Sabin will realize that any South American gentleman would be accompanied on New Year’s morning by an attractive companion.” And Señor Gomez preened a little smile in my direction.

I nodded. “Quite so. But it has been worrying me ever since I met you, where I had seen you before. I’m quite certain now that I place you.”

“That,” he said, “is fortunate, because it is not well that those little haunting thoughts should mar a potential friendship. It is much better when one is able to dismiss those haunting memories so as to relax and drift along on the stream of mutual liking.”

His dark eyes twinkled a friendly message into mine.

I glanced at the clock. It was three forty-five. I had a reservation back to San Francisco on the six-o’clock plane.

“Perhaps,” I said, “you would care to have breakfast with me. We might talk about chemicals. Unfortunately, I have a very early appointment with another gentleman — an appointment for ten o’clock.”

“But any time suits me!” Señor Gomez exclaimed.

“Would eight-thirty be too early?”

“Not at all. I might even suggest eight o’clock because there might be certain details to be discussed before your ten-o’clock appointment.”

“Eight o’clock,” I said, “will be quite all right. Here at the hotel?”

He bowed and extended his hand.

I felt the long, sinewy fingers grip mine, and there was something in the grip that made me want to jerk my hand away. It was as though the tentacles of an octopus had twined themselves about my wrists. But his eyes were smiling and very friendly.

Quite ostentatiously, I wished the clerk good-morning, left a call for six o’clock, and took the elevator up to the floor where my room was located. But I didn’t go to the room. Instead, I walked down the corridor to the stairs, walked down the stairs, waited until the clerk’s back was turned, then moved casually across the lobby and out the side door to the street.

The office and factory of the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing & Supply Company was down near the waterfront in an old part of the French Quarter where dilapidated commercial buildings filled with musty atmosphere and haunted with hoary antiquity offered plenty of space and cheap rents.

Under the circumstances, effecting an entrance to the building was mere child’s play for a man who had at one time in his checkered career specialized in locks and combinations; nor did the door of the big vault offer any difficulties other than the necessity for locating and disconnecting the burglar-alarm system and brushing up a bit on some of the technique that was a carry-over from the old days.

Once inside the vault, I had no difficulty in locating what I wanted.

Quite apparently, auditors were going through the books to determine the exact extent of the shortage, and their progress through the various ledgers was denoted by a series of orderly check marks against the numerous items which had been gone over.

I moved on ahead of the audit, locating figures which denoted liquid assets, wherever possible moving a decimal point or skillfully changing a figure. Then, with a pencil, I made little checks just as the auditors had done, so that it appeared the work had progressed farther than was actually the case, and that the figures I had changed and manipulated had been approved by the auditors.

There was not one chance in ten thousand that such manipulation would go unnoticed. It was the last-minute, clumsy attempt of a desperate criminal who was being cornered.

When I had completed my work, I replaced the books, closed the vault, slipped out of the door, and noticed that the first gray light of dawn was beginning to illuminate the French Quarter.

I walked through the deserted streets to the Roosevelt Hotel, found a taxi and was taken to the airport. I sat in the waiting room, dozing until my plane was ready to take off.

At about the time I entered the plane and fastened the safety belt, I had the satisfaction of knowing that I had left behind me a trail which would lead to a bewildered confusion which, in turn, would set in operation certain activities that promised to have some very startling repercussions.

When I failed to respond to the call I had left at my hotel, a bellboy would be sent up with a passkey. He would find the bed had not been slept in, that my personal belongings were spread about the room. The night clerk would remember that I had wished him a good-morning at around four o’clock, that I had gone directly up to the room, that shortly before that I had been in earnest conversation with a dark-complexioned man who might have been a South American. And at about the time the police were being notified, Señor Ramon Vasquo Gomez would enter the lobby to keep his early-morning appointment with me, and find a police officer ready with a warm welcome.

Shortly thereafter, auditors checking the books of the chemical company would begin to puzzle over certain discrepancies which had, apparently, been duly checked in the progress of their audit. Sometime within the next forty-eight hours, the discovery would be made that the books had been tampered with in a desperate attempt to distort the facts with reference to liquid assets.

On the whole, it looked rather promising. New Orleans police would definitely be puzzled to account for the manipulation of the books. Such falsification of records was hardly compatible with the theory that Daphne Strate was the guilty party. Perhaps now Benjamin Colter Ruttling would begin to concern himself with the details of his New Orleans branch, while Daphne Strate could begin to wonder at what was happening.

So I settled back in the cushions and let the rhythm of the pulsing motors lull me into restful slumber. I doubted if the New Orleans police would connect the west-bound passenger who had secured reservations under the name of John Harper with the east-bound passenger named Sabin who had been bound for South America.

At any time now, the cat which had eaten the canary might well begin to suffer the first premonitory pangs of acute indigestion.

Chapter Eleven

Yat Sing was waiting for me in front of the dingy little Chinese-owned apartment house where I had my hideout. His eyes slithered up to mine in quick appraisal, then glided away without his having made the slightest sign; but I knew he had news to impart, and would join me in a few minutes.

I got under a shower, changed my clothes, and was half dressed when I heard Yat Sing’s knock at the door, and the rattle of dishes.

I opened the door. Once more, Yat Sing was the perfect characterization of a Chinese waiter. He raised his voice in the sing-song pidgin English of Chinatown, and said, “My bossey man say long time now you no pay. You going cat chum food my restlaunt, you must catchum pay me money tomollow suah.”

I said, “Things have been pretty tough. I can let you have two dollars today, perhaps two dollars more tomorrow. How’s that?”

“All-right. Maybeso I tell bossey man,” Yat Sing replied.

The dishes rattled as Yat Sing set the tray on the table. Then he went back and closed the door, came over to sit beside me, and took a long breath, priming himself for the unwelcome chore of carrying on a long conversation.

“You go airplane,” Yat Sing said. “Maybeso two hour later, white man comes, ask questions, look over list of people who go on plane. Then he go sendum telegram. No can find out what’s in telegram. I find out two telegrams to New Orleans.”

“What did this man look like?”

“Face have expression alla same happy bull. This man thick.”

“Clothes?”

“Clothes alla same yours, but different color — brown.”

“You mean double-breasted brown?”

“Alla same.”

“A little stripe?”

“White.”

I knew now that Herb Rendon had given me a line on himself. I asked confidently where this man lived.

“This man,” Yat Sing said, “velly smart. Velly hard follow. He go all around circles. He go in one door; he come out another.”

“Where did he go finally?”

“Montelley House Hotel.”

“Under what name is he registered?”

“No find out yet.”

“Benjamin C. Ruttling, president of Chemical Company — how about him?”

“He go see police.”

“What about?”

“Not find out yet.”

“Daphne Strate and Genevieve Hotling — what about them?”

“Still same place.”

“Has Daphne Strate seen Mr. Ruttling?” I asked.

“No see.”

“Have the police found any more clues to the killing of George Bronset, the porter?”

“No clues.”

I ate my dinner silently, thinking that over. Yat Sing smoked a cigarette, saying nothing.

“Ramon Vasquo Gomez,” I said at length, “in New Orleans. I saw him there and...”

Yat Sing was ahead of me. “You leave hotel. Ramon Gomez come see. Police talk long time. Ask many questions. Take him headquarters.”

I said, “I also had an appointment with Randolph Holaberry for ten o’clock. What did he do?”

“He not come.”

Once more, I was silent, and once more, Yat Sing returned to his cigarette. No use to ask him how he knew these things or to question the accuracy of his information. He was head of a far-flung system of celestial espionage and transmitted accurate, up-to-the-minute information of cold, hard facts. He wasted no time in idle surmise. When Yat Sing had established something as a fact, he would communicate it. Until that time, his thought processes were locked behind a bland, moonfaced tranquillity that was as hard to penetrate as the armor of a battleship.

Abruptly, Yat Sing, noticing that I had finished, got up and arranged the empty dishes on the tray.

“That’s all the information you have?” I asked.

“No more.” He turned at the door. “Maybe so you go out,” he said. “Maybe so you have trouble. No matter. Chinaboy plenty close.”

And he was out, closing the door behind him.

Soo Hoo Duck had spoken. The mysterious, ubiquitous hand of the Chinese would be protecting me.

I smoked two cigarettes and did much thinking. Then I put on a light overcoat, drew on thin, very soft and flexible gloves, pulled a hat down low on my forehead, and went out into the night.

Chapter Twelve

I tapped gently on Apartment 632 at the Medville Arms.

Genevieve Hotling opened the door. “Hello,” she said.

“May I come in?”

“It’s almost midnight. I was just going to bed.”

I didn’t say anything.

She smiled then and said, “Oh, all right, come on in. I was interested in a story and was sitting up to finish it. Usually I’m in bed by eleven.”

“Where’s your friend, Daphne?”

“She hasn’t come in yet.”

“Been out all evening?”

“Since about nine. Did you hear about what happened in New Orleans?”

“What?”

“They’ve virtually cleared her of the embezzlement.”

“How did that happen?”

“I don’t know the details, but something happened that convinced the police the embezzler is still in New Orleans. Apparently he tried to take some advantage of the auditors who were working on the books.”

“So Daphne’s out in the clear?”

“Yes.”

“And about the hotel business?”

She said, “I’m satisfied that will straighten out.”

“You don’t think Daphne Strate had anything at all to do with your cousin’s death?”

“Naturally not. Otherwise I wouldn’t be protecting her.”

“And you don’t think she had anything to do with the death of the Pullman porter?”

“Of course not.”

“What makes you so positive?”

“She couldn’t have done it; she simply couldn’t have done it.”

I offered her a cigarette. She took one, and I struck a match.

“Mind if I get personal?” I asked.

“Now or later?” she asked in a calm, very noncomittal tone of voice.

“Does it make any difference?”

“Some.”

“Why?”

“Nearly all men get personal sooner or later. It’s the rapidity with which they rush the point that makes it more or less objectionable.”

I deliberately misunderstood her. “Meaning that the delay makes it more objectionable?”

She met my eyes, smiled, and said, “Sometimes.”

“But not always?”

“Definitely not always. It depends upon the personal equation and the — well, the approach.”

I said, “All right, I’m going to get personal now, and there won’t be any subtlety about the approach.”

“That wasn’t exactly the way I had you sized up, but go ahead — get it off your chest.”

“When I went out to see Benjamin Colter Ruttling the other night, did you telephone him that I was coming?”

The surprise on her face could hardly have been simulated unless she was a darned good actress. “What on earth made you think I did anything like that?” she asked.

“Someone did.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t.”

“Did Daphne?”

“I don’t think so. She knew you were trying to help her.”

“She didn’t seem too certain of it when I left.”

“She did afterwards.”

“What changed her mind?”

“I talked with her.”

I said, “Daphne went out. She could have telephoned Ruttling.”

“Yes, she could,” Genevieve admitted.

“And you were left alone. You could have telephoned him.”

“Yes, I could have. I didn’t. I don t think Daphne did.”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know. The whole thing is new to me.”

“Do you think Daphne went to see him tonight?”

“I hadn’t thought of it, but — well, she may have.”

“Who was it telephoned her about the New Orleans matter?”

“I don’t know.”

I said, “The poison that killed your cousin was a chemical worked out by the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing & Supply Company. It’s something they’re using in connection with a treatment of brush bristles. A tablet dissolved in water has the effect of stiffening the bristles on a brush — toothbrush, hairbrush, nailbrush, etc. It’s particularly advantageous in the treatment of toothbrushes, and when it’s used according to directions, there’s no danger. But taken internally it would produce symptoms similar to those of an overdose of sleeping pills.”

“Daphne didn’t kill my cousin.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I think — I think I know...”

“Go ahead,” I said.

She changed her mind and quit talking altogether.

“You mean that you think you know who did?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Your cousin didn’t write to you?”

“She was a poor correspondent.”

“When was the last time you heard from her?”

She said, “Mr. Sabin, I’m going to be frank with you. My cousin telephoned me from New Orleans. She told me she was coming to San Francisco, that she had reservations at the Pelton Hotel. She told me she was on a very dangerous mission and that she thought it would be better for me if she didn’t see me after she arrived in the city. She seemed to think that we might meet on the street or somewhere and that — well, you know, she intimated she was in some danger and she didn’t want to drag me into it. And she said she was bringing someone with her, that if I did meet her on the street, not to use her name, not even her first name.”

“It was from New Orleans that she telephoned?”

“Yes.”

I got up and walked over to the bookcase in the corner of the room, resting my elbows on it, studying Genevieve, trying to frame my next question.

I was still debating which particular lead I wanted to follow, when I heard the sound of a key being fitted into the lock. The bolt clicked back.

Daphne Strate burst into the room. “Hello, Jen! It’s really true! I’m in the clear on that New Orleans business!”

She hadn’t seen me, and she ran over to Genevieve Hotling, throwing her arms out in an embrace.

Genevieve narrowed her eyes and jerked her head in my direction, but Daphne didn’t see the signal.

“And there’s something else, Jen...”

“That’s fine, honey,” Genevieve interrupted firmly, “and I’m sure Mr. Sabin will be as pleased as I am to hear it.”

“Mr. Sabin! He...”

Genevieve’s fingers clasped Daphne’s forearm firmly, exerting a gentle pressure, and turned her in my direction.

Daphne got the idea, swung to face me, said, “Oh, hello, I didn’t see you! The New Orleans business is being cleaned up. I’m exonerated. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“That,” I said, “is very wonderful indeed. I appreciate how you must feel.”

She hesitated a moment, then came over to me, her hand extended. “I think I owe a good deal to you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For going out to see Mr. Ruttling. I think you made quite an impression on him — in my behalf.”

“Indeed,” I said. “You’ve seen him?”

“Well, I... Yes.”

She threw her arms around my neck and pressed warm red, grateful lips to mine. I could feel her body straining against me, could feel the rapid pound, pound, pound of her heart.

Then she had taken her arms away, slipped out of my grasp, and was waltzing across the room to Genevieve.

I took out my handkerchief and wiped lipstick off my mouth. It was flavored with raspberry.

“Oh, I’m so happy!” Daphne said. “I feel like two-million-dollar’s worth of champagne bubbles.”

She swung Genevieve around in a swirling turn, clasped her once more in an embrace, and said, “Jen, you were just wonderful to me!”

Genevieve said, “Why, I didn’t do anything, Daphne.”

“You took me in when... when things looked dark.”

“I knew you hadn’t done anything wrong, honey.”

Daphne said, “How about a drink? Have we got anything to drink in the house, Jen? Let’s celebrate.”

“I’ve got about half a bottle of Scotch in the kitchenette.”

“Let’s bust it, Jen. I’ll get you another one tomorrow. Mr. Sabin wants a drink with us, don’t you?”

I said, “I’m not certain I do.”

They both looked at me in surprise.

I said to Genevieve, “You told me that the New Orleans business had been cleaned up, before Daphne came in.”

“Why, yes,” Genevieve said, meeting my eyes.

I said to Daphne, “Then you knew it had been cleared up earlier?”

“Well — in a way. Nothing I could be sure about. It wasn’t until after I talked with Mr. Ruttling that I knew that — well, you know, that Mr. Ruttling understood it.”

“And when did you talk with him? What time?”

“This evening.”

“Who told you about the New Orleans matter having been cleaned up?”

“Why... why, I don’t know what right you have to cross-examine me on that.”

“Go on,” I said. “Who told you?”

“It’s none of your damn business.”

I looked across at Genevieve, to make certain she was going to get it. I said, “I tried to put a deal across for Daphne. I thought someone in the company might be making her the goat. I knew she wouldn’t get to first base if she went to the president of the company and reminded him that she was the little girl he had taken out in New Orleans on the sneak-away party. He’d brush her off, and tell her to go jump in the lake. Moreover, he’d undoubtedly have turned her over to the police.

“So I went to Ruttling’s house and told him my name was Sabin, that I was a private detective, that Daphne had kept a diary, that her account of what had happened that night when she went out with Ruttling would make very interesting reading, that I had the diary, and that a tabloid newspaper wanted it.”

Genevieve Hotling’s eyes were without expression. “You mean you blackmailed him?”

“You’re damned right I blackmailed him,” I said. “I put it up to him cold-turkey, the theory being that as long as he thought I had Daphne’s diary he would never permit her to be arrested by the New Orleans police on a six-thousand-dollar embezzlement charge.”

“I’m afraid I don’t get you,” Genevieve said.

I said, “It’s simple. No one would care a hang about Daphne Strate’s impressions of going out with her boss on a whoopee party in the French Quarter unless it was tied up with some news story. But if the company of which Ruttling was president had her arrested for embezzlement, and then, as she sobbed out her story of innocence, she referred to a diary she had, and the diary contained some very interesting statements concerning the evening she had spent with the president of the company — well, then it would be news. Do you get me?”

“I get you,” Genevieve said.

Daphne didn’t say anything.

I said, “Therefore, I thought that once I could impress upon Ruttling the fact that such a diary was in existence, he would see to it that nothing was done about apprehending Daphne. I thought he would telephone his New Orleans office, and the New Orleans police would drop the charge.”

Genevieve said, “You mean that you’re the one who’s responsible for Daphne’s exoneration?”

“What I was doing didn’t pan out. Do you know why not?”

“No.”

“Because,” I said, “your dear little friend Daphne sneaked out and telephoned Mr. Ruttling, telling him I was coming out there to see him, but that I didn’t have authority to speak for her. That she wanted to see him personally.”

“How you talk!” Daphne said.

I said, “I’ve been wondering about that ever since I went out there. Now I can put two and two together. The missing fact that I didn’t have is now in my hands and it all fits together to make a perfect picture.”

“I still don’t get it,” Genevieve said.

I said, “I went up to Ruttling’s house. I handed a good jolt to the servant who answered the door. That brought Whitney, Ruttling’s secretary. I handed it to Whitney straight from the shoulder. Whitney went back and told Ruttling. Ruttling was in a panic. He went to his office upstairs in the house and told Whitney to bring me up. Whitney came back to get me and bring me up. They kept me waiting for a few minutes in the outer office. Then, when I went inside Ruttling played with me as a cat plays with a mouse. What brought about the change?”

“Are you certain there was a change?” Genevieve asked.

“Of course, there was a change. Ruttling would never have left his dinner party and gone to his upstairs study to receive me unless he’d been badly frightened. Then something happened to make him get over being frightened. It was something Whitney didn’t know anything about until after he had taken me to the upstairs office. There’s only one thing it could have been. A telephone call.”

Daphne Strate said, “Listen, there are about two million telephone subscribers within a ten-mile radius and...”

I smiled at her. “And how many of them would be smart enough to sit up all night and fake a diary?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You put through a telephone call to Ruttling’s house. You’d been trying to get him off and on all day. You couldn’t get past the barrier of secretaries. But after I had gone and delivered my message to Whitney, and Whitney had in turn taken it to Ruttling, you telephoned, and Ruttling received the call with open arms. He talked with you on the telephone and asked you what you were trying to do, blackmailing him with a diary.”

“Phooey,” she said.

I said, “You are a quick-thinking little girl, Daphne. You listened to what Ruttling had to say, and he let the cat out of the bag. So you told Ruttling that you had the diary, that I didn’t have it; that he had nothing to worry about as long as he was your friend. You asked him if he didn’t remember how friendly you had been in New Orleans, and he handed you a nice little package of hooey over the telephone. You hung up, feeling very, very smart and very, very smug, leaving me holding the sack.”

After that, they let me in to see Ruttling. He was too shrewd to let me see that his attitude had changed while I’d been on the stairs. He talked with me at first as though he were interested, and then, all of a sudden, he changed his entire attitude, trying to make me think I had said the wrong thing somewhere along the line.

“You went down to a stationery store first thing in the morning, got yourself a neat-looking little diary and started in with January first, nineteen hundred and forty-three, faking entries. It didn’t make any difference what you put in the diary, because Ruttling didn’t have any way of checking up on you. Then you came to that fateful evening in New Orleans, when Ruttling had taken you out, and you really went to town. You had found out by that time that Ruttling was afraid of what you might put in the diary, so you confided everything to the diary, everything you could think of that had happened and perhaps something that only might have happened, didn’t you?”

“That’s a lie!”

“Then,” I said, “you began to do some more thinking. You learned that the New Orleans matter had been cleared up, that your name was vindicated. That left Ruttling in rather a peculiar position. As long as he had the threat of prosecution for embezzlement to hold over you, it was sort of a stalemate, but when that blew up, you had the supposedly genuine diary, and Ruttling had a headache. So you telephoned Ruttling again, and Ruttling suggested you come over there tonight. You went out and had a very satisfactory talk. You came back feeling like the two million dollars’ worth of champagne bubbles. Now suppose we see why.”

I made a quick grab for her purse, which lay on the table.

For a moment, she didn’t realize what I was doing, then she screamed and flung herself at me.

It was too late. I had the purse open. It was full of money.

I dumped it out on the table. “You little fool,” I said.

“Why am I a fool? How dare you open my purse!”

“How much did you get, Daphne?”

“It’s none of your business. My own affairs aren’t to be bandied about and...”

“How much, Daphne?”

“I hate you! I could kill you!”

“How much?”

“I tell you, it’s none of your business. I’ll mind my affairs and you can mind yours.”

I said, “Are you foolish enough to think for one minute that the money isn’t marked?”

“Phooey! You talk like a gangster movie,” she said.

“Just a minute, Daphne, and I’ll show you just how much you can trust people. You thought you were smart. Did you give up the diary?”

“I... That’s something else that’s none of your business.”

I looked up Ruttling’s number in the telephone book, went over to Genevieve’s phone, called the number and assumed the hard-boiled, expressionless voice of a police-radio broadcaster. “Police Headquarters. Let me have Ruttling’s secretary, please.”

Whitney’s voice said, “Yes, Sergeant, this is Mr. Whitney, Mr. Ruttling’s secretary.”

“Give me the dope on that dough again,” I said. “There seems to have been a mistake on some of the stuff.”

“Just a moment,” Whitney said, and I heard the rustle of paper.

“There’s fifteen hundred dollars in five one-hundred-dollar bills, ten fifty-dollar bills, and twenty-five twenty-dollar bills. Now, what numbers did you want?” he asked.

“The numbers on the hundreds.”

“Just a moment,” Whitney said. “Here they are.”

He read off five numbers. I copied them on a sheet of paper, said, “Okay,” and hung up.

I passed the list across to Genevieve. “All right,” I said. “There are the numbers of the hundred-dollar bills.”

It was Genevieve who reached forward and picked up the list of numbers. She turned to Daphne Strate and said, without any expression whatever in her voice, “Pick up the hundred-dollar bills, honey. Let’s see if the numbers check.”

Daphne Strate stood perfectly still. She might not have heard either of us.

Genevieve matter-of-factly started pawing around the bills on the table, pulled out five one-hundred dollar bills and spread them out.

“Come on, honey,” she said, “check the numbers.”

As one in a daze, Daphne Strate leaned over the table. Genevieve read out the five figures.

It didn’t need any affirmation from Daphne Strate to show that the numbers checked.

“There you are,” I said to Daphne. “You’ve traded your diary for a one-way ticket to San Quentin.”

“What... what do I do now?”

“Now,” I said, “you grin and bear it. You started out to be a grownup little girl. You started double-crossing those who were trying to do something for you. You’ve got yourself in a sweet mess, and now you can try to find a way out.”

She looked at me steadily without batting an eyelash, then she walked across the room to the studio couch, flung herself face down on it and remained motionless. If she’d started crying, it would have eased the tension all around, but she didn’t cry, just lay there stretched out and rigid.

I walked over and shook her. “Tell me,” I said, “does Ruttling know where he can get you? Did you give him any address?”

She shook her head.

“Not even any telephone number?”

“I... I... told — him he could reach — me — through a friend.”

“Come on,” I said, “snap out of it. He told you he wanted to take you out again, didn’t he? Suggested that you might have an evening together in San Francisco, now that things were all straightened out; that he held no ill-feeling and wanted to know how he could reach you. Is that right?”

She straightened up on the couch. “Damn him! I could kill him!”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Is what I said correct? Did he ask you where he could get in touch with you, and did you give him an address?”

“He told me he didn’t mind paying me for the diary; that he didn’t mind giving me money at all; that he thought I was entitled to something; that he was acting under the advice of his attorney and his secretary, but that if I’d scribble some way to reach me on a piece of paper and leave it under the blotter on his desk, he’d get in touch with me later on and — well you know, we could talk with each other — informally.”

“What address did you give him?”

“I told him to call here and ask for Genevieve.”

I nodded to Genevieve Hotling “Grateful little devil, isn’t she? How soon can you pack up?”

“Do I have to?”

“I think you’d better.”

Genevieve didn’t say a word. She walked over to the closet, pulled out her suitcase and a bag and started packing. “How long do you suppose I’ve got?” she asked.

“Probably not to exceed ten minutes. Getting all the numbers on those bills copied will hold things up a little while and the police won’t have any idea she’s going to run out on them. They’ll think they have all the time in the world.”

Daphne savagely jerked her own suitcase out from under the studio couch, threw a few things in it, walked over to the table where the money was lying, said bitterly, “Two million dollars’ worth of champagne bubbles!”

She swung her arm in a sweeping gesture and knocked all the money onto the floor.

Chapter Thirteen

I said to Daphne, “Pick up the money, Sweetie.”

“Why should I? I don’t want a one-way ticket to jail.”

I said, “You aren’t going to leave it on the floor and give all of us a one-way ticket to jail.”

“What am I going to do with it, then?” she asked.

“Do you want to burn it?”

“Why not?”

Genevieve said, “We can’t burn it. I do all my cooking with gas here in the apartment, and there isn’t any fireplace.”

“Pick it up,” I said to Daphne.

She looked at me for a second or two with a surly negation in her eyes. I didn’t wait for that to turn into defiance. I turned away from her and said to Genevieve, “Turn on the radio.”

She walked over without a word and turned on the radio.

Daphne was picking up the money, putting it together in a sheaf. “Why do you want the radio on?” she asked.

“It will keep anyone from standing out in the corridor and hearing anything we say. Try and get a news broadcast, Genevieve, and turn it up good and loud.”

Daphne had the money all picked up now. She pushed it out at me and said, “Since this seems to be your party, you take charge of the refreshments.”

I took the money from her, folded it once, snapped an elastic around it, and pushed it down in my coat pocket. Gravely, I took out my wallet, crammed with greenbacks Soo Hoo Duck had given me for the sinews of war. I took out half a dozen twenties and handed them to her.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

I said, “In the underworld there are men who make a specialty of taking hot money and giving clean cash in return for it. If you’re going to be a crook, you’d better start learning the ropes.”

Her eyes blazed. She said, “I could...”

“Don’t pull that favorite expression of yours,” I said, “that you could kill me. That’s something else that could get you into trouble, if it hasn’t already.”

Genevieve brought in a news broadcast, tuning it up so that it was level with the sound of our voices.

“What are you going to do with that money?” Daphne demanded.

“What do you care? You wanted to burn it up.”

“Well, I’m beginning to think you just threw a scare into me so you could climb aboard the gravy train. When you come right down to it, we don’t know anything about you.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “You—”

Knuckles tapped on the door.

Genevieve looked at me with eyes that held no fear, only a silent question. Daphne’s face twisted into a spasm of expression. She glanced wildly about her as though looking for some means of escape.

“Are there any back stairs?” I asked Genevieve.

She shook her head.

I said, “All right, we’re in for it.”

“What shall I do?” Daphne asked.

I said, “Sit down on the davenport, act as though you were just about ready for bed, and keep the panic off that face of yours.”

“Shall I answer it?” Genevieve asked.

I said, “I think I’d better. One just can’t tell.”

The knuckles sounded again, a more imperative and authoritative summons than the first knock.

I walked over and opened the door.

Señor Ramon Vasquo Gomez stood on the threshold, his face twisted into that smirk with which he would have greeted an attractive woman who opened the door. It was amusing to see that expression play tag with a whole series of expressions as he recognized me.

“My dear Señor Gomez,” I said, “won’t you come in?”

“It is a pleasure, Señor Sabin. I had hardly expected to find you here.”

“Business,” I said, “forced me to change my plans.”

He entered the apartment, was careful to close the door behind him, looked at Genevieve Hotling, then turned to Daphne Strate. An expression of triumphant satisfaction flooded his face. “Well, well,” he said, “what strange things happen! One follows Daphne Strate to see where she will go, and she leads one to the Señor Sabin, who is so interested in purchasing large quantities of commercial chemicals for his South American business.”

“And Miss Hotling,” I said.

He turned to Genevieve with a bow.

“Miss Hotling,” I said, “may I present Señor Ramon Vasquo Gomez, once resident of Argentina, and murderer of your cousin, Betty Crofath.”

Gomez, in the midst of a bow from the hips, jerked upright as quickly as though I had yanked him by the coat collar and snapped him back. “What was that?” he asked.

“I merely wanted Miss Hotling to know that you had murdered her cousin,” I told him.

“My dear sir, I was in New Orleans at the time of that unfortunate occurrence! Please, may we not have the radio turned off if we are to engage in conversation?”

I nodded to Genevieve.

She was watching me for signals, as a base runner watches his coach. She reached toward the radio.

At that moment, the announcer said, “Turning now from National affairs to our own city, police have uncovered new evidence in connection with the murder of George Bronset, the porter who...”

Genevieve Hotling clicked the radio into silence.

I turned suavely to Gomez, and said very casually, “That may be quite true, señor. Perhaps you were in New Orleans at the time the young lady met her death, but—”

Gomez jumped from his position at the far end of the room, to grab the dial on the radio. He snapped it back on, turned to me with glittering eyes.

I moved toward him. “You asked to have the radio...”

His right hand came up from his hip pocket holding a blued-steel automatic pointed squarely at my stomach.

The voice of the radio announcer came blasting into the room. “... dead in a downtown hotel under circumstances which for a time baffled the police, who have thrown out a dragnet for the young woman who registered at the hotel under the name of Betty Crofath, as well as the man who was seen leaving the room shortly before the body was discovered. With the identification of fingerprints found in that room and after a careful check of the description of the man who passed himself off on the house detective as a representative of the Motor Vehicle Department, police are now convinced that the man they want is none other than Ed Jenkins, known throughout the underworld as The Phantom Crook because of his ability to slip through the fingers of the police.”

Señor Gomez’ black eyes were glittering at me with an intensity of concentration. His lips twisted in a smile.

The announcer went on: “Edward Jenkins has had perhaps as adventurous a career as any man alive. He is reputed to be both hated and feared by the organized underworld, which misses no opportunity to pass on any information it may have concerning him to the police. Yet so clever is this master crook that he has become almost a legendary figure. Earlier in his career, police had him in custody half a dozen times, only to have him slip through their fingers. Later on, they set trap after trap, only to have The Phantom Crook vanish into thin air. Of late, there has been some attempt to enlist public sympathy by presenting the claim that Jenkins is used as a scapegoat by the underworld; that any crime which momentarily baffles the police is blamed upon Jenkins by the stool pigeons who obey the orders of their underworld masters. Police, however, brand this claim as absurd. They say that, despite all reports to the contrary, Jenkins is still carrying on his nefarious activities, albeit so cleverly that it is next to impossible to secure proof which would result in his conviction in front of a jury.

“However, police have definitely identified several of the fingerprints found in the room where George Bronset met his death as being those of Ed Jenkins, The Phantom Crook. Arthur Harryman, the house detective, when shown a police photograph of Jenkins, leveled an emphatic finger at the pictured likeness and said, 'There’s the man!’

“Police are also convinced that the beautiful blonde young woman who registered at the hotel under the name of Betty Crofath was, in fact, Daphne Strate of New Orleans, who was for a time sought by the police of the Southern city in connection with a shortage of funds in a chemical company where she had been employed. More recently, however, her name has been cleared in connection with that shortage, and police are convinced that insofar as the murder of George Bronset is concerned, she is an innocent bystander who has been frightened into flight by events for which she is, in all probability, blameless. Police insist that if she will surrender herself and submit to questioning, they will extend her every possible consideration.

“At the request of police, we are broadcasting a description of Ed Jenkins, The Phantom Crook. Anyone having any information concerning the man who answers this description will please communicate with police headquarters immediately. According to police, Jenkins is about five feet ten and a-half or eleven inches in height, somewhere in the late twenties or early thirties, with an abundance of dark, wavy hair, a thin, straight nose, high cheekbones, penetrating gray eyes, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, well-dressed in a dark gray double-breasted suit. His weight is about a hundred sixty-five pounds.

“Turning now to the local political scene, it has been announced that two of the candidates for mayor...”

Ramon Gomez switched off the radio.

“So,” he said with a smooth, purring note of satisfaction in his voice, “the man who left the room in the Pelton Hotel was none other than Ed Jenkins, The Phantom Crook — and how well the description fits you, Señor Sabin. But come, we are all wasting time, standing here tense and dramatic. Suppose we be seated and relax for a friendly discussion. But do not think that I will hesitate to use this weapon. And, my dear Señor Jenkins — or perhaps you prefer to be called Sabin — please note that I don’t make the mistake of holding the weapon extended, where you could reach it with a swift blow or a well-placed kick. No, señor, I have learned how to use these little toys. You will note that I keep it held back and closely against my body. I can assure you that at the first unexpected move on your part there will be most unpleasant consequences.”

I held a chair for Genevieve. “We may as well be seated,” I told her.

Daphne Strate sat on the davenport, looking from Gomez to me. Her forehead was creased in a thoughtful frown. Her eyes were intent upon missing nothing that happened.

“May I reach for a cigarette,” I asked Gomez, “without causing unpleasant complications?”

“Oh, but certainly. You see, señor, it is necessary for one in my profession to acquire and remember many things. And among the odd bits of knowledge that I have picked up is some rather detailed information about the character who is known as The Phantom Crook. I know, for instance, that he never carries a gun. He has rather a unique philosophy upon this point which appeals to me.”

Gomez turned to Genevieve Hotling. “Would you ladies perhaps like to hear about it?”

“I would,” Daphne Strate said, speaking so quickly that her reply came on the heels of Gomez’ question.

Gomez favored her with a little more detailed study. “Ah, yes,” he said, “the young woman who had the room in which the Pullman porter was found with his throat cut wishes to know more about The Phantom Crook. Most interesting — perhaps we should say most significant.”

“What about his philosophy concerning guns?” Daphne Strate asked.

“It is very, very interesting,” Gomez announced in the voice of an enthusiastic collector praising some very rare item. “You will correct me if I am wrong, Señor Sabin, but as I gather the story, The Phantom Crook relies entirely upon his wits. He says that to carry a gun is like carrying a crutch. One grows to depend upon it, and to the extent that one relies upon the symbol of brute force, one loses the ability to think with that quick-witted cunning which takes advantage of every situation. And that is correct, is it not, señor?”

“You’re doing the talking,” I said.

Gomez turned to Daphne Strate. “Moreover,” he said, “The Phantom Crook has been known to remark that if one depends upon a gun, someone can take the gun away from him, and he is disarmed. But if he depends upon his wits, he can always keep his wits about him. Rather a neat bit of an idea there, don’t you think?”

“You mean he never carries a gun?” Daphne Strate asked.

“I personally cannot vouch for it. This is only the second time I have met the gentleman. The first time was in New Orleans, when he was posing as one about to embark upon a business in South America. However, my dear young lady, rest assured that if my information is inaccurate and the hand which is exploring Señor Sabin’s pocket, ostensibly for a cigarette case, should come out with anything more sinister, you will promptly proceed to stick fingers in your ears, because four or five explosions will take place with very great rapidity, and the stomach of Señor Sabin will be perforated with holes arranged in a very neat circle. I pride myself not only upon my accuracy with a gun, but the quickness with which I can pull the trigger. I am interested in the philosophy of The Phantom Crook, but I do not subscribe to it. I find a gun a very convenient weapon — but then I do not have a police record. I can appreciate the fact that as Señor Jenkins — or Señor Sabin, as he undoubtedly prefers to be called — would express it, the police can arrest a man with a police record simply for having a gun in his possession. But they can hardly arrest him for merely having his wits about him.”

I said to Daphne Strate, “He’s rather vain, you know. Don’t deprive him of his moment of temporary triumph. He is basking in the warm light of his own self-approval.”

For a moment, there was anger in Gomez’ eyes. Then he was smiling at me. “Perhaps you are right, Señor Sabin. Who knows. But, in any event, señor, this little steel baton that I hold in my hands makes me the master of the orchestra. I can command the tune that is to be played and the tempo with which it will be played, as well.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Come, come, Señor Sabin. I do not want to steal the entire show. I have shown you the efficacy of my weapon; now perhaps you would like to give these very beautiful young ladies a demonstration of the weapon which is supposed to serve you in such good stead — the use of your wits.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Why not, indeed, señor? We are waiting impatiently for you to proceed.”

I said to the girls, “How about a cigarette?” and extended my case toward Genevieve.

“I’m sorry,” Señor Gomez interrupted, “but if the young ladies wish cigarettes, they must get them themselves from their own supply. I do not wish to seem impolite, but when one has heard stories of the remarkable agility of The Phantom Crook, one wishes him to keep his distance. I am only too well aware, señor, of the limitations of a gun at very close quarters. To keep your victim at least seven feet eight inches away is my motto.”

I lit a cigarette.

“We are waiting for the demonstration of your particular weapon, señor,” the South American reminded me.

I said, “Let’s do a little reasoning, then. Betty Crofath, it seems, was killed by a rather peculiar poison, which resembled one of the barbitals in its action. It seems that the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing and Supply Company has recently put out a chemical for the treatment of brush bristles which comes in small white tablets, which is quite poisonous, and which, when taken internally, produces rapidly fatal symptoms that are very similar to those accompanying an overdose of the more powerful hypnotics.”

“You interest me very much,” Gomez told me.

“Now then,” I went on, “I went to New Orleans. I sent Randolph Holaberry, the manager of the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing and Supply Company, a wire stating that I was arriving by plane, that I was leaving almost immediately for South America, and that I wished to get some information from him as to prices and deliveries on commercial chemicals.

“Mr. Holaberry came to my hotel very shortly after I arrived. I talked with him for some time about chemicals and prices. Mr. Holaberry was the only person in New Orleans who had any reason to believe I was interested in commercial chemicals.

“Around three o’clock in the morning, I returned to the hotel. Señor Gomez was waiting for me. He told me that from sources of information which were purely his own, he had learned that I intended to engage in business in Argentina and that I was in the market for commercial chemicals. He wished to tell me about the chemicals of the Bak Shui Wong Chemical Company of Shanghai.”

I turned to Genevieve Hotling. “Under the circumstances, would some idea suggest itself to your mind?”

Señor Gomez said delightedly, “This is enjoyable, señor. Pray, proceed.”

I said, “Since I was not engaged in business in Argentina and had no intention of doing so, since Randolph Holaberry, the head of the chemical company in New Orleans, was the only person on earth who had any information to the effect that I intended to engage in business, it is obvious that Señor Gomez’ information must have come through Randolph Holaberry.

“That brings up a very interesting situation. Mr. Holaberry calls upon me, apparently attempting to sell me chemicals. He leaves, and passes on information to Señor Gomez which enables that individual to call upon me as the representative of an Oriental competitor, and offer to deliver the same merchandise at a much lower price than that quoted me by Mr. Holaberry. A very interesting situation.”

“But don’t stop there!” Gomez said. “Please, señor. Please go on. Surely your next step of reasoning is obvious.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Señor Gomez was the friend of Betty Crofath. He knew her in Argentina. He comes to New Orleans. Betty Crofath comes to New Orleans. Betty Crofath had information which might have been of some military importance, something that would have hurt the Japanese Empire had it been divulged to certain parties. Betty Crofath is murdered. The instrumentality of that murder is a poison which very much resembles a sleeping tablet in appearance and in effect. It is a chemical worked out by the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing and Supply Company. A very interesting chain of circumstances, don’t you think?”

Señor Gomez made a little bow. “You express it very forcefully, señor. Now, perhaps, may I say a word?”

“Go ahead.”

“Let us look at it from the other viewpoint. Betty Crofath leaves New Orleans for San Francisco. At approximately that same time, The Phantom Crook takes an airplane to Tucson. He boards the train. He has a berth directly across from the one occupied by Miss Crofath. Shortly after The Phantom Crook boards the train, Miss Crofath dies. Also on that car is a Daphne Strate, who is a friend of Miss Crofath and who had been seen in earnest conversation with her the night before. The next morning, The Phantom Crook is seen engaged in earnest conversation with Miss Strate. Then Miss Strate goes to San Francisco, assumes the name of Betty Crofath, steals Betty Crofath’s purse, her driving license, her baggage. The Phantom Crook calls upon her in her hotel bedroom. Daphne Strate leaves. The Phantom Crook leaves. Almost immediately after the last departure, the body of the Pullman car porter is found in the room. His throat has been cut from ear to ear.”

And Gomez made a little bow, smiled at us, and said, “I rather like that presentation. I doubt if a prosecuting attorney could have done better.”

Daphne Strate was watching me with thoughtful, speculative eyes.

“But come, come,” Señor Gomez said. “We are above all of these petty matters, my dear Señor Sabin. The game we are playing is far removed from that elemental cops-and-robbers pastime. You are not going to say anything to the police about me, and, by the same token, I am not going to say anything to the police about you.”

“What, then, are you going to do?”

“You mentioned when you first met me that you had seen me on New Year’s morning.”

“Something to that effect.”

“In a restaurant.”

“I said in front of a restaurant.”

“With an attractive young woman.”

“That’s right.”

“And we were engaged in an argument,” Señor Gomez went on.

“Correct.”

“That was in Buenos Aires?”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell me the name of the restaurant?”

“No.”

“Could you tell me what street it was on?” he asked.

“No.”

“Could you tell me what hotel you stayed at there?”

“I see no reason for doing so.”

“Could you tell me exactly, or approximately, even, what time it was?”

“Shortly after daylight.”

“Come, come, señor, you should do better than that. Was it eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten o’clock?”

“About eight o’clock, I should judge.”

His smile showed even rows of white teeth. “A very conservative guess, señor, but as it happens, a wrong guess which betrays you to your undoing. In short, my dear Señor Sabin, much as I dislike to question the word even of one who has a police record, it is now quite evident to me that you have never been in Buenos Aires, that you did not see me on New Year’s morning at all, that you were simply bluffing about the whole business. If you will note carefully, Señor Sabin, you will realize that Buenos Aires is far south of the Equator, that, therefore, the seasons are completely reversed; that New Year’s day comes in the middle of our summer; that in place of getting daylight around seven or seven-thirty in the morning, the sun is high in the heavens at eight o’clock on New Year’s. In short, my dear Señor Sabin, it has now become apparent to me that you received this information from something Betty Crofath had written — perhaps a diary.”

“And so?” I asked.

“And so, señor, if it is all the same to you, I will take custody of that diary.”

“I am afraid it is not all the same to me,” I told him.

“I will take custody of it anyway.”

Daphne Strate sat suddenly upright. “So that’s it!” she exclaimed.

Señor Gomez looked at her with thoughtful eyes.

“That is what, my dear?”

“That’s where it was.”

“The diary?”

“Yes.”

“And,” Ramon Gomez said, suavely, “that is where what was, my dear?”

I said to Daphne Strate, “You keep your tongue moving, and you’ll talk your head off — and I don’t mean that merely as a figure of speech.”

Ramon said, “Don’t let him frighten you, my dear.”

Daphne Strate said nothing.

“What was it you had reference to, Miss Strate?”

She shook her head.

Gomez turned to me. “I’m afraid, Señor Sabin, you are causing me much trouble. Come, which one of you has the diary?”

Señor Gomez turned to Daphne Strate. “My dear,” he said, “you need not be afraid of me. I am perhaps your best friend. I perhaps could get you out of rather a tight scrape. All that I would ask in return would be your assistance.”

She watched him silently.

“I have reason to believe,” he said, “that there was something in the personal effects of Betty Crofath that would have been very valuable. I have, I believe, gone through all of those personal effects and I have not found that which I wanted. Therefore, it never existed or it has been removed.

“I have good reason to believe that it existed. So, my dear, let us suppose it was removed. Do you suppose that you have it?”

She slowly shook her head. “I didn’t have a chance to go through her things — I just gave them a hurried glance when I — when I heard this noise.”

“The noise?”

“The man who was bound and gagged and placed in the bathtub.”

“Oh, yes,” Ramon Gomez said, and tilted back his head and raised his eyes to the ceiling, as one who wishes to appraise certain various ideas and does not want his judgment to be influenced by any visual interruption.

“There must have been a diary,” he said almost musingly, “and that diary must contain more than... No, how absurd, how foolish of me! I know where it is now.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Not in the diary. Of course not! It was in the one place where no one ever thought to look — the place that...” He broke off abruptly.

I grinned at him.

Daphne Strate looked disappointed.

Abruptly, Gomez got to his feet. “My dear Miss Strate, I think that you and I can be of some mutual assistance.”

She looked him over with a certain tentative appraisal. “What’s your proposition?” she asked.

“Come, come,” Ramon said. “One should hardly make his proposition to a beautiful young woman in the presence of hostile witnesses. What I say might be misconstrued. I notice that you have a suitcase there. Yours, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

“You were leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Splendid! Excellent! After we get into the corridor I shall carry your suitcase. But here, since the Señor Sabin has such a reputation for baffling speed and swift dexterity, I will not be quite so gentlemanly. You had better go first.”

She looked at Genevieve, looked at me, looked back at Ramon Gomez, then without a word, picked up the suitcase and started for the door.

“A most interesting young woman,” Ramon Gomez said, as he beamed at me. “She has the power of decision — a realist. I fancy we shall get along splendidly.”

Gomez stood near the door, the automatic pressed close against his side. His eyes swept the room as Daphne Strate marched through the doorway into the corridor.

“I followed her here from Ruttling’s house, and what a fortunate bit of shadowing that was.”

I met his eyes and said guilelessly, “And when am I free to go?”

“My dear Señor Sabin,” he said, “go any time you damn please,” and stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him.

Chapter Fourteen

Genevieve Hotling said, “Are you really the one they call The Phantom Crook?”

I ground out the end of my cigarette in an ash tray and merely smiled.

She said almost wistfully, “I remember when you cleaned up your record and started going straight. What happened after that? Did you slip?”

I said, “Something happened that made it so I didn’t care one way or another. The police did the rest. You know, it’s very difficult for the police to say to the newspaper reporters, ‘We just don’t know. We haven’t any clues’. Much easier to say, ‘Yes, we know who did it. We’ll have him in custody within another day or two if he stays in the state, but he’s probably gone down to Mexico or back East somewhere.’ ”

“Meaning you?” she asked.

“Meaning me. The public have an idea I’m responsible for about ninety percent of the unsolved crimes.”

“How many of them are you responsible for?”

“None.”

“It’s difficult to believe that.”

“I’m not asking you to believe it; I’m simply telling you.”

“Don’t you care whether I believe you or not?”

I started to say no, then at something peculiar in her eyes, said yes instead.

“What,” she asked, “do we do now?”

“What would you like to do?”

She said, “We can go out and—”

“Don’t be silly,” I told her. “He stayed here long enough to bait his trap. If we went out now, it would be fatal. Got any playing cards?”

“Yes. Why?”

I said, “Get me a deck. Where are the bedclothes?”

She nodded toward a closet.

I went over to the closet, pulled out the bedclothes, cut blankets into strips and started tying the strips together.

“A rope?” she asked.

I nodded.

We tied them together in a long rope, and tossed the loose end out of the window. Then we tied the other end to the radiator.

“We go down that?” Genevieve asked me dubiously.

I smiled and said, “We go up. I noticed a couple of blank spaces on the directory. Probably those apartments are vacant.”

I walked across to pick up her suitcase. I didn’t trust to the elevator, but took the stairs, located one of the vacant apartments and did things to the lock.

The place was completely furnished.

I switched on the lights and closed the door. I held a chair for her and said casually, “After all, there aren’t very many good two-handed card games. How about a cigarette? And then let’s try cribbage.”

She took one, said, “I simply can’t understand Daphne.”

I lit her cigarette, shuffled the cards, said, “I understand her, all right. Cut the cards.”

We played two or three hands. Then there were sounds coming from the apartment house, below us, the sounds of doors opening and closing, of heavy feet in the corridors. Outside on the street, cars roared into noise and sped away. We could hear the rumble of men’s voices.

“I’m frightened,” Genevieve said.

I scooped up the cards. “Just to be on the safe side, we’d better turn out the lights and sit in the dark. They won’t search the apartment house, but if they should happen to see a light in an apartment that’s supposed to be vacant, it might cause trouble.”

I turned out the lights. We went over and sat on the davenport. There was enough light coming in from the street to show objects in shadowy outline.

“After all,” Genevieve said, “you don’t need to be so standoffish. I’m scared.”

I slid my arm around her shoulders, drew her over close to me. “There’s nothing for you to be frightened about.”

“Why?”

“If they catch us, you simply tell the truth. I forced you to come up here.”

“You aren’t frightened?”

“Not in the way you mean.”

“Don’t you think they’ll catch you?”

“They may.”

“How long have you lived like this?”

“Like what?”

“Being on the dodge?”

“Almost ever since I can remember.”

“Do you want to tell me about yourself?” she asked me.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“How did you get started?”

“The same way most of them get started. My parents were divorced. My mother took my custody. Then she fell in love and married again. The man didn’t like me. My mother had another child by this man. When you’re young and sensitive and hungry for love, and find you can’t get that love, it does things to you. You get bitter. You get harsh. You get a mental maturity which hasn’t been properly seasoned. I turned to the companionship of other boys. We weren’t particularly vicious; we simply wanted action. Then something happened, and they blamed our gang for it. Circumstantial evidence pointed pretty strongly to one of the boys, but I knew he was absolutely innocent. They brought him into Juvenile Court. The judge was a misfit. He tried to break the boy’s spirit. After a while, they sent him to reform school. It made me bitter. I learned to hate the law.

“After that, it was an easy step to find myself outsmarting the police. Then there came a time when I wasn’t clever enough. By that time, I was old enough to take the jolt. They threw the book at me.

“In the Big House, I made up my mind that if I was going to be a crook I’d be a top-notcher. There’s plenty of chance to pick up miscellaneous information in stir. I kept my eyes and ears open. Then, about a year before I got out, I realized it was a game you couldn’t beat. I decided to go straight. That shows all I knew about what we call justice.

“When a man gets out of prison, he either has to have a job and friends who are interested in seeing that he goes straight, or he has to team up with the underworld and make a living out of crime. Otherwise, you can’t beat the game. I know, because I tried. I tried to be a lone wolf. The underworld couldn’t understand me — thought I’d gone soft. Men whom I’d met in stir and who had educated me in all the tricks of the profession, thinking they’d have a young, skillful apprentice to help them later on, felt that I’d betrayed them. In a way, I had.”

“But surely,” she said, “that didn’t drag you back into the underworld!”

“No, the police did that. They started using me as a scapegoat. I was the fall guy for any crime the police couldn’t solve.”

“It doesn’t seem possible,” she said.

“It wouldn’t have been,” I told her, “if I hadn’t been so young and thought I was so smart. I decided that it would be easier to let the police try to catch me, and to outwit them, than to go into court and try and clear my name.”

“But I can’t understand that.”

“To understand it,” I said, “you have to know something about our system of law. Well-balanced justice permeates our law in theory but not in practice. Getting justice implanted in laws which, for the most part, go back for decades is quite a job. Because we have been so jealous of our liberties, we have fought to retain many of our ancient laws, and some of those weren’t too good. They go back to a day when public executions were as exciting and as well attended as a country fair.

Our laws are very smug and sometimes hypocritical. Theoretically, if a man is on trial for a crime, you can’t prejudice the jury against him by showing that he has ever been convicted of another crime. The theory of the law, set forth in self-righteous complacency, is that a man can only be tried for the one crime he is accused of committing.”

“That’s fair,” she said.

“Very fair, if it worked that way. The trouble is, it doesn’t.”

“Why?”

“If you don’t deny the charges against you, the prosecution can’t show that you’ve ever been convicted of another crime. But if you take the witness stand and become a witness, the law says that your testimony may be impeached by showing that you have been convicted of a crime.”

“Why is that?”

“That’s because from time immemorial it has been permissible to impeach a witness in a civil case by showing he’s been convicted of a felony. And when they apply the same rules of evidence to criminal cases, the man with a criminal record doesn’t dare to take the stand.

“Wait a minute,” I said, as she started to say something, “don’t get me wrong. The law, in its smug complacency, says, 'Oh, we’ll fix that all right’, and throws a statute on the books saying that if a man accused of crime doesn’t take the stand and testify in his own behalf that isn’t to be considered against him; the jury aren’t even allowed to think about it, much less comment on it.”

“But can jurors do that?” she asked.

“Only the judges think so.”

“You mean, if you don’t take the stand...”

“If you don’t take the stand,” I said, “you’re licked. The jurors listen to the judge tell them that inasmuch as the defendant hasn’t taken the stand, they aren’t allowed to consider that in any way, and then go back to the jury room, look at each other, elect a foreman, and for a while nobody says anything. Then someone says, 'Well, what do you think?’ and someone else says, 'I think the so-and-so is guilty.’ Perhaps there’s an argument, and somebody blurts, 'Well, he didn’t dare to take the witness stand; you can see that,’ then someone says, 'But we’re not supposed to consider that,’ and then someone laughs, and then they have another ballot and the foreman announces they’ve agreed on a verdict, and that the defendant is guilty as hell.”

“But suppose you had taken the stand?” she wanted to know.

I smiled. “Then the district attorney tries to trap you on cross-examination. If he can get you mixed up, he pours a lot of sneering sarcasm at you and then gives you the works. If he can’t get you mixed up, he pauses for a long moment, then looks at you and says, 'Let’s see, Mr. Doe, you’ve been convicted of a felony, haven’t you? Back in nineteen-twenty-eight, I believe?’

“You look him in the eyes and say, 'Yes, sir,’ and you can feel the sympathy of the jury turning to ice. It isn’t alone the way the district attorney says it, but it’s the tone of voice he uses, as much as to say, 'Look at him, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, a graceful, gifted, talented, accomplished liar. He wants you to believe he’s innocent and yet I’ve just forced him to admit that he’s a crook, a professional criminal.’ ”

I stopped talking, so that there was a sudden dramatic silence.

After a moment, Genevieve asked, “And what does the jury do?”

“The jury,” I said, “loses interest in everything connected with the case. The only thing that concerns them is how soon they can get a chance to write a verdict of guilty and go home. What’s the use of wasting time on a crook? Throw the book at him. There should be a law against letting a crook have a jury trial, wasting the time of twelve good men and true.”

“But can’t you appeal?”

I laughed. “You can appeal only on questions of law. The verdict of the jury is final on questions of fact. You’ve been found guilty by due and proper legal procedure, and that’s it.”

“So what happens?”

“So,” I said, “you go to the Big House for the second time. This time, they give you quite a jolt. When you get out, you’re pretty apt to be sour and bitter at the whole thing. Then’s when you really start going wrong. And if you get caught again there’s nothing to it. The D.A. dangles two prior convictions in front of a jury. That time they send you up for life. You’re an habitual criminal. No, it’s a game you can’t beat — not unless you have some luck, some friends, a lot of determination, and a job with a boss who knows your past history and is willing to give you a chance to go straight.”

“But I should think society would make it easy for a man who has been convicted of crime to go straight. I always thought it was that way.”

“Lots of people do.”

We were silent for a little while. Then I said, “Pretty soon, when things have cooled off a bit, I’m going to leave here. After I do, give me about ten minutes, then call the police. Tell them that I knotted the blankets together and tossed them out of the window for a blind. Then I made you come up here with me and wait; that you were frightened stiff and didn’t dare not to do everything I asked. But give me a break on one thing.”

“What?”

“Say that you came with me because I asked you to; that you thought I’d kill you if you didn’t, but that at no time did I make any threats. All I did was to ask you to come. And when I left, I told you that, as a personal favor to me I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything for ten or fifteen minutes.”

She thought that over. “And I’m to tell them you didn’t make any threats?”

“Not right off the bat,” I said. “Think it over and...”

There were footsteps coming down the hall outside. Then the footsteps stopped in front of the door.

I heard Genevieve’s breath suck in, in a quick, gasping intake.

We sat perfectly still for a matter of some ten seconds. Then the steps moved slowly away.

I turned to Genevieve, whispered “Take it easy.”

She breathed my name.

Then, abruptly, the steps came back, paused once more in front of the door. Then, very gently, fingers tapped against the panels.

Genevieve’s hand came over to rest on mine. Her fingers were cold.

We sat perfectly still, waiting.

I heard the scrape of metal against the lock of the door — not a key. Somebody picking the lock.

It seemed that we sat there for more than a minute while we could hear the gentle scratching and scraping of metal against metal. Then the latch clicked back, and the door opened.

Silhouetted against the vague light of the outer corridor were two figures, two men moving with surreptitious stealth.

Every muscle in Genevieve’s body tightened. I knew she was going to scream. I slid my left arm up from her shoulders, clapped my hand over her mouth. That brought her back to sanity and got her nerves under control.

The two ominous figures moved on into the shadows of the apartment. I heard fingers groping along the wall for a light switch. Then abruptly the room clicked into brilliance.

Yat Sing and another Chinese stood peering into the room. Abruptly, Yat Sing gave an exclamation of satisfaction and gently closed the door.

I held my hand clamped over Genevieve’s mouth.

“Velly hard time to find,” Yat Sing said. “Police men big fools. See blanket hang from window. Think you go way. Yat Sing tries knots on blanket. Find too loose. If you go down blankets, knots be velly tight. Yat Sing think maybeso you somewhere in house. Findum all vacant apartments. Pick lock each apartment. Take long time. Velly solly not come sooner,” he said impassively.

Genevieve realized now that these men were my friends. I felt her relax and removed my hand from her lips.

“What is it, Yat Sing?” I asked.

His beady, glittering eyes bored into mine. “Ngat T’oy,” he said, “go way. No come back.”

Chapter Fifteen

I was on my feet, facing Yat Sing with no recollection of having moved from the davenport. I could feel a deadly, cold rage taking possession of me, sharpening my faculties until I saw the things in that room with a clarity and attention to details that made it seem my eyes were photographing motion pictures upon my brain.

And beneath all of the rage, there was a chill of apprehension.

The people with whom we were dealing knew too much. They had repeatedly made use of information which was closely guarded as a secret locked in the minds of Chinatown’s leaders — and information which is kept secret by an Oriental is very secret indeed.

I met Yat Sing’s eyes and saw the consternation on his face. I looked at Genevieve Hotling sitting on the davenport, still open-mouthed with amazement. I looked at the Chinese who had entered the room with Yat Sing, and knew him instantly for what he was. He was a Foo Tow Chi, a Chinese hatchet man. At one time, these men were the executioners for the tongs, the gunmen who roved about, killing members of rival tongs, chosen for their skill with a gun, their cool nerve and daring.

“How,” I asked, “did it happen?”

Yat Sing said, “Get automobile. Start for see you. My men watch her go; wait for her come. She no come.”

I knew that Ngat T’oy had always prized her freedom of action. She had remonstrated with her father that there was no necessity that he should know where she went or what she did, because of what she was pleased to call her unimportance. But I knew also that her father had instructed Yat Sing to keep an eye on her wherever it was possible to do so, without letting Ngat T’oy know that she was being protected. And a moment’s thought convinced me that Yat Sing had had men on my tail; otherwise he would not have known that I was at the Medville Arms.

I said swiftly, in Chinese, “The woman with hair like straw that has been left in the sun — did you see her?”

“I saw her,” Yat Sing said in his native language.

“You saw her when she came to this apartment house?”

“When she came, and when she left.”

“She came alone?”

“Alone.”

“No one drove her to the place?”

“No one.”

“Was she followed?”

Yat Sing said, without hesitancy, “Not followed. She came from the car that goes over hills, with a bell that clangs. The car stops. She gets off and walks one block to apartment house.”

“The car that is pulled by a rope up the hills?” I asked.

“The same thing,” he affirmed.

“Let’s go,” I said simply to Yat Sing.

“You want me to — stay here?” Genevieve asked.

“Not now,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because you are no longer safe in this apartment house — anywhere in it.”

I turned to Yat Sing and said in English. “This woman is to be given protection. Take her with you. Keep her safe until such time as I tell you there is no longer danger.”

I swung my eyes over to meet Genevieve’s. “This man,” I said, “is my friend. With him you are safe. Go with him. Do as he tells you. It may be inconvenient, but it will be safe.”

She said, somewhat angrily, “Who are you to come to my apartment in the dead of night, involve me in a crime, carry me up to a vacant apartment, hold me there, then turn me over to some Chinaman and tell me to go with him wherever he wants to take me?”

“I am your friend,” I said, “and they will like it better if you refer to them as Chinese rather than as Chinamen.”

She met my eyes for a long moment. Then the flash of anger faded from her eyes. She got up from the davenport. “Very well, friend, I will go with these Chinese,” she said.

I saw the faintest flicker of expression on the face of Yat Sing, nothing so crude as a motion of the facial muscles, but only a very slight softening of the lines of tension about his eyes. I knew then that Yat Sing approved of her, and that she had made a friend.

I said to Yat Sing, “I wish to make certain there are no police remaining to watch the house. I will stay with you until you have told me the coast is clear, and then I will go.”

“Alone?” he asked.

“Alone.”

He glanced toward the Foo Tow Chi and said in Chinese, “Dead enemies can do no harm.”

“Where I am going there is danger for one; for two — death.”

Yat Sing said, “Lead the way.”

We left the apartment, didn’t trust to the elevator, but walked down the stairs, the Foo Tow Chi in front, Yat Sing in the rear, Genevieve and I in the middle. Had any prowler tried to stop us on those stairs that night he would have received a surprise which might well have been fatal.

On the floor below, Genevieve hesitated a moment. “Could I,” she asked, “get a few things from my apartment?”

I shook my head.

“Please. It will only take me a few seconds — less than a minute. I promise.”

We stood there in the corridor while I weighed that which was prudent against the pleading of her eyes.

Her eyes won.

“Very well,” I said, “but you have only a few seconds.”

We moved down the corridor to her apartment. She unlocked the door and went in. It was quite evident that police had been through the place. The blanket rope which I had thrown out of the window had been pulled back and coiled on the floor. Doors had been opened. Clothing had been pulled from the closet and tossed carelessly on the bed, in an effort on the part of police to make certain that I was not hiding behind clothes in the closet.

Abruptly, the telephone started to ring, and the sudden sound of that bell shattered the silence in such strident summons that Genevieve jumped, with that jerky motion which is the fear-inspired reflex of taut nerves.

The sound of that ringing telephone forced me to change my plans instantly.

Either someone had been ringing the telephone at intervals, and it was merely coincidence that the phone happened to ring as we entered the apartment, or someone knew that we had entered the apartment and wished to talk with us.

I whirled to place my hand on Genevieve’s arm, gripping her so she would concentrate her attention upon what I had to say.

“In a moment, Genevieve, you will answer that telephone. Your voice will sound sleepy. You will say that you went out shortly after Daphne left your apartment; that I left at the same time you did, telling you I was going out through the basement; that I said I would return and kill you if you said anything to anyone; that you were terribly frightened. You walked the streets for awhile, then decided that you would return to your apartment because there was no place else for you to go. You found that I had apparently returned in your absence; that I had tom up some of the bedclothes into strips; that I had searched the apartment and thrown clothes onto the floor. You will never admit that the possibility entered your mind that the police had been here and searched the apartment in your absence. You will say that you found other blankets to put on the bed, crawled into bed and went to sleep; that you were awakened by the ringing of the telephone. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“But you are not to say that, unless your presence in the apartment is questioned,” I warned.

Once more she nodded, and then said simply, “Ouch, you’re hurting my arm.”

I realized, then, the tension with which I was gripping her.

“All right,” I said. “Answer the telephone now.”

She moved over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, yawned and said, “Hello,” in a voice that was thick with sleep.

I watched the expression on her face.

The receiver snarled rapid, metallic sounds that were audible to me only as a rapid-fire, rattling sequence of noises — noises that clattered forth some crisp message, then quit abruptly.

But those noises made Genevieve Hotling’s eyes pop wide open.

She picked up a pencil and started writing rapid shorthand notes on a pad.

We heard the businesslike click at the other end of the line as the person who had spoken dropped the receiver into place, without giving Genevieve an opportunity to ask a question.

Genevieve replaced the receiver back into place and turned to me.

“Well?” I asked.

She said, “The person at the other end of the line didn’t ask who I was, simply started delivering this message.”

“And the message?”

She read her shorthand notes:

“We wish the return of the maps you have taken from the trunk. Tomorrow morning, after Fred Collette has made his morning deliveries, you will see our hand. The one whom you thought in danger, whom you will later think is safe, can be rescued from the clutches of your law only when we say the word. Otherwise, the Little Sun will be eclipsed into perpetual darkness.”

I looked at Yat Sing. “Herb Rendon?” I asked. “The man in the Monterey House Hotel?”

“Him gone bed.”

“You’re sure?”

“Go room, turn out light, make snore noise,” Yat Sing said.

I said, “The woman with the straw-colored hair left with South American, the one who called on me in the New Orleans hotel.”

“Heap savvy.”

“Can you find that man?”

“Any time.”

My face showed surprise.

“He leave here,” Yat Sing explained. “Two China boys go along behind.”

I looked at the message Genevieve had written out for me. “Before Frank Collette has made his morning delivery.” What did it mean?

An idea occurred to me. I consulted the telephone directory, then sat down at the telephone and dialed the morning newspapers.

The second paper I tried gave me the answer I wanted. The Circulation Department told me that Frank Collette was a lad who made morning bicycle deliveries in a section of the residential district.

After a few minutes’ delay, I got the boundaries of the territory assigned to Frank Collette.

I said to Yat Sing, “Ngat T’oy is being held a prisoner somewhere within the boundaries of this district. Something that will be published in tomorrow morning’s newspaper will change the entire situation. And... wait a minute.”

I sketched out a mental map of the city, then got up from my chair and said to Yat Sing, “It is easier than that. The residence of Benjamin Colter Ruttling is within the district covered by Frank Collette’s newspaper deliveries.”

I saw Yat Sing’s dark, slanting eyes glitter with emotion.

I said to him, “Not yet. So far, it is a one-man job. In order to make their message dramatic, they gave us too broad a clue.”

Yat Sing said, “Maybe-so on purpose.”

“That,” I told him, “is why I am going alone.”

Chapter Sixteen

We paused at the doorway of the apartment house. Outside, the streets seemed silent and deserted. Yat Sing stepped out to the cement porch, moved down two steps to the street. We followed, Genevieve Hotling, the Chinese hatchet man, and I. A car swerved around the corner and screamed to a stop. I knew the driver. He was a trusted messenger whom Soo Hoo Duck used in times of emergency. But the lad looked at me with no sign of recognition. It was to Yat Sing that he gave his message.

“I am,” he said rapidly in Chinese, “the unworthy bearer of a most important message. He who is the Master desires that you and the Vanishing Ghost should seek his presence immediately.”

Without a word, I stepped from the curb, opened the rear door of the car and nodded to Genevieve. “Will you get in?” I asked.

“Is this necessary?” she inquired.

“I think it is.”

“Why?”

“I think it will insure your safety.”

I didn’t tell her that since it had been to her the message concerning Little Sun had been delivered, she stood no chance whatever of being released from what virtually amounted to detention by the Chinese. It would take some event of major importance to make the Chinese resort to extreme measures. But once they decided to take those measures, there would be no turning back.

We climbed in the car and in minutes were in the middle of Chinatown.

The car came to a stop. Yat Sing looked at me.

I said to Genevieve, “You’ll have to trust me and trust these men. Will you promise to stay with them for a little while?”

“For how long?”

“Until you hear from me again.”

Yat Sing was holding the door open for me impatiently. When Soo Hoo Duck summoned one to an audience, it was useless to waste time in polite nothings. Why worry about asking the girl’s permission? She would stay, whether she wanted to or not.

I joined Yat Sing on the sidewalk. We crossed to an unlighted doorway, black with sinister shadows.

It was too dark to see the door open, but we could feel the movement of air, hear the slight creak of hinges.

Yat Sing’s hand was at my elbow, and we went inside.

We were taken to the presence of Soo Hoo Duck without the loss of a moment; nor did Soo Hoo Duck waste time in the flowery preliminaries which are incident to Chinese conversation.

“My son,” he said to me in Chinese, “the minutes have been as hours crawling across the face of the clock like turtles in the sun. Come at once, please.”

Not knowing what to expect, my heart filled with dread, I followed him through a door and into a corridor, conscious of the fact that I was hard put to it to keep pace with this little old man, while behind me, Yat Sing was all but running.

We paused before a door.

Soo Hoo Duck did not knock. As far as I could see, there was no way by which he made our presence known, but there was some secret signal of communication, perhaps some beam of invisible light, perhaps we were standing upon a concealed signal which, beneath the heavy carpet, established a contact and flashed a light or actuated a buzzer.

The door opened.

A Chinese woman whom I had never seen before said, “She waits,” and flung the door wide open.

Soo Hoo Duck’s hand clutched at my arm and I could feel a faint trembling running along my nerves. It was as though Soo Hoo Duck’s fear had subtly communicated itself to me.

I entered that room not knowing what to expect.

Ngat T’oy sat in a chair over in a corner of the room. She was wearing street clothes, and at first glance, she seemed to be quite her usual self.

“Hello,” she said to me, after making a little Chinese gesture of respect to her father. “Boy, am I glad to see you! I thought you would never get here.” And then she began to laugh, and a note of wild, fearful hysteria edged her voice.

The woman said to Soo Hoo Duck, “She won’t let me undress her; won’t let me touch her.”

I saw Soo Hoo Duck’s eyes soften with sympathy. “My dear,” he said in Chinese, “perhaps a doctor of the white race can quiet you with...”

“No! No! No!” she screamed. “They drug you. No doctor. I’ll be all right. I’m just nervous, that’s all.”

Soo Hoo Duck and Yat Sing exchanged glances.

“What happened?” Yat Sing asked in Chinese.

Soo Hoo Duck said, “She was crowded into the curb, held a prisoner for a while.”

“Was she harmed?” Yat Sing asked.

“Certainly not,” Ngat T’oy said proudly. “There is no reason to make so much commotion over this. I want to speak to Ed. Father. And alone, please.”

Soo Hoo Duck said to Yat Sing and to the woman, “Come.”

They shuffled out of the room.

As soon as the door had closed, Ngat T’oy spoke to me with such rapidity that my ears could hardly follow her words. “Ed, I’ve got to undress. You’ve got to find some way of getting my clothes out of here.”

“Your clothes!” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“Come here.”

I moved over closer to her.

She raised her skirt, showed me pink silk, and on that pink silk were ominous splotches of blood.

“Ngat T’oy, you were hurt?”

“Not me,” she said. “I’m afraid — I’m afraid I committed murder.”

“If you killed someone who was trying to harm you, it is not...”

“No, no, not that. I’m afraid I committed deliberate, coldblooded murder. I am afraid I killed a man who never harmed me, a man I don’t even know.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, I tell you.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“All right. I was driving along the street, intending to run an errand, pay a social call and then see if I could get in touch with you, just to find out how things were coming. A car pulled alongside. A man said, ‘A message for Little Sun’ — that is the name you use always, Ed, and I thought it must be from you. But I was cautious. I pulled over to the curb on Grant Avenue, where there were dozens of people within earshot. My own countrymen. I had only to raise my voice, and I could have commanded the obedience of a dozen of my countrymen.”

“What did he do?”

“Ed, I... I don’t know. He came over to the car. He lowered his voice. He said, ‘A man who is very dear to you is in danger. He wants you to go to him.’

“I drew away a little. I knew, Ed, that you would never send for me because you were in danger, and I think the man realized that, because he said, ‘And there is danger to your father, as well.’ And then his hand rested on my arm and I felt something — a pinprick.

“I tried to jerk my arm away.

“He said, ‘Don’t, you little fool. Can’t you see I’m trying to give you this message without letting everyone on the street hear it?’

“And then he started talking, and peculiar things happened. He said that I must get men whom I could trust and go to a certain place, and he started to tell me where that place was. I was to take a certain street, go so many blocks, then turn to the left, and, as I tried to follow him, a roaring noise came into my ears, and my mind seemed stupefied. I tried to concentrate, and the more I tried, the less could I think. I couldn’t focus my eyes. My tongue got thick. I felt that my body had been turned into a big head. And then I was unconscious.”

“And then what?”

There was more than fear in her eyes, there was terror. “Ed, I don’t know. I felt that men were carrying me upstairs. I was placed in a bedroom. Lately, I have been carrying a dagger, something that I could use in defense if it came to an absolute showdown. I don’t know what happened to me. I seemed to be hypnotized. I was walking on tip-toe toward a bed. A man was sleeping there. I knew that I must kill him.”

“A drug-induced nightmare,” I said.

“Ed, look.” She raised her blouse. I could see a strip of smooth, peach-tinted skin, a leather sheath. She raised the blouse farther. The sheath was empty.

“And what happened?” I asked.

“Ed, I killed him in his sleep. I felt drawn by some power, greater than I was, something over which I had no control, something that pushed me onward as though it had been a big hand. And the moment I struck down with the knife, I felt that I had fulfilled the thing I had been called upon to do. A vast peace and contentment came over me. I slept. And when I awakened, I was in my car, out in the residential district. I was parked at a curb. There was fog swirling all around. I was filled with panic. I started the car and came home at once. Father ordered me to bed. I went into the closet and started to take off my clothes. I saw the blood — and then I remembered.”

“What did your dagger look like, Ngat T’oy?”

“You’ve seen it, Ed. Jade, encrusted with gold.”

“The dragon on the handle?” I asked.

“Yes... And my purse, Ed. It is missing.”

I reached a sudden decision. “I will tell your father the truth. I will tell your father and Yat Sing while you take a hot bath and dress. And then you are going out with me.”

“And these clothes that I have on?” she asked.

I smiled. “Do you not think you can trust Yat Sing for that?”

“Yes,” she said simply, “if I tell him the truth, I need have no worry about someone finding these clothes. But, Ed, do you think that I murdered...”

“Ngat T’oy,” I said, “who knows? There are drugs which destroy the volition. Perhaps you were hypnotized. Perhaps you were drugged and told to dream... The probabilities are that it was merely a dream. You say this man was in bed?”

“He was lying on a bed, but was fully dressed.”

I said, “When you have bathed and changed your clothes, you will come with me and we will investigate.”

Ngat T’oy clapped her hands, summoning her woman.

I left the room, walked down the corridor to where Soo Hoo Duck and Yat Sing were seated, waiting for me.

Chapter Seventeen

I left Ngat T’oy in the car.

The fog had now settled to a thick blanket, muffling sounds.

The big house of Benjamin Ruttling was a white monstrosity, without visible architectural design, a huge, dark bulk suspended in a sea of weak skimmed milk. From the ground, one could not see the roof. Midway along the side of the house, it was impossible to see the corners.

I felt my way carefully along the side of the fog-enshrouded mansion until I found what I sought — a door at the service entrance with glass panels.

What followed was purely elementary in the art of housebreaking.

Ten seconds later, I was inside.

Despite the shortage of domestic labor, a man with the money, resourcefulness and ruthlessness of Benjamin Colter Ruttling would have servants. These servants were probably sleeping in the back wing of the house. My concern was with the front bedrooms.

The job in hand called for all of my skill, all the underworld education I had learned from my contacts with expert criminals, as well as such experience as I had gained in my war with the underworld.

On silent feet, I moved down the long corridor which led to the sweeping staircase that had been so carefully planned for its architectural balance.

The beam of my flashlight, a flashlight hardly larger than a fountain pen, showed me the curving wrought-iron ornamentation of the staircase, the wrought-iron cage for the big indirect-lighting fixture hanging by a massive chain from a hook suspended in the ceiling; showed me the...

I froze in my tracks. A shadow had been cast by some object which lay upon the floor.

The pencil of illumination struck a sprawled body, grotesquely inert in death, a sinister red stain welling out from under it, to send a blood-red reflection from the beam of my flashlight dancing upon the ceiling.

Slowly, carefully, fearing a trap, yet faced with the necessity of doing what had to be done, I circled around the dead man.

The beam of my flashlight illuminated the face, showed the death-distorted features of Whitney, the confidential secretary of Benjamin Colter Ruttling. The dagger of Ngat T’oy was plunged to its hilt in his chest.

I moved back from the body, noticing the direction in which it had fallen. Then I looked back toward the stairs.

I found a drop of blood, more blood, a trail of telltale spots which moved along the curving staircase to the upper corridor, down the corridor to an open door.

I listened for fully two minutes in front of this door before I ventured to enter the room.

My flashlight showed a bedroom. The bed had not been turned down, but there was an indentation on the counterpane where someone had flung himself at full length to rest — or perhaps get a cat nap while waiting for some particular event to happen. And there was blood on this counterpane.

I retraced my steps to the body sprawled in the hallway.

A glimpse of the eastern windows showed that the first faint wisps of light were trickling through the thick fog clouds, giving to the windows a faint hint of cold, gray visibility.

Ngat T’oy, waiting outside in the automobile, would be getting impatient.

I took from my pocket the money I had taken from Daphne Strate, fifteen hundred dollars. And I carefully counted out seven hundred and fifty dollars, folded it and slipped it into Whitney’s inside coat pocket.

Then I moved up the stairs once more on swiftly silent feet.

This time, I entered the room where Ruttling had received me on the occasion of my first visit. I remembered that there had been an expensive desk set in that room, a paper knife, scissors, paperweight, desk clock, ornamental blotter. With my gloved hands, I gently extracted the paper knife from the leather receptacle and once more went down the stairs.

I bent over the body. Carefully, I drew out the jade-handled dagger, and, as I drew it out, I inserted into the wound the paper knife I had taken from Ruttling’s desk.

I pushed the paper knife deeply and firmly into the wound; then I withdrew it, wiped it off rather hurriedly on the coat of the victim, then took it back upstairs and replaced it.

On my way out, I stopped in at the lavatory on the first floor to wash off Ngat T’oy’s dagger. I washed it with soap and water, and when I had finished there was no faintest stain upon either blade or handle.

I found Ngat T’oy’s purse where I thought it would be, on the table in the reception hallway. I put knife and purse under my coat and slipped out of the house the same way I had entered.

Cold dawn was now making the fog more milk-white than when I had entered. It was possible to see little swirling tendrils of fog in the strengthening daylight, ghastly streamers that drifted on past, caressing the countryside with damp fingers.

Ngat T’oy was waiting impatiently in the automobile.

“Just a minute,” I said, and raised the lid in the storage compartment in the back of the car. “I want to get a rag and wipe off that windshield,” I said. “Do you have anything in here that I could use?” I asked.

“Not there, silly,” she said. “It’s in the glove compartment.”

I hid her purse and dagger in the back of the car, pulled down the lid, snapped the handle into place, walked around to the front of the car and took the rag she gave me.

“You were in there a long time,” she said. “I thought you just wanted to talk with a man.”

“I had a hard time waking him up,” I said, polishing off the windshield.

“Did you learn anything?” she asked anxiously.

“I think so,” I said. “But I’ve got to go to the Monterey House Hotel to make sure. Are you feeling better?”

“I’m getting more of a grip on myself,” she said. “I think the daylight will make a difference — if only we could get out of this fog.”

I slid in behind the steering wheel, took off the emergency brake and let the car coast silently down the long incline.

“I think, Little Sun,” I told her, “we’ll be out of the fog very soon.”

Chapter Eighteen

I parked my car directly in front of the Monterey House Hotel.

“Will you be long?” Ngat T’oy wanted to know.

“Not long,” I said.

“Ed, tell me, can you find out anything — anything at all?”

“Not yet. I think this man I’m going to see will give me what I’m looking for,” I told her.

It was that period just before sunrise which is so beautiful out in the mountains, on rolling farmland or along a trout stream, and is so drab and sickly in a city.

A night clerk looked up from a book he was reading.

“You have a Herbert Rendon in the place?” I asked him.

“Yes, sir, room five hundred and six. Excuse me, sir, I hardly think he’s up yet,” he said.

“Not up yet!” I exclaimed. “He didn’t leave that six-o’clock call?”

“No, sir, his call was for seven.”

I grinned and said, “That’s one on Herb. I’ll bet that’s the first time he ever forgot an appointment in his life. Connect me up on a room phone. I’m going to have some fun with him. Why, he promised me he’d be all dressed and ready to come down to the lobby the minute I telephoned. Wait a minute. I’ll fix him.”

I walked over to the room phones, picked one up. The clerk connected me. I could hear the phone ringing, and then Rendon’s voice, not jovial this time, but thick with sleep.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Rendon,” I said, “this is the desk. I hated to disturb you, but the young lady says it’s most important; that it will be all right to ring you; that if I don’t do it, you’ll be very, very angry.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Rendon asked.

“A Miss Strate,” I said. “A Miss Daphne Strate. She seems to be very much upset over something and says you’ll want to see her.”

“Is she alone?”

“That’s right. And, if you’ll pardon me, she seems rather distraught.”

“Send her up,” Rendon said. “Send her right up.”

I took my face an inch or two from the telephone and said, “It’s all right, Miss Strate. You may go on up.”

I hung up the telephone, walked back to the desk and saw by the way the clerk was looking at me that he had been listening in on the conversation.

I slapped my hand down on the counter and burst into laughter. “This,” I said, “is one on Herb! That’s the way to get him up and dressed in a hurry. I was a little afraid I couldn’t get away with it because as soon as he heard the phone ring, he’d remember his appointment with me. He fell for it hook, line and sinker. This is going to be good,” I said, laughing and shaking my head.

I took the elevator up to the fifth floor, walked down to 506 and tapped very timidly on the panels of the door with the tips of my fingers.

I heard Rendon’s voice saying, “Just a minute, Miss Strate,” and then the bolt shot back and the door opened.

Rendon was just pushing the last of his shirttail down into his trousers. His face, which had been wreathed into a smile of pleasant expectancy, dropped about a foot.

Before he had recovered, I walked on into the room, over to the telephone, took pliers from my pocket and cut the telephone wire.

“Don’t,” I told him, “make the mistake of making any sudden moves.”

His eyes narrowed. “Isn’t this rather a new role for you, Jenkins? I thought you never carried a gun.”

I said, “Sit down over there on the foot of the bed. Keep your hands in sight. Don’t make any moves. Don’t try to reach under your pillow or into a suitcase.”

“What,” he asked, “do you want?”

I stood by the doorway. “I want to give you a break.”

“On what?”

I said, “Unless I miss my guess, you’re either FBI or Military Intelligence. You’re working for the Government. I’m Ed Jenkins, The Phantom Crook. Perhaps I have some patriotism, too.” I watched him.

His eyes showed interest now.

I said, “The poison that was given Betty Crofath was something that had been worked out by the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing and Supply Company. It was something relatively new. Someone had been trying to kill her. They couldn’t make connections. Finally the trick was done rather neatly. The person took the same train out of New Orleans with Betty Crofath — not in the same car, but on the same train — managed to sit next to her for a few minutes, open her purse, substitute poison in place of the sleeping tablets she was known to use, and move on.

“For a while, I thought it might have been Daphne Strate. Then I began having some other ideas.”

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Under the name of Sabin, I went back to New Orleans, got in touch with the head of the chemical company there. Holaberry was the only one who knew I was in New Orleans.”

His eyes twinkled. “Not the only one, Jenkins.”

“The only one,” I said, “who knew that I was supposed to be in the market for large quantities of commercial chemicals.

“I talked with Holaberry. A few hours later, Ramon Vasquo Gomez came to my hotel and tried to sell me chemicals to be furnished by the Jap-controlled Bak Shui Wong Chemical Company of Shanghai.”

“Very interesting,” Rendon said. “Very, very interesting.”

“At the time, I made the mistake of jumping at the obvious conclusion.”

“That is nearly always a mistake.”

I nodded, “I’m afraid I did Holaberry an injustice.”

“Then how did Gomez get the tip-off?” he asked.

I said, “Holaberry must have telephoned Benjamin Colter Ruttling that night and told him I was there. Then, tonight, Ramon came to the apartment of Genevieve Hotling. He said he had followed Daphne there. That was a lie. Daphne was not followed — but Daphne had left her address with Ruttling.”

“Then you mean Ruttling called back Gomez and told him to try and sell you on a competitive line of merchandise put out by a Japanese-controlled company?” Rendon said. “Why, the thing is incredible. The president of the company could hardly be cutting his own throat!”

“No,” I said, “but the secretary who was double-crossing him could have been listening in — chap by the name of Whitney.”

Rendon’s eyes narrowed.

“I thought about the president at first,” I said, “but he couldn’t have been on the train because Daphne Strate knew him. She’d have seen and recognized him. But she didn’t know Whitney. The car porter probably saw Whitney fumbling around in Betty Crofath’s purse. That was just too bad for the porter. The reason I got a berth out of Tucson was that some passenger got off at Tucson. It would be very interesting to find out if that passenger might not have been a tall, slender chap with a horse face and pale blue eyes.”

“Whitney’s description?”

I nodded.

Rendon said, “Apparently there were some things in Miss Crofath’s trunk which had considerable significance.”

I said, “That, of course, is a little out of my line. But if Whitney or his accomplice, Ramon Gomez, murdered the Pullman porter in the room which had been reserved by Betty Crofath in the Pelton Hotel, it is reasonable to suppose that — well, draw your own conclusions.”

Rendon said thoughtfully, “A tall, slender man with a horse face. Yes, I noticed him in the Pelton Hotel.”

“You might be able to find that he was registered there. Rather a ticklish position, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “But as a crook of some experience, it wasn’t a position I would care to have been in.”

“Why not?”

I said, “The Japanese are not a particularly tolerant race.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Only if I, as Whitney, had taken a contract to search Betty Crofath’s trunk and find certain documents which were, in turn, to be delivered to my accomplice Gomez, who represented the Bak Shui Wong Chemical Company of Shanghai... Well — just suppose, Rendon, that after I had made my search, I hadn’t been able to find those documents. Would Gomez believe me? Would the Japanese believe me? Wouldn’t it be rather reasonable to expect that the representatives of the Bak Shui Wong Chemical Company would take steps to see that, just in case I had made a double-cross, the enemies of Japan didn’t profit by it?”

Rendon’s eyes showed glittering interest. He gave a low whistle.

I got up and started for the door.

“Wait a minute,” Rendon said. “You haven’t told me just what your connection is in this.”

I bowed and smiled. “My interest has nothing to do with Betty Crofath. To tell you the truth, I was making a play for Daphne Strate.”

“Why?”

I said, “I wanted the diary she had. I wanted to sell it to Ruttling. And I almost put it across. If the little tart hadn’t double-crossed me, I would have. I’m telling you this frankly, because you’ll find out when you talk with Ruttling that I tried to peddle the diary to him. It was one of the few failures I have made in such matters.”

And I bowed myself out.

That was once when it was much to my advantage to have a reputation for being a crook. He believed me.

I’d cut his telephone line. It would take him a few minutes to get in touch with the night clerk. He’d have to rouse some sleeper to get a telephone, and I was taking the only elevator down.

At that, Rendon was a fast worker.

The night clerk was just answering the telephone as I went out the door.

Ngat T’oy looked up at me with anxious eyes.

I avoided her eyes. My right hand pushed a tack into the tire.

“Nothing, Ed?”

I shook my head. “I can’t get a line on a thing. Look here, Ngat T’oy, don’t you think it was a simple case of suggestion? You know how it is. There are certain drugs which more or less destroy the volition, make one susceptible to hypnosis. While you were drugged, someone could have repeatedly told you certain things you were to dream...”

“But they might just as well have told me certain things I was to have done,” Ngat T’oy said. “And then — and then — oh, Ed, I’m afraid I would have done them. It was the most awful feeling.”

I drove the car away. “I’m afraid,” I said, “I’m at the end of my string.”

Ngat T’oy’s face was hard with fatigue, worry and inner conflict. The growing daylight was not so kind to it.

I had felt lucky to have thought of the long upholsterer’s tack I had picked up at home and stuck in my pocket, but now I was in a dither of annoyance for a moment, wondering if the dam thing had dropped out of the tire. Suddenly however, I heard the sound of the rim striking an obstruction, and a moment after that, the peculiar thump... thump... thump of a flat tire.

I pulled in to the curb and stopped. “Got a spare?” I asked her.

“Why, yes, in the back.”

I said, “It’s too early to find any place open where we can change the tire. I’ll have to do it myself.”

I took my coat off, folded it neatly, laid it over the seat back.

Ngat T’oy got out and walked around to the back part of the car.

I raised the turtleback, groped around and found the jack and a canvas roll containing tools. I jacked the front wheel up and came back to get the spare.

All of a sudden, I heard Ngat T’oy’s half scream.

“What is it, Little Sun?” I asked.

She was staring at the back of the car, her eyes wide. The jade handle of the dagger was peeping into sight from out behind the spare tire.

“Good Lord!” I said.

Ngat T’oy pushed me to one side, scrambled into the car, pulled out the knife, then stood so the light struck it. She searched it with the greatest care.

“Anything on it?” I asked.

“No,” she breathed.

She dove back into the car once more, groped around, and came out with her purse, held that up to the light. Then suddenly her arms were around me. She was laughing, crying, talking all at once. I felt her lips on mine, her arms straining me to her.

“Ed! Oh, Ed!” she cried. “It was a dream! They planted those things in the back of my car, thinking I wouldn’t find them until... Oh, Ed! Oh, my darling!”

Chapter Nineteen

Soo Hoo Duck listened to so much of my story as I told him. I saw his kindly eyes soften into gentle sympathy as I talked. When I had finished, he waited for a few moments, putting my story in order in his mind, getting ready to ask questions.

I didn’t want to answer any of those probing questions.

I glanced at Yat Sing.

Yat Sing’s face was as bland as a full moon, but his eyes, glittering, inscrutable, penetrating, were boring skeptically into mine. It was then I played my trump card.

I said, “I have been doing much thinking — thinking that I could have done to better advantage earlier. Everyone seems to think that I have certain valuable documents which I took from the trunk of Betty Crofath. I thought they were all wrong. But perhaps they were right and I was wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Soo Hoo Duck asked me.

“Betty Crofath,” I said, “was very clever. She realized that, before she left South America, her baggage might be searched by persons who rather suspected she had information she should not have. Therefore she worked out an elaborate code.”

“What?”

“I noticed,” I said, “in reading her diary, that she always described the furniture in any room which she thought was artistically arranged. At the time, I thought that she had a taste for interior decorating. But lately, a new explanation has occurred to me.”

“And that?” Soo Hoo Duck asked.

I said, “Suppose that when she described the location of the table she was talking about a flat top that was under construction in Japan? Suppose that chairs were destroyers? Suppose that beds, pianos or other massive articles of furniture were battleships?”

“The diary,” he said sharply. “Where is it?”

I took it from my pocket.

I noticed Soo Hoo Duck’s fingers tremble as he opened the pages.

“I have picked out several instances where rooms are described,” I said. “Let us orient them with reference to a map of Japan. Notice that invariably she describes the location of the furniture in these rooms according to directions. There was a piano in the northeast corner, while a table was on the west side of the room. Hardly the sort of furniture arrangement which would impress one as being artistic,” I said. “And notice that on the south side of the room were a group of half a dozen chairs.”

Yat Sing picked up a pencil and began drawing maps.

As these topographical outlines began to form physical features of familiar regions, there was grateful acknowledgement in every expression that Soo Hoo Duck made in my direction. Finally, he turned to Yat Sing and said, “To this man, I shall always bare my soul.”

Later, Soo Hoo Duck ordered tea, egg foo yung, fried rice and strips of Chinese pork for his guests. For himself, he had that peculiar, tasteless rice gruel which is a standard breakfast dish in China. It is perhaps the only bit of oriental diet my stomach can’t quite stand.

When we had finished, I arose.

Soo Hoo Duck looked at me sharply, arose and said, “Excuse me a moment, please,” and stepped quickly into an adjoining room.

I could hear him talking in low tones with the woman who was waiting on Ngat T’oy.

When he came back, his face was softened. He looked at me with affection. “My son,” he said, “she sleeps.”

“Quietly?” I asked.

“Quietly. She sleeps, and there is even a smile which plays about her lips.”

“It is well,” I said.

“You are leaving?”

I nodded.

“The other girl,” Soo Hoo Duck said gently, “sleeps also, and I am advised that before she went to sleep she asked that under no circumstances should she be permitted to sleep so that slumber would rob her of seeing you upon your return.”

I hesitated.

“And,” Soo Hoo Duck went on, “the woman who watches over her says that in her sleep she has mentioned your name.”

I turned toward the door. “It is not well,” I said, “that a woman should mention the name of The Phantom Crook in her sleep. Our ways are different. Hers is the way of light and life and laughter. My feet take me through the dark alleys. I travel in the ways of stealth. Better to let her go her way than to encourage her eyes to see the dark shadows of life.”

“You have enemies,” Soo Hoo Duck said. “You are at war with the law of your own land, but the hand of every Chinese is the hand of a friend. In my family, you are as an honored son. And should you ever go to China, I can assure you that you will be treated as a king. Only here, in your land, where your lawmakers themselves admit that justice is blind, is it necessary for you to follow the ways of stealth — a land which tonight you have served to such great advantage that you would be honored, were the facts but known.”

“The facts will not be known,” I told him. “Many facts will not be known. When a newsboy named Frank Collette tosses a newspaper upon a certain porch in the exclusive residential district, and the Filipino houseboy goes to get that newspaper, other facts will come to light. Then Ramon Vasquo Gomez will be charged with murder. There will be much confusion among the members of the Bak Shui Wong Chemical Company. And there will be an even greater incentive to eliminate The Phantom Crook. It is well, therefore, that I go before these things are discovered, and that the girls remain in peaceful slumber.”

For a moment, Soo Hoo Duck debated the point. Then his eyes slithered over to the face of Yat Sing, his captain who had charge of the far-flung Chinese Intelligence. What he saw in Yat Sing’s face made him sigh wearily with resignation. He turned to me, clasped his hands in front of his heart and shook them gently. “Farewell, my son. Your bravery and wisdom have done much for your country and for mine.”

I bowed humbly. “I have profited by the light of your wisdom,” I told him. “As the moon can but reflect the light of the sun, so have I but seemed to be wise. Now I go out into the shadows and there will be only darkness for me there.”

It was a typical Chinese speech, but there was truth to it.

I would leave this magnificent place with its carved furniture, its deep rugs, its crystal chandeliers and go out into the darkness. Only when some disaster threatened would I dare return.

In the meantime, because I had laughed at the law, I was destined to plunge once more into the shadows of night, into the alleys of Chinatown.