The Chinese Doll

Chapter 8

Dr. Elizabeth Saari was halfway through her waffle. I had finished mine and Mike was pouring a second on the iron. The night patrolman had finished eating and left us.

At the rear of the restaurant a neon beer sign buzzed fitfully and threatened itself with extinction. It had been buzzing fitfully and threatening itself with extinction for the better part of a year. Even the flies that had established a home under the first E ignored the disturbances and had settled down to raise a family.

We three humans and the flies were alone in the place.

Dr. Saari sat across the booth table from me with an ill-concealed smile playing about her lips. It made me distinctly uncomfortable; I knew she was amused with me.

Without warning or preamble she accused, “You were fibbing to Mr. Thompson yesterday.”

“Everybody fibs to Mr. Thompson.”

She tossed a wealth of brown hair impatiently. “I’m referring to your statement about ‘seeing’ the ice skater as you ‘passed the lake.’ ”

“I did see her,” I defended myself. “Of course, I didn’t run over and shake her by the hand.”

“I don’t doubt that you saw her. You must have seen her; your appearance at the autopsy proves that. You saw her either on the lake or somewhere else. But you were fibbing to Mr. Thompson about something. I read it on your face.”

“You weren’t looking at my face.”

“Oh—? I recall that you had a stubble — you hadn’t shaved that day. And that you were on the verge of being sick several times. And that you wanted to make a few wisecracks but thought the better of it. All of that was on your face.”

“My landlady won’t let me have the hot water.”

“Let’s talk about the fibbing.”

“Why should I babble everything to you?” I complained. “You haven’t unlimbered your tongue as yet.”

“You haven’t asked.”

“I haven’t — Doctor, listen carefully and tell me where you’ve heard this before: what were you doing at the train?”

“O...h. You’ve been wondering about that? But that’s so easily explained. I was waiting for my mother; she’s coming down from Chicago to live with me. I had expected her to be on that train.”

I was apparently supposed to believe that.

To needle her I asked, “How old are you?”

“None of your business!”

Which was the answer I expected. Mike brought my second waffle to the booth. We waited in silence until he had gone. Pouring twice the necessary amount of syrup on the waffle, I looked up suddenly to catch her studying me. It was easy to return the stare. Presently she fidgeted.

“I’m twenty-seven,” she offered.

“Your chances of grabbing a man are about fifty-fifty. Twenty-seven, unmarried, attractive — but fresh, nosey and somewhat stubborn. Say a fifty-fifty chance.”

“I don’t want to grab a man,” she returned heatedly. “I’m going to be an old maid.”

“That’s what they all say. Some of them are eventually surprised to find they are just that — and then it’s too late.”

She flared contritely, “I certainly don’t want to marry a detective.” I presume you can appreciate the irony in those words for me, Louise? The unintended paraphrasing of your own words were so nearly accurate, they stung. She must have been looking at my face again; she caught something.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized.

“Doctor,” I stated, “when it comes to a detective, your fifty-fifty chance of getting married becomes unbalanced. The odds are stacked heavily against you.”

“What’s her name?” she asked me.

I told her.

“Is she nice?”

Which is something of a foolish question to ask a man in love. I’m prejudiced. And I’d rather not repeat to you, Louise, my description of you. You probably wouldn’t agree with half the lavish natural gifts I heaped upon you, and I would refuse to take a single one of them back. Let’s leave it at that. If you don’t know by this time that I think you’re the most wonderful woman that ever walked the earth, you haven’t been listening for the last several years.

She suggested, “Let’s change the subject.”

I agreed. “Were you around when the Chinese girl’s belongings were itemized?”

“Yes. I signed as a witness.”

“What was in the handbag?”

“She had none.”

“No handbag? Not even a compact or something? Wasn’t anything found on the lake bank?”

“Not even a something, Chuck. Nothing.”

“Then how was she identified?”

“She wasn’t.” Elizabeth glanced at her wristwatch. “Or at least, she hadn’t been up until about eleven o’clock.”

“Nothing at all. Are you sure?”

“Do you doubt me, Chuck? There wasn’t a single thing except the identification bracelet on her wrist.”

“But you said—”

“The bracelet carried no identification. Mr. Thompson had pinned his hopes on that, too.”

“Blank?”

“Practically.” She wiped her lips with a paper napkin and a smudge of lipstick came off. “Except for a good luck token engraved on it.”

“Good luck!” I echoed bitterly. “She had precious little of that. First there was the — Elizabeth!”

She jumped. I half rose from my scat.

“Elizabeth, that good luck token, what was it like?”

“I don’t recall. Just a token.”

“Was it a Chinese token? A Chinese symbol?”

“What else? She was Chinese.”

Her words so elated me I impulsively leaned across the table and kissed her. She sat back, startled. I slid out of the seat, leaving the partly-eaten remains of the second waffle on the plate. I grabbed my hat and coat with one hand and her nearest arm with the other. The yank nearly pulled her to the floor. She made a wild grab for her purse.

“If you’re always like this,” she complained crossly, “you can take back your proposal. If that kiss was a proposal.” She got to her feet.

Still holding her arm, I sped up the aisle between the booths. She was struggling to button her coat and still hold onto the purse. I didn’t bother to put my hat and coat on.

Mike emerged from the kitchen in time to catch her last words. He watched the exodus, shouting advice.

“He’s always like that, lady. You betta’ not propose.”

“Never mind the offstage noises, Mike. We’re going to the county jail.” And I pulled Elizabeth out the door.

She dug her heels into the snow and dragged me to a full stop. “You’re inhuman,” she cried breathlessly. “Here are the keys.”

“Never mind the keys. We’ll walk. Only a few blocks.”

“But why the jail? The body is at the undertaker’s.” I had already started walking and she struggled to keep up with me.

“I don’t want to see the body. I want to see that bracelet. And unless someone has claimed the body, she’s a county liability. She’ll be buried in potter’s field and her possessions — that bracelet — will be on file at the jail.”

“But maybe someone has claimed the body?”

“And opened themselves to police questioning? In view of the fact that sooner or later some smart cop will tie the Chinese girl to the abandoned car? Oh, no!”

“But there’s no harm in that!”

“There is when you must be one of the parties who figured in a premeditated murder. Accessory before the fact. No one will claim that body — you can count on it!”

Just outside the jail entrance I stopped the girl.

“You’ll have to front for me, Elizabeth. My license ran out yesterday. I don’t expect them to do anything nasty, but if they do, you’re the one who wants to see the bracelet. Understand?”

“Just leave it all to me, Chuck.” And then she added bluntly, “I like you, Chuck.”

“Sure. Let’s go in.”

Leaving the cold, clean air of a biting winter dawn and walking into a jail is like... well, walking into a jail. The place smelled like a jail. It had the overpowering suggestion of a dirty, unsanitary, nostril-offending jail. Lysol did nothing to dispel the odor. No one but a jailkeeper would live there by choice.

The jailkeeper turned off a small radio when we entered and arose from a creaky rocking chair.

“Why, hello, Doc.” He grinned a toothy welcome at Dr. Saari, exhibiting teeth stained yellow with tobacco. “What can I do for you, Doc?”

“I would like to see the bracelet found on the body of that Chinese girl, if I may?” She backed up the request with a contrasty, white smile.

“Sure thing, Doc. It’s around here somewheres.” He turned his back on us to rustle through a stack of junk on his desk. “Here it is. We ain’t never identified her yet, Doc.”

Elizabeth removed the bracelet from the large manila envelope and turned the underside up. Engraved on the smooth undercurve of the bracelet was the “good luck” symbol. I nudged the doctor and she replaced it in the envelope.

“Thank you very much.”

“That’s all right, Doc. Drop in any time.”

We got out of there in a rush. I stopped outside on the steps to suck in a deep lungful of air. She was doing the same.

“Promise me something?” she asked between gulps.

“Anything, doctor. Anything. Well, almost anything.”

“Don’t ever call me ‘Doc.’ Call me anything you wish, anything at all, but never ‘Doc.’ ”

“It’s a promise. And thank you very kindly.”

“For what?” We had started back up the street.

“For what you just did. Come on — I’m hungry, now. Let’s go back and have another waffle.”

She grabbed my arm savagely and spun me around.

“What’s the matter?”

“Charles Horne, up to a certain point you are a very nice young man to know. You have just reached that point! Don’t go over it: give — or else!”

“The bracelet, you mean?”

“The bracelet, I mean! That meant something to you.”

“I’ll say it did. In Chinese, I’m told, that symbol means Fidelity and Friendship.”

“O...h?”

“Oh. And the last two places I saw Fidelity and Friendship, other than on that bracelet, was on the cover of Harry Evans’ amateur magazine and stamped in gold on the inside of Harry Evans’ wallet.”

“O...h.”

Good morning, Louise. And thank you for the letters.