by Jerry eBooks
It was not long before the frown of displeasure of the face of the other vanished as he recognized the popular Chinese-American plainclothes man. Then he spoke in Cantonese:
“Greetings, Tom Ching. My shop is honored, as am I—and my daughter.”
“Hello, Anna.” The detective playfully chucked the little girl under the chin. Then he glanced seriously up at her father, Lu Tai.
“Lu Tai, you are an honest man and a member of an honest tong. I know you would not willingly betray another tong member or the tong itself, but the robberies in Chinatown, occasioned with the help of TNT which is used to blow up the iron safes of the merchants, must be stopped.” His voice dropped lower and he invoked his ancestors. “People come to you and tell you things. I believe nothing goes on in Chinatown that you do not know. It is not easy for us to do as well. Not even for me—and I am Chinese. But the robberies must be stopped. I want to know where the cache of TNT is hidden, and who owns it.”
Lu Tai stroked his white beard, smiled and sat down on a rattan chair. “And did you not know, my son, that the tongs themselves have attempted to lift the veil of mystery surrounding the source of the explosive, and that all honest men in Chinatown would give much to know the answer to your problem. Nevertheless”—he paused and glanced quickly at the girl.
“Anna,” he continued, “was playing with some of her friends in the backyard near the establishment of the embalmer Wong Sung and there overheard some talk from within the cellar about a planned robbery on my neighbor K’ang Ho, the dealer in live chickens. But I have warned K’ang and—” Lu Tai stopped suddenly, clutched at the counter.
The shop and about three yards of pavement on all sides of it lifted toward heaven, settled back onto its foundations and shook as a terrible explosion filled the street with the glass windows of many shops.
TOM CHING acted instantly. He did a standing broad jump from where he stood clear across the threshold into the street. His hands were in his pockets in an instant. When they emerged one clutched a pistol, the other a police whistle. And when he blew the whistle, a torrent of bluecoats erupted at the shattered shop front of K’ang Ho, dealer in live chickens.
Most of them were no longer alive, though they had been at a considerable distance from the blast which had taken place in the indolent quiet of the noon hour in the back office of the establishment. The proprietor, who was obviously a case for the shellshock ward, had also parted with a rusty old iron safe and some three hundred dollars in cash. The safe lay in huge chunks over the office floor and sections of it stuck in the walls, while the money was missing.
Patrolman Lenihan, a tall Irish cop, made a quick investigation of the losses, then walked over to Tom Ching who was helping K’ang Ho into a waiting ambulance.
“ ‘Tis the crookedest thing I’ve seen since me grandmither’s gold teeth were stolen on Leary Street in Dublin—and she asleep on a park bench, poor thing.”
The detective waved off the ambulance, turned and grinned. “How many men you got?”
“Twinty. And what’ll I do with ’em?”
“Have ’em surround that undertaking parlor over there, front and back, then you come with me.”
When Lenihan returned from posting men in the backyard, Ching, surrounded by an excited crowd of Chinese, was standing at the door of the embalmers. The detective kicked the door open with a quick movement of his foot and entered. Lenihan followed, shutting the door behind him.
Confronting them was a tiny, aged Chinese with a huge head and two beady black eyes. Dressed in rusty black, both hands folded into his cuffs, mandarin style, he bowed low.
“Do not speak Amelican good—” he began. “You can talk in Chinese,” replied the detective in that language. He threw a quick glance around the room which served as an entrance to the funeral parlor proper.
“There are services going on?” he asked.
Wong Sung nodded gravely. He wiped his eyes. “There are always services going on. The living die—and the dead cannot linger. They must be buried and their souls assisted to heaven in the proper manner.”
Tom Ching nodded. “That is right. And may I ask whose happy departure for the realms of the blessed is being attended to right now?”
Wong Sung padded about for an instant. “Even so,” he replied. “It is the dead merchant, Ku Sui, who lies in state below. He is to be buried this afternoon.”
“We may, perhaps, pay our respects to the dead?” asked Ching. When the other had nodded, he turned to Lenihan.
“Take five of your men and turn this place inside out. Tap the walls, look into closets. Somewhere there may be a couple of quarts of TNT and it’s gotta be found. You’ll find me downstairs. Don’t be surprised when you walk in. American funerals are funny, too.”
Thirty minutes later, Lenihan clattered down the steps leading to the first cellar which had been converted into a huge and elaborate funeral parlor, Canton style. The place was silent, though not deserted, for about half a dozen mourners were seated against the wall. The patrolman looked about for the detective, found him gazing down into the open coffin. The cop took a look and shuddered.
“I’d say the deceased looked a bit on the peaked side.” Then he nudged Ching. “If there’s a drop of TNT in the joint, it must have evaporated. What about down here?”
Ching shook his head. “Not a trace. I grilled Wong Sung, but he denied everything. Guess the stuff isn’t here.”
A few minutes passed, then some pallbearers entered the room, approached the coffin, closed the lid, and prepared to convey their burden into a backroom from where it would be loaded into a hearse.
Ching nursed his chin. The stuff was in the place, had to be in the place. Another minute and they’d have to leave. Abruptly he rose. Lenihan gazed after him in astonishment, for the detective had carried his chair with him and was raising it over the coffin that was being trundled on its way out, raising the light rattan chair and bringing it down with all his strength on the top of the elaborately decorated box.
“Aieee!”
Lenihan whirled to see Wong Sung who had entered the room scream, clap his hands over his head and faint dead away on the floor. The cop’s eyes popped when he took in the spectacle of six pairs of pallbearers’ legs quaking dismally, while Chinese oaths broke out upon the air. The rattan chair stopped abruptly just before it hit the coffin top. Tom Ching grimaced with the effort, tossed the chair aside and drew his revolver.
“Put that casket down on the floor!” he barked to the pallbearers, and in an aside to Lenihan, “Get me the coroner.”
Back at the precinct house a few hours later, Tom Ching explained to Lenihan.
“I never cottoned to a thing until I realized what a dull sort of funeral it was. Chinese funerals are gay. They last for days. The dead are sung to, drunk to, prayed over, praised and danced around. That room was gloomier than a dungeon. Obviously a funeral was going on—but a fast one, and a phony one because we’d got on the scene too quickly. Clearly, then, the stuff was somewhere in the coffin—actually it was in the corpse.
“Wong Sung just stored the stuff in his clientele, pumping it out with a stomach pump into the next customer just before the excustomer’s coffin got into the hearse.”
The cop shuddered. “Sure and that was an awful chance you took, forcin’ their hand by makin’ believe you wuz going to sock the coffin.”
The detective laughed. “Don’t think about it, Lenihan. If I’d hit a homer by mistake, you’d never have had to worry over it!”
TOP IT OFF WITH DEATH
Basil Wells
The sprawling barnlike Stayn homestead lifted its ugly slate-roof towers above the grove of maple trees that roofed the steep slope of Gleason Hill. A long extension ladder set into the front lawn’s light greenness reached above the second story to the base of a dragon-topped tower sprouting from the roof covering the attic.
“There’s no question about it not being suicide?” demanded the fat little man with the tomato-
red face and the blur of snowy hair.
“Course not, Fred,” snorted Sheriff Mort, his lanky body twisting out of the seat of the black pickup truck. He pushed the plaster cast of his left foot to the ground and fumbled for his crutches. “Leonard Stayn phoned, said they found him in the library.”
“Odd he’d have Rell Forbes fixing the roof,” said Fred Rogers, “if he was planning to die. You know how tight George always was with his money.”
Sheriff Mott’s snort of disgust at his brother-in-law’s words brought a wry smile to Fred’s lips. Leo Mort considered him to be an impractical, easy-going clown whose ideas were bound to be valueless.
“George Stayn was a good citizen,” the sheriff said reprovingly, resting his weight on his crutches, “and he was careful with his money.”
This was meant to be a dig at Fred. Most of Fred’s profits from electrical wiring and the fixtures he sold went for books and fishing equipment. Fred coughed, choking back a chuckle.
“Come right in,” invited a voice from the porch steps. “He’s upstairs as we found him, Sheriff.”
Fred studied the man and woman above them as Sheriff Mort worked his painful way upward. Five cement steps he must climb to the porch level, his fractured ankle swinging.
Leonard Stayn was tall and light-haired, the memory of shrapnel in his uneven walk. Ida Davis was tiny and dark, her rounded arms and plump face deeply tanned.
It was the girl who had spoken.
“We heard the shot while we were walking out on the lawn,” she was telling Mort hurriedly. To Fred it seemed that her voice was strained. “We went up. He lay dead before the fireplace, the gun beside his head.”
Stayn bit his lip. Fred saw that his eyes clouded over for a moment and he was frowning. Excitement built up inside the fat little man. His red face glowed brighter.
“We found him,” admitted Stayn. “Mrs. Proctor came next, and then Rell Forbes came down from the roof. He suggested that we’d better phone you.”
They were walking across the wide porch now, the afternoon sun left behind. Mrs. Proctor, the housekeeper, and Rell Forbes, Beechridge’s plumber and general repairman, were talking together there on a creaking chain-hung seat. The bony woman stood up, her stringy grey hair darker in the shadows. Forbes’ chunky bigness remained sprawled in the unsteady wooden swing.
“I heard you, Ida Davis!” her hoarse voice boomed out triumphantly. “Trying to make out you and Leonard were together. Len was in his room packing.”
She turned her pale gaze on the sheriff again. “They’d been quarreling. Len was leaving for good.”
Fred walked along the porch until he could see the ladder leaning against the front of the house. The ladder passed the library’s single window. Fred knew that was the library for he’d put two new floor plugs in George Stayn’s study less than six months before. Ida Davis, alone on the front lawn, could have climbed the ladder, fired through the open window and tossed the gun inside.
Or Len Stayn could have slipped into his brother’s book-lined room and killed him. All Beechridge knew there was ill feeling between the two men. Leonard was twenty years younger than George. Before his stretch in the Army, he had been addicted to fast cars and double chances. He’d been involved in several accidents, one fatal. George had spent several thousand dollars keeping him out of jail.
Apparently the younger Stayn had come back a changed man, quiet and serious now, but George didn’t trust him. He’d permitted Len to run a vacant garage he owned for wages and his board.
Fred came back to where his brother-in-law was scowling at Ida and Len. The sheriff didn’t like the way this case of suicide was threatening to develop into something else.
“Well,” he said to the girl, “how about it?” Rell Forbes chuckled and ran his broken-knuckled fingers through his stiff reddish hair. He was a great one for practical jokes and gadgets to implement them. He seemed to be taking a lot of pleasure in the muddled situation at the Stayn’s.
“Might as well tell him,” he said to the girl. He wet his lips, grinning. “Remember that I saw you down there.”
Ida’s face darkened and then paled. She looked at Leonard.
“Told you it was silly trying to say we were together,” he told her. “Why lie about it? George killed himself.”
Ida blinked back an angry gleam. She nodded.
“Silly of me,” she admitted. “I was on the lawn alone. I looked up and saw Mr. Forbes. A moment later the gun went off.”
“And you thought maybe Len . . .” Sheriff Mott’s voice trailed off questioningly.
“I was the first one to reach him,” said Len quickly. “He was bleeding and groaning. I bent over him. Ida thought I had shot him.”
He laughed shakily, his eyes shifting from the girl’s face to Mott’s long weather-beaten features.
“Why don’t you ask Mrs. Proctor where she was?” snapped Ida Davis angrily. “She’s always threatening to leave for a new job or to get married again. She would, only, George had promised her ten thousand dollars in his will.”
“You—hussy!” shrieked the housekeeper’s voice. She sprang toward the smaller woman. Fred thrust himself in her way and held her back.
“No,” he told the sputtering woman, “no more wrangling.”
“Come on up to the study,” said Sheriff Mott nervously, his crutches rapping on the bare boards of the porch.
“It’s her and him,” Mrs. Proctor’s spiteful voice cried out, “cooked up this whole thing. Len killed him. She was going to swear they was together. Now they ain’t got a leg to stand on.”
Rell Forbes was standing in the open doorway grinning delightedly at all the excitement. Now he went ahead of the sheriff and the others up the steps to the second floor.
“We’ll see about that,” said Mort impatiently as he swung along on his crutches.
Apparently Mrs. Proctor disliked the two young people. That dislike was probably mutual. Now that George was dead she would be leaving. Len and Ida were engaged, and few married couples in Beechridge employed housekeepers or other servants. So she was voicing her spite.
Still, her accusations might be designed to cover up her own guilt. So far, of the four possible murderers in the Stayn household, Ida and Rell Forbes had eliminated one another—unless of course they were working together. Fred doubted that possibility. Of course Forbes might be planning to blackmail the girl if she were guilty.
“Argued all through dinner.” The noon meal was always dinner in Beechridge. Mr. Proctor was still talking. “I thought Leonard was going to strike poor George.
“Something about the garage. Len wanted to buy—give a note or mortgage. George told him the judgement from that auto wreck case with Mrs. Black, her that’s married now to Rell here, would make trouble.”
Sheriff Mott grunted something and swore under his breath at the last few steps of the staircase.
“Fifteen thousand it was,” rumbled the housekeeper’s voice up ahead, “and George wouldn’t pay a penny of it for Len.”
“I’d have paid it off,” broke in the younger Stayn. “She’d have taken it in small installments. Her lawyer said so. But George wouldn’t listen.” His voice thickened. “He wanted to keep me slaving right here under his thumb.”
“I’ve tried to get him to leave before,” Ida put in. “He’s a fine mechanic. The Metzgar Iron Works need plenty of help.”
They left the stairs and turned left along a close-ribbed strip of black rubber carpet tacked thriftily over the thick green rug of the hall. The second door on the right was the dead man’s study.
“We’ll have to consider murder a possibility,” said Sheriff Mort to the others. “I’ll know for certain when we take paraffin tests of his hands. If he did not fire a gun there’ll be no burnt powder on them.”
He turned to the watching quartet. “The same test will be given to you at my office.”
Fred cursed under his breath. He’d insisted that his brother-in-law learn something of fingerpr
int lore and the other tests when he was elected six months before. But now Mort had spilled the whole business to them. All of them could explain how they had been plinking at a target or shooting at a rat.
He waited. Oddly enough, none of them volunteered any such information. Maybe, he found himself thinking, George Stayn had really shot himself. But he couldn’t believe that somehow.
Three of them had a motive. The Stayn estate must be worth half a million dollars. Leonard and Ida would inherit that. The ten thousand dollar bequest to Mrs. Proctor was another motive. As for the repairman—he had been on the roof.
Fred bit his tongue. Something that Mrs. Proctor had said sparked his brain. They had been arguing about Leonard taking over the garage and why George had refused. Maybe he’d found a motive after all.
He hurried down the stairs to the front lawn and climbed the ladder. As he passed the window he caught the sudden angry scowl of Rell Forbes.
In about a minute he would come charging out of the house and up the ladder after Fred; so the electrician made his hands and feet move faster.
Up the short ladder at the base of the tower he swarmed to the flat metal-roofed square topping it. The triple-throated chimney of the house lifted beside him. He climbed the weathered metal framework supporting the sooty dragon and peered down into the black openings.
There were fresh scratches, grooves in the rectangular opening nearest him.
From below excited voices came up to him. The open fireplace in the study must lie directly below him. He caught sight of a black cord looped over a sooty nail inside the chimney.
He pulled it up.
It was a jointed pole of light wood and metal with a number of fine wires traversing its length and a mirror attachment at its lower tip. Most interesting of all was a folding arm of riveted metal X’s that could be extended or shortened by control wires.
A heavy foot jarred the metal roof. He climbed quickly down from the dragon’s support to face the narrowed blue eyes of Forbes. He had released the cord and the rod went slapping down the chimney. It would miss the offset fireplace and end up in the basement.