The detective stared after Smith, then rose and resumed to his room on the second floor. He had forgotten to reclose the storm shutter through which Harriet had scrambled early that morning. And the servants who had tidied it up had neglected to do so, having come by during the deceptive calm of the hurricane’s eye. The result was not as bad as the catastrophe of the previous afternoon, but it took Chan some fevered exertion and some minor wetting to set things to rights.
This chore completed, he called Harriet again, using the code he had given her. Again her phone failed to answer. There was nothing for it but to return to her retreat via the tunnel and see what had become of her.
Again, Chan used the back stairway to reach the complexities of the basement. This time, he made a wrong turn and stumbled again upon Johanssen in his control room. He apologized, found the shooting gallery and, from there, was able to get his bearings and rediscover the unobtrusive tunnel entrance. He was not aware that anyone else saw him, but his sense of unease rose with each step he took.
So acute was his hair-stiffening sense of being in unseen danger that, when he reached the door at its end, he uttered, “Open barley,” in such a low pitch that the door failed to respond. He felt trapped, tried again, louder, and his knees went watery with relief as the door obeyed the password.
Everything appeared to be in order in Harriet’s “retreat.” Everything save for the fact that its proper occupant seemed to have vanished.
Harriet’s eggnog glass stood upside down in a sink rack in the kitchen, neatly rinsed and dried. Her closets were shipshape, the ashtrays were scrubbed and shining. Yet Chan felt a sense of intrusion recently past, a hackle lifting, all-but-subconscious certainty that someone else had been there before him.
He finally connected this reaction with his sense of smell. As befitted her somewhat austere personality, the scent Harriet used, unless her dresser and bathroom lied, was old fashioned, aromatic, 7411 Eau de Cologne plus a near odorless deodorant. Yet, in her wardrobe closets and close to the front door, Chan detected another odor, one whose heavier base and distinctive scent were familiar, but which he could not quite identify. It was tantalizingly like trying to remember a word that eludes the searching memory line an eel in shallow water.
Its olfactory remains were fading, but Chan took enough sniffs to be sure he could identify it again.
In the less fortress-like retreat, the fury of the hurricane was far more evident than in the main residence, As he stood briefly in front of the tunnel entrance, debating his next move, a giant palm crashed somewhere outside somewhere close at hand - and the lights went out. Chan had to grope his way down the narrow staircase like a blind man.
Fortunately, only the wiring in the retreat was put out of order and, once he was through the “open barley” door, his way along the passage was illuminated.
As he padded along the two hundred-foot passage, Chan liked the situation less and less. His presentiment of trouble ahead continued to rise and he moved with the wariness of a commando in alien territory. When he reached the door at the north end, he hesitated, wondering what awaited him on the other side.
Chan was not a man given to yielding to such fancies. He believed in building his cases upon facts, as a good police detective must if he is to obtain convictions in court once he has brought a criminal to face a jury of his peers.
But there had been a handful of occasions in the course of his long and distinguished career as an investigator, when such presentiments of danger had been so overwhelming that Chan obeyed them. There was the time when, in dark of night, a multiple murderer of frail Honolulu dancehall girls had waited for him to turn a corner with the intention of decapitating him with a machete honed to razor sharpness. There was the time when he had hesitated to enter his own car and, feeling foolish, had lifted the hood - to find four sticks of dynamite wired to the starter, enough to have blown him to kingdom come. There was the time…
But enough, Chan thought, taking a deep breath. This was another such occasion, foolish or otherwise, when he felt violent death a mere whisper away. Instead of walking through the door directly, he flattened himself against one of the tunnel walls and, after silently unlatching it, pushed the door open with a toe…
…to be greeted for the second time within twenty-four hours by the savage detonations of an automatic rifle fired at close range. Ricocheting bullets whined and pinged viciously about him as he dropped to the concrete floor.
The silence that followed this deadly thunderburst was deafening, broken only by the whisper of rapidly receding footfalls. Chan took his time about rising, well aware that any pursuit would be as futile as it might prove dangerous, even fatal. He found two of the slugs lying nearby - much too near-by for comfort - and put them away in the fob-pocket of his trousers.
Then, without hearing sounds indicating the presence of another human being, he made his way to the shooting gallery with its thick soundproof walls. This time, he made sure that he entered by the proper door at the proper end of the firing range.
The glass front of one of the two weapons racks on either side of the door had been broken. Willis was standing in front of it, frowning at the special Mannlicher semiautomatic that had come close to eliminating both Chan and Zachariah Burdon the day before. He was holding the heavy weapon as easily as a small boy holds a cap pistol.
Willis looked up as the detective entered and said, a frown on his handsome face, “These wall cases are kept locked except when in use. Somebody broke in and took this gun out.”
“How can you be sure that’s the one?”
For answer, Willis held it toward Chan, who took it and immediately caught the burned powder and metal smell that is unmistakable evidence of a gun that has recently been fired. He nodded, handed it back, said, “What brought you on the scene, Willis?”
Willis said, “I was on my way to the wine cellar to select the bottles for dinner when I heard firing. I came here to see if anything was wrong, but I was too late. The weapon had already been returned to its place in the rack.”
He shook his head at the broken glass, added, “Miss Harriet is going to raise cain about this broken glass and Mr. Zach will bite nails when he finds the weapon was returned without being cleaned.”
Chan said, “Have you seen Miss Harriet?”
The butler regarded Chan impassively. For a long moment, the detective knew he was being weighed very much in the balance, Then, slowly, Willis nodded and said, “Follow me, Inspector.”
Chan’s feelings were mixed as he obeyed the gigantic man. He could not discard the possibility that Willis might quite plausibly have been the would-be assassin who had so nearly perforated him in the tunnel entrance. He had been holding the weapon. He had, by Harriet’s admission, been the only person, outside of the late Lionel Burdon and herself who knew the secret of the underground passage between the two dwellings.
Willis could have been the one who had “staged” Lionel Burdon’s suicide and pushed Harriet through the bedroom window. But Chan couldn’t buy that either, obvious solution though it seemed. If Willis were the murderer, if it were he who had fired at the detective, why had he not finished the job?
It occurred to Chan then that, for reasons of his own, the big butler might not wish to dispose of him in the shooting gallery; might be leading him to some location less frequented for his impending demise. But the detective couldn’t buy that, either.
For one thing, Willis seemed to take it for granted Charlie Chan would follow him. For another, he was leading him toward the servants’ wing of the big house and up a staircase the detective recognized, from his perusal of the architectural plans in the album, that led directly to the staff’s quarters.
So Chan followed obediently… up another flight of stairs, along a narrow hallway, to a door at its end which Willis opened after a discreet knock. There, in the small but neatly and comfortably furnished living room of what was evidently the butler’s private suite, Harriet sat in an armchair-rocker
, watching a small color television set whose picture was remarkably clear considering the near Armageddon of the elements outside.
“I knew you’d be worried about me,” Harriet said, “so I sent Willis to bring you here.” Then, to the butler, “Thank you, Willis.”
It was dismissal, and the butler in his resplendent livery discreetly disappeared. Harriet flipped off the TV and said, “If you want to know why I came here, it’s because somebody tried to break into the retreat. I decided discretion was the better part of cowardice and took off. This was the safest place I could think of - Willis and I are old friends. After all, we’ve been running this household for years now.”
Chan told her briefly about the attempted assassination in the basement. “I don’t think the bullets were meant for me,” he said. “I think they were meant for you.”
“Idiots!” said Harriet with scorn. Then, “Evidently, my secret passage is no longer secret.”
Chan said, “Whoever is behind this may have found the passage, but he hasn’t worked out the ‘open barley’ bit.”
Harriet opened her mouth to ask a question, then nodded and said, “I see - if they had, they’d never have tried to get to my retreat by the front door.”
“Hardly - in this weather.”
“So now, Charlie, all you have to do is look for wet clothes. Am I right?”
“Unlikely solution.” Chan shook his head. “Wet clothes probably disposed of by now - murderer too smart.”
“Oh, talk English, will you, Charlie?” said Harriet. Then, “If he’s so smart, why the gunfire after making the previous crimes so carefully accidental?”
“Because somebody wants one of us out of the way too badly. And, as long as the gunfire was unheard - Willis’s being in the cellar was coincidental from the killer’s point of view - the body could still be disposed of in a house like this and in weather like this. Somebody disappears in a hurricane? Who asks questions?”
“You could be right, Charlie.” Harriet shuddered visibly, “Ugh!” she said. Then, “Were you looking for me merely to see that I’m okay, or was there something else?”
“Something else, Harriet. Apart from making Wilmot a voting member of the board, can you tell me what the meeting is all about?”
Harriet’s eyes narrowed and she thought a good thirty seconds before replying. Then she said, “All Gaul in this instance is divided into two parts instead of Julius Caesar’s three. For almost a hundred years, the family business has been a private corporation - today among the biggest in the world.
“During the last year or so, there has been an effort by some of us to go public - to issue and sell stock across the big board. On the positive side, this would add hundreds of millions, perhaps even a billion, to the combined family exchequers. It’s a very tempting prospect.”
“Wouldn’t the family run the risk of losing control?”
Harriet shrugged. “There’s always that risk, of course, though a supposedly safe percentage of common and preferred stock would remain in family hands. And going public would certainly reduce the tax load.
“On the negative side, it would change the entire picture. Inevitably, outsiders would have to be let in - and ultimately, control might be lost to some outside syndicate with enough clout to force the stock down, so that enough could be purchased to outvote the family in a proxy war. It may sound like a purely technical matter, but there are great emotional values involved, and feeling has been running high.”
Chan nodded, said, “I take it Lionel Burdon was against going public?”
“Dead against it,” Harriet winced at her own unfortunate choice of words.
“And you?”
Again hesitation, then, “I can see both sides and I flatter my self I’m not too old to fear change that may be inevitable. But after what has happened, I’m not going to cast my vote in favor of anyone who is willing to kill to put it through.”
“How can you cast your vote if you’re not at the meeting?” the detective asked.
“Don’t worry about that, Charlie,” said Harriet. “The meeting is hopelessly deadlocked. I’ll sit tight until I can make my vote count the most.”
“But how can you know?”
Harriet’s smile was almost smug. She said, “I ought to keep you on the hook for the sheer satisfaction of baffling the great Charlie Chan. But it’s simple enough if you think about it. Who has been managing the household and staff all these years?”
Chan understood, said, “The servants.”
“Of course. The footman assigned to the boardroom reports to Willis. And Willis reports to me.”
As she spoke, the house phone buzzed. Three rings, then two. Harriet rose briskly to answer it, listened, nodded, then hung up. “Still deadlocked,” she said, “and about to adjourn until evening. You notice we’re using your code.”
“Glad to have modest role in espionage project,” said Chan. Then, letting the pidgin lapse, “Now, Harriet, can you tell me who are the leaders of the go-public faction?”
“I can try,” she said, resuming her seat in the rocker with a wince, adding, “My body feels as if a troop of cavalry had just ridden over it. I guess I’m not as rugged as I used to be.”
“Who is?” said the detective.
VII
“ZACHARIAH is probably the leader of the go-public faction,” said Harriet Burdon MacLean. “And Lenore’s for it, which means Davis Wilmot, too, in all probability. Lowell’s against it and so far I’ve held out.”
“Since Zachariah has no vote, with Lowell and Ellen and you on the stay-private side, I should think you’d be able to swing it either way with your vote alone,” said Chan.
“It’s not that simple, Charlie.” Harriet shifted the pillow behind her to ease her discomfort. “I didn’t say Ellen was against the go-public move.”
Chan’s eyebrows rose. “You mean, she’s going against her husband?”
“It’s not uncommon in this situation,” said Harriet. “Actually, I don’t know. Ellen was strong for staying private until about six weeks ago. Since then, she has simply clammed up.”
“How is she voting in today’s meeting?”
“Thus far, she has not cast a vote,” Harriet told him. “If she goes for the change when she does vote, then I’ll have to go in and vote against her.”
“What about Wilmot?”
“Poor Davis! He won’t be given his seat until the issue is decided without him. That’s in the new member bylaws.” She shook her kerchiefed head, added, “It looks now as if he’ll have to wait another day or two - perhaps till another meeting.”
“Has there ever been violence in the family before?” Chan inquired.
“Not in my lifetime,” said Harriet. “If there was any earlier, it was carefully concealed.”
Chan said, “What made you suspect foul play in your brother’s death? Surely, it was not merely a hunch based on knowledge of his character that caused you to have me sent here.”
“Hunch and knowing Lionel were strong factors,” said Harriet. “But there was something else. A purely negative factor, Charlie, one that took a day or two to seep out of my subconscious. You’ll probably laugh at me…”
She paused. Charlie Chan waited patiently.
Finally, she said, “Well, I told you I was in the living room watching the old movie on TV. Lionel was with me when I turned it on. He said he’d seen it before and that it bored him. Then he went to his study to work. When I went in to wake him up after the picture was over, he was beyond waking.”
“So…?” said Chan.
“So, I may have been interested in the film, but, Charlie, I would have heard the sound of a shot. Think it over.”
The house phone gave its coded rings. Painfully, Harriet got up to answer it, brushing off the detective’s offer of help. When she hung up, she said, “Meeting adjourned until after dinner.” Then she hobbled back to her chair.
Chan said, “I thought the room was soundproofed.”
“
Not the study. The boardroom beyond it is. It’s directly over the shooting gallery and the control room in the basement. They’re contained in a soundproofed shaft two stories high.”
“Inner citadel,” said the detective.
“Exactly,” said Harriet. She reached for the purely medicinal highball at her elbow and the detective knew that it was time to depart. What Harriet had told him was vital and there was much he had to know before he took any final action.
The first person he wanted to see was Willis. He found the big butler quietly polishing a magnificent sterling silver punchbowl in a special room off the pantry. In his shirtsleeves, Willis was even more imposing than in full livery, since the impressive width and depth of his shoulders was revealed without benefit of padding.
Gravely, Willis laid down his chamois cloth, donned his blue and gold coat and took the detective on another tour of the basement - a briefer one than Zachariah had conducted the previous evening.
Chan wanted to check out the environment of the “suicide” and did so. He was particularly interested in a circular, in-a-closet staircase that connected a corner of the shooting gallery with the boardroom overhead. It offered access by which anyone could have entered the boardroom from the basement, gone into the study next door, shot Lionel Burdon and returned as he - or she - had come.
But this failed to solve the problem of the shot unheard by Harriet Burdon MacLean… unless the victim had been killed, not in his study but either in the soundproofed boardroom next door or the gallery below. Chan was certain by now that it was murder, but he was a long way from being able to prove it, even to his own personal satisfaction, much less that of a court of law.
He decided it was time to beard Dr. Smith again to mine out of him whatever factor of doubt he was witholding.
Instead, Chan was collared by Zachariah Burdon just as he reached the living room door.
“Charlie,” said the former Marine Corps Colonel, “I want to talk to you. Let’s go to my room.”
It was more command than request, but the detective decided to play along. He was still notably unclear about several aspects of Zachariah’s role in the recent tragic events that had plagued and were continuing to plague the mighty Burdon family.
Charlie Chan The Silent Corpse Page 6