Denby’s irony kicked back. As they approached a parapet, a tarpaulin dropped from the adjoining building. It enveloped the G-man and his prisoner. The flat roof trembled from the impact of men leaping from the upper level.
A command in Chinese was followed by a concerted rush. Denby’s pistol crackled once. Cragin lunged. The invisible line behind heavy tarpaulin muffled his charge.
They flattened Cragin and his captor to the roof. They were knocked loose jointed, and half suffocated when the tarpaulin was jerked off.
A dozen Chinese pounced on the dazed captives and rolled them up in the canvas. They lifted the bulky cylinder to the adjoining roof, and hauled it away.
The procession finally filed down a stairway.
“You big boob,” Cragin muttered, “a Chink gal steered me into this, but you managed to get into it by good headwork.”
When the tarpaulin was dumped to the floor, their captors set about binding the prisoners. The bland, round faced Chinaman who supervised the job chuckled when he saw that Cragin was already hand-cuffed.
They were in the room Cragin had photographed. Their captors laid them on the long table whose center was overshadowed by the brazen statue of the Queen of Heaven. Her placid face mocked them, and her slim hands were making the sign that Hassler had made in his vain attempts to check the assassins.
“Pay day,” was Denby’s grim comment. “Notice those lads sharpening their knives?”
Cragin shuddered, but remarked, “Kind of small, aren’t they?”
“Not for their purpose,” was the somber explanation. “Ever hear of the death of a thousand cuts?”
The moon-faced dignitary in the brocaded robe and plumed cap approached with two of the elders. They consulted for a moment in Chinese, then one demanded in English, “Which of you spied on the ritual? Tell the Honorable Yut Lee; otherwise you will both die the death of a thousand cuts, instead of just the guilty one.”
“What happens to the other?” demanded Cragin. If he could jockey them into a huddle, he might be able to make a break.
He saw a chance. If he had thought of it sooner, they would both be loose now, with a slim fighting chance.
“We will strangle him,” said Yut Lee. “Which is more pleasant.”
Silence. Dry-lipped—Sweat-beaded foreheads. Too quick a death might not be such an advantage.
“Honorable Yut Lee,” said a layman, “it must be the one who had a camera.”
Denby’s teeth gritted audibly. He was regretting his pleasantry. “How the hell do you expect either of us to tell the truth,” demanded Cragin. “He might have taken the camera from me.”
Yut Lee stroked his chin. “Of course, we can slice both of you.”
“Let the person who told you to expect us do the identifying,” suggested Cragin.
Yut Lee called a huddle at the further end of the room.
“Hitch around so I can touch the pocket your key is in,” Cragin whispered to Denby. “When it gets on the table, grab it in your teeth and unlock the handcuffs. They got your gun, but not mine. When they saw me shackled, they figured I must be disarmed.”
Denby hitched over and said, “Make it fast—but a lot of good it’ll do!”
Bit by bit Cragin worked the key toward the mouth of the pocket. His efforts, however, were checked by a buzz of voices at the further end of the room and the click-click of a woman’s heels.
Anita was coming to identify her victim.
Wrath shook Cragin. But he dislodged the key and whispered, “Clear! Watch your moves!”
Only, it wasn’t Anita! Mona Bartley was accompanying Yut Lee.
“I didn’t expect two,” she was saying. “Judging from what I heard him and Anita Tsang planning, he was going alone.”
Her topaz eyes regarded Cragin. She almost smiled, then said, “If you hadn’t been playing around with that Chink jane, I might give you the breaks, you dirty louse!”
She turned to Yut Lee, and indicated Cragin: “That’s the one.”
She accompanied Yut Lee to the group at the end of the room. Two men stepped out and addressed him.
“What’s the argument!” Mona wondered. “When does the slicing start?”
“The two highbinders who took care of Hassler,” explained Yut Lee, “want to settle their private grudge against Cragin. He wounded them.”
Cragin died a dozen times before he felt Denby’s key grating on the lock. A click. His hands were free; but no time to grab a ceremonial sword from the altar.
He drew his pistol, jammed the muzzle against the cord at his ankles, pulled the trigger. Yut Lee’s mob charged. Cragin leaped to his feet, jerked the table on edge. Denby slid to the floor, sheltered by the heavy top.
“I’ve got a knife!” he shouted between blasts of Cragin’s .45. “Grab it before your gun’s empty!”
The heavy automatic drove the enemy to cover. One—two—three deliberately placed shots. Each found its mark. Yut Lee pitched in a heap. Cragin, under cover of panic, snatched Denby’s penknife and slashed his bonds.
The Chinks recovered; but two more men knocked off checked the charge.
“One slug to go,” growled Cragin. “Got no spare clip. Grab a sword—”
The dull boom of a shotgun shook the room. It came from the rear of the renewed rush. Then a drumming of pistol fire, with slugs spattering floor, walls, and ceiling. A clump of Chinese burst into view, shooting, hacking, slugging, yelling as they cornered the Society of the Queen of Heaven.
Their leader was the shriveled little fellow who had settled the tong battle on Jackson Street. It ended before it was fairly started. The leader approached the barricade.
“Alle same gettee hell out,” he beamed. “P’lice come click. Savee plenty?”
“If you want to stick around here,” Cragin said to Denby, “go ahead. There’s no Tien Hau Hoi’h left to arrest. Me, I’m going.”
As Cragin followed his guide into an alley, the Chinatown squad took possession.
With Mona helplessly messed up by a stray bullet, he’d have to guess the answers. Or so he thought until the shriveled Chink let him through a dingy doorway and into a room rich with magnificent carpets, lacquers, and bronzes.
In the midst of it all was Anita Tsang, smiling at his perplexity. “I told you that father’s tong had signed a treaty of peace with the Tien Hau Hoi’h. But while I was waiting you, thinking of the risk you were taking, I noticed that snapshot you took of the tong battle on Jackson Street.
“So I told him that you had the film where the police would get it if you didn’t return safely. He led the rescue party.”
“You mean this old geezer had enough pull to start a brand new war just to keep from taking a murder rap on account of that picture?”
“Absolutely,” said Anita. “That’s my old man—Tsang Ah Lin.”
“Clistian Chinaman,” the old gunner interpolated, beaming and bowing.
“And he’ll stay Christian and out of the opium business,” said Anita, “as long as that picture is hanging over his head!”
“But what was the trouble with Hassler in the first place?” demanded Cragin, still perplexed.
“Hassler,” she explained, “supplied the Tien Hau Hoi’h with opium.
“Then to make a bigger clean-up, he sold their rivals—my old man’s tong—an equally heavy consignment, at the same time. That made them competitors. Also, with such an over-supply, the price dropped. Result, a tong war.
“And the Queen of Heaven outfit, getting wise to Hassler’s cold decking them decided to finish him.”
That explained it all: Mona, the lovely spy, getting wise to Hassler the night he made the deal with the Hop Wangs on the yacht. And she had planted the cord to admit assassins to kill Hassler and make away with the records of opium dealing which would otherwise kick back.
�
��Since you’ve blackmailed your Clistian father out of hop peddling and tong wars,” said Cragin, “maybe you can come up some time and look at the pictures—without—ah—complications.”
“You’ll get that government reward,” said the practical minded yellow peril, “and then you—”
“I’ll get your old man a silver mounted shotgun,” Cragin cut in.
“Then you can get yourself an apartment,” she corrected. “Your office…it’s awfully uncomfortable—”
THE MARK OF TAI FENG
Originally published in Spicy Detective Stories, April 1936.
“But listen, Mr. Baker,” I protested the craggy-faced, young man behind the desk, “I can’t close up the Golden Gate Protective Service and be your personal watch-dog.”
The square-jawed Mr. Baker’s teeth clamped down on his dollar cigar. He grunted and slid a check across the mahogany.
“That’s for you and your agency!” snapped Forest Baker.
Cliff Cragin glanced at the figures. His gray eyes widened.
“It’s me and my agency, all right,” he admitted. “And for a dollar extra, you could have the stenographer, if I had one. But you might tell me who’s threatening you, and why, so I could—”
“That is none of your damn business. Your job,” explained Baker, “is to keep your eyes open. I’ll do the thinking.”
As he bolstered his .45, reached for his hat, and followed his client, Cragin thought of Baker’s business associate, Darrell Davis, who had been knifed in their crowded theater lobby the night before. The job promised to be interesting.
The first week was routine: follow Baker from his fourteenth floor apartment to his office, then at the close of business pick up his number one playmate, Norma Tanaris, whose copper-colored hair made her black lashes and brown eyes a permanent and fascinating surprise.
But that pleasantly monotonous week ended on Baker’s birthday, when a Western Union messenger handed Cragin an unsealed red envelope. In addition to the typed address was a column of Chinese characters splashed on with gilt ink. This was his first chance at the inside of things. He lifted the flap of the envelope.
“Between midnight and one A.M. you die unless you come to terms. Remember Darrell Davis, your penthouse is no safer than your theater lobby. Happy birthday from—”
The signature was in gilt brush strokes: two Chinese characters.
* * * *
Cragin barged into Baker’s study. He was there. So was Norma. They were staging what might be called a dress rehearsal. Baker apparently had been objecting to the drape of her sapphire and silver gown. At all events, he was rearranging it. Norma didn’t seem to mind…yet Cragin sensed that she could hold Baker at any distance she wished.
She had lovely legs; their slender curves gleamed through the sheerness of her hosiery, and Baker swallowed involuntarily as his eyes clung to her ankles.
Incidentally, Norma had a rather nice face: piquant and intriguing rather than pretty; but Cragin did not notice that until she answered his appreciative stare with a cool friendly smile that was seconded by her eyes. She wasn’t a bit annoyed at the interruption; but Baker was.
“Cragin, what the hell—?”
“Sorry, Mr. Baker,” beamed Cragin, “but just like you ordered, I wasn’t thinking. Anyway, here’s a gilt-edged laundry ticket I figured you’d want to see.”
Baker snatched the red envelope. His face tightened as he glanced at the message. Then he handed it to Cragin, who pretended to study it.
“Better call off that party,” counseled Cragin. “Particularly that Chinese opera star you’ve caged for the evening.”
“The party will go on as planned,” declared Baker.
“Forest,” urged Norma, deftly plucking the note from Cragin’s fingers, “you should at least cancel Tin Yuk’s engagement. She’s harmless enough, but you never can—”
“I told the crowd that even if she did turn down a Hollywood contract, I’d land her for a private engagement. And by God, I will. Cragin, tell the police I want a special guard around the building. Right now!”
As he left the study, Cragin regretfully shook his head.
“If I’d gotten a couple of questions to that jane, she’d not have looked so tickled at interruptions…what the hell is her game? She’s not a gold-digger, and she’s not in love with him. So what?”
Norma was not dumb. She should have known that her urging Baker to sack the Chinese prima donna would just solidify his stubbornness.
All of which was a thought, even though Cragin was not being paid to think.
* * * *
The party was one of those refined brawls where you gargle champagne and try to find out things about the other fellow’s lady friend; but Cragin, busy checking the guests, had no chance at either diversion.
His attention finally centered on two women: Norma Tanaris, and Tin Yuk, the Chinese prima donna. The name was Heavenly Jewel, and she looked it.
From her chin to her tiny feet she was sheathed in a pale coral tunic. Its high-necked reserve hinted at something infinitely more alluring than what the others were advertising with gowns that a cough would slip from their moorings.
Cragin, speculating on the dainty fascination of a rayed disc of brocade over Tin Yuk’s breast, noticed that Norma and the prima donna were becoming clubby. He wondered if that meant that he had an ally or an enemy.
Norma borrowed Tin Yuk’s eyebrow pencil, touched her own black arches, then returned it. Just a trifle, but Cragin noted it.
It was close to midnight.
“Mr. Baker,” counseled Cragin, “the guests are all so pie-eyed they’d never miss you. Why not take a powder! Your buddy, Darrell Davis, got the works right under the noses of two dicks!”
“Bats!” grunted Baker. “That’s just what someone expects me to do. I’m safer here than anywhere in the house. Who the hell could slip past the cops and get into the belvedere? You just watch those Chink musicians. Among other things, I’m wearing a bullet-proof vest.”
Cragin shrugged. Then he heard a familiar voice at his side. Baker turned to join Norma Tanaris.
Presently Cragin caught the point of Baker’s strategy. The lights dimmed, leaving a bluish, artificial moonglow broken only by a miniature spot playing on the dais at the further end of the belvedere. The Chinese musicians filed in with their gongs, moon fiddles, and samyins and took their places.
Baker accompanied Tin Yuk to the dais. The spot shifted, making her gold brocade and pearl-sewn headgear gleam in the eerie light.
Cragin leaning against a column, could watch the entire crescent of guests who faced Tin Yuk. Baker’s back was toward him; but he had a profile view of the prima donna. He watched that silk-sheathed slender figure, his breath instinctively quickened as he watched the rise and fall of that rayed disk of gold…
But before he got to the point of wondering if what travelers said about Chinese sing-song girls was true, Cragin’s blood froze in his veins.
Two Chinese characters suddenly blossomed out between Baker’s shoulders, flaming greenish-blue. Cragin yelled. His voice was drowned by the clang of bronze. He bounded forward as Baker turned to step from the dais.
But that turn was never completed. Glass spattered behind Cragin. Baker pitched forward in a heap at Tin Yuk’s glittering feet.
She went on with her dance. Someone snickered. Baker had taken a few too many, they thought. But then as the gongs subsided, Cragin’s voice drowned the prima donna’s.
“Lay off!” he roared, dashing to the dais.
Baker shuddered and slumped flat. A dark pool spread from beneath his chest and across the dais. Full comprehension brought the guests to their feet.
They milled around until the cops from the ground floor arrived and broke up the riot.
Baker was a nasty spectacle.
The slug, flat
tening against the back of his bullet-proof vest, had come out the front, leaving a hole so big you could toss a cat through it.
Someone had fired from beyond the belvedere. Bullet-proof vests stop pistol slugs and knives, but are worse than useless against a high-powered rifle.
The sergeant sent a man to the apartment house adjoining Baker’s place; the only building in the block tall enough to give a line of fire toward the belvedere. Then he nailed Tin Yuk.
“All right, sister, cough up! What’d you mark him for, so someone could plug him? Never mind lying—who else around here can write Chinese? It’s a cinch the musicians didn’t get a chance at him.”
Tin Yuk’s faintly slanted eyes became black opals in her lovely white mask, but her denial was calm. That, however, proved nothing.
The arrival of the medical examiner was a blank formality; but his opinion on the phosphorescent character on Balter’s coat coincided with the report of the plain clothes man when he returned from the adjoining building.
“That electrical outfit you found,” explained the medico, “was an ultra-violet ray generator that could readily project a beam through the quartz glass of this belvedere. The pigment on Baker’s back could be any one of a number of chemicals that glow under such rays.”
The assassin’s warning note had tricked Baker into what seemed an inaccessible place, and then had marked him to distinguish him from his guests. It was inevitable that Baker would take the dais to present the rarity of the evening, Tin Yuk.
“But why the hell the spectacular warnings?” muttered Cragin. “There’s more to this than just fireworks!”
And then the sergeant scraped some of the pigment from Baker’s coat. In the bright light the phosphorescence was blocked out. It was black and greasy. It had a distinct cosmetic odor.
“Eyebrow pencil!” declared the sergeant. Then, turning to Tin Yuk; “Where’s yours?”
Held in a dark corner, the pencil still had a faint glow. But Cragin interposed: “Get that red-headed jane in the silver dress! She borrowed Tin Yuk’s pencil and switched this one to hang it on her. Otherwise, why the hell aren’t her eyebrows glowing?”
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