E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Norma Tanaris, however, was gone.

  That was an out for Tin Yuk. Cragin had not mentioned the warning letter signed in Chinese. His play was to try private persuasion on the prima donna. His client was dead. He had to crack the case to keep the Golden Gate agency from having two black eyes instead of one.

  Half an hour later, he was edging Tin Yuk into a taxi.

  “We’re going someplace where you can tell me all about the Chinese angle,” he said. “It’s your turn to give me a boost. Right?”

  She nodded. Her face was an ivory mask, but her dark eyes were troubled.

  Cragin followed her into his apartment. Though still aloof, she now was a tantalizing blend of poise and sweetness.

  “How can I help you?” she murmured, coiling herself up in an overstuffed chair.

  “What was written on Baker’s back?”

  “Tai Fang,” she answered. “The destroying typhoon.”

  “A secret order? Like the Society of Heaven and Earth?”

  “Such things are secrets in China, just like over here,” she answered. “All I know is that that red-haired girl wheedled him into meeting my terms, two weeks ago. I named an absurd figure because Chinese art is just funny and ridiculous to you Americans. That’s why I turned down that Hollywood contract. All I am sure of is that this Tai Fang planned to use me to distract the police.”

  That made sense. And framing an innocent person with that Chinese hocus-pocus would have succeeded but for Cragin’s observation.

  “Get my musicians clear of the police,” she pleaded. “I’m responsible for them.”

  “What are you afraid of?” he demanded. “Why worry about them?”

  “Those musicians are all members of my family. We are political refugees as well as artists. If we are deported because of this tangle—but maybe you’ve seen pictures of executions in the main street? Prisoners kneeling in a row—the headsman trotting down the line, sword in hand, a head dropping at every other stride?”

  “Yeah…pretty,” muttered Cragin. The story rang true. “You’ll have me crying in another minute!”

  “You can help us, somehow!”

  She sensed that his gruff irony was forced.

  As her fingers closed on his wrist, Cragin gathered an armful. The gesture came from his urge to reassure that fragile, exotic creature, but it did not stop there.

  She neither yielded nor resisted. There was an instant of blood-stirring reluctance heightened by her strange sweetness. Cragin’s heart was pounding, and thrills raced through him at the touch of her silken sleekness.

  Her lips became a scarlet, questing flame as she yielded to his insistent embrace. The sinuous clinging of her body was infinitely exciting, and the riddle and glamour of Asia burned in eyes that had become long black opals.

  Somewhere, far back in his reeling brain, Cragin knew that she was playing him, but as long as the hand of Tai Fang did not find him for a little while, it made no difference…

  * * * *

  The darkness of the adjoining room finally became a monstrous interrogation point. He doubted that he actually could have been so close to anything so alien, and the grotesquerie of it at last found voice: “Why did you…?”

  Her answer was a silken whisper: “Because the goodness of your heart helped me.”

  “Good heart, hell! You fascinated me—” Her laugh was a rippling murmur.

  “You’re honest. I know you will help, even though I have nothing more for you.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No. We can never repeat this. To try would be fatal. Now please leave me. So I can think—”

  The doorbell interrupted her. It jangled insistently. Seizing his .45, Cragin hurried to the door. He jerked the knob. The pistol sagged to his side.

  “For God’s sake!” he growled. “Norma Tanaris!”

  “I’m in a terrible jam!” she panted.

  “And you’re wasting time if you think you can kid me into changing my story. Listen, darling—after putting Baker on the spot—”

  “But I didn’t!” she protested. “You’ve got to help me.”

  “I’d be a pretty sap, doing that! I’m still wondering how you made “your getaway.”

  Norma smiled and seated herself. He laid his .45 on the table.

  “I saw your expression change and sensed what was coming. Your crack held the attention of the police and while it was soaking in, I edged to the stairway instead of the elevator. Confusion and luck made it. I can clear myself, but I need time.”

  “You’ll have the rest of your life at Tehachapi,” he countered, reaching for the telephone.

  “Don’t!” The soft intentness of her voice checked his hand. “I can lead you to Tai Fang. That will clear me and serve you.”

  “Great, if true. Let’s go.”

  “That’s the trouble,” she said. “I don’t know where Tai Fang hangs out. I’ve never met him face to face. I didn’t know he was going to kill Baker tonight. I thought that brand was just to shake his nerve. I framed Tin Yuk by Tai Fang’s order to distract the police. You bungled my play. He never forgives a slip. I’m on the spot two ways now.

  “Don’t you see, I’ve got to play fair with you to square myself?”

  “Who the hell is Tai Fang?”

  “A big opium smuggler. I didn’t know that at the start. He engaged me to watch Baker, who with Davis and another banker froze Tai Fang out of business a couple years ago. But he raised money and went out for revenge as well as regaining his racket.”

  Logical, if true. Norma was putting it across. String along with Norma. And Tin Yuk could give him the Chinese slant on the case. In the morning see the immigration officials and verify Tin Yuk’s story.

  “All right, now what am I supposed to do?”

  “Let me stay here. I need a hideout.”

  Cragin laughed. She had picked the wrong time for that play. Tin Yuk’s loveliness had blinded him to new feminine attractions. Norma’s beauty was merely something like apple pie after omelette soufflé.

  “Please—until I can get something to wear,” she pleaded. “I just can’t go to my apartment.”

  “And make me an accessory after the fact? Listen, darling. If you don’t know where Tai Fang is, and if you’re in bad with him, how the hell can you put me next?”

  “I do know where one of his lieutenants hangs out. If the police catch up with me, he’ll check out. Until then, he’ll stay put, feeling safe.”

  Reasonable again. Norma was too damn reasonable. Cragin had a hunch that anyone trying to play ball with that girl would end up with a handful of porcupines.

  She uncoiled from the chair and wrapped herself about him.

  “Cliff, they’ll kill me if they catch me.”

  Her breath sighed into his ear. The thrill that that touched off tangled up with the one started by the tantalizing curves that clung to him just enough to suggest that further pressure would be even nicer.

  It was—lots!

  “Please, Cliff—can’t you let me stay here—anywhere at all—” She was playing him for a sucker, and he knew it. But the longer she clung, the greater his taste for apple pie.

  “We’re both in danger… Cliff, I could like you ever so much…”

  Cragin abruptly arose, letting Norma slide to her feet. “Business and play don’t mix at all!”

  His stern judgment was due to Tin Yuk being just beyond the door. The unseen spectator cooled him considerably. “You can park on the lounge there. I’ll get you a blanket.”

  He made a dive for the other room. Tin Yuk was gone.

  Had she left to notify Tai Pang’s highbinders? After all, the Heavenly Jewel’s story was pretty much on a par with Norma’s: logical, but—!

  “Am I the prime sucker!” he muttered. “Tin Yuk may have me on the spot already!”r />
  When he returned with a blanket and a pillow and a brainful of long, brown thoughts, Norma had slid one shoulder of her silver gown down, as though one delicious wriggle would allow it to drop altogether. But what most aroused Cragin’s interest—though in an entirely different way—was the flash of crimson and gilt that had worked up from the décolletage of her gown; that threatening letter to Baker. Why was she keeping it? It would damn her with the police. It would do her no good if she were really in wrong with Tai Fang.

  Cragin moved fast. One arm drew her close, and before she could lower her hands from patting her rumpled hair, he was reaching for the crimson envelope.

  It should have been easy. Maybe he was too eager for a—well, a clue. He skidded on the curves. But he lost enough time for Norma to take a hand. He missed the envelope a second time and then Norma became as elusive as a basket of eels. She broke clear. When Cragin overtook her in the other room, she was coiled in a compact and delicious knot.

  Boy scout training did come in handy, but that crimson envelope picked the damnedest hiding places! When he finally did get and hold the mauled and crumpled square of crisp crimson, neither of them were in the least interested in it. They were both breathing a lot more violently than the exercise warranted, and with his eyes closed he could draw a relief map of Norma.

  Then she clung to him—and not to recapture the envelope. Cragin knew she wasn’t staging an act now!

  And what she murmured before the conversation became quite inarticulate had nothing to do with Tai Fang—

  * * * *

  They finally remembered that the decanter in the other room contained a couple drinks apiece. It happened to be Old Pirate, but it could have been Young Bilge-water for all Cragin was concerned with bouquet.

  “Here’s to Tai Fang!” proposed Norma.

  “May none of his children be Chinese!” seconded Cragin.

  Then he perceived a lot of things, all at once, and any one of them would have been hard to digest.

  There was a soft click, and the yellow face that followed the inward swing of the door was certainly no Heavenly Jewel. Cragin reached for the automatic on the table. Norma yeeped. The highbinder was diving for his own pistol, and his expression showed that he knew he couldn’t make it in time.

  That split second stretched to infinity; a succession of flashing thoughts.

  Tin Yuk had reported to Tai Fang! But why didn’t the highbinder have his gun ready? Because he didn’t expect Cliff to be on guard—Cragin’s trigger finger drew only a flat snick. The chamber was empty and the magazine was missing.

  The highbinder dropped his gun and lunged.

  Sock! That sounded like a shot, but it was only Cragin modifying the map of China. He didn’t hear the movement behind him. The crash that followed was Cragin hitting the floor. He lashed out with his boot and heard a gorgeous grunt from the center of a yellow horde that swamped him.

  No more sounds from Norma. Cragin’s fist sank wrist deep into someone’s stomach. His knee drove a highbinder crashing against the table. But the yellow wave swarmed home, pounding and kicking him into the carpet, methodically knocking him flat, wrenching, choking, hammering, until the thud of blows and the grunts of breath driven out by his flailing fists and boots became a monotonous rumbling, then a buzzing, then a blackness that whirled and pitched and rocked…

  Omelette soufflé and apple pie had played hell with Cragin!

  When the lights went on again, he didn’t ask where he was. He was all too certain that he was somewhere else. But though he needed four dollars’ worth of headache powders and nine miles of bandages, the major operation was, who had tinkered with his pistol, Tin Yuk or Norma?

  He was not bound, and he was sitting in a chair. A lean, grizzled Chinaman with a face as benignant as a meat axe and a voice like silk was leaning over him and probing Cragin’s pockets.

  He jerked back, eyed something he had discovered, and said, “If you G-men devoted more time to thought and less to feminine architecture, I wouldn’t add so many badges to my collection.”

  The golden shield with the spread eagle pointed his remark.

  “G-man?” echoed Cragin.

  “Precisely. Just what my informant told me I’d find. Very clever, getting a job as the late Mr. Baker’s bodyguard and then trying to track back from him to me.

  “And it worked, after all, Mr. Cragin. You have finally met Tai Fang.”

  As he spoke, a pair of highbinders emerged from behind a blue curtained door: the deadly hatchet men of tradition, though they carried automatics instead of the little axes that used to make Chinatown history.

  Chill in no way caused by the breeze from the bay raced down Cragin’s spine. His battered lips suddenly became dry, and sweat cropped out on his forehead. Even if he did convince them he was not a G-man, he had seen too much to survive.

  Tai Fang clapped his hands. A white man entered the dingy room. He had Cragin’s breadth of shoulder, his lean, rangy figure. His hair was sandy, and like Cragin, he had gray eyes. All but his facial expression matched the unwilling impostor.

  “Finley,” murmured Tai Fang, “will you have to study his mannerisms any longer?”

  “Hell, no!” chuckled Finley. “Not after listening to him wrangling with that red head.”

  His voice proved it. Tai Fang smiled maliciously.

  “Mr. Cragin, you made me regret my lost youth. The age of stupidity does have its compensations—but I digress.

  “You will be my guest until my surgeon remodels Finley a bit. Thus when the new Mr. Cragin reports to Department of Justice headquarters, no one will suspect that he is Tai Fang’s agent.”

  He said nothing about the disposition of Cragin. Tai Fang credited the supposed G-man with certain imagination.

  The two highbinders took charge before Cragin could kick Tai Fang in the stomach or better.

  “Shackle him, Hop Wang!” the smuggler directed. “Finley, memorize those odd words Mr. Cragin is using.”

  A private investigator has only a slim chance of attaining a ripe old age; but lying shackled to an operating table while waiting a plastic surgeon, an ether cone, and the final meat axe was something other than being decently blasted from one’s eyeteeth in a dog fight. And as exhaustion finally subdued his vane efforts to spring the shackles that confined his wrists and ankles, he found himself a diversion just as sour.

  “Who planted that damn gold badge on me? Which of those ——ing bims framed me? Heavenly Jewel, why the—!”

  Why, Mr. Cragin.

  And what he said about Norma was even better. But which was guilty? Maybe both had ganged up as part of some intricate Chinese triple play. Merely being knifed by a gang of highbinders wasn’t as bad as being a double sap.

  “And where I’m going, a lei is only a wreath of flowers,” he grimly muttered.

  Then he thought of a good gag to trick Tai Fang.

  “Hey, you yellow bellied—!” he roared. “You’re not so clever as you think.”

  He didn’t expect his first challenge to get the rise he needed to make his final desperate play for salvation; but neither did he expect what happened.

  “Oh, my God!” warned a familiar voice. “Do shut up!”

  Norma was just creeping into sight. She had a hacksaw blade. His brilliant idea had picked a devil of a moment! Her color faded as she froze, listening.

  After an endless moment she sighed. No one had heard Cragin.

  “What the hell?” he demanded as she set to work.

  “I had to do it!” she said in a low, desperate voice as the blade bit in. “I’m a D.J. investigator working on Baker to get at Tai Fang. Tai Fang’s agent was suspicious, and so I had to use you as a stall to get to this place.”

  “Make this good, and I won’t sock you when we get out of here!” he muttered. “So it was you—selling me out to
solve your case!”

  “It was my duty—and I figured I could get you clear, before—”

  “Nuts for you and your duty!” he bitterly growled. “I wish the whole damn D.J. was in my boots tonight!”

  “Thank God they’re not!” she retorted.

  Cragin grinned. The redhead had guts!

  But the grin faded, and the saw dropped from Norma’s fingers. There was a soft rustling from the left. A panel slid open, and Tai Pang entered the room.

  “My men are not as numerous as the Department of Justice, my dear,” murmured Tai Pang, “but they will presently prove themselves just as charming. Your recent affectionate scene with our friend here made me anticipate a move like this.”

  Tai Fang was speaking from behind a pistol. There would be a pair of X’s somewhere along the waterfront.

  And then Cragin’s brilliant idea came back. At the most Tai Fang only knew that Norma had pulled a triple cross; he did not know that Cragin was not a G-man.

  “Listen, Tai Fang,” said Cragin, “you can send that stooge to take my place. You can fix him up with rubber finger-tips with faked prints. But you can’t coach him to fake my signature on reports. Now how do you like it?”

  Cragin sensed that he had scored. The smuggler was thinking fast.

  “You underestimate me, Mr. Cragin,” Tai Fang finally countered. He shouted an order in Cantonese. Then as felt-soled slippers came padding down the concealed passageway, he resumed, “Your left-handed signature is not on file. Your duplicate will sustain some injury that will permanently cramp his right hand. Simple, yes?”

  For a moment Norma’s glance clashed with Cragin’s. The sudden flicker of understanding told him she was catching the point. He wondered if her wits would work fast enough when the time came.

  And then a pair of highbinders came in with paper and ink.

  “Now for those left-handed signatures for your double to study,” murmured Tai Fang as one of the highbinders released Cragin’s wrists and jerked him upright.

  He reached for the pen with his left, but his right caught the fellow’s throat, fingers sinking in like a wolf trap. Then the left crashed home. Tai Fang’s pistol blast shook the room as Cragin, the kicking highbinder, and the operating table crashed to the floor.