“The first thing a newcomer does is buy a topee. He is fairly frightened into it by tales of the deadly sun. He also buys a trunkful of other truck which the guidebooks prescribe.
“An old resident would don a new topee and have his old hat delivered to his quarters. A newcomer, however, would not want to put up with delays in delivery. Furthermore, he would carry it to his rooms to don it in private and get accustomed to the set of the strange headgear instead of putting it on at Little’s.
“Billahi, this man can be traced.”
Thus far, Pâwang Ali had nothing definite. His toying with irrelevancies and suppositions enraged Inspector Kemp; yet through dallying with a chain of associated thoughts, Pâwang Ali came to a salient conclusion:
“Since the Dragon found this box to be the most convenient receptacle for Hussayn’s head, he must have been in constant touch with the man who bought the topee, and had access to his rooms. Yet the Dragon must know that the purchaser of that sun helmet can be traced. And that can only mean that by the time I find that person, his revelations will be meaningless—or else he will be dead.”
What was the connection between the purchaser of a cork helmet, and the subtle, sinister Father of Dragons? An early answer would mean vengeance; delay, another murder. Pâwang Ali reached for the telephone to get in touch with Inspector Kemp; but before his hand closed on the instrument, the bell tinkled.
Inspector Kemp was on the wire. He was phoning from the outskirts of town.
“Murder out on Balestier Road—Yes. Not far from where it branches into Moulmain Road—Shot, dragged from his rickshaw, and robbed—Meet me out there? Right!”
CHAPTER II
From the Borneo Wharf to the Moulmain Road is four miles as a crow flies—if any crow could stand the thousand odors rising from the Asiatic quarter of Singapore. A rickshaw can cover the distance in an hour; yet a certain white man found that that short jaunt took him the rest of his life. He should have paused in the network of streets just beyond Beach Road to listen to the strident voices of calcimined Japanese girls as they sang to the metallic notes of three-stringed samisens, or to buy gin pahits for the ladies who smiled from the glare of lights that alternated with black shadows; but he went on, and thus, later in the evening, Hajara Singh, a stalwart, bearded Sikh policeman, found his body not far from the fork of the Y formed by the junction of the Moulmain and Balestier Roads at the northern outskirts of the city.
Police Inspector Arnold Kemp had scarcely braked to a halt near the corpse when Pâwang Ali pulled up, slid from the wheel of his powerful car, and joined him. For a moment they stood surveying the scene by the headlights of their parked cars. The inspector had already noted two odd circumstances: the absence of the policeman who had reported the crime, and the fact that the corpse was headless.
Kemp turned to Pâwang Ali, whose dark eyes had been shifting like swords in swift play.
“Where the devil is Hajara Singh, and why did he report that this man was shot, when you can see with half an eye that his head’s been chopped off?” demanded the inspector. He seemed more irritated by the Sikh’s absence and inaccurate report than by the murder.
There was a moment of silence. Pâwang Ali’s glance probed the shadows that lay to the left of the headlight beams of his long, sleek car. His smile was peculiar as he said in a low, even voice, “Hajara Singh did not violate police regulations. He is still on his post. Look.”
The inspector followed the gesture. By the glow reflected from the foliage at the roadside he distinguished a metallic gleam, and a dark shape sprawled in the shadows. And then Pâwang Ali’s flashlight pierced the obscurity, revealing the carved hilt and the last three inches of the blade of a Malay kris which projected from between the broad shoulders of a Sikh policeman.
Inspector Kemp cursed savagely. Pâwang Ali turned to the headless corpse. He noted the fine tropical-worsted sack suit, the costly footgear, and the hat that lay several yards from the body. Then he indicated the stain on the shirt front, and the round hole that pierced a fold of the necktie.
“This man was shot. He was dead before the blade sheared his neck. Note that there was not the spurt of blood that should follow when a head is removed.”
The victim was a new arrival in Singapore, judging from the pallor of well-kept hands that had had no time to burn or tan in the blistering sun of Malaya. The tailor’s label had been removed from the inside of the coat pocket, and a piece had been cut from the sweat band of the featherweight pearl-gray felt hat. The bullet, fairly drilling him through the heart, had left on the right of his spine. Death must have been instantaneous.
Pâwang Ali forced open the clenched hands. The palms were clean, and there was no damp earth under the nails. Yet the earth for a yard or two about the body indicated signs of vigorous struggle and trampling feet and yet nothing marked the tropical-worsted suit.
“Damnably odd,” said the inspector, noting the points called to his attention. He had arrived but a few moments before Pâwang Ali and thus had made no detailed observations. “Why did Hajara Singh report that this man was shot? And why was Hajara Singh killed?”
Inspector Kemp, wrathful and perplexed, chose to ignore his having scoffed at Pâwang Ali’s methods of investigation.
“That,” said Pâwang Ali, “is simple. Something which happened while Hajara Singh was telephoning you about a shooting and robbery made it necessary for the murderers to return, behead the corpse, and remove the tailor’s labels in order to delay identification. Hajara Singh was killed either because he returned and surprised them at their work, or because they believed he could have given you a good description of the features of the deceased.
“Those hidden events are the key—they must be.”
“Very simple,” grumbled the inspector. “And since you’re psychic, you might as well read the minds of these dead men and give me the answer.”
Pâwang Ali shrugged, smiled thinly, and countered, “When you phoned me, I had just begun questioning a severed head.”
He told of receiving a hatbox which contained the head of Hussayn. He concluded, “And now look at the white hands and throat of this man at our feet. He is a new arrival, and must very recently have bought a solar topee for wear during the day. And the container in which it was packed was taken from his rooms by a servant who is a spy in the service of the Dragon—thus the Dragon sent me the head of Hussayn in a box which would be traced to a dead man.”
“Forget all this wash about dragons!” snapped the inspector. “I don’t blame you for being heated up about the death of your assistant, and all that sort of thing, but I want you to find out who took this white chap’s head. Very much more relevant is what I mean.”
Pâwang Ali swallowed a wrathful retort and began pacing up and down the road, scrutinizing footprints by the headlights of his car. He went as far as the fork of the Y, returned, and again knelt near the headless corpse. After continued scrutiny of the ground, he said: “There was, as you see, a struggle in which neither Hajara Singh nor this man took part. One man, wearing rubber-heeled shoes, beat off three, perhaps four barefooted assailants. They scattered. He ran down Moulmain Road; but not until after he had knelt beside a barefooted man he struck down.
“But he left in such a hurry that he dropped this envelope.”
Pâwang Ali handed the inspector an envelope of official size. Despite the trampling by muddy feet, it was apparent that it was made of exceptionally fine bond paper. Pâwang Ali’s face was impassive, but his eyes sparkled as he watched the inspector’s features change, and heard him whistle in amazement.
The two words typed on the face of the envelope were brief, but they were dynamite. Li Fat was a name quite common among the thousands of Chinese in Singapore; but without any street address, and typed on an unstamped and unsealed envelope of such distinctive size and texture, that name could designate only the Li Fat, par excellen
ce; the coolie who had worked himself up to a position as financial secretary to the sultan of Johore, just across the straits from Singapore.
Both the sultan and his secretary had residences in Singapore; and that envelope obviously had contained documents to be handed by the deceased to Li Fat, who handled all of the sultan’s confidential transactions. Kemp now sensed that the headless corpse betokened more than murder and robbery. No ordinary tourist or petty business man had dealings with Li Fat. A spy, or an important foreigner had been waylaid, Kemp stared for an instant at the bloodstained envelope; then he looked up, and noted with amazement his ally’s sudden change of expression.
His eyes were focused on the darkness beyond the inspector. They glowed with a greenish, feral phosphorescence. It was as though the man had become a tiger; and the illusion was heightened by the poised, vibrant tensity of his erect figure and the flare of his nostrils, as though he had scented game that he would relentlessly track down. He sensed that Pâwang Ali had in some inexplicable way divined the background of what had seemed no more than a grisly, savage crime. But the inspector was not prepared for the assertion that followed.
“This is the work of the Father of Dragons,” declared Pâwang Ali. “And for the sake of my servant Hussayn I will have his head and his hand.”
Inspector Kemp swore and gritted his teeth.
“Rot! And here I thought you had something to say! I fancy that because Hussayn and this chap both lost their heads, the same person killed them. Where’s the Dragon’s signet?”
Pâwang Ali without a word took the wheel of his car, made a U-turn at the road fork, and braked to a halt as he returned toward the headless corpse.
“This damp earth is very helpful, inspector,” he murmured with poisonous suavity. “You can make ever so many plaster casts and measurements. Later, I will look at them, though I would without any such help recognize the wheel prints of the two rickshaws that were here. But only after I have had a word with Li Fat.”
“What the devil do you mean?” demanded Inspector Kemp, nettled by the irony that edged that soft voice.
“Satan the Stoned has been sowing trouble. And do not be surprised if there are more slayings before sunrise.”
Pâwang Ali left the inspector wondering whether he referred to further murders, or to the significantly frequent report, “killed while resisting arrest.” He tramped on the accelerator, sent the powerful car screaming toward the water front, whipped it aside to miss by a scant inch a water buffalo that loomed monstrously in the darkness, then swung right into Jalan Besar, heading for the Asiatic quarter.
With less speed Pâwang Ali would have reached his destination without mishap. But as he rounded the curve, a tire let go with a report like a shotgun blast. Despite Ali’s catlike coordination, his car lurched, jerked, and as a second tire exploded under the strain, plunged into the salt marsh beside the road. For an instant he was dazed by the impact. Then he snapped the ignition switch, slid from behind the wheel and flung open the door. The heavy car was hopelessly mired. Pâwang Ali grimaced wryly as he sank ankle-deep in mud; but his smile was almost whimsical as he observed the condition of the front tires.
They had been slashed in a dozen places. Someone well acquainted with his habit of driving with the accelerator flat to the floor board had decided that killing by remote control was safer than risking an increase in the monotonously long list of people who died while seeking Pâwang Ali with knife or pistol. Someone had anticipated his taking the case of the headless corpse.
CHAPTER III
Pâwang Ali picked his way to the road and set out at a brisk pace down Jalan Besar. His fatalistic indifference to the possibility of enemies lying in wait to catch him on foot was typical of the eccentric investigator whose methods outraged Inspector Kemp’s sense of propriety. It was not only Pâwang Ali’s bewildering scramble of logic and seemingly occult nonsense that perplexed, the inspector; the man himself was a supreme riddle. It was rumored that Pâwang Ali’s mother was the sister of a Malay rajah, and that his father was an Arab—a sayid who traced his descent in unbroken line to the prophet. But no one was certain of anything save that, however odd his methods, he was definitely on the side of the law.
Presently Pâwang Ali was a shadow among the shadows of the Asiatic quarter. A narrow doorway that pierced an otherwise blank wall yielded to his touch; and in another moment he was in his study, a bizarre combination of barbaric richness and modern convenience. An electric clock, an up-to-date all-wave radio set, and a row of pressed-metal filing cases contrasted strangely with Boukhariot tapestries, damascened blades shaped to accord with every murderous fancy of the Orient, and antique Kashan rugs that shimmered in the glow of tall, saw-pierced brass floor lamps.
Pâwang Ali took from his pocket the envelope addressed to Li Fat. Beside it he laid a card which Inspector Kemp had not seen him press against the fingers of the headless corpse. Then he took from his desk a finger-print kit, and presently he was comparing the card and the envelope. The deceased had handled the envelope more often than the others whose prints marked the paper; and the manufacturer name embossed on the space that would be covered by the flap was American.
Pâwang Ali pressed one of the push buttons on his teak desk. In a moment four yellow-faced men wearing the toadstool-shaped hats and cotton shirts of Chinese coolies filed into the room. His glance flashed along the line of shrewd, slanting eyes and wrinkled, expressionless faces, pondered for a moment, then addressed the men he sometimes called his ears and his eyes. He paused neither for acknowledgment nor question.
“Find what Americans arrived in Singapore within the past two days, and if one of them is missing from his hotel. In the morning, see if that man bought a sun helmet at Little’s. He was white-faced, and probably had reddish hair. So I would judge from his hands and wrists. Look for a rickshaw that carried him out Balestier Road.” Pâwang Ali named the peculiarities of the rickshaw tires, then continued, “Make inquiry concerning Hajara Singh, the Sikh policeman, and find whether he had any conversation with the stranger I have described. And have my car pulled out of the marsh to the right of Jalan Besar, where it joins Lavender Road. That is all.”
They turned and without a word filed from the room; but before the door closed behind them, he heard their low, sing-song chatter as they apportioned his assignments among themselves. Pâwang Ali had a mission too urgent to permit him to dabble in details. While he could not yet prove it, he was certain that the Father of Dragons was responsible for the murder at Moulmain Road.
The stranger had had business with Li Fat. That he had been led far out of his way, at a right angle to the proper direction, suggested that his movements had been watched, and that a rickshaw coolie had taken him into an ambush. Had robbery been the sole motive, there would have been no attempt to thwart identification. It now seemed probable that one of the spies who had dogged the stranger had taken the empty hat box from his room so that the Father of Dragons could pack Hussayn’s head in a container which, if traced, would lead to a dead man—none of which Pâwang Ali had bothered to explain to the skeptical inspector.
Pâwang Ali stepped from his study into an adjoining room. In a moment he returned. He had doffed his European suit and was wearing a tight-fitting jacket, a scarlet skull cap, and a multicolored sarong. He left the house by a side door which opened into a narrow alley that led to the water front. There he hailed a rickshaw. The coolie set out at a full trot toward Tanglin Road. Although he had been delayed by the wreck of his car, there still was a chance to get to Li Fat’s house and warn him that an impostor would present the credentials of a murdered American. This would be the most certain way of striking back, and definitely proving whether or not the insidious Father of Dragons was involved; and the trail of vengeance might lead from there directly to the lurking menace.
* * * *
Li Fat’s rambling house was at the end of a lane that branched
from Nassim Road. A high palisade guarded the overgrown grounds, but the gate was invitingly ajar. Pâwang Ali beckoned to the rickshaw coolie, sent him on ahead to announce Li Fat’s visitor.
There was a murmur of voices. Pâwang Ali ascended the steps to the veranda, and was admitted to a vestibule. A Chinese servant led the way down a narrow hall pervaded by a musty sweetness. The passage finally opened into a room in which a round-faced Chinese in shimmering silk sat at a rosewood desk. He bore not the least resemblance to Li Fat. Pâwang Ali sensed trouble.
“Tabay, tuan!” the man behind the desk greeted in Malay. “Salutations, sir.”
Pâwang Ali returned the courtesy, seated himself, and began with disconcerting frankness, “Why does Li Fat’s office boy sit at his master’s desk?”
The fellow was obviously not an office boy; and no one without Malay blood in his veins could have contrived to add to the insulting query the studied insolence of Pâwang Ali’s purring voice.
“This humble person is Yut Lee,” replied the Chinese as he placed his long finger nails together, “who has the honor of representing the exalted Li Fat during his absence.”
The round, yellow face had not changed expression, and the intonation was the essence of courtliness; but the room into which Pâwang Ali had stepped had become a vortex of vibrant menace. He sensed that his presence was a surprise, and that Yut Lee was a self-appointed representative, waiting to receive Li Fat’s visitors.
There were two plays for Pâwang Ali: one, to withdraw and watch; the other, to capture Yut Lee and impersonate Li Fat himself. The last would be easy enough. The expected visitor could never have met the sultan’s financial secretary, else Yut Lee, portly and moon-faced, would not have been offered as a substitute for the shriveled Cantonese coolie who had faced starvation too many years to allow later prosperity to give him bulk.
The mesh of trickery more than ever indicated the Father of Dragons.
“Prior Born,” said Pâwang Ali in Chinese, solemnly mimicking celestial formality, “be pleased to permit this unworthy person to relieve you of a task so far beneath your resplendent talents.”
E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives Page 24