E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Wait a minute!” exclaimed Grant. “We’ve missed something. Look—over there!”

  Mop Wang followed his gesture. A shred of pale turquoise-blue silk projected from the wall. It was as though someone, passing hastily through a concealed doorway, had caught a garment on a bolt-socket on the other side of the opening.

  “A woman in haste loses her poise,” quoted Hop Wang, eyeing the shred. With a sly smile, he added, “and sometimes other things also.” Then his countenance became serious. Thrusting a knife blade into the crack, he pried, and the seemingly solid wall began to yield. Then there was a click, and a section of the wall swung back.

  Grant peered past Hop Wang down a flight of three stairs. Something metallic glistened at the bottom.

  Grant bounded down the flight and picked up the glittering object. It was a woman’s lipstick in a golden case, and it was engraved “M. S.”

  “Mary Smith!” Grant ejaculated. “Holy smoke!”

  Then came the sound of muffled sobbing beyond the door that blocked his further advance.

  “Foo Yong also should lie in there,” said Hop Wang, at Jim’s shoulder.

  They drew back, then united in a plunge against the door. It flew open, and they reeled off balance. From deep gloom they had come into sudden, brilliant light. The panel behind them clicked shut.

  The room was empty and untenanted, but from its walls came a soft, ominous hissing, and from beyond them the murmur of voices. A tingling, poisonous sweetness drowned the musty odor of the chamber. Grant whirled to bound back up the stairs. He saw Hop Wang’s yell die on his lips, saw the keen yellow face distort oddly in its gasping for breath. Then Grant realized that his own head, was swimming, that his feet seemed to be sinking through the stair treads, as though he were running on soft, spongy dough. His ears buzzed, and his muscles turned flabby, out of control.

  He gritted his teeth and seized Hop Wang’s shoulder, tried to lift him from his knees. Then he too went down. The brilliant glare of the underground chamber was a surging mass of color, a reek of buzzing sounds, as blackness closed in and the poisonous, sweet air filled his lungs.

  Grant vaguely recognized the roar of his pistol, then sensed that masked figures were bobbing up in the gathering oblivion. Then came a familiar, sinister coughing laugh. Grant’s mind became a blank.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Ritual of Death

  When perception finally penetrated the drugged haze, Grant’s head was splitting, and his mouth was foul with a metallic, sickening sweetness, the lingering reek of the fumes that had paralyzed his body and mind. His muscles ached, and when he tried to stretch his cramped limbs, he gradually realized that he was bound, hand and foot; and was lying on a hard, unyielding surface.

  Voices all about him were chattering in Cantonese, or in the hard-bitten lingo of gangdom. A dry racking cough and a bitter, foul-mouthed curse told him that he was in the hands of his old enemy, Slim Hammond, vicar in the field of the Man On Long Island.

  Then Grant saw that he was stretched upon a long, broad table around which were gathered yellow, inscrutable Chinamen. Hop Wang lay at his side.

  Grant twisted his left wrist and craned his neck so as to get a glimpse at his watch. Eleven-thirty! Where were the Dorni and Murray gangsters from Chicago? Grant had instructed Foo Sam and Buddy Slesson to dash in and rescue him, if he did not emerge safely by ten o’clock; and here it was eleven-thirty—an hour and a half late—and no sign of his friends. Had their planes crashed? Had they been waylaid?

  He groaned. What use to guess what was detaining them? The fact that they were an hour and a half overdue meant they would never come.

  There was a stirring of chairs, and the cadaverous, hook-nosed face of Hammond swam into Grant’s field of vision.

  “Well, wise guy, how do yer like it now?” snarled the gang chieftain. He coughed, gestured toward the seated Chinese, and continued, “I’m the chief knocker of dais Chink tong—and the only reason yer alive is because the boys want ter give you a send-off with plenty of fireworks. Yer a dumb egg, Jim Grant. Whaddya think we snatched that Chink cook fer, anyway? We did it ter split up yer mob in Chi while we cleaned up on yer pal Murray. And I’m smarter than these Chinks, too. They figured you wouldn’t be sap enough to fall fer that hunka blue rag from the B.V.D.’s of yer blonde sweetie; but I knew my stuff, eh?”

  “Well, Slim,” said Grant, smiling up at him, “you have to guess right once in a while, even if it’s only by chance.”

  Hammond snarled an oath and jerked a gun; but a yellow hand grasped his wrist.

  “We proceed according to custom of On Leon Tong, Mr. Hammond,” said the suave voice of one of the Elders, “Before we execute these persons, we must officially proclaim their lives forfeited.”

  “Say, looka here, Chinks!” Hammond exploded. “You’re taking orders from me, because I represent the Man—”

  A sudden hush fell over the assemblage, as every eye turned to the door. Grant craned his neck, and saw a slender, immaculately tailored man, in full evening dress and cape, with a silk hat set at just barely an angle on his well-formed head, and a black Domino mask with a fringe shielding his entire features from view. Hot, unblinking eyes stared out through the holes in the mask.

  Then the newcomer spoke in tones of icy steel, tones which Jim Grant remembered having heard once before through a slit in a steel plate in a concrete cell, when he had been taken a prisoner by the Hammond gang, while tracking down the loot of the Diversey Rank.

  “Slim Hammond!” rasped the voice of the Domino. “Unless you can use more discretion, and not let your personal hatreds interfere with carrying out my orders, I shall get another representative. Worthy elder brothers, you may proceed with your ritual.”

  “Long Island in person!” marveled Grant to himself.

  And then the Exalted Master called the conclave to order.

  “We shall die according to ancient customs,” whispered Hop Wang in an even voice. “Honorable Uncle I regret the deplorable error that I made in leading you into this trap.”

  “Skip it,” replied Grant, “I led you into it.”

  They were in plain sight, with not a chance to use their teeth to gnaw each other’s bonds. The On Leon, were taking no chances on valuable prisoners.

  In obedience to the Exalted Master’s command the tong members took their posts, according to rank, some seating themselves in the chairs that were ranged on three sides of the room, others—the high-binders—aligning themselves at the further end. The fourth side of the star chamber was occupied by a shrine and altar to the patron god of the tong. A latus shaped bowl, full of peanut oil in which floated a burning wick, stood on the altar, and about it were five censers from which arose spirals of pungent joss smoke.

  “The ritual of the death sentence, Honorable Uncle,” whispered Hop Wang. In the face of peril he had shed his modern manners and punctiliously addressed Grant as befitted his father’s younger brother.

  “Pretty ceremony,” was Grant’s ironic, smiling reply. Then, under cover of chanting voices, he added, “Flop on your side. Maybe I can bite the cords from your wrists while they’re singing their hymns. Can’t get our feet loose, but you might grab a gat and go to glory blazing.”

  “No, Honorable Uncle—allow me to liberate your hands at the auspicious moment. I am more familiar with the ceremony, and could better pick the time. As Confucius says, A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

  “We’re going a damn sight further than a thousand miles,” was Grant’s thought, as he listened and watched.

  Incense bearers, wearing the red sash of office, were filing up and down the ranks, giving each tong-man three joss sticks.

  “Let the first oath be recited,” droned the Exalted Master.

  Each tong man lifted a joss stick and led by the Secretary repeated, “By this incense we swear to aven
ge any wrong committed against any brother of this tong.”

  The Master then lighted his own joss stick, placed it in the jar in front of him, and droned, “He who violates this oath, let thunder from all the heavens annihilate him.”

  “Ah, fer cripes sake, cut out all this crap,” interrupted Hammond, “and let’s get down to business.”

  But the masked stranger laid a restraining hand on his shoulder, and the Exalted Master, ignoring the ill-mannered outburst, gravely called for the second oath, a blood chilling recital of terrors in this world and the next, for any tong member who failed in spirit or letter to perform his task of exterminating the Hep Sings and all other enemies of the On Leon Tong.

  “It is useless, Honorable Uncle,” whispered Hop Wang. “That foreign devil is watching us too closely.”

  True! The boring eyes of the man in the mask were fixed upon the two victims, rather than upon the ceremony.

  Then the third and most awful oath was recited. The Exalted Master, with the tong men filing after him, went to the altar to deposit their burning joss sticks so that the fumes would call to the god’s attention the solemn covenant of death. Grant, vainly struggling against his bonds, knew that his number was up. He wondered who would collect the twenty thousand dollars on his head. He did not need to ask who was paying it.

  The On Leons were chanting a final invocation; but the ritual was interrupted. A dull rumble shook the room. There was a beating at the guarded door, and a shrill screaming. Then another blast, louder than the first. In an instant the council chamber was a confusion of voices; a bolt slid aside. Grant heard a woman cry out in shrill Cantonese, that lanced the tumult like a knife thrust.

  “The Hep Sings are attacking,” said Hop Wang.

  The On Leons were drawing weapons and surging through the doorway.

  Dense acrid fumes billowed into the incense-thickened air. The lights winked out.

  Grant felt soft eager fingers pawing him in the darkness. A chilly blade slipped between his wrists. His liberated hand closed on the butt of an automatic. He could hear nothing above the yelling confusion; but as the cords about his ankles parted, the lights blazed on again.

  He leaped to the floor; tottering on numb, stiffened legs. Tin Yuk, grimy and bedraggled, was slashing at Hop Wang’s bonds.

  There was no firing in the smoke-obscured passageway. The Hep Sings were not breaking in.

  Tin Yuk had come alone, and with a couple of bombs had made noise enough for an army, thus temporarily demoralizing the On Leon Tong. But they would be back again in an instant, and more vengeful than ever, as soon as they discovered the ruse.

  “This way,” directed the girl, leading Grant and his young Chinese ally to one end of the altar.

  Grant half expected a magic hidden passage to open before them, but no such luck. Merely a chance to crouch by the end of the altar, and be shielded by it from the door.

  The babble of returning voices could be heard in the passageway. Then two Chinamen appeared, and thrust their heads cautiously within the door. Each of them carried a gat in his hand. Grant raised his own weapon and sent two slugs to their mark.

  Before he could prevent it, the girl ran from behind the altar and raced toward the door. Grant held his gun alert, and waited.

  A tongster appeared in the doorway, with dagger held above his shoulder by its point, poised for a throw. Grant blasted him down, and his dagger clattered to the floor.

  Tin Yuk scooped up two automatics and the dagger, felt in the pockets of the fallen men for extra clips of cartridges, then raced back to the safe haven of the altar’s end. An ominous silence settled over the building.

  “Beware secret entrance,” warned Hop Wang.

  “There is none,” the girl asserted. “It was to an Elder of this tong that my revered dirty louse of a father first sold me as a slave. I know every passage in this house. We are safe behind this altar, until they rush us.”

  “Or throw a pineapple,” Grant grimly added. He pumped a shot at what he thought was a dim human shape beyond the doorway, then glanced at his wrist-watch. “Almost midnight,” he said.

  Hop Wang, crouching beside him, looked at him in surprise. “Pardon me, my adopted uncle,” he said, “but it cannot be much more than ten. You are probably still carrying Chicago time.”

  A wave of sickly relief surged over Grant. His allies hadn’t failed him, as he had thought. Instead of being nearly two hours overdue, it wasn’t yet time for their attack. So, if he could hold out for a quarter of an hour more—.

  He looked at his watch again. It had stopped. Perhaps ten o’clock was already at hand!

  As if in answer to his unspoken thought, an echoing crash sounded far down the corridor. Then the rattle of machine guns.

  “Come on!” shouted Grant, springing up. “Let’s get into this! It’s now or never!” Then turning to the girl, who had risen and stood resolutely beside him, “Tin Yuk, if you know this place so well, where do they keep the prisoners?”

  “Follow me,” she said, taking his arm with one dainty hand, and holding an electric flashlight in the other.

  Down passageways, through panels, up and down stairs she led him, while the noise of the fighting grew in volume, until finally they stopped before a tier of barred cells. All but one was empty, but in that one stood Foo Yong.

  “Gee, but it’s good to see you!” Grant exclaimed.

  “Hello, Missy Glant,” the prisoner casually replied. “Wait till put on slippers. Have used toes to untie lopes.”

  He wiggled those finger-like members, then slid them into his slippers. Meanwhile Tin Yuk was unbarring the door.

  Joe Murray’s Chinese butler and Jim Grant clasped each other in their arms for a brief moment, while Tin Yuk turned up her little nose in intense disgust. Then Grant introduced Hop Wang. In deference to Chinese etiquette, he omitted to introduce Foo Yong to Tin Yuk.

  “Are you sure there is no one else here?” he asked.

  Tin Yuk, looked at him sharply. “There is no one else,” she said.

  The battle on the floor above them had by now assumed thunderous proportions. Tin Yuk led her three charges up several flights of stairs, until at last they reached a cellar just below the street level. Here they suddenly ran into a score of Chinese sneaking down the corridor ahead of them.

  Tin Yuk flashed her light on their backs. One of them wheeled and drew back his hand. A knife whistled through the air, narrowly missing the girl. Grant withheld his fire, not knowing whether they were friends or foes.

  “They’re On Leons,” whispered Hop Wang, discharging his gat in their general direction.

  An open door loomed darkly at Grant’s right “In there, Foo Yong,” he commanded “You’re not armed.”

  Foo Yong slipped into the darkness. There came a dull thud within, and then a groan and a gurgling sound. But before Grant could investigate, the pack of highbinders rushed them and forced them back along the corridor.

  “Poor Foo Yong!” he exclaimed.

  Knives slithered and three automatics barked intermittently in the darkness. Occasionally Tin Yuk’s electric torch would flash for an instant.

  Grant lost all sense of direction in the darkness, but kept close to the girl’s flashes. His extra clips of cartridges were quickly exhausted. His companions, too, had stopped tiring.

  Then a door slammed, a heavy wooden bar thudded into place, and Tin Yuk’s light flashed on and swept over Grant’s and Hop Wang’s faces. Thud, thud, crashed the bodies of their enemies on the barred door, in an effort to break it down.

  “Come on!” commanded the girl, leading them up a flight of stairs. At the top, she opened a door just a crack, and peered cautiously out. “Okay,” she said, flinging it open all the way.

  They were in a damp dark courtyard, lit by a single street lamp, and terminating in an alley at the further end. Beside th
e door, from which they had just emerged, stood a half dozen ashcans, piled high with garbage. Gee, it was good to be outdoors again, even in such sordid surroundings!

  “Well, where next?” asked Grant.

  “Sh!” cautioned the girl, pulling him down behind the barrels. For a door was opening a little further down the court.

  A hatchet man stepped out, peered carefully in both directions, and began to tiptoe across the courtyard. “Crack!” came the sound of an automatic. The highbinder pitched forward on his face, twitched a moment, and lay still.

  Several more Chinamen dashed out of the house, deployed and started across the court, with knives held by points above their shoulders, ready to hurl.

  “Look,” whispered Grant. “Look at that coal-hole!” For in the middle Of the court, a manhole-cover had lifted a few inches.

  Then from its tilted edge came a number of carefully spaced flashes and bangs, and one by one the highbinders dropped to the pavement.

  Two shapes appeared from the alley at the further end of the court; the small wiry figure of Torchy Cullinane and the hulk of Mike Novak. Grant hailed, then rushed to meet them. The manhole cover opened wide, and clanked back onto the stones and Foo Yong emerged, with a gat in his chubby hand.

  “Missy Glant him velly smart man,” he declaimed. “Foo Yong no have gun, so Missy Glant push him into coal cellar, where is Hammond gangster with gun. Foo Yong take gun—”

  “Which accounts for the thud, and the groan, and the gurgle,” Grant interpolated. “And I thought that they had got you!”

  Foo Yong continued, “Missy Glant velly clever man. Him put Foo Yong in coal bin, so Foo Yong can lift cover and shoot highbinder. Velly clever.”

  “Skip it,” said Grant Then to Torchy and Mike “What are you two guys doing here.”

  The big Polack replied, “I get tired sit in car. Besides, dat Chink moll, she pinch two of my pineapples.”