I crouched low on the balcony, in accordance with instructions, and found the loose floorboards that opened up a black hole. Feet first, I went down in, slanting at an angle that made descent easy. It seemed to be a sort of slot cut diagonally through the wall. It was stuffy, and I don’t like narrow holes. I went down swiftly, coming into a small room, long and narrow, as if placed inside a thick wall.
No light was there. My flashlight showed a room perhaps eighteen feet long by four wide, furnished with table, couch and two chairs. I looked under the one rug on the floor. The trapdoor was there—a crude affair that didn’t pretend it was part of the floor.
Flat on my belly, I put an ear to the trapdoor. No sound. I raised it a couple of inches. Darkness and a faint murmuring of voices. I pushed the trapdoor wide, let it down easily on the floor and stuck head and shoulders into the opening, discovering then that it was a double arrangement. Another door was below, fitting no doubt in the ceiling of the room below.
Cautiously I let myself down on it. It gave under my foot. I could have pulled myself up again, but since I had disturbed it I chose to keep going.
I put both feet on it. It swung down. I dropped into light. The door snapped up over my head. I grabbed Hsiu Hsiu and clapped a hand over her tiny mouth in time to keep her quiet.
“Hello,” I said to the startled Garthorne; “this is my boy’s evening off, so I came myself.”
“Hello,” he gasped.
This room, I saw, was a duplicate of the one from which I had dropped, another cupboard between walls, though this one had an unpainted wooden door at one end.
I handed Hsiu Hsiu to Garthorne.
“Keep her quiet,” I ordered, “while—”
The clicking of the door’s latch silenced me. I jumped to the wall on the hinged side of the door just as it swung open—the opener hidden from me by the door.
The door opened wide, but not much wider than Jack Garthorne’s blue eyes, nor than this mouth. I let the door go back against the wall and stepped out behind my balanced gun.
The queen of something stood there!
She was a tall woman, straight-bodied and proud. A butterfly-shaped headdress decked with the loot of a dozen jewelry stores exaggerated her height. Her gown was amethyst filigreed with gold above, a living rainbow below. The clothes were nothing!
She was—maybe I can make it clear this way. Hsiu Hsiu was as perfect a bit of feminine beauty as could be imagined. She was perfect! Then comes this queen of something—and Hsiu Hsiu’s beauty went away. She was a candle in the sun. She was still pretty—prettier than the woman in the doorway, if it came to that—but you didn’t pay any attention to her. Hsiu Hsiu was a pretty girl: this royal woman in the doorway was—I don’t know the words.
“My God!” Garthorne was whispering harshly. “I never knew it!”
“What are you doing here?” I challenged the woman.
She didn’t hear me. She was looking at Hsiu Hsiu as a tigress might look at an alley cat. Hsiu Hsiu was looking at her as an alley cat might look at a tigress. Sweat was on Garthorne’s face and his mouth was the mouth of a sick man.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated, stepping closer to Lillian Shan.
“I am here where I belong,” she said slowly, not taking her eyes from the slave-girl. “I have come back to my people.”
That was a lot of bunk. I turned to the goggling Garthorne.
“Take Hsiu Hsiu to the upper room, and keep her quiet, if you have to strangle her. I want to talk to Miss Shan.”
Still dazed, he pushed the table under the trapdoor, climbed up on it, hoisted himself through the ceiling, and reached down. Hsiu Hsiu kicked and scratched, but I heaved her up to him. Then I closed the door through which Lillian Shan had come, and faced her.
“How did you get here?” I demanded.
“I went home after I left you, knowing what Yin Hung would say, because he had told me in the employment office, and when I got home— When I got home I decided to come here where I belong.”
“Nonsense!” I corrected her. “When you got home you found a message there from Chang Li Ching, asking you—ordering you to come here.”
She looked at me, saying nothing.
“What did Chang want?”
“He thought perhaps he could help me,” she said, “and so I stayed here.”
More nonsense.
“Chang told you Garthorne was in danger—had split with The Whistler.”
“The Whistler?”
“You made a bargain with Chang,” I accused her, paying no attention to her question. The chances were she didn’t know The Whistler by that name.
She shook her head, jiggling the ornaments on her headdress.
“There was no bargain,” she said, holding my gaze too steadily.
I didn’t believe her. I said so.
“You gave Chang your house—or the use of it—in exchange for his promise that”—the boob were the first words I thought of, but I changed them—“Garthorne would be saved from The Whistler, and that you would be saved from the law.”
She drew herself up.
“I did,” she said calmly.
I caught myself weakening. This woman who looked like the queen of something wasn’t easy to handle the way I wanted to handle her. I made myself remember that I knew her when she was homely as hell in mannish clothes.
“You ought to be spanked!” I growled at her. “Haven’t you had enough trouble without mixing yourself now with a flock of highbinders? Did you see The Whistler?”
“There was a man up there,” she said, “I don’t know his name.”
I hunted through my pocket and found the picture of him taken when he was sent to San Quentin.
“That is he,” she told me when I showed it to her.
“A fine partner you picked,” I raged. “What do you think his word on anything is worth?”
“I did not take his word for anything. I took Chang Li Ching’s word.”
“That’s just as bad. They’re mates. What was your bargain?”
She balked again, straight, stiff-necked and level-eyed. Because she was getting away from me with this Manchu princess stuff I got peevish.
“Don’t be a chump all your life!” I pleaded. “You think you made a deal. They took you in! What do you think they’re using your house for?”
She tried to look me down. I tried another angle of attack.
“Here, you don’t mind who you make bargains with. Make one with me. I’m still one prison sentence ahead of The Whistler, so if his word is any good at all, mine ought to be highly valuable. You tell me what the deal was. If it’s half-way decent. I’ll promise you to crawl out of here and forget it. If you don’t tell me, I’m going to empty a gun out of the first window I can find. And you’d be surprised how many cops a shot will draw in this part of town, and how fast it’ll draw them.”
The threat took some of the color out of her face.
“If I tell, you will promise to do nothing?”
“You missed part of it,” I reminded her. “If I think the deal is half-way on the level I’ll keep quiet.”
She bit her lips and let her fingers twist together, and then it came.
“Chang Li Ching is one of the leaders of the anti-Japanese movement in China. Since the death of Sun Wen—or Sun Yat-Sen, as he is called in the south of China and here—the Japanese have increased their hold on the Chinese government until it is greater than it ever was. It is Sun Wen’s work that Chang Li Ching and his friends are carrying on.
“With their own government against them, their immediate necessity is to arm enough patriots to resist Japanese aggression when the time comes. That is what my house is used for. Rifles and ammunition are loaded into boats there and sent out to ships lying far offshore. This man you call The Whistler is the owner of the ship
s that carry the arms to China.”
“And the death of the servants?” I asked.
“Wan Lan was a spy for the Chinese government—for the Japanese. Wang Ma’s death was an accident, I think, though she, too, was suspected of being a spy. To a patriot, the death of traitors is a necessary thing, you can understand that? Your people are like that too when your country is in danger.”
“Garthorne told me a rum-running story,” I said. “How about it?”
“He believed it,” she said, smiling softly at the trapdoor through which he had gone. “They told him that, because they did not know him well enough to trust him. That is why they would not let him help in the loading.”
One of her hands came out to rest on my arm.
“You will go away and keep silent?” she pleaded. “These things are against the law of your country, but would you not break another country’s laws to save your own country’s life? Have not four hundred million people the right to fight an alien race that would exploit them? Since the day of Taou-kwang my country has been the plaything of more aggressive nations. Is any price too great for patriotic Chinese to pay to end that period of dishonor? You will not put yourself in the way of my people’s liberty?”
“I hope they win,” I said, “but you’ve been tricked. The only guns that have gone through your house have gone through in pockets! It would take a year to get a shipload through there. Maybe Chang is running guns to China. It’s likely. But they don’t go through your place.
“The night I was there coolies went through—coming in, not going out. They came from the beach, and they left in machines. Maybe The Whistler is running the guns over for Chang and bringing coolies back. He can get anything from a thousand dollars up for each one he lands. That’s about the how of it. He runs the guns over for Chang, and brings his own stuff—coolies and no doubt some opium—back, getting his big profit on the return trip. There wouldn’t be enough money in the guns to interest him.
“The guns would be loaded at a pier, all regular, masquerading as something else. Your house is used for the return. Chang may or may not be tied up with the coolie and opium game, but it’s a cinch he’ll let The Whistler do whatever he likes if only The Whistler will run his guns across. So, you see, you have been gypped!”
“But—”
“But nothing! You’re helping Chang by taking part in the coolie traffic. And, my guess is, your servants were killed, not because they were spies, but because they wouldn’t sell you out.”
She was white-faced and unsteady on her feet. I didn’t let her recover.
“Do you think Chang trusts The Whistler? Did they seem friendly?”
I knew he couldn’t trust him, but I wanted something specific.
“No-o-o,” she said slowly. “There was some talk about a missing boat.”
That was good.
“They still together?”
“Yes.”
“How do I get there?”
“Down these steps, across the cellar—straight across—and up two flights of steps on the other side. They were in a room to the right of the second-floor landing.”
Thank God I had a direct set of instructions for once!
I jumped up on the table and rapped on the ceiling.
“Come on down, Garthorne, and bring your chaperon.”
“Don’t either of you budge out of here until I’m back,” I told the boob and Lillian Shan when we were all together again. “I’m going to take Hsiu Hsiu with me. Come on, sister, I want you to talk to any bad men I meet. We go to see Chang Li Ching, you understand?” I made faces. “One yell out of you, and—” I put my fingers around her collar and pressed them lightly.
She giggled, which spoiled the effect a little.
“To Chang,” I ordered, and, holding her by one shoulder, urged her toward the door.
We went down into the dark cellar, across it, found the other stairs, and started to climb them. Our progress was slow. The girl’s bound feet weren’t made for fast walking.
A dim light burned on the first floor, where we had to turn to go up to the second floor. We had just made the turn when footsteps sounded behind us.
I lifted the girl up two steps, out of the light, and crouched beside her, holding her still. Four Chinese in wrinkled street clothes came down the first-floor hall, passed our stairs without a glance, and started on.
Hsiu Hsiu opened her red flower of a mouth and let out a squeal that could have been heard over in Oakland.
I cursed, turned her loose, and started up the steps. The four Chinese came after me. On the landing ahead one of Chang’s big wrestlers appeared—a foot of thin steel in his paw. I looked back.
Hsiu Hsiu sat on the bottom step, her head over her shoulder, experimenting with different sorts of yells and screams, enjoyment all over her laughing doll’s face. One of the climbing yellow men was loosening an automatic.
My legs pushed me on up toward the man-eater at the head of the steps.
When he crouched close above me I let him have it.
My bullet cut the gullet out of him.
I patted his face with my gun as he tumbled down past me.
A hand caught one of my ankles.
Clinging to the railing, I drove my other foot back. Something stopped my foot. Nothing stopped me.
A bullet flaked some of the ceiling down as I made the head of the stairs and jumped for the door to the right.
Pulling it open, I plunged in.
The other of the big man-eaters caught me—caught my plunging hundred and eighty-some pounds as a boy would catch a rubber ball.
Across the room, Chang Li Ching ran plump fingers through his thin whiskers and smiled at me. Beside him, a man I knew for The Whistler started up from his chair, his beefy face twitching.
“The Prince of Hunters is welcome,” Chang said, and added something in Chinese to the man-eater who held me.
The man-eater set me down on my feet, and turned to shut the door on my pursuers.
The Whistler sat down again, his red-veined eyes shifty on me, his bloated face empty of enjoyment.
I tucked my gun inside my clothes before I started across the room toward Chang. And crossing the room, I noticed something.
Behind The Whistler’s chair the velvet hangings bulged just the least bit, not enough to have been noticed by anyone who hadn’t seen them bulge before. So Chang didn’t trust his confederate at all!
“I have something I want you to see,” I told the old Chinese when I was standing in front of him, or, rather, in front of the table that was in front of him.
“That eye is privileged indeed which may gaze on anything brought by the Father of Avengers.”
“I have heard,” I said, as I put my hand in my pocket, “that all that starts for China doesn’t get there.”
The Whistler jumped up from his chair again, his mouth a snarl, his face a dirty pink. Chang Li Ching looked at him, and he sat down again.
I brought out the photograph of The Whistler standing in a group of Japs, the medal of the Order of the Rising Sun on his chest. Hoping Chang had not heard of the swindle and would not know the medal for a counterfeit, I dropped the photograph on the table.
The Whistler craned his neck, but could not see the picture.
Chang Li Ching looked at it for a long moment over his clasped hands, his old eyes shrewd and kindly, his face gentle. No muscle in his face moved. Nothing changed in his eyes.
The nails of his right hand slowly cut a red gash across the back of the clasped left hand.
“It is true,” he said softly, “that one acquires wisdom in the company of the wise.”
He unclasped his hands, picked up the photograph, and held it out to the beefy man. The Whistler seized it. His face drained grey, his eyes bulged out.
“Why, that’s—” he began, and st
opped, let the photograph drop to his lap, and slumped down in an attitude of defeat.
That puzzled me. I had expected to argue with him, to convince Chang that the medal was not the fake it was.
“You may have what you wish in payment for this,” Chang Li Ching was saying to me.
“I want Lillian Shan and Garthorne cleared, and I want your fat friend here, and I want anybody else who was in on the killings.”
Chang’s eyes closed for a moment—the first sign of weariness I had seen on his round face.
“You may have them,” he said.
“The bargain you made with Miss Shan is all off, of course,” I pointed out. “I may need a little evidence to make sure I can hang this baby,” nodding at The Whistler.
Chang smiled dreamily.
“That, I am regretful, is not possible.”
“Why—?” I began, and stopped.
There was no bulge in the velvet curtain behind The Whistler now, I saw. One of the chair legs glistened in the light. A red pool spread on the floor under him. I didn’t have to see his back to know he was beyond hanging.
“That’s different,” I said, kicking a chair over to the table. “Now we’ll talk business.”
I sat down and we went into conference.
XI
Two days later everything was cleared up to the satisfaction of police, press and public. The Whistler had been found in a dark street, hours dead from a cut in his back, killed in a bootlegging war, I heard. Hoo Lun was found. The gold-toothed Chinese who had opened the door for Lillian Shan was found. Five others were found. These seven, with Yin Hung, the chauffeur, eventually drew a life sentence apiece. They were The Whistler’s men, and Chang sacrificed them without batting an eye. They had as little proof of Chang’s complicity as I had, so they couldn’t hit back, even if they knew that Chang had given me most of my evidence against them.
Nobody but the girl, Chang and I knew anything about Garthorne’s part, so he was out, with liberty to spend most of his time at the girl’s house.
I had no proof that I could tie on Chang, couldn’t get any. Regardless of his patriotism, I’d have given my right eye to put the old boy away. That would have been something to write home about. But there hadn’t been a chance of nailing him, so I had had to be content with making a bargain whereby he turned everything over to me except himself and his friends.
Corkscrew and Other Stories Page 14