The Mystery Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Mystery Stories

by Talley, Marcia

  She had decided that cruelty was his vice. In what way he gratified it she had never learned, nor did she desire to do so. There were periodical visits from the police, but she had learned long ago that her father was too clever to place himself within reach of the law.

  However crooked one part of his business methods might be, his dealings with his clients were straight enough, so that no one had any object in betraying him; and the legality or otherwise of his foreign relations evidently afforded no case against him upon which the authorities could act, or upon which they cared to act.

  In America it had been graft which had protected him. She had learned this accidentally, but never knew whether he bought his immunity in the same way in London.

  Some of the rumours which reached her were terrifying. Latterly she had met many strange glances in her comings and goings about Limehouse. This peculiar atmosphere had always preceded the break-up of every home which they had shared. She divined the fact that in some way Huang Chow had outstayed his welcome in Chinatown, London. Where their next resting-place would be she could not imagine, but she prayed that it might be in some more sunny clime.

  She found herself to be thinking over much of John Hampden. His bona fides were not above suspicion, but she could scarcely expect to meet a really white man in such an environment.

  Lala would have liked to think that he was white, but could not force herself to do so. She would have liked to think that he sought her company because she appealed to him personally; but she had detected the fact that another motive underlay his attentions. She wondered if he could be another of those moths drawn by the light of that fabled wealth of her father.

  It was curious, she reflected, that Huang Chow never checked—indeed, openly countenanced—her friendship with the many chance acquaintances she had made, even when her own instincts told her that the men were crooked; so that, knowing the acumen of her father, she was well aware that he must know it too.

  Several of these pseudo lovers of hers had died. It was a point which often occurred to her mind, but upon which she did not care to dwell even now. But John Hampden—John Hampden was different. He was not wholly sincere. She sighed wearily. But nevertheless he was not like some of the others.

  She started up in bed, seized with a sudden dreadful idea. He was a detective!

  She understood now why she had found so much that was white in him, but so much that was false. His presence seemed to be very near her. Something caressing in his voice echoed in her mind. She found herself to be listening to the muted sounds of Limehouse and of the waterway which flowed so close beside her.

  That old longing for the home of her childhood returned tenfold, and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. She was falling in love with this man whose object was her father’s ruin. A cold terror clutched at her heart. Even now, while their friendship was so new, so strange, there was a query, a stark, terrifying query, to stand up before her.

  If put to the test, which would she choose?

  She was unable to face that issue, and dropped back upon her pillow, stifling a sob.

  Yes, he was a detective. In some way her father had at last attracted the serious attention of the law. Rumours of this were flying round Chinatown, to which she had not been entirely deaf. She thought of a hundred questions, a hundred silences, and grew more and more convinced of the truth.

  What did he mean to do? Before her a ghostly company arose—the shadows of some she had known with designs upon her father. John Hampden’s design was different. But might he not join that mysterious company?

  Now again she suddenly sprang upright, this time because of a definite sound which had reached her ears from within the house: a very faint, bell-like tinkling which ceased almost immediately. She had heard it one night before, and quite recently; indeed, on the night before she had met John Hampden. Cohen—Cohen, the Jew, had died that night!

  She sprang lightly on to the floor, found her slippers, and threw a silk kimono over her night-robe. She tiptoed cautiously to the door and opened it.

  It was at this very moment that old Huang Chow, asleep in his cell-like apartment, was aroused by the tinkling of a bell set immediately above his head. He awoke instantly, raised his hand and stopped the bell. His expression, could anyone have been present to see it, was a thing unpleasant to behold. Triumph was in it, and cunning cruelty.

  His long yellow fingers reached out for his horn-rimmed spectacles which lay upon a little table beside him. Adjusting them, he pulled the curtains aside and shuffled silently across the large room.

  Mounting the steps to the raised writing-table, he rested his elbows upon it, and peered down at that curious blotting-pad which had so provoked the curiosity of Durham. Could Durham have seen it now the mystery must have been solved. It was an ingenious camera obscura apparatus, and dimly depicted upon its surface appeared a reproduction of part of the storehouse beneath! The part of it which was visible was that touched by the light of an electric torch, carried by a man crossing the floor in the direction of the lacquered coffin upon the gilded pedestal!

  Old Huang Chow chuckled silently, and his yellow fingers clutched the table edge as he moved to peer more closely into the picture.

  “Poor fool!” he whispered in Chinese. “Poor fool!”

  It was the man who had come with the introduction from Mr. Isaacs—a new impostor who sought to rob him, who sought to obtain information from his daughter, who had examined his premises last night, and had even penetrated upstairs, so that he, old Huang Chow, had been compelled to disconnect the apparatus and to feign sleep under the scrutiny of the intruder.

  Tonight it would be otherwise. Tonight it would be otherwise.

  X

  THE LACQUERED COFFIN

  Durham gently raised the trap in the roof of Huang Chow’s treasure-house. He was prepared for snares and pitfalls. No sane man, on the evidence which he, Durham, had been compelled to leave behind, would have neglected to fasten the skylight which so obviously afforded a means of entrance into his premises.

  Therefore, he was expected to return. The devilish mechanism was set ready to receive him. But the artist within him demanded that he should unmask the mystery with his own hands.

  Moreover, he doubted that an official visit, even now, would yield any results. Old Huang Chow was too cunning for that. If he was to learn how the man Cohen had died, he must follow the same path to the bitter end. But there were men on duty round the house, and he believed that he had placed them so secretly as to deceive even this master of cunning with whom he was dealing.

  He repeated his exploit, dropping with a dull thud upon the cushioned divan. Then, having lain there listening awhile, he pressed the button of his torch, and, standing up, crept across the room in the direction of the stairway.

  Here he paused awhile, listening intently. The image of Lala Huang arose before his mind’s eye reproachfully, but he crushed the reproach, and advanced until he stood beside the lacquered coffin.

  He remembered where the key was hidden, and, stooping, he fumbled for a while and then found it. He was acutely conscious of an unnamable fear. He felt that he was watched, and yet was unwilling to believe it. The musty and unpleasant smell which he had noticed before became extremely perceptible.

  He quietly sought for the hidden lock, and, presently finding it, inserted the key, then paused awhile. He rested his torch upon the cushions of the divan where the light shone directly upon the coffin. Then, having his automatic in his left hand, he turned the key.

  He had expected now to be able to raise the lid as he had seen Huang Chow do; but the result was far more surprising.

  The lid, together with a second framework of fine netting, flew open with a resounding bang; and from the interior of the coffin came a most abominable stench.

  Durham started back a step, and as he did so witnessed a sight which turned him sick with horror.

  Out on to the edge of the coffin leapt the most gigantic spider which he had
ever seen in his life! It had a body as big as a man’s fist, jet black, with hairy legs like the legs of a crab and a span of a foot or more!

  A moment it poised there, while he swayed, sick with horror. Then, unhesitatingly, it leapt for his face!

  He groaned and fired, missed the horror, but diverted its leap, so that it fell with a sickening thud a yard behind him. He turned, staggering back towards the stair, and aware that a light had shone out from somewhere.

  A door had been opened only a few yards from where he stood, and there, framed in the opening, was Lala Huang, her eyes wide with terror and her gaze set upon him across the room.

  “You!” she whispered. “You!”

  “Go back!” he cried hoarsely. “Go back! Close the door. You don’t understand—close the door!”

  Her gaze set wildly upon him, Lala staggered forward; stopped dead; looked down at her bare ankle, and then, seeing the thing which had fastened upon her, uttered a piercing shriek which rang throughout the place.

  At which moment the floor slid away beneath Durham, and he found himself falling—falling—and then battling for life in evil-smelling water, amidst absolute darkness.

  Police whistles were skirling around the house of Huang Chow. As the hidden men came running into the court:

  “You heard the shot?” cried the sergeant in charge. “I warned him not to go alone. Don’t waste time on the door. One man stay on duty there; the rest of you follow me.”

  In a few moments, led by the sergeant, the party came dropping heavily through the skylight into the treasure-house of Huang Chow, in which every lamp was now alight. A trap was open near the foot of the stairs, and from beneath it muffled cries proceeded. In this direction the sergeant headed. Craning over the trap:

  “Hallo, Mr. Durham!” he called. “Mr. Durham!”

  “Get a rope and a ladder,” came a faint cry from below. “I can just touch bottom with my feet and keep my head above water, but the tide’s coming in. Look to the girl, though, first. Look to the girl!”

  The sergeant turned to where, stretched upon a tiger skin before a half-open door, Lala Huang lay, scantily clothed and white as death.

  Upon one of her bare ankles was a discoloured mark.

  As the sergeant and another of the men stooped over her a moaning sound drew their attention to the stair, and there, bent and tottering slowly down, was old Huang Chow, his eyes peering through the owl-like glasses vacantly across the room to where his daughter lay.

  “My God!” whispered the sergeant, upon one knee beside her. He looked blankly into the face of the other man. “She’s dead!”

  Two plain-clothes men were busy knotting together tapestries and pieces of rare stuff with which to draw Durham out of the pit; but at these old Huang Chow looked not at all, but gropingly crossed the room, as if he saw imperfectly, or could not believe what he saw. At last he reached the side of the dead girl, stooped, touched her, laid a trembling yellow hand over her heart, and then stood up again, looking from face to face.

  Ignoring the mingled activities about him, he crossed to the open coffin and began to fumble amongst the putrefying mass of bones and webbing which lay therein. Out from this he presently drew an iron coffer.

  Carrying it across the room he opened the lid. It was full almost to the top with uncut gems of every variety—diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topaz, amethysts, flashing greenly, redly, whitely. In handfuls he grasped them and sprinkled them upon the body of the dead girl.

  “For you,” he crooned brokenly in Chinese. “They were all for you!”

  The extemporized rope had just been lowered to Durham, when:

  “My God!” cried the sergeant, looking over Huang Chow’s shoulder. “What’s that?”

  He had seen the giant spider, the horror from Surinam, which the Chinaman had reared and fed to guard his treasure and to gratify his lust for the strange and cruel. The insect, like everything else in that house, was unusual, almost unique. It was one of the Black Soldier spiders, by some regarded as a native myth, but actually existing in Surinam and parts of Brazil. A member of the family Mygale, its sting was more quickly and certainly fatal than that of a rattlesnake. Its instinct was fearlessly to attack any creature, great or small, which disturbed it in its dark hiding place.

  Now, with feverish, horrible rapidity it was racing up the tapestries on the other side of the room.

  “Merciful God!” groaned the sergeant.

  Snatching a revolver from his pocket he fired shot after shot. The third hit the thing but did not kill it. It dropped back upon the floor and began to crawl toward the coffin. The sergeant ran across and at close quarters shot it again.

  Red blood oozed out from the hideous black body and began to form a deep stain upon the carpet.

  When Durham, drenched but unhurt, was hauled back into the treasure-house, he did not speak, but, scrambling into the room stood—pallid—staring dully at old Huang Chow.

  Huang Chow, upon his knees beside his daughter, was engaged in sprinkling priceless jewels over her still body, and murmuring in Chinese:

  “For you, for you, Lala. They were all for you.”

  ANCHORS AWAY, by C. Ellett Logan

  Gina paused in her kitchen doorway to listen to the message on the answering machine.

  “Axel Boyette? Swinson Concrete here, confirming your 10 a.m. appointment for Saturday the seventeenth. We want to remind you to complete the required site prep: clear all brush and debris—then rake smooth. If you need to reschedule for any reason, you must do so at least forty-eight hours prior to your reserved time by calling 703-3 …”

  Gina tuned out the rest of the message, furious that her husband had followed the instructions to the letter, destroying her roses in the process. She stepped from the kitchen onto the dirt and stones of their side yard—a no-man’s land bathed in the perpetual shadow of the house, where even weeds would not grow. From her shady post, she observed that the noonday sun rendered everything else a washed-out white, especially her husband’s bass boat. Around twenty feet in length, including outboard motor and trailer, the thing was covered with a canvas tarp that somehow made it look like a whale in a silly cap, waiting to go for a ride.

  Skirting the boat, she knelt beside a pitiful pile of plant remains, suffering as if it were her own body parts dumped in a heap on the hard-scrabble ground.

  “Oh, my sweet babies,” she said, carefully picking up the severed limbs that had once been her Knock Out roses. Aromatic blossoms stubbornly clung to the stems, heads bowed and petals limp.

  “I’m so sorry.” Gina swallowed hard, wiping the wetness from her cheeks on the back of her thick gardening gloves. She carted the bushes close to her body like injured children until she filled the compost pile around back, the pricking of their thorny teeth barely registering through her sorrow.

  “He said he had to take out some flowers for the carport, but I never dreamed he meant my roses,” she exclaimed to the wilted foliage, cooing gently as she had when their shoots had been tender.

  Gina had only half listened when Axel explained about contractors coming to install a cement parking deck for his boat. Even though they had a two-acre lot full of possible sites for his project, she should have realized that he would want the damn boat where he could admire it from the dining room window. The same window she used to look through to enjoy her flower beds.

  “Why didn’t I pay more attention?” She stepped back into the shade for a moment’s rest. “Maybe I could’ve stopped him.”

  To be fair, much of their property was covered in pine trees, more difficult to clear than her garden. Gina had been grateful when Axel gave up his womanizing for fishing, relieved to know his destination when he drove off every Saturday morning pulling his boat and trailer. But the fact that he was capable of destroying the one hobby that gave her pleasure, just to accommodate his, was cold even for him.

  Gina, who was in the best shape of her life because of gardening, worked the small pitchfor
k with ease. She thoroughly mixed the lifeless branches into the rotted manure and leaf litter of the compost pile then put the yard tools away. She had the urge to call the concrete company to cancel the pour. But it was only Wednesday, and the job still ten days away—her husband might discover what she had done. She didn’t have the nerve to risk it.

  * * * *

  The next afternoon, Gina climbed up and down on a footstool taking apart light fixtures for a good soaking, disgusted by the dried insect parts that rained down. From her perch in the hall, she heard the slam of a car door, followed by Axel’s gruff voice calling goodbye to his ride home, a fellow traveling salesman. She continued her chore until she got the etched-glass cover washed and dried and back in place. Her husband usually parked his suitcase on the small front porch, then went around to the side yard to examine the flex-fit cover on the boat for tightness, or the trailer tires for air pressure; anything to spend time and attention on his boat. And money—2009 had been an expensive year. First he traded in their paid-for car for a used truck with a trailer hitch and a monthly payment. And now they owed good money on a concrete pad and steel cover.

  So it was a good thing her husband had a stable job selling office products. On Mondays he checked in at the local office to talk to his manager about the coming week’s goals and turn in his travel expenses. On Tuesdays he set up appointments. Wednesdays through Fridays he drove the company van from town to town in the surrounding counties, servicing his outside-sales route, delivering toner cartridges, and taking new orders. He performed his “adore the boat” ritual every Friday after he was dropped off, before he saw fit to gather up his bag and join her.