The House Without a Key

by Earl Der Biggers

  “Amos? Is that you, Amos? This is Minerva. Come over here to Dan’s as quickly as you can.”

  The voice muttered in protest. Miss Minerva cut in on it sharply.

  “For God’s sake, Amos, forget your silly feud. Your brother is dead.”

  “Dead?” he repeated dully.

  “Murdered, Amos. Will you come now?”

  A long silence. What thoughts, Miss Minerva wondered, were passing through the mind of that stern unbending Puritan?

  “I’ll come,” a strange voice said at last. And then, a voice more like that of the Amos she knew: “The police! I’ll notify them, and then I’ll come right over.”

  Returning to the hall, Miss Minerva saw that the big front door was closed. Amos would enter that way, she knew, so she went over and opened it. There was, she noted, an imposing lock, but the key had long since been lost and forgotten. Indeed, in all Dan’s great house, she could not recall ever having seen a key. In these friendly trusting islands, locked doors were obsolete.

  She reentered the living-room. Should she summon a doctor? But no, it was too late, she knew that only too well. And the police—didn’t they bring some sort of doctor with them? Suddenly she began to wonder about the police. During all her time in Honolulu she had never given them a thought before. Away off here at the end of the world—did they have policemen? She couldn’t remember ever having seen one. Oh, yes—there was that handsome, brown-skinned Hawaiian who stood on a box at the corner of Fort and King Streets, directing traffic with an air that would have become Kamehameha himself. She heard the scrape of a chair being moved on the lanai, and went to the door.

  “Nothing is to be touched out here,” she said. “Leave it just as it was. You’d better go upstairs and dress, both of you.”

  The two frightened servants came into the living-room, and stood there regarding her. They seemed to feel that this terrible affair called for discussion. But what was there to be said? Even in the event of murder, a Winterslip must maintain a certain well-bred aloofness in dealing with servants. Miss Minerva’s feeling for them was kindly. She sympathized with their evident grief, but there was, she felt, nothing to discuss.

  “After you’ve dressed,” she ordered, “stay within reach. You’ll both be wanted.”

  They went out, Haku in his absurd costume, Kamaikui moaning and muttering in a way that sent shivers up and down Miss Minerva’s spine. They left her there alone—with Dan—and she who had always thought herself equal to anything still hesitated about going out on the lanai.

  She sat down in a huge chair in the living-room and gazed about her at the trappings of wealth and position that Dan had left forever now. Poor Dan. Despite all the whispering against him, she had liked him immensely. It is said of many—usually with small reason—that their lives would make an interesting book. It had been said of Dan, and in his case it was true. What a book his life would have made—and how promptly it would have been barred for all time from the shelves of the Boston Public Library! For Dan had lived life to the full, made his own laws, fought his battles without mercy, prospered and had his way. Dallied often along forbidden paths, they said, but his smile had been so friendly and his voice so full of cheer—always until these last two weeks.

  Ever since that night he sent the letter to Roger, he had seemed a different man. There were lines for the first time in his face, a weary apprehensive look in his gray eyes. And how furious he had been when, last Wednesday, he received a cable from Roger. What was in that message, Miss Minerva wondered; what were those few typewritten words that had caused him to fly into such a rage and set him to pacing the floor with tigerish step?

  She thought of him as she had seen him last—he had seemed rather pathetic to her then. When the news came that the President Tyler could not dock until morning, and that Barbara—

  Miss Minerva stopped. For the first time she thought of Barbara. She thought of a sprightly, vivacious girl as yet untouched by sorrow—and of the morning’s homecoming. Tears came into her eyes, and it was through a mist she saw the bamboo curtain that led into the hall pushed aside, and the thin white face of Amos framed there.

  Amos entered, walking gingerly, for he was treading ground he had sworn his feet should never touch. He paused before Miss Minerva.

  “What’s this?” he said. “What’s all this?”

  She nodded toward the lanai, and he went out there. After what seemed a long time, he reappeared. His shoulders drooped wearily and his watery eyes were staring.

  “Stabbed through the heart,” he muttered. He stood for a moment regarding his father’s picture on the wall. “The wages of sin is death,” he added, as though to old Jedediah Winterslip.

  “Yes, Amos,” said Miss Minerva sharply. “I expected we should hear that from you. And there’s another one you may have heard—judge not that ye be not judged. Further than that, we’ll waste no time moralizing. Dan is dead, and I for one am sorry.”

  “Sorry!” repeated Amos drearily. “How about me? My brother—my young brother—I taught him to walk on this very beach—”

  “Yes.” Miss Minerva looked at him keenly. “I wonder. Well, Dan’s gone. Someone has killed him. He was one of us—a Winterslip. What are we going to do about it?”

  “I’ve notified the police,” said Amos.

  “Then why aren’t they here? In Boston by this time—but then, I know this isn’t Boston. Stabbed, you say. Was there any sign of a weapon?”

  “None whatever, that I could see.”

  “How about that Malay kris on the table out there? The one Dan used as a paper cutter?”

  “I didn’t notice,” Amos replied. “This is a strange house to me, Minerva.”

  “So it is.” Miss Minerva rose and started for the lanai. She was her old competent self again. At that moment a loud knock sounded on the screen door at the front of the house. Presently there were voices in the hall, and Haku ushered three men into the living-room. Though evidently police, they were all in plain clothes. One of them, a tall, angular Yankee with the look of a sailing master about him, stepped forward.

  “I’m Hallet,” he said. “Captain of Detectives. You’re Mr. Amos Winterslip, I believe?”

  “I am,” Amos answered. He introduced Miss Minerva. Captain Hallet gave her a casual nod; this was man’s business and he disliked having a woman involved.

  “Dan Winterslip, you said,” he remarked, turning back to Amos. “That’s a great pity. Where is he?”

  Amos indicated the lanai. “Come, Doctor,” Hallet said, and went through the curtain, followed by the smaller of the two men.

  As they went out, the third man stepped farther into the room, and Miss Minerva gave a little gasp of astonishment as she looked at him. In those warm islands thin men were the rule, but here was a striking exception. He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty step of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby’s, his skin ivory-tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting. As he passed Miss Minerva he bowed with a courtesy encountered all too rarely in a work-a-day world, then moved on after Hallet.

  “Amos!” cried Miss Minerva. “That man—why he—”

  “Charlie Chan,” Amos explained. “I’m glad they brought him. He’s the best detective on the force.”

  “But—he’s Chinese!”

  “Of course.”

  Miss Minerva sank into a chair. Ah, yes, they had policemen out here, after all.

  In a few moments Hallet came briskly back into the living-room. “Look here,” he said. “The doctor tells me Mr. Winterslip has been dead a very short while. I don’t want your evidence just yet—but if either of you can give me some idea as to the hour when this thing happened—”

  “I can give you a rather definite idea,” said Miss Minerva calmly. “It happened just previous to twenty minutes past one. Say about one fifteen.”

  Hallet stared at her. “You’re sure of that?”

  “I ought to be. I got the time from the wri
stwatch of the person who committed the murder.”

  “What! You saw him!”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I saw his wristwatch.”

  Hallet frowned. “I’ll get that straight later,” he said. “Just now I propose to comb this part of town. Where’s the telephone?”

  Miss Minerva pointed it out to him, and heard him in earnest conversation with a man at headquarters named Tom. Tom’s job, it seemed, was to muster all available men and search Honolulu, particularly the Waikiki district, rounding up any suspicious characters. He was also to have on hand, awaiting his chief’s return, the passenger lists of all ships that had made port at Honolulu during the past week.

  Hallet returned to the living-room. He took a stand directly in front of Miss Minerva. “Now,” he began, “you didn’t see the murderer, but you saw his wristwatch. I’m a great believer in taking things in an orderly fashion. You’re a stranger here. From Boston, I believe?”

  “I am,” snapped Miss Minerva.

  “Stopping in this house?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Anybody here besides you and Mr. Winterslip?”

  Miss Minerva’s eyes flashed. “The servants,” she said. “And I would like to call your attention to the fact that I am Dan Winterslip’s first cousin.”

  “Oh, sure—no offense. He has a daughter, hasn’t he?”

  “Miss Barbara is on her way home from college. Her ship will dock in the morning.”

  “I see. Just you and Winterslip. You’re going to be an important witness.”

  “It will be a novel experience, at any rate,” she remarked.

  “I daresay. Now, go back—” Miss Minerva glared at him—it was a glare that had frightened guards on the Cambridge subway. He brushed it aside. “You understand that I haven’t time for please, Miss Winterslip. Go back and describe last evening in this house.”

  “I was here only until eight-thirty,” she told him, “when I went to a luau with some friends. Previous to that, Mr. Winterslip dined at his usual hour and we chatted for a time on the lanai.”

  “Did he seem to have anything on his mind?”

  “Well, he has appeared a bit upset—”

  “Wait a minute!” The captain took out a notebook. “Want to put down some of this. Been upset, has he? For how long?”

  “For the past two weeks. Let me think—just two weeks ago to-night—or rather, last night—he and I were sitting on the lanai, and he was reading the evening paper. Something in it seemed to disturb him. He got up, wrote a note to his cousin Roger in San Francisco, and took it down for a friend aboard the President Tyler to deliver. From that moment he appeared restless and unhappy.”

  “Go on. This may be important.”

  “Last Wednesday morning he received a cable from Roger that infuriated him.”

  “A cable. What was in it?”

  “It was not addressed to me,” said Miss Minerva haughtily.

  “Well, that’s all right. We’ll dig it up. Now, about last night. Did he act more upset than ever?”

  “He did. But that may have been due to the fact he had hoped his daughter’s ship would dock yesterday afternoon, and had learned it could not land its passengers until this morning.”

  “I see. You said you was only here until eight-thirty?”

  “I did not,” replied Miss Minerva coldly. “I said I was here only until eight-thirty.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Well, hardly.”

  “I’m not here to talk grammar,” Hallet said sharply. “Did anything occur—anything out of the ordinary—before you left?”

  “No. Wait a moment. Someone called Mr. Winterslip on the telephone while he was at dinner. I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation.”

  “Good for you!” She glared at him again. “Repeat it.”

  “I heard Mr. Winterslip say: ‘Hello, Egan. What—you’re not coming over? Oh, yes you are. I want to see you. I insist on it. Come about eleven. I want to see you.’ That was, at least, the import of his remarks.”

  “Did he seem excited?”

  “He raised his voice above the ordinary tone.”

  “Ah, yes.” The captain stared at his notebook. “Must have been Jim Egan, who runs this God-forsaken Reef and Palm Hotel down the beach.” He turned to Amos. “Was Egan a friend of your brother?”

  “I don’t know,” said Amos.

  “You see, Amos was not a friend of his brother, either,” explained Miss Minerva. “There was an old feud between them. Speaking for myself, I never heard Dan mention Egan, and he certainly never came to the house while I was here.”

  Hallet nodded. “Well, you left at eight-thirty. Now tell us where you went and when you got back. And all about the wristwatch.”

  Miss Minerva rapidly sketched her evening at the luau. She described her return to Dan’s living-room, her adventure in the dark—the luminous dial that waited for her to pass.

  “I wish you’d seen more,” Hallet complained. “Too many people wear wristwatches.”

  “Probably not many,” said Miss Minerva, “wear a wristwatch like that one.”

  “Oh. It had some distinguishing mark?”

  “It certainly did. The numerals were illuminated, and stood out clearly—with an exception. The figure two was very dim—practically obliterated.”

  He looked at her admiringly. “Well, you certainly had your wits about you.”

  “That’s a habit I formed early in life,” replied Miss Minerva. “And old habits are hard to break.”

  He smiled, and asked her to continue. She told of rousing the two servants and, finally, of the gruesome discovery on the lanai.

  “But it was Mr. Amos,” Hallet said, “who called the station.”

  “Yes. I telephoned him at once, and he offered to attend to that.”

  Hallet turned to Amos. “How long did it take you to reach here, Mr. Winterslip?” he inquired.

  “Not more than ten minutes,” said Amos.

  “You could dress and get here in that time?”

  Amos hesitated. “I—I did not need to dress,” he explained. “I hadn’t gone to bed.”

  Hallet regarded him with a new interest. “Half past one—and you were still up?”

  “I—I don’t sleep very well,” said Amos. “I’m up till all hours.”

  “I see. You weren’t on friendly terms with your brother? An old quarrel between you?”

  “No particular quarrel. I didn’t approve of his manner of living, and we went separate ways.”

  “And stopped speaking to each other, eh?”

  “Yes. That was the situation,” Amos admitted.

  “Humph.” For a moment the captain stared at Amos, and Miss Minerva stared at him too. Amos! It flashed through her mind that Amos had been a long time alone out there on the lanai before the arrival of the police.

  “Those two servants who came downstairs with you, Miss Winterslip,” Hallet said. “I’ll see them now. The others can go over until morning.”

  Haku and Kamaikui appeared, frightened and wide-eyed. Haku had nothing to tell, he had been sleeping soundly from nine until the moment Miss Minerva knocked on his door. He swore it. But Kamaikui had something to contribute.

  “I come here with fruit.” She pointed to a basket on the table. “On lanai out there are talking—Mr. Dan, a man, a woman. Oh, very much angry.”

  “What time was that?” Hallet asked.

  “Ten o’clock I think.”

  “Did you recognize any voice except your master’s?”

  Miss Minerva thought the woman hesitated a second. “No. I do not.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Maybe eleven o’clock. I am sitting close to window upstairs. More talking on lanai. Mr. Dan and other man. Not so much angry this time.”

  “At eleven, eh? Do you know Mr. Jim Egan?”

  “I have seen him.”

  “Could you say if it was his voice?”

  “I could not say.”


  “All right. You two can go now.” He turned to Miss Minerva and Amos. “We’ll see what Charlie has dug up out here,” he said, and led the way to the lanai.

  The huge Chinese man knelt, a grotesque figure, by a table. He rose laboriously as they entered.

  “Find the knife, Charlie?” the captain asked.

  Chan shook his head. “No knife are present in neighborhood of crime,” he announced.

  “On that table,” Miss Minerva began, “there was a Malay kris, used as a paper cutter—”

  The Chinese man nodded, and lifted the kris from the desk. “Same remains here still,” he said, “untouched, unsullied. Person who killed carried individual weapon.”

  “How about fingerprints?” asked Hallet.

  “Considering from recent discovery,” Chan replied, “search for fingerprints are hopeless one.” He held out a pudgy hand, in the palm of which lay a small pearl button. “Torn from kid’s glove,” he elucidated. “Aged trick of criminal mind. No fingerprints.”

  “Is that all you’ve got?” asked his chief.

  “Most sincere endeavors,” said Chan, “have revealed not much. However, I might mention this.” He took up a leather-bound book from the table. “Here are written names of visitors who have enjoyed hospitality of the house. A guest book is, I believe, the term. You will find that one of the earlier pages has been ruthlessly torn out. When I make discovery the volume are lying open at that locality.”

  Captain Hallet took the book in his thin hand. “All right, Charlie,” he said. “This is your case.”

  The slant eyes blinked with pleasure. “Most interesting,” murmured Chan.

  Hallet tapped the notebook in his pocket. “I’ve got a few facts here for you—we’ll run over them later.” He stood for a moment, staring about the lanai. “I must say we seem a little shy on clues. A button torn from a glove, a page ripped from a guest book. And a wristwatch with an illuminated dial on which the figure two was damaged.” Chan’s little eyes widened at mention of that. “Not much, Charlie, so far.”

  “Maybe more to come,” suggested Chan. “Who knows it?”

  “We’ll go along now,” Hallet continued. He turned to Miss Minerva and Amos. “I guess you folks would like a little rest. We’ll have to trouble you again to-morrow.”