The House Without a Key

by Earl Der Biggers

  John Quincy’s eye fell on the Japanese waiter. What were those lines from The Mikado? “But family pride must be denied and mortified and set aside.”

  The boy smiled. “Yes, Charlie,” he admitted, “I have much to tell you.” And over the inspeakable coffee of the All American Restaurant he repeated to the detective the story the Reverend Frank Upton had told on the President Tyler.

  Chan beamed. “Now,” he cried, “we arrive in the neighborhood of something! Brade the blackbirder, master Maid of Shiloh boat, on which Mr. Dan Winterslip are first officer—”

  “But Brade was buried on Apiang,” protested John Quincy.

  “Yes, indeed. And who saw him, pardon me? Was it then an unsealed box? Oh, no!” Chan’s eyes were dancing. “Please recollect something more. The strong box of ohia wood. Initials on it are T.M.B. Mysteries yet, but we move, we advance!”

  “I guess we do,” admitted John Quincy.

  “This much we grasp,” Chan continued. “Dan Winterslip repose for quiet hour on lanai, in peaceful reading. This news assault his eye. He now leaps up, paces about, flees to dock to send letter requesting, please, the ohia wood box must be buried deep in Pacific. Why?” Fumbling in his pocket, Chan took out a sheaf of papers, evidently lists of steamer arrivals. “On Saturday just gone by, the Sonoma make this port. Among passengers—yes—yes—Thomas Macan Brade and honorable wife, Calcutta. It is here inscribed they arrive to stay, not being present when Sonoma persist on journey. On the night of Monday, Mr. Dan Winterslip are foully slain.”

  “Which makes Mr. Brade an important person to locate,” said John Quincy.

  “How very true. But the hurry are not intense. No boats sailing now. Before sleeping, I will investigate downtown hotels, Waikiki to-morrow. Where are you, Mr. Brade?” Chan seized the check. “No—pardon me—the honor of paying for this poison-tasting beverage must be mine.”

  Out in the street, he indicated an approaching trolley. “It bears imprint of your destination,” he pointed out. “You will require sleep. We meet to-morrow. Congratulations on most fruitful evening.”

  Once more John Quincy was on a Waikiki car. Weary but thrilled, he took out his pipe and filling it, lighted up. What a day! He seemed to have lived a lifetime since he had landed that very morning. He perceived that his smoke was blowing in the face of a tired little Japanese woman beside him. “Pardon me,” he remarked, and knocking the pipe against the side rail, put it in his pocket. The woman stared at him in meek startled wonder; no one had ever asked her pardon before.

  On the seat behind John Quincy a group of Hawaiian boys with yellow leis about their necks twanged on steel guitars and sang a plaintive love song. The trolley rattled on through the fragrant night; above the clatter of the wheels the music rose with a sweet intensity. John Quincy leaned back and closed his eyes.

  A clock struck the hour of midnight. Another day—Wednesday—it flashed through his mind that to-day his firm in Boston would offer that preferred stock for the shoe people in Lynn. Would the issue be over-subscribed? No matter.

  Here he was, out in the middle of the Pacific on a trolley-car. Behind him brown-skinned boys were singing a melancholy love song of long ago, and the moon was shining on crimson poinciana trees. And somewhere on this tiny island a man named Thomas Macan Brade slept under a mosquito netting. Or lay awake, perhaps, thinking of Dan Winterslip.

  Chapter 13

  The Luggage in Room Nineteen

  John Quincy emerged from sleep the next morning with a great effort, and dragged his watch from under the pillow. Eight-thirty! Good Lord, he was due at the office at nine! A quick bath and shave, a brief pause at the breakfast table, a run past the Public Gardens and the Common and down to School Street—

  He sat up in bed. Why was he imprisoned under mosquito netting? What was the meaning of the little lizard that sported idly outside the cloth? Oh, yes—Honolulu. He was in Hawaii, and he’d never reach his office by nine. It was five thousand miles away.

  The low murmur of breakers on the beach confirmed him in this discovery and stepping to his window, he gazed out at the calm sparkling morning. Yes, he was in Honolulu entangled in a murder mystery, consorting with Chinese detectives and Waikiki Widows, following clues. The new day held interesting promise. He must hurry to find what it would bring forth.

  Haku informed him that his aunt and Barbara had already breakfasted, and set before him a reddish sort of cantaloupe which was, he explained in answer to the boy’s question, a papaia. When he had eaten, John Quincy went out on the lanai. Barbara stood there, staring at the beach. A new Barbara, with the old vivacity, the old joy of living, submerged; a pale girl with sorrow in her eyes.

  John Quincy put his arm about her shoulder; she was a Winterslip and the family was the family. Again he felt in his heart that flare of anger against the “person or persons unknown” who had brought this grief upon her. The guilty must pay—Egan or whoever, Brade or Leatherbee or the chorus girl. Pay and pay dearly—he was resolved on that.

  “My dear girl,” he began. “What can I say to you—”

  “You’ve said it all, without speaking,” she answered. “See, John Quincy, this is my beach. When I was only five I swam alone to that first float. He—he was so proud of me.”

  “It’s a lovely spot, Barbara,” he told her.

  “I knew you’d think so. One of these days we’ll swim together out to the reef, and I’ll teach you to ride a surfboard. I want your visit to be a happy one.”

  He shook his head. “It can’t be that,” he said, “because of you. But because of you, I’m mighty glad I came.”

  She pressed his hand. “I’m going out to sit by the water. Will you come?”

  The bamboo curtain parted, and Miss Minerva joined them. “Well, John Quincy,” she said sharply, “this is a pretty hour for you to appear. If you’re going to rescue me from lotus land, you’ll have to be immune yourself.”

  He smiled. “Just getting acclimated,” he explained. “I’ll follow you in a moment, Barbara,” he added, and held open the door for her.

  “I waited up,” Miss Minerva began, when the girl had gone, “until eleven-thirty. But I’d had very little sleep the night before, and that was my limit. I make no secret of it—I’m very curious to know what happened at the police station.”

  He repeated to her the story told by Mrs. Compton and Leatherbee. “I wish I’d been present,” she said. “A pretty woman can fool all the men in Christendom. Lies, probably.”

  “Maybe,” admitted John Quincy. “But wait a minute. Later on, Chan and I followed up your newspaper clue. And it led us to a startling discovery.”

  “Of course it did,” she beamed. “What was it?”

  “Well,” he said, “first of all, I met a missionary on the boat.” He told her the Reverend Frank Upton’s tale of that morning on Apiang, and added the news that a man named Thomas Macan Brade was now in Honolulu.

  She was silent for a time. “So Dan was a blackbirder,” she remarked at last. “How charming! Such a pleasant man, too. But then, I learned that lesson early in life—the brighter the smile, the darker the past. All this will make delightful reading in the Boston papers, John Quincy.”

  “Oh, they’ll never get it,” her nephew said.

  “Don’t deceive yourself. Newspapers will go to the ends of the earth for a good murder. I once wrote letters to all the editors in Boston urging them to print no more details about homicides. It hadn’t the slightest effect—though I did get an acknowledgment of my favor from the Herald.”

  John Quincy glanced at his watch. “Perhaps I should go down to the station. Anything in the morning paper?”

  “A very hazy interview with Captain Hallet. The police have unearthed important clues, and promise early results. You know—the sort of thing they always give out just after a murder.”

  The boy looked at her keenly. “Ah,” he said, “then you read newspaper accounts of the kind you tried to suppress?”

  “Cert
ainly I do,” snapped his aunt. “There’s little enough excitement in my life. But I gladly gave up my port wine because I felt intoxicants were bad for the lower classes, and—”

  Haku interrupted with the news that John Quincy was wanted on the telephone. When the boy returned to the lanai there was a brisk air of business about him.

  “That was Charlie,” he announced. “The day’s work is about to get under way. They’ve located Mr. and Mrs. Brade at the Reef and Palm Hotel, and I’m to meet Charlie there in fifteen minutes.”

  “The Reef and Palm,” repeated Miss Minerva. “You see, it keeps coming back to Egan. I’d wager a set of Browning against a modern novel that he’s the man who did it.”

  “You’d lose your Browning, and then where would you be when the lecture season started?” laughed John Quincy. “I never knew you to be so stupid before.” His face became serious. “By the way, will you explain to Barbara that I can’t join her, after all?”

  Miss Minerva nodded. “Go along,” she said. “I envy you all this. First time in my life I ever wished I were a man.”

  John Quincy approached the Reef and Palm by way of the beach. The scene was one of bright serenity. A few languid tourists lolled upon the sand; others, more ambitious, were making picture postcard history out where the surf began. A great white steamer puffed blackly into port. Standing in water up to their necks, a group of Hawaiian women paused in their search for luncheon delicacies to enjoy a moment’s gossip.

  John Quincy passed Arlene Compton’s cottage and entered the grounds of the Reef and Palm. On the beach not far from the hotel, an elderly Englishwoman sat on a camp stool with an easel and canvas before her. She was seeking to capture something of that exotic scene—vainly seeking, for John Quincy, glancing over her shoulder, perceived that her work was terrible. She turned and looked at him, a weary look of protest against his intrusion, and he was sorry she had caught him in the act of smiling at her inept canvas.

  Chan had not yet arrived at the hotel, and the clerk informed John Quincy that Miss Carlotta had gone to the city. For that interview with her father, no doubt. He hoped that the evidence of the check would bring about Egan’s release. It seemed to him that the man was being held on a rather flimsy pretext, anyhow.

  He sat down on the lanai at the side, where he could see both the path that led in from the street and the restless waters of the Pacific. On the beach nearby a man in a purple bathing suit reclined dejectedly, and John Quincy smiled in recollection. Mr. Saladine, alone with his tragedy, peering out at the waters that had robbed him—waiting, no doubt, for the tide to yield up its loot.

  Some fifteen or twenty minutes passed, and then John Quincy heard voices in the garden. He saw that Hallet and Chan were coming up the walk and went to meet them at the front door.

  “Splendid morning,” said Chan. “Nice day to set out on new path leading unevitably to important discovery.”

  John Quincy accompanied them to the desk. The Japanese clerk regarded them with sullen unfriendliness; he had not forgotten the events of the day before. Information had to be dragged from him bit by bit. Yes, there was a Mr. and Mrs. Brade stopping there. They arrived last Saturday, on the steamship Sonoma. Mr. Brade was not about at the moment. Mrs. Brade was on the beach painting pretty pictures.

  “Good,” said Hallet, “I’ll have a look around their room before I question them. Take us there.”

  The clerk hesitated. “Boy!” he called. It was only a bluff; the Reef and Palm had no bell-boys. Finally, with an air of injured dignity, he led the way down a long corridor on the same floor as the office and unlocked the door of nineteen, the last room on the right. Hallet strode in and went to the window.

  “Here—wait a minute,” he called to the clerk. He pointed to the elderly woman painting on the beach. “That Mrs. Brade?”

  “Yes-s,” hissed the clerk.

  “All right—go along.” The clerk went out. “Mr. Winterslip, I’ll ask you to sit here in the window and keep an eye on the lady. If she starts to come in, let me know.” He stared eagerly about the poorly furnished bedroom. “Now, Mr. Brade, I wonder what you’ve got?”

  John Quincy took the post assigned him, feeling decidedly uncomfortable. This didn’t seem quite honorable to him. However, he probably wouldn’t be called upon to do any searching himself, and if policemen were forced to do disagreeable things—well, they should have thought of that before they became policemen. Not that either Hallet or Chan appeared to be embarrassed by the task before them.

  There was a great deal of luggage in the room—English luggage, which is usually large and impressive. John Quincy noted a trunk, two enormous bags, and a smaller case. All were plastered with labels of the Sonoma, and beneath were the worn fragments of earlier labels, telling a broken story of other ships and far hotels.

  Hallet and Chan were old hands at this game; they went through Brade’s trunk rapidly and thoroughly, but without finding anything of note. The captain turned his attention to the small traveling case. With every evidence of delight he drew forth a packet of letters, and sat down with them at a table. John Quincy was shocked. Reading other people’s mail was, in his eyes, something that simply wasn’t done.

  It was done by Hallet, however. In a moment the captain spoke. “Seems to have been in the British civil service in Calcutta, but he’s resigned,” he announced to Chan. “Here’s a letter from his superior in London referring to Brade’s thirty-six years on the job, and saying he’s sorry to lose him.” Hallet took up another letter, his face brightened as he read. “Say—this is more like it!” He handed the typewritten page to Chan. Chan looked at it, and his eyes sparkled. “Most interesting,” he cried, and turned it over to John Quincy.

  The boy hesitated. The standards of a lifetime are not easily abandoned. But the others had read it first, so he put aside his scruples. The letter was several months old, and was addressed to Brade in Calcutta.

  “Dear Sir: In reply to your inquiry of the sixth instant, would say that Mr. Daniel Winterslip is alive and is a resident of this city. His address is 3947 Kalia Road, Waikiki, Honolulu, T.H.”

  The signature was that of the British consul at Honolulu. John Quincy returned the epistle to Hallet, who put it in his pocket. At that instant Chan, who had been exploring one of the larger bags, emitted a little grunt of satisfaction.

  “What is it, Charlie?” Hallet asked.

  Chan set out on the table before his chief a small tin box, and removed the lid. It was filled with cigarettes. “Corsican brand,” he announced cheerfully.

  “Good,” said Hallet. “It begins to look as though Mr. Thomas Macan Brade would have a lot to explain.”

  They continued their researches, while John Quincy sat silent by the window. Presently Carlotta Egan appeared outside. She walked slowly to a chair on the lanai, and sat down. For a moment she stared at the breakers, then she began to weep.

  John Quincy turned uncomfortably away. It came to him that here in this so-called paradise sorrow was altogether too rampant. The only girls he knew were given to frequent tears, and not without reason.

  “If you’ll excuse me—” he said. Hallet and Chan, searching avidly, made no reply, and climbing over the sill, he stepped on to the lanai. The girl looked up as he approached.

  “Oh,” she said, “I thought I was alone.”

  “You’d like to be, perhaps,” he answered. “But it might help if you told me what has happened. Did you speak to your father about that check?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I showed it to him. And what do you think he did? He snatched it out of my hand and tore it into a hundred pieces. He gave me the pieces to—to throw away. And he said I was never to mention it to a soul.”

  “I don’t understand that,” frowned John Quincy.

  “Neither do I. He was simply furious—not like himself at all. And when I told him you knew about it, he lost his temper again.”

  “But you can rely on me. I shan’t tell any one.”

 
“I know that. But of course father wasn’t so sure of you as—as I am. Poor Dad—he’s having a horrible time of it. They don’t give him a moment’s rest—keep after him constantly—trying to make him tell. But all the policemen in the world couldn’t—Oh, poor old Dad!”

  She was weeping again, and John Quincy felt toward her as he had felt toward Barbara. He wanted to put his arm about her, just by way of comfort and cheer. But alas, Carlotta Maria Egan was not a Winterslip.

  “Now, now,” he said, “that won’t do a bit of good.”

  She looked at him through her tears. “Won’t it? I—I don’t know. It seems to help a little. But”—she dried her eyes—“I really haven’t time for it now. I must go in and see about lunch.”

  She rose, and John Quincy walked with her along the balcony. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” he said. “The police are on an entirely new trail this morning.”

  “Really?” she answered eagerly.

  “Yes. There’s a man named Brade stopping at your hotel. You know him, I suppose?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

  “What! Why, he’s a guest here.”

  “He was. But he isn’t here now.”

  “Wait a minute!” John Quincy laid his hand on her arm, and they stopped. “This is interesting. Brade’s gone, you say?”

  “Yes. I understand from the clerk that Mr. and Mrs. Brade arrived here last Saturday. But early Tuesday morning, before my boat got in, Mr. Brade disappeared and he hasn’t been seen since.”

  “Mr. Brade gets better all the time,” John Quincy said. “Hallet and Chan are in his room now, and they’ve unearthed some rather intriguing facts. You’d better go in and tell Hallet what you’ve just told me.”

  They entered the lobby by a side door. As they did so, a slim young Hawaiian boy was coming in through the big door at the front. Something in his manner caught the attention of John Quincy, and he stopped. At that instant a purple bathing suit slipped by him, and Mr. Saladine also approached the desk. Carlotta Egan went on down the corridor toward room nineteen, but John Quincy remained in the lobby.