The House Without a Key

by Earl Der Biggers

  “So very true,” agreed Chan. “More clues lead us into presence of immovable stone wall. We sway about, seeking still other path.”

  “I’ll say we do,” answered John Quincy. “There comes my car. Good night!”

  Not until the trolley was half-way to Waikiki did he remember Mr. Saladine. Saladine crouching outside that window at the Reef and Palm. What did that mean? But Saladine was a comic figure, a lisping searcher after bridge-work in the limpid waters of Waikiki. Even so, perhaps his humble activities should be investigated.

  Chapter 16

  The Return of Captain Cope

  After breakfast on Sunday morning, John Quincy followed Miss Minerva to the lanai. It was a neat world that lay outside the screen, for Dan Winterslip’s yard boy had been busy until a late hour the night before, sweeping the lawn with the same loving thoroughness a housewife might display on a precious Oriental rug.

  Barbara had not come down to breakfast, and John Quincy had seized the opportunity to tell his aunt of Brade’s return, and repeat the man’s story of Dan Winterslip’s theft on board the Maid of Shiloh. Now he lighted a cigarette and sat staring seriously out at the distant water.

  “Cheer up,” said Miss Minerva. “You look like a judge. I presume you’re thinking of poor Dan.”

  “I am.”

  “Forgive and forget. None of us ever suspected Dan of being a saint.”

  “A saint! Far from it! He was just a plain—”

  “Never mind,” put in his aunt sharply. “Remember, John Quincy, man is a creature of environment. And the temptation must have been great. Picture Dan on that ship in these easy-going latitudes, wealth at his feet and not a soul in sight to claim it. Ill-gotten wealth, at that. Even you—”

  “Even I,” said John Quincy sternly, “would have recalled I am a Winterslip. I never dreamed I’d live to hear you offering apologies for that sort of conduct.”

  She laughed. “You know what they say about white women who go to the tropics. They lose first their complexion, then their teeth, and finally their moral sense.” She hesitated. “I’ve had to visit the dentist a good deal of late,” she added.

  John Quincy was shocked. “My advice to you is to hurry home,” he said.

  “When are you going?”

  “Oh, soon—soon.”

  “That’s what we all say. Returning to Boston, I suppose?”

  “Of course.”

  “How about San Francisco?”

  “Oh, that’s off. I did suggest it to Agatha, but I’m certain she won’t hear of it. And I’m beginning to think she’d be quite right.” His aunt rose. “You’d better go to church,” said John Quincy severely.

  “That’s just where I am going,” she smiled. “By the way, Amos is coming to dinner to-night, and he’d best hear the Brade story from us, rather than in some garbled form. Barbara must hear it too. If it proves to be true, the family ought to do something for Mr. Brade.”

  “Oh, the family will do something for him, all right,” John Quincy remarked. “Whether it wants to or not.”

  “Well, I’ll let you tell Barbara about him,” Miss Minerva promised.

  “Thank you so much,” replied her nephew sarcastically.

  “Not at all. Are you coming to church?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t need it the way you do.”

  She left him there to face a lazy uneventful day. By five in the afternoon Waikiki was alive with its usual Sunday crowd—not the unsavory holiday throng seen on a mainland beach, but a scattering of good-looking people whose tanned straight bodies would have delighted the heart of a physical culture enthusiast. John Quincy summoned sufficient energy to don a bathing suit and plunge in.

  There was something soothing in the warm touch of the water, and he was becoming more at home there every day. With long powerful strokes he drew away from the malihini breakers to dare the great rollers beyond. Surfboard riders flashed by him; now and then he had to alter his course to avoid an outrigger canoe.

  On the farthest float of all he saw Carlotta Egan. She sat there, a slender lovely figure vibrant with life, and awaited his coming. As he climbed up beside her and looked into her eyes he was—perhaps from his exertion in the water—a little breathless.

  “I rather hoped I’d find you,” he panted.

  “Did you?” She smiled faintly. “I hoped it too. You see, I need a lot of cheering up.”

  “On a perfect day like this!”

  “I’d pinned such hopes on Mr. Brade,” she explained. “Perhaps you know he’s back—and from what I can gather, his return hasn’t meant a thing so far as Dad’s concerned. Not a thing.”

  “Well, I’m afraid it hasn’t,” John Quincy admitted. “But we mustn’t get discouraged. As Chan puts it, we sway about, seeking a new path. You and I have a bit of swaying to do. How about Mr. Saladine?”

  “I’ve been thinking about Mr. Saladine. But I can’t get excited about him, somehow. He’s so ridiculous.”

  “We mustn’t pass him up on that account,” admonished John Quincy. “I caught a glimpse of his purple bathing suit on the first float. Come on—we’ll just casually drop in on him. I’ll race you there.”

  She smiled again, and leaped to her feet. For a second she stood poised, then dived in a way that John Quincy could never hope to emulate. He slipped off in pursuit, and though he put forth every effort, she reached Saladine’s side five seconds before he did.

  “Hello, Mr. Saladine,” she said. “This is Mr. Winterslip, of Boston.”

  “Ah, yeth,” responded Mr. Saladine, gloomily. “Mr. Winterthlip.” He regarded the young man with interest.

  “Any luck, sir?” inquired John Quincy sympathetically.

  “Oh—you heard about my accthident?”

  “I did, sir, and I’m sorry.”

  “I am, too,” said Mr. Saladine feelingly. “Not a thrath of them tho far. And I muth go home in a few deth.”

  “I believe Miss Egan said you lived in Des Moines?”

  “Yeth. Deth—Deth—I can’t they it.”

  “In business there?” inquired John Quincy nonchalantly.

  “Yeth. Wholethale grothery buthineth,” answered Mr. Saladine, slowly but not very successfully.

  John Quincy turned away to hide a smile. “Shall we go along?” he said to the girl. “Good luck to you, sir.” He dove off, and as they swam toward the shore, he reflected that they were on a false trail there—a trail as spurious as the teeth. That little businessman was too conventional a figure to have any connection with the murder of Dan Winterslip. He kept these thoughts to himself, however.

  Half-way to the beach, they encountered an enormous figure floating languidly on the water. Just beyond the great stomach John Quincy perceived the serene face of Charlie Chan.

  “Hello, Charlie,” he cried. “It’s a small ocean, after all! Got your Ford with you?”

  Chan righted himself and grinned. “Little pleasant recreation,” he explained. “Forget detective worries out here floating idle like leaf on stream.”

  “Please float ashore,” suggested John Quincy. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Only too happy,” agreed Chan.

  He followed them in and they sat, an odd trio, on the white sand. John Quincy told the detective about Saladine’s activities outside the window the night before, and repeated the conversation he had just had with the Middle Westerner. “Of course, the man seems almost too foolish to mean anything,” he added.

  Chan shook his head. “Begging most humble pardon,” he said, “that are wrong attitude completely. Detective business made up of unsignificant trifles. One after other our clues go burst in our countenance. Wise to pursue matter of Mr. Saladine.”

  “What do you suggest?” John Quincy asked.

  “To-night I visit city for night work to drive off my piled tasks,” Chan replied. “After evening meal, suggest you join with me at cable office. We despatch message to postmaster of this Des Moines, inquiring what are present
locality of Mr. Saladine, expert in whole-selling provisions. Your name will be signed to message, much better than police meddling.”

  “All right,” John Quincy agreed, “I’ll meet you there at eight-thirty.”

  Carlotta Egan rose. “I must get back to the Reef and Palm. You’ve no idea all I have to do—”

  John Quincy stood beside her. “If I can help, you know—”

  “I know,” she smiled. “I’m thinking of making you assistant manager. They’d be so proud of you—in Boston.”

  She moved off toward the water for her homeward swim, and John Quincy dropped down beside Chan. Chan’s amber eyes followed the girl. “Endeavoring to make English language my slave,” he said, “I pursue poetry. Who were the great poet who said—‘She walks in beauty like the night?’”

  “Why, that was—er—who was it?” remarked John Quincy helpfully.

  “Name is slippery,” went on Chan. “But no matter. Lines pop into brain whenever I see this Miss Egan. Beauty like the night, Hawaiian night maybe, lovely as purest jade. Most especially on this beach. Spot of heartbreaking charm, this beach.”

  “Surely is,” agreed John Quincy, amused at Chan’s obviously sentimental mood.

  “Here on gleaming sand I first regard my future wife,” continued Chan. “Slender as the bamboo is slender, beautiful as blossom of the plum—”

  “Your wife,” repeated John Quincy. The idea was a new one.

  “Yes, indeed.” Chan rose. “Recalls I must hasten home where she attends the children who are now, by actual count, nine in number.” He looked down at John Quincy thoughtfully. “Are you well-fitted with the armor of preparation?” he said. “Consider. Some night the moon has splendor in this neighborhood, the cocoa-palms bow lowly and turn away their heads so they do not see. And the white man kisses without intending to do so.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me,” John Quincy laughed. “I’m from Boston, and immune.”

  “Immune,” repeated Chan. “Ah, yes, I grasp meaning. In my home I have idol brought from China with insides of solid stone. He would think he is—immune. But even so I would not entrust him on this beach. As my cousin Willie Chan say with vulgarity, see you later.”

  John Quincy sat for a time on the sand, then rose and strolled toward home. His path lay close to the lanai of Arlene Compton’s cottage, and he was surprised to hear his name called from behind the screen. He stepped to the door and looked in. The woman was sitting there alone.

  “Come in a minute, Mr. Winterslip,” she said.

  John Quincy hesitated. He did not care to make any social calls on this lady, but he did not have it in him to be rude. He went inside and sat down gingerly, poised for flight. “Got to hurry back for dinner,” he explained.

  “Dinner? You’ll want a cocktail.”

  “No, thanks. I’m—I’m on the wagon.”

  “You’ll find it hard to stick out here,” she said a little bitterly. “I won’t keep you long. I just want to know—are those boneheads down at the station getting anywhere, or ain’t they?”

  “The police,” smiled John Quincy. “They seem to be making progress. But it’s slow. It’s very slow.”

  “I’ll tell the world it’s slow. And I got to stick here till they pin it on somebody. Pleasant outlook, ain’t it?”

  “Is Mr. Leatherbee still with you?” inquired John Quincy.

  “What do you mean is he still with me?” she flared.

  “Pardon me. Is he still in town?”

  “Of course he’s in town. They won’t let him go, either. But I ain’t worrying about him. I got troubles of my own. I want to go home.” She nodded toward a newspaper on the table. “I just got hold of an old Variety and seen about a show opening in Atlantic City. A lot of the gang is in it, working like dogs, rehearsing night and day, worrying themselves sick over how long the thing will last. Gee, don’t I envy them. I was near to bawling when you came along.”

  “You’ll get back all right,” comforted John Quincy.

  “Say—if I ever do! I’ll stop everybody I meet on Broadway and promise never to leave ’em again.” John Quincy rose. “You tell that guy Hallet to get a move on,” she urged.

  “I’ll tell him,” he agreed.

  “And drop in to see me now and then,” she added wistfully. “Us easterners ought to stick together out here.”

  “That’s right, we should,” John Quincy answered. “Good-by.”

  As he walked along the beach, he thought of her with pity. The story she and Leatherbee had told might be entirely false; even so, she was a human and appealing figure and her homesickness touched his heart.

  Later that evening when John Quincy came downstairs faultlessly attired for dinner, he encountered Amos Winterslip in the living-room. Cousin Amos’s lean face was whiter than ever; his manner listless. He had been robbed of his hate; his evenings beneath the algaroba tree had lost their savor; life was devoid of spice.

  Dinner was not a particularly jolly affair. Barbara seemed intent on knowing now the details of the search the police were conducting, and it fell to John Quincy to enlighten her. Reluctantly he came at last to the story of Brade. She listened in silence. After dinner she and John Quincy went out into the garden and sat on a bench under the hau tree, facing the water.

  “I’m terribly sorry I had to tell you that about Brade,” John Quincy said gently. “But it seemed necessary.”

  “Of course,” she agreed. “Poor Dad! He was weak—weak—”

  “Forgive and forget,” John Quincy suggested. “Man is a creature of environment.” He wondered dimly where he had heard that before. “Your father was not entirely to blame—”

  “You’re terribly kind, John Quincy,” she told him.

  “No—but I mean it,” he protested. “Just picture the scene to yourself. That lonely ocean, wealth at his feet for the taking, no one to see or know.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, but it was wrong, wrong. Poor Mr. Brade. I must make things right with him as nearly as I can. I shall ask Harry to talk with him to-morrow—”

  “Just a suggestion,” interposed John Quincy. “Whatever you agree to do for Brade must not be done until the man who killed your father is found.”

  She stared at him. “What! You don’t think that Brade—”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows. Brade is unable to prove where he was early last Tuesday morning.”

  They sat silent for a moment; then the girl suddenly collapsed and buried her face in her hands. Her slim shoulders trembled convulsively and John Quincy, deeply sympathetic, moved closer. He put his arm about her. The moonlight shone on her bright hair, the trades whispered in the hau tree, the breakers murmured on the beach. She lifted her face, and he kissed her. A cousinly kiss he had meant it to be, but somehow it wasn’t—it was a kiss he would never have been up to on Beacon Street.

  “Miss Minerva said I’d find you here,” remarked a voice behind them.

  John Quincy leaped to his feet and found himself staring into the cynical eyes of Harry Jennison. Even though you are the girl’s cousin, it is a bit embarrassing to have a man find you kissing his fiancée. Particularly if the kiss wasn’t at all cousinly—John Quincy wondered if Jennison had noticed that.

  “Come in—I mean, sit down,” stammered John Quincy. “I was just going.”

  “Good-by,” said Jennison coldly.

  John Quincy went hastily through the living-room, where Miss Minerva sat with Amos. “Got an appointment downtown,” he explained, and picking up his hat in the hall, fled into the night.

  He had intended taking the roadster, but to reach the garage he would have to pass that bench under the hau tree. Oh, well, the colorful atmosphere of a trolley was more interesting, anyhow.

  In the cable office on the ground floor of the Alexander Young Hotel, Chan was waiting, and they sent off their inquiry to the postmaster at Des Moines, signing John Quincy’s name and address. That attended to, they returned to the street. In the park across the way an
unseen group of young men strummed steel guitars and sang in soft haunting voices; it was the only sign of life in Honolulu.

  “Kindly deign to enter hotel lobby with me,” suggested Chan. “It is my custom to regard names in register from time to time.”

  At the cigar stand just inside the door, the boy paused to light his pipe, while Chan went on to the desk. As John Quincy turned, he saw a man seated alone in the lobby, a handsome, distinguished man who wore immaculate evening clothes that bore the stamp of Bond Street. An old acquaintance, Captain Arthur Temple Cope.

  At sight of John Quincy, Cope leaped to his feet and came forward. “Hello, I’m glad to see you,” he cried, with a cordiality that had not been evident at former meetings. “Come over and sit down.”

  John Quincy followed him. “Aren’t you back rather soon?” he inquired.

  “Sooner than I expected,” Cope rejoined. “Not sorry, either.”

  “Then you didn’t care for your little flock of islands?”

  “My boy, you should visit there. Thirty-five white men, two hundred and fifty natives, and a cable station. Jolly place of an evening, what?”

  Chan came up, and John Quincy presented him. Captain Cope was the perfect host. “Sit down, both of you,” he urged. “Have a cigarette.” He extended a silver case.

  “Thanks, I’ll stick to the pipe,” John Quincy said. Chan gravely accepted a cigarette and lighted it.

  “Tell me, my boy,” Cope said when they were seated, “is there anything new on the Winterslip murder? Haven’t run down the guilty man, by any chance.”

  “No, not yet,” John Quincy replied.

  “That’s a great pity. I—er—understand the police are holding a chap named Egan?”

  “Yes—Jim Egan, of the Reef and Palm Hotel.”

  “Just what evidence have they against Egan, Mr. Winterslip?”

  John Quincy was suddenly aware of Chan looking at him in a peculiar way. “Oh, they’ve dug up several things,” he answered vaguely.

  “Mr. Chan, you are a member of the police force,” Captain Cope went on. “Perhaps you can tell me?”

  Chan’s little eyes narrowed. “Such matters are not yet presented to public,” he replied.