E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Who the hell told your men that rot?” stormed Farrell. “About stolen goods?”

  “My dear man,” smiled the inspector, “those Sikh chaps take the oddest notions.”

  He turned to the Sikh and reproved him in Hindustani. Farrell pretended he couldn’t understand. But it had been a tip-off, as he had guessed, and the policeman caught hell for the break.

  * * * *

  He went back to Hong Li’s house. The police were turning it inside out. They could not deny him a word with the slender Chinese girl. Her fine, pale yellow face was like a mask, but her eyes blazed as she said, “There is more to this than the eye sees. My honorable father told me before he died that this was not your work.”

  “But a pear-shaped ruby?” Farrell cut in, his voice iron.

  She pointed at a ball of gum opium. It had been cut in half. In its heart was a faceted, pear-shaped depression. Hong Li had removed Draupadi’s jewel from its hiding place in anticipation of his visit.

  “The Honorable Hong kept his promise,” said Farrell, bowing very low. “I will recover it. But that Arab?”

  She did not know. Nor had any of the servants ever before seen him.

  Farrell, going back to his bungalow, regretted his rash promise. If he failed, he would lose face, which is more precious than rubies when dealing with Orientals; and Farrell’s fortunes lay in the east.

  Those damned Hindus! Deliberately giving the Arab a break; a man plainly an Arab and an enemy of their faith. Why?

  And half the police force of Penang waiting to nail him on a tip off? Again, why?

  Nadja?

  When he reached the house, it was darkened. Antonia was gone. A chair was overturned. A decanter was smashed, its shards reddened. Blood flecked the floor, and there was a ragged wisp of silk from her kimono snagged on the latch tongue.

  She had been kidnapped, but not injured. The blood splotches coincided with the prints of men’s bare feet in the compound. She had sapped someone.

  It became more puzzling and more dangerous every moment. But Farrell was certain that the ruby of Draupadi was behind it.

  He slumped into a chair, smoking for a long time and drinking numerous slugs of straight brandy. He did not need the profit in the ruby, but failure and Nadja’s treachery bruised his pride.

  Damn her Slavic temper.

  The brandy only made him wrathful. His rage blazed in his eyes as at the sound of feminine footsteps on the verandah he stalked to the door. He recognized that swaying, panther gait.

  Nadja, green eyes glittering, smile over-sweet. He slapped her into a corner before she could dodge, but she came up purring. He did not dare hit her again, or he would kill her. Or she, him.

  I’m awfully sorry, darling,” she murmured. “Now listen. I went up in the air and told the police. When I changed my mind, it was too late to warn you. So I came out to face the music.

  “I heard Antonia phoning someone named Selim. They’re playing for the ruby.”

  “They played, and it was good!” he growled.

  “I know where Selim is,” she purred. “Be a good boy, and I’ll tell you. Also, four Hindus kidnapped Antonia. I didn’t interfere. I didn’t care where they took her.

  “She made a jackass of you. So I’ll forgive you. You do need a guardian, don’t you?”

  Her gorgeous effrontery dazed him. Then she kissed him, and he liked it.

  He returned the kiss, and Nadja, gasped, her eyelids drooped, and her hips drew closer—then she slipped from his arms and reminded him of Selim.

  “And here’s a pistol,” she said. “I’d better wait here. The police would wonder, if they saw us together.”

  A hired car carried Farrell to a house near the mosque on Acheen Street.

  He made the last block on foot. He hugged the shadow of a wall as he noted four tall Hindus at Selim’s door. A voice from within was ladling out choice obscenities in Arabic.

  “Come in and get me, father of many pigs!”

  The door opened, but there were no takers. Farrell crept forward. His head was whirling, and not from brandy or Nadja’s kiss of forgiveness.

  The Hindus were of the priestly caste. Then why had they helped Selim escape the police when their very presence here proved their knowledge of his possessing the ruby of Draupadi?

  Why, if they had been so close to Hong Li’s house, had they not exposed or attacked the old fellow. They must have been lurking in the grounds, watching Farrell from cover.

  The only thing that was plain was that that hawk of an Arab could and would kill the quartet without exerting himself.

  “We come in peace,” soothed the chief.

  “You are wise,” mocked Selim, opening the door wider.

  Farrell, pistol ready, was about to take charge; but instead, he hung back. As the door closed, he skirted the house, scaled a wall, and dropped into the courtyard. He crept through darkness and odors. A door blocked him but he could hear, and from an angle catch a glimpse of Selim’s hawk face.

  “We have your accomplice, Antonia,” said the Brahmin spokesman. “She dies if you do not surrender the ruby of Draupadi.”

  The Arab laughed; but his mouth tightened and his eyes became bleak when he saw the proof. A plump hand held Antonia’s ear pendants that Farrell recognized as well as Selim.

  Seconds flatfooted by. For a moment Farrell waited for Selim to cut them to ribbons. Then the Arab made a sign of assent. The fellow must care for Antonia, even though he had with a fake hold-up planted her as a spy in Farrell’s house, to pave the way for his sale of the ruby, once it was stolen from Hong Li.

  The plump hand was again extended, this time to receive the ransom.

  “Dogs,” snarled Selim. “How do I know that you will release her?”

  “Then bring the ruby,” said the priest. “The police now know that you killed Hong Li, that only you could have taken the stone. So you dare not bring them when you come to get her.”

  They gave Selim the address.

  “Now go, son of many fathers,” snarled the Arab. “I will have to move in stealth.”

  They went. Farrell cautiously pulled himself up the sloping face of a pilaster, clutched a second floor balcony railing, and drew himself over the side.

  He crept through deadly darkness in which he found stairs leading to the ground floor. Halfway down, he paused and watched Selim poking a knife blade into the crevice between two blocks of masonry.

  Farrell edged down into the wavering shadows cast by a peanut oil lamp. A weak tread sank underfoot. He lashed out at the balluster. It yielded, pitching him down four steps.

  Selim’s surprise and Farrell’s heavy landing for an instant leveled the odds. The Arab dropped something that gleamed like a monstrous gout of blood, snatched his khanjar, flung himself across the room.

  Farrell was numbed by the shock. Though he instinctively drew his pistol, he did not want to shoot. He parried the knife with the barrel. The Arab’s shoulder slammed him against the wall. Farrell’s muscular contraction jerked the trigger.

  The blast shook the room. The slug ricocheted from a window bar and went screaming into the street. Farrell dropped the weapon, caught Selim’s arm, wrenched his second stab out of line. He flung his opponent half way across the room. He had to work fast, before the police arrived.

  Farrell took a power dive at the ruby, but the Arab rebounded, blade point on. The American swayed on his knees, evading the thrust. They sank in a struggling tangle. Though outweighed, Selim was iron hard, and elusive as a snake.

  The door crashed in under the impact of heavy shoulders. Silhouetted against the opening was a pair of Sikh policemen. Payday in Penang!

  Farrell’s fist crashed home, knocking Selim end for end. He blotted the peanut oil lamp with a kick as his hand closed on the ruby.

  The Sikhs, charging home with cl
ubs, tangled with Selim. The wick guttered out. Darkness covered Farrell’s flight. But he read the sounds: a hoarse bellowing, a cry of rage, the smack of a baton.

  Farrell’s escape was good. But as he cooled, from the melee, he laughed bitterly. He now understood Nadja’s sweetness!

  She had anticipated the reason for kidnapping Antonia. Selim, deprived of the ruby, could not ransom her. Vengeful Slavic wit had seen a chance to doom the Eurasian girl.

  Antonia had tricked him—but that was one of the rules of the great game of adventure. Her exquisite loveliness had left him with memories. He could keep Draupadi’s ruby, and condemn her to death, or—

  Damn Nadja and her cat’s intuition!

  But she had not anticipated that he would have the address of Antonia’s captors. There was a chance to release her, and keep the ruby. Perilous, but the laugh would be on Nadja.

  Farrell hastened to an all-night bazaar, bought a turban and robe. They would take his absence of beard to be the disguise of a fugitive slayer.

  Presently he was knocking for admittance. He kept his face half muffled, and cursed them in Arabic.

  A Hindu admitted him. Farrell’s foul language made scrutiny of his face needless. He followed his guide down a dark passageway. In the dimly lighted room beyond, he saw three Hindus whose foreheads were branded with Brahmin caste marks.

  Lying bound and gagged on an upholstered bench was a slender, amber-hued girl whose bare legs and half concealed breasts identified her: Antonia.

  The light, and six sharp eyes detected the imposture. Farrell was unarmed, but he had expected recognition: they had not. He drove in with smashing fists, ducked a hurled crock, jammed his shoulder into a flabby stomach. A prostrate but conscious kidnaper snagged his ankles. Farrell crashed headlong.

  Two Hindus not yet casualties pounced on him with hands and feet. Farrell kicked upward, but too high. A knife raked him. He jerked clear of another.

  A third, bleeding at the mouth, recovered and leaped into action. They crushed Farrell to the floor. He clung to the haft of a dagger he had wrenched out of the tangle.

  Hands were clawing and tearing at him. He shouted to Antonia. Though bound, she wriggled clear of the bench, thudded to the floor. His blade darted out of the melee.

  A slash, and her hands were free.

  Farrell erupted from the heap, but was tripped. His knife skated across the floor. Antonia reached and seized it. Her ankles free, she dashed to the door, shrieking until the tiles shivered.

  She had recognized Farrell. She did not know that he had the ruby. Her cries for the police carried at least to headquarters!

  A squad of Sikhs ploughed in.

  Worse yet, the sardonic inspector appeared as they laid out the five combatants. Worst of all, among the blood splashes on the floor was a gout that gleamed: a ruby.

  The inspector picked it up, eyed Farrell and Antonia, and observed, “I’d just heard rumors of a woman having been carried into this place. And this stone seems to explain why a handful of Hindus picked on you at Hong Li’s.”

  “I was looking for the girl,” said Farrell. “They took her from my shack.”

  “Singular, what?” resumed the inspector. “Finding Draupadi’s ruby in the possession of four of her priests? Y’know, I do believe they must have gotten it from Hong Li.”

  “My word!” exclaimed Farrell, so burned with wrath that he was cool. “But that Arab fellow—how does he fit?”

  “He didn’t live long enough to say. He was arrested at his house. On the way to the station, he broke away. He was killed while escaping.”

  Farrell thrust Antonia into a ghari. God, wouldn’t Nadja have a laugh: Glenn Farrell helps recover Draupadi’s ruby!

  “Let’s go to Selim’s house,” said Antonia. “There’s some things I want to get.”

  “His death doesn’t bother you,” he observed.

  “He made me trick you. I’m glad he’s dead.” Her voice was venomous; then it softened, and she murmured endearments that ended in a breath-draining kiss.

  And Selim, the fool, had given a ruby and his life in a vain effort to save her!

  The ghari halted. She entered the deserted house. In a moment she returned. She thrust something cold and hard into his hand, saying, “You lost a ruby to save me. This pays for all but your love.”

  In his palm blazed a matchless flare of red: a pear-shaped ruby.

  “This is the true ruby of Draupadi,” she explained, “which Selim took when he went to kill Hong Li so that the Chinaman could not sell it to you.

  “He did not expect to get it; only to kill him. Selim had a ruby smuggled from Mogôk. He had a lapidary cut it to the exact shape of Draupadi’s world famed jewel before the theft, intending to palm it off on an unwary collector as an antique. He planned to bribe the priests into falsely announcing that their stone was stolen, so as to fool the victim. But before this was arranged, Draupadi’s jewel was stolen.

  “You are more widely known than you realize. So, with the much advertised theft, and genuine disturbances, we counted on your buying this duplicate. We did not at first know that the original would be offered you.”

  “But damn it—those priests—they were priests—”

  “They robbed their own goddess,” explained Antonia. “It was a flawed stone, but being stolen from a temple it would bring a greater price than if merely sold by the temple. That’s why they didn’t want the police to recover it. Hong Li was their sales manager! They dared not sell it—the people would call it a sacrilege.”

  Her words cleared the confusion; and her voice told him more. The death of Selim, lover and accomplice, had left her alone in the world: and a jewel that size could be sold only by a master at the game. She had seen Nadja’s wrath, and she knew that Farrell would be lonely.

  All this from her endearments and gratitude: though maybe she did in her way care for him.

  * * * *

  When they arrived at the bungalow, Nadja was waiting, and with a smile for two.

  The sudden freezing of Antonia’s face and the deadly blackness of her eyes confirmed Farrell’s suspicion, told him that the Eurasian girl had lost a bet.

  “Darling, maybe you don’t need a guardian,” Nadja admitted, when she heard the story. “It’s a clear profit, now—better than buying as we planned.”

  “My dear,” said Farrell, “I made Hong Li’s daughter a promise. I’m paying her for the ruby. She will give a slice of it to Antonia. Or to you, if you’re staying in Penang.”

  “Take him!” flared Antonia. “He’s an easy mark!”

  “That’s why I like him,” yawned Nadja. “And that’s why I’m getting him out of Penang. Hong Li’s daughter must be nice, or he’d not have made such a stupid promise.”

  DOUBLE CATSPAW

  Originally published in Spicy-Detective Stories, December 1936.

  “Mr. Farrell, I do hope I’ll see more of you,” was what Madeleine said as she watched the porter stow her hand luggage into the ghari at the Tanjong Pagar station in Singapore, but her crimson lips and dark eyes said a great deal more—though most eloquent of all was her supple, sensuous body and its aura of radiant vitality.

  “That,” smiled the tanned, broad-shouldered American, handing her into the ghari, “is something you can’t dodge. I’m going to be busier than a Chinaman eating soup with chopsticks, but somehow, we’ll find a chance to dance out at Tanjong Katong, and—”

  “Don’t forget—the Wellington,” she cut in as the coolie smacked the shaggy Shan pony across the rump and the ghari rolled into the traffic.

  Forget? Well, rather not. The good-humored gray eyes that peered from the shadow of the American’s pith helmet narrowed acquisitively. Madeleine Fortesque had lots of it where there should be lots, and little where she should be slim. Only thing wrong with Madeleine was her way of saying no.

>   “If we’d only missed the express and stayed another day in Penang,” he told himself, remembering how the soft white curves smiling from Madeleine’s negligee had left him cross-eyed.

  Farrell’s urgent business, however, had not permitted him to miss the Singapore express. Millwood Industries, Incorporated, wanted to find out what was wrong in northern Malaya, why the Raja of Batu Gaja could not keep banditry, sabotage, and assorted assassination from playing the devil with the mines and plantations controlled by the estate of the late James Millwood.

  Farrell, like many others, knew the answer: a sinister master of intrigue who for want of a more accurate name was called the Claw of Iblis. Murder in Malacca—revolt in Acheen—gun-running to Borneo—all manufactured in Singapore, but find the maker.

  If Claw of Iblis—the Hand of Satan—was not precise enough, then dope out his real name.

  It wasn’t like a guessing contest in the states. This was á L’orientale: if you are wrong, you wake up wondering who laid your head between your ankles.

  Farrell drove out Orchard Road to a furnished bungalow he had engaged by wire. Hotels might be safer, but also more conspicuous. And not as handy if he had to leave town in a hurry…

  Leaving towns was his specialty. Someone once said that all he left in Moulmein was a pagoda and an oil barge, but that was unjust. He left a Chinese merchant’s daughter with pleasant memories.

  An hour later, Hop Wing, the number one boy, was stowing the luggage while Farrell donned fresh drills, a newly whitened helmet, and a .450 Webley.

  A rickshaw took him through the sunset glow to an estate well out on Balestier Road. A black Tamil as thin as a bamboo rod admitted him to the house of Wallace Crosby, the resident manager of the East Indies Trading Corporation.

  They traded, all right; but while they came back from Borneo with nuts—coco and palm—they left Singapore loaded with trouble. Farrell’s hunch was that Wallace Crosby must be connected with the hidden trouble-maker of South East Asia, the venomous industrial spy who blackmailed native princes, organized revolts, upset thrones for whoever could pay off.