They all went into the pagoda through the round portal. Inside, the smell of incense was thick, and blue light flickered around the stone altar from small candles inside blue glasses. Among the symbols of forest and sky and the magical runes of the Mongol Shamans, the bier lay in front of the altar. In a heavy silence, Madame Li lay face down in front of the bier, dressed all in flowing white robes.
“Madame Li?” Chan said quietly.
The tiny woman didn’t move. They waited. Her voice seemed to drift out of the gloom of the temple itself:
“You violate the spirits of the Temple. Have you no respect for the dead? Leave me to mourn the loss of our Khan, the death of my husband.”
“To mourn is good,” Chan said, “but to know is better. The parents of Angela Farley mourn also. Parents who paid much money to place their daughter in your care. A poor child who died because she saw what she was not supposed to see.”
The woman still didn’t move. “A child too disturbed, too sick to know what she saw.”
“Disturbed, perhaps, a little,” Chan said. “But more disturbed by being placed in your private prison, behind barred windows. Restrained against her will for her parents who paid much for you to do this. Not sick, Madame Li, but drugged by you! Kept always drugged. Somehow she resisted, fooled you, and managed to escape.”
Captain Wade said, “There are laws against that kind of operation.”
For another moment the tiny woman lay there unmoving. Then she slowly got up, turned away from the bier of her dead husband to face Chan and Wade, C.V. Soong and Betty Chan.
“So you know?” she said. “All right, yes, we provided a service for people who wanted their hard-to-handle children cared for. But that’s all!”
Chan said, “We know about the heroin shipped to the Temple in the secret chests of the scrolls. The heroin you used in your treatment of the disturbed children.”
Madame Li blinked. “The chests?”
“The secret Benny Chan discovered accidentally and had to be killed to hide. Angela Farley saw Benny open the secret compartment - violate the scroll - and saw your killers pursue him. The Khan must have known what Angela saw, and perhaps discovered the secret of the boxes himself.”
“The Khan?” the tiny woman blinked again. “He… he did talk much to Angela, and he was checking the chests yesterday. I saw him! Was that why he was killed?”
“Who knows better than you!” Betty Chan cried, “Murderer! You killed my brother!”
“I killed no one!” Madame Li shook her head violently. “Yes, I used the Temple to make money from the stupid rich who pretend they want to help their unwanted relatives, but who really only want them out of the way! I admit that. But I have killed no one!”
“You were in Honolulu at Mr. Soong’s house,” Chan said. “You and Carleton Sedgwick didn’t want me to speak with Angela Farley, wanted her silenced.”
“We were just trying to protect our business here! I went to Hawaii to be sure you didn’t know what we were doing, To watch you and to watch Mr. Soong!”
“And what was Carleton Sedgwick doing in Honolulu?” Chan asked quietly.
“He was with me, that’s all,” Madame Li said.
“Hiding at the Soong mansion? Outside?”
Madame Li stared. “Hiding? No, he wasn’t at the house.”
“I’m sorry, but he was there,” Chan said. “And where is he now?”
“Gone, run away, when he heard you were coming here. He sensed you had found out what we were doing here,” the woman said. She seemed to think, and her eyes flashed. “Carleton! He did it all, of course! He never trusted Benny not to accidentally reveal our rackets He must have had the heroin sent -“
The lawyer’s voice boomed out in the dim temple, “Liar!”
They all turned. The tall, elegant lawyer stumbled into the dim temple as if pushed. He had been. Behind him, Lieutenant Forbes walked grimly.
“You were right, Mr. Chan,”
Forbes said. “We caught him heading south fast in his car. Running like hell.”
XVI
CAPTAIN WADE said, “So it was Sedgwick? He killed them all to cover his racket, and the way he was getting his heroin into the country?”
“He was chasing the girl the first night,” Forbes stated.
“No!” Carleton Sedgwick cried. “All right, I ran when I heard Charlie Chan was coming down. Why not? I’d called the Farleys, I knew he knew about our racket. But I didn’t kill Benny, or Angela, or the Khan! I don’t know why they were killed!”
“All were killed,” Chan interrupted, “because they had discovered the secret; shipment of heroin inside the hidden compartment of scroll chests. A clever way of shipping drugs; who would investigate elegant boxes containing priceless historical documents sent by a famous amateur scholar and philanthropist to an innocent Temple? Also, if something goes wrong, all eyes would turn to the scrolls as the target of thieves, not to the boxes in which they were carried!”
“Heroin?” Carleton Sedgwick said, stared. “In the boxes?”
“A fact discovered by accident by Benny Chan. Once having made discovery, Benny was confused. Caution told him to say nothing, to pretend he did not know. But loyalty to the Temple and the Khan who helped him, made him think he must tell the Khan. The killers saw this, had to stop Benny, so they drowned him!”
“Killers, Charlie?” Captain Wade said. “More than one?”
Chan nodded. “This heroin smuggling is the work of The Yellow Claw Tong, men who wear capes and hats; hide faces, and looked to Angela Farley like demons! The girl saw them chase Benny Chan that night, grotesque figures in the fog. It is the killers of the Yellow Claw Tong who hung Angela, and attacked me in my hotel room and murdered the Khan who had discovered the secret of the boxes because he, too, doubted Benny Chan died by accident.”
C.V. Soong, who had said nothing for some time, had been listening as if he could not believe what he was hearing, now spoke from the shadows of the flickering blue lights:
“You mean this tong gang used me? Used my scrolls as a cover to ship heroin?”
“Yes,” Chan said. “Someone got the heroin to Honolulu from the Orient, used a secret Chinese chest to ship it to the mainland. The only question now is, who here is working with the Chinese Mafia gang of the Yellow Claw Tong?”
Chan turned to Betty Chan. “Miss Chan, you were born and raised in Chinatown. You married a young man who was a militant Chinese. A young man who vanished. Where is your ex-husband?”
“George?” the girl said, licked at her pretty lips. “Why, I don’t know. Mr. Chan. You… you don’t mean you think that I know anything about the Tong?”
“Who would know better than a girl who is Chinese, who works in a book store where Chinese culture is paramount?”
“Of course!” C.V. Soong said angrily. “She must be a member of the Tong. Who else would know that Benny was bringing the chests into the country? Benny must have told her about the scrolls, and she saw a way to smuggle the heroin in. Someone had to get it out of the chest unseen, and who better than his sister? Benny would trust her! She probably met him each time , got him off guard, and took out the heroin before it got to the Temple. But the last time he spotted her doing it, so she sent her Tong to kill him!”
Everyone turned to look at the pretty young girl. She was pale, looking from one to the other. Wade and Forbes moved closer to her.
Chan shook his head slowly, dark eyes hidden. “One strange fact puzzled me all along. The key to the mystery. Benny Chan was drowned, made to look like accident of falling into ocean. But by a very great stroke of fortune, Benny falls into the sea without taking the chest and scroll with him! Luckily, he dropped the box on the beach where the police find it, so the scroll is not lost.
“Also, I was attacked in my hotel room, the Khan was murdered, but once again the chest is not taken, and the scroll is safe. Very odd. It would have been a much better accident to Benny if the box were lost in the ocean. When I was a
ttacked and the Khan murdered, it have seemed again like the motive was the robbery of the scroll if the chest or scroll had been taken by the killer.
“This would have been much more confusing, would have given the police no chance to discover the hidden compartment, or the special device used on chest so I could be followed in San Francisco. By leaving scroll and chest each time, the killers took an unnecessary risk that the truth would be discovered.”
No one spoke. They all watched Charlie Chan.
“There is only one answer - the man who planned this whole scheme to deliver heroin is someone to whom the scrolls are of great value. A man who cannot allow the scrolls to be lost, and who cannot allow the scrolls to be hidden! If the scrolls were taken by the killers, even if they were returned to the owner, they could not ever be shown or they would reveal him to be the killer and a smuggler of drugs. No, the only answer to why the chests were left for the police to find, is that they will return scrolls to the rightful owner! No need, then, to hide the scrolls later.”
Chan looked at C.V. Soong. “You are the heroin smuggler, the leader of the Yellow Claw Tong! You are the murderer!”
C.V. Soong swore, “Don’t be ridiculous, Inspector Chan! Is this the way you got your reputation, accusing innocent people? Why would I smuggle heroin? I’m a rich man, respected.”
“Rich men want to remain rich,” Chan said dryly. “I think a thorough check in Hawaii will reveal that you have long made money by being a leader of the Tong, Chinese Mafia. I’m sure we will now find many Tong members who will talk.”
“Really, Mr. Chan?” Soong said, and the gun appeared in his hand. “All right, yes, if you check deeply enough you’ll find what you say. I had to continue my work, my philanthropy, and I had to have money. I lead the Yellow Claw Tong, but they won’t ever tell you that. I tell you now only because it is time for me to go elsewhere anyway. Do not attempt to follow me, you can’t stop me.”
As they all stood frozen, the old man backed slowly out of the portal of the eerie temple.
“He won’t get far,” Lieutenant Forbes said. “I’ve got my men at every gate and roadblocks up everywhere.”
Some hours later, Chan and Captain Wade sat in the captain’s San Francisco office. Betty Chan had just left, tears in her eyes for her brother, but smiling because she had known he had not died by accident, and she had helped to catch his killer.
Carleton Sedgwick and Madame Li were in cells waiting to be charged for running their illegal racket. Chan and the Captain sat facing each other.
“So your work here is done, Charlie,” Captain Wade said. “Will you be staying in San Francisco much longer?”
Chan smiled. “Unfortunately, no. I had hoped to make one or two social calls while I was here, but as your English writer once wrote ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one’. There is always work to be done.”
The Captain smiled ruefully, looking at the stack of paper work on his desk. “Don’t I know it,” he said.
“But perhaps next time, Mort. Or if you should ever get to Honolulu -” Chan let it hang
“Thanks Charlie,” Captain Wade said. “But I feel badly about your visit being such a bummer. I’d have enjoyed an evening with you - showing you some of the changes in San Francisco since your last visit. I’m afraid this wasn’t a very good time for you.”
“On the contrary, Mort,” Chan responded. “It is enough to stop such parasites as Mr. Soong. It is always a good feeling to know one has put out the spark before the house caught fire.”
“Yeah,” Wade nodded. “That’s one of the benefits of this job.”
“The best one,” Chan agreed.
Read: Is the next issue:
THE PAWNS OF DEATH
A Thrilling New CHARLIE CHAN Short Novel
by Robert Hart Davis
The hotel was quiet, its rooms elegant and its great hall the perfect setting for the Traps-Continental. Chess Tournament. The two contenders, met in an atmosphere of mistrust and smoldering hatreds. Even as Charlie Chan watched them make their opening gambits, a third player entered the game of war. The player’s name was Fate, and the stakes were life and death…
Charlie Chan in the Temple of the Golden Horde Page 9