Tales of Chinatown Read online

  I stared into the leering face, and it was the face of one who knew and who might have said: "Yes! this and other things equally strange have I beheld in many lands as well as England. Much I could tell. Many things grim and terrible, and some few joyous; for behold! I smile but am silent."

  For a while Harley stared abstractedly at the bloodstains on the pedestal of the joss and upon the floor beneath from which the matting had been pulled back. Suddenly he turned to Ma Lorenzo:

  "Where have you hidden the body?" he demanded.

  Watching her, I thought I saw the woman flinch, but there was enough of the Oriental in her composition to save her from self- betrayal. She shook her head slowly, watching Harley through half-closed eyes.

  "Nobody hab," she replied.

  And I thought for once that her lapse into pidgin had been deliberate and not accidental.

  When finally we quitted the house of the missing Kwen Lung, and when, Harley having curtly acknowledged "good night" from the detective on duty, we came out into Limehouse Causeway.

  "You have not overlooked the possibility, Harley," I said, "that this woman's explanation may be true, and that the fireman of the Seahawk may have been entertaining us with an account of a weird dream?"

  "No!" snapped Harley—"neither will Scotland Yard overlook it."

  He was in a particularly impossible mood, for he so rarely made mistakes that to be detected in one invariably brought out those petulant traits of character which may have been due in some measure to long residence in the East. Recognizing that he would rather be alone I parted from him at the corner of Chancery Lane and returned to my own chambers. Furthermore, I was very tired, for it was close upon two o'clock, and on turning in I very promptly went to sleep, nor did I awaken until late in the morning.

  For some odd reason, but possibly because the fact had occurred to me just as I was retiring, I remembered at the moment of waking that I had not told Harley about the romantic wedding of Captain Dan. As I had left my friend in very ill humour I thought that this would be a good excuse for an early call, and just before eleven o'clock I walked into his office. Innes, his invaluable secretary, showed me into the study at the back.

  "Hallo, Knox," said Harley, looking up from a little silver Buddha which he was examining, "have you come to ask for news of the Kwen Lung case?"

  "No," I replied. "Is there any?"

  Harley shook his head.

  "It seems like fate," he declared, "that this thing should have been sent to me this morning." He indicated the silver Buddha. "A present from a friend who knows my weakness for Chinese ornaments," he explained grimly. "It reminds me of that damned joss of Kwen Lung's!"

  I took up the little image and examined it with interest. It was most beautifully fashioned in the patient Oriental way, and there was a little hinged door in the back which fitted so perfectly that when closed it was quite impossible to detect its presence. I glanced at Harley.

  "I suppose you didn't find a jewel inside?" I said lightly.

  "No," he replied; "there was nothing inside."

  But even as he uttered the words his whole expression changed, and so suddenly as to startle me. He sprang up from the table, and:

  "Have you an hour to spare, Knox?" he cried excitedly.

  "I can spare an hour, but what for?"

  "For Kwen Lung!"

  Four minutes later we were speeding in the direction of Limehouse, and not a word of explanation to account for this sudden journey could I extract from my friend. Therefore I beguiled the time by telling him of my adventure with Captain Dan.

  Harley listened to the story in unbroken silence, but at its termination he brought his hand down sharply on my knee.

  "I have been almost perfectly blind, Knox," he said; "but not quite so perfectly blind as you!"

  I stared at him in amazement, but he merely laughed and offered no explanation of his words.

  Presently, then, I found myself yet again in the familiar room of the golden joss. Ma Lorenzo, in whom some hidden anxiety seemed to have increased since I had last seen her, stood at the top of the stairs watching us. Upon what idea my friend was operating and what he intended to do I could not imagine; but without a word to the woman he crossed the room and grasping the great golden idol with both arms he dragged it forward across the floor!

  As he did so there was a stifled shriek, and Ma Lorenzo, stumbling down the steps, threw herself on her knees before Harley! Raising imploring hands:

  "No, no!" she moaned. "Not until I tell you—I tell you everything first!"

  "To begin with, tell me how to open this thing," he said sternly.

  Momentarily she hesitated, and did not rise from her knees, but:

  "Do you hear me?" he cried.

  The woman rose unsteadily and walking slowly round the joss manipulated some hidden fastening, whereupon the entire back of the thing opened like a door! From what was within she shudderingly averted her face, but Harley, stepping back against the wall, stopped and peered into the cavity.

  "Good God!" he muttered. "Come and look, Knox."

  Prepared by his manner for some gruesome spectacle, I obeyed—and from that which I saw I recoiled in horror.

  "Harley," I whispered, "Harley! who is it?"

  The spectacle had truly sickened me. Crouched within the narrow space enclosed by the figure of the idol was the body of an old and wrinkled Chinaman! His knees were drawn up to his chin, and his head so compressed upon them that little of his features could be seen.

  "It is Kwen Lung!" murmured Ma Lorenzo, standing with clasped hands and wild eyes over by the window. "Kwen Lung—and I am glad he is dead!"

  Such a note of hatred came into her voice as I had never heard in the voice of any woman.

  "He is vile, a demon, a mocking cruel demon! Long, long years ago I would have killed him, but always I was afraid. I tell you everything, everything. This is how he comes to be dead. The little one"—again her voice changed and a note of almost grotesque tenderness came into it—"the lotus-flower, that is his own daughter's child, flesh of his flesh, he keeps a prisoner as the women of China are kept, up there"—she raised one fat finger aloft—"up above. He does not know that someone comes to see her—someone who used to come to smoke but who gave it up because he had looked into the dear one's eye. He does not know that she goes with me to see her man. Ah! we think he does not know! I—I arrange it all. A week ago they were married. Tuesday night, when Kwen Lung die, I plan for her to steal away for ever, for ever."

  Tears now were running down the woman's fat cheeks, and her voice quivered emotionally.

  "For me it is the end, but for her it is the beginning of life. All right! I don't matter a damn! She is young and beautiful. Ah, God! so beautiful! A drunken pig comes here and finds his way in, so I give him the smoke and presently he sleeps, but it makes delay, and I don't know how soon Kwen Lung, that yellow demon, will wake. For he is like the bats who sleep all day and wake at night.

  "At last the sailor pig sleeps and I call softly to my dear little one that the time has come. I have gone out into the street, locking the door behind me, to see if her man is waiting, and I hear her shrieks—her shrieks! I hurry back. My hands tremble so much that I can scarcely unlock the door. At last I enter, and I see and I know—that yellow devil has learned all and has been playing with us like cat and mouse! He is lashing her, with a great whip! Lashing her—that tiny, sweet flower. Ah!"

  She choked in her utterance, and turning to the gilded joss which contained the dead Chinaman she shook her clenched hands at it, and the expression, on her face I can never forget. Then:

  "As I shriek curses at him, crash goes the window—and I see her husband spring into the room! The tender one had fallen, there at the foot of the joss, and Kwen Lung, his teeth gleaming—like a rat—like a devill—turns to meet him. So he is when her man strike him, once. Just once, here." She rested her hand upon her heart. "And he falls—and he coughs. He lie still. For him it is finished. That d
evil heart has ceased to beat. Ah!"

  She threw up her hands, and:

  "That is all. I tell you no more."

  "One thing more," said Harley sternly; "the name of the man who killed Kwen Lung?"

  At that Ma Lorenzo slowly raised her head and folded her arms across her bosom. There was something one could never forget in the expression of her fat face.

  "Not if you burn me alive!" she answered in a low voice. "No one ever knows that—from me."

  She sank on to the divan and buried her face in her hands. Her fat shoulders shook grotesquely; and Harley stood perfectly still staring across at her for fully a minute. I could hear voices in the street outside and the hum of traffic in Limehouse Causeway.

  Then my friend did a singular thing. Walking over to the gilded joss he reclosed the opening and not without a great effort pushed the great idol back against the wall.

  "There are times, Knox," he said, staring at me oddly, "when I'm glad that I am not an official agent of the law."

  While I watched him dumfounded he walked across to the woman and touched her on the shoulder. She raised her tear-stained face.

  "All right," she whispered. "I am ready."

  "Get ready as soon as you like," said he tersely.

  "I'll have the man removed who is watching the house, and you can reckon on forty-eight hours to make yourself scarce."

  With never another word he seized me by the arm and hurried me out of the place! Ten paces along the street a shabby-looking fellow was standing, leaning against a pillar. Harley stopped, and:

  "Even the greatest men make mistakes sometimes, Hewitt," he remarked. "I'm throwing up the case; probably Inspector Wessex will do the same. Good morning."

  On towards the Causeway he led me—for not a word was I capable of uttering; and just before we reached that artery of Chinatown, from down-river came the deep, sustained note of a steamer's siren, the warning of some big liner leaving dock.

  "That will be the Patna," said Harley. "She sails at twelve o'clock, I think you said?"

  MAN WITH THE SHAVEN SKULL

  I. A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

  "Pull that light lower," ordered Inspector Wessex. "There you are, Mr. Harley; what do you make of it?"

  Paul Harley and I bent gingerly over the ghastly exhibit to which the C.I.D. official had drawn our attention, and to view which we had journeyed from Chancery Lane to Wapping.

  This was the body of a man dressed solely in ragged shirt and trousers. But the remarkable feature of his appearance lay in the fact that every scrap of hair from chin, lip, eyebrows and skull had been shaved off!

  There was another facial disfigurement, peculiarly and horribly Eastern, which my pen may not describe.

  "Impossible to identify!" murmured Harley. "Yes, you were right, Inspector; this is a victim of Oriental deviltry. Look here, too!"

  He indicated three small wounds, one situated on the left shoulder and the others on the forearm of the dead man.

  "The divisional surgeon cannot account for them," replied Wessex. "They are quite superficial, and he thinks they may be due to the fact that the body got entangled with something in the river."

  "They are due to the fact that the man had a birthmark on his shoulder and something—probably a name or some device—tattooed on his arm," said Harley quietly. "Some few years ago, I met with a similar case in the neighbourhood of Stambul. A woman," he added, significantly.

  Detective-Inspector Wessex listened to my companion with respect, for apart from his established reputation as a private inquiry- agent which had made his name familiar in nearly every capital of the civilized world, Paul Harley's work in Constantinople during the six months preceding war with Turkey had merited higher reward than it had ever received. Had his recommendations been adopted the course of history must have been materially changed.

  "You think it's a Chinatown case, then, Mr. Harley?"

  "Possibly," was the guarded answer.

  Paul Harley nodded to the constable in charge, and the ghastly figure was promptly covered up again. My friend stood staring vacantly at Wessex, and presently:

  "The chief actor, I think, will prove to be not Chinese," he said, turned, and walked out.

  "If there's any development," remarked Wessex as the three of us entered Harley's car, which stood at the door, "I will, of course, report to you, Mr. Harley. But in the absence of any clue or mark of identification, I fear the verdict will be, 'Body of a man unknown,' etc., which has marked the finish of a good many in this cheerful quarter of London."

  "Quite so," said Harley, absently. "It presents extraordinary features, though, and may not end as you suppose. However—where do you want me to drop you, Wessex, at the Yard?"

  "Oh no," answered Wessex. "I made a special visit to Wapping just to get your opinion on the shaven man. I'm really going down to Deepbrow to look into that new disappearance case; the daughter of the gamekeeper. You'll have read of it?"

  "I have," said Harley shortly.

  Indeed, readers of the daily press were growing tired of seeing on the contents bills: "Another girl missing." The circumstance (which might have been no more than coincidence) that three girls had disappeared within the last eight weeks leaving no trace behind, had stimulated the professional scribes to link the cases, although no visible link had been found, and to enliven a somewhat dull journalistic season with theories about "a new Mormon menace."

  The vanishing of this fourth girl had inspired them to some startling headlines, and the case had interested me personally for the reason that I was acquainted with Sir Howard Hepwell, one of whose gamekeepers was the stepfather of the missing Molly Clayton. Moreover, it was hinted that she had gone away in the company of Captain Ronald Vane, at that time a guest of Sir Howard's at the Manor.

  In fact, Sir Howard had 'phoned to ask me if I could induce Harley to run down, but my friend had expressed himself as disinterested in a common case of elopement. Now, as Wessex spoke, I glanced aside at Harley, wondering if the fact that so celebrated a member of the C.I.D. as Detective-Inspector Wessex had been put in charge would induce him to change his mind.

  We were traversing a particularly noisy and unsavoury section of the Commercial Road, and although I could see that Wessex was anxious to impart particulars of the case to Harley, so loud was the din that I recognized the impossibility of conversing, and therefore:

  "Have you time to call at my rooms, Wessex?" I asked.

  "Well," he replied, "I have three-quarters of an hour."

  "You can do it in the car," said Harley suddenly. "I have been asked to look into this case myself, and before I definitely decline I should like to hear your version of the matter."

  Accordingly, we three presently gathered in my chambers, and Wessex, with one eye on the clock, outlined the few facts at that time in his possession respecting the missing girl.

  Two days before the news of the disappearance had been published broadcast under such headings as I have already indicated, a significant scene had been enacted in the gamekeeper's cottage.

  Molly Clayton, a girl whose remarkable beauty had made her a central figure in numerous scandalous stories, for such is the charity of rural neighbours, was detected by her stepfather, about eight in the evening, slipping out of the cottage.

  "Where be ye goin', hussy?" he demanded, grasping her promptly by the arm.

  "For a walk!" she replied defiantly.

  "A walk wi' that fine soger from t' Manor!" roared Bramber furiously. "You'll be sorry yet, you barefaced gadabout! Must I tell you again that t' man's a villain?"

  The girl wrenched her arm from Bramber's grasp, and blazed defiance from her beautiful eyes.

  "He knows how to respect a woman—what you don't!" she retorted hotly.

  "So I don't respect you, my angel?" shouted her stepfather. "Then you know what you can do! The door's open and there's few'll miss you!"

  Snatching her hat, the girl, very white, made to go out. Whereat the gamekeeper, a
brutal man with small love for Molly, and maddened by her taking him at his word, seized her suddenly by her abundant fair hair and hauled her back into the room.

  A violent scene followed, at the end of which Molly fainted and Bramber came out and locked the door.

  When he came back about half-past nine the girl was missing. She did not reappear that night, and the police were advised in the morning. Their most significant discovery was this:

  Captain Ronald Vane, on the night of Molly's disappearance, had left the Manor House, after dining alone with his host, Sir Howard Hepwell, saying that he proposed to take a stroll as far as the Deep Wood.

  He never returned!

  From the moment that Gamekeeper Bramber left his cottage, and the moment when Sir Howard Hepwell parted from his guest after dinner, the world to which these two people, Molly Clayton and Captain Vane, were known, knew them no more!

  I was about to say that they were never seen again. But to me has fallen the task of relating how and where Paul Harley and I met with Captain Vane and Molly Clayton.

  At the end of the Inspector's account:

  "H'm," said Harley, glancing under his thick brows in my direction, "could you spare the time, Knox?"

  "To go to Deepbrow?" I asked with interest.

  "Yes; we have ten minutes to catch the train."

  "I'll come," said I. "Sir Howard will be delighted to see you, Harley."

  II. THE CLUE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS

  "What do you make of it, Inspector?" asked my friend. Detective- Inspector Wessex smiled, and scratched his chin.

  "There was no need for me to come down!" he replied. "And certainly no need for you, Mr. Harley!"

  Harley bowed, smiling, at the implied compliment.

  "It's a common or garden elopement!" continued the detective. "Vane's reputation is absolutely rotten, and the girl was clearly infatuated. He must have cared a good bit, too. He'll be cashiered, as sure as a gun!"