A Coffin From Hong Kong

A mysterious voice from the telephone; a beautiful Chinese girl shot dead; a rich old man with a troubled conscience; a private investigator involved in murder; a Chinese prostitute who talked too much; and a coffin. These are some of the intriguing ingredients of James Hadley Chase's splendid thriller. It is definitely a book to keep you awake long after your bedtime.

A PANTHER BOOK

I was just about to shut down the office for the night when the telephone bell rang. The time was ten minutes past six o'clock. It had been a dull, long and unprofitable day: no visitors, a mail I had dropped into the trash basket without even slitting an envelope, and now this first telephone call.

I lifted the receiver and said, "Nelson Ryan." My voice as alert and eager as I could make it.

There was a pause. Over the open line I could hear the sound of an aircraft engine start up.

The din beat against my ear for a brief moment, then faded to background noise as if the caller had closed the door of the telephone booth. 

"Mr. Ryan?" A man's voice: deep toned and curt.

"That's right."

"You are a private investigator?"

"Right again."

There was another pause. I listened to his slow, heavy breathing: he was probably listening to mine. Then he said: "I have only a few minutes. I'm at the airport. I want to hire you."

I reached for a scratch pad.

"What's your name and your address?" I asked.

"John Hardwick, 33 Connaught Boulevard."

As I scribbled the address on the pad, I asked, "What is it you want me to do, Mr. Hardwick?"

"I want you to watch my wife." There was another pause as another aircraft took off. He said something that was blotted out by the high whine of the jet's engines. "I didn't get that, Mr. Hardwick."

He waited until the jet had become airborne, then speaking rapidly, he said, "My business takes me regularly twice a month to New York. I have the idea that while I'm away, my wife isn't behaving herself. I want you to watch her. I'll be back the day after tomorrow—Friday. I want to know what she does while I'm away. What will it cost?"

This wasn't the kind of business I welcomed, but at least it was better than nothing. "Just what is your business, Mr. Hardwick?"

He spoke with a touch of impatience. "I'm with Herron, the plastic people."

Herron Corporation was one of the biggest concerns on this strip of the Pacific Coast. A quarter of Pasadena City's prosperity came from them.

"Fifty dollars a day and expenses," I said, jacking up my usual fee by ten bucks.

"That's all right. I'll send you three hundred dollars right away as a retainer. I want you to follow my wife wherever she goes. If she doesn't leave home, I want to know if anyone visits her. Will you do this?"

For three hundred dollars I would have done much harder things. I said, "I'll do it, but couldn't you come in and see me, Mr. Hardwick? I like to meet my clients."

"I understand that but I have only just decided to take action. I'm on my way to New York, but I'll see you on Friday. I just want to be sure you will watch her while I'm away." "You can be sure of that," I said, then paused to let another jet whine down the runway. "I'll need a description of your wife, Mr. Hardwick."

"Thirty-three Connaught Boulevard," he said. "They are calling me. I must go. I'll see you on Friday," and the line went dead.

I replaced the receiver and took a cigarette from the box on the desk. I lit the cigarette with the desk lighter and blew smoke towards the opposite wall.

I had been working as an investigator for the past five years, and during that time, I had run into a number of screwballs. This John Hardwick could be just another screwball, but somehow I didn't think he was. He sounded like a man under pressure. Maybe he had been worrying for months about the way his wife had been behaving. Maybe for a long time he had suspected her of getting up to tricks when he was away and suddenly, as he was leaving for another business trip, he had finally decided to check on her. It was the kind of thing a worried, unhappy man might do—a split-second impulse. All the same, I didn't like it much. I don't like anonymous clients. I don't like disembodied voices on the telephone. I like to know with whom I am dealing. This setup seemed a shade too hurried and a shade too contrived.

While I was turning over the information I had got from him, I heard footfalls coming along the passage. A tap sounded on the frosted panel of my door, then the door opened. An Express messenger dropped a fat envelope on my desk and offered me his book for my signature.

He was a little guy with freckles, young and still clinging to an enthusiasm for life that had begun to slip away from me. As I signed his book, his eyes sneered around the small shabby room, taking in the damp stain on the ceiling, the dust on the bookcase, the unimpressive desk, the worn clients' chair and the breast and bottom calendar on the wall.

When he had gone I opened the envelope. It contained thirty ten-dollar bills. Typed on a plain card were the words:

               
From John Hardwick, S3 Connaught Boulevard, Pasadena City.
 

For a moment I was puzzled how he could have got the money to me so quickly, then I decided he must have a credit rating with the Express Messenger Company and had telephoned them immediately after telephoning me. Their offices were just across the street from my office block.

I pulled the telephone book towards me and turned up the Hardwicks. There was no John Hardwick. I eased myself out of my desk chair and plodded across the room to consult the Street Directory. It told me Jack S. Myers, Jnr., and not John Hardwick, lived at 33 Connaught Boulevard.

I stroked my six o'clock shadow while I considered the situation. I remembered that Connaught Boulevard was an out-of-the-way road up on Palma Mountain, about three miles from the centre of the city. It was the kind of district where people might rent their homes while they were on vacation: this could be the situation as regards John Hardwick and his wife. He might possibly be an executive of Herron Corporation, waiting for his own house to be built, and in the meantime, he had rented 33 Connaught Boulevard from Jack S. Myers, Jnr.

I had only once been to Connaught Boulevard and that was some time ago. The property there had been run up just after the war: nothing very special. Most of the places were bungalows, half brick, half timber. The best thing about Connaught Boulevard was its view of the city and the sea, and if you wanted it, its seclusion.

The more I thought about this assignment, the less I liked it. I hadn't even a description of the woman I had been hired to watch. If I hadn't been paid the three hundred dollars I wouldn't have touched the job without first seeing Hardwick, but as I had been paid, I felt I had to do what he wanted me to do.

I locked up my office, then crossing the outer office, I locked the outer door and started for the elevator.

My next-door neighbour, an Industrial Chemist, was still toiling for a living. I could hear his clear, baritone voice dictating either to a recorder or to his secretary.

I took the elevator to the ground floor and crossing the street, I went into the Quick Snack Bar where I usually ate. I asked Sparrow, the counter man, to cut me a couple of ham and chicken sandwiches.

Sparrow, a tall thin bird with a shock of white hair, took an interest in my affairs. He wasn't a bad guy, and from time to time, I would cheer him up with a flock of lies about adventures he liked to imagine happened to me.

"Are you on a job tonight, Mr. Ryan?" he asked eagerly as he began to make the sandwiches.

"That's right," I said. "I'm spending the night with a client's wife, seeing she doesn't get into mischief."

His mouth dropped open as he goggled at me, "Is that a fact? What's she like, Mr. Ryan?"

"You know Liz Taylor?"

He nodded, leaning forward and breathing heavily.

"You know Marilyn Monroe?"

His Adam's apple jumped convulsively.

"I sure do."

I gave him a sad smile.

"She's like neither of them."

He blinked, then realising I was kidding him, he grinned.

"Poking my nose where it shouldn't be poked, huh?" he said.

"I guess I asked for that one."

"Hurry it up, Sparrow," I said. "I have my living to earn."

He put the sandwiches in a paper sack.

"Don't do anything you're not paid to do, Mr. Ryan," he said, giving me the sack.

The time was now twenty minutes to seven. I got in my car and drove out to Connaught Boulevard. I didn't hurry. By the time I was driving up the mountain road, the late September sun was sinking behind the peak of the mountain.

The bungalows in Connaught Boulevard were screened from the road by box hedges or flowering shrubs. I drove slowly past No. 33. Big double gates hid the property. Some twenty yards or so further up the road was a lay-by which commanded a splendid view of the sea. I pulled in there, cut the engine and shifted from the driver's seat to the passenger's seat. From this position I had a clear view of the double gates.

There wasn't anything for me to do but wait. This was something I was reasonably good at. If you're crazy enough to pick on a career such as mine, patience is the main necessary ingredient.

During the next hour, three or four cars drove past. The drivers, men returning from the toils of earning a living, glanced at me as they went by. I hoped I looked like a man waiting for a girl friend, and not like a dick watching a client's wife.

A girl, wearing skin tight slacks and a sweater, walked past my parked car. A poodle trotted along just ahead of her, visiting the trees enthusiastically. The girl glanced at me while I let my eves browse over her shape. She found I was a lot less interesting than I found her. I watched regretfully as she disappeared into the gloom.

By nine o'clock it was dark. I took out the paper sack and ate the sandwiches. I gave myself a slug of whisky from the bottle I kept in the glove compartment.

It had been a long, dull wait. The double gates of No. 33 had been as active as a stuffed pike. But now it was dark enough for me to take the initiative. I left the car and crossed the road. I opened one of the double gates and looked into a small neat garden. There was just light enough to make out a lawn, flowers and a path that led to a compact bungalow with what looked like a veranda.

The bungalow was in darkness. I came to the conclusion that there was no one at home. To make sure, I walked around the back, but no lights showed there either.

I returned to my car, feeling depressed. It appeared that as soon as her husband had left for the airport, Mrs. Hardwick had left home.

There was nothing I could do now but to sit there in the hope she would return sometime during the night. With three hundred dollars still nagging at my conscience, I settled down to wait. Sometime around three o'clock in the morning, I fell asleep.

The first rays of the sun, striking through the windshield of the car brought me sharply awake. I had a crick in my neck, a nagging ache in my spine and a guilty feeling when I realised I had slept for three hours when I should have been earning my three hundred dollars. Coming up the road was a milk delivery truck. I watched the milkman stop and start as he delivered milk to each bungalow. He drove past No. 33, then stopped just opposite me to deliver milk to No. 35.

As he came out, I joined him. He was an elderly man whose face showed much background of hard living and toil. He looked inquiringly at me, pausing with his milk bottles in their wire basket clutched in his hand.

"You forgot No. 33," I said. "Everyone's got milk but No. 33." He looked me over, his old eyes curious.

"They happen to be away," he said. "What's it to you, mister?"

I could see he was the kind you don't take liberties with. I had no wish to have a cop on my neck so I took out my professional card and handed it to him. He examined it carefully, then whistling gently through his teeth, he returned the card to me.

"You don't call on No. 33?" I asked.

"Sure I do, but they're away for a month."

"Who are they?"

He considered the question for a moment "Mr. and Mrs. Myers."

"I understand Mr. and Mrs. Hardwick live there now."

He put down the wire basket and shifted his hat to the back of his head.

"Right now no one lives there, mister," he said, scratching his forehead. "I would know if there was anyone there. People have to have milk and I'm the one who delivers it up here. I don't deliver milk to No. 33 because no one lives there this month."