Bride of the Rat God (37 page)

“I’m afraid you’re right about that,” Alec said gloomily.

“Clearly Da Shu Ken knows that you are guarded, Miss Flamande. Now he will begin to take steps against the guards. Later tonight, when all sleep, I will go up to the walls of this institute and mark them as well as I can to keep him from entering again the dreams of those who sleep there.”

He frowned, stroking Buttercreme’s long fur with his crippled fingers. “He holds great power in dreams,” he went on in a low voice, “taking what form will most affect the dreamer and speaking in the voice they will best hear. Thus he has convinced them that although I have never done them harm, I am their enemy because I was so thousands of years ago, when they think humankind was different.

“But men and women were never different.” He smiled a little and shook his head. “They loved, and wanted, and behaved blindly and for reasons they did not understand; they sometimes crippled their children even when they were trying to love them, and sowed good fruit and evil without being able to tell which was which, and did foolish things to escape pain that in the end could not be escaped. And perhaps she does remember.” He set the little dog down and, turning, vanished through the kitchen door and out into the night.

“Well, whatever she does or doesn’t remember,” said Christine, getting to her feet, “
I
call it a lot of nerve. Now we’ll have to watch out for them, too.”

Norah shrugged. “What can they do?”

The police arrived at seven o’clock in the morning on the thirty-first of December to arrest Shang Ko.

“Mr. Shang?” Norah stared in disbelief at the police lieutenant standing on the porch in the dove-colored presunrise light. Her breath puffed white as she spoke. “There must be some mistake.”

She could hear men going around the side of the house to the cottage. In the kitchen Chang Ming barked challengingly, though Norah knew full well that if one of the officers came into the house, the sun-colored dog would be on his back in seconds, begging to have his tummy rubbed.

“If there is, it’ll get straightened out at the station.” The lieutenant shrugged, a medium-sized man with a face as uncommunicative as shoe leather. “But we got a warrant for Shang Ko, employed and living at this address.”

“He’s gone, Dave.” Two burly patrolmen appeared at the foot of the porch steps. “Looks like the captain was right about some kind of cult. There’s candles and all kinds of crazy drawings all over the floor back there.”

“What Mr. Shang does with his spare time, in his own room, is neither my concern nor yours,” Norah said firmly. “What I want to know is, Who is responsible for this order and what caused them to decide that Mr. Shang was a menace to us instead of a help?”

“Ma’am,” said the lieutenant, tipping his hat to the back of his head, “I was told to pick up this Shang person.” He pronounced the “a” as in
bang,
not
khan.
“And that’s all I know. You can go downtown and take it up with Captain Steckel if you got a question. Right now we got a fugitive from justice on our hands, and we’re going to have to search the house and grounds for him.”

“You’re quite welcome to search the grounds,” replied Norah coolly. “But since I’m a stranger in this country, I don’t know whether I’m legally required to let you enter this house without a warrant. If you’ll be so kind as to wait one minute, I shall find out.” And she closed, and locked, the door in his face.

“Alec...”

He wasn’t in the kitchen where she’d left him. With the filming of
She-Devil
under way again, she’d taken to rising early enough to dress, brush the dogs, and have breakfast with Alec before he left for the studio an hour before Christine and she herself would follow. He clattered downstairs as she went into the hall to look for him, crossing directly to his camera and the film magazines that were heaped in a corner of the living room beside the dark and dilapidated Christmas tree. Before he turned to speak to her, he flipped open the camera and put something inside, then shut and latched it again.

“I hope that’s everything,” he said in an undervoice, straightening up to kiss Norah quickly. “I heard. They can’t give Christine grief about all the booze in this place because she can argue it was gifts, but I cleared all those little powders out of her vanity drawers, just in case.”

“Can
they search?”

“They need a warrant to search either the house or the grounds, but there’s no point in not letting them in. Filming’s only going on until four this afternoon because of the party at Brown’s place tonight; I can go down to city hall afterward and try to find out who’s behind this, though I may need a couple hundred from Chris to do it with.”

“On New Year’s Eve there won’t be much point,” Norah said. “My guess is it’s our friends up the road.”

Alec nodded. “Since Da Shu Ken convinced them they’ve got the most to lose if Shang stays here, you may be right.” He wrapped the camera thickly in oilcloth against the rain and tucked it under his arm. “Any chance you can talk Chris out of going to the party... What am I saying?”

Norah laughed at his expression of comic resignation. “Bite your tongue, sir. On the other hand... Would you mind if she and I spent the night at your place in Venice? This whole thing’s making me very uneasy.”

“Good thought. If Shang was right about the Rat-God, at least we’ll be surrounded by water down there.” He put his hand on her waist, and reached up—just slightly—to kiss her lips. “Thank God we managed to talk Christine out of going to the Navy-Washington game in Pasadena tomorrow. Better go let Lieutenant Murphy in before he gets sore, but make him realize you’re doing him a favor. I’ll load this stuff in the car. See you in Babylon.”

The search was cursory. Chang Ming, as Norah had anticipated, promptly recognized in both officer and men long-lost but deeply beloved friends and ran to fetch assorted bits of rope and spit-covered rags in the hope they could be tempted to play. Buttercreme retreated at once to the cupboard under the stairs. None of the police took the slightest notice of Alec as he carried his equipment out to his Ford, cranked it to unwilling life, and sputtered away.

“You realize now that a warrant’s been sworn, if Shang returns and you don’t call us, you’ll be obstructing justice.” Murphy handed her a card with a telephone number scribbled in pencil on the back. “I’m leaving one of my men here in the cottage today in case he comes back.”

Norah smiled dazzlingly. “How very kind of you,” she said. “We were a little worried—Miss Flamande and I—for we’re spending the night with friends and the house is so isolated. But with a policeman here to guard it we shall feel quite safe. And I’ll certainly telephone if I should see Mr. Shang and your officer should not. Good morning.” And she closed the door behind him just as Dominga came up the walk.

Christine squawked with indignant protest (“I mean,
honestly,
darling, what do we pay our taxes for?”) at the news of Shang’s persecution and was all for calling in sick to the studio and proceeding immediately to Chinatown to warn Hsu Kwan—“immediately” meaning as soon as she put on her makeup. But if the police had come for the Shining Crane, thought Norah, it was a good bet they’d arrested, or at least driven into hiding, the younger wizard as well. As soon as Christine and two of her miniature guardians departed for the studio, she proceeded to Chinatown by cab to locate Shang’s apothecary shop.

But though Chinatown itself was not many blocks in extent, nowhere in its tangled alleys could she locate either the shop itself or any familiar landmark. And though Chang Ming showed no signs of disquiet beyond his usual acute curiosity about new surroundings, Norah found herself deeply uneasy among the ancient walls and gaudy balconies.

The streets were too crowded, packed with hurrying men and women, unfamiliar voices speaking a language she did not know. Far too many doorways moved with curtains and strange damp-warm breezes from within. Fu Manchu and the mysteries of the Orient aside, Norah could not put from her mind the drawing she had seen, the image of the thing that stalked them, the bestial face with its fanged snout and eyes that were at once wise and mindless. She was conscious of a deep unwillingness to return to the bungalow on Ivarene and a still deeper sense that going to Mr. Brown’s party that night would not be a good idea at all.

“Nonsense, darling,” Christine protested that evening, craning her head to refresh her lipstick in the rearview mirror while speeding along Wilshire Boulevard full crack. “I’m not going to go out into the gardens with anybody, and you’ll stay with me the whole time and everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

She dug in her handbag for a cigarette; Norah took it from her with a hasty “I’ll get that,” and Christine returned her vagrant attention to the road.

“I do hope this party’s more fun than the last one,” she went on. “I mean, murder and mayhem aside,
either
of my mothers-in-law could have thrown a better bash than that Christmas affair.”

Whatever else could be said about it, Norah thought later that evening, Frank Brown’s New Year’s Eve party was certainly everything she had ever heard Hollywood parties were.

An ocean of booze, thanks to the good Captain Oleson; dancers from the studio chorus line performing maneuvers up and down the monumental stairs (“Not a pretty boy in the lot, dammit!”); Flindy McColl being chased squeaking around the bedrooms by Hans Schweibler while everyone sniffed cocaine in the corners. Mrs. Violet removed Emily—discreetly enshrouded in a red velvet dress Christine claimed came directly from Sears Roebuck via catalogue—early in the proceedings. Charlie Sandringham sipped mineral water and also left early: “It’s rather embarrassing to be the only person in the room not in flagrant violation of the United States Constitution.”

Norah, in a subdued dress of rose and caramel charmeuse, watched Christine weaving like a darkly glittering damselfly among crowds of tipsy admirers and felt profoundly out of place. Unlike the occasion of the Christmas party, she had not been invited, nor had Alec, and she spent a good deal of her time avoiding Mr. Vidal. Ambrose Conklin, in a Savile Row suit with a small sprig of holly in his buttonhole, brought her what tasted like actual champagne and chatted for a time with her about cinema music. He asked about the necklace Christine was wearing, an Edwardian dog-collar affair of diamonds and pearls to cover the fading bruises—all her shots in
She-Devil
included similar pieces now—and spoke of how it became her; Norah was rather touched at the way his gentle gray eyes followed her sister-in-law from group to group.

In time, Frank Brown allowed himself to be disentangled from a herd of would-be Pickfords and Gishes for a conference in the library. He listened soberly to Norah’s account of the hunt for the two Chinese wizards, chewing a cigar and turning his pencil over and over in his hand as he had a week earlier. “Mr. Shang’s been using his connections in Chinatown to see if he can learn who really murdered Keith Pelletier,” Norah explained, a tale that made considerably more sense than the truth. “I went up to the Sabsung Institute this evening while Christine was getting dressed, and the gates were closed and locked. I’m virtually certain the police are after Hsu Kwan as well as his grandfather, if they haven’t arrested them already; you must help us get them out of jail if they have.”

“I see what you mean.” Brown’s river-ice eyes fixed her for some moments with their odd, unnerving stare. “Of course, if there
is
a mysterious cult behind it in Chinatown, the police may have found out something about it that you girls don’t know.”

“I’m sure they have,” Norah said coolly. “But that doesn’t mean they have to keep Mr. Shang and his grandson behind bars.”

“Of course not.” Brown put a paternal arm around each of the girls and steered them toward the door. “I won’t be able to do a thing tomorrow, of course—the whole town’ll be closed—and I’m having another meeting with Jesperson and my lawyers Thursday. But if I can, I’ll get in touch with Steckel and find out what’s going on. You keep an eye on Chris until then.”

He paused and removed his cigar to give Christine a moist and clumsy kiss. “By the way,” he added as he opened the door, “I owe you thanks—big thanks—for locating Charlie. He’s putting in a hell of a performance. I don’t think he’s been drunk once this week. With any luck we’ll get the newspapers off our backs once and for all, and to hell with Jesperson and his rumors.
Midnight Cavalier
’s doing solid box office, and since we fed the papers those stories about Chris, everybody’s asking about
She-Devil.”

Outside, several minor actresses and the most statuesque of the dancers were loitering. Brown’s appearance seemed to galvanize them, and they immediately surrounded him, gazing at him with the dazzled worship that women outside Hollywood generally reserved for actors.

Watching Brown speak to them, flattering this one, noticing that one, exuding the peculiar charm that so far had eluded her analysis, Norah had a sudden thought and stepped very quietly back into the study.

The big desk was cleared of papers, its battered surface incongruous among the stiffly posed gods, crocodiles, and hieroglyphs. Its topmost drawer was locked, but the key was simply tucked beneath the blotter. Norah cast a nervous glance at the wide black back in the pillared doorway, one heavy arm around Christine’s slim waist, then turned the key.

What she expected to find was a paper with the telephone number of the Chinatown section of the LAPD on it and the names of Shang Ko and his grandson. She did so almost at once; a quick comparison with the card in her purse confirmed her suspicion. “Apothecary” was written after Shang Hsu Kwan’s name, and beneath that, among the doodlings a man made while on the telephone, “$2,000.”

She didn’t, however, expect to find the other object that was in the drawer. So shocked was she at the implications of it, and so terrified, that she almost shut and locked the drawer at once.

But from the doorway she heard Christine’s giggle and Flindy’s husky drawl. Looking up, she saw them and two other girls, a blonde and a brunette, laughing and making themselves charming for the head of the studio, and something went through Norah like a heated spike of rage. Very softly she opened the drawer again, withdrew the thing she had found, and slipped it into the gold-mesh handbag Christine had lent her for the evening. Then she locked the drawer again and left by the long window onto the terrace. Brown was far too preoccupied even to remember whether she’d remained in the room or passed him in the doorway. She deposited the key inconspicuously between the paws of one of the crouching sphinxes, where it would eventually be discovered.