Corkscrew and Other Stories (16 page)

“I told The Whistler I was through this afternoon,” he finished.

“How did he like it?”

“Not a lot. In fact, I had to hit him.”

“So? And what were you planning to do next?”

“I was going to see Miss Shan, tell her the truth, and then—then I thought I'd better lay low.”

“I think you'd better. The Whistler might not like being hit.”

“I won't hide now! I'll go give myself up and tell the truth.”

“Forget it!” I advised him. “That's no good. You don't know enough to help her.”

That wasn't exactly the truth, because he did know that the chauffeur and Hoo Lun had still been in the house the day after her departure for the East. But I didn't want him to get out of the game yet.

“If I were you,” I went on, “I'd pick out a quiet hiding place and stay there until I can get word to you. Know a good place?”

“Yes,” slowly. “I have a—a friend who will hide me—down near—near the Latin Quarter.”

“Near the Latin Quarter?” That could be Chinatown. I did some sharp-shooting. “Waverly Place?”

He jumped.

“How did you know?”

“I'm a detective. I know everything. Ever hear of Chang Li Ching?”

“No.”

I tried to keep from laughing into his puzzled face.

The first time I had seen this cut-up he was leaving a house in Waverly Place, with a Chinese woman's face showing dimly in the doorway behind him. The house had been across the street from a grocery. The Chinese girl with whom I had talked at Chang's had given me a slave-girl yarn and an invitation to that same house. Big-hearted Jack here had fallen for the same game, but he didn't know that the girl had anything to do with Chang Li Ching, didn't know that Chang existed, didn't know Chang and The Whistler were playmates. Now Jack is in trouble, and he's going to the girl to hide!

I didn't dislike this angle of the game. He was walking into a trap, but that was nothing to me—or, rather, I hoped it was going to help me.

“What's your friend's name?” I asked.

He hesitated.

“What is the name of the tiny woman whose door is across the street from the grocery?” I made myself plain.

“Hsiu Hsiu.”

“All right,” I encouraged him in his foolishness. “You go there. That's an excellent hiding place. Now if I want to get a Chinese boy to you with a message, how will he find you?”

“There's a flight of steps to the left as you go in. He'll have to skip the second and third steps, because they are fitted with some sort of alarm. So is the handrail. On the second floor you turn to the left again. The hall is dark. The second door to the right—on the right-hand side of the hall—lets you into a room. On the other side of the room is a closet, with a door hidden behind old clothes. There are usually people in the room the door opens into, so he'll have to wait for a chance to get through it. This room has a little balcony outside, that you can get to from either of the windows. The balcony's sides are solid, so if you crouch low you can't be seen from the street or from other houses. At the other end of the balcony there are two loose floor boards. You slide down under them into a little room between walls. The trap-door there will let you down into another just like it where I'll probably be. There's another way out of the bottom room, down a flight of steps, but I've never been that way.”

A fine mess! It sounded like a child's game. But even with all this frosting on the cake our young chump hadn't tumbled. He took it seriously.

“So that's how it's done!” I said. “You'd better get there as soon as you can, and stay there until my messenger gets to you. You'll know him by the cast in one of his eyes, and maybe I'd better give him a password. Haphazard—that'll be the word. The street door—is it locked?”

“No. I've never found it locked. There are forty or fifty Chinamen—or perhaps a hundred—living in that building, so I don't suppose the door is ever locked.”

“Good. Beat it now.”

X

At 10:15 that night I was pushing open the door opposite the grocery in Waverly Place—an hour and three-quarters early for my date with Hsiu Hsiu. At 9:55 Dick Foley had phoned that The Whistler had gone into the red-painted door on Spofford Alley.

I found the interior dark, and closed the door softly, concentrating on the childish directions Garthorne had given me. That I knew they were silly didn't help me, since I didn't know any other route.

The stairs gave me some trouble, but I got over the second and third without touching the handrail, and went on up. I found the second door in the hall, the closet in the room behind it, and the door in the closet. Light came through the cracks around it. Listening, I heard nothing.

I pushed the door open—the room was empty. A smoking oil lamp stunk there. The nearest window made no sound as I raised it. That was inartistic—a squeak would have impressed Garthorne with his danger.

I crouched low on the balcony, in accordance with instructions, and found the loose floorboards that opened up a black hole. Feet first, I went down in, slanting at an angle that made descent easy. It seemed to be a sort of slot cut diagonally through the wall. It was stuffy, and I don't like narrow holes. I went down swiftly, coming into a small room, long and narrow, as if placed inside a thick wall.

No light was there. My flashlight showed a room perhaps eighteen feet long by four wide, furnished with table, couch and two chairs. I looked under the one rug on the floor. The trapdoor was there—a crude affair that didn't pretend it was part of the floor.

Flat on my belly, I put an ear to the trapdoor. No sound. I raised it a couple of inches. Darkness and a faint murmuring of voices. I pushed the trapdoor wide, let it down easily on the floor and stuck head and shoulders into the opening, discovering then that it was a double arrangement. Another door was below, fitting no doubt in the ceiling of the room below.

Cautiously I let myself down on it. It gave under my foot. I could have pulled myself up again, but since I had disturbed it I chose to keep going.

I put both feet on it. It swung down. I dropped into light. The door snapped up over my head. I grabbed Hsiu Hsiu and clapped a hand over her tiny mouth in time to keep her quiet.

“Hello,” I said to the startled Garthorne; “this is my boy's evening off, so I came myself.”

“Hello,” he gasped.

This room, I saw, was a duplicate of the one from which I had dropped, another cupboard between walls, though this one had an unpainted wooden door at one end.

I handed Hsiu Hsiu to Garthorne.

“Keep her quiet,” I ordered, “while—”

The clicking of the door's latch silenced me. I jumped to the wall on the hinged side of the door just as it swung open—the opener hidden from me by the door.

The door opened wide, but not much wider than Jack Garthorne's blue eyes, nor than this mouth. I let the door go back against the wall and stepped out behind my balanced gun.

The queen of something stood there!

She was a tall woman, straight-bodied and proud. A butterfly-shaped headdress decked with the loot of a dozen jewelry stores exaggerated her height. Her gown was amethyst filigreed with gold above, a living rainbow below. The clothes were nothing!

She was—maybe I can make it clear this way. Hsiu Hsiu was as perfect a bit of feminine beauty as could be imagined. She was perfect! Then comes this queen of something—and Hsiu Hsiu's beauty went away. She was a candle in the sun. She was still pretty—prettier than the woman in the doorway, if it came to that—but you didn't pay any attention to her. Hsiu Hsiu was a pretty girl: this royal woman in the doorway was—I don't know the words.

“My God!” Garthorne was whispering harshly. “I never knew it!”

“What are you doing here?” I challenged the woman.

She didn't hear me. She was looking at Hsiu Hsiu as a tigress might look at an alley cat. Hsiu Hsiu was looking at her as an alley cat might look at a tigress. Sweat was on Garthorne's face and his mouth was the mouth of a sick man.

“What are you doing here?” I repeated, stepping closer to Lillian Shan.

“I am here where I belong,” she said slowly, not taking her eyes from the slave-girl. “I have come back to my people.”

That was a lot of bunk. I turned to the goggling Garthorne.

“Take Hsiu Hsiu to the upper room, and keep her quiet, if you have to strangle her. I want to talk to Miss Shan.”

Still dazed, he pushed the table under the trapdoor, climbed up on it, hoisted himself through the ceiling, and reached down. Hsiu Hsiu kicked and scratched, but I heaved her up to him. Then I closed the door through which Lillian Shan had come, and faced her.

“How did you get here?” I demanded.

“I went home after I left you, knowing what Yin Hung would say, because he had told me in the employment office, and when I got home— When I got home I decided to come here where I belong.”

“Nonsense!” I corrected her. “When you got home you found a message there from Chang Li Ching, asking you—ordering you to come here.”

She looked at me, saying nothing.

“What did Chang want?”

“He thought perhaps he could help me,” she said, “and so I stayed here.”

More nonsense.

“Chang told you Garthorne was in danger—had split with The Whistler.”

“The Whistler?”

“You made a bargain with Chang,” I accused her, paying no attention to her question. The chances were she didn't know The Whistler by that name.

She shook her head, jiggling the ornaments on her headdress.

“There was no bargain,” she said, holding my gaze too steadily.

I didn't believe her. I said so.

“You gave Chang your house—or the use of it—in exchange for his promise that”—the boob were the first words I thought of, but I changed them—“Garthorne would be saved from The Whistler, and that you would be saved from the law.”

She drew herself up.

“I did,” she said calmly.

I caught myself weakening. This woman who looked like the queen of something wasn't easy to handle the way I wanted to handle her. I made myself remember that I knew her when she was homely as hell in mannish clothes.

“You ought to be spanked!” I growled at her. “Haven't you had enough trouble without mixing yourself now with a flock of highbinders? Did you see The Whistler?”

“There was a man up there,” she said, “I don't know his name.”

I hunted through my pocket and found the picture of him taken when he was sent to San Quentin.

“That is he,” she told me when I showed it to her.

“A fine partner you picked,” I raged. “What do you think his word on anything is worth?”

“I did not take his word for anything. I took Chang Li Ching's word.”

“That's just as bad. They're mates. What was your bargain?”

She balked again, straight, stiff-necked and level-eyed. Because she was getting away from me with this Manchu princess stuff I got peevish.

“Don't be a chump all your life!” I pleaded. “You think you made a deal. They took you in! What do you think they're using your house for?”

She tried to look me down. I tried another angle of attack.

“Here, you don't mind who you make bargains with. Make one with me. I'm still one prison sentence ahead of The Whistler, so if his word is any good at all, mine ought to be highly valuable. You tell me what the deal was. If it's half-way decent. I'll promise you to crawl out of here and forget it. If you don't tell me, I'm going to empty a gun out of the first window I can find. And you'd be surprised how many cops a shot will draw in this part of town, and how fast it'll draw them.”

The threat took some of the color out of her face.

“If I tell, you will promise to do nothing?”

“You missed part of it,” I reminded her. “If I think the deal is half-way on the level I'll keep quiet.”

She bit her lips and let her fingers twist together, and then it came.

“Chang Li Ching is one of the leaders of the anti-Japanese movement in China. Since the death of Sun Wen—or Sun Yat-Sen, as he is called in the south of China and here—the Japanese have increased their hold on the Chinese government until it is greater than it ever was. It is Sun Wen's work that Chang Li Ching and his friends are carrying on.

“With their own government against them, their immediate necessity is to arm enough patriots to resist Japanese aggression when the time comes. That is what my house is used for. Rifles and ammunition are loaded into boats there and sent out to ships lying far offshore. This man you call The Whistler is the owner of the ships that carry the arms to China.”

“And the death of the servants?” I asked.

“Wan Lan was a spy for the Chinese government—for the Japanese. Wang Ma's death was an accident, I think, though she, too, was suspected of being a spy. To a patriot, the death of traitors is a necessary thing, you can understand that? Your people are like that too when your country is in danger.”

“Garthorne told me a rum-running story,” I said. “How about it?”

“He believed it,” she said, smiling softly at the trapdoor through which he had gone. “They told him that, because they did not know him well enough to trust him. That is why they would not let him help in the loading.”

One of her hands came out to rest on my arm.

“You will go away and keep silent?” she pleaded. “These things are against the law of your country, but would you not break another country's laws to save your own country's life? Have not four hundred million people the right to fight an alien race that would exploit them? Since the day of Taou-kwang my country has been the plaything of more aggressive nations. Is any price too great for patriotic Chinese to pay to end that period of dishonor? You will not put yourself in the way of my people's liberty?”