Chapter XIII
EARLY morning sunbeams slanted through the mist rising from the streets of Chinatown when the wail of police-car sirens died in front of the gilt and lacquered front of China Bobby’s restaurant
“Looks like a phony tip, Inspector,” said a plainclothes man to Inspector Burks as they swung from one of the cars.
Burks glowered at the gleaming front of the restaurant. “If it is, I’ll hang the man who gave it by the ears,” he growled. Then sighting the lovely form of a young girl who had just stepped from a small roadster parked behind one of the squad cars, he called: “Say, Miss Dale, you’re sure that mysterious telephone call that tipped you off said this was the joint?”
“Certain of it, Inspector Burks,” replied Betty Dale in her crisp, businesslike voice. She approached the plate-glass front of the restaurant and looked in. Walking beside her was a cheerful, redheaded youth with note book and pencil poised as though he could hardly wait for a big news story to break.
“You two step back, now,” ordered Burks. “We’re going to break in here if we can’t raise the proprietor. Say, Reardon!” he called to one of his subordinates, “you know Chinatown from the sewers on up. Isn’t this about where that dope joint used to be back in tong-war days?”
The elderly Reardon nodded. “Used to be known as Hong-Po’s catacombs. Cellars and tunnels extended for about a block. But in the last big raid, we sealed up all the catacombs.”
“Wouldn’t take much to open ’em again,” said Burks. He shouted brisk orders to his men, and five minutes later the police were pouring into the restaurant.
“Everything looks on the up-an’-up,” one of the detectives was heard to whisper, “and will Burks’ ears be red when he gets climbed for raidin’ a legitimate joint!”
“Look here, Inspector Burks!” Betty Dale called excitedly. As if entirely by accident, she had located the door at the rear of the restaurant that led down into the opium den.
“Thunderation!” roared Detective Reardon. “I remember that circular staircase! Went down there in a raid once. This is Hong-Po’s old place. Somethin’ in that tip after all, Inspector. I can smell the stinkin’ black stuff clear up here!”
“Watch things up, men!” Burks warned. “Maybe this is just a bootleg dope joint. And maybe the tip was okeh when this guy told Miss Dale we’d find the Ghoul here!”
Down the winding staircase, and the squad trooped through the passage that opened on still a larger room. Police searchlights cleaved the tar blackness and gleamed on green and gilt. Light reflected from the baleful eyes of the dragon twining the huge artificial tree; it found here and there, in curtained bunks, the opium sleepers.
“Dope de luxe!” exclaimed Reardon. “This outdoes anything Hong-Po ever put across. Now if the rest of the place was open, there’d be a door over here—” He approached the panel decorated with the lacquered dragon. His keen eyes found the switch-button that centered the eye of the monster. He gave it a push. Nothing happened.
“Looks like somebody put the machinery on the fritz,” said Burks. “Malvern, get the acetylene torch and cut through this steel panel.”
Reardon’s ear was pressed to the door. “Take it easy, inspector,” he cautioned. “I can hear people moving around in there. Maybe they won’t be in such a sweet temper as the smoky lads in the bunks.”
“Be in a damn sight worse temper when we get hold of them,” Burks growled. He watched the hissing torch as it knifed through the steel. “That’s got it!” The heated panel fell back with a dismal clang. “Let’s go, boys!”
AGAIN through smoky blackness, the searchlights cut — this time to find blear-eyed gunmen huddling in the corners of what had been China Bobby’s office. A few nervous shots rattled out, but a police Tommy-gun, by way of warning, raked one of the walls high above the heads of the hoods.
“Round them up!” ordered Burks. “We want that girl, too.” He kicked through a black charred film that had once been a silk curtain. On the floor of a little closet, he found the yellow-skinned man whom he recognized as China Bobby. He knelt beside the man. “Not dead,” he muttered. “Seems to be taking a quiet snooze. Looks like the work of some guy I’ve met before. Suppose this half-breed’s the Ghoul, Reardon?”
The old detective shook his head. “Can’t say. We haven’t gone halfway through this joint yet. There used to be a sort of dungeon down below that Hong-Po used. Better get that acetylene torch busy again. This room was a sort of center to a spider-web formation of rooms and passages.”
But it was only after two hours of arduous labor that the secrets of the catacombs were completely revealed. What had been the Ghoul’s laboratories was a mass of wreckage. The explosion had buckled the walls. A yellow, amber-like hand jutting out from a pile of debris told Burks that beneath were bodies made hideous by the Amber Death.
It was the inquisitiveness of the redheaded reporter who accompanied Betty Dale that led the police to find the secret passage that led to the scene of the Ghoul’s last stand. And to all appearances, the redheaded youth came very near being asphyxiated by the chlorine fumes that lingered in the passage. Burks, Malvern, and six others ventured up the passage after gas masks had been put on. Though Burks did not notice it at the time, he might have seen that one of his masked followers was the ever-curious redheaded reporter.
“Who’s that over in the corner?” shouted Burks. He pointed to a fleshy form in the corner — a man who exhibited signs of life in an effort to wriggle from his bonds and talk through his gag. “The mayor, by all that’s holy! Give Mayor Grauman a hand, one of you fellows. I’m going—”
As Burks stepped through the door of the next room, words failed him. Seated in a metal chair in the center of the room was the figure of a man. His contorted yellow face resembled nothing so much as the carved visage of an ugly Chinese joss. He sat perfectly still.
“A Chink!” gasped one of the detectives. “Looks like that Ah-Fang you’ve been sendin’ Keegan lookin’ all over town for!”
“Yes, Burks,” said the redheaded reporter, “looks as though for once you were right.”
“What’d you mean, ‘for once’?” Burks sprang across to the chair and snatched up a piece of paper that lay in the lap of the unconscious man. As his eyes skated down the paper, he read:
I am the Ghoul. I freely confess to all the crimes of murder and extortion in which the Amber Death played so important a part.
Burks mumbled an oath. “And it’s signed — good Lord!” Burks wiped a hand over his forehead. “And it was reported that he committed suicide in his own home after receiving a warning from the Ghoul!”
THE redheaded reporter had been looking over Burks’ shoulder at the note. “I suppose a fellow could easily fake the Amber Death by injecting some harmless yellow dye beneath the flesh of his face. Probably, he switched needles, and used one containing dye instead of the one containing poison that Luigi gave him. Then under cover of dark, he got away with his men and their captives, knowing that if he was reported dead, no suspicion—”
Burks brushed the reporter to one side and snatched the mask of yellow, mummified flesh away from the real face of the Ghoul — a virile face with an impressively high forehead surmounted by gray hair. It was the face of Lionel Gage. He seemed to have been plunged into a doped sleep.
“We should have known,” said the reporter softly. “There wasn’t any sense to the Ghoul kidnaping Lionel Gage because Gage was broke. Gage admitted as much — told Warnow so in the presence of Malvern. He said Wall Street had stripped him. Yet he continued to live pretty much as he did before. Where did he get the money? Why, from this extortion scheme! And when everybody else could talk only of the Ghoul’s fiendishness, Gage kept emphasizing the Ghoul’s power. He carried vanity, which was the keynote of his character as the Ghoul, into his respectable side of life. He wanted everyone to realize what a master-mind the Ghoul was. Why? Because he was the Ghoul.”