“You see it was this way, officer—” I heard him saying as I slipped out of the death trap, and into the hallway. I’d rather liked to have stayed and listened for a bit, but it was no place for Ed Jenkins. I melted into the shadows, slipped down the back stairs, and into the night.
Half way down the alley in the next block I stopped to look back at the house. Lights blazed from every window I could see. Paul Boardman was going to have a great time making his explanations. But the real fun would commence after he’d told his story. Then it would develop that the police came to the house because Garret had telephoned them that a man had been killed there — and then, when the police arrived, they found the corpse to be Garret himself.
That would be some little hurdle for even Boardman to take.
I hunted up a friendly photographer, developed the two plates and put them in a safe and secret place. Then I climbed back into a Chinese disguise. Somehow I felt that I could take a chance with Soo Hoo Duck. I didn’t step back into the character of Yee Dooey Wah, however. I picked an older man, a gray-haired sage. The Chinks respect gray hairs.
Eight o’clock found me digesting a morning newspaper and sipping coffee. Headlines all over the front page announced that Ed Jenkins, famous criminal, known as the Phantom Crook because of his ability to slip through the fingers of the police, had shot and killed Bob Garret, one of the most efficient detectives on the force. There was a reward offered. Indignation ran high, and the police had thrown out their “dragnet.” It was predicted that the murderer would be in custody within another twenty-four hours.
The account was a bit blurred as to details, but I gathered that I had broken into Boardman’s house to rifle a safe, had been caught red-handed by Garret who had been trailing me, and I had killed him with a shotgun.
So they had framed that on me, had they? Oh, well, it’s all in a life time. That would knock my California immunity into a cocked hat. And, in the meantime, Boardman would be waging a relentless war. He must get me now or I might get him. He had seen something of my methods. There were other crooked detectives to take the place of Bob Garret, but there was in Garret’s death something of a grim warning that must have caused ripples to run up and down Boardman’s spine.
Anyhow, Helen Chadwick would read that paper and know that she had nothing to fear. There was only one witness to her attempted safe robbery left alive. It would be her word against Paul Boardman’s, if anything should ever come up now — and there was the matter of that photograph... No, Helen would read the paper and know she was safe. Boardman would do nothing, dared do nothing, until he had murdered me, either by due process of law or by the bullet of a hired killer.
I became conscious of someone standing by my side.
Casually, yet with every nerve alert, I peered up over the top of the paper. Soo Hoo Duck was standing beside me, his face wrinkled into its parchment smile.
“Good morning, my brother. You are a stranger in the city?”
I regarded him gravely. There was more than coincidence in his spying me out. He must have the eye of an eagle for piercing disguises. Did he know me as an imposter, or did he know me as Ed Jenkins, the one who had recently posed as Yee Dooey Wah? I couldn’t tell, could only take a chance.
“One needs but to know human nature,” I reminded him, “and he is never a stranger in any city.”
He bowed gravely, with great dignity, his clawlike hand pulling his coat the tighter about his hollow chest.
“Ah, yes, human nature,” he said meditatively. “One moment it is like a rushing stream, then it meets an obstruction and is dammed into a lake. Finally the lake bursts through its obstructions and carries all before it. My brother, I wish you pleasure in your visit here. In my small way I have some influence among my people. If there is anything I can do for you, pray command me.”
With that friendly word he was off.
I stared at him, speculatively — wondering. Upon his middle finger was a jade ring, and upon the ring was carved a great dragon, similar to the dragon which had been imprinted in the red wax on the paper I had received in the Mandarin Café.
Perhaps, after all, he was a powerful friend. If so, I might need him.
We had engaged in a duel to the death, Paul Boardman and I. He had unlimited influence, money, position, power, and he was frantically combing the city, seeking to bring about my death. On the other hand, I had no power, no influence, was listed as a crook, forced to be always on the outskirts of society — and yet I was fighting for the safety of the girl I loved. There was danger ahead, there would be adventures. Never before had I been in such need of a cool head and a quick wit.
If the man who made the mark of the wax dragon was an enemy, he would be merely one more enemy to outwit. If he should prove to be a friend, something seemed to tell me he would be a powerful friend, a friend not of mine so much as a friend of Helen Chadwick; and more than all, a friend of fair play. And there was the buzzard. Beyond doubt he was an enemy. He lived up to his appearance, a vulture who hovered about, companion of killers — and he had fastened his attention upon me.
All in all it would be a busy time — the next few weeks, or, perhaps, months. I would be back in my element, hunted by the police, trailed by gangsters. There would be a price on my head, both in crookdom and with the police. Yet, through it all, I must find some way to protect Helen Chadwick.
In any event, the die was cast. The future was on the lap of the gods, but, in the meantime, the first trick was mine.
Grinning Gods
Chapter Twenty-One
Seated in the back part of the Yat King Café, I dipped my chop sticks into a bowl of chicken noodles and listened to the hum of conversation about me. As long as I could keep in a dim light I felt safe. Color of skin, hair, eyebrows, clothes, would pass muster anywhere. It was only in regard to the eyes that my disguise was weak. It required a little grease paint to give the necessary slant to the upper corners, and grease paint has a habit of glinting a reflected gleam under the rays of a bright light.
The back of the Yat King Café was the gathering place of Chinese politicians. Those who controlled the destinies of Chinatown were accustomed to meet there in the early part of the evening. On this night they had come earlier than usual, a significant sign.
I raised my bowl of rice to my mouth and scooped down the white grains, Chinese fashion. For years I had studied the Chinese, learning the eight tones of Cantonese dialect, studying Chinese manners and customs, learning as much as possible of their habits of thought; all in preparation for the time when no ordinary disguise would avail, and I must assume a role which it would never be suspected a white man could assume.
“... san man chee.”
The words came as a drifting fragment of conversation which eddied from the table behind me where three of the prominent men of Chinatown swapped gossip over their tea.
It was the second time I had heard those three words in the course of ten minutes.
Why should these Chinamen be talking so continuously of the newspaper? The Chinese paper had come out in the morning and had excited no comment. They were, therefore, referring to the evening newspaper, the Clarion, probably.
I beckoned the young Chinese boy who waited on the tables.
“Ngo yiu Fa K’ei san man chee.”
He gave that brief flicker of slanting brown eyes which passes for a nod of the head with the Oriental, and slippety-slopped away.
In telling him that I wanted the American newspaper I did not risk discovery. I appeared as a Chinaman of the younger generation, and might be interested in things of the Fa K’ei without exciting comment.