And what a police shake-up there would be! Captain Bansome shot down by his own men! Would they be able to hush it up? Probably not. The Chief of Police was on the square, was fighting Paul Boardman. Boardman had been grooming Captain Ransome for the Chief’s job... How the papers would be filled with the story of Ed Jenkins’ wild escape, the trickery by which the police had turned their guns upon their own captain while the real quarry slipped through their fingers.
It was a wild night, and my work was not over. I must watch that red roadster.
I had thought I knew Chinatown; but, during the next fifteen minutes, I was swept through places I had never dreamt of. Chattering, gibbering Chinese scuttled like frightened rats through the district, breaking away from the vicinity of that fatal block. It was fear of those gunmen who were released for action.
Chinese react toward a hatchetman or highbinder just as a covey of quail react to the silent shadow of a swift-flying hawk. And now Chinatown’s shadows thronged with men who made of murder a specialty. Chuck Gee had combined the tongs, concentrated their energies upon ridding Chinatown of this man who mingled with them, yet was not of them.
I emerged to the surface some three blocks away, stepped to the street, and started working my way back, walking in the open, not with furtive glances over my shoulder as the other Chinese were doing, but with head thrust forward, slipping purposefully through the shadows, my attitude that of the hunter rather than the hunted.
And it worked. Chinese ran from me like mice from a cat. Everywhere was a constant jabbering of excited comment. Chinese were afraid to remain on the street, afraid to stay at home. It was, for Chinatown, a night of terror.
Police were throwing a cordon about all Chinatown. Tourists were gathered up and told to get out of the district. Licensed guides were notified to go on home and forget Chinatown for a night. Grimly, determinedly, the police were continuing the hunt.
I slipped past the fatal corner, swiftly, noiselessly, yet not as though I was seeking concealment.
The red roadster was still there.
And there was more.
Sitting atop one of those sinister, black dead-wagons which are used to convey corpses to undertaking parlors was “The Buzzard.”
Who he was I did not know, except that he was, in some way, in with the ring of crooks that were in control of many branches of the city government. He was tall, angular, awkward, long of neck and with a constantly twitching nose. Twice before I had seen him, and each time an attempt had been made on my life. Evidently he furnished a convenient method for relieving the crooks of such corpses as they found it inconvenient to dispose of.
But if they should kill me, they would no longer need to be secretive about disposing of my body. They could and would blazen it forth to the world that Ed Jenkins was dead... and the sombre dead-wagon was parked next to the red roadster!
My lips set in a grim line, and at the same time, I could feel the cold sweat on my forehead.
Once more I must take a chance. Trap or no trap, I would go to her.
There was the flutter of a skirt.
Ngat T’oy walked up and down the street, casually, as though she wanted to get out of the close atmosphere of her living quarters.
I waited until she turned, and slipped along behind her, walking slightly faster.
“Little Sun,” I whispered, when I was three feet away.
She did not move her head, made no slightest sign of having heard, but one of the hands which was clasped behind her back wriggled slightly, and I saw a piece of paper in the fingers.
I took it as I slipped by. A watcher could not have told we had any interest in each other.
It would have been more prudent to have waited before reading that message, but I dared not risk delay. I turned in at a café, ordered some tea, and spread the paper under the shelter of the table cloth.
“I warned her, tried to get her to come, remain with me for an hour or two; but Chuck Gee had a paper which he slipped her and then she disappeared. I think they forged a note from you. Boardman has gone home and the police were ostentatiously careful to tell her she was at liberty to leave, and advised her to get out of Chinatown.
Chuck Gee is the custodian of the Joss Room and I think you will find him there. If I can help I will.
Here is a map of the entrances to the Joss Room.”
The note was unsigned, save for a small circle with radiating lines — a little sun. The accompanying diagram was full and complete. Generally, I knew the location of the joss room. In it were kept a great assortment of various gods. There were the six great Chinese idols that were carried in the parades, and there were twelve boxes of assorted ivory idols, each group having some peculiar significance to the Oriental.
The situation was desperate. Helen Chadwick in Chinatown! Chuck Gee, head of a hundred gunmen, doing the will of Paul Boardman, safe in the knowledge that any police investigation would be controlled.
It is not unusual for people to disappear in Chinatown. Such white persons as roam the narrow, crooked streets after the usual tourist traffic has ceased are expected to know the risks they take.
Boardman had a perfect alibi. He had merely been a visitor in Chinatown, waiting to see justice done to Ed Jenkins. The killing of Captain Ransome had upset him. He had gone home. He didn’t even know Helen Chadwick was in Chinatown, otherwise he would have been only too pleased to have escorted her home.
The police had advised her that the telephone call had been a mistake; that not only was she at liberty to go home, but she was advised to do so at once. They had probably offered her a police escort.
Then had come Chuck Gee, shuffling along, and grinning that evil, pockmarked grin of his. He had slipped a note in her hand, a clever forgery. It had purported to come from me, probably telling her to trust the bearer and he would guide her to me.
After that, a hidden signal, Chuck Gee shuffling away and Helen Chadwick following. Another white girl disappears in Chinatown. The newspapers dish up the news to readers who want to feel the creeps going up and down their spines, the police make an “investigation,” and finally unearth the “information” that the girl was really mixed up in certain matters which made her want to disappear. They guardedly suggest to anxious friends that it is better not to press the matter too far, that it might unearth a scandal.
Such is the usual course in such matters. A murder crowds the story off the front page, the police drop it, and the mystery remains unsolved.
That is where outlaw undertakers come into play. An obscure undertaker with a shabby “funeral parlor” in the cheaper part of the city seems to be doing a big business. He buries paupers who are interred simply in the Potter’s field. And he becomes rich. Forged burial permits, a political pull, a dead-wagon that rattles forth at night on mysterious errands — and the body is legally disposed of. There is none of the burial in cellars, none of the amateurish weighting of bodies and chucking them into a lake where they eventually rise to the surface. It is all handled smoothly and efficiently. The burial is in broad daylight. The papers are all in order. Another pauper without friends or relatives has slipped over the great divide and finds a legal resting-place in a shallow, unmarked grave.
Such is the murder system of the big cities when men such as Paul Boardman lend their political influence to ways of crime.
Now I realized why the Buzzard’s dead-wagon waited in Chinatown.
Because I was being hounded from pillar to post; because my life was in constant danger, with a cordon of police thrown about Chinatown, while a hundred highbinders explored the shadows, Paul Boardman thought he was safe, that I dared not try to rescue Helen Chadwick.