“Quick, if you care for your own safety — or mine!” I told her. “Little Sun, the Chinese girl you met tonight, is a friend; get her to accompany you out of Chinatown if possible. Get into your roadster. Hurry!”
She started to run for the alley exit then.
“You come, Ed. They are watching Chinatown. You will be unsafe here. Come with me. I’ll drive you out.”
I shook my head.
“They are watching all streets out of the Chinese quarter, and they’ll have your car spotted, give it a thorough search. I’ll give your telephone a ring later on.”
She saw the sense of that, gained the street and started for her car. I remained within the shadows, watched her anxiously. Her red roadster was still parked at the curb. I saw that, and saw something else that warmed my heart. Little Sun was patrolling the street, and she ran toward Helen Chadwick with outstretched arms, calling to her. Helen was safe.
In that moment I saw other things.
Red cars were roaring about filled with blue-coats. They were keeping a reserve force in Chinatown, ready to throw out a police cordon whenever I showed myself. Firing those gods had been all that Chuck Gee needed to proclaim my identity. He had tipped off the police. Once more a dragnet was being thrown out. Once more I was surrounded.
This time, however, I had only myself to think of. Helen Chadwick had learned her lesson. She would get out of Chinatown and stay out of it, and she wouldn’t be obeying mysterious telephone calls. Also she realized just how much and how little she could depend on the police force.
There was gladness in my heart as I stepped lightly back into the dark shadows of the alley. About me the night air trembled with the wailing of sirens, the barking of exhausts, the shrilling of police whistles. Apparently they were surrounding a space of four blocks.
I skipped down the dark alley.
As I had expected, a dark shape loomed among the deepest shadows, the dead wagon of the Buzzard.
I threw back the doors, climbed within, closed the doors behind me, lay down and lit a cigarette.
A minute or two later the springs swayed as a figure climbed into the driver’s seat.
The engine started and we jolted away over the rough streets of Chinatown. I sat up within the jostling interior, once more opened the pouches in my belt, and took out a mirror, some cotton and a bottle of alcohol. I swabbed my features carefully, washing off the stain.
Chinatown was getting pretty hot for me. It would be some little time before I went back there again — not until after I had convinced the police that I had definitely escaped.
The wagon was halted at the police lines, halted long enough for the Buzzard to show his pass.
“Anyhow, we’ve got to finger-print you,” came the words of a gruff officer. “Them’s the orders from headquarters. They say this Jenkins can disguise himself so he looks like anything from a lamp post to the Prince of Wales.”
There followed a jostling about on the seat while the Buzzard was being finger-printed.
I sat within the wagon and chuckled softly.
Nor did I do as I had planned at first and slip out while we were traveling. I decided to have another look at this Buzzard, this illicit buryer of the murdered dead. It was not until he had parked the wagon at the curb that I slipped open the doors and stepped out upon the sidewalk.
He was just climbing from the driver’s seat.
“I have never got your name. I’ve always had to refer to you in my thoughts as the 'Buzzard,’ ” I told him. “It’s embarrassing, because you seem to have taken quite a prominent part in some of my more recent adventures, and I want to know who to send the flowers to in case I see any more of you. I’m Ed Jenkins.”
He stood there, arms flapping outward like the ungainly wings of an unclean bird, his red-rimmed eyes open until the whites seemed to bulge out over the red, his narrow, thin-lipped mouth sagging open beneath the hooked nose, his Adam’s apple racing up and down in his dry throat.
A sign was thrust in the scanty strip of lawn, and on it appeared the gold letters,
“ABE GRUE — UNDERTAKER.”
“Good night, Mr. Grue,” I said, and strolled away, striving to give to my walk the appearance of a careless saunter.
Two days later I read my newspaper with interest.
Disguised as a South American millionaire, staying in the splendor of the best hotel in the city, with my paper propped before me upon a table covered with the whitest of linen, the most glittering cut-glass, I read two items which interested me strangely.
One was that Mrs. Loring Kemper, the leader of society, had given a party for Miss Helen Chadwick, who had brought with her as a joint guest of honor a Chinese girl, Little Sun. There was an elaborate description of the charming Chinese society girl, and a prediction that she would be very much in evidence at the most exclusive affairs during the coming season. Mrs. Kemper had been particularly gracious, and her attitude was open sesame to the higher circles of inner society.
The second item was a brief description of a complete nervous breakdown by Paul Boardman, the public-spirited financier, who had been devoting so much of his time to civic betterment that his nerves had given way and his doctors had ordered him to the seclusion of a secret sanitarium. It was not mentioned how long he expected to remain, but I knew that only one thing could ever perfectly restore his shattered nerves, and that would be the obituary notice of one Ed Jenkins, sometimes known as The Phantom Crook.
Grimly I folded the paper. I would find out the address of that sanitarium. I needed from Paul Boardman a complete statement which would clear my name of the murder of Bob Garret. After that... well, after that much might be possible; but while I was a fugitive from justice, while I had a price on my head, I could hardly hope to justify the faith that Helen Chadwick and Mrs. Loring Kemper had shown in me.
However, all in good time.
The newspaper contained a front-page story of the steps that were being taken to apprehend Ed Jenkins, The Phantom Crook.
I crumpled it and threw it aside. The piece concerning Paul Boardman I carefully clipped from the second section and put within my notebook.
I was not finished with Paul Boardman. And then another item caught my eye. It was an account of a mysterious fire in a Chinese joss house. It had been extinguished without damage.
I was glad. I liked to think of those six painted gods standing in tranquil silence, grinning into the future.
“Monsieur is pleased?”
It was the voice of the waiter. And then I realized that I, too, was grinning into the future.
“Monsieur is pleased,” I told him.
Yellow Shadows
Chapter Twenty-Two
The hotel lobby hummed with activity. Plain-clothes police, detectives, special detail men appeared and disappeared like scum upon boiling syrup. Once more Jenkins had slipped through the police net, and the police didn’t like it.
After a while things quieted down, but I knew they would be watching, guarding every exit as best they might. They would make no commotion, but everyone leaving the hotel would be inspected carefully.
A very short while before I had been a guest of the hotel as a South American millionaire, dark, swarthy-skinned, indolent. Now it would take sharper eyes than those at the moment looking for me to discover the same man with carefully trimmed mustache and Van-dyke — a tourist who wanted to see much and had little time for it.
I strolled to the desk. Here a Chinatown party was made up every night. A licensed guide was on hand and a knot of people had already gathered. At the proper moment I paid three dollars for a ticket and joined the crowd.