“You heard?” asked Soo Hoo Duck in Cantonese.
“My Lord, I heard.”
“Then go at once and use the information.”
The wicket slammed shut.
Soo Hoo Duck’s eyes bored into mine.
I met his gaze without flinching. If he had meant that the aged listener should summon the police that was his privilege. I knew how much old Soo Hoo Duck thought of his daughter. She was more than the apple of his eye. She was his sole reason for living.
Finally he spoke again. His voice was now as calm as his countenance.
“There is a Fate which masters the efforts of puny man. Yet such powers as we have were given to us for use.”
I nodded. Personally, I was in no mind to discuss abstract philosophy. Yet I knew how much more he suffered than I did, and I was willing to let him take the lead.
“You knew, perhaps, that Chuck Gee had gone to his fathers?”
Perhaps it was because he slipped in the statement so casually, sandwiched in between bits of philosophy. Perhaps it was because I had been thinking so much of Ngat T’oy that I was listening mechanically. Whatever the reason, I could feel my eyes widen in incredulous surprise.
“Chuck Gee!” I exclaimed.
Soo Hoo Duck bowed in grave assent.
“Chuck Gee. He is with his fathers.”
“Who did it?”
His eyes suddenly raised from the teakwood table and bored into mine.
“He was shot down from an automobile which drew up close to the curb.”
“Did they see who was in the machine?”
He nodded, his eyes as hard as two pieces of polished ebony.
“Yes. The shots were fired by a man who yelled that he was Ed Jenkins. He was accompanied by a girl who was dressed as for a masquerade ball. She wore the costume of a red poppy.”
I clutched at the table.
What hellish scheme had Mansfield planned? What was the diabolical significance of his plot? Why should these two girls who meant much to me, who had sacrificed much to help me, be placed in red poppy costumes, and on a night when Chuck Gee had been murdered by a man who used my name, who was accompanied by a girl in a red poppy dress?
A sudden thought came to me.
I arose and made for the door. Dimly I was conscious of the heavy teakwood chair toppling over backward. Almost as one in a trance, I saw a huge, half-naked Chinaman stand before me with a curled scimitar upraised. I plunged madly forward, and, for some reason, he made no attempt to strike, but fell back. I took the steps two at a time, pounded impatiently at the smooth surfaces of the doors which barred my way.
There came a faint clicking as though an electrical contact had been made and a magnet had pulled a piece of steel. Then the doors opened and I was once more out in the night.
The taxicab was still there.
I pulled the startled driver close to me, lest some other ears should hear the question I asked.
“Was there an undertaker’s wagon parked near the alley down which you took your poppy?”
He scowled for a moment in contemplation, then slowly nodded.
“Yes, I believe there was, boss. I ain’t sure just whereabouts. I remember seein' a dead-wagon parked near the curb, an' a tall chap was sittin' on the box.”
I climbed into the cab.
“Drive out Grower Street,” I told him, “and make it just as snappy as the bus'll stand.”
Twice before I had crossed the trail of the tall man who drove the dead-wagon. He was in with the police in some manner. Boardman used him as a tool, and such bodies as the police did not care to officially account for were removed in this sombre, black-boxed automobile and eventually received regular interment in the pauper’s field, officially recorded as “indigent dead.”
The last time I had crossed the trail of this man I had managed to track him to his place of business. Abe Grue, undertaker, were the words that appeared on the sign which was thrust in the scanty lawn of the cheap house.
Very well, that information would come in handy. Boardman did not know that I knew the identity of his scavenger. Certainly, Grue would not divulge the information. Far be it from him to kill the goose that lay the golden eggs by admitting that I had tracked him to his lair.
Perhaps he had been in on this thing. It was a clue well worth following. The hidden interior of that black wagon could be used to transport the living as well as the dead. There was a chance that Ngat T’oy had been given a ride in that gruesome vehicle, either as a captive or as a corpse.
If Abe Grue knew where she was, he would tell. That I vowed. Ngat T’oy had been the victim of some scheme be cause of her friendship for Helen Chadwick or me, and I quivered with rage at the thought. I had been too long on the defensive. Now they could see me fighting back.
Then and there, in the interior of that swaying taxicab I determined to fight back, and fight back hard.
I stopped the driver two blocks from Abe Grue’s place. Everything seemed quiet. The neighborhood was not of the best, but it was one that went to bed early, and had received rigorous training in minding its own business.
I took to the alleys and backyards. If there were any watchers keeping vigil on Abe Grue’s place of “business” they could have their pleasure for their pains. I didn’t know just what my interview would lead to, but I knew what it would be about, and I wasn’t advertising my presence.
I still retained my clown masquerade, and the white clothing caused me a little uneasiness as I slipped through the shadows. However, I made a back window undetected. None of the windows was open, and all of them were latched on the inside with the conventional catch. There was little to choose from between them so I picked a wide one.
The catch yielded to a little persuasion, and I raised the sash and reached within.
Then I got a surprise that sent little tingles up and down my spine. The darkness back of that window was artificial darkness, caused by a thick felt curtain which hung from some point on the inside of the window. At the touch of my hands the curtain pushed back and I sat, framed in the window, looking upon such a scene as caused the hairs on the back of my neck to tingle and bristle.
It takes something well out of the ordinary to make the cold waves ripple up and down my back-bone. But this time I’d run into something that was an utter stranger to the word, “usual.”
The window was wide because it opened into the buzzard’s “workshop.” During the daytime it doubtless furnished him with ample light. When he worked at night he covered the window with felt to keep the white light of the incandescents in the ceiling from arousing curiosity in the neighboring houses.
Below me was a marble slab.
On either side stretched a row of big bottles.
On the marble slab was the body of a young woman, a young woman who had met a death of violence. Her face was bruised and scratched. There was a look of wild horror in the open eyes, and her throat showed as a ghastly slit.
Bending over her, his long, ungainly arms seeming all elbows, his long-necked head wagging back and forth, performing some technical trick of his gruesome trade, was Abe Grue, the outlaw undertaker, he whom I had labeled “the buzzard.”
In a chair, tied hand and foot, gagged, her eyes absolutely inscrutable, was Ngat T’oy, still attired in the costume of a red poppy.
While he worked, the buzzard talked.
“It won’t be long now, little one. I’ll just get this body fixed up, and then I’ll attend to you. My, my, but they expect a lot of me. Think of having to fix this body up so it’ll look natural if anyone opens the casket. A high-necked dress will do it, but high-necked dresses cost money. Why can’t they learn to do their stuff below the shoulders?
“But it’ll be different with you, little one. I’ll fix you so you’ll be a credit to the profession. There won’t be a wound that’ll show on your whole body. Just an opened artery or two and they’ll believe that was done in embalming.”