Charlie Chan [1] The House Without a Key

by Earl Derr Biggers

  “It’s been ruined,” he complained sadly. “Too much aping of the mainland. Too much of your damned mechanical civilization — automobiles, phonographs, radios — bah! And yet — and yet, Minerva — away down underneath there are deep dark waters flowing still.”

  She nodded, and they sat for a moment busy with their memories. Presently Dan Winterslip snapped on a small reading light at his side. “I’ll just glance at the evening paper, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, do,” urged Miss Minerva.

  She was glad of a moment without talk. For this, after all, was the time she loved Waikiki best. So brief, this tropic dusk, so quick the coming of the soft alluring night. The carpet of the waters, apple-green by day, crimson and gold at sunset, was a deep purple now. On top of that extinct volcano called Diamond Head a yellow eye was winking, as though to hint there might still be fire beneath. Three miles down, the harbor lights began to twinkle, and out toward the reef the lanterns of Japanese sampans glowed intermittently. Beyond, in the roadstead, loomed the battered hulk of an old brig slowly moving toward the channel entrance. Always, out there, a ship or two, in from the East with a cargo of spice or tea or ivory, or eastward bound with a load of tractor salesmen. Ships of all sorts, the spic and span liner and the rakish tramp, ships from Melbourne and Seattle, New York and Yokohama, Tahiti and Rio, any port on the seven seas. For this was Honolulu, the Crossroads of the Pacific — the glamorous crossroads where, they said, in time all paths crossed again. Miss Minerva sighed.

  She was conscious of a quick movement on Dan’s part. She turned and looked at him. He had laid the paper on his knee, and was staring straight ahead. That bluff about being young — no good now. For his face was old, old.

  “Why, Dan —” she said.

  “I — I’m wondering, Minerva,” he began slowly. “Tell me again about that nephew of yours.”

  She was surprised, but hid it. “John Quincy?” she said. “He’s just the usual thing, for Boston. Conventional. His whole life has been planned for him, from the cradle to the grave. So far he’s walked the line. The inevitable preparatory school, Harvard, the proper clubs, the family banking house — even gone and got himself engaged to the very girl his mother would have picked for him. There have been times when I hoped he might kick over — the war — but no, he came back and got meekly into the old rut.”

  “Then he’s reliable — steady?”

  Miss Minerva smiled. “Dan, compared with that boy, Gibraltar wobbles occasionally.”

  “Discreet, I take it?”

  “He invented discretion. That’s what I’m telling you. I love him — but a little bit of recklessness now and then — However, I’m afraid it’s too late now. John Quincy is nearly thirty.”

  Dan Winterslip was on his feet, his manner that of a man who had made an important decision. Beyond the bamboo curtain that hung in the door leading to the living-room a light appeared. “Haku!” Winterslip called. The Japanese servant came swiftly.

  “Haku, tell the chauffeur — quick — the big car! I must get to the dock before the President Tyler sails for San Francisco. Wikiwiki!”

  The servant disappeared into the living-room, and Winterslip followed. Somewhat puzzled, Miss Minerva sat for a moment, then rose and pushed aside the curtain. “Are you sailing, Dan?” she asked.

  He was seated at his desk, writing hurriedly. “No, no — just a note — I must get it off on that boat —”

  There was an air of suppressed excitement about him. Miss Minerva stepped over the threshold into the living-room. In another moment Haku appeared with an announcement that was unnecessary, for the engine of an automobile was humming in the drive. Dan Winterslip took his hat from Haku. “Make yourself at home, Minerva — I’ll be back shortly,” he cried, and rushed out.

  Some business matter, no doubt. Miss Minerva strolled aimlessly about the big airy room, pausing finally before the portrait of Jedediah Winterslip, the father of Dan and Amos, and her uncle. Dan had had it painted from a photograph after the old man’s death; it was the work of an artist whose forte was reputed to be landscapes — oh it must assuredly have been landscapes, Miss Minerva thought. But even so there was no mistaking the power and personality of this New Englander who had set up in Honolulu as a whaler. The only time she had seen him, in the ‘eighties, he had been broken and old, mourning his lost fortune, which had gone with his ships in an Arctic disaster a short time before.

  Well, Dan had brought the family back, Miss Minerva reflected. Won again that lost fortune and much more. There were queer rumors about his methods — but so there were about the methods of Bostonians who had never strayed from home. A charming fellow, whatever his past. Miss Minerva sat down at the grand piano and played a few old familiar bars — The Beautiful Blue Danube. Her thoughts went back to the ‘eighties.

  Dan Winterslip was thinking of the ‘eighties too as his car sped townward along Kalakaua Avenue. But it was the present that concerned him when they reached the dock and he ran, panting a little, through a dim pier-shed toward the gangplank of the President Tyler. He had no time to spare, the ship was on the point of sailing. Since it was a through boat from the Orient it left without the ceremonies that attend the departure of a liner plying only between Honolulu and the mainland. Even so, there were cries of “Aloha,” some hearty and some tremulous, most of the travelers were bedecked with leis, and a confused little crowd milled about the foot of the plank.

  Dan Winterslip pushed his way forward and ran up the sharp incline. As he reached the dock he encountered an old acquaintance, Hepworth, the second officer.

  “You’re the man I’m looking for,” he cried.

  “How are you, sir,” Hepworth said. “I didn’t see your name on the list.”

  “No, I’m not sailing. I’m here to ask a favor.”

  “Glad to oblige, Mr. Winterslip.”

  Winterslip thrust a letter into his hand. “You know my cousin Roger in ‘Frisco. Please give him that — him and no one else — as soon after you land as you possibly can. I’m too late for the mail — and I prefer this way anyhow. I’ll be mighty grateful.”

  “Don’t mention it — you’ve been very kind to me and I’ll be only too happy — I’m afraid you’ll have to go ashore, sir. Just a minute, there —” He took Winterslip’s arm and gently urged him back on to the plank. The instant Dan’s feet touched the dock, the plank was drawn up behind him.

  For a moment he stood, held by the fascination an Islander always feels at sight of a ship outward bound. Then he turned and walked slowly through the pier-shed. Ahead of him he caught a glimpse of a slender lithe figure which he recognized at once as that of Dick Kaohla, the grandson of Kamaikui. He quickened his pace and joined the boy.

  “Hello, Dick,” he said.

  “Hello.” The brown face was sullen, unfriendly.

  “You haven’t been to see me for a long time,” Dan Winterslip said. “Everything all right?”

  “Sure,” replied Kaohla. “Sure it’s all right.” They reached the street, and the boy turned quickly away. “Good night,” he muttered.

  Dan Winterslip stood for a moment, thoughtfully looking after him. Then he got into the car. “No hurry now,” he remarked to the chauffeur.

  When he reappeared in his living-room, Miss Minerva glanced up from the book she was reading. “Were you in time, Dan?” she asked.

  “Just made it,” he told her.

  “Good,” she said, rising. “I’ll take my book and go upstairs. Pleasant dreams.”

  He waited until she reached the door before he spoke. “Ah — Minerva — don’t trouble to write your nephew about stopping here.”

  “No, Dan?” she said, puzzled again.

  “No. I’ve attended to the invitation myself. Good night.”

  “Oh — good night,” she answered, and left him.

  Alone in the great room, he paced restlessly back and forth over the polished floor. In a moment he went out on to the lanai, and found the newspaper
he had been reading earlier in the evening. He brought it back to the living-room and tried to finish it, but something seemed to trouble him. His eyes kept straying — straying — with a sharp exclamation he tore one corner from the shipping page, savagely ripped the fragment to bits.

  Again he got up and wandered about. He had intended paying a call down the beach, but that quiet presence in the room above — Boston in its more tolerant guise but Boston still — gave him pause.

  He returned to the lanai. There, under a mosquito netting, was the cot where he preferred to sleep; his dressing-room was near at hand. However, it was too early for bed. He stepped through the door on to the beach. Unmistakable, the soft treacherous breath of the Kona fanned his cheek — the “sick wind” that would pile the breakers high along the coast and blight temporarily this Island paradise. There was no moon, the stars that usually seemed so friendly and so close were now obscured. The black water rolled in like a threat. He stood staring out into the dark — out there to the crossroads where paths always crossed again. If you gave them time — if you only gave them time —

  As he turned back, his eyes went to the algaroba tree beyond the wire, and he saw the yellow flare of a match. His brother Amos. He had a sudden friendly feeling for Amos, he wanted to go over and talk to him, talk of the far days when they played together on this beach. No use, he knew. He sighed, and the screen door of the lanai banged behind him — the screen door without a lock in a land where locks are few.

  Tired, he sat in the dark to think. His face was turned toward the curtain of bamboo between him and the living-room. On that curtain a shadow appeared, was motionless a second, then vanished. He caught his breath — again the shadow. “Who’s there?” he called.

  A huge brown arm was thrust through the bamboo. A friendly brown face was framed there.

  “Your fruit I put on the table,” said Kamaikui. “I go to bed now.”

  “Of course. Go ahead. Good night.”

  The woman withdrew. Dan Winterslip was furious with himself. What was the matter with him, anyhow? He who had fought his way through unspeakable terrors in the early days — nervous — on edge —

  “Getting old,” he muttered. “No, by heaven — it’s the Kona. That’s it. The Kona. I’ll be all right when the trades blow again.”

  When the trades blew again! He wondered. Here at the crossroads one could not be sure.

  CHAPTER II

  The High Hat

  JOHN QUINCY WINTERSLIP walked aboard the ferry at Oakland feeling rather limp and weary. For more than six days he had been marooned on sleepers — his pause at Chicago had been but a flitting from one train to another — and he was fed up. Seeing America first — that was what he had been doing. And what an appalling lot of it there was! He felt that for an eternity he had been staring at endless plains, dotted here and there by unesthetic houses the inmates of which had unquestionably never heard a symphony concert.

  Ahead of him ambled a porter, bearing his two suitcases, his golf clubs and his hat-box. One of the man’s hands was gone — chewed off, no doubt, in some amiable frontier scuffle. In its place he wore a steel hook. Well, no one could question the value of a steel hook to a man in the porter’s profession. But how quaint — and western!

  The boy indicated a spot by the rail on the forward deck, and the porter began to unload. Carefully selecting the man’s good hand, John Quincy dropped into it a tip so generous as to result in a touching of hook to cap in a weird salute. The object of this attention sank down amid his elaborate trappings, removed the straw hat from his perspiring head, and tried to figure out just what had happened to him.

  Three thousand miles from Beacon Street, and two thousand miles still to go! Why, he inquired sourly of his usually pleasant self, had he ever agreed to make this absurd expedition into heathen country? Here it was late June, Boston was at its best. Tennis at Longwood, long mild evenings in a single shell on the Charles, weekends and golf with Agatha Parker at Magnolia. And if one must travel, there was Paris. He hadn’t seen Paris in two years and had been rather planning a quick run over, when his mother had put this preposterous notion into his head.

  Preposterous — it was all of that. Traveling five thousand miles just as a gentle hint to Aunt Minerva to return to her calm, well-ordered life behind purple window-panes on Beacon Street. And was there any chance that his strong-minded relative would take the hint? Not one in a thousand. Aunt Minerva was accustomed to do as she pleased — he had an uncomfortable, shocked recollection of one occasion when she had said she would do as she damn well pleased.

  John Quincy wished he was back. He wished he was crossing Boston Common to his office on State Street, there to put out a new issue of bonds. He was not yet a member of the firm — that was an honor accorded only to Winterslips who were bald and a little stooped — but his heart was in his work. He put out a bond issue with loving apprehension, waiting for the verdict as a playwright waits behind the scenes on a first night. Would those First Mortgage Sixes go over big, or would they flop at his feet?

  The hoarse boom of a ferry whistle recalled John Quincy to his present unbelievable location on the map. The boat began to move. He was dimly conscious of a young person of feminine gender who came and sat at his side. Away from the slip and out into the harbor the ferry carried John Quincy, and he suddenly sat up and took notice, for he was never blind to beauty, no matter where he encountered it.

  And he was encountering beauty now. The morning air was keen and dry and bright. Spread out before him was that harbor which is like a tired navigator’s dream come true. They passed Goat Island, and he heard the faint echo of a bugle, he saw Tamalpias lifting its proud head toward the sparkling sky, he turned, and there was San Francisco scattered blithely over its many hills.

  The ferry plowed on, and John Quincy sat very still. A forest of masts and steam funnels — here was the water-front that had supplied the atmosphere for those romantic tales that held him spellbound when he was a boy at school — a quiet young Winterslip whom the gypsy strain had missed. Now he could distinguish a bark from Antwerp, a great liner from the Orient, a five-masted schooner that was reminiscent of those supposedly forgotten stories. Ships from the Treaty Ports, ships from cocoanut islands in southern seas. A picture as intriguing and colorful as a back drop in a theater — but far more real.

  Suddenly John Quincy stood up. A puzzled look had come into his calm gray eyes. “I — I don’t understand,” he murmured.

  He was startled by the sound of his own voice. He hadn’t intended to speak aloud. In order not to appear too utterly silly, he looked around for some one to whom he might pretend he had addressed that remark. There was no one about — except the young person who was obviously feminine and therefore not to be informally accosted.

  John Quincy looked down at her. Spanish or something like that, blue-black hair, dark eyes that were alight now with the amusement she was striving to hide, a delicate oval face tanned a deep brown. He looked again at the harbor — beauty all about the boat, and beauty on it. Much better than traveling on trains!

  The girl looked up at John Quincy. She saw a big, broad-shouldered young man with a face as innocent as a child’s. A bit of friendliness, she decided instantly, would not be misunderstood.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said.

  “Oh — I — I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean — I spoke without intending — I said I didn’t understand —”

  “You didn’t understand what?”

  “A most amazing thing has happened,” he continued. He sat down, and waved his hand toward the harbor. “I’ve been here before.”

  She looked perplexed. “Lots of people have,” she admitted.

  “But — you see — I mean — I’ve never been here before.”

  She moved away from him. “Lots of people haven’t.” She admitted that, too.

  John Quincy took a deep breath. What was this discussion he had got into, anyhow? He had a quick impulse to
lift his hat gallantly and walk away, letting the whole matter drop. But no, he came of a race that sees things through.

  “I’m from Boston,” he said.

  “Oh,” said the girl. That explained everything.

  “And what I’m trying to make clear — although of course there’s no reason why I should have dragged you into it —”

  “None whatever,” she smiled. “But go on.”

  “Until a few days ago I was never west of New York, never in my whole life, you understand. Been about New England a bit, and abroad a few times, but the West —”

  “I know. It didn’t interest you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” protested John Quincy with careful politeness. “But there was such a lot of it — exploring it seemed a hopeless undertaking. And then — the family thought I ought to go, you see — so I rode and rode on trains and was — you’ll pardon me — a bit bored. Now — I come into this harbor, I look around me, and I get the oddest feeling. I feel that I’ve been here before.”

  The girl’s face was sympathetic. “Other people have had that experience,” she told him. “Choice souls, they are. You’ve been a long time coming, but you’re home at last.” She held out a slim brown hand. “Welcome to your city,” she said.

  John Quincy solemnly shook hands. “Oh, no,” he corrected gently. “Boston’s my city. I belong there, naturally. But this — this is familiar.” He glanced northward at the low hills sheltering the Valley of the Moon, then back at San Francisco. “Yes, I seem to have known my way about here once. Astonishing, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps — some of your ancestors —”

  “That’s true. My grandfather came out here when he was a young man. He went home again — but his brothers stayed. It’s the son of one of them I’m going to visit in Honolulu.”

  “Oh — you’re going on to Honolulu?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Have you ever been there?”

  “Ye — es.” Her dark eyes were serious. “See — there are the locks — that’s where the East begins. The real East. And Telegraph Hill —” she pointed; no one in Boston ever points, but she was so lovely John Quincy overlooked it — “and Russian Hill and the Fairmont on Nob Hill.”