NAMES IN THE BLACK BOOK
~
“THREE UNSOLVED MURDERS IN A week are not so unusual—for River Street,” grunted Steve Harrison, shifting his muscular bulk restlessly in his chair.
His companion lighted a cigarette and Harrison observed that her slim hand was none too steady. She was exotically beautiful, a dark, supple figure, with the rich colors of purple Eastern nights and crimson dawns in her dusky hair and red lips. But in her dark eyes Harrison glimpsed the shadow of fear. Only once before had he seen fear in those marvelous eyes, and the memory made him vaguely uneasy.
“It’s your business to solve murders,” she said.
“Give me a little time. You can’t rush things, when you’re dealing with the people of the Oriental quarter.”
“You have less time than you think,” she answered cryptically. “If you do not listen to me, you’ll never solve these killings.”
“I’m listening.”
“But you won’t believe. You’ll say I’m hysterical—seeing ghosts and shying at shadows.”
“Look here, Joan,” he exclaimed impatiently. “Come to the point. You called me to your apartment and I came because you said you were in deadly danger. But now you’re talking riddles about three men who were killed last week. Spill it plain, won’t you?”
“Do you remember Erlik Khan?” she asked abruptly.
Involuntarily his hand sought his face, where a thin scar ran from temple to jaw-rim.
“I’m not likely to forget him,” he said. “A Mongol who called himself Lord of the Dead. His idea was to combine all the Oriental criminal societies in America in one big organization, with himself at the head. He might have done it, too, if his own men hadn’t turned on him.”
“Erlik Khan has returned,” she said.
“What!” His head jerked up and he glared at her incredulously. “What are you talking about? I saw him die, and so did you!”
“I saw his hood fall apart as Ali ibn Suleyman struck with his keen-edged scimitar,” she answered. “I saw him roll to the floor and lie still. And then the house went up in flames, and the roof fell in, and only charred bones were ever found among the ashes. Nevertheless, Erlik Khan has returned.”
Harrison did not reply, but sat waiting for further disclosures, sure they would come in an indirect way. Joan La Tour was half Oriental, and partook of many of the characteristics of her subtle kin.
“How did those three men die?” she asked, though he was aware that she knew as well as he.
“Li-chin, the Chinese merchant, fell from his own roof,” he grunted. The people on the street heard him scream and then saw him come hurtling down. Might have been an accident—but middle-aged Chinese merchants don’t go climbing around on roofs at midnight.
“Ibrahim ibn Achmet, the Syrian curio dealer, was bitten by a cobra. That might have been an accident too, only I know somebody dropped the snake on him through his skylight.
“Jacob Kossova, the Levantine exporter, was simply knifed in a back alley. Dirty jobs, all of them, and no apparent motive on the surface. But motives are hidden deep, in River Street. When I find the guilty parties I’ll uncover the motives.”
“And these murders suggest nothing to you?” exclaimed the girl, tense with suppressed excitement. “You do not see the link that connects them? You do not grasp the point they all have in common? Listen—all these men were formerly associated in one way or another with Erlik Khan!”
“Well?” he demanded. “That doesn’t mean that the Khan’s spook killed them! We found plenty of bones in the ashes of the house, but there were members of his gang in other parts of the city. His gigantic organization went to pieces, after his death, for lack of a leader, but the survivors were never uncovered. Some of them might be paying off old grudges.”
“Then why did they wait so long to strike? It’s been a year since we saw Erlik Khan die. I tell you, the Lord of the Dead himself, alive or dead, has returned and is striking down these men for one reason or another. Perhaps they refuse to do his bidding once more. Five were marked for death. Three have fallen.”
“How do you know that?” said he.
“Look!” From beneath the cushions of the divan on which she sat she drew something, and rising, came and bent beside him while she unfolded it.
It was a square piece of parchment-like substance, black and glossy. On it were written five names, one below the other, in a bold flowing hand— and in crimson, like spilled blood. Through the first three names a crimson bar had been drawn. They were the names of Li-chin, Ibrahim ibn Achmet, and Jacob Kossova. Harrison grunted explosively. The last two names, as yet unmarred, were those of Joan La Tour and Stephen Harrison.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded.
“It was shoved under my door last night, while I slept. If all the doors and windows had not been locked, the police would have found it pinned to my corpse this morning.”
“But still I don’t see what connection—”
“It is a page from the Black Book of Erlik Khan!” she cried. “The book of the dead! I have seen it, when I was a subject of his in the old days. There he kept accounts of his enemies, alive and dead. I saw that book, open, the very day of the night Ali ibn Suleyman killed him—a big book with jade- hinged ebony covers and glossy black parchment pages. Those names were not in it then; they have been written in since Erlik Khan died—and that is Erlik Khan’s handwriting!”
If Harrison was impressed he failed to show it.
“Does he keep his books in English?”
“No, in a Mongolian script. This is for our benefit. And I know we are hopelessly doomed. Erlik Khan never warned his victims unless he was sure of them.”
“Might be a forgery,” grunted the detective.
“No! No man could imitate Erlik Khan’s hand. He wrote those names himself. He has come back from the dead! Hell could not hold a devil as black as he!” Joan was losing some of her poise in her fear and excitement. She ground out the half-consumed cigarette and broke the cover of a fresh carton. She drew forth a slim white cylinder and tossed the package on the table. Harrison took it up and absently extracted one for himself.
“Our names are in the Black Book! It is a sentence of death from which there is no appeal!” She struck a match and was lifting it, when Harrison struck the cigarette from her with a startled oath. She fell back on the divan, bewildered at the violence of his action, and he caught up the package and began gingerly to remove the contents.
“Where’d you get these things?”
“Why, down at the corner drug store, I guess,” she stammered. “That’s where I usually—”
“Not these you didn’t,” he grunted. “These fags have been specially treated. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve seen one puff of the stuff knock a man stone dead. Some kind of a hellish Oriental drug mixed with the tobacco. You were out of your apartment while you were phoning me—”
“I was afraid my wire was tapped,” she answered. “I went to a public booth down the street.”
“And it’s my guess somebody entered your apartment while you were gone and switched cigarettes on you. I only got a faint whiff of the stuff when I started to put that fag in my mouth, but it’s unmistakable. Smell it yourself. Don’t be afraid. It’s deadly only when ignited.”
She obeyed, and turned pale.
“I told you! We were the direct cause of Erlik Khan’s overthrow! If you hadn’t smelt that drug, we’d both be dead now, as he intended!”
“Well,” he grunted, “it’s a cinch somebody’s after you, anyway. I still say it can’t be Erlik Khan, because nobody could live after the lick on the head I saw Ali ibn Suleyman hand him, and I don’t believe in ghosts. But you’ve got to be protected until I run down whoever is being so free with his poisoned cigarettes.”
“What about yourself? Your name’s in his book, too.”
“Never mind me,” Harrison growled pugnaciously. “I reckon I can take care of myself.” He looked c
apable enough, with his cold blue eyes, and the muscles bulging in his coat. He had shoulders like a bull.
“This wing’s practically isolated from the rest of the building,” he said, “and you’ve got the third floor to yourself?”
“Not only the third floor of the wing,” she answered. “There’s no one else on the third floor anywhere in the building at present.”
“That makes it fine!” he exclaimed irritably. “Somebody could sneak in and cut your throat without disturbing anyone. That’s what they’ll try, too, when they realize the cigarettes didn’t finish you. You’d better move to a hotel.”
“That wouldn’t make any difference,” she answered, trembling. Her nerves obviously were in a bad way. “Erlik Khan would find me, anywhere. In a hotel, with people coming and going all the time, and the rotten locks they have on the doors, with transoms and fire escapes and everything, it would just be that much easier for him.”
“Well, then, I’ll plant a bunch of cops around here.”
“That wouldn’t do any good, either. Erlik Khan has killed again and again in spite of the police. They do not understand his ways.”
“That’s right,” he muttered uncomfortably aware of a conviction that to summon men from headquarters would surely be signing those men’s death warrants, without accomplishing anything else. It was absurd to suppose that the dead Mongol fiend was behind these murderous attacks, yet— Harrison’s flesh crawled along his spine at the memory of things that had taken place in River Street—things he had never reported, because he did not wish to be thought either a liar or a madman. The dead do not return —but what seems absurd on Thirty-ninth Boulevard takes on a different aspect among the haunted labyrinths of the Oriental quarter.
“Stay with me!” Joan’s eyes were dilated, and she caught Harrison’s arm with hands that shook violently. “We can defend these rooms! While one sleeps the other can watch! Do not call the police; their blunders would doom us. You have worked in the quarter for years, and are worth more than the whole police force. The mysterious instincts that are a part of my Eastern heritage are alert to danger. I feel peril for us both, near, creeping closer, gliding around us like serpents in the darkness!”
“But I can’t stay here,” he scowled worriedly. “We can’t barricade ourselves and wait for them to starve us out. I’ve got to hit back—find out who’s behind all this. The best defense is a good offense. But I can’t leave you here unguarded, either. Damn!” He clenched his big fists and shook his head like a baffled bull in his perplexity.
“There is one man in the city besides yourself I could trust,” she said suddenly. “One worth more than all the police. With him guarding me I could sleep safely.”
“Who is he?”
“Khoda Khan.”
“That fellow? Why, I thought he’d skipped months ago.”
“No; he’s been hiding in Levant Street.”
“But he’s a confounded killer himself!”
“No, he isn’t; not according to his standards, which means as much to him as yours do to you. He’s an Afghan who was raised in a code of blood-feud and vengeance. He’s as honorable according to his creed of life as you or I. And he’s my friend. He’d die for me.”
“I reckon that means you’ve been hiding him from the law,” said Harrison with a searching glance which she did not seek to evade. He made no further comment. River Street is not South Park Avenue. Harrison’s own methods were not always orthodox, but they generally got results.
“Can you reach him?” he asked abruptly. She nodded.
“Alright. Call him and tell him to beat it up here. Tell him he won’t be molested by the police, and after the brawl’s over, he can go back into hiding. But after that it’s open season if I catch him. Use your phone. Wire may be tapped, but we’ll have to take the chance. I’ll go downstairs and use the booth in the office. Lock the door, and don’t open it to anybody until I get back.”
When the bolts clicked behind him, Harrison turned down the corridor toward the stairs. The apartment house boasted no elevator. He watched all sides warily as he went. A peculiarity of architecture had, indeed, practically isolated that wing. The wall opposite Joan’s doors was blank. The only way to reach the other suites on that floor was to descend the stair and ascend another on the other side of the building.
As he reached the stair he swore softly; his heel had crunched a small vial on the first step. With some vague suspicion of a planted poison trap he stooped and gingerly investigated the splintered bits and the spilled contents. There was a small pool of colorless liquid which gave off a pungent, musky odor, but there seemed nothing lethal about it.
“Some damned Oriental perfume Joan dropped, I reckon,” he decided. He descended the twisting stair without further delay and was presently in the booth in the office which opened on the street; a sleepy clerk dozed behind the desk.
Harrison got the chief of police on the wire and began abruptly.
“Say, Hoolihan, you remember that Afghan, Khoda Khan, who knifed a Chinaman about three months ago? Yes, that’s the one. Well, listen: I’m using him on a job for a while, so tell your men to lay off, if they see him. Pass the word along pronto. Yes, I know it’s very irregular; so’s the job I hold down. In this case it’s the choice of using a fugitive from the law, or seeing a law-abiding citizen murdered. Never mind what it’s all about. This is my job, and I’ve got to handle it my own way. All right; thanks.”
He hung up the receiver, thought vigorously for a few minutes, and then dialed another number that was definitely not related to the police station. In place of the chief’s booming voice there sounded at the other end of the wire a squeaky whine framed in the argot of the underworld.
“Listen, Johnny,” said Harrison with his customary abruptness, “you told me you thought you had a lead on the Kossova murder. What about it?”
“It wasn’t no lie, boss!” The voice at the other end trembled with excitement. “I got a tip, and it’s big!— big! I can’t spill it over the phone, and I don’t dare stir out. But if you’ll meet me at Shan Yang’s hop joint, I’ll give you the dope. It’ll knock you loose from your props, believe me it will!”
“I’ll be there in an hour,” promised the detective. He left the booth and glanced briefly out into the street. It was a misty night, as so many River Street nights are. Traffic was only a dim echo from some distant, busier section. Drifting fog dimmed the street lamps, shrouding the forms of occasional passers-by. The stage was set for murder; it only awaited the appearance of the actors in the dark drama.
Harrison mounted the stairs again. They wound up out of the office and up into the third story wing without opening upon the second floor at all. The architecture, like much of it in or near the Oriental section, was rather unusual. People of the quarter were notoriously fond of privacy, and even apartment houses were built with this passion in mind. His feet made no sound on the thickly carpeted stairs, though a slight crunching at the top step reminded him of the broken vial again momentarily. He had stepped on the splinters.
He knocked at the locked door, answered Joan’s tense challenge and was admitted. He found the girl more self-possessed.
“I talked with Khoda Khan. He’s on his way here now. I warned him that the wire might be tapped—that our enemies might know as soon as I called him, and try to stop him on his way here.”
“Good,” grunted the detective. “While I’m waiting for him I’ll have a look at your suite.”
There were four rooms, drawing room in front, with a large bedroom behind it, and behind that two smaller rooms, the maid’s bedroom and the bathroom. The maid was not there, because Joan had sent her away at the first intimation of danger threatening. The corridor ran parallel with the suite, and the drawing room, large bedroom and bathroom opened upon it. That made three doors to consider. The drawing room had one big east window, overlooking the street, and one on the south. The big bedroom had one south window, and the maid’s room one south and on
e west window. The bathroom had one window, a small one in the west wall, overlooking a small court bounded by a tangle of alleys and board-fenced backyards.
“Three outside doors and six windows to be watched, and this the top story,” muttered the detective. “I still think I ought to get some cops here.” But he spoke without conviction. He was investigating the bathroom when Joan called him cautiously from the drawing room, telling him that she thought she had heard a faint scratching outside the door. Gun in hand he opened the bathroom door and peered out into the corridor. It was empty. No shape of horror stood before the drawing room door. He closed the door, called reassuringly to the girl, and completed his inspection, grunting approval. Joan La Tour was a daughter of the Oriental quarter. Long ago she had provided against secret enemies as far as special locks and bolts could provide. The windows were guarded with heavy iron-braced shutters, and there was no trapdoor, dumb waiter nor skylight anywhere in the suite.
“Looks like you’re ready for a siege,” he commented.
“I am. I have canned goods laid away to last for weeks. With Khoda Khan I can hold the fort indefinitely. If things get too hot for you, you’d better come back here yourself—if you can. It’s safer than the police station —unless they burn the house down.”
A soft rap on the door brought them both around.
“Who is it?” called Joan warily.
“I, Khoda Khan, sahiba,” came the answer in a low-pitched, but strong and resonant voice. Joan sighed deeply and unlocked the door. A tall figure bowed with a stately gesture and entered.
Khoda Khan was taller than Harrison, and though he lacked something of the American’s sheer bulk, his shoulders were equally broad, and his garments could not conceal the hard lines of his limbs, the tigerish suppleness of his motions. His garb was a curious combination of costume, which is common in River Street. He wore a turban which well set off his hawk nose and black beard, and a long silk coat hung nearly to his knees. His trousers were conventional, but a silk sash girdled his lean waist, and his foot-gear was Turkish slippers.
Detective of the Occult Page 4
