“I know him,” nodded Graves.
“I showed him that tombstone on the back of the dead man. He examined it through a magnifying glass. To him that design was as plain as a fingerprint to your department at Scotland Yard.”
“What was plain about it?”
“That it was the work of a Japanese tattoo artist. I don’t know whether you are aware, Graves, but the art of tattooing began in the East and reached its highest development in Japan. The Japanese became past-masters of the art. Then it was prohibited in the East, and it traveled across the world and flourished in our East End.”
“Japanese!” said the startled Graves. “That girl we saw weeping for her father was half Japanese.”
Isaac Heron nodded.
“Her mother was pure Japanese. She married Elmer Hayes when, as a sailor, he landed in Japan. And as my tattoo expert pointed out, the majority of the three hundred and fifty designs on that body we saw had been done by Japanese artists.”
“As also the tombstone?”
“Yes, the tombstone that was pricked into his body only a few days ago,” emphasized the gypsy. “But the artist who executed that design, even though murder was in his heart and stringing at the end of his needles, couldn’t resist putting his signature to his devilment.”
“Signature! I saw no signature.” protested Graves.
“Just the letters ‘Y.S.’ beneath the inscription on the tombstone,” said Heron. “They were enough.”
The Scotland Yard man gave a quick glance out of the window of the taxi.
“I say, Heron, this fellow is heading for Limehouse. Is that all right?”
“Quite all right. Limehouse is where the Orientals insist upon clustering, in London. Chinese—and Japanese,” he added significantly.
“Japanese?”
“I took the liberty of telephoning the Poplar police-station in your name,” explained Heron. “I asked them if they knew of any Japanese claiming to be a tattooer, with the initials Y.S., who had set up shop in their district. I must say they were exceedingly smart. Within ten minutes they had the information for me. Yogai Safu was my man. His address was Limehouse Causeway. And here we are!”
Heron tapped sharply on the driver’s window. The man slurred his cab against the pavement and stopped. The two men stepped out. They were at the entrance to that dark, twisting gully of a street where solitary men shuffle quietly against unlighted houses.
Limehouse Causeway.
Followed by the Scotland Yard man, Isaac Heron plunged into that cleft in the darkness. They walked for about a hundred yards, then the gypsy stopped outside a shuttered shop that presented a blind exterior. The gypsy stretched out a hand, found a door-knob, turned it and padded along a narrow corridor. Then he opened another door and entered a room badly lit by a shield of bluish white gas.
Graves shuffled after him and peered about expectantly. It was the second strange interior he had seen that evening. The dirty yellow of the walls was an almost perfect camouflage for the wrinkled almond face of an old Japanese squatting on a heap of greasy cushions. There was not even a blink of surprise on that impassive Oriental face as it regarded the intruders.
“Yogai Safu?” asked the gypsy.
“Your honorable servant,” replied the Japanese, bowing and displaying a smooth bald head. “What would you have me do, gentlemen?”
His English was passable, his manner completely assured. Isaac Heron smiled easily.
“I’ve a friend here who wants to be tattooed.” Graves started; but Heron went on without a pause: “A sailorman tells me that Japs are the best at the job, and I saw the card in your window yesterday. Can you do the job?”
“It is, gentlemen, somewhat late in the evening.”
“But my friend is willing to pay,” added Heron.
The Scotland Yard man sniffed. This opening conversation was not to his liking. He preferred more direct methods. He opened his mouth and spoke roughly.
“What I want to know—” he began.
But Heron quickly interposed.
“My friend, as you will gather, is a little nervous. But then they all are, eh? Graves, strip off your coat and bare your arm to the gentleman.”
Mechanically, but more worried than ever, the Scotland Yard man obeyed. Despite the absurdity of the situation, his trained eyes were observing every detail, every object in that strange room.
A long low table was covered with little colored bowls and bottles—inks for the tattooer. A bunch of gleaming needles lay in a tray. And behind the table, against the wall, was pasted a medley of designs: mermaids rising on their tails, cherry trees dripping blossoms, a naked diver fighting a shark under water, a dragon breathing fire—these and scores of other sensational and murderous designs were ranged there.
“What a beautiful white skin for tattooing!”
The old Japanese was purring as he took the bared left arm of Graves in his own yellow fingers. The Scotland Yard man shuddered at the touch. At the same time he gave an appealing glance at Isaac Heron which suggested that the farce had gone far enough.
“And will the gentleman decide upon the design?” asked the Japanese.
Heron replied with that subtle smile:
“My friend is often in dangerous situations. He might easily be killed and his body be unrecognized. Now I suggest that, as a form of identification, you tattoo a tombstone on his arm.”
“A tombstone!”
The oblique eyes of the Japanese seemed to become mere slits in a yellow mask as he repeated the words.
“Why not?” inquired the gypsy. “It’s not an unusual design, is it?”
“No.”
“Then go ahead.”
The yellow hand stretched out for a needle. The point was tried against a thumb. He lit a spirit lamp and dabbed the needle in the flame. Then he dipped it into a little bowl of purple ink.
“And what name would the honorable gentleman like to have tattooed on the tombstone?” asked the Japanese, the needle poised in the air.
“Detective Inspector Graves of Scotland Yard,” replied Isaac Heron.
Graves felt the clutch on his arm tighten. But on the face of the tattooer there was no expression.
“Very well,” he murmured and dipped the needle into another bowl.
The slitted eyes were regarding the sinewy white arm that he held in his grasp. Beads of perspiration broke out on the brow of the detective. His own gaze was fixed upon that gleaming needle that was about to plunge into his arm.
But even as the needle came toward the white skin, the hand of Isaac Heron was quicker. His fingers clutched the hand of the old Japanese in a vise-like grip.
“Grab the other hand, Graves!” came his warning voice.
The Scotland Yard man was only too eager to obey. In a few seconds the Japanese was lying on the cushions, his yellow wrists circled with the steel handcuffs which Graves always thoughtfully carried about with him.
“Poison, as I suspected,” said Heron, sniffing at one of the little bowls. “Once he heard you were from Scotland Yard, he realized he was suspected. He intended you to go the same way as Elmer Hayes. Isn’t that so, Yogai Safu?”
For once the yellow mask was twisted with rage.
“Elmer Hayes was a white dog. He deserved to die. Twenty years ago I swore, at the shrine of my ancestors, to kill him!”
“Twenty years ago!” Isaac Heron lifted an eyebrow inquiringly.
The Japanese hissed through clenched teeth: “Twenty years ago, Elmer Hayes posed as an honorable gentleman, and came to my studio in Yokohama for be tattooed. He wanted many, many designs upon body. I not know it was intention to show himself to crowds and make money by displaying body. Ugh! A vulgar practice. But many things I did not know at that time.”
“What else didn’t you know?” asked the gypsy.
“Elmer Hayes had infatuated my daughter, my only daughter. She was as sweet as cherry blossom in spring. I loved her as the last descendant of most honorable ancest
ors. That white dog from overseas smuggled her away in steamer.”
The old man’s voice was firm. Not a tear trickled down that wrinkled face.
“And then?” encouraged Heron.
“I make for hara-kiri,” said the old man. “But even as I prepare before shrine of ancestors, voice told me it was duty to get vengeance first. Honor had been violated. Until stain had been washed out with blood, my work on this miserable earth not ended. I packed up my needles, my inks and my kakemono, and sailed for America.
“A stranger in strange countries, it was not easy for me to follow their path. I find myself always too late. Across America, into Europe, through far lands I follow—for twenty years! I must stop often to earn money with tattoo. I open studio here in London. Then one morning the man himself walked into studio.
“The gods of my ancestors had answered my prayers and given enemy into my hands. He not recognize me. I used the same initials, but fake name. He saw only an old Nipponese who practice ancient art of tattooing. He asked me to prick design on back, one of few empty places left. I think first kill him quick. Then I remember he taken my daughter to live his life of shame; she had died in poverty. He must suffer for that. So, slowly, with cunning, I pricked poison into his body while making tombstone on his back. I knew just when that poison would take effect. So I pricked date on tombstone.”
“Yes, we saw it,” said Graves roughly. “On his dead body, eh?” chuckled the old man.
There was silence for a moment. Then Isaac Heron spoke.
“There is one thing you do not know, old man,” he said.
“And what is that, honorable sir?”
“Elmer Hayes has a daughter. You are her grandfather.”
Once again came that hiss of emotion through clenched teeth. The old Japanese seemed to age before their eyes.
“That I did not know,” he faltered. “Is—is she beautiful?”
“Like her mother.”
The old man sighed.
“It is not right that her grandfather should be branded as a murderer.”
The remark seemed to rouse Detective Inspector Graves. He reached out for his coat and struggled into it.
“We’ll be making our way to the station,” he said. “I must phone to stop the burial of Elmer Hayes for tomorrow.”
He took hold of the old Japanese and raised him from the couch of cushions. In that moment the man seemed to age incredibly; he swayed and almost crumpled to the floor. With a jerk Graves brought him to his feet.
“I apologize, honorable sir,” smiled the Japanese weakly. “You see, I am dying.”
“Dying!” Graves stared, disconcerted. “Yes,” mumbled the old man. “My work now is finished. I have avenged. It is better for the girl—she who is my granddaughter—that I do not live.”
He seemed to lapse into a coma. With the help of Isaac Heron the detective carried the Japanese to the door. Under the light of the street lamp the gypsy gave the old man a searching glance.
“Yes,” he nodded to Graves. “I think he is dying—and because he has determined in his mind to die. I doubt whether you’ll ever get him to trial. The ways of the Oriental are strange, Graves.” And he went off in search of a taxi, leaving Graves supporting a very old and unconscious man.
TRIGGER MEN, by Eustace Cockrell
Mudd didn’t want to go. We’d been having a nice time as we were: Mudd because I’d brought a bottle of very special Scotch over to him, I because I had finally got him to talking. Detective Sergeant Joe Mudd couldn’t talk without being interesting.
He had been telling me about the time two or three years before when a couple of guns had tried to free Jake Zeppechi when they were putting him on the train, taking him to the Federal prison. The guns were dead; they had killed Zeppechi and killed three of his guards; two of them had been F.B.I. men, and the Department of Justice had squared up with them. The other one had been Red Armstrong, a White Falls detective.
“Yes,” Mudd had said. “They took care of the trigger men. A couple of coked-up lads doin’ a job of work for their price. The papers said they were tryin’ to lift Zeppechi. They weren’t. They were hired to kill Zeppechi, because Zeppechi was gonna talk. The guards just happened to be in the way when they turned loose with their typewriter.”
Just then the phone had rung.
Mudd came back swearing dispassionately. “Yes,” he went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “they can’t ever prove that, but I know it’s so. And I know the guy that had it done, and I’ll take care of that some time. Red Armstrong got his that day, and Red was a friend of mine.… I got to go downtown now. You want to come?”
“Where to?” I asked.
“Carlotta’s,” Mudd said, pulling on his coat. I got up and put on my coat too. Carlotta’s was exciting, even if nothing happened.
We went down in the elevator and out in through the lobby and got in Mudd’s car. I didn’t ask him why we were going, or what the phone-call had been, because I knew he wouldn’t tell me until he wanted to, and then I wouldn’t have to ask.
Carlotta’s is down on the river-front; you have to drive over three blocks of rough cobblestones, between high walls of unlighted dinginess, to reach it.
Inside, the ceiling is low and the lights are never bright. Usually the air is stale. But the rough tables are solid walnut, the checked cloths are linen, the glass is crystal. And there is a swell band there—the swellest that has ever been in White Falls.
Mudd pulled his car up across the street from the little sign, and my heart started beating a bit faster in spite of myself as I watched him check over his service revolver, which he was wearing in a shoulder-holster under his coat.
“Just routine,” he said. “Some dame called me up and told me to come down here. Said somebody was scheduled to get bumped off, and if I was sittin’ in the place it probably wouldn’t come off. The chances are a hundred to one it was some crank, or some of my so-called friends with that kind of a sense of humor.” He put the gun back in its holster. “But anyway,” he added, “there’s no use takin’ chances.”
There was a good crowd when we got there at ten-thirty. All sorts of people. It was always like that. Thugs and punks and gangsters, play-boys and men-about-town and aristocrats.
“Margot,” as the orchestra leader had announced her, was dancing. Margot was a small blonde, and to my mind no dancer. I was looking around.
Joe Mudd and I were seated at a table for two over against one wall, and from it I could see the entire room; but I saw it only as a composite picture with little attention to any person or detail that went to make up the whole.
Later I was sorry there was no complete clarity to my mental image—a clarity about which I could be definite and certain. But as I looked back on it, I got only the same picture I got that night when I tried to reconstruct the scene of those first few minutes.
Margot had finished her dance and was leaving the floor. I remember that. The place was now full of people. A lot of them I knew myself, and some of them Mudd had identified for me.
But I didn’t see them as people so much, this important moment. I saw them more as impressionistic flashes of different things that went to make up the night-club that was Carlotta’s.
Carlotta herself had come onto the floor and begun her song. And when you saw and heard Carlotta, you knew why the place was as popular as it was. She was singing “Midnight Babies,” and the light on her had begun to dim. All the other lights in the house were out then, as always when she sang.
In the hazy reflection from the spot, as my eyes swept the room and then fastened on Carlotta, I got only these momentary glimpses of people.
I saw Ike Stein, a small-time racketeer, sitting at a table by himself at the edge of the dance floor and eying the sultry beauty of the singer with a not too subdued covetousness in his eyes.… I saw Arnold Marshalt sitting at a table behind Ike Stein’s. He was with his sister and Bud Fenston, his sister’s fiance. Marshalt was young and good-looki
ng and rich. His eyes were not readable but they had something somber in them and they were not on Carlotta. They were on Bud Fenston—Bud Fenston, sitting pale and drawn, looking determinedly at Evelyn Marshalt, whose face held a hopelessness strangely out of place on those finely chiseled features you felt were designed to reflect gayety.… I saw Junky Rothfuss sitting at a table beside Marshalt’s. He was with some other people, but he might have been alone. He was cold and quiet, and there was no more in his eyes than in those things that hang in front of optometrists’ shops. He was a known power in the White Falls underworld. How high his power reached no one knew; Carlotta was said to be his girl.
I saw—but of course, I didn’t see these things: I only got impressions of them. All I saw was Carlotta, for she was singing, and when she sang, that’s all you knew about.
The spot of light was getting dimmer, as it always did when she sang. Then on the last note of her song the light would go out entirely, and there would be darkness complete for one moment while utter silence held the place. Then the light would come on, and the band would play, and everyone would be talking at once in a sort of uneasy way. That’s what Carlotta did.
That’s why you watched her. Tonight it was like other nights. She was standing there singing. Then it happened.
There was no warning unless you count the tenseness that always hung over things down there. But it went very quickly. Too much so, for when it was over, I could remember it only in fleeting glimpses, like a movie in which everything has been falsely speeded up.
The detonation of the shot rumbled in that low room, and I saw a figure dive awkwardly toward Carlotta’s feet and lie there, blood spurting from what had been a head.
The spotlight on Carlotta, the only light, went out. But as it went out, there was quick movement across the room, scuffling noise, a grunt; I saw Bud Fenston moving, and I saw Marshalt move, jostling Rothfuss as he rose.
And then across the table from me a chair scraped harshly on the floor, and there was a rattle as it fell.
* * * *
Joe Mudd was standing up, and in the darkness there was the hoarse and reassuring bellow of his voice:
The Detective Megapack Page 91
