“I got to look around. I’ll be back later.”
“Don’t be too long. I got a surprise when you come back.”
“Everyone seems to have,” Carmody grumbled. “Don’t pick too many prunes.”
“I’ll split some oak to get limbered up first.”
He headed for the wood pile.
Honest John was gunning the engine when Agard yelled, “Hey, where’n hell’s that axe?” Pretending not to hear, he went helling down the drive. Carmody wanted to call Alma, but he resisted the urge. He had his badge with him; he’d brought it for sentimental reasons, and now it came in handy.
His first stop was the Coastline Bus Station. There he learned from the check sheets that two tickets for Coyote had been sold the night of the murders, but that only one had been taken up. And he found the cab driver who had taken Alma to the cannery.
“Yeah, she was with a tall, good-looking guy in a gray suit, and he was trying to kiss her good-night and she was saying, hurry, hurry, your bus is about leaving, and then she says to me, get going, I’m late for work.”
“He didn’t go with her then?”
“Nuh-uh. And I am damned if I know whether he made his bus.”
Carmody drove to Coyote again, which was tough on his “A” card.
The Mexican proprietor of the Eldorado, wiry man with twinkling eyes and wavy black hair, was on duty.
“Where’s Elwell live?”
“Go by the side stairs, mister.”
Carmody went. He knocked. He rattled the knob. There was no answer. Honest John returned to report his luck. The boss smiled. “I think maybe he quit. He is up too early, mos’ time he sleep till noon. You are the police?”
“Uh-huh. Take me up, will you?”
“With pleasure, sir. Is one lousy bartender anyway, and too much police yesterday.”
So Hapgood had been on the job, and plenty. As they went up the stairs, Carmody cursed solo plays.
“Where do you live, Mr. Lopez?”
“Nex’ door in the yellow house.”
He used his pass key. The bed was rumpled. Match and cigarette stumps littered the floor. The clothes closet was empty. Lopez went on, “Nice fellow, only he jerks down too much from the cash, every bartender does, a little is all right, too much is not. Bot the worst, he don’ like heavy work with the cases of beer.”
“Weak back?”
“Joost lazy. Maybe the truck crackup. When he go through the windshield to get cut up—I don’t know.”
* * * *
Carmody spent some moments looking at the dusty floor. Then back at the bar he bought a couple drinks, and asked, “What time’d he come in from his night off?”
“Is lousy business, I close early. I do not know, bot he was sleep late, like always.”
All of which proved zero. The only thing that did count was Elwell’s taking a powder. Maybe Agard’s release—Alma could have learned of it, and told Elwell—had made him think that since the Swede was not in deep enough to be held without bail, the cops would nail someone else. A mere runout, however, doesn’t by a long shot prove guilt, yet Carmody was good and griped, for he wanted more conversation with Alma’s ornamental husband.
On the way back, he debated the matter of going to Hapgood and telling all. The deputy wasn’t a bad egg. “And I’m losing my punch,” Carmody muttered, somberly. “Prune picking does something to a fellow.”
But first, he wanted to think it out.
Back at Agard’s, he found the old man riding herd on the pickers. The predicted surprise had materialized. Glancing at the wood pile, Carmody saw that the Swede had split his quota.
So Honest John got to work. Like all these murders in the farm belt, it would take time, and lots of it. Since a flash finish seemed out, the only move was to work, meet more neighbors, and finally get the answer. An answer is usually available, when the tight mouthed apple knockers finally decide to tell all.
The ground became rougher, and the prunes smaller, and the sun hotter. Agard finally said, some while before sunset, “You knock off, you being here counts more’n what you pick, it’s the example.”
So he hobbled after the Swede.
The local bus, jammed with cannery workers, was pulling up in front of Agard’s. A blonde girl, and a tall man in a gray suit got out. The Swede said, “That there’s the surprise.”
“That,” Carmody said when he was through gaping, “is gospel. What are they doing, heading for here?”
They were Alma and Orrin Elwell. The ex-bartender had two suitcases, one new, one battered. Alma had a bag.
“She’s come back to keep an eye on her orchard,” Agard explained, “and she talked him into getting out of a non-essential job and coming out to help her. Even if he ain’t worth a damn working, having a man around helps, with the pickers. And they’re going to stay here, it’s the handiest.”
In other words, Alma was now convinced that Gunnar Agard had not killed her parents; and her move would do more for the old Swede than the foxiest mouthpiece possibly could.
Alma was pleasant as though she and Carmody had not swapped words. Elwell made a good stab at pretending that Carmody had not socked his jaw. As for Carmody, he was still wondering which of the two men had hunted him with an axe. This was all too dizzy. He preferred his crimes straight, with a beer chaser.
Alma cooked supper. This wasn’t a game. Her eyes glowed. She was proud of Elwell, coming back to the farm. She did not look at all like the beaten and dazed girl who had flared up in anguish when Carmody deliberately knifed and ribbed her. Elwell had an alibi. Maybe Agard also had one. Everyone was at ease but Honest John, and he sat on the edge of his chair.
Alma refilled the coffee cups. Carmody broke out cigarettes. Then, as he fumbled for matches, the Swede said, “Some in the kitchen.”
“I’ll get them!” Alma was nearest the door.
But Elwell produced a book, and struck one. For his own, the third light, he took another. “Not that I’m superstitious.”
Alma piped up, “Orrin, must you always drop them on the floor!”
“Sorry, honey, I’m not behind a bar now.”
And then Carmody got it. He jerked his chair back. “But you damn’ soon will be behind bars.”
Elwell jumped up. “What’s that? By God, again?”
“You ground those match stumps into the floor, I heard you. Like you ground them in your room. And in the tool room, when you went to the gas barrel.”
His words shocked the three into a silence which gave him all the chance he wanted. “You flung that gas into their room. Because he—they—convinced your wife, you’d always be a bum.”
Elwell had cleared the table. His laugh was loud and shaky. “Because I grind matches. God, lots of people do!”
He started to swing at Carmody. He landed. The punch had no steam. Honest John came back, laying him flat and goggle-eyed. “Get back! The both of you, stand back!” he commanded. “He asked for that one, and this is business.”
The back door opened, just as Carmody stepped toward the ex-bartender. Hapgood stomped in. “Funny business, huh?”
Carmody knelt at Elwell’s feet, looked up, grinned. “For the second time, H, you’re not a pest. I’m betting this guy has blisters on his feet, and coal dust in his pants cuffs. Smithing coal from Bean’s tool room. And you look at the nail prints on the floor where he twisted his hoof on the matches.”
“That’s what you were looking for last night?”
“Uh-uh.” Carmody yanked off a shoe. “Look. Too much walking.” He ripped Elwell’s sleeve. “Scar on arm, glass cuts like on his face. Husky but no muck, glass cuts are nasty to muscle. That’s why that axe last night didn’t bite deep into the pillar when it missed my head, and that’s why he had to take three chops at old man Bean. Shake out his cuffs, Hapgood! That’s the payoff.”<
br />
And all the while, Alma stood there, color receding, eyes widened with horrified understanding. When Elwell sat up, blinking, she cried out, and ran from the room. “Bean said,” he croaked, “you come to finish me. You, Agard.”
“Bean was chopped dizzy and cross-eyed,” Carmody said. “The cops figured that out, and began wondering about prune pickers. So did Alma, or she’d never have come to this place. You probably didn’t want to come out here, but this was the chance to horn in on a nice farm and no work.”
Then, to Hapgood, “Take it away, he’s yours. I’m sick of all this, it’s worse’n prunes. I’ll be at the tourist court.”
When Hapgood left with his prisoner, the Swede asked in a low voice, “That late fire? That’s what nearly sunk me.”
“Just as a guess, he pulled the window down, cut off the draft. It took a while to break out and to the air. What set me thinking was the man taking gas from the barrel. If you’d done it, you’d brought your own gas, you got plenty. He hoofed from San Jose, instead of taking the bus for Coyote. He hoofed back to San Jose, making eight miles. No more bus to Coyote that night, he either hoofed or hitched a ride. Then last night, to conk me, he musta walked to and from San Jose.”
“No vonder he has blistered feet.” Agard cocked his head toward the bedroom. A pillow was muffling Alma’s sobbing. “Like he figured, she did give him a chance. Look here, you better start detecting again, you are no damn’ good picking prunes anyway. Too fat.”
Carmody straightened a kink out of back. “I’m picking ’em. There’s a war on. But not your prunes, Pop. I am getting out of here before I have to face her. She’s glad I done the trick but I don’t look good to her, and never will.”
The Swede nodded. “You are a good fellow. But quit calling me Pop, I ain’t so old.”
THE DRAGON’S SHADOW
Originally published in Clues Detective Stories, April 1935.
Two men sat face to face in a spacious second-floor room of a luxuriously-appointed house in the native quarter of Singapore. Not more than a yard of ornately-carved teak desk separated them, yet the gap between the two was as wide as all Asia, and as ancient as time itself. The one whose long, slender fingers still stroked the crystal globe at his right was of medium stature, lean and wiry. His dark eyes were faintly slanting, steel hard, and relentless as his thin-lipped mouth and predatory nose. He was Pâwang Ali, free-lance investigator, and mortally feared by criminals because he closed cases by submitting a report which inevitably read, “Killed while resisting arrest.”
The man facing Pâwang Ali broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and had a rugged, leathery face which for the moment was as somber as the downward droop of his sun-bleached, straw-colored mustache—Police Inspector Arnold Kemp, who was certain that two plus two invariably equals four.
The inspector jerked his chair back from his desk, snapped to his feet, and wrathfully declared, “You’ve given me nothing but a lot of occult rot, drivel and pipe dreams instead of information! Dragon, my eye! It’s nothing more or less than a gang of organized criminals that is terrorizing plantation owners.”
Inspector Kemp’s blue eyes shifted for a moment toward the astrological charts and crystal globe at the right of the desk. He swallowed his wrath, and resumed, “Damn it, don’t you see I can’t tell when your remarks are to be taken literally, and when they’re just figures of speech? Now start all over.”
A smile twitched for a moment at the corner of Pâwang Ali’s mouth; then he began, “As I said, the atrocious murders in Johore and Trengganu are the work of a person who calls himself the Father of Dragons, a murderous fanatic who is whispering of revolt to discontented Malay sultans, and trying to antagonize those who approve of British supervision. He is trying to get the war lords of China to cease fighting each other, join forces with their present common Asiatic enemy, and present a united front against Europeans.
“Is it just coincidence that your revenue cutters have found that most of the smugglers they’ve stopped between here and Sumatra have been loaded with munitions?
“Mr. Kemp, someone is planning to blow the lid from all Asia. I have been investigating for weeks. I know—only, I cannot be more explicit than to say that the Father of Dragons is the trouble maker.”
The inspector shook his head. His teeth clamped down on his cigar. He reached for his hat, jammed it well down to his ears, and stalked toward the door.
“Dragons be damned!” he muttered. The slam of the door cut short remarks that followed.
Pâwang Ali grinned and turned to the papers that covered his desk. He thrust aside the crystal globe and the astrological charts that had aroused the inspector’s wrath. They were aids to Pâwang Ali’s intuitive methods of investigation; and in addition, they served to distract the inspector’s attention from the Chinese and Malay assistants who combed the dives and alleys and outlying kampongs of Singapore in search of rumors and gossip which their master patiently pieced together and interpreted. Some of his assistants were in no position to bear official scrutiny; and what the inspector did not know would not cause him any loss of sleep.
A buzzer whirred. Pâwang Ali pressed one of the buttons near the edge of his desk. A short, gnarled, crafty-eyed Chinese entered the room. In his hand he carried a square package wrapped in a scarlet sarong. This he laid on the teak desk, explaining, “It was dropped at the side door. The messenger disappeared before we could stop him.”
“Very well, Wing Kee. Unwrap it.”
The Chinese obeyed. But before he could lift the cover of the cardboard box which the gaudy sarong had concealed, Pâwang Ali sensed what it must contain. The lower edge of the container was moist. Blood was seeping from a corner.
Pâwang Ali’s smooth, handsome face froze into grim lines, and his dark eyes narrowed. He recognized the face that stared at him from the box.
“Hussayn,” he said. His low voice trembled with wrath. He saw that the eyes had been gouged out, the ears clipped off. Inside the cover of the box were a few lines of Malay script.
“Your servant Hussayn saw and heard too much,” he read. “The Dragon’s shadow hangs over you. Cease meddling, or we will do as much, and more, for you.”
The message was unsigned; but above it was a vermilion imprint depicting a dragon. About the figure were blurred smudges and lines, as though some one had pressed his hand palm down against the seal.
Hussayn had been gone for a week, patiently following a rumor from to Johore and thence to Terengganu. His head proved that he had come close to the mysterious and sinister master of assassins whose presence in Malaya Pâwang Ali had suspected, and Inspector Kemp had denied.
The dragon was a symbol of power and imperial pretensions, as was the position of the seal, placed above the message. Hussayn, the wiliest of Pâwang Ali’s assistants, had found the Father of Dragons; but a parang had lifted his head from his shoulders before he could report. He had died less than an hour ago. Somewhere in Singapore a messenger was reporting that the grisly trophy had been delivered.
Pâwang Ali slowly rose from his chair. He had a debt to pay.
“Wing Kee,” he said solemnly, “this man was your brother, and the brother of all those who serve me. Go out and say to them that I will have the hand and the head of the man who did this thing. And find Hussayn’s body.”
Wing Kee shuffled to the door. Pâwang Ali for several moments stared at the head of the man who had died with his secret. Then he closely scrutinized the dragon seal. It had been applied in the Chinese manner: the raised portions of the die had been painted with pigment and then pressed against the moistened paper; but neither reason nor fancy could account for the smudges and palm lines that surrounded the image of the symbol of power.
“This,” murmured Pâwang Ali to the silence of the room, “may open the inspector’s eyes.”
He picked up the cover of the box. It was labeled: Little’s—“
The Finest Store East of Suez”—Singapore & Kuala Lumpur. Judging from its size and shape, it had contained a topee, or cork helmet worn by Europeans to break the fierce rays of the Malayan sun. The cardboard, inside and out, was fresh, neither bleached nor yellowed by exposure. He lifted the severed head from the packing in which it was nested. Part of it was tissue; the rest was pieces of newspaper, dated that day. On the inside of the box he saw scarcely perceptible abrasions—marks left by the edge of a sun helmet, and the substance used for whitening it.
There was no delivery address on the cover of the box. The purchaser of the sun helmet had carried it to his quarters. Nevertheless, the anonymous purchaser could be traced, even in a city of over a quarter of a million inhabitants. If the person buying the topee were a stranger, he would have paid cash; otherwise, nine times out of ten, he would have signed a chit. If the latter, there would be a record; if the former, some clerk would remember the unusual cash-and-carry purchase.
Pâwang Ali thrust the cover aside, hitched himself toward the crystal ball, dusted its surface with a piece of black velvet, and settled back in his chair. He stared into the pulsing depths of the globe. In the glow of the tall brass floor lamps, it seemed to be a sphere of moonstone, and at times of opal. His eyes were focused as toward a great distance, peering through and beyond the globe.
Pâwang Ali was not hypnotizing himself, nor was he trying to see the slayer or his name in the crystal. Its purpose was merely to aid him in concentration, in bringing to his consciousness vague, hazy perceptions that lurked far back in the hidden recesses of his mind. Wrath and vengeance no longer branded his aquiline features. He had become as impersonal as doom; he had divested himself of all emotion so that his intuition could grasp the clues that the cardboard container presented. Finally he blinked, sat erect, and again regarded the head of Hussayn. He began weighing a tenuous thread of logic:
E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives Page 23
