E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  As he bounded forward, Grant glanced into the alcove which he had uncovered in yanking the four-storied bunk aside. He caught a flickering glimpse of a slender figure in embroidered silks. Hands and feet were bound, and the face was muffled by a gag; but the seed-pearl head-dress and glossy hair drawn back from the forehead told him that it was not Foo Yong. All in a glance—but before he could hurl himself into the unequal battle, he heard above the yelling and the incessant rattle of a million firecrackers, a splintering of wood, infuriated howls; and the unmistakable chatter of a machine gun.

  Then the door burst open, and in Came Torchy Cullinane, axe in hand. At his heels was Mike Novak, frantically spraying everything in sight with a pocket machine gun.

  “Drop that damn thing, Mike!” roared Grant, flattening to the floor as lead sizzled over his head. “Stop him, Torchy!”

  Torchy’s head was a red blur as he snatched the machine gun, pocketed it, and plunged into action with the axe he had picked up on the way. And that turned the day. The surviving highbinders fled bawling through a panel behind a tier of bunks. Hop Wang, gashed and unscholarly, leaped to his feet.

  “Get out!” he said. “Quick! Foo Yong not here. On Leons thought we were stealing slave girl—over there in alcove.”

  “Okay, Hop Wang!” Grant replied. He bounded after his troops. But halfway to the floor he halted, spun about, and scooped up the slender, bound and gagged girl. Poor thing! She would be in a tough spot if he left her there to face her master’s wrath. She would be flayed alive under suspicion of having in some way managed to summon a rescue party.

  Torchy and Slesson led the rush down the stairs. They ploughed through the deserted gaming room, cleared the grocery store, and stretched long legs out of the alley.

  As they piled into the Packard, Grant deposited the bound girl on the front seat, and gave his commands.

  “The On Leons’ll watch for this car on the road to Oakland,” he said. “So I’ll take the peninsula route, west of the bay, to Frisco, where they won’t think to look for me. You followers change to the light eight, and drive straight back. As the On Leons doesn’t know about that car, you’ll be safe. I’ll leave this girl somewhere in Frisco, and come across on the ferry.”

  Hop Wang murmured, “Wisdom of our distinguished guest is unexcelled.”

  “Yer damn tootin’!” added Buddy Slesson.

  Grant drove without lights to where the other car was parked by the railroad siding, paused merely long enough to let out Foo Sam and Hop Wang and Buddy and Torchy and Mike; then roared away in the darkness, heading westward, toward Santa Clara and thence to the Bayshore Highway that led to San Francisco.

  As he approached the salt marshes at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, and saw the gleaming, aluminum bulk of the U.S. Naval Station hangars, Grant pulled up, snapped on the dome light, and untied Ah Fook’s captive. She was an exotic little creature, with dark, faintly slanted eyes, and skin the color of old ivory. Her long-sleeved silken jacket was richly embroidered, and half a dozen jade bracelets tinkled on her wrist as she reached for her elaborate head-dress, plucked it from her sleek black hair and flung it angrily to the floor boards. Whoever she was, she was in a spiteful humor.

  “Wassa malla—you no likee?” solicitously inquired Grant, grinning at her petulant gesture.

  “Damn right I don’t like it!” she exclaimed. “And if you don’t mind, please speak United States. I’m a Chink, but I can’t help it. And I hate the sound, sight, smell, or shadow of anything Chinese!”

  Except for the scarcely perceptible slant of her eyes, Grant would have thought that she was a white girl masquerading in Oriental costume. Her voice had not the slightest trace of accent. But why should a Chinese girl hate all things Chinese? She laughed at the amazement which showed on Grant’s face.

  “I don’t know how you got messed up in this jam, and I don’t care. Getting me away from that dried-up old buzzard of an Ah Fook is God’s gift from heaven.—Yes, I’m one of those slave girls you read about! Without going into details, I ended up—thanks to an unguarded monument and six highbinders—in Ah Fook’s dingy dump, and I’ve spent the past week trying not to be nice to him or anyone like him. When you started the show, they bundled me up in that filthy cubby-hole to hide me. They thought you were trying to rescue me.—And now where are you taking me?”

  Not that she seemed to care, so long as their route led away from San Jose. She eyed Grant approvingly.

  “That,” said he, “depends on lots of things. I’m on a hunt for Foo Yong, a Hep Sing man kidnapped from Chicago.”

  “Do you mean to say you came all this distance just to locate a Chink?”

  “If I’d known they had anything like you around here, I’d have made the trip anyhow,” Grant answered as he let in the clutch. “But listen, Little Lotus Bud, I am anxious about that Chinese friend of mine—”

  “The name,” she corrected, snuggling over just close enough to convince Grant that her severely straight silken jacket concealed perfectly charming curve’s, “is Tin Yuk.”

  “My dear, I can’t speak a word of Chinese,” said Great, “but Tin Yuk sounds—er—sounds—well, great!”

  “It sounds like hell to me,” her sweet voice replied, “but the English of it is even worse: it means Heavenly Jewel and if that isn’t a mess of a name! Oh, I hate it! If my old man only’d had sense enough to call me—just anything at all, except something stupid and Chinese.”

  “Filial piety seems to have gone to the devil,” mourned Grant. “You’ve shattered about nine hundred illusions in half as many yards.”

  “And not satisfied with naming me Tin Yuk,” the Heavenly Jewel continued, “my old man—the dirty louse!—practically sold me to Ah Fook. I raised the devil, but it didn’t do any good.”

  “Then,” said Grant, “there’s not much use taking you home?”

  “Lord, no!” Tin Yuk eyed him for a moment, then snuggled her sleek black head against his shoulder. “But do you insist on getting rid of me?”

  “Why—well—the truth of it is, I figured on taking you to the Rescue Mission, or some such outfit that specializes in caring for slave girls—”

  “And then I’d be married to the first damn Chink that could prove he was a Clistian, and they’d hound me into it! Rescue, my eye! I’m plenty rescued right now, thank you, big boy.”

  “Well—I can stake you to a bit of dough to tide you over until you get yourself a job, somewhere—”

  The sedan came within an ace of plunging headlong into the salt marsh, as Tin Yuk’s slender arms, twining about Grant’s neck, then and there discounted, every rumor he had ever heard to the effect that Chinese girls know absolutely nothing about kissing. Before he got the car straightened out and back into the traffic lane, Grant decided that Tin Yuk’s name was singularly appropriate. Her eager lips, and the warm, clinging contact of her supple, slender body wiped out in one instant the racial barrier that had checked Grant’s earlier appraisal that “she’s rather cute, and just like a figure painted on a fan.”

  “Not unless it’s an asbestos fan!” he amended, as the glare of approaching headlights forced his attention to the road. “Holy smoke, what a girl!”

  Tin Yuk’s sparkling black eyes were smiling as inscrutably as her crimson lips; but there was a faint flush on her cheeks, and the sudden lift of her delicately curved breasts gave added meaning to the embroidered jacket. Tin Yuk, with the unfailing instinct of the Oriental woman knew to the exact instant when to shift from burning abandon to poised reserve; and she likewise knew that Grant had by now forgotten that she was the most foreign of all foreign creatures.

  Race is easy enough to forget. Older and more seasoned travelers than Jim Grant, Yale ’34, have forgotten much more with far less provocation. There is nothing quite so utterly feminine as an Oriental woman, with sly, subtle, inflaming coquetry that wins where any other pla
y would fail. The sing-song girls of Shanghai do a perfect job with one glance slanted from the not-quite shelter of a painted fan.

  Grant could keep fiery, gorgeous Julia Dorni, the sister of a rival gang leader, in her place, and talk to her like a brother; but Tin Yuk was far beyond every accepted standard of reckoning. This little beauty was an alluring, fragrant breath from a far-off, almost legendary land, where eyes and everything else were on a slant, and occidental rules do not apply.

  And she obviously didn’t want them to apply. Added to her lure was an irresistible curiosity-appeal.

  “I know a place in the city,” she was murmuring.

  Grant knew she was not referring to any refuge for a “rescued” slave-girl. He was wondering whether she would take him to some place as exotic as old Hop Wang’s reception room—wondered whether Tin Yuk’s silk-concealed loveliness could be as fascinating to the eye as her gracious curves were to his touch—wondered—.

  And then Grant’s thoughts leaped back from far-off Cathay to the Bayshore Highway in less than the tenth part of a second. He jammed on the brakes, and swung sharply aside to avoid a broadside collision with the fool who had come piling pell-mell out of a side road. There was a splintering of glass, the crunching of tortured metal, the bursting of a tire—and Grant’s car plunged crazily into the salt marsh, hub-deep in mud. The car which had ditched him still held the road. Grant flung the door open; but a glint of metal from the empty sash of the rear glass of the other car gave him an instant’s warning.

  He ducked, as a ribbon of flame spurted from the muzzle of the tommy gun that was sweeping his wrecked car. Grant drew his pocket machine gun as he flattened. Without a whimper Tin Yuk reached for the dashboard compartment and found an automatic and extra clips for the machine gun.

  As lead rattled around him like hail on a tin roof, Grant sprayed the heavy enemy sedan. There was a yell, the tinkle of glass, and the snout of the tommy gun jerked out of line. A burst of bullets from the front window swept the radiator and headlights of Grant’s sedan; and from the far side of the enemy car, Grant saw dark figures flash around the hood and to the ditch before he could shift his fire to cut them down. Then he froze as he remembered Mike Novak’s parcel of bombs.

  “Fire like hell!” he directed, and, as Tin Yuk peppered the darkness of the ditch, Grant fumbled for the case, seized a pineapple, and hurled it at the rear of the enemy’s car. A burst of flame, a roaring crash, and the shattered gas tank spouted a geyser of surging flames.

  Grant leaped to the road. By the glare of the fiercely blazing car he saw the attackers diving for the shelter of clumps of marsh grass. One of them paused to direct a burst of fire back at Grant, but Grant’s machine gun cut him down. Lead whistled over the hood of Grant’s car, and he promptly dropped to the road. The enemy, seeing him disappear, ventured from concealment, but Grant’s drumming fusillade forced them back to cover.

  Grant made the most of his respite. Plunging into his car, he snatched the two remaining pineapples and hurled them at the sheltering fence. A volcano of flame and mud and water spurted from the dancing shadows. Two men raced frantically up the highway. The glare of the blazing car silhouetted them against the further gloom. And the deadly sputter of Grant’s machine gun mowed them down. They pitched headlong into the mud.

  Tin Yuk had emptied her pistol. Her ivory golden face was placid as the painted features of the girls that decorate a tea set; but her black eyes had a wicked sparkle, as she stepped over to him.

  “Lucky you had sense enough to toss those bombs,” she remarked. “Look at the holes on this side of your car. A bit lower—” She leaned fragrantly against him.

  Grant grinned, “What between you and those high-binders,” he said, “I’m having a hell of a time.”

  “But they aren’t—weren’t, I mean—highbinders.”

  “What!”

  “When the gas tank went up,” she affirmed, “I got a glimpse. Every last one of them was no more a Chinaman than you are.”

  “We’re in a devil of a fix,” said Grant. “That car blazing to the high heavens, and only a mile or two from Redwood City—Damnation! Scram! To the other side of the road—quick!”

  Headlights were rapidly approaching from the rear. There was no siren blast, but the high-pitched whine of the engine told Grant that a powerful car was moving toward them at a terrific clip. Brakes squealed as Grant followed Tin Yuk across the four-lane highway.

  He heard a shout. He whirled, machine gun reloaded and ready. And then he recognized Buddy Slesson.

  “We hadda hunch,” gasped Slesson, as Grant bundled Tin Yuk into the V-8, “so we cut back from de Oakland highway an’ came like de hammers of hell across de Dumbarton Bridge. To cover de highway—”

  “Wait a minute,” interrupted Grant.

  Slesson jammed the brakes. Grant dove to the ditch, dragged one of the fallen gunners from the mud. Then he pulled the other into view. Slesson, Cullinane and Novak got out, and joined him.

  “Ever seen either of them?” Grant asked.

  “I’ll say I have!” Slesson exclaimed. “Two of Slim Hammond’s rats. Right?”

  “Right,” agreed Torchy and Mike.

  “Well, that solves the question as to who is back of all this devilment,” asserted Grant, as he returned to the little V-8. “The Man on Long Island is trying to annex the On Leon Tong, and, Slim Hammond is doing the dirty work for him.—Now let’s phone Hop Ching, and report the theft of his car.”

  “My honorable grandfather anticipated your wisdom,” was Hop Wang’s suave comment. “He did so, as soon as you left. Let us drive on. Even though we have not found Poo Yong, we have learned something which you evidently regard as important.”

  “Correct,” said Grant. “Some of my eastern friends are back of this tong war.”

  And then Tin Yuk cut in: “I forgot to tell you—I can’t really imagine what made me so stupid—but while I was a prisoner in Ah Fook’s flop-house, I heard considerable discussion of Foo Yong. They were expecting him to be shipped out to San Jose, but you got there ahead of him. And now you’ll have to strike in San Francisco.”

  It was a tight squeeze in the small car. Grant and his two Chinese allies sat on the rear seat, with the beautiful Tin Yuk in Grant’s lap. Torchy Cullinane drove, and Buddy Slesson and Mike Novak crowded in beside him.

  At a command from Hop Wang, Torchy swung the V-8 to the right, and headed toward the San Mateo Bridge, to cut back again across lower San Francisco Bay and reach Oakland before the news of the battle had made too much progress. Old Hop Citing, whether he liked it or not, would have to give them a hideout on account of his grandson’s part in the raid on the house of an On Leon merchant.

  “Maybe,” suggested Grant, as they cleared the toll-keeper without any sign of question, “Hop Ching can suggest some way of taking care of Tin Yuk.”

  “Don’t bother,” whispered the Heavenly Jewel. “I have some ideas of my own on that subject.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Trapped in a Bedroom

  Upon arriving at Hop Ching’s residence in Oakland, Grant found that the old scholar had anticipated the return of the raiders. One of his numerous sons, a plump, middle-aged M.D., had his instruments in readiness; and little time was lost in attending to knife slashes, lacerations, and superficial bullet wounds. That done, Grant convened a council of war; and though, out of deference to Hop Ching’s old-fashioned Chinese sense of propriety, the Heavenly Jewel was excluded from the meeting, Grant told them her story, with the additional details which she had elaborated after the battle on the Bayshore Highway.

  Hop Ching, after gravely considering every angle of the raid, offered his opinion: “It came to my grand-son’s attention that Foo Yong was in San Jose. Yet according to story you have presented, Mr. Grant, Foo Yong had not arrived, but was expected. Thus I offer my opinion that source of my grandson’s informati
on was not only accurate, but quite close to inner councils of enemy. As Kung-Fu-Tsze says, ‘Many can babble of what has been done; but only few can speak of what is to be.’”

  “That,” agreed Grant, “is sound sense. Also, we have indisputable evidence that American gangsters are in on this war. It was certainly not coincidence that put four of Slim Hammond’s mob on my trail within a quarter of an hour after I raided San Jose Chinatown. Whether you like it or not, Mr. Hop, we must be allies against this mobster who is using the local tongs to do his dirty work. I am sure that you can devise some way in which my men can cooperate with the Hep Sing Tong. If American gangs get a firm hold on one or more tongs, it will mean trouble for all Chinese, law-abiding and criminal alike.”

  “And just how do you distinguish between Eye-of-Snake helping On Leon Tong, and you helping Hep Sing Tong, Mr. Grant?” asked Hop Ching, with just the trace of a malicious twinkle in his wise old eyes.

  “The Murray mob is a small independent outfit, whereas Slim Hammond works for The Man on Long Island, the sinister unknown who dominates nearly all gangland, and who now appears to be attempting to annex one of the tongs. And, if this isn’t sufficient differentiation, Mr. Hop, you’ll just have to take my word for my motives.”

  “Wisely spoken, Mr. Grant,” conceded the scholar: “And though you have but few men, and Hep Sings are sadly decimated, we may gain our end. It has been said, ‘River is flux of many streams.’”

  And then Grant speeded up the interminable proverb-exchanging by taking a hand at it himself.

  “It has been said, ‘Heaven plays no favorites.’ I will fly to Chicago here and now, round up every gunner I can find, and come back to fight this out. In the meanwhile, Mr. Hop, you get further sidelights on the information which the Heavenly Jewel picked up in her captor’s house.”