The Chinese Parrot

by The Chinese Parrot [lit]

  "-- next number on our program -- Miss Norma Fitzgerald, who is appearing in the musical show at the Mason, will sing a couple of selections --"

  Madden leaned forward and tapped the ash from his cigar. Thorn and Gamble looked up with languid interest.

  "Hello, folks," came the voice of the woman Bob Eden had talked with the day before. "Here I am again. And right at the start I want to thank all you good friends for the loads and loads of letters I've had since I went on the air out here. I found a lovely bunch at the studio tonight. I haven't had time to read them all, but I want to tell Sadie French, if she's listening in, that I was glad to know she's in Santa Monica, and I'll sure call her up. Another letter that brought me happiness was from my old pal, Jerry Delaney --"

  Eden's heart stopped beating. Madden leaned forward, Thorn's mouth opened and stayed that way, and the eyes of the professor narrowed. Ah Kim, at the table, worked without a sound.

  "I've been a little worried about Jerry," the woman went on, "and it was great to know that he's alive and well. I'm looking forward to seeing him soon. Now I must go on with my program, because I'm due at the theater in half an hour. I hope you good people will all come and see us, for we've certainly got a dandy little show, and --"

  "Oh, shut the confounded thing off," said Madden. "Advertising, nine-tenths of these radio programs. Makes me sick."

  Norma Fitzgerald had burst into song, and Bob Eden shut the confounded thing off. A long look passed between him and Ah Kim. A voice had come to the desert, come over the bare brown hills and the dreary miles of sagebrush and sand -- a voice that said Jerry Delaney was alive and well. Alive and well -- and all their fine theories came crashing down.

  The man Madden killed was not Jerry Delaney! Then whose was the voice calling for help that tragic night at the ranch? Who uttered the cry that was heard and echoed by Tony, the Chinese parrot?

  CHAPTER XX

  Petticoat Mine

  AH KIM, carrying a heavy tray of dishes, left the room. Madden leaned back at ease in his chair, his eyes closed, and blew thick rings of smoke toward the ceiling. The professor and Thorn resumed their placid reading, one on each side of the lamp. A touching scene of domestic peace.

  But Bob Eden did not share that peace. His heart was beating fast -- his mind was dazed. He rose and slipped quietly outdoors. In the cookhouse Ah Kim was at the sink, busily washing dishes. To look at the impassive face of the Chinese no one would have guessed that this was not his regular employment.

  "Charlie," said Eden softly.

  Chan hastily dried his hands and came to the door. "Humbly begging pardon, do not come in here." He led the way to the shadows beside the barn. "What are trouble now?" he asked gently.

  "Trouble!" said Eden. "You heard, didn't you? We've been on the wrong track entirely. Jerry Delaney is alive and well."

  "Most interesting, to be sure," admitted Chan.

  "Interesting! Say -- what are you made of, anyhow?" Chan's calm was a bit disturbing. "Our theory blows up completely, and you --"

  "Old habit of theories," said Chan. "Not the first to shatter in my countenance. Pardon me if I fail to experience thrill like you."

  "But what shall we do now?"

  "What should we do? We hand over pearls. You have made foolish promise, which I heartily rebuked. Nothing to do but carry out."

  "And go away without learning what happened here! I don't see how I can --"

  "What is to be, will be. The words of the infinitely wise Kong Fu Tse --"

  "But listen, Charlie -- have you thought of this? Perhaps nothing happened. Maybe we've been on a false trail from the start --"

  A little car came tearing down the road, and they heard it stop with a wild shriek of the brakes before the ranch. They hurried round the house. The moon was low and the scene in semi-darkness. A familiar figure alighted and without pausing to open the gate, leaped over it. Eden ran forward.

  "Hello, Holley," he said.

  Holley turned suddenly.

  "Good lord -- you scared me. But you're the man I'm looking for." He was panting, obviously excited.

  "What's wrong?" Eden asked.

  "I don't know. But I'm worried. Paula Wendell --"

  Eden's heart sank. "What about Paula Wendell?"

  "You haven't heard from her -- or seen her?"

  "No, of course not."

  "Well, she never came back from the Petticoat Mine. It's only a short run up there, and she left just after breakfast. She should have been back long ago. She promised to have dinner with me, and we were going to see the picture at the theater tonight. It's one she's particularly interested in."

  Eden was moving toward the road. "Come along -- in heaven's name -- hurry --"

  Chan stepped forward. Something gleamed in his hand. "My automatic," he explained. "I rescued it from suitcase this morning. Take it with you --"

  "I won't need that," said Eden. "Keep it. You may have use for it --"

  "I humbly beg of you --"

  "Thanks, Charlie. I don't want it. All right, Holley --"

  "The pearls," suggested Chan.

  "Oh, I'll be back by eight. This is more important --"

  As he climbed into the flivver by Holley's side, Eden saw the front door of the ranch house open, and the huge figure of Madden framed in the doorway.

  "Hey!" cried the millionaire.

  "Hey yourself," muttered Eden. The editor was backing his car, and with amazing speed he swung it round. They were off down the road, the throttle wide open.

  "What could have happened?" Eden asked.

  "I don't know. It's a dangerous place, that old mine. Shafts sunk all over -- the mouths of some of them hidden by underbrush. Shafts several hundred feet deep --"

  "Faster," pleaded Eden.

  "Going the limit now," Holley replied. "Madden seemed interested in your departure, didn't he? I take it you haven't given him the pearls."

  "No. Something new broke tonight." Eden told of the voice over the radio. "Ever strike you that we may have been cuckoo from the start? No one even slightly damaged at the ranch, after all?"

  "Quite possible," the editor admitted.

  "Well, that can wait. It's Paula Wendell now."

  Another car was coming toward them with reckless speed. Holley swung out, and the two cars grazed in passing.

  "Who was that?" wondered Eden.

  "A taxi from the station," Holley returned. "I recognized the driver. There was some one in the back seat."

  "I know," said Eden. "Some one headed for Madden's ranch, perhaps."

  "Perhaps," agreed Holley. He turned off the main road into the perilous, half-obliterated highway that led to the long-abandoned mine. "Have to go slower, I'm afraid," he said.

  "Oh, hit it up," urged Eden. "You can't hurt old Horace Greeley." Holley again threw the throttle wide, and the front wheel on the left coming at that moment in violent contact with a rock, their heads nearly pierced the top of the car.

  "It's all wrong, Holley," remarked Eden with feeling.

  "What's all wrong?"

  "A pretty, charming girl like Paula Wendell running about alone in this desert country. Why in heaven's name doesn't somebody marry her and take her away."

  "Not a chance," replied Holley. "She hasn't any use for marriage. 'The last resort of feeble minds' is what she calls it."

  "Is that so?"

  "Never coop her up in a kitchenette, she told me, after the life of freedom she's enjoyed."

  "Then why did she go and get engaged to this guy?"

  "What guy?"

  "Wilbur -- or whatever his name is. The lad who gave her the ring."

  Holley laughed -- then was silent for a minute. "I don't suppose she'll like it," he said at last, "but I'm going to tell you anyhow. It would be a pity if you didn't find out. That emerald is an old one that belonged to her mother. She's had it put in a more modern setting, and she wears it as a sort of protection."

  "Protection?"

  "Yes. So every
mush-head she meets won't pester her to marry him."

  "Oh," said Eden. A long silence. "Is that the way she characterizes me?" asked the boy finally.

  "How?"

  "As a mush-head."

  "Oh, no. She said you had the same ideas on marriage that she had. Refreshing to meet a sensible man like you, is the way she put it." Another long silence. "What's on your mind?" asked the editor.

  "Plenty," said Eden grimly. "I suppose, at my age, it's still possible to make over a wasted life?"

  "It ought to be," Holley assured him.

  "I've been acting like a fool. Going to give good old dad the surprise of his life when I get home. Take over the business, like he's wanted me to, and work hard. So far, I haven't known what I wanted. Been as weak and vacillating as a -- a woman."

  "Some simile," replied Holley. "I don't know that I ever heard a worse one. Show me the woman who doesn't know what she wants -- and knowing, fails to go after it."

  "Oh, well -- you get what I mean. How much farther is it?"

  "We're getting there. Five miles more."

  "Gad -- I hope nothing's happened to her."

  They rattled on, closer and closer to the low hills, brick red under the rays of the slowly rising moon. The road entered a narrow canyon, it almost disappeared, but like a homing thing Horace Greeley followed it intuitively.

  "Got a flashlight?" Eden inquired.

  "Yes. Why?"

  "Stop a minute, and let me have it. I've an idea."

  He descended with the light, and carefully examined the road ahead. "She's been along here," he announced. "That's the tread of her tires -- I'd know it anywhere -- I changed one of them for her. She's -- she's up there somewhere, too. The car has been this way but once."

  He leaped back beside Holley, and the flivver sped on, round hairpin turns, and along the edge of a precipice. Presently it turned a final corner, and before them, nestled in the hills, was the ghost city of Petticoat Mine.

  Bob Eden caught his breath. Under the friendly moon lay the remnants of a town, here a chimney and there a wall, street after street of houses crumbled now to dust. Once the mine had boomed and the crowd had come, they had built their homes here where the shafts sank deep, silver had fallen in price and the crowd had gone, leaving Petticoat Mine to the most deadly bombardment of all, the patient silent bombardment of the empty years.

  They rode down Main Street, weaving in and out among black gaping holes that might have been made by bursting shells. Between the cracks of the sidewalks, thronged once on a Saturday night, grew patches of pale green basket grass. Of the "business blocks" but two remained, and one of these was listing with the wind.

  "Cheery sight," remarked Eden.

  "The building that's on the verge of toppling is the old Silver Star Saloon," said Holley. "The other one -- it never will topple. They built it of stone -- built it to stand -- and they needed it, too, I guess. That's the old jail."

  "The jail," Eden repeated.

  Holley's voice grew cautious. "Is that a light in the Silver Star?"

  "Seems to be," Eden answered. "Look here -- we're at rather a disadvantage -- unarmed, you know. I'll just stow away in the tonneau, and appear when needed. The element of surprise may make up for our lack of a weapon."

  "Good idea," agreed Holley, and Eden climbed into the rear of the car and hid himself. They stopped before the Silver Star. A tall man appeared suddenly in the doorway, and walked briskly up to the flivver.

  "Well, what do you want?" he asked, and Bob Eden thrilled to hear again the thin high voice of Shaky Phil Maydorf.

  "Hello, stranger," said Holley. "This is a surprise. I thought old Petticoat was deserted."

  "Company's thinking of opening up the mine soon," returned Maydorf. "I'm here to do a little assaying"

  "Find anything?" inquired Holley casually.

  "The silver's pretty well worked out. But there's copper in those hills to the left. You're a long way off the main road."

  "I know that. I'm looking for a young woman who came up here this morning. Maybe you saw her."

  "There hasn't been any one here for a week, except me."

  "Really? Well, you may be mistaken. If you don't mind, I'll have a look round --"

  "And if I do mind?" snarled Shaky Phil.

  "Why should you --"

  "I do. I'm alone here and I'm not taking any chances. You swing that car of yours around --"

  "Now, wait a minute," said Holley. "Put away that gun. I come as a friend --"

  "Yeah. Well, as a friend, you turn and beat it. Understand." He was close to the car. "I tell you there's nobody here --"

  He stopped as a figure rose suddenly from the tonneau and fell upon him. The gun exploded, but harmlessly into the road, for Bob Eden was bearing down upon it, hard.

  For a brief moment, there on that deserted street before the Silver Star, the two struggled desperately. Shaky Phil was no longer young, but he offered a spirited resistance. However, it was not prolonged, and by the time Holley had alighted, Bob Eden was on top and held Maydorf's weapon in his hand.

  "Get up," the boy directed. "And lead the way. Give me your keys. There's a brand new lock on that jail door, and we have a yearning to see what's inside." Shaky Phil rose to his feet and looked helplessly about. "Hurry!" cried Eden. "I've been longing to meet you again, and I don't feel any too gentle. There's that forty-seven dollars -- to say nothing of all the trouble you put me to the night the President Pierce docked in San Francisco."

  "There's nothing in the jail," said Maydorf. "I haven't got the key --"

  "Go through him, Holley," suggested the boy.

  A quick search produced a bunch of keys, and Eden, taking them, handed Holley the gun. "I give old Shaky Phil into your keeping. If he tries to run, shoot him down like a rabbit."

  He took the flashlight from the car and, going over, unlocked the outer door of the jail. Stepping inside, he found himself in what had once been a sort of office. The moonlight pouring in from the street fell upon a dusty desk and chair, an old safe, and a shelf with a few tattered books. On the desk lay a newspaper. He flashed his light on the date -- only a week old.

  At the rear were two heavy doors, both with new locks. Searching among his keys, he unlocked the one at the left. In a small, cell-like room with high barred windows his flashlight revealed the tall figure of a girl. With no great surprise he recognized Evelyn Madden. She came toward him swiftly. "Bob Eden!" she cried, and then, her old haughtiness gone, she burst into tears.

  "There -- there," said Eden. "You're all right now." Another girl appeared suddenly in the doorway -- Paula Wendell, bright and smiling.

  "Hello," she remarked calmly. "I rather thought you'd come along."

  "Thanks for the ad," replied Eden. "Say, you might get hurt running about like this. What happened, anyhow?"

  "Nothing much. I came up to look round and he" -- she nodded to Shaky Phil in the moonlit street -- "told me I couldn't. I argued it with him, and ended up in here. He said I'd have to stay overnight. He was polite, but firm."

  "Lucky for him he was polite," remarked Eden grimly. He took the arm of Evelyn Madden. "Come along," he said gently. "I guess we're through here --"

  He stopped. Some one was hammering on the inside of the second door. Amazed, the boy looked toward Paula Wendell.

  She nodded. "Unlock it," she told him.

  He unfastened the door and swinging it open, peered inside. In the semi-darkness he saw the dim figure of a man.

  Eden gasped, and fell back against the desk for support.

  "Ghost city!" he cried. "Well, that's what it is, all right."

  CHAPTER XXI

  End Of The Postman's Journey

  IF BOB EDEN had known the identity of the passenger in the taxi that he and Holley passed on their way to the mine, it is possible that, despite his concern for Paula Wendell, he would have turned back to Madden's ranch. But he drove on unknowing; nor did the passenger, though he stared with interest at the p
assing flivver, recognize Eden. The car from the Eldorado station went on its appointed way, and finally drew up before the ranch house.

  The driver alighted and was fumbling with the gate, when his fare leaped to the ground.

  "Never mind that," he said. "I'll leave you here. How much do I owe you?" He was a plump little man, about thirty-five years old, attired in the height of fashion and with a pompous manner. The driver named a sum and, paying him off, the passenger entered the yard. Walking importantly up to the front door of the house, he knocked loudly.