The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  The moving beam picked out piles of rusty and dusty junk—then focused suddenly on a broken-down armchair to which a Chinese was bound hand and foot. The Oriental writhed and wriggled in his bonds, trying to call out through a cloth bag.

  “Cut him loose, Driscoll,” O’Hara ordered, and struck a match to light an oil lantern which stood on an upturned box.

  “Blue Coat Men! Praise be to Tao!” the yellow man gasped as soon as the gag was removed.

  O’Hara straightened up, staring at the young Oriental. “What name you?” he demanded. “You’re not Chang Loo!”

  Then it was the Oriental’s turn to stare. “Who say I am not Chang Loo?” he challenged. “Take me to my uncle Chang Pao the silversmith—he tell you chop-chop that I am his brother’s son!”

  “Hey, what is this!” O’Hara exclaimed. “I’ve seen Chang Loo a dozen times—I looked at his papers, his huchao, his chock-gee, when Chang Pao’s will was read—”

  “Chang Pao is dead?” the yellow man broke in excitedly. “Hai! Now it is as plain as black writing on rice paper! Tajen, I am Chang Loo! This other one is a thief who has stole my name, my papers—and now he steals my dead uncle’s wealth! Hearken, Tajen—”

  And speaking in a staccato jabber that was half English and half Cantonese, the young Celestial poured forth as strange a tale of evil plotting as Sergeant O’Hara had ever heard in this devious quarter where the bizarre and the fantastic are a daily commonplace.

  Chang Loo told how he had received a telegram advising him of his uncle’s grave condition and had at once set out on his long journey to reach his dying uncle’s bedside.

  Arriving in the late evening, he had inquired his way to Lantern Court, but even as he set foot upon the steps of No. 14, a figure had loomed up behind him, jabbed a gun against his back, and growled a command to walk straight ahead and keep his tongue behind his teeth.

  One hundred and fifty paces he had counted in the darkness, to this fifth house of the narrow street whose name he did not know. Still at gun-point, he had been forced up the dark stairs to this dark attic, where he had been tied into the chair and then gagged, by a man who wore a black cloth mask over his face.

  “You’ve been a prisoner in this room ever since?” O’Hara asked.

  “Aye, Tajen,” the young Chinese replied. The masked man had searched him thoroughly, taking away all his possessions, even a little jade luck piece with the seal of Wan-teh.

  He added the other details of his strange captivity. Once a day the masked man appeared to give him food and water and a few minutes’ exercise walking to and fro, but always with bound hands. The masked man never spoke, only raising his pistol in a gesture that threatened instant death if the prisoner tried to summon help.

  O’Hara and Driscoll exchanged swift glances. Beyond all doubt this young Chinese was the true Chang Loo—he had names, dates, facts at his command; he described with minute accuracy the very papers which O’Hara had examined in Lee Shu’s office, even to a small piece torn from the corner of his official chock-gee.

  he other Chang Loo—the arrogant, wine-drinking, fan-tan-playing Chang Loo, was a daring impostor who had engineered a brazen and spectacular theft of the old silversmith’s house and fortune!

  “There’s cool nerve for you!” O’Hara exclaimed. “But this phoney nephew must have had help to pull off a job as slick as that.” He turned to the young Oriental. “This masked man—did he walk with a limp?”

  “No, Tajen, no limp.”

  “Hell!” O’Hara said. “I was sure it was Tai Gat.”

  “Well, it could be a single-handed job, Sarge,” Driscoll declared. “Chang here says he hasn’t visited his uncle since he was a small boy, so it wouldn’t be much of a trick to fool Tai Gat. How could he tell it was a phoney?”

  “I think the mask man is gila—crazy!” Chang put in suddenly.

  O’Hara turned quickly. “Why?”

  “Because of the parrot, Tajen. Always he bring this green Feather Devil with him, hidden under a black cloth. He tie the bird’s foot to the floor, then he give it liquor to drink and poke it with a stick until the bird scream with anger. All the time the mask man mutter curses, and one time he kick the bird and hurt its wing—”

  “Sounds crazy to me,” Driscoll declared, but O’Hara said nothing, his forehead knotted in thought.

  “I think he is gila,” Chang continued, “but it is Number One good luck for me. Tonight he bring the parrot with him, like always. He push it with stick, make it drunk. But while he is here there is big noise of bells and horns as the fire-wagons come close by the street—”

  “That’s right, Sarge,” Driscoll confirmed. “There was a fire in the next block.”

  And young Chang gave the details of the sudden opportunity which had led to his rescue. The masked man, uneasy over all the commotion outside, slipped out to see if the fire threatened Mandarin Lane, leaving his prisoner bound to the chair.

  But Chang had learned how to wriggle his arms free, although he could not release his feet, for the rope was knotted behind the chair. And since he had first seen the parrot he had worked out a plan for sending a message.

  Coaxing the parrot within reach of his hands had been the hardest part, Chang declared. After that, everything had been easy. A feather from the parrot’s wing gave him a quill pen, a scratch across his wrist drew blood for ink, a torn piece of cloth served as paper.

  With the message hastily written and tied to the bird’s leg, he had inched his chair over to a long-handled rake in the dusty rubbish. Perching the parrot on the rusty tines of the rake, he had lifted it up to a small air-vent under the roof.

  “A push, Tajen, and the Feather Devil is on his way,” Chang went on. “But I have just finish when the mask man returns. He make an angry shout and hit me. Then he tie my hands quick and run out, and I say a thousand prayers to Kwan-Yin that the Feather Devil will escape from him.”

  “That was a smart piece of work, Chang,” O’Hara commended, “but you’re lucky it didn’t cost you your life.”

  “The fellow was too busy trying to catch the parrot,” Driscoll suggested.

  “Yes—the parrot,” O’Hara said slowly. “We’re always running up against a Feather Devil. Look, Driscoll, the man who murdered Yun Chee passed up a thousand dollars’ worth of easy loot to steal a worthless parrot. Why? And Chang’s masked man, with a fortune at stake, risks everything to recapture Shao. Again, why?”

  “That’s easy,” Driscoll replied. “He wanted to destroy that message.”

  “All right, then, let’s see how he went about it,” O’Hara said. “He chased the parrot along Mandarin Lane to Canton Street and then into Manchu Place, where I chased him away. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” Driscoll said.

  “I pick up the parrot and the message. That leaves the masked man with three choices of action: he can drop everything and take it on the lam, he can go back to Mandarin Lane and kill Chang Loo to silence him, or take him away to a different hideout. So what happens? He follows me back to the precinct and snatches Shao from my office. Why? What value has the parrot, after its message is in the hands of the police?”

  “I don’t know,” Driscoll admitted, “unless the guy is gila, like Chang says.”

  O’Hara shook his head. “Well, we’ll know more about that when we finish with No. 14 Lantern Court. Let’s go!”

  “We’ll find nothing but an empty house,” Driscoll predicted. “By this time that phoney nephew has packed up all the loose dough and skipped.”

  “And what about the parrot?” O’Hara queried. “Does the parrot go with the rest of the loot?”

  “Oh, damn the parrot!” Driscoll snorted.

  “Not so fast, Driscoll.” O’Hara grinned. “There’s a wild hunch floating around in my head, and if I’m right—there’ll be a surprise waiting for us at No. 14 Lantern Court!”

  Thus it came about that the real Chang Loo retraced the one hundred fifty paces which had deprived him of his rightful
inheritance, with three Blue Coat Devils walking by his side, armed and ready to enforce his lawful claim to the riches of No. 14 Lantern Court.

  Chang Pao’s house was as dark and gloomy-looking as it had been earlier in the evening, although the lifting fog had taken away its ghostly aspect. O’Hara went up the brownstone steps and hammered a brisk tattoo on the door.

  There was no response, and he pounded again, while Driscoll watched with a smile. “I told you it’d be an empty nest, Sarge.”

  Then Burke called out from the rear: “There’s somebody inside, Sarge! I saw a face at the upstairs window!”

  “O.K., then, we’ll waste no more time,” O’Hara said. Jabbing the pinchbar into the crack of the door, he gouged out an opening, then began to wrench. With a crackling of wood and a snapping of metal, the lock surrendered and the door creaked inward.

  Gun in hand, O’Hara stalked into the hallway, where a silk-shaded light was burning. “Hey, Chang Loo! Tai Gat!” he shouted. “Come on down! Police!”

  Then O’Hara scrambled for cover as Chang Loo’s bright yellow robe moved in the darkness at the head of the stairs, and a long arm clutching a pistol reached snakily over the railings.

  Flame spurted from the black muzzle, and the dark stairwell echoed and re-echoed with the explosive reports. The glass panes of the vestibule door fell with a tinkling crash—a bullet skittered wildly from the face of a bronze gong, adding to the roaring clamor.

  “It’s no use!” O’Hara shouted up the dark staircase. “We’ve got you cornered! The house is surrounded! I’m giving you ten seconds to throw down that gun—or we come up after you, shooting!”

  A harsh laugh was the answer, and a bullet that tore a long furrow across the wall just missed Driscoll’s head.

  “O.K.—you asked for it!” O’Hara shouted as he sprang toward the stairs, with Driscoll right at his heels, both pumping bullets into the upper darkness to clear their path.

  The yellow robe whisked from sight as they raced up the staircase. They pounded in hot pursuit up the next flight of steps, but as they gained the upper hall a heavy door boomed shut and a cross-bar rattled into place.

  O’Hara hurled his weight against the door. “Damn! It’s like iron—must be lined with sheet-metal.”

  Driscoll hammered on the armored door with his pistol butt, calling out. “Better give up, Chang! This is your last chance! You catch bullet chop-chop!”

  For a few moments he kept his ear against the door, listening, then shook his head. “No answer, Sarge.”

  O’Hara nodded. “Bring the tools—we’ll smash our way in.… Burke, cover the outside of the house.… Chang Loo, keep back there on the stairs. There may be more shooting.”

  Sergeant O’Hara was an experienced hand with a raiding ax, but it took him nearly twenty minutes of furious hacking before the metal-shod door yielded to his attack. With the final blows, Driscoll moved forward, finger tense on trigger, but when the shattered door sagged back there was no need for shooting.

  The impostor who had masqueraded as Chang Loo lay dead on the floor of the room, a pistol clutched in his hand, his bright yellow robe splashed and stained from the pool of blood collected around his head.

  “What a mess!” Driscoll breathed, kneeling down beside the body. “Put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger! Blew out the back of his head … Hey, Sarge, look! There’s the parrot!”

  The green Feather Devil was perched on the back of a chair, glaring at them with hostile intensity. “Rawk-awk!” it trumpeted, crisping its claws and ruffling its feathers.

  “And look—the table!” Driscoll cried, pointing. “We were just in time! He was gettin’ ready to take it on the lam, with what’s left of the loot.”

  O’Hara looked at the preparations for flight—at the disorderly heap of crumpled bills turned out, apparently, from two ginger-jars which lay empty on the floor, at a small camphor-wood casket packed with choice jade carvings in mutton-fat and fei-tsui and ornaments of gold and silver set with precious stones.

  “Well, this guy was no piker,” Driscoll commented. “It was all or nothing, and he sure gave us a run for our money. You’d think a smart guy like him would’ve fixed himself for a fast getaway. This room’s like a jail-cell—bars on the windows, iron on the door.”

  “They all make mistakes,” O’Hara said. He went over to the windows and tapped his finger against the metal bars, then opened a closet and sounded the walls briefly. Frowning in thought, he stood looking down at the dead man. “Funny we didn’t hear the shot.”

  “Through that iron door?” Driscoll scoffed. “Say, he could have kicked off with a cannon while you were banging away with the ax.”

  “Too bad we didn’t get him alive,” O’Hara remarked slowly. “There are a lot of questions I’d like to ask.”

  Driscoll was busy searching the dead man’s clothing. “Look, Sarge, here are the identification papers he stole from Chang Loo, even the little jade luck piece.… Recognize it, Chang?”

  “Yiss, yiss!” young Chang cried, darting forward to clutch his luck piece, while O’Hara examined the papers—the telegram which had summoned Chang Loo, his chock-gee and hu-chao.

  “Hello—what’s this!” O’Hara exclaimed, smoothing out a strip of red paper. “Chinese writing. Is this yours, Chang?”

  Chang Loo ran his eye over the “broken stick” symbols, and his voice quivered with excitement as he said, “Not see this writing before, Tajen, but it is for me—a letter from my dead uncle Chang.”

  “This writing, by the hand of Chang Pao, for the eyes of his nephew, Chang Loo.

  Having great fear of thieves and night robbers, who have thrice broken into my house in search of plunder, I have hidden the greater of my wealth in a secret place, safe from all searching, even by eyes sharp as the needle. Trusting no man, I leave the key to this hiding place in the keeping of Shao, my Feather Devil. Hearken to the three words he will speak—from those three words make one word—and that one will guide you to the hidden treasure. Use thy wealth with wisdom, son of my brother, so that the house of Chang may ever be held in honor.”

  For a few moments there was absolute silence after Chang Loo’s voice was still; then Driscoll burst out excitedly: “There’s your parrot clue, Sarge! Now we know why this phoney Chang hung on to the parrot through thick and thin! He wanted to get at old Chang’s hidden treasure, and he couldn’t make the parrot talk! That’s why he poked it with a stick and made it drunk with samshu—he wanted to make it speak those three words!”

  “Hoya!” young Chang Loo exclaimed. “It is plain as the rising sun!”

  “Yes, and it’s also plain that he never did get those three words out of Shao,” O’Hara put in. “He was still working on that parrot tonight, when Chang Loo sent out his message. So the treasure is still hidden where old Chang left it, and the parrot still has the secret!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TRIPLE FIRE

  ith a single motion they all turned to face the green Feather Devil, sidling along its perch, staring back at them with a sullen hostility, as if defying them to wrest its secret by fair means or foul.

  “Come on, Feather Devil, speak up!” Driscoll coaxed, scratching its crest. “Give us those three little words!”

  “Rawk-awk!” said the parrot, and drew blood from Driscoll’s finger with a nip of its sharp beak.

  “Nice birdie!” Driscoll said soothingly. “Give us those three little words—so I can wring that blasted neck of yours!”

  “You’ve got a job on your hands,” O’Hara said. “Shao’s been worked on by experts.”

  While Driscoll went on trying to coax the precious words from the stubborn parrot, O’Hara heard Burke’s voice shouting up to him excitedly from downstairs.

  “Hey, Sarge! Here’s Tai Gat!”

  “Send him up!” O’Hara called back, and the limping mafoo came hurrying up the stairs, bursting with excited questions about the broken doors, the bullet-scarred halls, the Blue Coat Man’s
tale that the New Master was lying dead.

  With grim brevity O’Hara pointed to the sprawled body lying there on the stained floor, and recounted what had taken place in crisp, terse sentences that left the mafoo gasping with astonishment.

  “Chang Loo not real Chang Loo!” he stammered. “Can there be two moons in the sky? Ai-yee! It is a devil work past all belief! Sah-jin, I leave house after rice-time to burn prayers for Old Master at Plum Blossom Joss House. Young Master say he go to fan-tan game—now he is gone to ancestors. Hoya! The ways of the Lords of Destiny are hidden from the eyes of men.”

  O’Hara questioned Tai Gat about the arrival of the false Chang Loo. The mafoo replied that the impostor had simply rung the bell and presented the telegram as introduction. The silversmith had already lapsed into the coma which endured until the hour of his death, and Tai Gat declared that he had observed nothing to arouse suspicion about the stranger’s identity.

  Regarding Chang Pao’s hidden treasure, Tai Gat professed complete ignorance. The Old Master had grown secretive and suspicious in his later years, and kept most of the rooms locked up, day and night. The mafoo was forbidden to enter his master’s private quarters, unless summoned by the gong.

  “Didn’t you look after the parrot Shao?” O’Hara asked. “Feeding him, and so on?”

  “No, Sah-jin,” Tai Gat answered. “Shao live in Master’s room until he fall sick. Then I move him to Kwan-Yin room so his noise not wake Master from sleep.”

  “Did you ever hear the parrot talk?” O’Hara questioned. “Did you ever hear him speak anything except his name?”

  “Not listen, Sah-jin,” Tai Gat replied. “Me not likee Feather Devil. Young ones good for eating, but old ones good for nothing but make noise.”

  “Well, you’re wrong about Shao. Shao happens to be the most valuable parrot in the world.” Abruptly, O’Hara turned to Driscoll, who was still trying to wheedle the magic words from the obstinate Feather Devil.