Behind That Curtain

by Earl Der Biggers

  Miss Morrow stood, her brows contracted in bewilderment, looking down at the unexpected enclosure she had found in the envelope with the London postmark.

  “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “There’s just one trouble with this detective business. It’s so full of mystery.”

  Chan smiled. “Humbly begging pardon to mention it, I would suggest you iron out countenance. Wrinkles might grow there, which would be a heart-breaking pity. Occasional amazing occurrence keeps life spicy. Accept that opinion from one who knows it.”

  “But what in the world does this mean?” she asked.

  “One thing I am certain it does not mean,” Chan replied. “Scotland Yard in sudden playful mood does not post empty paper over six thousand miles of land and water. No, some queer business has blossomed up near at hand, which it is our duty to unveil.” The girl began to smooth the blank sheet. Chan stretched out a warning hand. Despite his girth, the hand was thin and narrow, with long, tapering fingers. “I beg of you, do not touch further,” he cried. “A great mistake. For although we can not see, there is something on that paper.”

  “What?” she inquired.

  “Fingerprints,” he answered. Gingerly by one corner he removed the paper from her hand. “The fingerprints, dainty and firm, you have made. The fingerprints, also, perhaps not so dainty, of the person who folded it and put it in envelope.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Miss Morrow.

  “I am no vast admirer of science in this work,” Chan went on. “But fingerprints tell pretty much truth. Happy to say I have made half-hearted study of the art. In Honolulu, where I am faced by little competition, I rejoice in mouth-filling title of fingerprint expert. Mr. Kirk, have you a drawer with heavy lock, to which you alone hold key?”

  “Surely,” replied Kirk. He unlocked a compartment in a handsome Spanish desk, and Chan deposited the paper inside. Kirk turned the key, and removing it from the ring, handed it to Charlie.

  “Later,” remarked Chan, “with lamp black and camel’s hair brush, I perform like the expert I have been pronounced. Maybe we discover who has been opening Sir Frederic’s mail.” He picked up the empty envelope. “Behold—steam has been applied. The marks unquestionable.”

  “Steam,” cried Barry Kirk. “But who in the world—oh, I say. Sir Frederic’s mail came through the local office of Thomas Cook and Sons.”

  “Precisely,” grinned Chan.

  “And Mr. Carrick Enderby is employed there.”

  Chan shrugged. “You are bright young man. It is not beyond possibility that the mark of Mr. Enderby’s large thumb is on that paper. However, speculation is idle thing. Facts must be upearthed. Miss Morrow—may I rudely suggest—the remainder of Sir Frederic’s mail?”

  “Yes, of course,” said the girl. “I feel rather guilty about this, but when duty calls, you know—”

  She sat down and went through the other letters. Obviously her search was without any interesting result.

  “Well,” she said finally, “that’s that. I leave the matter of the blank sheet of paper to you, Sergeant. For myself, I am going to turn my attention to Miss Gloria Garland. What was that pearl from her necklace doing under the desk beside which Sir Frederic was killed?”

  “A wise question,” nodded Chan. “Miss Garland should now be invited to converse. May she prove more pointed talker than Miss Lila Barr.”

  “Let me call her up and ask her over here,” suggested Kirk. “I’ll tell her I want to have a talk with her in my office about last night’s affair. She may arrive a bit less prepared with an explanation than if she knows it’s the police who want to see her.”

  “Splendid,” approved Miss Morrow. “But I’m afraid we’re cutting in most frightfully on your business, Mr. Kirk. You must say so if we are.”

  “What business?” he inquired airily. “Like Sergeant Chan, I am now attached to your office. And I’m likely to grow more attached all the time. If you’ll pardon me for a moment—”

  He went to the telephone and reached Miss Garland at her apartment. The actress agreed to come at once.

  As Kirk came away from the telephone, the doorbell rang and Paradise admitted a visitor. Captain Flannery strode into the room.

  “Hello,” he said. “You’re all here, ain’t you? I’d like to look round a bit—if I’m not butting in.”

  “Surely no one could be more warmly welcome,” Chan told him.

  “Thanks, Sergeant. You solved this problem yet?”

  “Not up to date of present speaking,” grinned Chan.

  “Well, you’re a little slow, ain’t you?” Captain Flannery was worried, and not in the best of humor. “I thought from what I’ve read about you, you’d have the guilty man locked up in a closet for me, by this time.”

  Chan’s eyes narrowed. “Challenge is accepted,” he answered with spirit. “I have already obliged mainland policemen by filling a few closets with guilty men they could not catch. From my reading in newspapers, there still remains vast amount of work to do in same line.”

  “Is that so?” Flannery responded. He turned to Miss Morrow. “Did you talk with the Barr woman?”

  “I did,” said the girl. She repeated Lila Barr’s story. Flannery heard her out in silence.

  “Well,” he remarked when she had finished, “you didn’t get much, did you?”

  “I’ll have to admit I didn’t,” she replied.

  “Maybe not as much as I could have got—and me not a woman, either. I’m going down now and have a talk with her myself. She don’t look good to me. Cried because her fellow went and left her? Perhaps. But if you ask me, it takes more than that to make a woman cry nowadays.”

  “You may be right,” Miss Morrow agreed.

  “I know I’m right. And let me tell you something else—I’m going to be on hand when you talk with Gloria Garland. Make up your mind to that right now.”

  “I shall be glad to have you. Miss Garland is on her way here to meet us in the office downstairs.”

  “Fine. I’ll go and take a look at this weepy dame. If the Garland woman comes before I’m back, you let me know. I’ve been in this game thirty years, young woman, and no district attorney’s office can freeze me out. When I conduct an investigation, I conduct it.”

  He strode from the room. Chan looked after him without enthusiasm. “How loud is the thunder, how little it rains,” he murmured beneath his breath.

  “We’d better go to the office,” suggested Kirk. “Miss Garland is likely to arrive at any moment.”

  They went below. The sun was blazing brightly in the middle room; the events of the foggy night now passed seemed like a bad dream. Kirk sat down at his desk, opened a drawer, and handed Chan a couple of press clippings.

  “Want to look at those?” he inquired. “As I told you this morning, it appears that Sir Frederic was interested, not only in Eve Durand, but in other missing women as well.”

  Chan read the clippings thoughtfully, and laid them on the desk. He sighed ponderously. “A far-reaching case,” he remarked, and was silent for a long time.

  “A puzzler, even to you,” Kirk said at length.

  Chan came to himself with a start. “Pardon, please? What did you say?”

  “I said that even the famous Sergeant Chan is up against it this time.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. But I was not thinking of Sir Frederic. A smaller, less important person occupied my mind. Without fail I must go to little Barry Chan on next Wednesday’s boat.”

  “I hope you can,” smiled Miss Morrow. “Not many men are as devoted to their families nowadays as you are.”

  “Ah—you do not understand,” said Chan. “You mainland people—I observe what home is to you. An unprivate apartment, a pigeonhole to dive into when the dance or the automobile ride is ended. We Chinese are different. Love, marriage, home, still we cling to unfashionable things like that. Home is a sanctuary into which we retire, the father is high priest, the altar fires burn bright.”

  “Sounds rather pleasant,
” remarked Barry Kirk. “Especially that about the father. By the way, I must send my namesake a cablegram and wish him luck.”

  Miss Gloria Garland appeared in the outer office, and Kinsey escorted her into the middle room. She was not quite so effective in the revealing light of day as she had been at a candlelit dinner table. There were lines about her eyes, and age was peering from beneath the heavy make-up.

  “Well, here I am, Mr. Kirk,” she said. “Oh—Miss Morrow—and Mr. Chan. I’m a wreck, I know. That thing last night upset me terribly—such a charming man, Sir Frederic. Has—has anything been unearthed—any clue?”

  “Nothing much,” replied Kirk, “as yet. Please sit down.”

  “Just a moment,” said Miss Morrow. “I must get Captain Flannery.”

  “I will go, please,” Chan told her, and hurried out.

  He pushed open the door of the office occupied by the Calcutta Importers. Captain Flannery was standing, red-faced and angry, and before him sat Lila Barr, again in tears. The Captain swung about. “Yes?” he snapped.

  “You are wanted, Captain,” Chan said. “Miss Garland is here.”

  “All right.” He turned to the weeping girl. “I’ll see you again, young woman.” She did not reply. He followed Chan to the hall.

  “You too have some success as a tear-starter,” suggested Chan.

  “Yeah—she’s the easiest crier I’ve met this year. I wasn’t any too gentle with her. It don’t pay.”

  “Your methods, of course, had amazing success?”

  “Oh—she stuck to her story. But you take it from me, she knows more than she’s telling. Too many tears for an innocent bystander. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars right now that she’s Eve Durand.”

  Chan shrugged. “My race,” he said, “possesses great fondness for gambling. Not to go astray into ruin, I am compelled to overlook even easy methods of gain in that line.”

  Captain Flannery was driven back to his favorite phrase. “Is that so?” he replied, and they entered Kirk’s office.

  When they were all in the middle room, Barry Kirk shut the door on the interested Mr. Kinsey. Captain Flannery faced Gloria Garland.

  “I want to see you. You know who I am. I was upstairs last night. So your name’s Gloria Garland, is it?”

  She looked up at him a bit apprehensively. “Yes, of course.”

  “Are you telling your real name, lady?”

  “Well, it’s the name I have used for many years. I—”

  “Oh? So it isn’t the real one?”

  “Not exactly. It’s a name I took—”

  “I see. You took a name that didn’t belong to you.” The Captain’s tone implied a state’s prison offense. “You had reasons, I suppose?”

  “I certainly had.” The woman looked at him with growing anger. “My name was Ida Pingle, and I didn’t think that would go well in the theater. So I called myself Gloria Garland.”

  “All right. You admit you travel under an assumed name?”

  “I don’t care for the way you put it. A great many people on the stage have taken more attractive names than their own. I have done nothing to justify your rudeness—”

  “I can quite understand your feeling,” said Miss Morrow, with a disapproving glance at the Captain. “From this point I will take up the inquiry.”

  “I wish you would,” remarked Miss Garland warmly.

  “Had you ever met Sir Frederic Bruce before you came to Mr. Kirk’s dinner party last night?” the girl inquired.

  “No, I had not.”

  “He was, then, a complete stranger to you?”

  “He certainly was. Why should you ask me that?”

  “You had no private interview with him last night?”

  “No. None.”

  Captain Flannery stepped forward, his mouth open, about to speak. Miss Morrow raised her hand. “Just a moment, Captain. Miss Garland, I warn you this is a serious business. You should tell the truth.”

  “Well—” Her manner became uncertain. “What makes you think I’m—”

  “Lying? We know it,” exploded Flannery.

  “You broke the string of your necklace last night on your way to the bungalow,” Miss Morrow continued. “Where did that accident happen?”

  “On the stairs—the stairs leading up from the twentieth floor to the roof.”

  “Did you recover all the pearls?”

  “Yes—I think so. I wasn’t quite sure of the number. Of course, I needn’t tell you they’re only imitation. I couldn’t afford the real thing.”

  Miss Morrow opened her handbag, and laid a solitary pearl on the desk. “Do you recognize that, Miss Garland?”

  “Why—why, yes. It belongs to me, of course. Thank you so much. Where—er—where did you find it?”

  “We found it,” said Miss Morrow slowly, “under the desk in this room.” The woman flushed, and made no reply. There was a moment’s strained silence. “Miss Garland,” the girl went on, “I think you had better change your tactics. The truth, if you please.”

  The actress shrugged. “I fancy you’re right. I was only trying to keep out of this. It’s not the sort of publicity I want. And as a matter of fact, I’m not in it very deep.”

  “But you really broke the string in this office, where you had come for a talk with Sir Frederic?”

  “Yes, that’s true. I caught the necklace on a corner of the desk when I got up to go.”

  “Please don’t start with the moment when you got up to go. Take it from the beginning, if you will.”

  “Very good. When I said I had never seen Sir Frederic before last night, I was telling the truth. I had left the elevator and was crossing the hallway to the stairs, when the door of these offices opened and a man stood on the threshold. He said: ‘You are Miss Garland, I believe?’ I told him that was my name, and he said he was Sir Frederic Bruce, Mr. Kirk’s guest, and that he wanted to have a talk with me, alone, before we met upstairs.”

  “Yes—go on.”

  “Well, it seemed odd, but he was such a distinguished-looking man I felt it must be all right, so I followed him in here. We sat down, and he started to tell me who he was—Scotland Yard, and all that. I’m English, of course, and I have the greatest respect for any one from the Yard. He talked around for a minute, and then he went to the point.”

  “Ah, yes,” smiled Miss Morrow. “That’s what we are waiting for. What was the point?”

  “He—he wanted to ask me something.”

  “Yes? What?”

  “He wanted to ask me if I could identify a woman who disappeared a great many years ago. A woman who just stepped off into the night, and was never heard of again.”

  A tense silence followed these words. Quietly Chan moved a little closer. Barry Kirk’s eyes were fixed with interest on Gloria Garland’s face. Even Captain Flannery stood eagerly at attention.

  “Yes,” said Miss Morrow calmly. “And why did Sir Frederic think you could identify this woman?”

  “Because I was her best friend. I was the last person who saw her on the night she disappeared.”

  Miss Morrow nodded. “Then you were present at a picnic party in the hills near Peshawar on a certain night fifteen years ago?”

  The woman’s eyes opened wide. “Peshawar? That’s in India, isn’t it? I have never been in India in my life.”

  Another moment of startled silence. Then Flannery roared at her. “Look here—you promised to tell the truth—”

  “I am telling the truth,” she protested.

  “You are not. That woman he asked you about was Eve Durand, who disappeared from a party one night outside Peshawar—”

  Chan cut in on him. “Humbly asking pardon, Captain,” he said, “you shouldn’t be so agile in jumping upon the lady’s story.” He picked up a couple of clippings from the desk. “Will you be so kind,” he added to Miss Garland, “as to mention name of place from which your friend disappeared?”

  “Certainly. She disappeared from Nice.”

  �
��Nice? Where the hell’s that?” Flannery asked.

  “Nice is a resort city on the French Riviera,” replied Miss Garland, sweetly. “I am afraid your duties keep you too much at home, Captain.”

  “Nice,” repeated Chan slowly. “Then the name of your friend was perhaps Marie Lantelme?”

  “That was her name,” the actress replied.

  Chan selected a clipping, and handed it to Miss Morrow. “Will you condescend to read words out loud?” he inquired. “Most interesting, to be sure.”

  Again, as in the dining-room of the St. Francis the day before, Miss Morrow read one of Sir Frederic’s treasured clippings.

  “What became of Marie Lantelme? It is now eleven years since that moonlit June night when a company under English management played The Dollar Princess on the stage of the Theatre de la Jetee-Promenade, in the city of Nice. It was a memorable evening for all concerned. The house was sold out, packed with soldiers on leave, and the manager was frantic. At the last moment word had come that his leading lady was seriously ill and with many misgivings he sent for the understudy, a pretty, inconspicuous little chorus girl named Marie Lantelme. It was her big chance at last. She stepped out on the blazing stage and became a woman transformed. The performance she gave will never be forgotten by any one who was in that audience—an audience that went wild, that was on its feet cheering for her when the curtain fell.

  “After the performance the manager rushed in high glee to Marie Lantelme’s dressing-room. She was a discovery, and she was his. He would star her in London, in New York. She listened to him in silence. Then she put on her simple little frock and stepped from the stage door out upon the jetty. Fame and riches were waiting for her, if she chose to take them. Whether she chose or not will never be known. All that is known is that when she left the theater she walked off into nothingness. Eleven years have passed, and from that day to this no one has ever heard from Marie Lantelme.”

  Miss Morrow stopped reading, her countenance again in great need of ironing out. Captain Flannery stood with open mouth. Only Chan seemed to have retained his cheerful composure.

  “Marie Lantelme was your friend?” he said to Miss Garland.

  “She was,” replied the actress, “and somehow Sir Frederic knew it. I was appearing in that same company. I must say the clipping exaggerates a bit—I suppose they have to do it to make things interesting. It was an adequate performance—that’s what I would have called it. I don’t remember any cheering. But there isn’t any doubt about her making good. She could have had other parts—better ones than she had ever had before. Yet it’s true enough—she left the theater, and that was the last of her.”