Continuing to laugh, this Jun-chan again shook the naked one violently. Finally, the shaken Jun-chan made a strange sound and his eyes suddenly opened.
‘Oh so you’ve finally come to, have you? Come on, get a grip on yourself. What were you doing in this place?’
The Jun-chan in worker’s clothes again spoke in a most peculiar way.
For a time, the naked Jun-chan appeared not to know what was going on. He opened and closed his sleepy eyes, but when he saw the woman in black standing before him it was as if he had sniffed smelling salts for he quickly recovered his senses.
‘M’lady, I’ve had a terrible time… Hah! It’s him. This blackguard.’
Looking at the overall-clad Jun-chan, the seated Jun-chan jabbered madly. Then the Jun-chans locked together and a fierce struggle ensued.
However, the nightmarish contest did not last long. In an instant, the naked man was thrown onto the concrete floor.
‘You bounder! You bounder! How dare you pretend to be me, you swine! M’lady, be careful. He’s an impostor! It’s Matsu in disguise. It’s the stoker Matsu.’ The naked Jun-chan yelled out from the floor where he lay flat out after having been thrown.
‘Hey, you there. I’ll have to ask you to put up your hands and just remain quiet while I listen to what Jun-chan has to say.’
Realizing that the situation would not be resolved simply, the woman in black had quickly grasped her pistol and pointed it at the Jun-chan clad in working clothes. Her voice was kind, but the extent of her determination could be gauged by the hue of her flashing eyes.
The man wearing the overalls obediently raised both hands, but the leer remained on his face. There was something weird about the fellow.
‘All right Jun-chan. Tell me your story. What exactly is going on here?’
Suddenly embarrassed by his nudity, Jun-chan coiled himself up and then began to speak.
‘You know that after everyone came here last night I went back out to the steamer by myself. It must have been then. Having finished doing what I had to do on the ship, I came back to land on the boat – and who do you think had sneaked along with me in the darkness but this fellow, Matsu, the stoker? I bawled him out in no uncertain terms, but then the bounder suddenly came flying at me.
‘I had no idea that the blockhead was so strong. He started really laying in to me. I took some telling blows and finally lost consciousness. I don’t know how long after that it was, but when I came to I was lying in one of the storerooms here with my hands and legs tied and without a stitch of clothing on. I tried to shout out but it was no good because I’d been gagged. I was scrabbling to get out when he came into the storeroom. Then I saw he was wearing my working clothes. And he must be an expert in disguise or something because he was also wearing a false beard. His face looked exactly like mine.
‘Aha, I thought, he’s made himself look like me because he’s got some plot in mind. I realized he was a deceptive villain but I couldn’t do anything because I was all tied up. Then, the scoundrel says to me “just put up with it a little longer” and lands me another knockout blow. I’m ashamed to say it, but I lost consciousness again. The next thing was when I came to just now.
‘You’re going to get yours now Matsu! With things this way, looks like you’ve run out of luck. You can enjoy the wait until I take my full revenge on you.’
After Jun-chan had finished talking, the woman in black suppressed a strong feeling of disquiet and laughed with apparent pleasure.
‘You are a deep one aren’t you Matsu? I had no idea you were such a villain. I congratulate you. So, you’ve been behind all these strange goings on from the start, right? You threw the dummy into the tank and dressed up the mannequins with all that strange garb. But what possible purpose could you have for doing that? It doesn’t matter now, so you might as well tell me. Hey, stop leering and answer me, would you?’
The man in the work clothes asked teasingly, ‘And if I don’t answer, what do you intend to do?’
‘Kill you. It seems you don’t know your boss’s character yet. She likes nothing better than the sight of blood.’
‘So you mean that you’re going to let me have it with that pistol? Ha, ha, ha.’
The insolent fellow laughed loudly.
At some stage he had lowered both his hands, both of which were now thrust nonchalantly in his pockets.
The woman in black gnashed her teeth at such an unthinkable insult from one of her underlings.
She could endure no more.
‘Laugh at me, do you? Here, take this!’
No sooner had she shouted this than she levelled the pistol and pulled the trigger.
Did the man in work clothes lose his life immediately after hearing this trite gibe? Why no, of course not. He stood there with his hands thrust into his pockets laughing with evident pleasure.
The trigger was pulled, but it simply clicked without firing.
‘I say, that made an odd sound, don’t you think? Perhaps there’s something awry with your pistol?’
The derisive laughter infuriated the woman in black. She pulled the trigger again and again in quick succession but there was only the hollow clicking sound.
‘You scoundrel! You took the bullets out, didn’t you?’
‘Oh so you’ve finally twigged have you? It is indeed as you say. Look here.’
Taking his right hand from the pocket, he opened it to reveal several small bullets snuggled cutely like little marbles in his palm.
Just then, there was a loud sound of footsteps outside the cage and the Black Lizard’s rowdy minions came rushing in.
‘My lady, we’ve got a problem. It’s Kitamura. He was supposed to be guarding the entrance, but he’s been tied up!’
‘And he’s out like a light!’
Matsu must have done this too. But why tie up just Kitamura and leave the rest alone? Maybe there was a special reason for it.
‘Hey, who in the name of creation is he?’
The men’s eyes were full of surprise when they realised there were two ‘Jun’ichis’.
‘It’s Matsu the stoker. We’ve found out that he’s the one behind everything. Hurry up and pin him down.’
Heartened by these reinforcements, the woman in black spoke loudly.
‘What’s that? Matsu? You swine you. How dare you do such a thing!’
The men stampeded into the cage and made to seize the man in the working clothes. But what speed Matsu had! Dodging beneath the clutching hands of the advancing group, he had in an instant dashed outside the cage. Then, while gradually backing away, the grinning figure beckoned with his hand as if saying ‘come here.’ What unfathomable audacity!
As if hypnotized, the woman in black and her rough henchmen moved out of the cage and edged after him.
What a peculiar procession! The pursued backing off along the concrete-walled subterranean passage, while the pursuers slowly moved directly toward their hated foe with their hairy arms raised in a boxer’s pose.
Eventually the strange cavalcade reached the front of the stuffed doll display, where Matsu abruptly stood still.
‘Hey you lot! Do you know why Kitamura is tied up?’
Of course, his hands were stuck nonchalantly in his pockets when he launched the odd question.
‘Let me through there! I want to ask him some questions.’
It seemed the woman in black had thought of something, for she pushed her way to the head of the group and approached Matsu.
‘If you are Matsu, I apologise with all sincerity for having underestimated you. But are you really Matsu? The more I think about it, the less I believe it. You’re not Matsu at all, are you? And if that’s the case, do me the favour of taking off that damnable false beard, would you? Take of those whiskers please.’
Pitiful though it was, she seemed to be pleading with him.
‘Ha, ha, ha. You already know, even without my removing my beard. You know, but you are scared to say my name, aren’t you? Your pale face is proof of what I say – you look as though you’ve seen a ghost!’
It seemed that the man in working clothes was not Matsu. And he no longer spoke like some lowly thief. What was more, there seemed something familiar about the tone of that articulate voice. Such was the violence of her emotion that the woman in black could not prevent a shudder from coursing through her body.
‘All right, then, so you are…’
‘Oh there’s no need for reserve. Why do you hesitate? Out with it then, what’s the rest of the sentence?’
The man in the working clothes was no longer laughing. His overall bearing gave an impression of seriousness. The woman in black felt cold beads of perspiration slowly flowing down under her armpits.
‘Akechi Kogorō… you are Akechi Kogorō aren’t you?’
She felt better after managing to say it.
‘That’s right. You realised a long while ago, didn’t you? You knew, but you suppressed the thought out of cowardice.’
As he said this, the man in working clothes peeled off his beard. Though made up to look like Jun-chan, the face that emerged was unmistakably that of Akechi Kogorō, the much-missed Akechi Kogorō.
‘But why? How can this be?’
‘You mean how was I rescued after having been slung into the middle of the Enshū Sea? Ha, ha, ha. You thought you were ditching me into the sea then didn’t you? But there was a fundamental misapprehension there. You see, I wasn’t trapped inside that sofa – it was poor old Matsu. In order to carry on with my investigations, I decided to disguise myself as the stoker. After tying him up and gagging him I put him in the ideal hiding place – the human chair. Little did I think it would end up like that. I am truly sorry that he met such a tragic fate.’
‘Oh. So that was Matsu, you say? And then you disguised yourself as him and stayed in the engine room all the time. Is that correct?’
Somehow the woman thief’s words had lost their venom and taken on the dulcet tones of a lady of class.
‘Can it really be so, I wonder? But if Matsu had been gagged, how could he have spoken as he did? For after all, the two of us held a long conversation through the sofa’s fabric, didn’t we?’
‘It was me that was speaking.’
‘But how could…’
‘There’s a large closet in that cabin. I hid inside and spoke from there. To you, it sounded as though the voice came from inside the sofa. As there was someone wriggling around within it at the time, your misapprehension was understandable.’
‘In that case, then, it was you that hid Sanae-san away somewhere? And put that clipping from the Osaka newspaper on the chair?’
‘Indeed it was.’
‘Well, very elaborate I must say. So, just to get at me you took the trouble of forging a newspaper?’
‘Forging? Don’t talk such rot! How could I fake a newspaper at the drop of a hat? The story and the photo are both genuine.’
‘Oh really! I mean, it’s silly to say that Sanae-san has a double?’
‘There’s no double. The “Sanae” that you kidnapped and brought here was an impostor. If you only knew the difficulty I had in finding her look-a-like. Of course, I was confident that I could rescue her unharmed, but I was unwilling to expose the only child of a friend to such danger. The girl you took to be Sanae was Sakurayama Yōko, an orphan all alone in the world. What’s more, she is a modern girl of somewhat dubious morals. This was precisely why she was able to play her role in this grand drama so well. Even though she found herself in such a pickle, she had the guts to endure it all. Despite all the tears and wailing, she believed in me. She was certain that I would save her.’
Readers will doubtless recall a chapter earlier in our tale entitled ‘The Strange Old Man.’ It was then that master detective Akechi Kogorō carried out his feat of deception. For the unusual elderly man was none other than Akechi in disguise. From that evening, the real Sanae was concealed in a location known only by the private eye and her place was taken by Sakurayama Yōko, who entered the Iwase household and pretended to be Sanae. Starting the following day, ‘Sanae’ kept herself to her room, seemingly loath to show her face even to those in the house. Assuming that she had succumbed to some sort of depression as a result of the Black Lizard’s barrage of blackmail, her mother and father were not in the slightest bit suspicious that she might be an impostor. Yōko’s acting abilities were already outstanding at this stage.
Listening to the super sleuth’s tale of how he had countered surprise with surprise, the Black Lizard acknowledged from the core of her being her arch-enemy’s superiority. She even felt a deep-seated sense of veneration for this most mysterious great character. However, the veneration was certainly not shared by her ignorant and uncouth underlings. Indeed, they felt an infinite hatred and bitterness toward this rogue and enemy who had completely outdone their leader and sent their comrade Matsu to a watery grave.
They had listened impatiently to the long story, but when they sensed a lull in the to and fro of question and answer they could endure no longer.
‘Enough of this! Let’s do him in!’
One man’s cry sparked the rest and all four burly men leapt toward the lone, unaided detective. Not even the fearsome mastery of the villainess could have prevailed against such force.
One tried to throttle him from behind, another twisted up his arms, and yet another grabbed his legs and sought to topple him. There was no resisting such a deadly, crazed adversary – even for Akechi Kogorō. Things looked bad, very bad. Having struggled so hard to reach this point, was there no way for him to turn the tables at the very last? Or would the greatest detective of the age lose his life to a gang of thugs?
But strangely, in the thick of the uproar, there echoed a surprisingly cheerful laugh. And surely this was the laugh of Akechi Kogorō, who was now being pressed down by the four men. What could it all mean?
‘Ha, ha, ha! Don’t you lot have eyes? You’d better look closely. Hey, take a good look inside the case.’
This presumably meant the glass case like a show window displaying the stuffed human figures.
Without thinking, they all looked in that direction. They were completely unaware of what had happened inside the glass case – partly due to the tumult of the fight and partly because the display was away at an angle from the fray and thus difficult to see.
But now that they looked inside the case, they saw that an astonishing change had occurred. Every one of the dolls wore a man’s coat. All in their original positions, the male and the female figures were now dressed in stiff, serious-looking men’s jackets.
Of course, this must be Akechi’s handiwork, but how tiresome to carry out such mischief not once but twice! Wait a minute though. Surely Akechi would not play a meaningless prank. Might this weird changing of attires portend something astounding?
Naturally, the woman in black was the first to realize what it was.
‘Oh no!’
Amazingly, and before anyone could think of fleeing, the dolls stirred into life and stood up. It was not only the clothes that had changed, the insides had also been replaced with something completely different. These were not stuffed figures but live human beings who had posed like dolls, waiting for the right time to come. And look! Without exception, every one of the jacket-clad men was gripping a pistol and the muzzles were pointed toward the woman thief and her underlings.
At that instant, there came a loud crashing sound and a gaping hole appeared in the show window. Then, from the opening the men in jackets came flying out.
‘Black Lizard, you’re under arrest! Come quietly!’
The fearsome order used down through the ages rang out. This effective command is used surprisingly frequently by the modern constabulary.
Naturally, the men in coats were a taskforce of able police detectives who had infiltrated the underground lair with Akechi’s guidance.
When the private-eye asked earlier on why only Kitamura, the man on watch at the entrance, had been tied up, he was hinting at the arrival of the police in support. The signal for them to open the entrance came when Akechi telephoned the police headquarters, enabling the detectives to make their way underground without a hitch. When they came in, they dealt with the watchman. Of course, Akechi was helping from inside. That was when Jun-chan went missing just a while ago. But why did they not arrest the Black Lizard immediately? This was Akechi’s stratagem to heighten the effect of the capture. After all, detectives are not complete bores without a sense of humour.
Naturally, another team had enlisted the co-operation of the harbour police and gone to the pirate vessel out at sea. By now, every one of the Black Lizard’s underlings – and the steamer itself – would have been taken into custody.
The pirate crew here underground all quickly lowered their heads before the officers’ pistols. Fierce though the rough band was, there was nothing the men could do to oppose this nightmarish surprise attack, and they were all tied up, including the stark naked Jun-chan. However, their leader was more nimble. Having quickly perceived why the dolls were wearing coats, the Black Lizard ran away rapidly, eluding the clutching arms of the detectives and flying like a bird down the passage into her private room where she locked the door shut.
The woman in black could not withstand this ultimate insult to her pride as queen of the underworld. Though her fate was unavoidable, the Black Lizard surely intended to lock herself into her secret chamber and end her life in dignity. When Akechi Kogorō realized that, he slipped away from the commotion of the arrests, and raced alone to her chamber.
‘Open up! It’s me, Akechi! I have something I must say to you! Please, open the door!’
In response to his shouting came a weak reply: ‘Akechi-san. If it’s you alone…’
The Black Lizard and Beast In the Shadows Page 15
