Fifty Candles

by Earl Derr Biggers

  We waited. From where I sat I could see that the yellow fog from the tule- fields no longer pressed against the window panes. By straining my eyes, I fancied I could make out the dim outlines of an apartment house across the street. Was the tule-fog lifting?

  The glint of firelight on my pretty bracelets must have caught the eye of Barnes, for he came over and, grinning, set me free.

  “Thanks,” I said gratefully.

  “Temporarily, at any rate,” he spoiled it all by adding.

  He returned to his seat. Mark Drew came down the stairs and entered the room on tiptoe. He, too, found a chair. Our wait seemed endless.

  “I don’t think much of your scheme, Drew,” growled the detective at last. “Silly play-acting, if you ask me.”

  He was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps in the dining room. In another moment, in the big door of the drawing-room, Myers and Murphy appeared. Between them stood Hung Chin-chung.

  “You win, Drew!” Barnes cried. He leaped to his feet and turned up the lights, brisk, alive, delighted. “Hello, Hung—glad to see you,” he chortled.

  “He was makin’ his getaway by a rope from his window,” Myers explained. “We grabbed him the minute he landed.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Barnes. “Well, Hung—that’s the second time tonight the old fire-escape proved a handy invention, eh?”

  Hung did not speak. He faced the detective with a dignity that was somehow pathetic and hopeless.

  “Don’t try that stony-stare stuff on me,” Barnes warned. “I know you came down that way before. I—that is, we—I mean Mr. Drew here and I—found a few strands of the rope caught in the rough ledge of the window sill.” He passed round Hung into the hall, and returned with the bundle he had hidden beneath the cushion of a chair. As he now unrolled it I perceived that it was a pair of Hung’s trousers, wrapped about a pair of cheap American-made shoes. “You’re getting awful careless where you put your clothes, ain’t you, Hung?”

  The Chinaman shrugged his shoulders. “You are searching the lake for the moon,” he said scornfully.

  “Maybe we are,” answered Barnes. “And maybe we’ll find it too. Maybe the moon’s dropped down from heaven—by way of a rope fire-escape.” He went close to the impassive face of the Chinaman. “I’ve got you tagged, son, from the minute you left here to go to your room just before dinner. Wanted to charge your clothes, eh? To bring honor to your master and your master’s house? Was that the reason? I don’t think so. Now listen to me—and correct me if I’m wrong: You went to your room. You put on these white man’s shoes in place of those velvet slippers. You took the knife you’d snitched from Mr. Winthrop’s luggage when you were in the stateroom packing Henry Drew’s bags. You let out the rope of the fire-escape and dropped down into the fog. It wasn’t two minutes to Doctor Su’s place by the back way.

  “He was alone there. Did you fix that? You put the knife in him. When you came back you saw Henry Drew in the dining room. You slipped through the window and did him in, too. Before you could get back up by the rope route, Mr. Winthrop was with you in the fog—”

  “I remember,” I cried. “Something struck me in the face when I was close to the wall of the house. It must have been the rope.”

  “Sure,” said Barnes. “It was. Well, Hung, you and Mr. Winthrop played hide- and- seek in the fog. When he went out into the alley, you locked the gate after him. Then you climbed to your room. You drew up the rope and put it back on the hook. You took off these shoes, all wet and muddy, and the trousers, wet and stained round the bottom from walking in the tall grass. From your window you could step out on the roof; you hid these things in a dark corner out there. But you overlooked the mud on your window-sill, the mud on the floor. You put on fresh clothes and waited for the time when you were due to meet somebody—a friend. Where were you going, you and your friend? I’ll gamble there’s a boat waiting for you down at the dock; faked passports, maybe none at all; a bribe here and there—money will do a lot, eh? Well, Hung, I’m sorry. I can’t let you go to meet your friend. But don’t worry—it’s all right. Your friend will be here in a minute to meet you.”

  Even at that startling bit of information, Hung allowed himself no look of surprise or of distress. Again he shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s all up, Hung,” the detective was saying. “You haven’t got a chance in the world. It’s as clear as day. Your first free evening in twenty years, and you spend it killing your master and your master’s best friend. Is that your idea of a pleasant night off? Now that’s all from me. What have you got to say?”

  “Nothing,” answered Hung Chin-chung.

  Mark Drew came over and stood before the Chinaman. For a long moment the beady little eyes looked straight into those of the dead man’s son. Then, amazingly, they faltered, and Hung’s chin fell upon his breast.

  “Hung,” said Drew, “I’m sorry—you must know that. But after all, Henry Drew was my father, and I was bound to find out who killed him if I could. Then, too, you had tried to involve an innocent man. I’m all at sea. I thought you were loyal to my father—I spoke of your loyalty here tonight. There can be no question of your guilt, but that does not solve the mystery for me. It only increases it. What in heaven’s name was the motive behind all this?”

  We heard the front door open and the sound of footsteps in the hall. Riley, huge, red-faced, triumphant, came into the drawing-room. By one arm he led an amazing little captive, a Chinese girl who seemed not more than twenty. She was beautiful in her way; at least there was something intriguing about the sleek luster of her black hair, about her crimson mouth and her figure, alluringly slender and lissom. Her face was very frightened; the dark eyes held a hunted look as they glanced hurriedly about the room—and then one of relief as they fell on Hung Chin-chung.

  “Well, Riley,” said Barnes, “where’d you pick this up?”

  “It’s as I told you over the phone,” said Riley. “When I left this house to go back on my beat, the fog was lifting. I went down California. Ahead of me, standing near the corner of Grant, I see a big touring car. I hurried up to it. When he seen me coming, the driver, a snappy little Chinaman, tried to start his motor. It stalled. I come up with him.

  “I thought the back seat was empty, but under a couple of blankets I finds this bit of a girl. Just as I drags her out, the car started an’ the driver beat it. I thought you’d like to meet the lady.”

  “Delighted,” said Barnes. He went close to the girl. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  She shrank from him and said nothing.

  “I know her,” Mark Drew put in. “I was at her wedding ten years ago. She was only a child then—but there’s no mistaking her. Her name is Mah-li, and she is the wife of Doctor Su Yen Hun.”

  “Doctor Su’s wife!” cried Barnes. “Now we are getting on! A Chinese triangle—by all the yellow gods! I didn’t know they had ‘em. It’s all up, kid,” he said to the scared little figure. “Hung here has told us everything.”

  “That is a lie,” said Hung in a voice like ice.

  “Your husband’s been murdered. You know that?” roared Barnes.

  “I know nothing,” the girl answered faintly.

  “Where have you been tonight?”

  “At the house of my father, Yuan-shui, on Grant Street. Since early afternoon I was there. My brother was taking me home in his car.”

  “Taking you home? That’s a lie. Taking you to the corner to wait for somebody—somebody who was going to smuggle you on board a boat bound for the treaty ports. Come on—” The detective seized one white slender wrist. “Who were you waiting for on that corner? Who were you waiting for—tell me, and tell me the truth, or, by heaven—”

  He gave her arm a brutal twist.

  “Let the woman alone!” said Hung Chin-chung, and his voice sent shivers down my spine. “She was waiting for me.”

  “Sure, she was,” said Barnes, dropping the girl’s arm. “Now tell me all about it.

 
; “To you,” said Hung scornfully, “I will tell nothing.” He walked up to Mark Drew. “To you—everything,” he said. “Only tonight in this house you spoke of my loyalty, my devotion to your father, and my heart was heavy within me. And why? Because, but a little while before, I had slain both your father and his friend.” He turned to the girl, Mah-li. “All this was to be,” he explained as though to a child. “Long ago the gods arranged it. And who is man that he should struggle against the gods?” Again he faced Mark Drew. “But because you have believed in me, have trusted me, you must know that I had good and sufficient cause.”

  For a moment he was silent while we waited, tense with interest. In the hallway the great clock struck the hour of three.

  “Ten years ago,” the Chinaman continued to Drew, “I first saw this woman, Mah- li. In the doorway of her father’s shop in Grant Street—the shop of Yuan- shui, merchant of curios. A girl of fourteen, slender as the bamboo is slender, dainty as the blossom of the plum, beautiful as a jewel of pure jade. I saw her there, and it came to me that the best in life was evading me—a wife and sons to worship at the graves of my ancestors.”

  He stepped nearer to Mark Drew.

  “What you call love—that came to me. In my thoughts, the slim figure of Mah-li was always swaying gently, like a bamboo touched by the breeze. I saw myself her husband. I heard the cry of my first-born son. Yuan-shui, whom I approached, thought it could be honorably arranged. But, as you know, I was not my own master. There was my honorable promise to your father. In this room with the firelight like two torches in his evil eyes, he listened to me while I told him how Mah-li had caught up my heart and held it in her slender, perfumed hands. I asked his permission to marry. And why not? Could I not serve him as faithfully, even though Mah-li were also mine to care for? He did not speak. He was not pleased.

  “Vanity! Vanity was the secret flame at which he warmed his hands, grown cold with many wicked deeds. He was vain of my loyalty to him. That cake with the candles is a symbol, a boast. Selfish, cruel, he would not share me with the woman—he must have all my time, all my care, all my devotion. He thought I did not know. He was often a fool. He called into consultation his partner in evil, Doctor Su Yen Hun, an old man from whom the years had sucked all blood, leaving him a dry, unlovely husk. Between them they arranged it. Doctor Su had no wife living in San Francisco at the time. Your father took me on a journey to the south. When we came back it was Mah-li’s wedding day. She had been given to Su Yen Hun.

  “Henry Drew made merry at the wedding. That night in this room I saw his triumph blazing deep in his eyes. I hated him. I hated Su, his partner. Evil men, both of them, as like in their wickedness as the twin blossoms of the pear are like in beauty. Between them they had robbed me, and I swore that the instant I was free I would kill them both. Today brought my freedom, and tonight I kept my oath.”

  “You waited ten years!” said Mark Drew softly.

  “Why not?” said Hung. “Was I not bound by the chains of my honorable promise?”

  Detective Barnes was reaching for those chill cuffs of steel that had lately been on my wrists. Hung stepped to the side of Mah-li and laid a hand on her arm.

  “Do not grieve, little disappointed one,” he said. “We are not to dwell together in the great house by the broad river in the village of Sun Chin. It is the decree of the gods. For you—after you have put off the white garb of your mourning—there may be another, younger husband. For me—”

  “Put out your hands,” growled Barnes, coming nearer.

  “Once,” said Hung, “in Honolulu, the city of my birth, I stood in the foreigner’s court. It is a humiliation not to be endured a second time.”

  With a swift movement he turned his back on the detective. I alone stood between him and the fireplace, and I could see what followed.

  I had last noted my knife on the table; how he got it I do not know, but now it flashed from his sleeve. The firelight glinted on the blade as, holding the handle in his two lean hands, he plunged the point toward his heart. He took one dazed uncertain step, then fell, his black hair close to the dying fire, while from her tarnished frame above, Henry Drew’s first wife stared down at him. For an instant, held by this latest decree of the gods, no one moved.

  Then without a sound Mah-li dropped to the dead man’s side. It was Mark Drew who snatched the knife from her hand and left her there on her knees, gazing at the motionless figure on the hearth.

  He was at the end of the path at last, that Chinese boy born near Queen Emma’s yard, on the beach at Waikiki. Looking down at him, I was conscious of a feeling of pity—until I recalled the knife he had taken from my luggage. Then for the first time I realized all I had escaped. And quicker than the tule-fog lifting from San Francisco, all gloomy apprehension vanished from my heart.

  Henry Drew’s party broke up in a sort of silent awed confusion. Under the flickering gaslight in the dim old hall, Mary Will held out her hand.

  “Good night,” she said.

  “Good morning,” I answered, pointing to the clock. “Where do you imagine you’re going?”

  “To bed, of course.”

  “You could never sleep in this house. Go up and get your hat.”

  “Get my what!”

  “Your hat. We’ll come back for your luggage later in the day. Just now I propose to take you somewhere to breakfast.”

  “Nonsense! I can’t eat breakfast with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It simply isn’t done—that’s all,” argued Mary Will.

  “But it will be done this time. After breakfast I’m going shopping, and you may as well come along.”

  “Going shopping! For what?”

  “For a wife. I understand the town is filled with beautiful possibilities. And I don’t want to get your hopes up too far, but I may say that I’m considering you very seriously.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  “And I love you just as I did at three yesterday afternoon. Peculiar, isn’t it? Yes—I rather think I’ll marry you.”

  “Not without looking around?”

  “I’ll glance the other girls over on our way to the license bureau. If I change my mind, I promise to let you know at once. Now how about the hat?”

  Mary Will hesitated. The hour was not much of a help to her in her delightful stubbornness.

  “I’ll—I’ll have to change my dress, too,” she said and ran upstairs.

  In the brief space of half an hour she returned. Though the fog was gone, San Francisco was still a hidden city as we walked gingerly down the steep side of Nob Hill. The sidewalk was wet and slippery. It was absolutely necessary to hold hands.

  When we came out of an all-night lunch room near Union Square, dawn was breaking over the silent town. A policeman stood on a corner.

  “How soon can we get a marriage license?” I asked him.

  “Three hours and more,” said he. “Office won’t be open till nine.”

  “That’s a long time to wait,” I told him.

  He smiled. “I was that way once myself.”

  I bought a couple of morning papers and we strolled into Union Square. There were great headlines concerning the double murder on Nob Hill. Mary Will caught a glimpse of them.

  “It all seems a thousand years ago,” she said. “Let’s not read about it.”

  “Certainly not. I bought the newspapers to sit on.”

  I spread them over a wet bench. They served the purpose excellently. We sat close; Mary Will’s lovely eyes were heavy with sleep. Gradually her head slipped down on my shoulder. The hat she had put on was small and did not interfere. It seemed the hand of Providence.

  The policeman ambled by, still smiling. “She’s a pretty little thing,” he said softly. “Good luck to the both of you!” And he went on his way, whistling softly.

  Day came. The square filled with sunshine. Busy workers hurried by—not one of them too busy for a curious glance toward our bench
. Across the way, before my hotel, the bellman took up his position. He was fresh and crisp as the morning. The voices of newsboys became more insistent.

  I leaned over and kissed Mary Will’s warm lips.

  “Wake up,” I told her. “It’s your wedding day.”

  * * *

  THE END