Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “Blackbirder?” queried John Quincy.

  The missionary smiled. “Ah, yes—you come from Boston. A blackbirder, my boy, is a shipping-master who furnishes contract labor to the plantations at so much a head.52 It’s pretty well wiped out now, but in the ’eighties! A horrible business—the curse of God was on it. Sometimes the laborers came willingly. Sometimes. But mostly they came at the point of a knife or the muzzle of a gun. A bloody, brutal business.

  “But there on that bright morning under the palm I consigned to God the soul of a man who had so much to answer for.” From The House Without a Key, illustration by William Liepse (The Saturday Evening Post, January 31, 1925).

  “Winterslip and his men went up the beach and began to dig a grave under a cocoanut palm. I followed. I offered to say a prayer. Winterslip laughed—not much use, he said. But there on that bright morning under the palm I consigned to God the soul of a man who had so much to answer for. Winterslip agreed to come to my house for lunch. He told me that save for a recruiting agent who had remained aboard the brig, he was now the only white man on the ship.

  “During lunch, I talked to him. He was so young—I discovered this was his first trip. ‘It’s no trade for you,’ I told him. And after a time, he agreed with me. He said he had two hundred blacks under the hatches that he must deliver to a plantation over in the Kingsmill group, and that after he’d done that, he was through. ‘I’ll take the Maid back to Sydney, Dominie,’ he promised, ‘and turn her over. Then I’m pau.53 I’m going home to Honolulu.’”

  The Reverend Mr. Upton rose slowly. “I learned later that he kept his word,” he finished. “Yes, Dan Winterslip went home, and the South Seas saw him no more. I’ve always been a little proud of my part in that decision. I’ve had few rewards. It’s not everywhere that the missionaries have prospered in a worldly way—as they did in Hawaii.” He glanced at Madame Maynard. “But I’ve had satisfactions. And one of them arose from that meeting on the shore of Apiang. It’s long past my bed hour—I must say good night.”

  He moved away. John Quincy sat turning this horror over and over in his mind. A Winterslip in the blackbirding business! That was pretty. He wished he was back on Beacon Street.

  “Sweet little dig for me,” the old lady was muttering indignantly. “That about the missionaries in Hawaii.54 And he needn’t be so cocky. If Dan Winterslip dropped blackbirding, it was only because he’d found something more profitable, I fancy.” She stood up suddenly. “At last,” she said.

  John Quincy rose and stood beside her. Far away a faint yellow eye was winking. For a moment the old lady did not speak.

  “Well, that’s that,” she said finally, in a low voice. “I’ve seen Diamond Head again. Good night, my boy.”

  “Good night,” John Quincy answered.

  He stood alone by the rail. The pace of the President Tyler was slowing perceptibly. The moon came from behind a cloud, crept back again. A sort of unholy calm was settling over the hot, airless, deep blue world. The boy felt a strange restlessness in his heart.

  He ascended to the boat deck, seeking a breath of air. There, in a secluded spot, he came upon Barbara and Jennison—and stopped, shocked. His cousin was in the man’s arms, and their bizarre costumes added a weird touch to the scene. They did not see John Quincy, for in their world at that moment there were only two. Their lips were crushed together, fiercely—

  John Quincy fled. Good lord! He had kissed a girl or two himself, but it had been nothing like that.

  He went to the rail outside his stateroom. Well, what of it? Barbara was nothing to him; a cousin, yes, but one who seemed to belong to an alien race. He had sensed that she was in love with Jennison; this was no surprise. Why did he feel that frustrated pang deep in his heart? He was engaged to Agatha Parker.

  He gripped the rail, and sought to see again Agatha’s aristocratic face. But it was blurred, indistinct. All Boston was blurred in his memory. The blood of the roaming Winterslips, the blood that led on to blackbirding and hot breathless kisses in the tropic night—was it flowing in his veins too? Oh, lord—he should have stayed at home where he belonged.

  Bowker, the steward, came along. “Well, here we are,” he said. “We’ll anchor in twelve fathoms and wait for the pilot and the doctor in the morning. I heard they’d been having Kona weather out this way, but I imagine this is the tail end of it. There’ll be a moon shortly, and by dawn the old trades will be on the job again, God bless them.”

  John Quincy did not speak. “I’ve returned all your books, sir,” the steward went on, “except that one by Adams on Revolutionary New England.55 It’s a mighty interesting work. I intend to finish it to-night, so I can give it to you before you go ashore.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” John Quincy said. He pointed to dim harbor lights in the distance. “Honolulu’s over there, I take it.”

  “Yeah—several miles away. A dead town, sir. They roll up the sidewalks at nine. And let me give you a tip. Keep away from the okolehau.”56

  “The what?” asked John Quincy.

  “The okolehau. A drink they sell out here.”

  “What’s it made of?”

  “There,” said Bowker, “you have the plot for a big mystery story. What is it made of? Judging by the smell, of nothing very lovely. A few gulps, and you hit the ceiling of eternity. But oh, boy—when you drop! Keep off it, sir. I’m speaking as one who knows.”

  “I’ll keep off it,” John Quincy promised.

  Bowker disappeared. John Quincy remained by the rail, that restless feeling growing momentarily. The moon was hidden still, the ship crept along through the muggy darkness. He peered across the black waters toward the strange land that awaited him.

  Somewhere over there, Dan Winterslip waited for him too. Dan Winterslip, blood relative of the Boston Winterslips, and ex-blackbirder. For the first time, the boy wished he had struck first in that dark attic in San Francisco, wished he had got that strong box and cast it overboard in the night. Who could say what new scandal, what fresh blot on the honored name of Winterslip, might have been averted had he been quicker with his fists?

  As John Quincy turned and entered his cabin, he made a firm resolution. He would linger but briefly at this, his journey’s end. A few days to get his breath, perhaps, and then he would set out again for Boston. And Aunt Minerva would go with him, whether she wanted to or not.

  48.Oahu, the third-largest of the Hawaiian islands, is indeed the home of Honolulu, but the city is situated on the southwest corner of the island—San Francisco is far to the north (and east) of the island. Makapuu Point is on the easternmost point of the island.

  Map of Oahu

  49.Rounding the eastern-most point of Oahu, Koko Head is the headland on the southeastern corner of the island—a ship would pass by it to get to Honolulu.

  50.Apiang (properly, Apaiang or Abaiang) was formerly Charlotte Island and is commonly called Abaiang today. The first contact of the Micronesian natives with Europeans took place in 1606.

  51.“Lucilla, Maid of Shiloh” was a popular song written in 1864, and told a tale of the Civil War—there is no record of a ship bearing that name, nor is the name Tom Brade that of a real person. However, there were numerous “callous brutes” working the South Seas trade, some of whom were Americans. The most notorious of the blackbirders was the American-born William Henry “Bully” Hayes, who died in 1877. A great deal has been written about Hayes, by James A. Michener and others. See especially “Bully Hayes, South Sea Buccaneer,” “Louis Becke, Adventurer and Writer” in Rascals in Paradise, by James A. Michener and A. Grove Day [London: Secker & Warburg 1957]. While it is very difficult to separate the legends from the truth, it appears clear that, in the words of Michener and Day, he was “a cheap swindler, a bully, a minor confidence man, a thief, a ready bigamist.”

  William Henry “Bully” Hayes, 1863

  52.“Blackbirding” was a scourge of the Pacific islands in the 1860s and 1870s. Blackbirders resorted regularly to tric
kery (sometimes posing as missionaries) and violence to coerce islanders into virtual slavery. The British Navy, though active in the region, was unable to suppress the activity. The conscripts were often taken as far away as Peru to work, though many populated plantations in Fiji, Samoa, and Queensland, Australia.

  53.Andrews translates “pau” as “to be spent; to be finished or completed.”

  54.The implication here is that Mrs. Maynard came over as a missionary (or a missionary’s wife) and prospered in Hawaii.

  55.Bowker refers to American writer and historian James Truslow Adams’s Revolutionary New England, 1691-1776, first published in 1923. Bowker has borrowed books that John Quincy acquired “long ago,” but here, the book cannot be more than twelve to eighteen months old. In light of the “month” references elsewhere, the reference is helpful in confirming that the events of The House Without a Key took place in June 1924.

  56.Properly okolehao, Hawaiian “moonshine,” literally means “iron pots,” in which the brew was distilled. Its ingredients—as with all “homemade” alcoholic beverages—varied, including rice, the root of the ti plant, sugar cane, and other vegetables. Its alcohol content was as high as 65 percent (130 proof), depending on the maker’s tastes.

  CHAPTER VI

  Beyond the Bamboo Curtain

  Had John Quincy been able to see his Aunt Minerva at that moment, he would not have been so sure that he could persuade her to fall in with his plans. He would, indeed, have been profoundly shocked at the picture presented by his supposedly staid and dignified relative.

  For Miss Minerva was sitting on a grass mat in a fragrant garden in the Hawaiian quarter of Honolulu. Pale golden Chinese lanterns, inscribed with scarlet letters, hung above her head. Her neck was garlanded with ropes of buff ginger blossoms twined with maile.57 The sleepy, sensuous music of ukulele and steel guitar rose on the midnight air and before her, in a cleared space under the date palms, Hawaiian boys and girls were performing a dance she would not be able to describe in great detail when she got back to Beacon Street.

  Miss Minerva was, in her quiet way, very happy. One of the ambitions of her life had been realized, and she was present at a luau, or native Hawaiian feast. Few white people are privileged to attend this intimate ceremony, but Honolulu friends had been invited on this occasion, and had asked her to go with them. At first she had thought she must refuse, for Dan was expecting Barbara and John Quincy on Monday afternoon. When on Monday evening he had informed her that the President Tyler would not land its passengers until the next day, she had hastened to the telephone and asked to reconsider her refusal.

  Telephone advertisement ca. 1925

  And she was glad she had. Before her, on another mat, lay the remnants of a dinner unique in her experience. Dan had called her a good sport, and she had this evening proved him to be correct. Without a qualm she had faced the queer food wrapped in brown bundles, she had tasted everything, poi served in individual calabashes, chicken stewed in cocoanut milk, squid and shrimps, limu, or sea-weed, even raw fish. She would dream to-night!

  Now the feasting had given way to the dance. The moonlight was tracing lacy patterns on the lawn, the plaintive wail of the music rose ever louder, the Hawaiian young people, bashful at first in the presence of strangers, were bashful no longer. Miss Minerva closed her eyes and leaned back against the trunk of a tall palm. Even in Hawaiian love songs there is a note of hopeless melancholy; it touched her emotions as no symphony ever could. A curtain was lifted and she was looking into the past, the primitive, barbaric past of these Islands in the days before the white men came.

  A long, heart-breaking crescendo, and the music stopped, the swaying bodies of the dancers were momentarily still. It seemed to Miss Minerva’s friends an opportune moment to depart. They entered the house and in the stuffy little parlor, took leave of their brown, smiling host and hostess. The baby whose arrival in the world was the inspiration for the luau awoke for a second and smiled at them too. Outside in the narrow street their car was waiting.

  Through silent, deserted Honolulu they motored toward Waikiki. As they passed the Judiciary Building on King Street,58 the clock in the tower struck the hour of one. She had not been out so late, Miss Minerva reflected, since that night when a visiting company sang Parsifal at the Boston Opera House.59

  The iron gates that guarded the drive at Dan’s house were closed. Leaving the car at the curb, Miss Minerva bade her friends good night and started up the walk toward the front door. The evening had thrilled her, and she moved with the long confident stride of youth. Dan’s scarlet garden was shrouded in darkness, for the moon, which had been playing an in-and-out game with the fast-moving clouds all evening, was again obscured. Exotic odors assailed her nostrils; she heard all about her the soft intriguing noises of the tropic night. She really should get to bed, she knew, but with a happy truant feeling she turned from the front walk and went to the side of the house for a last look at the breakers.

  She stood there under a poinciana tree near the door leading into Dan’s living-room. For nearly two weeks the Kona wind had prevailed, but now on her cheek, she thought she felt the first kindly breath of the trades. Very wide awake, she stared out at the dim foaming lines of surf between the shore and the coral reef. Her mind strayed back to the Honolulu she had known in Kalakaua’s day, to that era when the Islands were so naive, so colorful—unspoiled. Ruined now, Dan had said, ruined by a damned mechanical civilization. “But away down underneath, Minerva, there are deep dark waters flowing still.”

  The moon came out, touching with silver the waters at the crossroads, then was lost again under fleecy clouds. With a little sigh that was perhaps for her lost youth and the ’eighties, Miss Minerva pushed open the unlocked door leading into the great living-room, and closed it gently so as not to waken Dan.

  An intense darkness engulfed her. But she knew her way across the polished floor and set out confidently, walking on tiptoe. She had gone halfway to the hall door when she stopped, her heart in her mouth. For not five feet away she saw the luminous dial of a watch, and as she stared at it with frightened eyes, it moved.

  Not for nothing had Miss Minerva studied restraint through more than fifty years. Many women would have screamed and fainted. Miss Minerva’s heart pounded madly, but that was all. Standing very still, she studied that phosphorescent dial. Its movement had been slight, it was now at rest again. A watch worn on some one’s wrist. Some one who had been on the point of action, but had now assumed an attitude of cautious waiting.

  Well, Miss Minerva grimly asked herself, what was she going to do about it? Should she cry out a sharp: “Who’s there?” She was a brave woman, but the foolhardiness of such a course was apparent. She had a vision of that dial flashing nearer, a blow, perhaps strong hands at her throat.

  She took a tentative step, and then another. Now, surely, the dial would stir again. But it remained motionless, steady, as though the arm that wore it were rigid at the intruder’s side.

  Suddenly Miss Minerva realized the situation. The wearer of the watch had forgotten the tell-tale numerals on his wrist, he thought himself hidden in the dark. He was waiting for her to go on through the room. If she made no sound, gave no sign of alarm, she might be safe. Once beyond that bamboo curtain leading into the hall, she could rouse the household.

  She was a woman of great will power, but it took all she had to move serenely on her way. She shut her lips tightly and accomplished it, veering a bit from that circle of light that menaced her, looking back at it over her shoulder as she went. After what seemed an eternity the bamboo curtain received her, she was through it, she was on the stairs. But it seemed to her that never again would she be able to look at a watch or a clock and find that the hour was anything save twenty minutes past one!

  When she was half-way up the stairs, she recalled that it had been her intention to snap on the lights in the lower hall. She did not turn back, nor did she search for the switch at the head of the stairs. Instead, s
he went hastily on into her room, and just as though she had been an ordinary woman, she closed her door and dropped down, trembling a little, on a chair.

  But she was no ordinary woman, and in two seconds she was up and had reopened her door. Her sudden terror was evaporating; she felt her heart beat in a strong regular rhythm again. Action was required of her now, calm confident action; she was a Winterslip and she was ready.

  The servants’ quarters were in a wing over the kitchen; she went there at once and knocked on the first door she came to. She knocked once, then again, and finally the head of a very sleepy Jap appeared.

  “Haku,” said Miss Minerva, “there is some one in the livingroom. You must go down and investigate at once.”

  He stared at her, seeming unable to comprehend.

  “We must go down,” amended Miss Minerva. “Wikiwiki!”

  He disappeared, and Miss Minerva waited impatiently. Where was her nerve, she wondered, why hadn’t she seen this through alone? At home, no doubt, she could have managed it, but here there was something strange and terrifying in the very air. The moonlight poured in through a small window beside her, forming a bright square at her feet. Haku reappeared, wearing a gaudy kimono that he often sported on the beach.

  Another door opened suddenly, and Miss Minerva started. Bah! What ailed her, anyhow, she wondered. It was only Kamaikui, standing there a massive figure in the dim doorway, a bronze statue clad in a holoku.60

  “Some one in the living-room,” Miss Minerva explained again. “I saw him as I came through.”