“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 bard 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 pinch-bar 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 sneakily 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 axe, 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.