“He’s dead, chief,” Wentworth said.
“What? Did he talk?”
“You’d better let me explain, sir. I was finishing my beat, with an eye on Number Eighteen Eleven Waverley, because there’s been hop sold there, when I heard a racket. Some Chinese were attempting to persuade another Chinaman — this one I found — not to go somewhere. He was so full of dope — that is, he wasn’t past the dream stage, and wasn’t out cold — that they couldn’t do anything with him. He rushed out, and I thought I’d have a look-see just why they didn’t want him going places.
“I stopped him — and it took a gun in his belly to do it…”
Dunand could see what had happened. Wentworth in a dark doorway. The ’binder, drug-crazed, leaping down a rickety stairway and into the street, murderous, deadly, to anyone who would confront him. Wentworth stepping before the Asiatic, gun out. A few sharp words, the flash of a knife…
“You shot him, Jim?”
“No,” Wentworth said quietly. “I took his knife away from him, and intended to book him as disorderly, just as an example to the hop-joints to keep their customers inside until they’d slept it off, when some other Chino slipped up, and before I had a chance to shift my grip, he drove a knife into my man’s throat… and that’s hatchetman-way of saying ‘Nobody talk!’ ”
“Get the murderer?”
Jimmy Wentworth said. “He was gone before I could get blood out of my eyes.”
Into Dunand’s eyes crept momentarily a look of fear, the fear of the unknown, of the mysteries of Chinatown, which only his youthful sergeant fully understood.
“Ah,” said the captain. And next, “The dead man, Jimmy… was he…”
“One of Kong Gai’s hatchetmen? No! That’s the curious part of it. My guess is that he’s a new bo’ how doy, earning his spurs, and not considered bad enough to be a brother of the snake. Some real Cobra knifed him, to make sure he didn’t talk… and there’s my clew.”
“Put in simple words, you’re trying to tell me that Kong Gai has a hand in the Ronald Whitcomb case?”
Wentworth said, “I’m telling you, chief, that the dead man had a hand in kidnapping three white children.”
“Rubbish! If Kong Gai were kidnapping for money, he wouldn’t take the father, too!”
Jimmy Wentworth looked out of the window. He said thoughtfully. “Not in America. But in China, chief, when ransom is demanded, one of the favorite ways of getting it is to take two people — a man and his father, for example, and… I hate to say it!… and torture the father until… the son is willing to pay any amount. And… well, you can see how this might be…”
Shivering, Dunand said, “You mean they’d torture Whitcomb’s children until the father, Ronald Whitcomb, would pay? I… of course you mean it. Kong Gai! It’s the sort of thing he’d do! But why should he pick Whitcomb? There are wealthier men in the city. Whitcomb’s rich, but there’re others with more money. Why Whitcomb, Jimmy?”
“I thought about that,” Jimmy Wentworth admitted. “The only answer I can give is that shown in Whitcomb’s list of customers. You had a copy of that, sir, and I looked it over. There are a few Chinese names on that list. Kong Gai might have had Whitcomb’s house invest money, and have lost it in the crash, and this is Kong Gai’s way of getting both money and revenge…”
“I’ll tear Chinatown apart,” Dunand growled.
“And scare ’em somewhere else,” Wentworth said. “Not that I have anything to suggest, chief. All I can do is to keep my eyes open. And I’m grateful that you kept the newspaper boys away. One hint that Kong Gai is involved, and the lives of the four, father and children, won’t be worth the price of a flower like those painted on the idol’s neck…”
While Dunand’s brows drew together, as the keen old captain fought to find some plan, Wentworth held the headless idol under the light on Dunand’s desk.
“Look at the little tiny lines painted on the petals of the flowers, sir,” he said. “The Chinese are marvelous artists, aren’t they?”
“I don’t give a damn what kind of artists they are! And neither should you, Jimmy Wentworth!”
“I was just wondering—”
The telephone rang sharply; Dunand answered it with his customary: “Dunand. Who’s this?” and then listened.
If Wentworth had not been bent over his strange wooden idol, he would have seen his chief’s face change from inattention to surprise, to astonishment, and then to fierce satisfaction. Dunand listened intently, and then said, “We’ll be right there. Nobody’s to see him. We’re on our way.”
Dunand stood up happily.
“Kong Gai,” he chuckled. “Kidnapping. Baloney. Here’s the end of the Whitcomb case! Ronald Whitcomb’s in the Forest Park Hospital, Jimmy. Mulloy phoned. Found him ‘dazed.’ Blah! I’ll bet his accounts are all wet, and he’s been usin’ customers’ money. We got Whitcomb, and I’ll bet he took his three children with him and intended to run off and then got cold feet about taking a trip to Peru. Dazed! Hooey! And you, Jimmy Wentworth, and your three flowers!”
Wentworth looked up, almost as if he hadn’t heard the gleeful speech.
“Now, what’s the matter?” demanded his chief.
“I was wondering why the petals of the flowers are marked, veined, the wrong way. When you look closely, the tiny black lines, the veins, are painted like those on… well, on a bee’s wing.”
“A bee’s left ear,” suggested the jubilant captain of detectives. “You been taking hop, too, Jimmy? Come along with me. A breath of air’ll do you good. Maybe it’ll make you stop dreaming about Kong Gai.”
Chapter III
The Man the Bees Stung
Officer Mulloy was standing on the fourth floor of the hospital, trying to appear as if he didn’t realize that the nurse at the desk was red-headed, pretty, and Irish, and as if he had forgotten that at home there were seven little Mulloys, and Nora herself, who would stand for no nonsense.
He saluted briskly as Dunand and Wentworth stepped from the noiseless elevator, hoping that the nurse could see the breadth of his shoulders.
“Found him wanderin’ on Forest Parkway, sir,” he said. “Red in the face he was, and that’s no lie, but whether it’s drinking he was I couldn’t say. He was goin’ this way and that, and I says, ‘Think shame to yourself, man, out on a street where th’ children is playin’. But he only looks at me. At first I thinks he’s far gone in a drunken spree, and then I see his eyes. And like no human eyes was they, sir! And—”
“And you brought him here,” said Dunand crisply.
“No other way could he have come, sir. For he fell right down before me eyes, he did, and I stop the first machine I see, and—”
“Good work, officer. Which room is Whitcomb in?”
“The one behind me, sir. But a nurse says he’s a very sick man, sir, or I’d have verified me suspicions—”
Dunand said sharply, “You aren’t positive it’s Whitcomb?”
Officer Mulloy drew himself up.
“And don’t he live on this beat, sir? Many’s the time I see him being drove home from work. I meant me suspicions about th’ drink an’ all—”
Dunand nodded, looking about. He said, “There’s a nurse, officer. Please ask her to go into Whitcomb’s room and tell the doctor I’m here, and that I want to see Whitcomb immediately.”
Nothing loath, Mulloy marched to the little alcoved desk and delivered the captain’s request. The nurse first telephoned her superintendent for permission to enter the sick room for the police, and, being given this, hurried across the hall. She reappeared in a moment and spoke briefly to Mulloy, who trudged back to his superiors.