“Where?”
“Just as I came out of the Whitcomb Building! I had walked to the curb, and turned around and shook my fist at the building. I wanted to tell the world what I thought of them all! I said something… crooks, you know… not very loudly, perhaps… and then just as I stopped, because there was a car at the curb, somebody said something I didn’t catch, and I was banged over the head. That’s all I remember, although I must have been yanked into the car—”
“Bull,” growled one of the deputies. “Trying to tell us you were kidnapped yourself, on a downtown street!”
Wearily, Cravens said, “I knew nobody’d believe me. I remember, too, that when I shook my fist toward the building there didn’t seem to be many people in sight; a couple of men and women walking the other way, with their backs in my direction, but no one saw me shake my fist—”
“One person saw you,” said Jimmy Wentworth. “A person I’m looking for myself.”
“You mean — you know — who hit me? Who carried me out of the city? Who got me in this terrible mess?”
“When we find him, we’ll find the same man who killed Whitcomb and stole the children.”
The deputies stared at the lithe, youthful figure in patrolman’s blue. Finally Undersheriff Egan blurted, “You can’t talk us out of th’ reward for th’ kids’ recovery like that, off’cer! Cravens is guilty as hell. He threatened Whitcomb, didn’t he? He wrote th’ ransom note on his company’s stationery, didn’t he? He ran away, didn’t he? We caught him, and there’s a five thousand dollar reward for doin’ it — and it’s goin’ to be ours!”
“You’re wrong,” Wentworth said.
“We’ll see what the newspapers say about it! I kept the capture quiet to give you city bulls a chance to make some more arrests, maybe, but now I’ll tell what I know. Then see where you get off if you let Cravens go!”
“We aren’t letting him go,” the Chinatown detective-sergeant said soothingly. “We’re keeping him for his good, and for our own. If you tell the newspapers, you will excite public opinion so greatly that Cravens, an innocent man, will be hanged. You don’t want that, do you, sheriff?”
“No,” said Undersheriff Egan, after a long pause. “But I don’t want to see the boys done out of a just reward, neither! I want some kind of assurance that you got another clew—”
“I give you my word,” Jimmy said simply.
Again the deputies all looked over the slim figure in blue.
“Yeah,” said Egan. “Your word. And who might you be, officer?”
“My name’s Wentworth,” said Jimmy.
A third time the men from the southern end of the state stared, this time in utter astonishment. Then one of the deputies calculated, “Wentworth! A kid like you! I don’t believe it!”
Captain Dunand said soberly, “He’s Wentworth, boys. Rated as sergeant of detectives—”
“Wentworth of the Chinatown Squad,” muttered Egan. “Well, well, well… I’d like to shake your hand, sergeant! If the case is in your hands, I won’t say a word! When’ll you make your arrests, sergeant?”
Jimmy Wentworth’s heart beat more rapidly. He knew on what a slim chance he based his conclusions — little more than flowers painted on the neck of a headless idol, and what common knowledge he possessed about bees — but was convinced that he was on the right trail. At all events, he was convinced of Cravens’ innocence, and that was sufficient to make him say quietly:
“Perhaps tomorrow, boys, if all goes well.”
Chapter V
The Bee’s Flight
Wentworth had little sleep that night. Bees! He had to learn about bees, and with that thought in mind routed out an expert at the state university across the bay. To him Wentworth listened carefully, making notes again and again; he left with the scientist’s assurance that his original conclusions, if faulty in detail, were correct in all major analysis.
These were simple. Bees were hungry little things. Bees didn’t like smoke. Bees died if they did not receive adequate fresh air. Bees became angry when cooped up. Bees could get out of any crevice, and would if they had the chance. Lastly, bees would always return to their hive, or wherever they were being kept, if they had been brought a considerable distance from their original hive…
And Whitcomb had died from many bee stings, died under torture.
Only Kong Gai the Deadly would have thought of sending a man to deliver the ransom demand for his children. Only Kong Gai’s mind would consider such a thing a joke, and something to be proud about.
Wentworth believed that the little black lines, like the markings on a bee’s wing, had been made on the headless idol to further protect the ’binder carrying it from vengeance of a god or devil not even Jimmy knew — some awful being of the underworld who, in addition to riding on a dragon, in addition to breathing fire and bearing ten swords in ten hands, also could kill by stinging men to death… that must be the reason why the white flowers — representing the kidnapped children — were so painted. To propitiate the god.
At eight-ten in the morning Wentworth marched into the bowl shop of the Wangs, who had more than once assisted the department. He found old Wang Yu behind his counter, and, after bowing and hoping that the ancient’s health was good, asked for the son, Wang Chen-po.
Old Wang clapped his hands thrice, and a Chinese dressed in American clothing instantly appeared. Without a word or look toward Wentworth, Wang Chen-po said, “And what are my honorable father’s commands?”
“Here is our friend,” said old Wang, indicating Wentworth. “I have none, except to have demanded your presence.”
“Hi, Jimmy,” grinned Chen-po, without apology, since he knew that his friend understood the Conduct-Toward-One’s-Father. “What do you want now? Everything is quiet on the Eastern Front, so far as I know—”
“How many youngsters are there in the Wang family?”
“Thinking of adopting one of them, Jimmy?”
“It’s Saturday,” said Wentworth, “and I thought maybe some of them might want to earn money to buy duck’s-egg cake.”
“They all have the Yankee spirit,” laughed Chen-po. “What do they do in order to make enough to get good and sick? They’re ravenous little devils, Jimmy. They can eat you into the hospital. Shoot!”
Jimmy said lightly, “They hang around their windows, Chen-po, where the lily-pots are, and when they see a bee, they catch it and put it in a box. One bee, one dollar.”
“Bees in Chinatown? Say, these youngsters aren’t dumb, Jimmy! They know better than to try such a game.”
“I think some of them may catch a bee or so, old man.”
Wang Chen-po scratched his chin, and before he had finished his father cackled in Cantonese:
“You waste time, my son. Inform the grandchildren of Wang Yü that bees are desired, in the shortest time possible. Our white friend does not joke.”
“That’s right,” Jimmy said, after bowing to old Wang. “And if the kids’ll catch bees, maybe I’ll catch…”
He became silent. Both Chinese knew what he meant, but neither blinked an eye. Kong Gail Every decent Chinese hated the terrible leader of the Snake Brotherhood. No man’s life was safe while the King Cobra lived.
“I’ll see what can be done,” Chen-po said quietly. “The kids are to be careful that they aren’t seen, eh? And to say nothing about it?”
“That’s it,” agreed Detective-Sergeant Wentworth. “I’ll go around my beat, and drop in just before lunch.”
It was almost noon when Jimmy Wentworth leaned against the old bricks of the cathedral on the southerly boundary of the Asiatic district, and pulled from his rear pocket a thick newspaper. He stood there, apparently reading, but his right hand was shrewdly busy inside the paper. For Wentworth was attempting to put into practice what the bee expert had told him… would it work?