“I hope they win,” I said, “but you’ve been tricked. The only guns that have gone through your house have gone through in pockets! It would take a year to get a shipload through there. Maybe Chang is running guns to China. It’s likely. But they don’t go through your place.
“The night I was there coolies went through — coming in, not going out. They came from the beach, and they left in machines. Maybe The Whistler is running the guns over for Chang and bringing coolies back. He can get anything from a thousand dollars up for each one he lands. That’s about the how of it. He runs the guns over for Chang, and brings his own stuff — coolies and no doubt some opium — back, getting his big profit on the return trip. There wouldn’t be enough money in the guns to interest him.
“The guns would be loaded at a pier, all regular, masquerading as something else. Your house is used for the return. Chang may or may not be tied up with the coolie and opium game, but it’s a cinch he’ll let The Whistler do whatever he likes if only The Whistler will run his guns across. So, you see, you have been gypped!”
“But—”
“But nothing! You’re helping Chang by taking part in the coolie traffic. And, my guess is, your servants were killed, not because they were spies, but because they wouldn’t sell you out.”
She was white-faced and unsteady on her feet. I didn’t let her recover.
“Do you think Chang trusts The Whistler? Did they seem friendly?”
I knew he couldn’t trust him, but I wanted something specific.
“No-o-o,” she said slowly. “There was some talk about a missing boat.”
That was good.
“They still together?”
“Yes.”
“How do I get there?”
“Down these steps, across the cellar — straight across — and up two flights of steps on the other side. They were in a room to the right of the second-floor landing.”
Thank God I had a direct set of instructions for once!
I jumped up on the table and rapped on the ceiling.
“Come on down, Garthorne, and bring your chaperon.
“Don’t either of you budge out of here until I’m back,” I told the boob and Lillian Shan when we were all together again. “I’m going to take Hsiu Hsiu with me. Come on, sister, I want you to talk to any bad men I meet. We go to see Chang Li Ching, you understand?” I made faces. “One yell out of you, and—” I put my fingers around her collar and pressed them lightly.
She giggled, which spoiled the effect a little.
“To Chang,” I ordered, and, holding her by one shoulder, urged her toward the door.
We went down into the dark cellar, across it, found the other stairs, and started to climb them.
A dim light burned on the first floor, where we had to turn to go up to the second floor. We had just made the turn when footsteps sounded behind us.
I lifted the girl up two steps, out of the light, and crouched beside her, holding her still. Four Chinese in wrinkled street clothes came down the first-floor hall, passed our stairs without a glance, and started on.
Hsiu Hsiu opened her red flower of a mouth and let out a squeal that could have been heard over in Oakland.
I cursed, turned her loose, and started up the steps. The four Chinese came after me. On the landing ahead one of Chang’s big wrestlers appeared — a foot of thin steel in his paw. I looked back.
Hsiu Hsiu sat on the bottom step, her head over her shoulder, experimenting with different sorts of yells and screams, enjoyment all over her laughing doll’s face. One of the climbing yellow men was loosening an automatic.
My legs pushed me on up toward the man-eater at the head of the steps. When he crouched close above me I let him have it.
My bullet cut the gullet out of him.
I patted his face with my gun as he tumbled down past me.
A hand caught one of my ankles.
Clinging to the railing, I drove my other foot back. Something stopped my foot. Nothing stopped me.
A bullet flaked some of the ceiling down as I made the head of the stairs and jumped for the door to the right.
Pulling it open, I plunged in.
The other of the big man-eaters caught me — caught my plunging hundred and eighty-some pounds as a boy would catch a rubber ball.
Across the room, Chang Li Ching ran plump fingers through his thin whiskers and smiled at me. Beside him, a man I knew for The Whistler started up from his chair, his beefy face twitching.
“The Prince of Hunters is welcome,” Chang said, and added something in Chinese to the man-eater who held me.
The man-eater set me down on my feet, and turned to shut the door on my pursuers.
The Whistler sat down again, his red-veined eyes shifty on me, his bloated face empty of enjoyment.
I tucked my gun inside my clothes before I started across the room toward Chang. And crossing the room, I noticed something.
Behind The Whistler’s chair the velvet hangings bulged just the least bit, not enough to have been noticed by anyone who hadn’t seen them bulge before. So Chang didn’t trust his confederate at all!
“I have something I want you to see,” I told the old Chinese when I was standing in front of him.
“That eye is privileged indeed which may gaze on anything brought by the Father of Avengers.”
“I have heard,” I said, as I put my hand in my pocket, “that all that starts for China doesn’t get there.”
The Whistler jumped up from his chair again, his mouth a snarl, his face a dirty pink. Chang Li Ching looked at him, and he sat down again.
I brought out the photograph of The Whistler standing in a group of Japs, the medal of the Order of the Rising Sun on his chest. Hoping Chang had not heard of the swindle and would not know the medal for a counterfeit, I dropped the photograph on the table.
Chang Li Ching looked at it for a long moment over his clasped hands, his old eyes shrewd and kindly, his face gentle. No muscle in his face moved. Nothing changed in his eyes.
The nails of his right hand slowly cut a red gash across the back of the clasped left hand.
“It is true,” he said softly, “that one acquires wisdom in the company of the wise.”
He unclasped his hands, picked up the photograph, and held it out to the beefy man. The Whistler seized it. His face drained grey, his eyes bulged out.
“Why, that’s—” he began, and stopped, let the photograph drop to his lap, and slumped down in an attitude of defeat.
That puzzled me. I had expected to argue with him, to convince Chang that the medal was not the fake it was.
“You may have what you wish in payment for this,” Chang Li Ching was saying to me.
“I want Lillian Shan and Garthorne cleared, and I want your fat friend here, and I want anybody else who was in on the killings.”
Chang’s eyes closed for a moment — the first sign of weariness I had seen on his round face.
“You may have them,” he said.
“The bargain you made with Miss Shan is all off, of course,” I pointed out. “I may need a little evidence to make sure I can hang this baby,” nodding at The Whistler.
Chang smiled dreamily.
“That, I am regretful, is not possible.”
“Why—?” I began, and stopped.
There was no bulge in the velvet curtain behind The Whistler now, I saw. One of the chair legs glistened in the light. A red pool spread on the floor under him. I didn’t have to see his back to know he was beyond hanging.
“That’s different,” I said, kicking a chair over to the table. “Now we’ll talk business.”
I sat down and we went into conference.
Two days later everything was cleared up to the satisfaction of police, press and public. The Whistler had been found in a dark street, hours dead from a cut in his back, killed in a bootlegging war, I heard. Hoo Lun was found. The gold-toothed Chinese who had opened the door for Lillian Shan was found. Five others were found. These seven, with Yin Hung, the chauffeur, eventually drew a life sentence apiece. They were The Whistler’s men, and Chang sacrificed them without batting an eye. They had as little proof of Chang’s complicity as I had, so they couldn’t hit back, even if they knew that Chang had given me most of my evidence against them.