“No.”
“All right. I’ll tell you about Garthorne. So far I’ve run into two angles on this trouble of yours. One of them has to do with this Chang Li Ching in Chinatown, and one with an ex-convict named Conyers. This John Garthorne was in Chinatown today. I saw him coming out of a cellar that probably connects with Chang Li Ching’s house. The ex-convict Conyers visited the building where Garthorne lives, early this afternoon.”
Her mouth popped open and then shut.
“That is absurd!” she snapped. “I have known Mr. Garthorne for some time, and—”
“Exactly how long?”
“A long — several months.”
“Where’d you meet him?”
“Through a girl I knew at college.”
“What does he do for a living?”
She stood stiff and silent.
“Listen, Miss Shan,” I said. “Garthorne may be all right, but I’ve got to look him up. If he’s in the clear there’ll be no harm done. I want to know what you know about him.”
I got it, little by little. He was, or she thought he was, the youngest son of a prominent Richmond, Virginia, family, in disgrace just now because of some sort of boyish prank. He had come to San Francisco four months ago, to wait until his father’s anger cooled. Meanwhile his mother kept him in money, leaving him without the necessity of toiling during his exile. He had brought a letter of introduction from one of Lillian Shan’s schoolmates. Lillian Shan had, I gathered, a lot of liking for him.
“You’re going out with him tonight?” I asked when I had got this.
“Yes.”
“In his car or yours?”
“In his. We are going to drive down to Half Moon for dinner.”
“I’ll need a key, then, because I am coming back here after you have gone.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m coming back here. I’ll ask you not to say anything about my more or less unworthy suspicions to him, but my honest opinion is that he’s drawing you away for the evening. So if the engine breaks down on the way back, just pretend you see nothing unusual in it.”
That worried her, but she wouldn’t admit I might be right. I got the key, though, and then I told her of my employment agency scheme that needed her assistance, and she promised to be at the office at half past nine Thursday.
I didn’t see Garthorne again before I left the house.
In my hired car again, I had the driver take me to the nearest village, where I bought a plug of chewing tobacco, a flashlight, and a box of cartridges at the general store. My gun is a .38 Special, but I had to take the shorter, weaker cartridges, because the storekeeper didn’t keep the specials in stock.
My purchases in my pocket, we started back toward the Shan house again. Two bends in the road this side of it, I stopped the car, paid the chauffeur, and sent him on his way, finishing the trip afoot.
The house was dark all around.
Letting myself in as quietly as possible, and going easy with the flashlight, I gave the interior a combing from cellar to roof. I was the only occupant. In the kitchen, I looted the icebox for a bite or two, which I washed down with milk.
The luncheon done, I made myself comfortable on a chair in the passageway between the kitchen and the rest of the house. On one side of the passageway, steps led down to the basement. On the other, steps led upstairs. With every door in the house except the outer ones open, the passageway was the center of things so far as hearing noises was concerned.
An hour went by — quietly except for the passing of cars on the road a hundred yards away and the washing of the Pacific down in the little cove. I chewed on my plug of tobacco — a substitute for cigarettes — and tried to count up the hours of my life I’d spent like this, sitting or standing around waiting for something to happen.
Another half hour went by with a breeze springing up from the ocean, rustling trees outside.
A noise came that was neither wind nor surf nor passing car.
Something clicked somewhere.
It was at a window, but I didn’t know which. I got rid of my chew, got gun and flashlight out.
It sounded again, harshly.
Somebody was giving a window a strong play — too strong. The catch rattled, and something clicked against the pane. It was a stall. Whoever he was, he could have smashed the glass with less noise than he was making,
I stood up, but I didn’t leave the passageway. The window noise was a fake to draw the attention of anyone who might be in the house. I turned my back on it, trying to see into the kitchen.
The kitchen was too black to see anything.
I saw nothing there. I heard nothing there.
Damp air blew on me from the kitchen.
That was something to worry about. I had company, and he was slicker than I. He could open doors or windows under my nose. That wasn’t so good.
Weight on rubber heels, I backed away from my chair until the frame of the cellar door touched my shoulder. So when a thin line of light danced out of the kitchen to hit the chair in the passageway, I was three steps cellar-ward, my back flat against the stair-wall.
The light fixed itself on the chair for a couple of seconds, and then began to dart around the passageway, through it into the room beyond. I could see nothing but the light.
Fresh sounds came to me — the purr of automobile engines close to the house on the road side, the soft padding of feet on the back porch, on the kitchen linoleum, quite a few feet. An odor came to me — an unmistakable odor — the smell of unwashed Chinese.
Then I lost track of these things. I had plenty to occupy me close up.
The proprietor of the flashlight was at the head of the cellar steps.
The first thin ray he sent downstairs missed me by an inch — which gave me time to make a map there in the dark. If he was of medium size, holding the light in his left hand, a gun in his right, and exposing as little of himself as possible — his noodle should have been a foot and a half above the beginning of the light-beam, the same distance behind it, six inches to the left — my left.
The light swung sideways and hit one of my legs.
I swung the barrel of my gun at the point I had marked X in the night.
His gun-fire cooked my cheek. One of his arms tried to take me with him. I twisted away and let him dive alone into the cellar, showing me a flash of gold teeth as he went past.
The house was full of “Ah yahs” and pattering feet.
I had to move — or I’d be pushed.
Downstairs might be a trap. I went up to the passageway again.
The passageway was solid and alive with stinking bodies. Hands and teeth began to take my clothes away from me. I knew damned well I had declared myself in on something!
I was one of a struggling, tearing, grunting and groaning mob of invisibles. An eddy of them swept me toward the kitchen. Hitting, kicking, butting, I went along.
A high-pitched voice was screaming Chinese orders.
My shoulder scraped the door-frame as I was carried into the kitchen, fighting as best I could against enemies I couldn’t see, afraid to use the gun I still gripped.
I was only one part of the mad scramble. The flash of my gun might have made me the center of it. These lunatics were fighting panic now: I didn’t want to show them something tangible to tear apart.
I went along with them, cracking everything that got in my way, and being cracked back. A bucket got between my feet.
I crashed down, upsetting my neighbors, rolled over a body, felt a foot on my face, squirmed from under it, and came to rest in a corner; still tangled up with the galvanized bucket.
Thank God for that bucket!
I wanted these people to go away. I didn’t care who or what they were. If they’d depart in peace I’d forgive their sins.
I put my gun inside the bucket and squeezed the trigger. I got the worst of the racket, but there was enough to go around. It sounded like a crump going off.