That night was one of those miserable, foggy nights so common to San Francisco in the winter season. A heavy fog had rolled under and over the Golden Gate Bridge and had spread itself over the city turning walkers into ghosts and buildings into giant gravestones. It was a perfect night for killers, muggers — and Winchester to carry out his six thousand dollar caper. Attired in black — even to a black cap — he made the turn on Grant Avenue at exactly three in the morning. Several minutes later, he was standing in front of Madame Chen’s shop. An occasional car went by and the sidewalk traffic was sparse, limited to a few staggering drunks.
An expert on locks and doors, he quickly removed the lock and cut the wire connected to the burglar alarm. So far — a piece of cake. He then opened the door softly and stepped inside. He stood for several minutes and listened. Madame Chen and son slept upstairs. Satisfied with the silence, he then slipped down the aisle to the office and found it unlocked. Nice of Madame Chen to leave it unlocked. He slipped a tiney flashlight out of his pocket and a moment later, the green elephant was flashing back at the feeble ray of the flashlight.
It took exactly eight minutes to open the lock on the case — one of those cursed Oriental locks! He pulled out the box containing the elephant, closed the cover and then filled his pockets with some of the more interesting looking gem studded artifacts in the room. They would look good in his New York apartment.
He then slipped quietly out of the shop and into the dirty night.
Lee Chau, at the tail end of a bottle of wine and several packs of cigarettes, was waiting impatiently when Winchester walked into the hotel room.
“Nothing to it, Mr. Chau,” he bragged. He opened the box and held up the exposed elephant.
“Give it to me!” exclaimed Lee, showing unusual emotion.
“The money first. Six thousand five hundred dollars.”
Lee snorted in disgust and handed Winchester an envelope, then dug five one hundred dollar bills out of his wallet. “There. Now get back to New York on the first plane!”
Winchester counted the money, nodded and handed over the Elephant. Then, he left the room.
Lee couldn’t believe his eyes. After all these years! The green elephant had returned to its rightful owner! He fingered the cold, flashing surface, then carefully took it out of the box and squeezed it like Sing Li used to do.
He felt a pin prick — then another — he dropped the gem and looked in horror at his fingers. Little droplets of blood were oozing out of his fingers! The gem had a poison vial attached underneath. The old woman must have recognized him. He’d fallen victim to the bite of the cobra! He’d killed many enemies that way. He must get to a phone — a doctor—!
He slipped into oblivion.
A figure stepped into the room and quickly picked up the gem and box, and hurried out.
It was four-thirty three that same morning when Fong walked into Madame Chen’s office and put the green elephant in front of her. She was wearing a green night robe and smoking a cigarette. She was smiling.
Fong spoke. “Winchester is in San Francisco Airport at this moment waiting for his flight to New York. Chau is under the care of a doctor.”
She nodded. “Let Winchester go. The man is an artist and I admire artists even if they are thieves.”
“Are you certain that Chau is Sing Li?”
“Yes. He wears my teeth marks on his wrist. I was suspicious of him when I first met him and when he saw the green elephant, he paled and the marks became quite visible.” She touched the gem. “Ten years ago, I was told about Bradford Winchester so when Chau and he came in here —.” She shrugged. Then, she laughed. “When I first met your father — he was a real gem expert — I showed him the elephant and —.” She took a small hammer out of the desk drawer. “He said it was fine workmanship but made of a special type of green —.” She brought the hammer down hard on the gem — shattering it. “Glass.”
“Will Chau — Sing Li die?”
“No. It was not the bite of the cobra — merely the sting of the spider.” She pushed the green glass pieces into a wastebasket. “He will remember Madame Chen.”
And Sing Li did recover, a broken and frightened man who hurried back to his apartment in New York where he became a recluse, refusing to see or talk to anybody.
The Perfect Crime Revisited
by Terry Black
It started out as an open and shut case. Trouble was, it was entirely too open!
“I thought you said it was open and shut,” said Detective Sergeant Barton Rimble, combing his fingers through a shock of blue-black hair. “Now you say we’re dead in the water. What the hell’s the problem?”
Calvin Cupflutter winced. Cupflutter was new to Homicide; he was Rimble’s junior by fifteen years, and had soft, baby-bottom features on a sunburnt oval face. He was often asked for his ID in bars. “You’d better see for yourself, sir,” he said cautiously. “We have what you might call... a complication.”
“It better be good,” snapped Rimble.
Rimble and Cupflutter jaywalked across the street, in front of a guacamole-colored Buick with out-of-state plates and a decal that said SMILE, GOD LOVES YOU. Another twelve paces brought them to the sliding glass doors of the Rupert Muncie Convention Center, a domelike building with colorless walls and sloping, mirrored windows.
“Godzilla’s doghouse,” muttered Rimble.
Cupflutter led him inside, past a dense gaggle of people milling in the foyer. The scene of the crime was an immense auditorium, kidney-shaped, with long rows of folding chairs surrounding a raised platform. Refreshments were available on tables to the rear. Beside one of the tables was a portly, middle-aged man with a Sterling silver letter opener jutting from his back.
Spectators jostled for a view of the victim. Two harried patrolmen were shooing them off.
“Victim’s name is Floyd Burbank,” said Cupflutter, consulting his notebook. “Thirty minutes ago he went to the men’s room, started back, stopped for a sandwich and keeled over dead. They checked his body and found the letter opener between his shoulder blades. No one knows who did it or why.”
Rimble grunted. “What made you think it was open and shut?”
Cupflutter pointed. On the floor was a vital clue: a thin line of blood trailed from the dead man’s outstretched finger, forming a wavering — but quite clear — indictment of his killer. The message said simply, THE BUTLER DID IT.
“Well, what’s the problem?” asked Rimble. “Did you talk to the butler? Does he have an alibi?”
Cupflutter could only groan, and shake his head, and jerk his thumb at a brightly-painted banner stretched between stanchions over hundreds of smartly-dressed men wearing topcoats, vests and black shoestring bowties. The banner read 54th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL BUTLER’S CONVENTION — WELCOME, BUTLERS!
Rimble’s eyebrow twitched. “Good God,” he moaned. “There must be a thousand butlers in here!”
“Twelve hundred,” said Cupflutter.
“I’m getting a migraine,” said Rimble, rubbing his forehead.
“Let me bring you an aspirin, sir,” said eight crisp voices, all at once.
The Other Side
by C. Bruce Hunter
The mobster’s life had been good, long and healthy. His death was something else!
Don Alberto trudged through the mist, squinting to keep track of the hooded figure who marched steadily ahead of him and occasionally sniffing the air for traces of brimstone that somehow weren’t there. The place was not what he expected. It didn’t matter, though. He was ready to go; he had already cheated Death for more than a decade.