“And you wish to leave here undetected?”
Clane nodded.
“It will be arranged,” Sou Ha said. “Will you come with me, please?”
She led them through a corridor, paused before a door of carved and inlaid wood. Clane knew that the other side of this door was of steel with a veneer of varnished pine.
Sou Ha stopped, her hand on the catch which controlled the door, her face, without expression, was raised to Terry Clane. “Will you always remember,” she asked in Chinese, “that in the abode of my father there is a refuge for you and your friends? That such things as we can do for you are yours to command? Anything. Everything.”
“You are a dear girl,” Clane said. “I am indebted to you both more than I can ever repay.”
Her face flushed. “Never speak of repayment to Chinese,” she flared and pressed a catch which caused the door to swing open. A Chinese stood on guard in the dingy, grimy corridor which was disclosed beyond the door.
“Will you see that these people are escorted to the street and that they are undetected?” Sou Ha asked in Chinese.
He bowed acquiescence.
Clane turned with outstretched hand, “Good-by, Embroidered Halo, and...”
He paused as he realized he was addressing a blank wall. Some pressure of her foot had caused a partition to slide into place, leaving only the open door and what seemed to be a solid wall.
“Don’t you see, Owl,” Cynthia said softly, “that is why she changed to Chinese clothes, to tell you that there is between you the gulf of racial difference. Let’s get out of here, Owl, before I start bawling.”
Twenty-Two
At the warehouse of the Eastern Art Import and Trading Company Clane dismissed the Chinese driver. “Do not wait,” he said. “It may be dangerous.”
“I was instructed to be at your service.”
“You’ve done a splendid job. You’re certain we were not followed?”
“You were not followed,” the Chinese driver assured him positively.
“That is all I ask,” Clane said. “You may report to your master that you have done all that I wished.”
The Chinese inclined his head, the motor whirred into activity, and the car glided smoothly away through the poorly lighted streets.
Terry Clane and Cynthia Renton stood there in the darkness, waiting until the taillight had vanished around a corner, until the sound of the motor was no longer audible.
“Owl,” Cynthia whispered, “I’m scared.”
“Want to go back?”
“Gosh, no! I wouldn’t miss it for a million dollars. I’m just telling you I’m scared. That makes it all the more thrilling. What do we do next?”
Clane tried the door. It was locked. Like two furtive shadows, they moved around the building until they came to the window through which police claimed Edward Harold had made his escape the night of the murder, only to return later and kill the man who had discovered him.
Not only was this window unlocked, but it had not been entirely closed. There was an opening of an inch and a half at the bottom.
“Gosh, that’s luck,” Cynthia whispered.
Clane frowningly contemplated the window for several seconds.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s almost too inviting,” Clane said. “It may be a trap. If you hear a noise when we raise the window, Cynthia — the sound of a burglar alarm or anything — just get moving. Don’t wait for me.”
Clane slipped on light gloves so his fingers would leave no print, and raised the window.
The sash slid up smoothly and noiselessly.
“You’d better wait here, Cynthia, and...”
“Don’t be a sap, Owl. I’m coming in. You give me a boost and I can help you up.”
Without a word, Clane lifted her in his arms, boosted her through the window, then followed her into the silence of the office.
“Now what?” Cynthia whispered.
Clane said, “I want to find the paper which Gloster must have found before he was killed.”
“How do you know he found a paper, Owl?”
Clane said, “I don’t know. I’m guessing, but we have pretty good grounds for guessing. Gloster came to the warehouse for something. He found Edward Harold here. That must have started him looking around. His hands got in some deep dust somewhere. Then he must have found something. Whatever it was, he took it to the desk here and put it on the desk. The fingerprints of his left hand were outlined in dust on the blotter. The nature of the prints showed he was putting pressure on the first and second fingers of his hand. That means he was leaning over the desk in the position a man would assume in studying a paper. In that position his thumb must also have borne part of the weight he was resting on his hand. But there is no thumb print.”
“Why, Owl?”
“Malloy says it’s because there was no dust on his thumb.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No. I think he had found a rolled paper in a dusty place. He went to the desk, unrolled the paper and held it with his left hand, the fingers on the blotter, the thumb on the top of the paper. So put your feminine mind to work and tell me where a rolled paper could have been concealed in a place where dust must have been a quarter of an inch thick.”
“There’s only one place, Owl, that I can think of.”
“Where?”
“That picture molding around the top of the wall. After all, this is a warehouse and they don’t do too much housekeeping.”
Clane moved a chair over to the wall, put a box on top of the chair. While Cynthia steadied the chair, he climbed up to the box. The beam of his flashlight slid along the edge of the picture molding.
“Dust enough, Cynthia,” he said, “but nothing here.”
“Let’s try the other wall.”
The second wall also yielded a blank, but midway along the third wall, Clane saw where the dust had been disturbed. There was something which could have been a rolled piece of paper reposing in the dust.
Clane marked the place, said excitedly, “I think we’ve got it, Cynthia! We’ll have to move the chair.”
Too excited now to bother about being cautious, they dragged the chair midway along the wall, and Clane climbed up on the chair, then on the box and possessed himself of two sheets of paper which were held in a tight roll with two small elastic bands.
Clane slipped off the elastic bands, unrolled the papers.
They were covered with fine pen-and-ink writing.
Clane held the flashlight. He and Cynthia put their heads together reading.
“It’s Farnsworth’s handwriting,” Cynthia said, “and the date... Owl! It’s the date he was murdered.”
Clane nodded, gave himself to a perusal of the document.
To Whom It May Concern
I have lost the desire to live. There is no atonement I can make, save to confess. And after I have made that confession, I do not care to go on living. I was trustee for money for Cynthia Renton. I invested this money in gold-mining properties near Baguio in the Philippines, gold-mining properties which I had carefully investigated and which looked good to me. At that time all of my personal money was invested in a partnership enterprise for Oriental trade, a partnership consisting of George Gloster, Ricardo Taonon and Stacey Nevis as my associates. We all held an equal interest We had an opportunity to plunge heavily and we plunged and lost. In the meantime, the mining enterprise in which I had invested the trust moneys proved to be immensely rich. I had an opportunity to sell out at an enormous profit. It was then that Ricardo Taonon pointed out to me that no one knew the gold mine had been an investment of trust funds since it had all been in my name. I had only to take some money from that to recoup the partnership business, and there would still be enough left to yield Cynthia a handsome profit and the money would only be in the nature of a loan to the partnership.