“He didn’t disappear. He simply went away. There weren’t any jobs in Denver, and...”
“All right, have it your own way,” Mason interposed. “Had you lived there long? I notice that your birth certificate says that you were born in California.”
“That’s right. We lived in California for a while, then went to Nevada, and then to Denver. My father had work in the mines. Conditions got so bad Dad made complaints and eventually started organizing the men. Unions had never gotten a hold in that locality, and the company fired him. Dad opened up a little store, and the miners all started buying their things from him. Then the company simply ruined him. They forced him into disastrous competition. They wanted to get him out of the country. They said his cracker-box socialism was going to ruin the country. That’s when he incurred all those debts. He...”
Wenston said, “I guess, Mr. Mason, we’re going to have to see the guv’nor, after all.”
Mason said, “We can check the incident of that upset boat in the Yangtze River before going any farther.”
“We don’t have to,” Wenston said. “I’ve heard the guv’nor speak of it half a dozen times.”
Mason sat at his desk for a moment drumming thoughtfully with his fingers on the edge of the desk. Abruptly, he asked Miss Wickford, “And you saw this ad in the paper this morning?”
“No. The one that appeared yesterday morning.”
“Why didn’t you answer it at once?”
“I was working, and I — well,” she said with a little smile, “I arranged with my relief to have today off. I went to a hairdresser and then called the number mentioned in the ad. I asked for Mr. Karr. Mr. Wenston answered, said he was handling the preliminary interviews, and made an appointment. I never did have a chance to tell him any of my story. He rushed me right up here. Now, if that ad is on the level, I want to see Mr. Karr. It’s a matter of money with me. I’m not going to kid you, Mr. Mason, and I’m not going to kid myself. If there’s any money coming to me from my father, I need it.”
“You’re employed?” Mason asked.
“Yes. I’m an actress, and I can’t get a part. I had some bits in New York. A man promised he could get me a part in pictures if I came to Hollywood. He lied. Right at present I’m working as cashier in a cafeteria. And I don’t like it. It would be worth a good deal to be able to slap the boss’s face and walk out.”
“With whom were you living while you were going to school?”
“An aunt. She died about three years ago. Really, Mr. Mason, all of this can be verified. If there’s really anything back of this ad in the paper, we’re wasting a lot of time.”
“I think the guv’nor would want to see her,” Wenston said to Mason and then added, “Right away.”
Mason reached for his hat. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”
Chapter 13
The people in the room were grouped in a tense-faced circle around the wheelchair occupied by Elston A. Karr. The day had been warm, yet the blanket covered his legs. His skin was no longer wax-like but was flushed. As his hand touched Mason’s, the lawyer noticed that the skin was dry and hot. Karr turned over the photograph and the letter, looked first at Johns Blaine, then at Gow Loong, the number one boy.
“Well?” he asked.
Blaine said nothing.
Rodney Wenston said, “When I brought her to Mason, I thought she wath a damned imposter, but this proof is pretty convincing.”
Doris Wickford said indignantly, “I’m not an impostor, and I’m tired of being treated like one. After all, this was your idea. I didn’t advertise to try and get in touch with you. You advertised to try and get in touch with me. If my father left any money, it isn’t yours, and there’s no reason why you should act as though giving it to me would be an act of generosity or charity on your part. After all, we have courts to protect the rights of people in cases like this.”
Karr didn’t so much as glance at her. He kept his eyes on Gow Loong.
Gow Loong extended his forefinger. The nail protruded a good half inch from the end of the finger. He placed this long nail on the face in the photograph. “Alla same Dow Tucker,” he said.
Karr nodded.
Gow Loong turned to Karr. “Maybe-so you tired. Too much work. Too much tlouble. Maybe-so you go sleep. Maybe one two hours. Wake up, feel more better. Too many people. Too much talk. Velly much no good.”
Karr turned to Johns Blaine. “I see no reason for prolonging the matter. This girl seems to be it. We’ll have to make an additional check, but that’s Dow Tucker’s picture all right. What she says about how he came to adopt the name of Dow sounds logical. Get me that album of pictures out of the desk in my bedroom.”
Gow Loong became merely a part of the scenery. He effaced himself beyond a point of silence. It seemed that even his personality had retired behind the expressionless composure of a calmly indifferent face. Johns Blaine hurried toward the bedroom.
Mason asked casually, “Keep those pictures in your bedroom all the time?”
“Prints,” Karr said. “The negatives are in a safe place. Wouldn’t take a million dollars for those negatives. Adventures in China that would curl your hair. I’ve seen things that white men aren’t permitted to see, things that no person should ever see. The Temple of the Passionate Buddha under the walls of the Forbidden City — the living dead man called up out of the grave to make obeisance to a Lama god. You might think it’s hypnotism, might think it’s superstition, might think it’s imagination, but I’ve seen things you can’t explain, things you can’t understand, things you don’t even dare to talk about. Take a look through that album, Johns. Get some of those pictures taken at Shanghai in the fall of ’20 and the spring of ’21.”
Blaine turned the pages of the photograph album. “Here’s a picture taken on a junk on the Whangpoo,” he said. “That shows him pretty well.”
“Show it to Mason,” Karr said. “Want him to see it.”
Mason looked at the picture of three men seated on the high stern deck of a big junk. The camera had been focused upon the faces. Back of them was a hazy sheet of water, the dim line of a bank, and the fuzzy outlines of an out-of-focus pagoda rising against the sky. The men were smiling affably at the camera with that peculiarly inane expression with which one obeys the command to “look pleasant.” On a table before them was a huge teapot. Three Chinese cups were nestled into the distinctive hole-in-the-center saucers which furnish a sturdy resting place for Chinese soup-bowl cups. Behind the group, standing a little to one side, looking solicitously down at the man in the center, was a Chinese who was undoubtedly Gow Loong. The man in the center was Elston A. Karr, more robust, twenty years younger, but still with that same cold-eyed concentration glittering from his eyes, that ruthless, indomitable purpose stamped upon his face. There had been change in the twenty years. He had lost weight. His skin had stretched taut across his cheekbones, and there were puffs under his eyes; but there could be no mistaking Elston Karr.
The man on his right was the man shown in the photograph produced by Doris Wickford. There could be no doubt of that, and the two photographs must have been taken at about the same time. The partially bald head, the snub nose, the long lower lip with the deep calipers stretching down from the nostrils, the cleft chin, the bushy eyebrows, the protruding batlike ears were unmistakable.
The third man in the photograph caught Mason’s eye. He was a thick-chested, heavy-necked individual with thick lips that were twisted into a smile, but even in the photograph it was apparent that the eyes were not smiling. They were the sort of eyes that wouldn’t smile. They were staring in sullen contemplation at the lens of the camera. It was as though the man had been brooding so long upon some sinister scheme that his thoughts had stamped themselves indelibly upon his face.