Wilson Tucker
The Chinese Doll
FOR
BOBBY AND JUDY
Chapter 1
Boone, Ill.
Tuesday, P.M.
My Dearest Louise:
Louise, the damndest thing happened here about an hour ago.
I was killing time here in the office trying to keep warm; was pushed back in the old swivel chair with my feet on the desk as a matter of fact, when this husky stranger eased in.
For several minutes I had been trying to decide where to go for lunch, unable to choose between chasing across the street to Thompson’s or going over to Milkshake Mike’s on the other side of the Courthouse square.
But now I can’t eat anything.
When this big stranger walked in I stared at him in a professional, disinterested sort of way and was reminded of your Uncle Jeff living out in Utah. This man looked a good deal like your uncle except that he was barrel-chested and powerful where Uncle Jeff was a run-down, weazened little squirt. It would require two and a half Uncle Jeffs to fill the man’s shoes and there would still be enough left over to make a caricature.
You know the type; you undoubtedly meet men like him in your business. He was large in girth and latent power, large in pocketbook potential, perhaps, and large in ideas of how he wanted the world to revolve about him. If you or any other newspaper reporter met him you’d label him a capitalist, or maybe a powerful lobbyist-something like that. But I didn’t think so.
He made my office seem small by merely standing there in the doorway. In that first, cursory glance at him I noticed that, and took my feet off the desk. And then I looked again.
He had weight, visible and invisible. He was used to swinging that weight around, visible and invisible. Not that he seemed a professional politician — he didn’t. But he wore his hat, his expensive suit, and his quiet assurance of hidden power each with the same degree of confidence; he knew that each fitted him.
Yes, I removed my feet from the desk and sat up.
By this time the stranger had closed the office door behind him, but he hadn’t advanced into the room. Instead, and almost imperceptibly, he had moved sideways from the door so that the pane of frosted glass was no longer at his back. I couldn’t fail to notice that: it told me things about him. Exhaling slowly, he leaned against the paint-chipped wall and examined the office with calculating eyes.
As usual, the place was a wreck.
I had been doing some typing on my book on Lost Atlantis; seven chapters are finished and they were spread in seven separate stacks in a semicircle on the floor. The typewriter was before me and a blank sheet of paper rolled halfway in — I was just starting a letter to you. A dictionary, a thesaurus, and a couple of reference books on Atlantis I had borrowed from the library were piled beside the typewriter.
The morning’s mail, all unopened except for your latest letter, was atop the books. Your violin case was on the floor where you walked out and forgot it three years ago. I keep it there for sentimental reasons; there is no violin in it, of course, but I file your letters there. Those two individual parts of you go well together.
Everything in the office was as I had left it the night before-meaning the janitor hadn’t touched the room. I blew pipe ashes off the desk and looked at the stranger again.
“You’re Horne, aren’t you?” he asked. “Charles Horne?”
Of course I was Charles Home. I knew it and he knew it; he didn’t have to ask to make sure. That kind of a man always tried to make sure, beforehand. He was stalling for time, time to size me up and permit his breathing to return to normal. I’m on the second floor you know, the stairs may have winded him.
I didn’t believe he and I had ever met before and that was to be wondered at in a low-bracket city like Boone. I had supposed that in my five or six years in business here I had come to know everybody, including the editors of the labor paper that are changed every month. I was familiar with all of the City Hall crowd, knew every clerk and deputy in the Courthouse, and he didn’t belong in either place.
“My name is Evans,” he offered finally without putting out his hand. “Harry W. Evans. I’m from out of town.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. There was a chair a few feet from where he stood against the wall. “I haven’t seen you around. Sit down.”
He shook his head, slowly. “I’ll stand.” And he did. He also kept his hat and coat on.
“I’ve only a few minutes.” He studied me intently. “Some of the boys tell me you can be relied upon. They said you were straight. Honest.” He also thought I was a skinny, dumb-looking creature who might pass for a private detective in a custard-pie comedy, but he didn’t say so with his lips.
“Tell the boys thanks,” I returned. “And I am, mostly. What boys?”
He hesitated a moment and breathed more evenly again. Finally he said, “Croyden.”
I nodded, not very surprised. Croyden is maybe forty, forty-five miles away. There are two railroads and a new bus line connecting Boone with Croyden and no little traffic of various and interesting 6orts plies back and forth. A lot of good stuff comes in here directly from the Croyden distilleries without benefit of a middleman. Like the cigarettes in North Carolina, I suppose. We also used to have a visiting delegation of girls each weekend until the Civic Pride League broke out their tomahawks and forced the police to close the district.
As one of the sidelines I’ve developed since you lit out for Capitol City and the political newsbeats again, I now handle investigations of policy applicants and sometimes accident claims for an insurance company over there.
I said to Evans, “I know Rothman and Liebscher, and a couple of other boys there.”
It was his turn to nod knowingly. “The boys said you were the man for the job.”
“What job?”
Swiftly then he reached into an inner pocket and brought out a handsome leather wallet. He could just as easily have pulled the gun I glimpsed under his armpit. The wallet was dark brown, not too new, and had some gold-leaf lettering on the interior flap. Above the lettering was a single symbol of some kind, also imprinted in gold leaf, but the whole movement was too fast to enable me to identify the symbol or whatever it was.
The wallet was bulging with long, green leaves.
He extracted five of them without counting, and advancing to the desk, tossed the bills in front of me. They made a lovely heap.
“Tomorrow,” he growled bitterly, “tomorrow, or the next day, I’m going to be in jail. It may be the day after that. I don’t really know. You get me out — if you can.”
“What’ll you be in jail for?” I’m naturally curious, as you well know, Louise. Maybe I have the makings of a reporter, too.
“I don’t know,” he replied frankly, almost musingly. He sounded as though he were patiently awaiting an expected surprise. “Actually, I don’t know.”
“Perhaps for carrying a gun?” I pointed out.
He nodded again, his eyes searching me. “I have a permit, of course, but that can conveniently become lost or stolen. It may be for spitting on the sidewalk.”
“Or perhaps for crossing the street against the light?” I suggested, beginning to grin.
He was in quick agreement. “Or parking in a safety zone. Or shoplifting. Or resisting an officer.”
I stood up. “You talk like a frame job.”
“Exactly!” he bit out explosively. “That is precisely what I am implying. That is why I don’t know the reason for my arrest. Sometime during the next few days I’ll do something I shouldn’t have done, according to some unheard-of ordinance, and I’ll be jailed.”
I put my thumb to my chin and found I hadn’t shaved.