Читать книгу The Chinese Parrot - Earl Derr Biggers - Страница 6

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AT six o’clock on the following Thursday evening Alexander Eden drove to the Stewart Hotel. All day a February rain had spattered over the town, bringing an early dusk. For a moment Eden stood in the doorway of the hotel, staring at the parade of bobbing umbrellas and at the lights along Geary Street, glowing a dim yellow in the dripping mist. In San Francisco age does not matter—much, and he felt like a boy again as he rode up in the elevator to Sally Jordan’s suite.

She was waiting for him in the doorway of her sitting-room, lovely as a girl in a soft, clinging dinner-gown of grey. Caste tells, particularly when one has reached the sixties, Eden thought as he took her hand.

“Ah, Alec,” she smiled. “Come in. You remember Victor?”

Victor stepped forward eagerly, and Eden looked at him with interest. He had not seen Sally Jordan’s son for some years, and he noted that, at thirty-five, Victor began to show the strain of his giddy career as man about town. His brown eyes were tired, as though they had looked at the bright lights too long, his face a little puffy, his waistline far too generous. But his attire was perfection; evidently his tailor had yet to hear of the failing Phillimore fortunes.

“Come in, come in,” said Victor gaily. His heart was light, for he saw important money in the offing. “As I understand it, to-night’s the night.”

“And I’m glad it is,” Sally Jordan added. “I shall be happy to get that necklace off my mind. Too great a burden at my age.”

Eden sat down. “Bob’s gone to the dock to meet the President Pierce” he remarked. “I told him to come here at once with your Chinese friend.”

“Ah, yes,” said Sally Jordan.

“Have a cocktail,” suggested Victor.

“No, thanks,” Eden replied. Abruptly he rose and strode about the room.

Mrs Jordan regarded him with concern. “Has anything happened?” she inquired.

The jeweller returned to his chair. “Well, yes—something has happened,” he admitted. “Something—well, something rather odd.”

“About the necklace, you mean?” asked Victor, with interest.

“Yes,” said Eden. He turned to Sally Jordan. “You remember what Madden told us, Sally? Almost his last words. ‘New York, and nowhere else.’ ”

“Why, yes—I remember,” she replied.

“Well, he’s changed his mind,” frowned the jeweller. “Somehow, it doesn’t seem like Madden. He called me up this morning from his ranch down on the desert, and he wants the necklace delivered there.”

“On the desert?” she repeated, amazed.

“Precisely. Naturally, I was surprised. But his instructions were emphatic, and you know the sort of man he is. One doesn’t argue with him. I listened to what he had to say, and agreed. But after he had rung off I got to thinking. What he had said that morning at my office, you know. I asked myself—was it really Madden talking? The voice had an authentic ring—but even so—well, I determined to take no chances.”

“Quite right, too,” nodded Sally Jordan.

“So I called him back. I had a devil of a time finding his number, but I finally got it from a business associate of his here in town. Eldorado seven six. I asked for P. J. Madden and I got him. Oh, it was Madden right enough.”

“And what did he say?”

“He commended me for my caution, but his orders were even more emphatic than before. He said he had heard certain things that made him think it risky to take the necklace to New York at this time. He didn’t explain what he meant by that. But he added that he’d come to the conclusion that the desert was an ideal place for a transaction of this sort. The last place in the world anyone would come looking for a chance to steal a quarter of a million dollar necklace. Of course, he didn’t say all that over the wire, but that was what I gathered.”

“He’s absolutely right, too,” said Victor.

“Well, yes—in a way, he is. I’ve spent a lot of time on the desert myself. In spite of the story-writers, it’s the most law-abiding place in America to-day. Nobody ever locks a door, or so much as thinks of thieves. Ask the average rancher about police protection, and he’ll look surprised and murmur something about a sheriff several hundred miles away. But for all that——”

Eden got up again and walked anxiously about the room. “For all that—or rather, for those very reasons, I don’t like the idea at all. Suppose somebody did want to play a crooked game—what a setting for it! Away out there on that ocean of sand, with only the Joshua-trees for neighbours. Suppose I send Bob down there with your necklace, and he walks into a trap. Madden may not be at that lonely ranch. He may have gone East. He may even, by the time Bob gets there, have gone West—as they said in the War. Lying out on the desert, with a bullet in him——”

Victor laughed derisively. “Look here, your imagination is running away with you,” he cried.

Eden smiled. “Maybe it is,” he admitted. “Begins to look as though I were growing old, eh, Sally?” He took out his watch. “But where’s Bob? Ought to be here by now. If you don’t mind, I’ll use your telephone.”

He called the dock, and came away from the ’phone with a still more worried look. “The President Pierce got in a full forty-five minutes ago,” he announced. “Half an hour should bring them here.”

“Traffic’s rather thick at this hour,” Victor reminded him.

“Yes—that’s right too,” Eden agreed. “Well, Sally, I’ve told you the situation. What do you think?”

“What should she think?” Victor cut in. “Madden’s bought the necklace and wants it delivered on the desert. It isn’t up to us to question his orders. If we do he may get annoyed and call the whole deal off. No, our job is to deliver the pearls, get his receipt, and wait for his cheque.” His puffy white hands twitched eagerly.

Eden turned to his old friend. “Is that your opinion, Sally?”

“Why, yes, Alec,” she said. “I fancy Victor is right.” She looked at her son proudly. Eden also looked at him, but with a vastly different expression.

“Very good,” he answered. “Then there is no time to be lost. Madden is in a great hurry, as he wants to start for New York very soon. I shall send Bob with the necklace at eleven o’clock to-night—but I absolutely refuse to send him alone.”

“I’ll go along,” Victor offered.

Eden shook his head. “No,” he objected, “I prefer a policeman, even though he does belong to a force as far away as Honolulu. This Charlie Chan—do you think, Sally, that you could persuade him to go with Bob?”

She nodded. “I’m sure of it. Charlie would do anything for me.”

“All right—that’s settled. But where the devil are they? I tell you, I’m worried——”

The telephone interrupted him, and Madame Jordan went to answer it. “Oh—hello, Charlie,” she said. “Come right up. We’re on the fourth floor—number four nine two. Yes. Are you alone?” She hung up the receiver and turned back into the room. “He says he is alone,” she announced.

“Alone,” repeated Eden. “Why—I don’t understand that——” He sank weakly into a chair.

A moment later he looked up with interest at the chubby little man his hostess and her son were greeting warmly at the door. The detective from Honolulu stepped farther into the room, an undistinguished figure in his Western clothes. He had round fat cheeks, an ivory skin, but the thing about him that caught Eden’s attention was the expression in his eyes, a look of keen brightness that made the pupils gleam like black buttons in the yellow light.

“Alec,” said Sally Jordan, “this is my old friend Charlie Chan. Charlie—Mr Eden.”

Chan bowed low. “Honours crowd close on this mainland,” he said. “First I am Miss Sally’s old friend, and now I meet Mr Eden.”

Eden rose. “How do you do?” he said.

“Have a good crossing, Charlie?” Victor asked.

Chan shrugged. “All time big Pacific Ocean suffer sharp pain down below, and toss about to prove it. Maybe from sympathy, I am in same fix.”

Eden came forward. “Pardon me if I’m a little abrupt—but my son—he was to meet your ship——”

“So sorry,” Chan said, regarding him gravely. “The fault must indubitably be mine. Kindly overlook my stupidity, but there was no meeting at dock.”

“I can’t understand it,” Eden complained again.

“For some few minutes I linger round gang-board,” Chan continued. “No one ventures to approach out of rainy night. Therefore I engage taxi and hurry to this spot.”

“You’ve got the necklace?” Victor demanded.

“Beyond any question,” Chan replied. “Already I have procured room in this hotel, partly disrobing to remove same from money-belt about waist.” He tossed an innocent-looking string of beads down upon the table. “Regard the Phillimore pearls at journey’s end,” he grinned. “And now a great burden drops from my shoulders with a most delectable thud.”

Eden, the jeweller, stepped forward and lifted the string in his hands. “Beautiful,” he murmured, “beautiful. Sally, we should never have let Madden have them at the price. They’re perfectly matched—I don’t know that I ever saw——” He stared for a moment into the rosy glow of the pearls, then laid them again on the table. “But Bob—where is Bob?”

“Oh, he’ll be along,” remarked Victor, taking up the necklace. “Just a case of missing each other.”

“I am the faulty one,” insisted Chan. “Shamed by my blunder——”

“Maybe,” said Eden. “But—now that you have the pearls, Sally, I’ll tell you something else. I didn’t want to worry you before. This afternoon at four o’clock some one called me—Madden again, he said. But something in his voice—anyhow, I was wary. Pearls were coming on the President Pierce, were they? Yes. And the name of the messenger? Why should I tell him that, I inquired. Well, he had just got hold of some inside facts that made him feel the string was in danger, and he didn’t want anything to happen. He was in a position to help in the matter. He insisted, so I finally said: ‘Very good, Mr Madden. Hang up your receiver and I’ll call you back in ten minutes with the information you want.’ There was a pause, then I heard him hang up. But I didn’t ’phone the desert. Instead I had that call traced, and I found it came from a pay-station in a cigar-store at the corner of Sutter and Kearny Streets.”

Eden paused. He saw Charlie Chan regarding him with deep interest.

“Can you wonder I’m worried about Bob?” the jeweller continued. “There’s some funny business going on, and I tell you I don’t like it——”

A knock sounded on the door, and Eden himself opened it. His son stepped into the room, debonair and smiling. At sight of him, as so often happens in such a situation, the anxious father’s worry gave way to a deep rage.

“You’re a hell of a business man,” he cried.

“Now, Father—no compliments,” laughed Bob Eden. “And me wandering all over San Francisco in your service.”

“I suppose so. That’s about what you would be doing, when it was your job to meet Mr Chan at the dock.”

“Just a moment, Dad.” Bob Eden removed a glistening raincoat. “Hello, Victor. Madame Jordan. And this, I imagine, is Mr Chan.”

“So sorry to miss meeting at dock,” murmured Chan. “All my fault, I am sure——”

“Nonsense,” cried the jeweller. “His fault, as usual. When, in heaven’s name, are you going to show a sense of responsibility?”

“Now, Dad. And a sense of responsibility just what I’ve only this minute stopped showing nothing else but.”

“Good Lord—what language is that? You didn’t meet Mr Chan, did you?”

“Well, in a way I didn’t——”

“In a way? In a way!”

“Precisely. It’s a long story, and I’ll tell it if you’ll stop interrupting with these unwarranted attacks on my character. I’ll sit down, if I may. I’ve been about a bit, and I’m tired.”

He lighted a cigarette. “When I came out of the club about five to go to the dock there was nothing in sight but a battered old taxi that had seen better days. I jumped in. When I got down on the Embarcadero I noticed that the driver was a pretty disreputable lad with a scar on one cheek and a cauliflower ear. He said he’d wait for me, and he said it with a lot of enthusiasm. I went into the pier-shed. There was the President Pierce out in the harbour, fumbling round trying to dock. In a few minutes I noticed a man standing near me—a thin, chilly-looking lad with an overcoat, the collar up about his ears, and a pair of black spectacles. I guess I’m psychic—he didn’t look good to me. I couldn’t tell, but somehow he seemed to be looking at me behind those smoked windows. I moved to the other side of the shed. So did he. I went to the street. He followed. Well, I drifted back to the gang-plank, and old Chilly Bill came along.”

Bob Eden paused, smiling genially about him. “Right then and there I came to a quick decision. I’m remarkable that way. I didn’t have the pearls, but Mr Chan did. Why tip off the world to Mr Chan? So I just stood there staring hopefully at the crowd landing from the old P. P. Presently I saw the man I took to be Mr Chan come down the plank, but I never stirred. I watched him while he looked about, then I saw him go out to the street. Still the mysterious gent behind the windows stuck closer than a bill-collector. After everybody was ashore, I went back to my taxi and paid off the driver. ‘Was you expecting somebody on the ship?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘I came down to meet the Dowager Empress of China, but they tell me she’s dead.’ He gave me a dirty look. As I hurried away the man with the dark glasses came up. ‘Taxi, mister?’ said Cauliflower Ear. And old Glasses got in. I had to meander through the rain all the way to the S. P. station before I could find another cab. Just as I drove away from the station along came Cauliflower Ear in his splendid equipage. He followed along behind, down Third, up Market to Powell, and finally to the Saint Francis. I went in the front door of the hotel and out the side, on to Post. And there was Cauliflower Ear and his fare, drifting by our store. As I went in the front door of the club my dear old friends drew up across the street. I escaped by way of the kitchen, and slipped over here. I fancy they’re still in front of the club—they loved me like a brother.” He paused. “And that, Dad, is the long but thrilling story of why I did not meet Mr Chan.”

Eden smiled. “By Jove, you’ve got more brains than I thought. You were perfectly right. But look here, Sally—I like this less than ever. That necklace of yours isn’t a well-known string. It’s been in Honolulu for years. Easy as the devil to dispose of it, once it’s stolen. If you’ll take my advice you’ll certainly not send it off to the desert——”

“Why not?” broke in Victor. “The desert’s the very place to send it. Certainly this town doesn’t look any too good.”

“Alec,” said Sally Jordan, “we need the money. If Mr Madden is down at Eldorado, and asks for the necklace there, then let’s send it to him immediately and get his receipt. After that—well, it’s his look-out. His worry. Certainly I want it off my hands as soon as may be.”

Eden sighed. “All right. It’s for you to decide. Bob will take it at eleven, as we planned. Provided—well, provided you make the arrangement you promised—provided he doesn’t go alone.” He looked toward Charlie Chan, who was standing at the window watching, fascinated, the noisy life of Geary Street far below.

“Charlie,” said Sally Jordan.

“Yes, Miss Sally.” He turned, smiling, to face her.

“What was that you said about the burden dropping from your shoulders? The delectable thud?”

“Now vacation begins,” he said. “All my life I have unlimited yearning to face the wonders of this mainland. Moment are now at hand. Care-free and happy, not like crossing on ship. There all time pearls rest heavy on stomach, most undigestible, like sour rice. Not so now.”

Madame Jordan shook her head. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said. “I’m going to ask you to eat one more bowl of sour rice. For me—for auld lang syne.”

“I do not quite grasp meaning,” he told her.

She outlined the plan to send him with Bob Eden to the desert. His expression did not change.

“I will go,” he promised gravely.

“Thank you, Charlie,” said Sally Jordan softly.

“In my youth,” he continued, “I am houseboy in the Phillimore mansion. Still in my heart like old-time garden bloom memories of kindness never to be repaid.” He saw Sally Jordan’s eyes bright and shining with tears. “Life would be dreary waste,” he finished, “if there was no thing called loyalty.”

Very flowery, thought Alexander Eden. He sought to introduce a more practical note. “All your expenses will be paid, of course. And that vacation is just postponed for a few days. You’d better carry the pearls—you have the belt, and, besides, no one knows your connexion with the affair. Thank heaven for that.”

“I will carry them,” Chan agreed. He took up the string from the table. “Miss Sally, toss all worry out of mind. When this young man and I encounter proper person pearls will be delivered. Until then I guard them well.”

“I’m sure you will,” smiled Madame Jordan.

“Well, that’s settled,” said Eden. “Mr Chan, you and my son will take the eleven o’clock ferry to Richmond, which connects with the train to Barstow. There you’ll have to change to another train for Eldorado, but you should reach Madden’s ranch to-morrow evening. If he is there and everything seems in order——”

“Why should everything be in order?” broke in Victor. “If he’s there—that’s enough.”

“Well, of course, we don’t want to take any undue risk,” Eden went on. “But you two will know what to do when you reach there. If Madden’s at the ranch give him the string and get his receipt. That lets us out. Mr Chan, we will pick you up here at ten-thirty. Until then you are free to follow your own inclination.”

“Present inclination,” smiled Chan, “means tub filled with water, steaming hot. At ten-thirty in entrance-hall of hotel I will be waiting, undigestible pearls on stomach, as before. Good-bye. Good-bye.” He bobbed to each in turn and went out.

“I’ve been in business thirty-five years,” said Eden, “but I never employed a messenger quite like him before.”

“Dear Charlie,” said Sally Jordan. “He’ll protect those pearls with his life.”

Bob Eden laughed. “I hope it doesn’t go as far as that,” he remarked. “I’ve got a life too, and I’d like to hang on to it.”

“Won’t you both stay to dinner?” suggested Sally Jordan.

“Some other time, thanks,” Alexander Eden answered. “I don’t think it wise we should keep together to-night. Bob and I will go home—he has a bag to pack, I imagine. I don’t intend to let him out of my sight until train-time.”

“One last word,” said Victor. “Don’t be too squeamish when you get down on that ranch. If Madden’s in danger that’s no affair of ours. Put those pearls in his hand and get his receipt. That’s all.”

Eden shook his head. “I don’t like the look of this, Sally. I don’t like this thing at all.”

“Don’t worry,” she smiled. “I have every confidence in Charlie—and in Bob.”

“Such popularity must be deserved,” said Bob Eden. “I promise I’ll do my best. Only I hope that lad in the overcoat doesn’t decide to come down to the desert and warm up. Somehow I’m not so sure I’d be a match for him—once he warmed up.”