Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 9 — January, 1942)

O’Hara commandeered one of the prowl cars and they sped to the Canton Street entrance to Mandarin Lane, picking up Detective Burke as they crossed Mulberry Lane. Leaving their car parked on Canton Street, the three men plunged into the darkness of Mandarin Lane.

“There’s the fifth house!” O’Hara whispered, and they came to a halt, scanning their objective. It was not really a house, but a two-story structure which had originally been a stables, later a garage, and finally abandoned altogether, judging by its neglected appearance and the planks nailed across its doors.

“No light showing,” O’Hara declared, stepping back to scan the grimy upper windows, black and staring as blind eyes. The original pulley-bar of the hayloft still protruded between the dormer windows, like a hangman’s gibbet. A separate door set in the sidewall led, apparently, to the upper floor of the building.

“O.K., Burke, stand guard here in the Lane,” O’Hara ordered. “Come on, Driscoll, we’ll crash this side-door and — hello, it’s not even locked! That’s funny—”

Driscoll’s flashlight lanced the darkness of a flight of narrow, dusty stairs, ending at another door. They went up cautiously, O’Hara’s hand slowly turning the knob of the upper door, then flinging it wide as Driscoll sent his beam sweeping over a bare, attic-like room festooned with cobwebs, its windows covered with heavy sacking.

The moving beam picked out piles of rusty and dusty junk — then focused suddenly on a brokendown armchair to which a Chinese was bound hand and foot. The Oriental writhed and wriggled in his bonds, trying to call out through a cloth bag.

“Cut him loose, Driscoll,” O’Hara ordered, and struck a match to light an oil lantern which stood on an upturned box.

“Blue Coat Men! Praise be to Tao!” the yellow man gasped as soon as the gag was removed.

O’Hara straightened up, staring at the young Oriental. “What name you?” he demanded. “You’re not Chang Loo!”

Then it was the Oriental’s turn to stare. “Who say I am not Chang Loo?” he challenged. “Take me to my uncle Chang Pao the silversmith — he tell you chop-chop that I am his brother’s son!”

“Hey, what is this!” O’Hara exclaimed. “I’ve seen Chang Loo a dozen times — I looked at his papers, his hu-chao, his chock-gee, when Chang Pao’s will was read—”

“Chang Pao is dead?” the yellow man broke in excitedly. “Hai! Now it is as plain as black writing on rice paper! Tajen, I am Chang Loo! This other one is a thief who has stole my name, my papers — and now he steals my dead uncle’s wealth! Hearken, Tajen—”

And speaking in a staccato jabber that was half-English and half-Cantonese, the young Celestial poured forth as strange a tale of evil plotting as Sergeant O’Hara had ever heard in this devious Quarter where the bizarre and the fantastic is a daily commonplace.

Chang Loo told how he had received a telegram advising him of his uncle’s grave condition and had at once set out on his long journey to reach his dying uncle’s bedside.

Arriving in the late evening, he had inquired his way to Lantern Court, but even as he set foot upon the steps of No. 14, a figure had loomed up behind him, jabbed a gun against his back, and growled a command to walk straight ahead and keep his tongue behind his teeth.

One hundred and fifty paces he had counted in the darkness, to this fifth house of the narrow street whose name he did not know. Still at gun-point, he had been forced up the dark stairs to this dark attic, where he had been tied into the chair and then gagged, by a man who wore a black cloth mask over his face.

“You’ve been a prisoner in this room, ever since?” O’Hara asked.

“Aye, Tajen,” the young Chinese replied. The masked man had searched him thoroughly, taking away all his possessions, even a little jade luckpiece with the seal of Wan-teh.

He added the other details of his strange captivity. Once a day the masked man appeared to give him food and water and a few minutes’ exercise walking to and fro, but always with bound hands. The masked man never spoke, only raising his pistol in a gesture that threatened instant death if the prisoner tried to summon help.

O’Hara and Driscoll exchanged swift glances. Beyond all doubt this young Chinese was the true Chang Loo — he had names, dates, facts at his command; he described with minute accuracy the very papers which O’Hara had examined in Lee Shu’s office, even to a small piece torn from the corner of his official chock-gee.