Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 9 — January, 1942)
- Автор: Reeves Robert, Champion D. L.
- Год: 1942
- Язык: английский
- Год: Fictioneers
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 9 — January, 1942)». Краткое содержание книги:
Driscoll straightened up, astonishment on his face. “But look, Sarge, how do you figure? Here, you can still smell the samshu on the bird, and here are the ink-stains on its feathers, from the inkwell on your desk.”
“Yeah, take a good look at those stains,” O’Hara replied crisply. “Those marks were made with black Chinese ink, thick as paint! Since when do I have Chinese ink on my desk?”
“Then... then there must be two parrots!” Driscoll exclaimed.
“Exactly! There’s been a switch. This parrot is only a stand-in for the real Shao! But I haven’t finished yet with the Chinese ink. Very interesting, that Chinese ink. It’s going to tell us a lot of things, because the man who painted those marks on the phoney parrot spilled some on his own hand!”
O’Hara swung around suddenly, seized Tai Gat by the arm and twisted his hand into view, revealing a telltale smudge along the edge of the palm. “Now, Tai Gat, suppose you tell us how you got that stain on your hand!”
“Not know!” the mafoo declared with hissing breath, trying to jerk his hand away, but O’Hara only tightened his grip, pushing him against the wall.
“Where’s that other parrot, Tai Gat? Where’s the real Shao? You know! You’re the one who made the switch tonight!”
The mafoo glared at him, sullen as a cornered animal. “Tai Gat know nothing about Feather Devil,” he insisted.
O’Hara straightened up, frosty-eyed. “So you spent the evening at the Joss House, burning prayers, eh? Well, we’ll soon check up on that. The bonze will tell us if you were there, and how long you stayed. But I know you’re lying, Tai Gat! You were in Mandarin Lane tonight — in the house where you kept Chang Loo prisoner! You were in Manchu Place, hunting for Shao with a flashlight! You followed me to the precinct to snatch back the parrot — then you came back here, back to this house, and murdered this fake Chang Loo!”
“Hey, Sarge!” Driscoll exclaimed in protest. “You’re way off the course! This was suicide. Didn’t we chase this guy up the stairs, didn’t he shoot at us?”
“What we saw was a yellow robe,” O’Hara replied, and leveled his finger at the dead impostor on the floor. “This man was dead before we set foot in Lantern Court. I could tell by the way his blood had soaked through the straw matting.”
“I still think you’re shootin’ wild, Sarge,” Driscoll said. “If this was murder, how did Tai Gat get out of this room? Look at it — door bolted, windows barred.”
“I don’t know how Tai Gat got out,” O’Hara replied, “but I know he was inside. I can prove it. Look at this letter of Chang Pao’s about the parrot. Here’s that Chinese ink again — a fresh smudge, right across one corner. Tai Gat handled this letter within the past hour!”
“Not so!” the mafoo cried out. “It is a Number One lie!”
“I still don’t see it, Sarge,” Driscoll argued. “If you’re right, why didn’t Tai Gat keep this letter for himself, or else destroy it. It’s the key to the whole thing.”
“Wrong!” O’Hara corrected sharply. “The parrot is the real key. What’s the letter worth if you haven’t got Shao — the real Shao — to give you the three words?”
O’Hara eyed the mafoo in cold appraisal. “Your little game is all washed up, Tai Gat. You’ll do no more hunting for Chang Pao’s treasure, because you’re going to jail for a long, long time. So you might as well hand over that other parrot. I know you’ve got it hidden somewhere in this house, and I’ll find it, if I have to take the place apart brick by brick.”
Tai Gat’s tongue moved uneasily across his lips, his eyes darting here and there as if seeking an avenue of escape. But as O’Hara’s hand gripped him in warning, his momentary panic passed, his slant-eyed face settled into the imperturbable mask of the Oriental.
“The Lords of Destiny frown upon me. Wah! I strive no more against the tide of evil fortune. Release your hands, Sah-jin, and I will deliver the true Shao into your keeping. He is hidden in the Kwan-Yin room.”
“No more tricks!” O’Hara warned, alert for a treacherous move as he followed the limping mafoo into the little prayer-room. Tai Gat lifted the gilded statue of Kwan-Yin to the floor, and then pulled away the black cloth which covered its pedestal. And there, under the stand, prisoned in a square wire cage, sat Shao — the real Shao — bound to silence by an ingenious wire gag fastened over its beak!
Tai Gat took out the bird and perched it on his forefinger. “Shao not talk for me — not tell me the three words of wealth,” the mafoo said softly, then his face contorted with sudden rage and his voice rose to a snarling screech. “Now I fix so he tell no one!”
And Tai Gat seized the parrot by the neck, twisted its head around with one vicious swirl and hurled the dead Feather Devil at O’Hara’s head.
“Wang pu tau!” the mafoo snarled, wrenching free from O’Hara’s clutching grasp and springing for the door, no longer the limping mafoo, but a frenzied killer darting toward escape with full-striding vigor, twisting away from Driscoll, hurling Chang Loo aside, slamming the door behind him to delay pursuit.
“The stairs!” O’Hara shouted, wrenching open the door, gun in hand. But Tai Gat was not racing down the steps. The wily mafoo had darted into the room where the false Chang Loo lay dead and flung up the sash of the far window.
The two detectives reached the battered doorway in time to see Tai Gat lift one foot to the seemingly solid web of iron bars swung outward in their wooden frame, like a grilled gate.
Driscoll fired and missed, but Tai Gat turned at bay, snarling, reaching for a shelf that held an array of bottles and drinking-bowls. With the fury of a madman he hurled stone bottles and porcelain cups and pottery jugs in a crashing barrage that filled the air with flying splinters and the rising fumes of rice wine and white Chinese whiskey.
O’Hara stumbled backwards as a stone bottle caught him on the shoulder, while Driscoll crumpled and fell under the impact of a blue-glazed samshu jar, his second shot plowing wildly into the ceiling.
Tai Gat took advantage of the momentary confusion to scramble out over the sill, and by the time O’Hara reached the window, the mafoo had left the narrow outside ledge and was crawling up the steep slant of the shingled roof.
“Come back here, or I’ll shoot!” O’Hara warned, leveling his .38.
Tai Gat turned his head, spitting curses as he glared down at the detective. Then his hand-hold slipped—
O’Hara leaned far out, snatching at the blue shaam as Tai Gat slid past, but the cloth tore away from his straining fingers. For one sickening moment the mafoo held fast to the rain-spout, then the frail metal sagged and snapped off.
O’Hara’s ears rang with the mafoo’s last wild cry — he heard the dull thump as the body landed on the hard brick pavement three stories below. He saw Burke come running from the house, his flashlight probing the darkness, but he knew that Tai Gat was dead even before Burke’s terse shout reached up to him.
By that time Driscoll was stirring again, brushing aside the broken pieces of blue pottery.
“Are you all right?” O’Hara asked.
“I’m O.K., Sarge.” Driscoll managed a crooked grin as he tenderly explored the lump on his head. “Hey, what about Tai Gat? Did he get away?”