Oddments Read online

  Then there was the fact that the assassin had fired three shots, the last two of which had come perilously close to sending Quincannon to join his ancestors. Poor and hurried shooting caused by darkness? Or had he also been a target? Something about the gunman fretted him, too, something he could not quite put his finger on.

  The whole business smacked of hidden motives, for a fact.

  And hidden dangers. He did not like to be made a pawn in any piece of intrigue. He liked it almost as little as being shot at, intentionally or otherwise, and failing at a job he had been retained to do. He meant to get to the bottom of it, with or without official sanction.

  Few door latches had ever withstood his ministrations, and the one on James Scarlett's building was no exception. Another attorney occupied the downstairs rooms; Quincannon climbed a creaky staircase to the second floor. The pebbled-glass door imprinted with the words J. H. Scarlett, Attorney-at-Law was not locked. This puzzled him slightly, though not for long.

  Inside, he struck a sulphur match, found the gas outlet—the building was too old and shabby to have been wired for electricity—and lit the flame. Its pale glow showed him a dusty anteroom containing two desks whose bare surfaces indicated that it had been some while since they had been occupied by either law clerk or secretary. He proceeded through a doorway into Scarlett's private sanctum.

  His first impression was that the lawyer had been a remarkably untidy individual. A few seconds later he revised this opinion; the office had been searched in a hurried but rather thorough fashion. Papers littered the top of a large oak desk, the floor around it, and the floor under a bank of wooden file cases. Two of the file drawers were partly open. A wastebasket behind the desk had been overturned and its contents gone through. A shelf of law books showed signs of having been examined as well.

  The fine hand of a highbinder? Possibly, though the methods used here were a good deal less destructive than those usually employed by the boo how doy.

  The smell of must and mildew wrinkled his nostrils as he crossed to the desk, giving him to wonder just how much time Scarlett had spent in these premises. The office wanted a good airing, if not a match to purge it completely. Scowling, he sifted through the papers on and below the desk. They told him nothing except that almost all of Scarlett's recent clients had been Chinese; none of the names was familiar and none of the addresses was on Fowler Alley. The desk drawers yielded even less of interest, and the slim accumulation of briefs, letters, and invoices in the file drawers was likewise unproductive. None bore any direct reference to either the Hip Sing or Kwong Dock tongs, or to Fong Ching under his own name or any of his known aliases.

  The only interesting thing about the late Mr. Scarlett's office, in fact, was the state in which Quincannon had found it. What had the previous intruder been searching for? And whatever it was, had he found it?

  Sabina was already at her desk when he arrived at the Market Street offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, at nine A.M. She looked bright and well-scrubbed, her glossy black hair piled high on her head and fastened with a jade barrette. As always, Quincannon's hard heart softened and his pulses quickened at sight of her. A fine figure of a woman, Mrs. Sabina Carpenter. For a few seconds, as he shed his derby but not his Chesterfield, the wicked side of his imagination speculated once again on what that fine figure would look like divested of its skirt and jacket, shirtwaist and lacy undergarments....

  She narrowed her eyes at him as he crossed the room. "Before we get down to business," she said, "I'll thank you to put my clothes back on."

  "Eh?" Sudden warmth crept out of Quincannon's collar. "My dear Sabina! You can't think that I—"

  "I don't think it, I know it. I know you, John Quincannon, far better than you think I do."

  He sighed. "Perhaps, though you often mistake my motives."

  "I doubt that. Was your sleepless night a reward of that lascivious mind of yours?"

  "How did you know—"

  "Bloodshot eyes in saggy pouches. If I didn't know better, I'd think you had forsaken your temperance pledge."

  "Observant wench. No, it was neither Demon Rum nor impure thoughts nor my misunderstood affections for you that kept me awake most of the blasted night."

  "What, then?"

  "The death of James Scarlett and the near death of your most obedient servant."

  The words startled her, though only someone who knew Sabina as he did would have been aware of it; her round face betrayed only the barest shadow of her surprise. "What happened, John?"

  He told her in detail, including the things that bothered him about the incident and the speculations shared with the three police officers. The smooth skin of her forehead and around her generous mouth bore lines of concern when he finished.

  "Bad business," she said. "And bad for business, losing a man we were hired to protect to an assassin's bullet. Not that you're to be blamed, of course."

  "Of course," Quincannon said sardonically. "But others will blame me. The only way to undo the damage is for me to find the scoundrel responsible before the police do."

  "Us to find him, you mean."

  "Us," he agreed.

  "I suppose it's back to Chinatown for you."

  "It's where the whole of the answer lies."

  "Fowler Alley?"

  "If Scarlett's mutterings were significant and not part of a hop dream."

  "You said he sounded frightened when he spoke the name. Opium dreams are seldom nightmares, John. Men and women use the stuff to escape from nightmares, real or imaginary."

  "True."

  "Scarlett's other words—'blue shadow.' A connection of some sort to Fowler Alley?"

  "Possibly. I'm not sure but what I misheard him and the phrase only sounded like 'blue shadow."

  "Spoken in the same frightened tone?"

  Quincannon cudgeled his memory. "I can't be certain."

  "Well, our client may have some idea. While you're in Chinatown, I'll pay a call on her."

  "I was about to suggest that." He didn't add that this was a task he himself wished to avoid at all costs. Facing a female client whom he had failed would have embarrassed him mightily. The job required Sabina's fine, tactful hand. "Ask her if she knows of any incriminating documents her husband might have had in his possession. And where he kept his private papers. If it wasn't at his office, the mug who searched it before me may not have found what he was after."

  "I will. Who would the mug be, do you suppose, if not one of Little Pete's highbinders?"

  "I don't say that it wasn't a highbinder. Only that the job seemed to have a more professional touch than the hatchet man's usual ham-fisted tactics."

  "Is there anything you can remember about the gunman?" Sabina asked. "It's possible he was known to Mrs. Scarlett as well as her husband."

  "It was too dark and his hat pulled too low for a clear squint at his face. Average size, average height." Quincannon scratched irritably at his freebooter's whiskers. "Still, there was something odd about him. . . ."

  "Appearance? Movements? Did he say anything?"

  "Not a word. Hell and damn! I can't seem to dredge the thing up."

  "Let it be and it'll come to you eventually."

  "Eventually may be too late." Quincannon clamped his derby on his head, squarely, the way he always wore it when he was on an important mission. "Enough talk. It's action I crave and action I'll have."

  "Not too much of it, I hope. Shall we meet back here at one o'clock?"

  "If I'm not here by then," Quincannon said, "it'll be because I'm somewhere with my hands around a highbinder's throat."

  Fowler Alley was a typical Chinatown passage: narrow, crooked, packed with men and women mostly dressed in the black clothing of the lower-caste Chinese. Paper lanterns strung along rickety balconies and the glowing braziers of food sellers added the only color and light to a tunnel-like expanse made even gloomier by an overcast sky.

  Quincannon, one of the few Caucasians am
ong the throng, wandered along looking at storefronts and the upper floors of sagging firetraps roofed in tarpaper and gravel. Many of the second and third floors were private apartments, hidden from view behind dusty, curtained windows. Some of the business establishments were identifiable from their displayed wares: restaurants, herb shops, a clothiers, a vegetable market. Others, tucked away behind closed doors, darkened windows, and signs in inexplicable Chinese characters, remained a mystery.

  Nothing in the alley aroused his suspicions or pricked his curiosity. There were no tong headquarters here, no opium resorts or fan-tan parlors or houses of ill repute; and nothing even remotely suggestive of blue shadows.

  Quincannon retraced his steps through the passage, stopping the one other white man he saw and several Chinese. Did anyone know James Scarlett? The Caucasian was a dry-goods drummer on his second, and what he obviously hoped would be his last, visit to the Quarter; he had never heard of Scarlett, he said. All the Chinese either didn't speak English or pretended they didn't.

  Fowler Alley lay open on both ends, debouching into other passages, but at least for the present, Quincannon thought sourly as he left it, it was a dead end.

  The Hip Sing tong was headquartered on Waverly Place, once called Pike Street, one of Chinatown's more notorious thoroughfares. Here, temples and fraternal buildings stood cheek by jowl with opium and gambling dens and the cribs of the flower willows. Last night, when Quincannon had started his hunt for James Scarlett, the passage had been mostly empty; by daylight it teemed with carts, wagons, buggies, half-starved dogs and cats, and human pedestrians. The noise level was high and constant, a shrill tide dominated by the lilting dialects of Canton, Shanghai, and the provinces of Old China.

  Two doors down from the three-story tong building was the Four Families Temple, a building of equal height but with a much more ornate facade, its balconies carved and painted and decorated with pagoda cornices. On impulse Quincannon turned in through the entrance doors and proceeded to what was known as the Hall of Sorrows, where funeral services were conducted and the bodies of the high-born were laid out in their caskets for viewing. Candlelight flickered; the pungent odor of incense assailed him. The long room, deserted at the moment, was ceilinged with a massive scrolled wood carving covered in gold leaf, from which hung dozens of lanterns in pink and green, red and gold. At the far end was a pair of altars with a red prayer bench fronting one. Smaller altars on either side wore embroidered cloths on which fruit, flowers, candles, and joss urns had been arranged.

  It was from here that the remains of Bing Ah Kee, venerable president of the Hip Sing Company, had disappeared two nights ago. The old man had died of natural causes and his corpse, after having been honored with a lavish funeral parade, had been returned to the temple for one last night; the next morning it was scheduled to be placed in storage to await passage to Bing's ancestral home in Canton for burial. The thieves had removed the body from its coffin and made off with it sometime during the early morning hours—a particularly bold deed considering the close proximity of the Hip Sing building. Yet they had managed it unseen and unheard, leaving no clue as to their identity or purpose.

  Body snatching was uncommon but not unheard of in Chinatown. When such ghoulishness did occur, tong rivalry was almost always the motivating factor—a fact which supported Sergeant Gentry's contention that the disappearance of Bing Ah Kee's husk was the work of Little Pete and the Kwong Dock. Yet stealing an enemy leader's bones without openly claiming responsibility was a damned odd way of warmongering. The usual ploy was a series of assassinations of key figures in the rival tong by local or imported hatchet men.

  Why, then, if Little Pete wanted all-out warfare with the Hip Sing, would he order the murder of a white attorney to shut his mouth, but not also order the deaths of Hip Sing highbinders and elders?

  The odor of fish was strong in Quincannon's nostrils as he left the temple. And the stench did not come from the fish market on the opposite side of the Street.

  The ground floor of the Hip Sing Company was a fraternal gathering place, open to the street; the two upper floors, where tong business was conducted, were closed off and would be well guarded. Quincannon entered freely, passed down a corridor into a large common room. Several black-garbed men, most of them elderly, were playing mah-jongg at a table at one end. Other men sat on cushions and benches, sipping tea, smoking, reading newspapers. A few cast wary glances at the fan kwei intruder, but most ignored him.

  A middle-aged fellow, his skull completely bald except for a long, braided queue, approached him, bowed, and asked in halting English, "There is something the gentleman seeks?"

  Quincannon said, "An audience with Mock Don Yuen," and handed over one of his business cards.

  "Please to wait here, honorable sir." The Chinese bowed again, took the card away through a doorway covered by a worn silk tapestry.

  Quincannon waited. No one paid him the slightest attention now. He was loading his pipe when the bald man returned and said, "You will follow me, please."

  They passed through the tapestried doorway, up a stairway so narrow Quincannon had to turn his body slightly as he ascended. Another man waited at the top, this one young, thickset, with a curved scar under one eye and both hands hidden inside the voluminous sleeves of his blouse. Highbinder on guard duty: those sleeves would conceal a revolver or knife or short, sharp hatchet, or possibly all three.

  As the bald one retreated down the stairs, highbinder and "foreign devil" eyed one another impassively. Quincannon had no intention of relinquishing his Navy Colt; if any effort were made to search him, he would draw the weapon and take his chances. But the guard made no such attempt. In swift, gliding movements he turned and went sideways along a hallway, his gaze on Quincannon the whole while. At an open doorway at the far end, he stopped and stood as if at attention. When Quincannon entered the room beyond, the highbinder filled the doorway behind him as effectively as any panel of wood.

  The chamber might have been an office in any building in San Francisco. There was a long, high desk, a safe, stools, a round table set with a tea service. The only Oriental touches were a red silk wall tapestry embroidered with threads of gold, a statue of Buddha, and an incense bowl that emitted a rich, spicy scent. Lamplight highlighted the face of the man standing behind the desk—a man of no more than thirty, slender, clean-shaven, his hair worn long but unqueued, western-style, his body encased in a robe of red brocaded silk that didn't quite conceal the shirt and string tie underneath. On one corner of the desk lay a black slouch hat with a red topknot. Quincannon said, "You're not Mock Don Yuen."

  "No, I am Mock Quan, his son."

  "I asked for an audience with your father."

  "My father is not here, Mr. Quincannon." Mock Quan's English was unaccented and precise. "I have been expecting you."

  "Have you now."

  "Your reputation is such that I knew you would come to ask questions about the unfortunate occurrence last night."

  "Questions which you'll answer truthfully, of course."

  "Truth is supreme in the house of Hip Sing."

  "And what is the truth of James Scarlett's death?"

  "It was arranged by the Kwong Dock and their cowardly leader, Fong Ching. You must know this."

  Quincannon shrugged. "For what purpose?"

  "Fong is vicious and unscrupulous and his hunger for power has never been sated. He hates and fears the Hip Sing, for we are stronger than any of the tongs under his yoke. He wishes to destroy the Hip Sing so he may reign as king of Chinatown."

  "He's the king now, isn't he?"

  "No!" Mock Quan's anger came like the sudden flare of a match. Almost as quickly it was extinguished, but not before Quincannon had a glimpse beneath the erudite mask. "He is a fat jackal in lion's skin, the son of a turtle."

  That last revealed the depth of Mock Quan's loathing for Little Pete; it was the bitterest of Chinese insults. Quincannon said, "Jackals feed on the dead. The dead such as Bing Ah Kee?
"

  "Oh yes, it is beyond question Fong Ching is responsible for that outrage as well."

  "What do you suppose was done with the body?"

  Mock Quan made a slicing gesture with one slim hand. "Should the vessel of the honorable Bing Ah Kee have been destroyed, may Fong Ching suffer the death of a thousand cuts ten thousand times through eternity."

  "If the Hip Sing is so sure he's responsible, why has nothing been done to retaliate?"

  "Without proof of Fong Ching's treachery, the decision of the council of elders was that the wisest course was to withhold a declaration of war."

  "Even after what happened to James Scarlett? His murder could be termed an act of open aggression."

  "Mr. Scarlett was neither Chinese nor a member of the Hip Sing Company, merely an employee." Mock Quan took a pre-rolled cigarette from a box on his desk, fitted it into a carved ivory holder. "The council met again this morning. It was decided then to permit the American Terror, Lieutenant Price, and his raiders to punish Fong Ching and the Kwong Dock, thus to avoid the shedding of Hip Sing blood. This will be done soon."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "The police now have evidence of Fong Ching's guilt."

  "Evidence?" Quincannon scowled. "What evidence?"

  "The Kwong Dock highbinder who shot Mr. Scarlett was himself shot and killed early this morning, during a police raid on Fong Ching's shoe factory. A letter was found on the kwei chan bearing the letterhead and signature of the esteemed attorney."

  "What kind of letter?"

  "I do not know," Mock Quan said. "I know only that the American Terror is preparing to lead other raids which will crush the life from the turtle's offspring."