Charlie Chan - Walk Softly, Strangler Part 3

"This is Ah-Nah, Madame Wu's companion. Doctor Svorenssen says you are at the Hollywood Roosevelt."

"That's right," said Chan. He was about to give the number of his suite when a feminine voice remembered from upstairs cut in on another extension.

"Will you get the h.e.l.l off this G.o.d d.a.m.n line?" it said angrily. "I've got to get through to Sheila."

"One moment, please," said Chan. Then, to Ah-Nah, "Are you still there, Miss?"

"Yes."

"Nine-sixteen," said Chan. "Are you going to get off this copulating line or do I call operator and cut you off?" said the intruding voice angrily.

"It's already past eleven," said Ah-Nah, sounding confused. "I'll meet you in the hotel at midnight."

"I'll tear out the line if you don't get off," said the lady who wanted to talk to Sheila.

"What's your room number?" Ah-Nah asked.

"Nine-sixteen!" Chan could not be sure whether he got through or not because the intruder chose that moment to kill the call.

He returned to Doctor Svorenssen, said, "If Ah-Nah calls back after I leave, tell her I'm at the hotel."

"Right on!" said the dentist, who had recovered his interrupted c.o.c.ktail-hour glow.

Chan wandered through the apartment, taking in the scene. He spotted three other telephones, one of them in use by a horse-faced female in a splashy flowered print that reminded him of that long-ago era when chintz furniture covers were well in style. Standing behind her, he was debating a suitable reprisal against this one-track lady whose determination had probably ruined his call from Ah-Nah.

But as soon as the thoughts of reprisal rose, Chan dismissed them with some sense of shame as not merely unworthy of his ancestors but unworthy of himself.

Chan lingered another half hour, awaiting a call-back from Ah-Nah, then decided it would be wise to stroll the two blocks to his hotel.

Entering the lobby from the Hollywood Boulevard side, he looked around for the young woman, failed to see her. It occurred to him that he had better go upstairs, in case she had heard him correctly despite their garbled conversation, to see if she were waiting in the corridor outside his room. By his wrist.w.a.tch, it was exactly six minutes past twelve when he entered the elevator.

Entering his room, Chan called the desk and left a message to have Ah-Nah call him when she arrived and asked for him. Then, feeling suddenly fatigued and let down after the events of the past seven hours, he took off his shoes and socks and jacket and loosened his s.h.i.+rt. Stretching out on the sofa, he turned on a tolerable late-show movie and settled down to wait.

When he awakened, it was past five in the morning and his head felt stuffed with cotton. Fearing lest he might have slumbered through Ah-Nah's call, Chan called the desk and was informed n.o.body had asked for him. Weighing the unpredictability of young women in general and Ah-Nah in particular, he got out of his clothes, donned unbleached raw silk pajamas and went to bed.

VIII.

CHAN WAS sitting on the edge of the bed, pondering the events of the evening before, when Pat Jarvis called him from the Hollywood Police Station on Wilc.o.x Avenue, just below Sunset.

Following a brief exchange of greetings, the captain said, "Charlie, I had the department Oriental expert up at Mei T'ang's place early this morning. He rates those weird stone vegetables at less than a grand."

Chan scratched his chest beneath his pajamas, glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch on the bedside table, said, "Still early, Pat. So it's just junk then."

"Worth the metal and alabaster, plus some curiosity value as murder relics," said Jarvis.

Chan said, "The fly I found by the body was not junk. Again I suggest a subst.i.tution. Otherwise, why the attack on me and theft of the jeweled fly?"

"Charlie, I know, I know - but I've got to go along with the estimate."

"Then how do you account for the real one?"

"I don't," said Jarvis. "But we've got a murderer to find - and fast - before this case is blown up out of all proportion."

"Ah," said Chan. "I remember the botch of the early-Twenties murder of William Desmond Taylor. You don't want to repeat that one, right?"

"d.a.m.ned right," said Jarvis.

"What can I do to help?"

"Right now, Just keep digging. We need all the A-one help we can get. And you're just the man who can help me now!"

Chan said, quickly before Jarvis could hang up. "The girl called me at Claudia Haynes's last night - the companion. She made an appointment to see me here at the hotel, but didn't keep it. I've been worried."

"Forget that one, too," said Captain Jarvis. "We had her back here till past two o'clock, then drove her home."

"Much relieved," said Chan. He hung up.

However, he was far from relieved by Jarvis's call. As he showered, then shaved with the electric razor his oldest grandchild had given him for Christmas, he compared the case in its present condition to a plate full of soft noodles - loose ends in every direction.

There was one such end that he could investigate - the matter of the jeweled animals, insects and vegetables in the apothecaries' jars that the police expert had summarily p.r.o.nounced to be junk. However, he had seen, held and briefly possessed the exquisitely crafted jeweled fly whose near-worthless replica adorned the carved ginseng root.

Chan knew it was not junk.

He ordered a Continental breakfast sent up. The hour was barely past nine - too early to call the party he had in mind. Following the light meal, he arranged with the hotel desk for the rental of a Chevrolet. Only then did he call Hei Wei Chinn, one of the authorities on antique Chinese artifacts he had flown to Los Angeles to see in connection with a viewing of the archaeological exhibit from the People's Republic.

"I await your visit with impatience," said Hei Wei Chinn. He and Chan had been friends since the bygone time when the Oriental art dealer operated a small shop in Honolulu. "When can I expect you?"

"Directly - if my visit at this time will not cause you inconvenience."

"Oh, come on over, Charlie," said the dealer. "h.e.l.l, I'm dying to see you after so many years."

Hei Wei Chinn, like his modest shop on South Robertson Boulevard, just below Pico, looked well used. His lean frame was flattered by a finely tailored suit of Hong Kong silk, his shoes were obviously bench made, his tie an objet d'art of vivid and wondrous resplendence.

Taking Chan back to his office, he produced, via a brisk Chinese girl a.s.sistant, a rare gunpowder tea in cups so thin as to be almost transparent, and there they chatted of former times and present problems.

When the conversation had been steered to the latter subject, Chan told his old friend about the murder.

"I heard about it on the TV news this morning," said Hei Wei Chinn. "A tragedy. I had no idea you were involved, however, Charlie."

"Yes and no," said Chan. "But there is one point, perhaps a trivial one, on which perhaps you can enlighten me out of your great wisdom."

He went on to describe the murdered star's strange collection and the jeweled insect he had found - and lost. He also gave the report of the police expert, concluding with, "Chine, did you ever hear of such a collection of curios in your study of Chinese works of art? For the fly I picked up was definitely a work of art."

"How did it feel?" Hei Wei Chinn asked.

Chan understood the question perfectly. Without hesitation, he replied, "It felt old - perhaps centuries old - which the ginseng root I handled did not."

Both men knew well the value of the sense of touch in estimating the age of such objects, both were sensitive to the invisible patina of antiquity in the texture of all objects. While hardly as unerring in such estimates as his expert friend, more than once the veteran detective inspector had been able to a.s.sign an object to its proper century deep in the past.

Chinn looked thoughtful and fell silent for a pause of at least thirty seconds. Then he said, "It is just possible - maybe..."

He picked up the phone and asked the girl to get him a number in Beverly Hills. After long preliminaries, the conversation was conducted in a North China dialect of which the Honolulu-born detective grasped only a few words. When Chinn hung up, he regarded his visitor with the trace of a complacent smile upon his lips.

[le said, "That was the deputy mission chief of the cultural mission from the People's Republic now in Los Angeles."

"Yes?" said Chan following a three-beat pause.

"I asked him if he had ever heard of such a collection of jewels. He denied it. Then I told him you still had the jeweled fly and that I had examined it and p.r.o.nounced it a genuine antique masterpiece."

"Go on," said Chan after another pause. "What was his reply?" He looked at the dealer "He made me hold while he consulted somebody else. I detected a faint tone of excitement in his voice. When he came back, I asked him if he wished to examine it. He said, 'No need. It is imitation.' How do you like that?"

"I think Honorable Hei Wei Chinn should be detective instead of humble self," said Chan.

"In the importing of cultural antiques, the dealer grows used to criminals," said Chinn. "Forgers, smugglers, thieves, fences, even murderers - all in a day's work. What do you make of it?"

"Just what you do, my friend," said Chan.

The deputy mission chief had first denied knowing of a collection like that in Mei T'ang's apothecary jars. Then he had insisted that Chan's phantom fly was a fake. The implications were obvious - someone, almost certainly whoever had stolen the originals and replaced them with cheap facsimiles - had already made or was making a deal with the Communist mission. Their experts must at least have examined the goods and found every insect in place.

Chan said, "If you learn anything further about the collection, I hope you will let me know. I suspect a close connection between the thief and the murderer of Mei T'ang."

"Don't worry - I'll dig till it hurts," promised the dealer. "Who knows? Perhaps this fabulous collection of priceless articles may pa.s.s through my hands"

"Keep eye on dollar - old age tranquil," said Chan.

"Oh, cut it out, Charlie," said his friend. "I'm not that old yet. And there's more than a possible buck involved here. My curiosity is aroused."

"Don't let it sleep until it has led you to the truth," said Chan.

Shortly afterward, the visit was concluded and Chan drove the small rental Chevrolet slowly back toward the House of Wu. He remained curious about Ah-Nah, the dead lady's companion, wis.h.i.+ng enlightenment as to why she had sought the midnight appointment and why she had not sought him out later in the hotel, when the police were through questioning her.

There was also the matter of discovering the craftsmen who had made the bogus jewels. It was quite possible that the girl, if she were in any way implicated in the robbery, might have some information on the subject. Nor did he rule out the possibility of Ah-Nah being the actual thief herself, though he doubted that the girl, alone, would have the resources to arrange a i secret sale to the Chinese Peoples' Republic.

There were a pair of L.A.P.D. cars parked outside the apartment house, each with a single uniformed officer idling at the wheel, presumably to watch those who entered and left the building as well as to monitor possible calls from Headquarters. Chan found s.p.a.ce halfway down Sycamore Drive and walked back.

Alone in the downstairs hallway, he paused, recalling in detail what had occurred on his first entry less than twenty-four hours earlier. He had entered with Doc Svorenssen, found the Heinemanns waiting for the rickety elevator to make its precarious way from the top floor The oddly matched producer and his strident hennaed wife had tired of waiting and taken the stairs - at any rate, Mrs. Heinemann had and her husband had tagged dutifully along.

The car arrived, Chan and Svorenssen had ridden upward - to be halted at the second floor by Claudia Haynes and Gil Roberts, who had accompanied them the rest of the precarious way to the murdered woman's rooftop conservatory. Chan remembered vividly the unmistakable aura of bristling hostility between actor and agent, hostility barely held under wraps due to the presence of the other two in the car.

This time, Chan's solitary ride to the penthouse apartment was uninterrupted by anything save the protests of the senile machinery of the elevator protests that again made him wish he had taken the stairs. He was met at the top by a uniformed policeman and policewoman, the latter looking trim and remarkable smart in her blues.

Ah-Nah, he learned, had departed at six-fifteen that morning. Yes, she had been alone. Yes, there had been a telephone call. It had come from a public phone booth near Hollywood and Vine. Yes' she had been driven away in a waiting car. No, she had not been followed. There had been only one police car on duty downstairs and there were no orders for either detainment or pursuit of the young woman. So they had let her go.

Chan knew better than to register vocally the frustration that he felt. It was, all too often, the story of his own life - his professional life at any rate. No matter how efficient the bureaucratic organization, there were inevitably unplanned-for contingencies, usually at some key point in the course of an investigation. It was too bad one arose so early.

He desired to examine again the collection of bogus jeweled objects in the dead woman's "laboratory", was informed that, after dusting for fingerprints, they had already been conveyed to the far better equipped facilities of the department's top Oriental expert.

Had there been any subsequent word on the young woman's whereabouts? There had been none. Strike out on two fronts, Chan thought unhappily.

He decided to take the stairs down and not the elevator.

IX.

AT THE second floor, Charlie Chan paused. The door to Claudia Haynes' apartment was ajar and, through it, he could hear voices in angry argument - one masculine, one feminine - the voices of Gil Roberts and the agent. He waited where he was, seeking to make out words, but both parties were talking simultaneously and all he could pick up, apart from obscenities, was the anger underlying the words.

As Chan moved along the worn carpet along the hallway between the staircases, the tall actor stormed out, his habitual languor destroyed by his very evident rage. He swung back toward the door and said, "Without me, there'll be no package, you double-crossing wh.o.r.e, and you know it. I'm in whether you like it or not."

He swung back, saw Chan standing there, said without a trace of embarra.s.sment, "Maybe you can talk some sense into the washed-up old bag!"

Roberts' long legs devoured the down staircase three steps at a time. Chan had no trouble imagining that he could see steam arising from the actor's invisible footprints on the well worn carpet He turned back. Claudia Haynes, looking ravaged-chic in cream-collared Cossack blouse and light blue pants, stood in the doorway, squinting at him through the smoke from a cigarette in a long ivory holder.

She said, "You wish to see me, Inspector? Come right on in. This appears to be visiting day."

There was no residue of anger in her manner as she led him crisply inside, sat him down in a leather chair opposite her script and phone-laden desk and offered Chan a drink, which he refused. One of the three phones rang and she picked up the right one unerringly, delivered what sounded like a knowledgeable a.s.sessment of some young actress for a specific part.

While she chatted, Chan wondered if Gil Roberts shed his fury as easily as she appeared to. When she hung up, apologized, put her phones on the answer service, he asked her.

"Oh," she said, "Gil will sulk for a couple of hours - until something else turns up to occupy the monorail that pa.s.ses for his mind. As for me, I blow my top at least a dozen times a day - it's expected of me in this business. If I really let myself get worked up, I'd have been buried years ago." A pause, then, "Now! What was it you wanted to see me about?"

By this time, the veteran detective inspector had his questions ready. He said, "I was wondering what effect the murder of your star will have on the package deal that was mentioned last night?"

She turned over her bony free hand atop the desk in another incisive gesture, said, "Catastrophic - unless I can turn it to our advantage."

"How do you propose to do that?"

"I'm not proposing to - I'm doing it," she said and he noted a rigid, near-bulldog set to her jawline. "I had no wish to see Mei T'ang killed - she was my best client and one of my best friends in bygone years, and she was helping finance her proposed comeback. But what's done is done and life must go on. So do income taxes."

"Alas, true!" Chan punctuated her pause.

"Let's call a spade a spade, shall we, Inspector? There is going to be a tremendous burst of scandal over the killing. Every old lover in Mei T'ang's life - and there were a number of them, I can a.s.sure you - will be hauled out of the media morgues, dusted off and dragged into the spotlight. Her old pictures will be pulled out of film storage warehouses and reshown at specialty theaters and on television late shows. Until her murderer is caught, Mei T'ang will once again be big news... and when her murderer is brought to trial, she'll be even bigger news.

"Now my job, as I see it, is to put this film together and get it booked and shot before the second wave comes. If we do that, we ride the crest right up onto the Moneysville sh.o.r.eline. I've been at it, hot and heavy, since six this morning, calling New York, then calling Chicago and so on, working right across the country with the time zones. And it's going to work. If you had come in half an hour earlier, I couldn't have taken time to see you."

"I understand," said Chan, wondering at this woman's chilled steel opportunism, "and I congratulate you." Then, "I see you work alone. You have no secretary?"

"Not in years, except for special rush jobs - and then I hire a Kelly Girl. With all the automatic aides industry has supplied in recent years, I'm saved the bother of breaking in a new girl and losing her to a studio or to some stud with king-sized equipment every six months. If the correspondence is too much for me, I tape it and s.h.i.+p it out to a professional typists' bureau less than six blocks away on Sunset.

"Believe me, it's easier - and cheaper in the long run. And there are no personality rubs." Claudia discarded her cigarette and placed her folded hands on the desk, added, "Now! Anything else?"

"One further question occurs - how are you going to make the film with the star dead?"