Behind That Curtain (3 page)

He introduced her to the surprised Sir Frederic, then to Charlie Chan. The expression on the face of the little Chinese did not alter. He bowed low.

“The moment has charm,” he remarked.

Kirk turned to Rankin. “And all the time,” he accused, “you knew who J. V. Morrow was.”

The reporter shrugged. “I thought I'd let you find it out for yourself. Life holds so few pleasant surprises.”

“It never held a pleasanter one for me,” Kirk answered. They went in to the table he had engaged, which stood in a secluded corner.

When they were seated, the girl turned to her host. “This was so good of you. And of Sir Frederic, too. I know how busy he must be.”

The Englishman bowed. “A fortunate moment for me,” he smiled, “when I decided I was not too busy to meet J. V. Morrow. I had heard that in the States young women were emancipated—”

“Of course, you don't approve,” she said.

“Oh—but I do,” he murmured.

“And Mr. Chan. I'm sure Mr. Chan disapproves of me.”

Chan regarded her blankly. “Does the elephant disapprove of the butterfly? And who cares?”

“No answer at all,” smiled the girl. “You are returning to Honolulu soon, Mr. Chan?”

A delighted expression appeared on the blank face. “To-morrow at noon the Maui receives my humble person. We churn over to Hawaii together.”

“I see you are eager to go,” said the girl.

“The brightest eyes are sometimes blind,” replied Chan. “Not true in your case. It is now three weeks since I arrived on the mainland, thinking to taste the joys of holiday. Before I am aware events engulf me, and like the postman who has day of rest I foolishly set out on long, tiresome walk. Happy to say that walk are ended now. With beating heart I turn toward little home on Punchbowl Hill.”

“I know how you feel,” said Miss Morrow.

“Humbly begging pardon to mention it, you do not. I have hesitation in adding to your ear that one thing calls me home with unbearable force. I am soon to be happy father.”

“For the first time?” asked Barry Kirk.

“The eleventh occasion of the kind,” Chan answered.

“Must be sort of an old story by now,” Bill Rankin suggested.

“That is one story which does not get aged,” Chan replied. “You will learn. But my trivial affairs have no place here. We are met to honor a distinguished guest.” He looked toward Sir Frederic.

Bill Rankin thought of his coming story. “I was moved to get you two together,” he said, “because I found you think alike. Sir Frederic is also scornful of science as an aid to crime detection.”

“I have formed that view from my experience,” remarked Sir Frederic.

“A great pleasure,” Chan beamed, “to hear that huge mind like Sir Frederic's moves in same groove as my poor head-piece. Intricate mechanics good in books, in real life not so much so. My experience tell me to think deep about human people. Human passions. Back of murder what, always? Hate, greed, revenge, need to make silent the slain one. Study human people at all times.”

“Precisely,” agreed Sir Frederic. “The human element—that is what counts. I have had no luck with scientific devices. Take the dictaphone—it has been a complete washout at the Yard.” He talked
on, while the luncheon progressed. Finally he turned to Chan. “And what have your methods gained you, Sergeant? You have been successful, I hear.”

Chan shrugged. “Luck—always happy luck.”

“You're too modest,” said Rankin. “That won't get you anywhere.”

“The question now arises—where do I want to go?”

“But surely you're ambitious?” Miss Morrow suggested.

Chan turned to her gravely. “Coarse food to eat, water to drink, and the bended arm for a pillow—that is an old definition of happiness in my country. What is ambition? A canker that eats at the heart of the white man, denying him the joys of contentment. Is it also attacking the heart of white woman? I hope not.” The girl looked away. “I fear I am victim of crude philosophy from Orient. Man—what is he? Merely one link in a great chain binding the past with the future. All times I remember I am link. Unsignificant link joining those ancestors whose bones repose on far distant hillsides with the ten children—it may now be eleven—in my house on Punchbowl Hill.”

“A comforting creed,” Barry Kirk commented.

“So, waiting the end, I do my duty as it rises. I tread the path that opens.” He turned to Sir Frederic. “On one point, from my reading, I am curious. In your work at Scotland Yard, you follow only one clue. What you call the essential clue.”

Sir Frederic nodded, “Such is usually our custom. When we fail, our critics ascribe it to that. They say for example, that our obsession over the essential clue is the reason why we never solved the famous Ely Place murder.”

They all sat up with interest. Bill Rankin beamed. Now things were getting somewhere. “I'm afraid we never heard of the Ely Place murder, Sir Frederic,” he hinted.

“I sincerely wish I never had,” the Englishman replied. “It was the first serious case that came to me when I took charge of the
C.I.D. over sixteen years ago. I am chagrined to say I have never been able to fathom it.”

He finished his salad, and pushed away the plate. “Since I have gone so far, I perceive I must go farther. Hilary Galt was the senior partner in the firm of Pennock and Galt, solicitors, with offices in Ely Place, Holborn. The business this firm carried on for more than a generation was unique of its kind. Troubled people in the highest ranks of society went to them for shrewd professional advice and Mr. Hilary Galt and his father-in-law, Pennock, who died some twenty years ago, were entrusted with more numerous and romantic secrets than any other firm of solicitors in London. They knew the hidden history of every rascal in Europe, and they rescued many persons from the clutches of blackmailers. It was their boast that they never kept records of any sort.”

Dessert was brought, and after this interruption, Sir Frederic continued.

“One foggy January night sixteen years ago, a caretaker entered Mr. Hilary Galt's private office, presumably deserted for the day. The gas lights were ablaze, the windows shut and locked; there was no sign of any disturbance. But on the floor lay Hilary Galt, with a bullet in his brain.

“There was just one clue, and over that we puzzled for many weary months at the Yard. Hilary Galt was a meticulous dresser, his attire was perfect, always. It was perfect on this occasion—with one striking exception. His highly polished boots—I presume you call them shoes over here—were removed and standing on a pile of papers on top of his desk. And on his feet he wore a pair of velvet slippers, embellished with a curious design.

“These, of course, seemed to the Yard the essential clue, and we set to work. We traced those slippers to the Chinese Legation in Portland Place. Mr. Galt had been of some trifling service to the Chinese minister, and early on the day of his murder the slippers
had arrived as a gift from that gentleman. Galt had shown them to his office staff, and they were last seen wrapped loosely in their covering near his hat and stick. That was as far as we got.

“For sixteen years I have puzzled over those slippers. Why did Mr. Hilary Galt remove his boots, don the slippers, and prepare himself as though for some extraordinary adventure? I don't know to this day. The slippers still haunt me. When I resigned from the Yard, I rescued them from the Black Museum and took them with me as a souvenir of my first case—an unhappy souvenir of failure. I should like to show them to you, Miss Morrow.”

“Thrilling,” said the girl.

“Annoying,” corrected Sir Frederic grimly.

Bill Rankin looked at Charlie Chan. “What's your reaction to that case, Sergeant?” he inquired.

Chan's eyes narrowed in thought. “Humbly begging pardon to inquire,” he said, “have you the custom, Sir Frederic, to put yourself in place of murderer?”

“It's a good idea,” the Englishman answered, “if you can do it. You mean—”

“A man who has killed—a very clever man—he knows that Scotland Yard has fiercely fixed idea about essential clue. His wits accompany him. He furnishes gladly one essential clue which has no meaning and leads no place at all.”

Sir Frederic regarded him keenly. “Excellent,” he remarked. “And it has one great virtue—from your point of view. It completely exonerates your countrymen at the Chinese Legation.”

“It might do more than that,” suggested Barry Kirk.

Sir Frederic thoughtfully ate his dessert. No one spoke for some moments. But Bill Rankin was eager for more material.

“A very interesting case, Sir Frederic,” he remarked. “You must have a lot like it up your sleeve. Murders that ended more successfully for Scotland Yard—”

“Hundreds,” nodded the detective. “But none that still holds its interest for me like the crime in Ely Place. As a matter of fact, I have never found murder so fascinating as some other things. The murder case came and went and, with a rare exception such as this I have mentioned, was quickly forgotten. But there is one mystery that to me has always been the most exciting in the world.”

“And what is that?” asked Rankin, while they waited with deep interest.

“The mystery of the missing,” Sir Frederic replied. “The man or woman who steps quietly out of the picture and is never seen again. Hilary Galt, dead in his office, presents a puzzle, of course; still, there is something to get hold of, something tangible, a body on the floor. But if Hilary Galt had disappeared into the fog that gloomy night, leaving no trace—that would have been another story.

“For years I have been enthralled by the stories of the missing,” the detective went on. “Even when they were outside my province, I followed many of them. Often the solution was simple, or sordid, but that could never detract from the thrill of the ones that remained unsolved. And of all those unsolved cases, there is one that I have never ceased to think about. Sometimes in the night I wake up and ask myself—what happened to Eve Durand?”

“Eve Durand,” repeated Rankin eagerly.

“That was her name. As a matter of fact, I had nothing to do with the case. It happened outside my bailiwick—very far outside. But I followed it with intense interest from the first. There are others, too, who have never forgotten—just before I left England I clipped from a British periodical a brief reference to the matter—I have it here.” He removed a bit of paper from his purse. “Miss Morrow—will you be kind enough to read this aloud?”

The girl took the clipping. She began to read, in a low, clear voice:

“A gay crowd of Anglo-Indians gathered one night fifteen years ago on a hill outside Peshawar to watch the moon rise over that isolated frontier town. Among the company were Captain Eric Durand and his wife, just out from home. Eve Durand was young, pretty and well-born—a Miss Mannering, of Devonshire. Someone proposed a game of hide-and-seek before the ride back to Peshawar. The game was never finished. They are still looking for Eve Durand. Eventually all India was enlisted in the game. Jungle and bazaar, walled city and teak forest, were fine-combed for her. Through all the subterranean channels of that no-white-man's land of native life the search was carried by the famous secret service. After five years her husband retired to a life of seclusion in England, and Eve Durand became a legend—a horror tale to be told by ayahs to naughty children, along with the ghost stories of that north country.”

The girl ceased reading, and looked at Sir Frederic, wide-eyed. There followed a moment of tense silence.

Bill Rankin broke the spell. “Some little game of hide-and-seek,” he said.

“Can you wonder,” asked Sir Frederic, “that for fifteen years the disappearance of Eve Durand, like Hilary Galt's slippers, has haunted me? A notably beautiful woman—a child, really—she was but eighteen that mysterious night at Peshawar. A blonde, blue-eyed, helpless child, lost in the dark of those dangerous hills. Where did she go? What became of her? Was she murdered? What happened to Eve Durand?”

“I'd rather like to know myself,” remarked Barry Kirk softly.

“All India, as the clipping says, was enlisted in the game. By telegraph and by messenger, inquiries went forward. Her heart-broken, frantic husband was given leave, and at the risk of his life he scoured that wild country. The secret service did its utmost. Nothing happened. No word ever came back to Peshawar.

“It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and in time, for most people, the game lost its thrill. The hue and cry died down. All save a few forgot.

“When I retired from the Yard and set out on this trip around the world, India was of course on my itinerary. Though it was far off my track, I resolved to visit Peshawar. I went down to Ripple Court in Devonshire and had a chat with Sir George Mannering, the uncle of Eve Durand. Poor man, he is old before his time. He gave me what information he could—it was pitifully meager. I promised I would try to take up the threads of this old mystery when I reached India.”

“And you did?” Rankin inquired.

“I tried—but, my dear fellow, have you ever seen Peshawar? When I reached there the hopelessness of my quest struck me, as Mr. Chan might say, with an unbearable force. The Paris of the Pathans, they call it, and its filthy alleys teem with every race in the East. It isn't a city, it's a caravansary, and its population is constantly shifting. The English garrison is changed frequently, and I could find scarcely any one who was there in the time of Eve Durand.

“As I say, Peshawar appalled me. Anything could happen there. A wicked town—its sins are the sins of opium and hemp and jealousy and intrigue, of battle, murder and sudden death, of gambling and strange intoxications, the lust of revenge. Who can explain the deviltry that gets into men's blood in certain latitudes? I walked the Street of the Story Tellers and wondered in vain over the story of Eve Durand. What a place to bring a woman like that, delicately reared, young, inexperienced.”