West of Guam (67 page)

Yut Gen widened his small eyes. “How could that be so?” he demanded. “You saw the fan somewhere at ten-thirty—”

Jo Gar smiled, shook his head. “I saw the fan here not long after ten. If it had been removed from the window a few minutes
after
I left the
Calle Vanisto
—it might have been in the dead man’s possession
before
he was murdered. Or it might have been dropped
by
the murderer.”

Yut Gen twisted a large ring on a finger of his right hand. He was standing with his back against the long counter, leaning partially against it. He seemed quite at his ease.

“I am the owner of my shop. I do not recall such a fan as you speak about. I am sorry.”

There was a finality in his voice. Jo Gar placed his right hand in a pocket of his drill suit. His raincoat was opened.

“It is yet early in the morning. But I have talked to several persons. A Chinese house-boy is accused of the murder of Señor Strett. He is
not
the murderer.”

Yut Gen shrugged. The Island detective smiled agreeably.

“You have lied to me,” he said pleasantly. “And where there is death it is not well to lie.”

Yut Gen stopped toying with his ring. His face became set, his eyes sullen. Jo Gar said softly:

“The soles of the dead man’s sandals were wet, though he was supposed not to have left the house last evening. I did not think that the amber fan could have
fallen
to the floor and have been kicked beneath the cabinet, during a struggle. I do not think there was much of a struggle, because Señor Neblo was upstairs. He would have heard the sounds.”

Yut Gen said quickly: “There was wind in the—” He checked himself. Jo Gar smiled coldly.

“You
remember
that, the wind in the palms. You
thought
of that—when you struck with the knife—”

The Chinese said calmly: “There was a typhoon last night. There is always the sound of wind—”

Jo Gar narrowed his blue-gray eyes. “Señor Strett came to your shop last night. When he departed he had with him the amber fan. Why was that?”

Yut Gen shrugged slightly. “I know nothing of the fan of amber,” he said slowly.

The Island detective nodded his head. “Yes, you know of it,” he contradicted quietly. “You went to Señor Neblo’s house
for
it. You surprised Señor Strett in the study, but he had sufficient time to place the fan beneath the cabinet. You killed by the knife, and made your escape.”

Yut Gen’s forehead had deep lines in it. His bared lips showed teeth that were not even.

“You make talk, Señor Gar,” he breathed.

Jo Gar smiled pleasantly and his right hand fingers moved within the cloth of the coat pocket. Sadi Ratan, some feet away, was bent over the counter, eyes intent on a small carving of jade.

“It is so,” Jo agreed. “You alone live behind your shop. You alone are the proprietor. You have no relatives, and few friends. In the window of the shop you have a valuable fan. An expert has this morning assured me it is worth many
pesos
—the amber is very old, and very good. The secretary of Señor Neblo visits you secretly, when he is thought to be working on reports. He leaves, taking with him this amber fan. You follow him, and murder him. And you lie to me. That is the talk I make.”

The Chinese made a faint hissing sound as he drew in a deep breath. “Because the soles of a man’s shoes are wet—does that prove that this man has visited
me?”

Jo Gar smiled calmly. “Last night I talked with Señor Neblo—we found letters—letters which Señor Strett would not have allowed others to see, and which he had concealed cleverly. One was a demand to pay a gambling debt—tomorrow; if not paid, the holder of his obligation would appeal to Señor Neblo, and explain—certain matters of his secretary.

“Other papers were memoranda of money advanced to you at different dates; demands for repayment, references to your refusal even so recently as last week, and, what is of most interest, a promise to call upon you last evening, with the threat of exposing your affairs if you did not make some settlement immediately. Shall I explain that to you?”

“It means nothing to me—If you wish to talk—” Jo Gar said slowly, smiling with his thin lips:

“For weeks the Manila police have been suspicious of you. For such a small shop too many men leave here, during the night. Too many men enter.”

The wind of the typhoon made rattling sounds, outside the shop. Between the blasts could be heard the shuffling of Sadi Ratan’s feet as he moved nearer, along the counter. Jo kept his narrowed eyes on the small ones of Yut Gen.

“I was not concerned with your shop, until the fan vanished from your window. I then became interested. Señor Strett was also interested in your shop. It was he who furnished you the money to purchase the opium. So that men could come here—and go from here. And you did not repay him. You promised at first; then you refused outright. You relied on his fear that Señor Neblo and the officials would learn of his connection with the illicit traffic.

“But Strett was desperate. That demand of the gambling debt and danger of exposure through that source made him so. He came to you in the late evening, when the typhoon was blowing and—received no satisfaction; only a repetition of your threat.”

Jo Gar spoke slowly, confidently; yet his eyes watched the slit eyes before him as if for confirmation.

“And he probably told you,” he went on, steadily, “that an anonymous letter to the police would draw you into prison. Then he left hurriedly; but, in going; he snatched up a thing of ready value—the amber fan.”

Yut Gen dropped his cigarette to the floor and set his heel upon it; then he glanced up impassively.

“It is possible,” Jo Gar continued, “that you discovered the theft. It is more probable that you started to think of the anonymous letter which Señor Strett in his desperation would write—for revenge. His secret notes that we found hinted of it.

“You followed him shortly, gained entrance to the house and to the study. As you came, he switched off the light, tossed the fan beneath the cabinet.”

Jo Gar paused a moment; then continued tonelessly:

“After you had killed him, you did not look for the fan. You feared the house-boy who had entered the struggle and then fled. Perhaps—” Yut Gen interrupted him, with a glance towards Sadi Ratan, who was standing not far from them, but with his shoulder turned and apparently not listening.

“I do not think I wish to hear you any further, Señor Gar,” the Chinese proprietor said. “It is only talk and means nothing to me. I know of no such fan as you describe. You have no possible way of connecting me with this murder you speak of. It is—”

“Fool!” Jo Gar hissed. “You were too confident, too careless. Why, you even neglected to change your clothing.”

The stubby fingers of his left hand pointed with quick gesture. “See—the blood spots still on the cuff—”

Involuntarily, with a start, the eyes of the Chinese snapped downward. Then his whole body tensed. His small black eyes blazed into the gray-blue ones of the little Island detective.

“Damn you!” he snarled in frantic rage.

Apparently forgetful of the lieutenant of police, his left hand flashed from behind him. Jo Gar saw the knife, and the fingers of his right hand in his pocket clenched.

The shop was filled with the sound of the explosion. The knife slipped from Yut Gen’s mangled left hand.

Yut Gen lifted his right hand, but there was no knife in it. Red spread from the fingers of the left hand, resting on the counter. Yut Gen spread his lips and seemed to bite into the large ring with his teeth. Jo Gar stood very quietly as the Chinese made sucking sound. After a few seconds Yut Gen’s body slipped down beside the counter.

When Sadi Ratan, with the Island detective, stooped over him the poison of the ring had brought death. Jo Gar straightened up.

“It might have been,” Lieutenant Sadi Ratan said slowly, “as you said. I think it is enough on which to let the house-boy go.”

“Suicide is often an admission of guilt,” Jo Gar murmured.

“You were very clever,” the lieutenant said, in the same tone. “We should work more closely together, Señor. I might even consider resigning in order to enter and strengthen your private agency.”

“I fear,” Jo Gar murmured, “that the loss to the Force would be too great, Lieutenant.”

A long-tailed lizard scurried across the ceiling toward the three-bladed, slow-turning fan. It made sound like dry leaves in a faint wind, and Baba arched his back, rising from the floor near the shuttered window. Jo Gar, paying no attention to the Siamese cat or the lizard, rolled a brown-paper cigarette between two brown slender fingers of his left hand, half closing his gray-blue eyes.

There were footfalls, light and unhurried, beyond the waxed floor of the office; a light tapping against the old wood of the door Jo Gar faced. The Island detective said almost tonelessly:

“Come, Sidi Kalaa.”

River sound, drifting over a reeking-hot Manila from the Pasig, reached his ears as the door opened and Kalaa entered from the outer office. The little man, half Malay, half Arab, came to within a few feet of the desk. His face was a brown mask, a flat mask of dark eyes, lips parted slightly showing white, even teeth. He spoke in precise English.

“It is the Miss Samson of the appointment.”

Jo Gar said: “She has been in Manila so short a time that she is prompt. Yes, Sidi Kalaa.”

He suspected always that there was not so much Arab blood within the veins of his assistant as Kalaa would have wished him to believe, but it pleased him to address the man with the formal “Mister,” and he knew it pleased Kalaa. As the door to the outer office was opened, his eyes went to the lizard scuttling away from the ceiling fan.

From the room beyond Kalaa said: “Señor Gar, it is Miss Samson.” She came into the room gracefully, as Jo Gar rose from the fan-backed chair. She was tall and slender, cool in thin white. Her face was oval and her eyes were blue. Her skin was very white.

She said nervously: “Señor Gar, it is good of you to see me. They told me you were a very busy man. But I—”

Something flickered slightly down from the ceiling; the lizard made dry sound as it zigzagged toward a wall. Baba crouched, leaped upward near an end of the desk. The girl shrank back, raised a white gloved hand to her lips, stifled a cry.

The Siamese landed quietly on his feet as Jo Gar said sharply: “Baba! No, it is not good for you to do that.” He said in a softer tone, in Tagalog;
“Omalis ka!”

The cat moved instantly to a far corner of the room. Jo Gar’s thin lips parted in a smile; he gestured toward a wicker chair.

“Please be seated. I am sorry. It is the time when our lizards shed their tails. Lizards are a delicacy to my Siamese.”

He watched some of the fear go from her blue eyes as she took her gloved hand away from her lips. She smiled a little, moved toward the chair.

“It’s—silly of me, Señor Gar. But I’m—”

She seated herself, and Jo Gar eased his slim figure to the fan-backed chair. He ran browned fingers of his right hand over his gray hair, pushed a lacquer box of brown-paper cigarettes toward her.

“You are nervous. The heat, perhaps, Miss Samson. And the cat startled you.”

Her blue eyes narrowed, and the muscles around her mouth tightened. She said suddenly: “I’m damned nervous! I’ve been nervous for days now; ever since we sailed from Honolulu. I can’t stand it—not much longer. So I’ve”—she spread her hands in a swift gesture—”come to you.”

The gray, slanted eyes of the detective smiled reassuringly into hers. “The manager of the Manoa Hotel is a good friend of mine. He has told me that you felt someone should know of a trouble—”

She interrupted, speaking hurriedly, with rising excitement. “You know that my name is Joan Samson. My brother was Conrad Samson, he lived here in Manila. Perhaps you—”

She paused, shivered slightly. The Siamese, in the far corner, lowered his black head, stretched. His nails made scraping sound on the waxed floor. Joan Samson bit her lower lip nervously.

Jo Gar said: “Baba has been with me many years. Do not be nervous. You were speaking of your brother. I remember that he was the victim of a Chinese who ran amok in the old Walled City.”

She said slowly and more steadily: “Yes, he was stabbed to death. That was a month ago. He loved to walk about, particularly in strange sections of cities. I haven’t seen him in two years. At first, when I was notified in San Francisco of his death, I didn’t think I would come here. His body was returned to the States, but before it arrived, I received a letter.”

Her eyes widened suddenly; seemed to fix on something behind Jo Gar. She said in a husky voice: “That fan-backed chair you’re sitting in—”

Jo Gar smiled. “It is a very fine one, Miss Samson. One of the finest ever made by the prisoners at Bilibid.”

“Oh, my God!” Her voice was a whisper in the office.

The detective said tonelessly: “It is not good for your mind and eyes to be filled with fear. My fan-backed chair is exceedingly comfortable.”

Her eyes were on his. “He wrote they would—kill him—that way,” she said softly.

Jo Gar touched match flare to a new brown-paper cigarette. “Your brother wrote he would be murdered?” He rolled the cigarette between his fingers.”

She said: “Yes. The letter came after he had been knifed to death, supposedly by that insane Chinese. He wrote he had been threatened; that his enemy was an Oriental, and that he had been told he would die seated in a fan-backed chair.”

The detective inhaled deeply. “He wrote you he had been warned he would die in a fan-backed chair. He did not die in a fan-backed chair. The Chinese who knifed him was found dead in a narrow street not far from the place where he accosted your brother. He had struck a child and an old woman, before he killed your brother. There were many knife wounds in the body of the Chinese. He was dead when the police found him. The medical report was insanity from drink—and death by his own hand.”