John Baer - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 5 — August 1922)

But whether Hanley was a coward, or whether it was because he scorned a cowardly act, he took his hand from the gun and resolved not to use it. Whatever the result might be, he meant to go over the books with Clayburne in the morning and confess to him the truth. They might accept his statement or reject it as they pleased. They might do with him as they liked. Hanley did not care — and that was the simple truth. If he could not vindicate himself — and he did not believe he could — nothing- really mattered. He had tried his best but fate seemed to be against him.

Then, as he walked up the lonely road, lined on each side with tall trees, he heard a noise just ahead and a great, threatening shape hurled itself at him with a savage snarl. Thrusting his hand into his pocket, he squeezed the automatic, discharging it without troubling to take it out of his pocket.

The bullet ripped his trousers, and flew wild. But a moment later, as he stood with the weapon in his hand, Hanley laughed at himself. Down the road a big, terrified dog was scampering He could plainly see its shadowy outlines as it rushed through the open.

He was nervous, that was all. There had been no real danger and the animal was only frightened at suddenly coming upon him in the darkness. So he trudged on toward his home at a leisurely pace, until his attention was attracted by a glare in the sky. An uneasy fear came over him and he quickened his footsteps, to pause on the edge of the clearing with an exclamation of horror.

His little bungalow and the shack he used as an office were enveloped in flames. Flimsy of construction, the rickety building was burning like tinder. Situated in a lonely spot upon the hillside, it had not as yet been observed by anyone else.

With a shout he dashed on — but his cries brought neither aid nor any response from the bungalow.

Arriving before the door, he called out Clayburne’s name repeatedly, but the crackle of the flames and the roar of their triumph were his only answer. To attempt to enter the building would have been madness, and the roof crumbled in while he stood there helpless.

Now he heard others approaching, and he felt a sickening sensation. The crazy fire apparatus was also on its way at a far too leisurely gait. They might as well spare their pains.

In a daze himself, Hanley tried vainly to answer a dozen questions at once. To each interrogator he told the simple truth — and each one of them smiled. The arrival of Clayburne and his presence in the bungalow had been known. The intention of the owner of the Yellow Dragon Trading Company to wind up his business had been noised abroad; and Hanley’s previous record was not any secret to his neighbors. Moreover, he stood there idiotically with a pistol clasped in his hand. People stared at him strangely.

But when the fire had burned itself out and the ruins were cooled with water, the crowd began to search with the aid of lanterns. The Chinese police were darting about like dogs upon the scent, and now they dragged from what had been the office two badly charred, dead bodies. The clothes had been burned from both, but the mystery of it was, why the two victims had been unable to get out. Despite the rapidity with which the flames had spread, a leap through the door or a window would have brought them both to safety.

Then the police found out why they had died, and they turned to Hanley, who stared at them in return and gaped at the charred bodies in stunned amazement. Buried in the breast of the auditor was a long Chinese knife. Through the lungs of Ah Fu, a forty-four bullet had passed. A policeman relieved Hanley of his weapon and carefully noted its calibre.

Not a vestige of furniture remained in the place. The little office with its books and papers and records of twenty years, was completely wiped out. At the same time the life of the man who had come to examine them had been taken — not by the flames which charred his body, but by the steel which still stuck into his breast. Ah Fu, who also knew a great deal about the business, had passed on to the Terrace of Perpetual Sleep.

Of course they arrested Hanley and clapped him into jail. The examining magistrate smiled at the story of the dog, although Moy Su confirmed the visit of Hanley to his little shop. Moy Su, however, made no mention of the reason why he had telephoned, and only when opportunity came did he slip a note for Hanley into the hands of his lawyer.

That note raised the hopes of the man who was going to defend the accused, even though it told Hanley that his case was hopeless. The communication was from Ah Fu and it was done on the typewriter. Hanley knew, of course, that the Chinaman had written it — but there was nothing to prove this fact to a jury. Even the signature could not be confirmed. None had ever seen it. The Chinaman had never thought of that — nor had he planned as shrewdly as his devotion had prompted.

For a moment Hanley looked at the typewritten text, and then tossed it away with a contemptuous laugh, as its worthlessness and the grim humor of the situation fully dawned upon him:

To Honorable Police, Shanghai, China from Ah Fu now intending to make himself quite dead. Honorable Mr. Hanley know nothing about killing the auditing pig. Ah Fu have plenty cause hate him man Clayburne. Why so nobody business. Ah Fu stab auditing pig and then take poison to go join little lotus flower because why he kill Clayburne.

It was crude fiction. Not even Hanley even pretended to believe it; yet he saw in an instant what the Chinaman had done and why he had done it. He told the lawyer and the attorney understood, but he also realized the utter impossibility of convincing the court.

Figuring that Clayburne would find something wrong with Hanley’s books, the devoted servant had planned to not only kill the auditor, but to destroy the evidence of his master’s supposed guilt. The pretended reason for his committing the crime was of course absurd invention. Hanley did not even know whether Ah Fu possessed a sister or a sweetheart. If the Chinaman had either, Hanley knew that Clayburne had never even seen such a girl any more than had he.

Evidently, however, Ah Fu had gone first to kindle the fire, and had then intended to finish Clayburne and later still attend to the taking of his own life. Perhaps he feared that if he lived to be questioned, he might break down under the examining of the magistrate and recant his confession, thus at least compromising his master. By dying himself, he had evidently decided, everything would be well. All Hanley had to do, Ah Fu thought, was to hold his tongue, and no one would be the wiser.

And indeed such might have been the case, had it not been for two things which Ah Fu did not foresee. He had not figured the possibility of Clayburne’s discovering him in the act of kindling the fire. The knife he had hurled at the auditor had indeed found its mark, but not before Clayburne’s bullet had reached Ah Fu. Thus the two wounded men died in the flames. That in itself would not have convicted Hanley.

But even the wisest of Chinamen, with the best of misguided intentions, could not have anticipated that Clayburne would carry a gun of precisely the same calibre as Hanley’s. Nor could he have surmised that a stray dog in the woods would cause Hanley to fire a shot under circumstances which he could not prove.

As it was, everything pointed to Hanley’s having fired the shack himself. Evidence indicated that he had murdered his guest and his servant — one because of what he might discover in going over his books — and the Chinese boy because he knew or saw too much. The very fact that Clayburne had been slain with a Chinese knife looked like a clumsy attempt on Hanley’s part to direct suspicion against the Chink. That one shell was missing from Clayburne’s gun was perfectly natural. It was supposed he had fired in self defense and that his bullet had caused the rent in Hanley’s trousers — the tear which he claimed had been caused by his own shot. It was apparently only a miracle that the ball had not lodged in Hanley’s leg.