JAMES HADLEY CHASE: A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

“A coffee, strong and black and fast,” I said, “then two fried eggs on ham.”

The big plain-clothes man who had followed me didn’t come into the bar. He stood just outside where he could watch me.

Containing his patience with an effort that brought dark circles to his armpits, Sparrow drew coffee and then got busy with the eggs and ham.

“Someone dead, Mr. Ryan?” he asked as be broke the eggs onto the hot-plate.

“What time do you shut down for the night?” I asked, watching the cop outside who scowled at me through the plate-glass window.

“Ten o’clock sharp,” Sparrow said, doing an unconscious little jig with impatience. “What’s going on across the way?”

“A Chinese woman got herself murdered.” I drank some of the coffee. It was hot and strong and good. “I found her in my office half an hour ago.”

His Adam’s apple did a rock ‘n’ roll.

“No kidding, Mr. Ryan?”

“Gospel truth.” I finished the coffee and pushed the cup towards him. “And again.”

“A Chinese woman?”

“Yeah. Don’t ask questions. I know as much as you do about it. Did you see a Chinese woman go in my office block after I had left?”

He shook his head as he refilled my cup.

“No. I think I’d have seen her if she had gone in before I shut up. I hadn’t much to do last night.”

I began to sweat gently. I had an alibi up to half past eight: the time the girl and the poodle had passed me. I had reckoned the Chinese woman had been in my office at that time. After half past eight, I had only me to say I had been sitting all night outside Jack S. Myers Jnr.’s empty bungalow.

“Did you notice any stranger going in there from the time I left to the time you closed?”

“Can’t say I did. Around nine the janitor locked up as usual.” He served the ham and eggs. “Who killed her?”

“I don’t know.” I had suddenly lost my appetite. The set-up now began to look bad for me. I knew Retnick. He was essentially a guy who clutched at straws. If I hadn’t a cast-iron alibi that would convince an idiot child, he would pounce on me. “You could have missed seeing her, couldn’t you?”

“I guess that’s right. I wasn’t looking out of the window all the time.”

Two men came in and ordered breakfast. They asked Sparrow what was going on. After a glance at me, he said he didn’t know. One of the men, a fat fellow wearing a Brando leather jacket said, “Someone’s got knocked off. That’s the blood-wagon outside.”

I pushed aside my plate. I just couldn’t eat food right now. I finished the coffee and slid off the stool.

Sparrow looked unhappily at me.

“Something wrong, Mr. Ryan?”

“Just too ambitious I guess,” I said. “Put it on the slate,” and I went out onto the street.

The big cop closed in on me.

“Where do you imagine you’re going?” he demanded.

“Back to my office,” I told him. “That worry you?”

“When the Lieutenant’s ready for you, I’ll tell you. Go sit in one of them cars.”

I went to one of the police cars and sat in the back. The forty-odd people standing staring, stared at me instead of the ambulance. I lit a cigarette and tried to ignore them.

I sat there smoking and letting my mind work on the past and the present without allowing it to move into the future. The more I considered my position the less I liked it. I had a feeling of being in a trap.

After nearly an hour the two interns came out carrying the stretcher. The Chinese woman, under the sheet, looked small and child-like. The crowd made the usual noise a crowd makes when it is being morbid. The interns loaded the stretcher into the ambulance and drove away. A few minutes later the M.O. came out, and getting in his car, drove after the ambulance.

There was another long wait, then the Homicide boys came out. One of them signalled to the big cop who was standing watching me. They all crammed into their cars and drove away.

The big cop opened the car door and jerked his thumb at me.

“Get moving,” he said. “The Lieutenant wants you.”

As I started across the sidewalk, Jay Wayde, the Industrial Chemist, who had the office next to mine came from his car. He joined me in the elevator.

He was three or four years younger than myself: a big, athletic college type with a crew- cut, a sun-tanned complexion and alert eyes. Every now and then we would meet as we left our offices and would ride down in the elevator together to our cars. He seemed a pretty regular fellow and like Sparrow, he had shown an interest in my way of life. I guess most respectable people can’t resist the so-called glamour of an investigator’s life. He often asked me what excitement I had had, and in the short time we were in the elevator and walking to our cars, I fed him the kind of lies I fed Sparrow.

“What goes on?” he asked as the elevator began its slow climb to the fourth floor.

“I found a dead Chinese woman in my office this morning,” I said. “The cops are getting excited about it.”

He stared at me.

“Dead?”

“Someone shot her.”

This piece of information appeared to stand him on his ear.

“You mean she’s been murdered?”

“That’s the technical term for it.”

“Well! For the love of Mike!”

“I’ve been saying exactly that since I found her.”

“Who killed her?”

“Ah! Now that is the question. What time did you leave your office last night? You hadn’t gone when I left.”

“Around nine. The janitor was closing up.”

“You didn’t hear a shot?”

“For God’s sake . . . no!”

“When you left did you notice if there was a light on in my office?”

“There wasn’t. Didn’t I hear you leave about six?”

“That’s right.”

I was getting rattled now. This Chinese girl must have been murdered after nine o’clock. My alibi was looking sicker than a wet hen.

The elevator came to rest at the fourth floor. We got out. Coming from my office was the janitor and Sergeant Pulski. The janitor looked at me as if I were a two-headed monster. They got into the elevator and sank out of sight.

“Well, I guess you’re going to be busy,” Wayde said, eyeing the cop standing at my office door. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

Leaving him, I walked past the cop and into the outer office. Apart from match ends on the floor and cigarette butts anywhere but in the ash-trays, the room had a lonely empty look. I went into my office.

Lieutenant Retnick was sitting behind my desk. He regarded me with the usual cop stare as I came in, and then waved me to the clients’ chair.

There was a smear of dry blood on the back of the chair. I didn’t fancy to contact with that so I sat on the arm of the chair. “You got a gun permit?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s your gun?”

“A .38 police special.”

He laid his hand, palm up, on the blotter.

“Give.”

“It’s in the top right-hand drawer.”

He stared for a long moment, then withdrew his hand.

“It isn’t. I’ve looked through your desk.”

I resisted the temptation to wipe away the trickle of cold sweat that began to run down the back of my neck.

“That’s where it should be.”

He took a cigar from a pigskin case, stripped off the wrapping, pierced the cigar with a match end, then fed the cigar into his face. All the time his small hard eyes locked with mine.

“She was shot with a .38,” he said. “The M.O. says she died around three o’clock this morning. Look, Ryan, why don’t you come clean? Just what did this yellow skin have in her handbag?”

Keeping my voice calm with an effort, I said, “I may seem to you to be a dumb, stupid peeper, but you can’t really believe I would be that dumb and that stupid to knock off a client in my own office with my own gun even if she had all the gold in Fort Knox in her goddam handbag.”