JAMES HADLEY CHASE: A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

He lit the cigar and blew a stream of rank smoke at me.

“I don’t know: you might. You might be trying to play it smart, kidding yourself you had dreamed up a water-tight alibi,” he said, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.

“If I had killed her,” I went on, “I would have known the time she had died. I wouldn’t have given you an alibi for eight-thirty, I would have cooked one up for three o’clock.”

He shifted around in my chair while what he used as a brain creaked under pressure.

“What was she doing in your office at that hour in the morning?”

“Want me to guess?”

“Look, Ryan, we haven’t had a murder in this city for five years. I’ve got to have some story to give the Press. Any ideas you’ve got, I’ll listen to. You help us, I’ll help you. I could arrest you and toss you in the tank on the evidence I’ve got against you, but I’m giving you a chance to prove I’m wrong. Go ahead and guess.”

“Suppose she was from ‘Frisco and not here? Suppose she had to talk urgently with me? Don’t ask me why or why she couldn’t talk to a private dick in ‘Frisco: just suppose this happened Suppose she decided to fake a plane and come here so she could talk to me and suppose she made up her mind about seven last night. She would know she couldn’t get here before I had left so she telephoned. Hard wick, having got rid of me, was waiting here to take the call. She told him she was flying here and would be here around three o’clock. He said it was okay and he would be here when she did arrive. When she arrived at the airport, she took a taxi and came here. Hardwick listened to what she had to say, then shot her.”

“Using your gun?”

“Using my gun.”

“The entrance to this building is locked at nine. The lock hasn’t been tampered with. How did Hardwick and the yellow skin get in here?”

“Hardwick must have arrived as soon as I had left and before the janitor locked up. He knew I was out of the way so he could sit right here and wait for the telephone call. When the time came for her to arrive, he went down and let her in. It’s a Yale lock. There’s no trouble opening it from the inside.”

“You ought to write movie scripts,” he said sourly. “Is this the yarn you’re going to tell the jury?”

“It’s worth checking. She would be easily spotted at the airport. The taxi-drivers out there would remember her.”

“Supposed it happened the way you say but instead of this unknown Hardwick, you were the one who told hex you would wait for her?”

“He’s not unknown. If you’ll check with the Express Messenger Service you’ll find he sent me three hundred dollars. You can check I was outside 33 Connaught Boulevard from seven- thirty until nine. After that time, although I was there, only one car passed me around two o’clock, but I don’t know if the driver saw me or not. At six the milk delivery man will tell you I was still there,”

“I’m only interested in knowing where you were between one and four this morning.”

“I was outside 33 Connaught Boulevard.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Just to keep the record straight, let me see what you have in your pockets.”

I turned out my pockets, laying the odds and ends on the desk. He watched without interest.

“If I had stolen her virtue,” I said, “I wouldn’t be carrying it around in my pocket.”

He got to his feet.

“Don’t leave town. I only need a puff of wind to throw you in the tank as a material witness, so watch yourself.”

He walked out of my office, through the outer room and into the passage. He left both doors wide open.

I collected my possessions and returned them to my pockets, then I pushed the door shut and sat on my desk and ht a cigarette. Right now they hadn’t a watertight case against me, but they did have something. A lot depended on what they turned up within the next few hours. Although Retnick was a bird-brain, I had a feeling the killer was framing me for the murder and would drop another clue in front of Retnick that could be a clincher. The disappearance of my gun could only mean the killer had shot her with it and it might turn up where Retnick would find it.

I slid off the desk. This wasn’t the time to sit around shaking my head at myself. I had work to do.

I locked up the office and headed for the elevator. Against Jay Wayde’s glass-panelled door, I saw Retnick’s shadow. He was talking to Wayde, collecting evidence against me.

With a sense of urgency, I rode down to the ground floor, walked by the two cops at the door, then crossed the street to where I had left my car.

I got in and slammed the door.

I was now as jittery as a junkie. I had a sudden urge for a slug of whisky. Drinking before six o’clock wasn’t my usual routine, but this was something special. I slid across the bench seat and opened the glove compartment. As I reached for the bottle, my heart gave a big kick against my ribs and my mouth turned as dry as a sun-bleached bone.

In the glove compartment lay my .38 police special and a lizard skin handbag.

I sat staring, feeling a chill crawl up my spine. As sure as I was breathing, this handbag belonged to the dead Chinese woman.

3

At the back of police headquarters there is a large yard surrounded by an eight foot high wall. Here, the police park their patrol cars, the riot squad trucks and the fast cars that rush experts to any emergency.

On one of the walls is a big notice that says in large red letters against a white background this park is for police vehicles only.

I swung my car through the open gateway and parked carefully beside a patrol car. As I cut the engine, a cop appeared from nowhere, his red Irish face showing violent fury.

“Hey! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you read?” he bawled in a voice that could be heard two blocks away.

“Nothing’s the matter with me,” I said as I removed the key from the ignition, “and I can read—even the long words.”

I thought he was going to explode. For a long moment he opened and shut his mouth while he struggled to frame words violent enough for the occasion.

Before he could give utterance, I said, smiling at him through the open window of my car, “Detective Lieutenant Retnick, the Mayor’s brother-in-law, told me to park here. Take it up with him if you feel badly about it, but don’t blame me if you get yourself kicked humpbacked.”

He looked as if he had suddenly swallowed a bee. For two long seconds he glared at me, his mouth working, then he stalked away.

I sat staring into space for perhaps twenty minutes, then a car came into the yard and parked within ten feet of me. Retnick got out and started towards a door that led into the grey stone building that was police headquarters.

“Lieutenant . . .”

I didn’t raise my voice but he heard me. He looked over his shoulder at me. He stiffened as if someone had goosed him with a’ branding iron, then he came over fast.

“What do you imagine you are doing here?” he demanded.

“Waiting for you,” I said.

He considered this, staring intently at me.

“Well, I’m here—now what?”

I got out of the car.

“You searched me, Lieutenant, but you forgot to search my car.”

He became very still, breathing heavily through his pinched nostrils, his hard watchful eyes alert.

“Why should I search your car, shamus?”

“You wanted to know what the yellow skin, as you call her, had in her handbag that had tempted me to shoot her in my office with my gun. You didn’t find it in my office nor in my pockets. I should have thought a really keen cop would have checked my car to make sure I hadn’t hidden the motive for murder there. So I’ve brought the car along just in case you wanted to be a really keen cop.”