Erle Gardner - The Case of the Empty Tin

Blaine said nothing.

Rodney Wenston said, “When I brought her to Mason, I thought she wath a damned imposter, but this proof is pretty convincing.”

Doris Wickford said indignantly, “I’m not an impostor, and I’m tired of being treated like one. After all, this was your idea. I didn’t advertise to try and get in touch with you. You advertised to try and get in touch with me. If my father left any money, it isn’t yours, and there’s no reason why you should act as though giving it to me would be an act of generosity or charity on your part. After all, we have courts to protect the rights of people in cases like this.”

Karr didn’t so much as glance at her. He kept his eyes on Gow Loong.

Gow Loong extended his forefinger. The nail protruded a good half inch from the end of the finger. He placed this long nail on the face in the photograph. “Alla same Dow Tucker,” he said.

Karr nodded.

Gow Loong turned to Karr. “Maybe-so you tired. Too much work. Too much tlouble. Maybe-so you go sleep. Maybe one two hours. Wake up, feel more better. Too many people. Too much talk. Velly much no good.”

Karr turned to Johns Blaine. “I see no reason for prolonging the matter. This girl seems to be it. We’ll have to make an additional check, but that’s Dow Tucker’s picture all right. What she says about how he came to adopt the name of Dow sounds logical. Get me that album of pictures out of the desk in my bedroom.”

Gow Loong became merely a part of the scenery. He effaced himself beyond a point of silence. It seemed that even his personality had retired behind the expressionless composure of a calmly indifferent face. Johns Blaine hurried toward the bedroom.

Mason asked casually, “Keep those pictures in your bedroom all the time?”

“Prints,” Karr said. “The negatives are in a safe place. Wouldn’t take a million dollars for those negatives. Adventures in China that would curl your hair. I’ve seen things that white men aren’t permitted to see, things that no person should ever see. The Temple of the Passionate Buddha under the walls of the Forbidden City — the living dead man called up out of the grave to make obeisance to a Lama god. You might think it’s hypnotism, might think it’s superstition, might think it’s imagination, but I’ve seen things you can’t explain, things you can’t understand, things you don’t even dare to talk about. Take a look through that album, Johns. Get some of those pictures taken at Shanghai in the fall of ’20 and the spring of ’21.”

Blaine turned the pages of the photograph album. “Here’s a picture taken on a junk on the Whangpoo,” he said. “That shows him pretty well.”

“Show it to Mason,” Karr said. “Want him to see it.”

Mason looked at the picture of three men seated on the high stern deck of a big junk. The camera had been focused upon the faces. Back of them was a hazy sheet of water, the dim line of a bank, and the fuzzy outlines of an out-of-focus pagoda rising against the sky. The men were smiling affably at the camera with that peculiarly inane expression with which one obeys the command to “look pleasant.” On a table before them was a huge teapot. Three Chinese cups were nestled into the distinctive hole-in-the-center saucers which furnish a sturdy resting place for Chinese soup-bowl cups. Behind the group, standing a little to one side, looking solicitously down at the man in the center, was a Chinese who was undoubtedly Gow Loong. The man in the center was Elston A. Karr, more robust, twenty years younger, but still with that same cold-eyed concentration glittering from his eyes, that ruthless, indomitable purpose stamped upon his face. There had been change in the twenty years. He had lost weight. His skin had stretched taut across his cheekbones, and there were puffs under his eyes; but there could be no mistaking Elston Karr.

The man on his right was the man shown in the photograph produced by Doris Wickford. There could be no doubt of that, and the two photographs must have been taken at about the same time. The partially bald head, the snub nose, the long lower lip with the deep calipers stretching down from the nostrils, the cleft chin, the bushy eyebrows, the protruding batlike ears were unmistakable.

The third man in the photograph caught Mason’s eye. He was a thick-chested, heavy-necked individual with thick lips that were twisted into a smile, but even in the photograph it was apparent that the eyes were not smiling. They were the sort of eyes that wouldn’t smile. They were staring in sullen contemplation at the lens of the camera. It was as though the man had been brooding so long upon some sinister scheme that his thoughts had stamped themselves indelibly upon his face.

“Who’s this man?” Mason asked.

Karr said, “A Judas — a dirty traitor — sold us out for his pieces of silver — almost brought about my death.” He looked up at Doris Wickford and said, “He was responsible for the death of your father. I shan’t forget him — ever.”

There was something in the way he said that last that was as whisperingly ominous as the sound of a carving knife being sharpened on a steel.

Mason compared the photograph in the book with that produced by Doris Wickford. Slowly he nodded his head, then asked, “Got any more pictures of Tucker?”

Karr jerked his head to Johns Blaine, and Blaine, turning the leaves of the photograph album, paused four times more to show Mason photographs. Always there were the photographs of the same four men: Karr; his partner, Tucker; Gow Loong; and this heavy-set, sullen-faced man who had apparently betrayed them.

Abruptly Karr said to Miss Wickford, “I want to check up on you. Where you lived, what you did, whom you knew.”

“Of course. You realize I was rather a child when Dad left, but I have rather distinct memories. I can tell you the houses we lived in — some of them, at any rate. Would you mind telling me whether my father left any considerable amount of property?”

“We had a partnership venture,” Karr said. “I didn’t know your father had any heirs. There was a partnership. We made some profit. He was killed. I didn’t make any formal accounting of his share. It wasn’t the sort of business you could offer for probate. We’d have been beheaded or hung if we’d been caught at it. Most dangerous, most risky business in the world, and the most fascinating. Betrayed by a damned Judas. But I got out of there with the money. I invested that money. The investments turned out well. Recently, Gow Loong mentioned that one night when Dow Tucker had been standing by the rail of the junk looking down at some little girls dancing on the landing in a Chinese village, he’d pointed out one little Chinese girl about seven or eight years old, and said that he had a daughter at home just about her age. He never spoke to me about it — very reticent about his private and family affairs. Gow Loong never realized the significance of it until later, when I was talking with him about the night Tucker was captured and killed. I’m tired. I’ll think it over. I’ll follow Gow Loong’s advice and rest. Give Mr. Blaine all the data you can think of, where you live, for whom you’ve worked, where you went to school, all the rest of it. Answer all questions Mr. Mason may ask.”

She nodded.

“One more thing,” Karr said abruptly. “You lived with an aunt?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps there are more letters from your father in your aunt’s things.”

“I never thought of that.”

“Know where they are?”

“No.”

“Try and find them. He might have written to her. See me again. No, don’t see me again. Keep in touch with Mr. Mason. He’s my lawyer. Don’t let Rodney Wenston’s hostility impress you much. He has nothing whatever to say about it. I told him to be skeptical in dealing with claimants. If you’re my partner’s daughter, I want to be friendly with you. If you’re an impostor, I want to send you to jail. I don’t want to waste too much time finding out which it’s going to be.”