Erle Gardner - The Case of the Empty Tin

Abruptly the door of the left-hand flat opened. A tall Chinese, clad in somber, dark clothes, said, “How-do? Mistah Mason? You please come in, velly quick please.”

Mason and Della walked through the door the Chinese was holding open and climbed the stairs. The door was swung quietly shut behind them by the swift-moving Chinese.

Nearing the head of the stairs Mason heard the sound of rubber-tired wheels rolling rapidly along the hardwood floor. The same high-pitched, reedy voice he had heard over the telephone said, “It’s all right, Johns. Don’t bother. I’ll make it.” Then a wheelchair shot through a curtained doorway. An emaciated hand applied a brake, and Mason found himself scrutinized by a pair of piercing gray eyes, deep-set beneath shaggy brows, in a face which seemed all skin and bones.

The man in the wheelchair gave the impression of boundless nervous energy. It was as though the strength which had been denied the body had gone into nervous vitality. So intense was the concentration in those gray eyes that the man seemed to entirely forget the amenities of the situation. Della Street he ignored, utterly and completely, devoting all of his attention to a study of the lawyer.

It was a man who came hurrying from the room behind the curtained doorway who broke the tension. “Mr. Mason?”

The lawyer nodded.

The man came forward, smiling. Powerful shoulders pushed out a short, muscular arm. Thick, strong fingers grasped Mason’s hand. “I’m Blaine,” he said. “Johns Blaine.”

Karr lowered the lids of his eyes. In that moment, so transparent and waxlike was his skin that he seemed almost as a corpse. Then his eyes slowly opened. The look of intense concentration had departed. There was a smile on his lips, and a kindly twinkle in his eyes. “Forgive me, Mr. Mason,” he said. “I need a good lawyer. I’ve heard a lot about you. I wanted to see if you measured up.”

He raised his hand from the arm of the wheelchair and extended it. Mason folded gentle fingers about the hand, noticing that the skin was cold, that the bones seemed delicately fragile.

“My secretary, Miss Street,” Mason introduced.

The others acknowledged the introduction, then Karr said, “And my number one boy, Gow Loong.”

Mason regarded the Chinese with undisguised interest. He had, somehow, more the air of a companion or partner than of a servant. His high forehead, the calm placidity of his countenance, the steady inscrutability of his dark eyes gave him a distinguished appearance.

“Don’t get interested in him,” Karr warned, in his quick, nervous voice. “He’s too much like the Orient. You want to understand him, but can’t. A perpetual mystery. Arouses your curiosity and then slams the door in your face. We’ve got too confounded much to think about — too much to talk about. Glad you brought your secretary. She can take notes, and I won’t have to go over the thing twice. Makes me terribly impatient when I have to repeat things. What are you standing there for? Come on, let’s go in where we can sit down and be comfortable, and get this over with.”

He grasped the big rubber tires of the wheelchair, spun it in a quick turn, lunged forward with his thin shoulders, and, mustering surprising strength, sent the chair shooting back through the curtained doorway at such speed that the others, following along behind, were hopelessly in the rear.

The room beyond the curtained doorway was a well-furnished drawing room with hardwood floors, sumptuous Chinese rugs and furniture which had quite evidently been brought from the Orient. The dark wood of this furniture had been cunningly carved with a design in which the dragon motif predominated.

Karr spun the wheelchair into a quick turn and stopped it instantly. He handled his chair with the deft, expert skill born of long practice. “Sit down. Sit down,” he said in his high-pitched, piping voice. “Don’t stand on formality, please. There isn’t any time. Mason, sit over here. Miss Street, if you’ll use that table for your writing. No! Wait a minute. There’s some nested tables over there. You can get one just the right height. Gow Loong, put that table over by her elbow. All set? Sit down, Johns. Damn it, you make me nervous, hovering around over me. I’m not going to break in two.”

“What has happened?” Mason asked.

Karr said, “Listen attentively, please. You got your notebook there, Miss Street? That’s fine. I’m right in the middle of a delicate matter. I won’t go into details right now, but I had a partner in China. A rough partnership it was, too. We were running guns up the Yangtze. Slice you up in fine pieces if they caught you. Death of a thousand cuts, they called it.

“Well, anyway, my partner and I kept ’em supplied with guns. There was excitement in it, and money. I won’t go into that, though, not now. I’ll only say I’m doing something in connection with that old partnership — and I’ve got to keep under cover until it’s done. I can’t stand any notoriety — don’t want anyone to know of me. Far as anyone knows, Elston A. Karr was killed up the river.

“I rented this apartment in the name of my stepson, Rodney Wenston. He signs all the checks, pays the rent, and all that. I don’t enter into the picture at all.

“However, there are some of the boys who aren’t fooled easily. Don’t ever underestimate the Oriental. They’re slow but sure. Sometimes they aren’t so slow, either. Well, as I said, I’ve got to avoid any publicity. No one must see me here. I can’t be questioned.

“Well, this matter I want to talk to you about has to do with the old partnership. I didn’t start the ball rolling until I was certain any interest which might have been aroused by my having moved in here had quieted down. So I picked this particular time to go ahead, and then that murder happened downstairs. Puts me in the devil of a predicament. I suppose the newspapermen will describe the house and the tenants. Worst possible time it could have happened.”

Mason asked, “Why not let this other matter wait?”

“Because I’ve already started it,” Karr exclaimed irritably. “Dammit, Mason, I told you that already. I’ve started the ball rolling. I can’t stop it now. And the more of a mystery they make of that murder downstairs, the longer the thing drags out, the more notoriety I’ll get, and the more dangerous it is for me.”

“Have the police been here yet?” Mason asked.

“No. That’s why I was in such a hurry to get you. I want you to help me handle them.”

Mason frowned. “How does it happen they haven’t been here before this?”

Karr said, “Talked them out of it. Sent Johns and Gow Loong down to find out what it was all about. The police questioned them. Some lieutenant from the Homicide Squad down there. What’s his name, Johns?”

“Tragg.”

“That’s right, Tragg. Lieutenant Tragg. Know him, Mason?”

“Yes.”

Karr said, “They told Tragg I was sick, that he’d have to come up to interview me, that I didn’t know anything, anyway. That’s not true. I heard the shot, but that’s all I know about it.”

Mason said, “Perhaps if you’d tell me why you felt it necessary to call me, we’d have a more satisfactory starting point.”

Karr jerked his head into a sharp turn. His eyes were blazing now with the fire of that devastating, nervous energy which seemed to be too much for his frail body to hold. “How about this secretary of yours? All right?”

“All right.”

“You can vouch for her?”

“Yes.”

“This is important — important as the devil.”

“She’s all right.”

Karr said, “I don’t know what happened downstairs. I don’t give a damn. I’m confined to my wheelchair. I can’t get around. Have to be lifted in and out. Don’t have any opportunity to be neighborly. Don’t want to be neighborly. All I ask is to be left alone. Now this confounded murder comes along, and I suppose the newspaper reporters will start snooping around. One thing I can’t stand, Mason, is publicity. Don’t want any of it. Can’t have it.”