Fifty Candles (1926)/Chapter 6
VI
While Detective Barnes was up-stairs fifteen or twenty minutes passed, duly recorded by the busy clock in the hall. Gloomy with foreboding, I sat staring at a Chinese print on the wall. It was a cheery little thing, representing an execution. I wondered about the most vitally interested party, who appeared to have completely lost his head. Was he guilty? Or had he, an innocent man, been caught up in a net of circumstantial evidence while the real culprit went free? It was for me a most interesting question.
The bald little detective was coming down the stairs. His face was very serious; he held one hand behind his back. Mary Will was staring at him, fascinated, and to my surprise he walked straight up to her.
“If you don’t mind, Miss Telfair,” he said, “we will go back to your story for a moment.”
“Yes,” breathed Mary Will. All color was gone from her face.
“Your room up-stairs—it’s the blue room to the left, on the second floor?”
“It is.”
“When you went up to get the smelling-salts for Mrs. Drew—you took the time to go first to your own room—didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“You wanted to hide something?”
“Yes.”
“Something you had picked up from the side of the dead man in the dining-room?” Mary Will nodded; her face was the color of that tablecloth old Drew had seized in his last moment of life. “You don’t seem to be up on this sort of thing, my girl,” Barnes went on. “Under your mattress was a pretty obvious place.”
He brought his hand round from behind his back, and when I saw what the hand held I had difficulty repressing the cry that rose to my lips. For the detective held a small Chinese knife, with a handle of grape jade, carved in the shape of some heathen god. It was unique, that knife, there could hardly be another like it in the world. I had bought it from a merchant far in the interior of China, and on the boat coming over I had shown it to several people, Mary Will included.
“It was the worst thing I could have done.” Mary Will was sobbing now. “But I was so excited—I had no time to think.”
Out of the murk of tule-fog and hatred and murder one dazzling thing flashed clear—and nothing else mattered. I was a happy man. “You did that for me!” I cried. “Mary Will—you’re wonderful!”
“Then this is your knife?” Barnes broke in, holding it before me.
“No question about it,” said I.
“How do you account for the fact that it was found beside the dead man?”
I turned in time to catch the look that passed between Parker and Carlotta Drew, and hot anger filled my heart.
“It was stolen, of course,” I said.
“Of course,” smiled the detective.
“I had not missed it yet,” I went on, “but it must have been taken from my luggage, in the stateroom, sometime today. There were just two men who had access to that luggage. One was the dead man, who could hardly have taken it.”
“And the other?” cried Mark Drew suddenly.
“The other,” said I, “was Doctor Parker, who at seven-thirty to-night claims he was lost in the fog.”
“Nonsense!” said Parker. “What motive———”
“Motive enough!” cried Mark Drew angrily. “A secret love-affair with my father’s wife that has been going on for more than a year. A lust for money that is famous on the China coast—along with your well-known lack of scruples in stopping at nothing to get it. Motive, my dear Doctor———”
“You think,” sneered Parker, “that I would paw over this man’s luggage—that I would steal his silly knife?”
“Why not? A man who would steal another’s wife would hardly stop at the theft of a little weapon like this!” Drew turned to the detective. “Sergeant Barnes, this man claims that at the time the crime was committed he was walking from his hotel to this house. There are good pavements, good sidewalks, all the way. Let me call your attention to his shoes. They are unbelievably wet; they are muddy.”
“Rot!” snarled Parker. “That means nothing. The sidewalk was torn up before a new building. I couldn’t see where I was going. I got rather deep into the water and mud.”
“You are in rather deep, my friend,” cried Drew. “I’ll grant you that.”
Other hot words passed between them, but I did not listen. I had turned to Mary Will. “Whatever happens,” I said, “I shan’t forget what you tried to do for me.”
“Oh—it was all wrong,” she whispered. “I see that now. I have harmed you dreadfully—and I only meant to help. I did it on the spur of the moment. Why I did it I can’t imagine.”
“Can’t you? I can. Your first instinct was to protect the man you love.”
“No—no,” she protested.
“Poor Mary Will. All your denials won’t avail now. The deed is done. You supposed that I had lost my head—and killed Henry Drew.”
“It was silly of me—I didn’t stop to think. And everything looked against you—I saw you running out of the window.”
“Everything is still against me. Are you, Mary Will? Look at me.” She raised her eyes to mine. “Mary Will—I did not kill Drew. You believe that—don’t you?”
“I believe it,” she answered. “Nothing will ever make me change.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” I cried.
All my depression, my gloom, was gone, and it was in almost a gay mood that I turned to face the detective. He had waved aside Mark Drew’s insinuations against Parker and was standing before me.
“Mr. Winthrop,” he said, “you had quarreled with the dead man. You claim that he and his partner, Doctor Su, had defrauded you. You admit all that. You admit that this is your knife which your sweetheart—this young woman—found by the body.”
“Yes,” I replied, “that’s all true. I admit also that things look rather badly for me. But in spite of all you have discovered, I did not kill Henry Drew. As you go further into the matter you must find that out yourself. Surely there must be some other evidence—I don’t know what it can be. Perhaps when you have talked with Doctor Su Yen Hun he can throw some light—”
The door opened and Riley came into the room. His great red face proclaimed him the bearer of news.
“Sergeant,” he cried, “I went to Doctor Su’s house, as ye told me to—”
“Yes, Riley.”
“The place was dark. I rung the bell—four times—mebbe five—nobody answered. I knew it was important, so I went round to the back. The kitchen door was open—”
“Go on.”
“I went inside. Sergeant—there wasn’t a livin’ thing in the house. Not wan. But he was there. Doctor Su Yen Hun, I mean. He was layin’ in the middle of the library floor—dead. Somebody’d got to him an’ stuck a knife between his ribs!”
My heart seemed to stop beating. A moment of dreadful silence fell.
“Did you examine the wound?” Barnes inquired.
“I did,” said Riley, proud of himself. “An’ it was exactly like the wan poor Mr. Drew got. Yes, Sergeant—if you ask me—the same hand done for’em both. I waited till Detective Curry arrived, an’ thin———”
“Yes, Riley. Thanks. You’d better go back to your beat.” As Riley went out Barnes turned to me. “This was Drew’s partner in the Yunnan mine,” he said. “The other man you say had cheated you?”
I tried to speak but the words would not come.
“Mr. Winthrop,” the detective went on, “I’m sorry, but I have no other course———”
“Wait a minute.” It was Mark Drew who spoke. “I beg your pardon, Sergeant. You are conducting this case, I know, but naturally my interest is keen. I tell you flatly I do not believe this young man is guilty of my father’s murder.”
“Thank you, Mr. Drew,” I said.
“It’s an old saying and a true one,” Barnes remarked, “that there’s a motive behind every killing. Find that motive and you’ve got your man. The motive in this case is clear—revenge.”
“But there’s another one of us who may have had a motive,” said Drew. His eyes were on Parker.
“I can’t arrest a man because his shoes are muddy,” replied Barnes peevishly. “You know that. No—everything points to this young fellow. He had the motive. His story of his actions after the crime is ridiculous. His knife was found———”
“But before you arrest him,” pleaded Drew, “there are so many matters still unaccounted for———”
The voice of Barnes was very cool and unfriendly.
“I recognize your interest,” he said. “If there is any clew I have not considered—any matter you think I should investigate further———”
Mrs. MacShane came into the room, bearing a tray of steaming coffee cups. She placed her burden on a table.
“I—I hardly know,” stammered Drew. “I’m not criticizing you, Sergeant, but—there are the fifty candles. Yes—by heaven—the fifty candles! There’s mystery in them. Whose birthday is this?”
Mrs. MacShane suddenly lifted her head and came over into the center of the group.
“I know whose birthday it is,” she said.
“You know?” cried Drew. “Then in heaven’s name tell us!”
“Your father explained it to me tonight,” the old woman went on. “He come into my kitchen with the fifty little pink candles in his hands, an’ he asked me to put them on the cake. ‘If I may make so bold, sir,’ I says to him, ‘whose birthday is it to-day? An’ he says to me, ‘It’s the Chinaman’s,’ he says. ‘It’s Hung Chin-chung’s.’ ”
“The Chinaman’s!” Mark Drew cried.
“But why should my husband give a birthday party for Hung Chin-chung?” asked Carlotta Drew, amazed.
“Just what I asks myself, ma’am,” Mrs. MacShane went on, “but Mr. Drew didn’t tell me. He just repeated that it was Hung’s birthday. ‘Yes, Mrs. MacShane,’ he says to me, ‘Hung was born fifty years ago to-day in a little house near some queen’s yard in Honolulu—out on that beach’—what is it now, the wan there’s all the songs about? Oh, to be sure!—‘out on the beach at Waikiki.’ ”