The Remittance-Woman/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE DEATH OF LIU PO-YAT
MARIE reached her room, switched on the electric light and went toward her bedroom. Then, suddenly, she gave a shriek and stared straight ahead. For there, on the bedroom threshold, she saw Liu Po-Yat stretched out in a darkening pool of blood. Marie rushed up to the woman.
Liu Po-Yat was bleeding to death from a dozen knife-wounds. She had almost reached a state of coma. Marie gathered all her courage. She knelt down and lifted up the bleeding head.
The freezing lips tried to speak. A gurgle came from the contracting throat. Finally a few incoherent words peaked out.
“Chuen to yan—” And again, “Chuen to yan”
“Please!” implored Marie. “Speak English—oh, please”
“Chuen to yan,” repeated the other. “Chuen to yan”—as if trying to give a message.
“Chuen to yan?” echoed Marie.
“Yes! Remember! Tell him”
“Who?”
“Your—friend.”
“Tell me! Who is the friend you mean? D’Acosta?” Liu Po-Yat shook her head negatively. “The mandarin?”
“No”—the dying woman gurgled out the words—“not friends—those—like other will be.” Suddenly she revived a little. She lifted her right hand in a supreme spasm of energy; then, even as her body was stiffening, she pointed into the bedroom.
Marie rose, crossed the threshold. She found her jewel-box upset, its contents strewn over the table itself, a few scattered on the floor.
Her hand went to her girdle. The little Tchou-fou-yao vase—that’s what the murderers had been looking for!
No piece of jewelry was missing.
Who was the assassin? Moses d’Acosta? Sun Yu-Wen? But the next moment she dismissed the suspicion. For she had dined with them, and the Chinese maid in the parlor had seen them drive off. And the dying woman had not mentioned either of them, but had spoken repeatedly, insistingly of “Chuen to yan”—whatever the Mongol monosyllables meant.
“Who, then, did it?” she asked herself. “And what is this vase? What is its sinister significance?”
She took it out, looked at it, examined the lizard-green surface, the tiny painting on the inside.
What was its meaning, its secret? And what had she to do with it? Or, perhaps, came the next thought, her mother, who had died in giving her birth, here in China, where her father had married her, whence he had returned white-haired and rather bitter and taciturn—her mother, whom her father never mentioned, or her grandfather?
But murder had been committed, and she realized that she must notify the hotel management.
She went down-stairs and entered the private office of Monsieur Paul Pailloux, the manager, a pudgy Parisian exile who carried his black beard ahead of him like a battering-ram and who bowed before her with opulent superciliousness.
“Ah—Miss Campbell!” he said. “That bill—it was a mistake”
“It isn’t about the bill.”
“No? Then—what can I do for you?”
“You can send for the police.”
“Police? Ah—your delicious American sense of humor”
“Cut it out! There’s nothing humorous in murder!”
“Murder? Ah—nom de Dieu! Murder?”
“Exactly.” And she told him.
“Are you sure, Miss Campbell?” he asked.
“What do you mean—am I sure? Didn’t I see her? Didn’t she talk to me before she died?”
“What did she say?”
“Just a few words.”
“What exactly, Miss Campbell?” insisted the Frenchman.
It was partly her revolt at the man’s cold-blooded curiosity, partly obedience to a peculiar impulse telling her that Liu Po-Yat’s dying words had not been meant for everybody’s ears which caused her to reply evasively:
“I couldn’t make out. I was naturally excited.”
“Of course,” he said soothingly.
“Let’s go up to my room.”
“No,” he said in a kindly manner. “Such a harrowing experience—I sha’n’t permit you—” He walked to the door. “I shall go up-stairs myself and investigate. Rest here until I return.” He left the office, closing the door.
It was a small room, hardly big enough to hold a roll-top desk, three chairs, and, wedged in between desk and wall, a little safe with its door swinging open.
Marie waited, ten minutes, twenty, twenty-five. Finally, impatient, she stepped out, but as she was about to turn toward the elevator, the house detective, a half-caste with a flat, brutish face, stopped her.
“Please wait in there,” he said. “Monsieur Pailloux just sent for me. And he wants no scandal, no excitement—you understand, don’t you?”
She went back into the office and sat down. She was in a conflicting state of mind. She felt deeply moved at the Manchu woman’s tragic death. She also felt conscious of a personal loss, rather more selfish. For Liu Po-Yat had evidently been familiar with the coilings of the mysterious forces which were sucking Marie into their whirlpool, had doubtless only been waiting for a propitious moment to take the American girl into her confidence. And now she was dead; Marie felt very lonely and young and homesick.
Time and again her thoughts returned to the little vase. Twice she took it from the fold of her girdle, looked at it. She had taken it out for the third time when, outside the door, she heard footsteps, voices, and she tried to slip the vase back. But her nail caught in the thin fabric; a seam ripped. She realized that she could not return the vase to its hiding-place, and, dimly sensing that she did not want whoever entered to find the thing in her hand, she looked round for a place in which to conceal it—the safe! It was open. Rapidly she stepped up to it and pushed the vase into the farthest corner among a lot of papers.
She had already straightened up when the door opened and Pailloux and the house detective entered.
“Well?” asked Marie. “What did you find out?”
Pailloux smiled.
“We found that you were mistaken. No murder has been committed.”
“But—Liu Po-Yat—I saw her”
“Doubtless a hallucination, Miss Campbell. Mr. De Smett and I”—pointing at the detective—“went to your rooms, and”—he spread eloquent hands—“we found nothing.”
“N-nothing?” Marie stammered.
“A hallucination.” Pailloux smiled. “Perhaps—pardon—a little too much champagne?”
“Too much champagne—my eye!” cried Marie. “You are crazy, both of you!”
“Are we?” asked the detective. He turned to the manager. “Perhaps Miss Campbell would prefer to see with her own eyes?”
“I’ll say I do!” affirmed Marie.
“Very well.”
And, followed by De Smett, Pailloux led the way to her suite.
“Look!” he said, as they entered.
Marie looked, looked again, doubting, for a moment, her sanity. No body was there, no blood spots, no signs of struggle, of murder. She went into her bedroom and glanced at the dressing-table. The jewel-box was in its old place, unopened.
No doubt, she said to herself, the manager himself, with the help of the detective and most likely other employees, had utilized the half-hour she spent in the office to remove the body and all traces of the tragedy and straighten the rooms. They had done it for a reason. What was it?
Very quickly, and as rationally as she could, she gathered her straying thoughts. By to-morrow her father would have replied to her cable. That would give her some sort of clue to the mystery. Until then she would have to make the best of a bad situation. So she smiled at the two men.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “I apologize. I must have had a drop too much of champagne. Shocking, don’t you think?”
Pailloux coughed.
“Miss Campbell,” he began, “I would—I regret—but”
“What? Come through!”
“You are”
“Under arrest!” The detective completed the other’s sentence and took a step in the girl’s direction. She stood her ground.
“Why,” she said, “this time it’s you who must have had a drop too much to drink! Arrest me—me—you said?”
“Yes.”
“But I thought you said no murder has been committed?”
“There hasn’t,” said the detective.
“What’s my crime, then?”
“Crime?” Pailloux shrugged distressed shoulders. “Hardly a crime—at least”
“If you prefer to make immediate restitution, Miss Campbell”
“Restitution of what, may I inquire?”
“Of a little Chinese vase. A bit of Tchou-fou-yao porcelain,” smiled the manager. “Come, Miss Campbell! You are accused of—pardon—not stealing it—no, no”
“Nothing as crude as that, eh?”
“Of course not! But perhaps you saw the little vase, liked it too much, eh?”
“You’d better give it back,” growled the detective.
“Oh!” She drew in her breath. Here was the vase again. She had hidden it in the safe. Doubtless it was this tiny piece of porcelain which the murderer had come to steal, which the Manchu woman had protected with her life, not knowing that her mistress had taken it along. D’Acosta wanted the vase. So did Sun Yu-Wen. And her father— She remembered his words.
“Monsieur Pailloux,” she said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Miss Campbell,” now implored the man, “I beg of you—you put me into a very awkward situation”
“Not half so awkward as the situation you are putting me in!”
“I am helpless. The person who accuses you”
“Who is that person?”
“You will be told at the police station—in jail!” cried the detective roughly.
“Oh—jail, is it?”
“Please,” said Pailloux, “do not force me to go that far. Give up the vase”
“I haven’t got it!”
“You will be searched at the station—and if they find the vase”
“Miss Campbell,” cut in the detective, “I want to warn you that everything you say”
“Will be used against me?” She laughed. “How gorgeously like home, sweet home! America—ah—that reminds me—I want you to notify the American consul at once, Monsieur Pailloux.”
“Can’t be done!” De Smett interrupted quickly.
“Is going to be done!” said the girl. She turned to the manager. “I’ll come along without a fuss if you telephone the American consul right now, in my presence, or let me ring him up myself. If you refuse”
“Well,” asked the detective, “what would happen? Going to hit me over the wrist with the fringe of your shawl?”
“Don’t forget—we are bound to pass through the hotel lobby. And I give you warning. I went to Vassar, misspent two years there—so the dean told me. But I was cheer-leader at our basket-ball matches. And, when it comes to shouting, why—to quote my favorite black-face Broadway comedian—you haven’t heard nothing yet.”
The two men looked attach other silently, questioningly.
“Do I win?” asked the girl.
“You do!” growled the detective.
“Good! I’ll ring up the consul.”
“Let me do it,” said the manager.
“All right, my dear Gaston!” laughed the girl. “Politeness first in a Frenchman—eh?—even when he is as crooked as a bull-pup’s tail!”
The manager winced, was going to say something, thought better of it, and unhooked the telephone receiver while Marie stood over him, telling him word for word what to say:
“Hello? Mr. Coburn? Pailloux talking. A young American girl has been arrested. … A Miss Campbell. … Theft. She wants you to come to the jail. … In an hour? All right!” He slammed the receiver back.
Five minutes later the girl, sitting between the two men, was driving through the Shameen, out of it, and into the native quarter.
In ten minutes the carriage stopped in front of a tall, imposing structure, with, above its broad entranceway, an ornate Chinese sign in scarlet and gold flanked by a smaller one which read in English:
Southern Chinese Republic
Headquarters of Canton Metropolitan Police
“Here we are,” said Pailloux. “And—Miss Campbell—I give you one more chance—if you want to give up the vase”
“‘Lead on, Macduff!’” she quoted frivolously. And, with a laugh, she preceded the two men into the building.