The Trap Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER XXXV

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  CHAPTER XL

  CHAPTER XLI

  CHAPTER XLII

  CHAPTER XLIII

  CHAPTER XLIV

  CHAPTER XLV

  CHAPTER XLVI

  CHAPTER XLVII

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  CHAPTER XLIX

  CHAPTER L

  CHAPTER LI

  CHAPTER LII

  CHAPTER LIII

  CHAPTER LIV

  CHAPTER LV

  CHAPTER LVI

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Harry Stephen Keeler. All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  CHAPTER I

  “NO SALE!”

  The finely dressed man in the purple velour hat, and sparkling diamond stickpin in his purple foulard tie, facing the open illumined doorway at the side of the darkened Chinese laundry on the dark outskirts of Comanche, Oklahoma, repeated his question to the younger man who stood in that doorway, more or less silhouetted against light from a ceiling bulb.

  “Then—then you wouldn’t even let me consult the book—as a student—if I pay you, say—$100?”

  The young Chinese standing in the doorway, in black blouse and baggy pants, and framed against a narrow, uncarpeted stairway going upward answered dignifiedly. “A mere student does not have $100.”

  The man standing outside the door, on the sunbaked ground, stroked his chin painedly. The chin of a white man it was, too! The two were all alone—and could speak as freely as two men on a desert island. All about them stretched fields, discernible as such thanks to plentiful stars in the sky, with the town itself all of a couple of blocks off, and practically dark, since it was now 9:30 of this early-October evening. The big purple car that stood on the sunbaked road, off from the man at the open doorway, was minus anyone in it. The laundry at side of the door was itself exceedingly dark, and minus even an all-night light.

  Now the man in the purple velour hat essayed to answer this calm assured statement of the young Chinese.

  “You’re not entirely right about that. There are always—rich students. And—but here!—you mean you wouldn’t let me even touch it?—handle it?—consult it?—for any price?”

  “Not for any price, no! $500. $1000. $10,000. $100,000. Not for any price—in the world.”

  “Will you—will you—for heaven’s sake—tell me—why?”

  “I see no objections, sir, whoever you are. You see, I had a dream just prior to my acquiring the book. My ancestor appeared in the dream. My particular ancestor, I mean, of whose estate my small share enabled me 5 years ago to buy this laundry. He said to me, ‘Charley, I regret the book is today—where it is. Pay anything for it—to get it. But—get it! And if, so doing, you will see that never is it touched or viewed again by white eyes, I will bring peace to you and your children. And prosperity—to you all!’ So-o,” continued the man in the doorway, “I went to where I knew the book was. And, without my going here into voluminous details that matter not, acquired it—by purchase. Yes, I paid out my entire life-savings of $190 for it. And I have faithfully lived up—to the dream-promise—of my ancestor.”

  “Hm?” said the man on the outside of the doorway. “Not much chance for a man to combat dreams, I must say! For—well—has it worked? Following the instructions—of your ancestor?”

  “I won $5000 in a lottery, not long after. Was able, thus, to go to China for 6 months. To get in, moreover, despite the so-called Red Curtain that temporarily holds men of like race apart. To get in on the plea that—but what does that matter? I was enabled to go. To get in. For full 6 months. Have, indeed, just returned from there. Is that proof?”

  “Proof of luck, all right. And maybe some diplomatic greasing because you might have been the descendant of somebody who founded China. Or—but all you cite is not particular proof that the book itself was the—but I suppose—you keep the book in a vault?”

  “We have no vaults in Comanche. No, I keep it where I can myself fondle it—read it—enjoy it—and know my ancestor.”

  The man standing at the doorway looked helpless. Gazed upward, slightly sidewise, at the exceedingly crude sign above the entire front of the dark laundry, also sidewise of him. The sign whose white letters on dark-red painted wood read: “CHA’S TSENG, ONLY CHINESE LAUNDRY IN COMANCHE”. Then he acted swiftly!

  For, from a hip pocket, he drew a short-barrelled steel-grey gun. Fired point-blank at the man in the doorway. The Chinese dropped where he stood. Lay slumped, part of his body—one yellow hand outstretched—across the threshold.

  The man with the gun stood rigid, to make sure the man sprawled across the doorway’s threshold was dead. Which the latter plainly was, however, for not so much as a quiver had been given by the body after it had fallen.

  With which cursory inspection of things, and thrusting the gun only in his side coat pocket, the man in the purple velour hat stepped somehow over the sprawled body, then vaulted, leaped, three steps at a time, up those narrow wooden steps that led upstairs. Straight into a room whose door was open, and whose light, or lights, were full on. The room, carpeted only with green matting, and painted yellow as to walls and ceiling, was minus occupants, fortunately, even as the young Chinese, on answering the door below tonight, had averred earlier by saying he was “quite alone.” The light for the room came from a single tall, standing lamp, with Chinese bronze stem, and very transparent shade of Chinese silk carrying handpainted representations of fish and lilies. A lacquered, straw-upholstered low couch stood on opposite side of room; there were a couple of mother-of-pearl inlaid taborettes off from a beautifully lacquered folding screen—an open door to a kitchen showing pots and pans.

  There was also, however, in the sparse furnishings of the room, a one-shelf obviously teakwood bookshelf that stood glaringly prominent on one wall. With magazines in it. Books, too. The obvious English dictionary, even. Enough volumes, indeed, of one thing or another, to fill the entire shelf.

  Straight to it the man in the velour hat stepped.

  Ran his eyes horizontally, frowningly, swiftly, across the backbones of the publications and books standing there.

  And the book—the book he was interested in—was there. Inserted almost lovingly, almost protectively, between two soft-leather bound publications that looked very much like trade catalogues, perhaps laundry-tra
de catalogues. As though to warm it, and protect it, and keep it even from being scratched!

  He reached swiftly forth, and drew it out. Not that his so doing did not, at same time, pull out half a dozen magazines at one side—and a trio or quartette of books on the other—so well wedged had the book he withdrew been between the protecting volumes each side, and they in turn packed snugly against their neighbors. The dislodged magazines and books fell helter-skelter on the floor at his feet.

  But he was not in the least interested in this mess. Was interested only in what he had withdrawn. He cast a momentary but highly appraising glance over the black-stamped letters in the orange cloth cover of the book in his fingers, to make sure there was no mistake being made. Which there plainly wasn’t! With which, by expert aid of his left hand, he pressed the book down into his left-hand coat pocket. And spinning about, swept across the matting-covered floor, and out, and vaulted down the stairway in the same three-step vault he had used coming up. Over the prone body he stepped again. And out over the sunbaked road to his waiting car.

  And with a roar of his engine, he was off—into the night. Carrying with him the precious copy of THE CHINESE CHARACTER, by T’seng T’seng Po Weng, Merchant of New Orleans, and for which he was risking—had indeed just risked—the gallows!

  CHAPTER II

  THE UNLUCKY ONE

  Sheriff Lafe Whitecotton, in process of depositing back on its hook the ancient telephone receiver of the wall-phone in the jail of the southwest town of Comanche, Oklahoma, scowled painfully at thought of the terrible predicament in which he now stood, this bright morning of October 7th, A.D.!

  Though such predicament was not the disconcerting fact that he didn’t possess a goshdarned clue to that outside killer, whoever he was, who came into town the night before last, an’ killed poor Charley T’seng—’s darned a good a Chinee as ever there was!—and even, whilst searchin’ his quarters for hidden gold or somethin’ filched a book off’n his bookshelf—at least as showed by both the mess on the floor und’neath the wall case, and the test’mony of Frank Wing, Charley’s laundryman friend from one town up the railroad, who was in those quarters less’n an hour before the murder, talkin’ to Charley, and actually handlin’ the book. No, Chinks have to expect t’ get killed in this world—one way or ’tother—they’re ev’body’s meat—not that he, Sheriff Lafe Whitecotton, wouldn’t get billy-be-damned hell, all right, in the town paper next issue, not for lettin’ a Chink get killed but for lettin’ a outsider come in and do a filthy job like that—yep, he’d catch puh-lenty on that bump-off!

  No, ’twasn’t the matter of Charley T’seng gettin’ killed—or the hiding that he, Lafe, would get in the town paper, for letting killers come in and do their stuff—that was the Sheriff’s real predicament just now. The latter being—and the Sheriff scowled right now ever so painfully—that he’d lost something ever so important in his life—and far more important than any big-city killer.

  Had lost it—all because of—Whisperwell Jenkins!

  Sleepwalker!

  Who not only, as now it seemed, had caused the Sheriff to lose a most important piece of so-called “convicting evidence” in that very murder, the murder of Charley T’seng, but had even caused him, the Sheriff, to lose $500 he’d been holding, in trust, for a certain highly vital purpose. No less than—

  Oh—oh—oh—oh! What in tarnation hell to do? Durn Whisperwell Jenkins. Durn sheriffin’. Durn ever’thing.

  And the Sheriff, hanging up the receiver, knew the moment was here to tell Whisperwell Jenkins, now locked up downstairs, off. To burn him up—wherever the hair was short. To make him know, if nothing else, that he had completely blocked justice, at least in the matter of the young Chinee, Charley T’seng, for all time to come!

  CHAPTER III

  JUDGE RUMBERY

  A striking and colorful figure the Sheriff was, to say the least, in his short homespun brown coat, hanging open this bright but not particularly too warm morning, so that the resplendent black-and-white checkered hickory shirt underneath screamed forth, and with his brown trousers tucked into high thong-laced yellow cowhide boots, matching exactly the leather wristlets that he wore on his wrists, and boots and wristlets both constituting a sort of honorary badge announcing that he had, in his day, worked in Texas and points west.

  A thing, the latter, that a philologist could have determined instanter by the Sheriff’s frequent, ever so frequent Western intonations, but which other folks, spec’ally strangers, had to be shown! Not that—and speaking of philologists—there was probably one in the whole world capable of discerning that the Sheriff’s speech today was a result of having, as a boy, lived in towns in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas; and Texas!

  His tall wide-brimmed grey hat, characteristic of all mid-West, Southern, and Southwestern peace officers, was tilted far back on his head, so that its rim would not buck the bulky telephone box; and the thin face, with its steel-grey eyes, as well as the deeply etched lines of a man of 46 in it—and which precisely was the Sheriff’s age—was sunburned as well as tanned. And thoughtful, as well as troubled.

  Thoughtful just now, however, not because of the complete and detailed instructions he had just given to a certain middle-aged Mis’ Ludamila Plimsey, painter-lady from Boston, who’d come here to Comanche short of about three months back to paint pictures, as to how to care for and properly feed a certain lady-cat who’d moved in, bag and baggage and 5 kittens, on Mis’ Plimsey—for the Sheriff knew cats from Absalom to Zewk, while Mis’ Plimsey admitted that the home she’d come from in the East had been catless—no, not because of having just told Mis’ Plimsey detailedly how to get on with Grimalky Stripedy-Pants was the Sheriff thoughtful. For cat rearin’ instructions he could rattle off without even thinking. But he was thoughtful because of his consarned problem about that—that fool Whisperwell. The—the sleep-walkin’ idiot. The—the—match-lightin’ fool. The—

  But now a ring came on the phone in front of him. He’d been waiting for it. He raised the receiver. It was “Central” as he’d expected. Esmereldy Hunbitt.

  “Is ’at you, Sher’ff?”

  “Yes, Esmereldy. I haven’t did yet what I come here to the jail for—so you kin continue to shift m’ calls to this here number. When I start back to m’ home, I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay, Sher’ff. An’ you’ll prob’ly be gettin’ plenty calls—or like, as jest now, requests for you to call her back—from Mis’ Plimsey. ’Bout cats, I mean! For Mis’ Plimsey she frankly co’fesses she ain’t never lived with cats afore. ’Caount of a uncle who was afeared of ’em. ’Caount of some awful ’sperience he had once in India, with a tiger. W’ich ever after made him have his—his—well, she puts it: his ‘wind up’—’bout cats. An’—but what I mean is she’ll be wantin’ to know things now night an’ day.”

  “’At’s all right, Esm’reldy. That lady-cat she’s now got—Grimalky Stripedy-Pants!—and me are p’tic’ly close friends. She—but I’ll let you know when I start back.”

  He hung up. And turned about.

  He stood in a simple white-washed room that was used to search and book prisoners in. A steel lock-cabinet was there, against one wall, for their belongings; a canvas-bound book, atop a battered kitchen-type table, for their crime-history. Nobody was in the room. Across the hall outside, through an open doorway framed with square-cut trimming, a shallow courtroom could be seen, with highbacked benches, also empty except for a white-haired, white-bearded man, in a wrinkled near-white linen suit, making some notes at the raised bench. Across the hard baked dirt road outside, as visible through the two tall multi-paned and flyspecked windows, could be seen a small town square, with iron benches on which loafers faced the road; and back of the square a few low wood-fronted stores with parked dilapidated cars in front, and in one instance even a mule and buggy.

  The Sheriff, standing thus, became lost for all of some fifth
of a minute in his own scrambled thoughts—about cats, and lady painters, and sleepwalkers, and Chinkees killed by outsiders with lit’iary inclinations, since they stooped to steal even a fool book!—and came to in time to be interrupted by the ancient white-bearded man in the white linen suit who, previously in the courtroom across the way, was now in the hallway—in the very doorway, in fact.

  “Howdy, Lafe? Heard you talkin’ on the phone quite a while?”

  “Yeah, Judge. Mis’ Plimsey’s c’sented to keep Grimalky Stripedy-Pants, who moved in on her, with all her kittens minute the Hornbottles moved out o’ town ’thout takin’ Grimalky with ’em; but she—Mis’ Plimsey, I mean—hain’t any exper’ence with cats, an’ I got to edycate her. Year from t’day, she’ll prob—”

  “Year from today,” Judge Hezekiah Rumbery said sagely, “she’ll prob’ly have a dog.”

  “She’ll fall so in love with Grimalky Stripedy-Pants,” said the Sheriff, even more sagely, “that a year from t’day there won’t be nobody who kin pry Grimalky away from her—but I have got to edycate her on cats, see?”

  “Well, that won’t make her mad,” said Judge Hezekiah Rumbery, still sagely. “She kinda likes you.”

  “Nonsense!” said the Sheriff. “I’m only a col’rful bug of some kind to her. Say Judge—can cats—plus kittens—ride in Pullmans—or do they have to go after their masters—in freight cars?”

  “Why do you ask, Lafe?”

  “W’y because that Grimalky Stripedy-Pants is ’bout the sweetest cat that ever lived on land or sea. And her kits are the same. And she—Mis’ Plimsey, I mean—is goin’ to fall plumb in love of the whole pack and kaboodle of those cats. And when she goes back to Boston, she’ll absolutely have to take the whole pack back with her. And—”

  “Well, to answer your very legal question, Lafe,” said the judge, kindly, “cats, as I happen to know, can travel on Pullmans—with people. Though not for nothing. For ’bout $10—slipped to the conductor. Which, if Mis’ Plimsey is willin’ to dig it up—but we can stand losin’ a few cats hereabouts a’right, a’right. Well,” he added, “reckon I’ll get me out to the square there with my morning County Echo. Seein’ today’s a court hol’day, an’ no court.”