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  “It was about nine minutes later, as near as he can remember, as he and the clerk were putting up some late prescriptions, that the two of ‘em heard one single shot. They thought it was an automobile tire exploding, but both of ‘em commented on the dull hollow sound of it. About eleven-thirty, after they’d locked up, both of ‘em starting south on foot with a Doctor O’Malley, who’d come in to order some office supplies, they noticed the chink’s place here still lit up, and everything pretty quiet. Gregson had a hunch that something had happened; so he and the doctor called over a fellow from the corner as a witness and the four of ‘em went in. No answer when they called Foy. They went in back of the counter and there he was dead on the floor where the woman had shot him down.”

  “This druggist has an alibi of course?” asked Darrell pointedly.

  “Seems he has,” said Corrigan. “I dropped off first at Gregson’s house, where the three men were waiting for us after phoning the detective bureau about it. Then, leaving one of my men, we came on here to the shop. You got here about fifteen minutes after us. As to the druggist’s alibi, I’ve no doubt of it. Clerk saw the brown-eyed girl come in, saw Gregson go with her down the street to the laundry, saw his employer come back, and the two were together when the sound of the shot was heard. This Doctor O’Malley was with ‘em when they locked up, and when they all pushed their way in Foy’s shop. Foy had been dead about thirty minutes then, according to the doc’s quick examination.”

  “I see.” Darrell strode across the room and examined the back door of the laundry. “I see the lock is unlocked,” he commented.

  Corrigan nodded. “Yes. The woman, instead of going back out on the street after she pulled what she did, simply slipped out the back door and made her way over to another street by way of the alleys. We found it unlocked just as it is.”

  Darrell looked about him once more. “What’s your theory, Frank?”

  “Same old thing,” said Corrigan. “Fool white woman mixing up with chinks.” He nodded to the cabinet. “As for the cabinet over there being wide open, there’s a couple of explanations. She may have done it in her rage. Women go berserk sometimes. On the other hand, the chink may have mislaid his key, may have wanted something out of it, and finally pried it open with the poker. Or have you a theory now yourself, Darrell? Tong stuff, you’re thinking, maybe, eh? Or possibly robbery?” He shook his head, “Not that, however, for there’s the chink’s money lying in the cabinet untouched. See it?”

  Darrell had long before noted with his observant eye what Corrigan now referred to, but he nevertheless strode over and took in the interior of the cabinet more completely. A few garments lay folded on the top shelves, an odd-looking musical instrument resembling both a gourd and a ukulele lay on a middle shelf, an abacus more heavy and cumbersome than the one out in front rested near the fiddle, and on the very bottom of the cabinet were stacks and stacks of silver coins in neat piles, evidently ranged for deposit in a bank. A cylinder of thick silver dollars looked down upon two thick cylinders of quarters. A veritable forest of dimes, nickles and pennies stood in rows, and at the end of it all a worn, greasy bank book, strapped with a rubber band, and bulging with a number of well-worn green bills. The stacks leaned slightly to one side as though the wrench of the cabinet doors had disturbed their equilibrium, but beyond that they were untouched. He came out from his position and turned to Corrigan again.

  “Going to photograph for finger prints of course, Frank?”

  “Oh, sure,” replied Corrigan in a matter-of-fact tone. “But I’m not counting on anything there,” he added. “The one certain article handled” — he nodded toward the rusty poker on the floor — “is covered with rust. That knocks out anything from that source. On top of this, likewise, Gregson the druggist says the woman wore kid gloves. That’s sure to make it a case of nothing doing for Hutchison, our f. p. expert.”

  Darrell nodded, perceiving the truth in the other’s words. “But what about the Chinese element in the case, Frank?”

  “I’ve dispatched Hooper up street on that angle. Seems the chink here associated a good deal with another chink — a waiter working in a chop-suey restaurant. The two of ‘em — ”

  But at this point of Corrigan’s words came an interruption caused by the sounds of several pairs of feet shuffling into the front room. A moment later a tall plain-clothes man with grim, protruding jaw, conducted into the back room two newcomers, one an old, fat Chinaman with roly-poly, humorous face, dressed in a quite modest, up-to-date American suit of businesslike cut, his one-time black hair now generously sprinkled with gray; the other a short, undersized Oriental, dressed in the suit of a waiter, and with spectacles containing, great, thick lenses over his blinking eyes. Several plain-clothes men crowded into the room behind them.

  Corrigan turned on the two Chinese. His voice took on the savage inquisitorial tone of the police investigator. “Well, which one of you is Charley Yat Gong?”

  The younger Chinaman with the thick-lensed glasses spoke.

  “Me — I — I am Charley Yat Gong.” He glanced apprehensively from where he stood through the doorway to where the body of Foy was visible.

  “You a friend of Napoleon Foy there?”

  “Me good flend of Foy Yi,” blabbered Charley Yat Gong. The tears came to his eyes. “Me good flend,” he wailed. “Is — is Foy Yi dead?”

  “Of course he’s dead, you fool,” snapped Corrigan. He turned to the other. “You Yuan Gow, owner Yuan Gow’s chop-suey lestulant, eh? You feedee public — muchee chopsticks, eh — plenty chow — no bobelly police, eh?”

  The little roly-poly old Chinaman looked Corrigan over ironically. “I own the restaurant on the upper corner,” he said in good English.

  Corrigan sniffed. “Gregson the druggist says this waiter of yours was a friend of Foy’s — hung out and played cards with him in the back here. This true?”

  Yuan Gow shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know anything about my employees while they are off duty.”

  “Charley Yat Gong on duty all evening in your place?”

  “Absolutely,” replied Yuan Gow. “Since six o’clock to-night Charley has been waiting on customers.”

  “How long have you been in business there?” snapped Corrigan.

  “Ten years,” said Yuan Gow.

  “I see.” Corrigan reflected. “Any customers in your place at around eleven o’clock when this chink was killed?”

  “One,” replied the gray-haired Chinese. “He is still there with a woman, smoking and talking. He’s been a little quarrelsome; he’s been drinking a bit, I presume. If you will send one of your men back there, these two people will assure you that both the waiter and myself have been in evidence all evening.”

  Corrigan turned to one of his assistants. “Burns, go on back to the restaurant and check up on these fellows’ alibi. That’s all — you can go, both of you.”

  Yuan Gow, followed by Charley Yat Gong, who, with a sad shake of his head, turned his thick lenses one last time toward the body of his friend, trudged from the place, Burns falling in behind them.

  “As you suggest yourself, Darrell,” Corrigan commented with a laugh, “one can never quite tell about these chinks with their hidden feuds. But I guess we can let the old boy and his waiter out of things.” He drew out a worn leather notebook and made one or two entries in it with the stub of a pencil. Then he closed it with a sharp snap. “Well, I’m going over to phone headquarters and arrange for the usual routine, including photographs and finger-print search.”

  A moment later Darrell heard a general exodus of footsteps, followed by several official voices gruffly dispersing the late crowd that was clustering about the doorway, and an inspection through the narrow doorway told him that only himself and a bluecoat were left in the place for the time being.

  He stood by himself for a moment reflecting. Then he went over to the cabinet and inspected its interior once more. The lock claimed his attention this time, and he saw that it had sp
lintered without much difficulty by the mere insertion of the sharp poker end between the doors and a little leverage on that implement. The principle discovered by Archimedes, multiplying the inconsequential force which a woman might have exerted, had proved quite efficacious. He backed off a foot or two more easily to survey the open doors. Then he stopped short — and just in time, as a violent fluttering and a vicious “awk” warned him to duck down. Turning like a flash on his haunches, he peered upward. The cockatoo was pressed against the side of the cage, its malignant red eyes glaring down at him, its beak poised where it had been ready to stick him in the back of the head.

  “You devil, you!” said Darrell quietly. “You’re a fine kind of a pet to have. You — ” He stopped. He had risen, but had been careful to take up a safe position just out of striking range of the vicious beak. And in so doing he had become aware of something which had not claimed his attention thus far. The cockatoo’s green beak held upon it a fleck of bright crimson — the crimson of human blood. And, protruding from the left corner of that beak, which seemed to work continually, with an odd, convulsive, swallowing motion, half stuck in the matted blood, was one single black hair.

  Then, as Darrell looked down at the clean white paper, the placing of which on the bottom of the cage had been the last thing Napoleon Foy had done while living, he spied upon it several short fragments of black hair, fragments which varied from a quarter to three eights of an inch in length, and whose brevity proclaimed only too plainly that they had been cut off by that sharp, scissors-like edge of the beak trying to dislodge the filamental obstacle. They were short indeed, yet their blackness against the white paper on the cage made them show up vividly.

  And, surveying the apparently inconsequential picture, Darrell found himself in short order reconstructing exactly what had transpired there that night. The mysterious woman whom the druggist had conducted to Foy’s shop had had first an argument with the Chinaman. Whether short or extended, the argument had undoubtedly concerned the handkerchief message which was in Foy’s possession. But of what clique she was, Darrell had to confess to himself that he could not fathom. Whatever the facts underlying that feature, the argument had wound up by her thrusting her gun against the Chinaman’s forehead and pulling the trigger. He had dropped like an ox back of the counter, and she had hurriedly stepped through the swinging gate and into the back room, her movements quite hidden from any passer-by on the sidewalk by the opaque green paint which covered the glass panels of the door to the same height as it did the plate-glass window.

  Straight she had gone to the cabinet. She had tried the doors. She had found them locked. She had looked hurriedly about the room. She had spied the rusty poker lying in the ashpit of the equally rusty little stove. She crossed the room and seized it, returned, thrust it in between the two doors, gave it a quick wrench and a few seconds later had abstracted the handkerchief.

  And now for the story told by the cockatoo’s bill! As she backed away from the cabinet, the prize in her hands, ready to pass out the rear door and away from the scence of her crime, she had come just a bit too close to the cockatoo’s cage. Her head had bumped the wicker enclosure. The fighting fury of a bird had lunged forward, nicked her in the head with all his might, and as she turned and jumped away to avoid another blow from that lightning-like beak, he had withdrawn it, now with a fleck of blood and a long hair or two clinging to it.

  But as Darrell stood watching the bird, wondering whether the methods of Sherlock Holmes with such things as human hairs and cigar ashes ever proved effective in actual life or not, the convulsive swallowing motion of the bird’s throat and the slow but sure disappearance of the hair which stuck forth from the corner of his beak showed that that valuable clue was ultimately to disappear entirely. He turned and went to the doorway separating the two rooms.

  The bluecoat was out on the sidewalk, getting the air. Darrell gazed about him, then spied what he wanted: a long pair of tarnished shears which hung on a nail above one of the sheeted sorting tables. He secured it immediately, and returning to the back room put into execution an odd maneuver in front of the wicker cage. With his right hand attracting the attention of the ever-watchful bird, his fingers clenching and unclenching at a dangerously close distance from the wicker bars, the bird itself watching like a hawk and ready to spring at the tantalizing sight, Darrell inserted the scissors, held in his left hand, cautiously through the rear bars of the cage.

  Nearer and nearer their points came to the cockatoo’s beak. But the bird’s attention was riveted only upon that dangerous right hand which continued to make motions such as no hand had ever made before. A sharp snip — and the end of the hair, a piece fully an inch long, fell to the bottom of the cage. There, by a bit of delicate manipulation, Darrell caught it dexterously in the points of the shears and drew it out. A second later he had withdrawn in a similar manner the two tinier fragments which had been first in evidence.

  In the palm of his hand he examined them — particularly the longer piece. A piece of a hair of the woman who had murdered the Chinaman. An odd — a bizarre — a Sherlockholmesian — clue; and yet, perchance, a clue of some value. Who could tell? Coal black it was, the black of jet, and as he drew from his pocket an empty envelope with the return card of the Call printed in the upper left-hand corner, the fragments of the hair gleamed like ebony against the white paper. With a final look at them, he dropped them in, and sealed up the flap. Then, with a final sweeping glance — about the back room of the laundry, and in turn the front room, he passed out into the night.

  CHAPTER XIII

  While Giant Presses Roar

  FROM Foy’s laundry, Darrell went straight to interview Gregson, the druggist.

  “I thought,” Darrell began, “that you might give me an additional detail or two beyond what I have on this woman who called at your drug store tonight. Was she apparently a stranger in the neighborhood?”

  The druggist nodded.

  “Undoubtedly. She was confused by the six-cornered crossing, evidently, and couldn’t quite get her bearings.”

  “Did she ask just whether there was a Chinese laundryman in that vicinity, or did she ask for Napoleon Foy?”

  “Neither,” replied the other. “She asked if I could tell her how to find Foy’s laundry.”

  “I see.” Darrell reflected a moment. “Black hair and brown eyes, eh? Pretty, I presume?”

  “All of that,” replied the druggist. “As pretty as a picture.”

  “About how old?”

  “Twenty-one — two — three — maybe four.”

  “Hear any sounds of quarreling after you walked out of the laundry, leaving her there?”

  The druggist shook his head.

  “No, I heard only their two voices, the guttural tones of Foy and the smoother tones of the girl. I couldn’t distinguish any words, and it wasn’t long before I was back at the corner and altogether out of earshot. It was about nine minutes after that we heard the shot, my assistant and I.”

  “Ever find Charley Yat Gong, Yuan Glow’s waiter, in there with Foy when you’ve dropped in the laundry for some reason or other?”

  “Dozens of times. Those two chinks were like brothers almost, although one time I heard ‘em quarreling like cats and dogs over their card game. I think they used to bet a little bit on the side.”

  “I see. Has old Yuan Gow got any suspicious trade of any sort hanging around his restaurant?”

  “Not at all. He runs an orderly, well-conducted Chinese restaurant, with really good cooking. Old Yuan Gow ought to be an American.”

  Darrell thought for a minute. “Well, I guess this about answers all I need to know, Mr. Gregson.” He rose. Little did Corrigan or his superiors at the detective bureau know about Napoleon Foy being the recipient of a message from John Cooper Jarndyce whose amazing lifelike replica in wax reposed in a casket in Greenwood Cemetery!

  Once outside, Darrell flagged a taxicab which was bowling along in the direction of the down dow
n district. He was at the Call inside of fifteen minutes. As he ran lightly up the steps, he came face to face with a girl coming down, a tall, thin, scrawny looking girl, her homely — indeed hopelessly unbeautiful — face covered with big freckles, her red hair in disarray. It was Sally Kope who handled society, engagements and marriages on the Call — and who by virtue of her department rather than her nature was known more intimately as “Sentimental Sal.”

  “H’lo, Jeff,” she called. “Riding high, aren’t you? Taxicabs, eh?”

  “Yes, when the Call pays for ‘em.” He smiled, stopping a moment under the big light over the doorway. “And how goes it with you, Sally?”

  “Rotten,” averred Sally Kope, her freckled face carrying a frown. “Crosby jumped all over me to-night because I haven’t had anything of value in my line for several weeks. Can you beat it, Jeff, blaming me for that? On the square, it seems as though everybody in town with any news value to their names have quit being engaged and given up the old institution of marriage.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Perhaps things will pick up in the sentimental line before long, Sal.”

  “They’d better,’ said the freckled-face girl, “if I’m to keep sweet with Crosby.” She turned. “Well, Jeff, I suppose you’re rushing in with a last-minute story. I won’t keep you. So long. Oh — by the way, Jeff — wait a minute!” He turned as she called him back. “Hear any rumors anywhere about a possible change of ownership of the Call?”