12 Chinks and A Woman

     Fenner said, “For you, there has never been anyone but Chang. He was everything t© you. When Carlos killed him, your life stopped. Nothing mattered to you. All you had to live for was to get even with Carlos for taking away the one thing that made your horrible life worth while. That's right, isn't it?”

     She put her hands over her face and shivered, then she said, “Yes.”

     “Thayler and you went to New York for a short trip. You couldn't even be parted from Chang for a few days, so he came up and you saw him, when Thayler was busy elsewhere. Carlos sent two of his Cubans and they found Chang and killed him. That's right, too, isn't it?”

     “They came in the night when I was with him,” she said. Her voice was expressionless. “One of them held me while the other cut his throat. I was there when they did it. They said they'd kill me if he resisted, so he just lay on the bed and let that awful Cuban cut his throat. Somehow, he managed to smile at me when he was doing it. Oh, God, if you could have been there! If you could have seen him lying there with the Cuban bending over him. The sudden look of terror and pain in his eyes as he died! I could do nothing, but I swore that I'd get Carlos, I would smash everything he had built up.

     Fenner yawned again. He was feeling tired. “You're not very nice,” he said. “I can't feel any pity for you, because you always thought of yourself first. If you were really fine you would have had your revenge, even if it brought you down too, but you hadn't the guts to lose what you already had, so you had to plot and plan to keep Thayler and get Carlos thrown to the wolves.”

     Glorie began to cry.

     Fenner went on, “While this was going on, Thayler had found himself a new toy. Thayler was a nasty bit of work too. There was a girl called Lindsay. Maybe he met her at a party. He liked her and somehow he got her to go to his house. He knew you weren't about and he persuaded her to drop in. I can guess what happened but you can tell me. He attacked her, didn't he? His usual stuff with a whip?”

     Glorie went on crying.

     “Well, he overdid it, didn't he? She died. When you got home, after Chang had been killed, you found Thayler running in circles with a corpse on his hands. That's the way it went, isn't it?”

     “Yes.” She put her handkerchief to her eyes and began to rock herself backwards and forwards.

     “You found the Lindsay dame dead, and her body badly cut by Thayler's whipping. Now, baby, it's your turn. Shoot! What did you do?”

     Glorie said, “You know all about it. Why ask me?”

     “But why did you come to me?”

     “I heard about you. I thought I saw my chance of saving Harry and starting trouble for Carlos. I heard you were tough and wouldn't stop at anything. I got a black wig, and wore simple clothes and came to you. I thought if—”

     “You came to me as Marian Daley. You said your sister was missing. You thought if I took up the case I'd start eventually on Carlos. You gave me the hint. You said twelve Chinamen, because they always ship Chinamen over in dozens from Cuba, and I'd be smart enough to see that that was Carlos's racket. You planned with Thayler to have the Lindsay dame's body, without arms or legs or head, planted somewhere where I could find it, and I'd think that it was the body of Marian Daley. Since Marian never existed, Thayler couldn't be tried for killing a non-existent person. So you tried to establish an identity between Marian and the body. To do this you got Thayler to fake up marks on your back, and when you came to see me, he telephoned to give you an excuse for undressing. I saw the marks, and naturally enough they impressed me. It was a rotten plan, and it could never have held water court of law, but you might have confused the issue if you'd have played cards right. But Thayler made mistakes.

     “He wanted to get the body cut up and taken away from his house. He wanted to get your identity established with me as quickly as possible, otherwise the fact that the body, when found, could have proved that it couldn't have been yours from a doctor's evidence of time of death. First, you had to see me, then I was to be held up for a day or so, to give him time to set the stage the way he wanted. To hold me up, he planted Chang on me. You didn't know this. He got his Cubans to take Chang along and put him in my office, hoping that the cops would come up and hold me for questioning. I beat him to it. Found out where the Cubans came from, got there, killed them before they could get rid of one of the hands and arms of the Lindsay dame. By slipping up like that, he made a complete mess of things. That's the way it went, isn't it?”