Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

“We’ve got to humor this fellow,” he confided in a low voice. “We can get a lot out of him, provided we handle him properly.”

Leaving I lodges to entertain him, we strolled out into the bedroom.

“How much do you know already?” asked Pennington.

Parsons moistened his lips.

“Born in Camberwell,” he said, reading from a notebook. “Newsvender, boxer, race course tout. Ran away to sea at fourteen, deserted ship at Karachi. Blank here for a couple of years, can’t get him to talk about those! Laborer on dockworks at Singapore. Drifted to China. Joined a pearl-diving outfit bound for New Guinea. Turned gold miner and did time out there for something or other — exact nature not disclosed.

“Home for the war and enlisted Royal Scots. Deserted. Joined Naval Division. Deserted. Highland Light Infantry — and deserted again! Served in France and Gallipoli. Prisoner with the Turks. Escaped—”

“A slippery customer!” commented Pennington under his breath.

“Another blank here,” pursued the inspector, not noticing the interruption. “Turned up in China again four years ago, as servant to Chanda-Lung—”

I whistled softly.

“Did he, by Jove?”

Parsons closed his book.

“Briefly, gentleman,” he continued, looking from one to the other, “that is the history of Mr. Joe Mortimer. A pretty grim record, reading between the lines! After the last episode he came home to Battersea, married and started business as an itinerant mender of chairs.

“Last week, as he will tell you when we go in, he met Chanda-Lung face to face in Epsom. It was not a pleasant interview for Mortimer, as you can imagine. He won’t say why or how he left China. Very possibly he murdered somebody to get away, and Chanda-Lung held that over his head.”

“He was ordered to call at an address in Hoxton,” said Pennington, carrying on at this point. “He went and was given certain things and very definite instructions.

“The things included the usual warning-card bearing the yellow scorpion sign, a jade-handled knife, smeared with the fatal ipoh batang poisoning and carefully sheathed, and a yellow card bearing a name and address. The instructions were to kill Inspector Parsons here within seven days!”

Parsons nodded grimly.

“But for a stroke of luck, my number would have been up by to-night!” he smiled.

“Mortimer got cold feet and went to the police?” I hazarded, vainly trying to connect the shabby, red-haired man in the next room with the desperate adventurer of Parsons’s notebook.

“Hardly that,” said the detective. “Joe was afraid of us — and mortally scared of Chanda-Lung. In his dilemma he went out and got drunk. The Sutton police took him and found the things on him. They called up the Yard and I went down immediately.

“Even then Joe wasn’t talking! He stuck to the tale he’d found the things in a garbage-heap until I persuaded him the crimes that troubled his personal conscience were of no particular interest to us.

“He’s made five consecutive statements since then — and they all read differently; but I’m pinning my faith on the first — the one he got out before he had time to remember what Chanda-Lung had promised to do to him if he split!”

III

We returned to the living room to find Joe Mortimer sitting with his head on his hands and his shifty eyes fixed on the carpet. At the sound of the door closing he sat up with a start.

Hodges was standing back from the window, looking out on a vista of trim-clipped privet hedges and a broad roadway with red tiled pavements and lime trees set on either side at intervals. He turned as we filed in.

“What’s up, Joe?” he demanded in his deep, booming voice of the much-traveled scarecrow in the chair. “Feeling depressed?”

The little man clutched at the green scarf at his throat. His freckled face — lined and yellowed like old parchment — had gone a shade paler than when I first saw him, and the corners of his mouth twitched queerly.

“He’s ’ere, I tell you!” he whispered suddenly, casting a nervous glance around the room. “I can feel ’im lookin’ at me from somewhere. If he knows that I’ve told you, ’e’ll—”

The sergeant crossed and bent over him.

“Who’s here, Joe?” he asked.

“Chanda-Lung!” came the low response. “ ’E ain’t human, sir, straight ’e ain’t. If you’d worked for ’im, same as I ’ave, you’d understand. I’ve seen things in China—”

With a sudden bound he was out of the chair and over by the window, peering out.

Parsons dropped a hand on his shoulder.

“Pull yourself together,” he advised him sternly. “You’re safe enough with us. We’ll look after you.”

“Safe!” echoed Mortimer with fine irony. “There ain’t such a word as far as ’e’s concerned! I’ve worked for ’im, I tell you, and I know. I was a fool to ’ave opened my mouth. I could ’ave told you blokes anything!”

I can see that extraordinary warped figure as I write, the man of many trades and many vicissitudes, in his shabby gray suit, frayed at the cuffs and faded at the knees, clutching at a window sill where hyacinths bloomed, scanning a sun-lit street with terror in his eyes.