The Cup of Confucious s-125 Read online

  the stained-glass window that gave dim light to the hall.

  The balky window lifted with a squeak. Clyde scrambled over the sill to the slotted platform of a fire escape. The fire escape steps made a steep slanting ascent from a rear courtyard to the roof of the hotel. But Clyde didn't climb or descend.

  He shut the stained-glass window behind him, hiding him from view of any one who might walk along the corridor. Then he took quick stock of his surroundings.

  Luck was with him.

  The thing that made Clyde squint his eyes with satisfaction was the red, dying blaze of the afternoon sun. It shone straight into his eyes, and into the

  rear windows of the hotel rooms.

  Leaning sideways from the fire escape platform, Clyde could see that the shade was drawn tight on the nearest window to keep out the unwelcome glare.

  If

  the first window was that way, the others were probably the same.

  There was a narrow stone balcony outside each window. Not more than three feet of space separated each one of those stone projections.

  Clyde counted the room windows. Before he had left the hallway inside the hotel he had made sure that 829 was the sixth window from the end. He made the dangerous leap across space to the first balcony without difficulty.

  He swung across four of the stone balconies, protected from discovery by the drawn window shades.

  Suddenly, he stiffened.

  There was a tinkling crash from the window of Room 829. A heavy object flew through the window and fell to the stone projection outside. It was a glass inkwell.

  Clyde gave the missile itself only a brief glance. He was watching the shattered hole in the window. Gray fumes were curling outward and ascending lazily through the glare of the sunshine.

  WITH swift, monkeylike heaves of his body, Clyde crossed the remaining balconies. He tried the window of 829. It lifted easily under his tug.

  Choking clouds of smoke blew outward into his face. He smelled the strange

  reek of sulphur. It made him gasp and cough and he drew backward with tears welling from inflamed eyes. Luckily, there was not much concentration of the deadly vapor and the brisk wind sweeping through the sunny courtyard dissipated

  it into thin, vanishing streamers.

  Clyde peered over the open sill and saw Snaper and Hooley. Both crooks lay

  flat on the floor. They were bound and gagged. Unconscious. It was Hooley who had managed to reach the desk and hurl the inkwell with an awkward heave of his

  trussed wrists, before he passed out. The evidence lay in the trail of ink on the desk and the black stain on Hooley's hand and sleeve.

  Beyond the two limp victims was the cause of the smoke and their unconsciousness. An exterminator's yellow sulphur candle was burning steadily in a corner of the room, sending a steady reek of poisonous smoke into the air.

  With a jump, Clyde reached the candle and snuffed out the flame. He threw the deadly little purveyor of death out the window to the courtyard. Then he whirled toward the two men.

  He slashed the bonds from their wrists and ankles, but he made no move toward restoring them to consciousness. Fate had given him a golden opportunity

  and he took immediate advantage of it.

  The camera appeared swiftly from his coat pocket. He removed the gloves from the hands of both crooks. Focusing the camera, he dropped on one knee. He took a perfect reproduction of the palms and fingers of Hooley and of Snaper.

  Magnified, examined by experts, those pictures would tell exactly who these crooks really were and why they had served a long prison term somewhere.

  Clyde had barely returned the bulky shape of the camera to his pocket when

  he heard a groan from Snaper. He saw Hooley's eyes flutter open. The fresh air was reviving the crooks. For an instant, they stared dully upward at the face of the young reporter who had saved them; then fear swam into their blank faces.

  With a bound, Hooley was on his feet. Snaper's gun menaced Clyde.

  CLYDE lifted his empty hands above his head. His voice remained calm. He explained what had happened, told how he had managed to get to their room. The only falsehood he told was that he had come to the hotel to meet a friend; had seen smoke filtering into the corridor from the cracks of the door of 829 and had gone immediately to their help by way of the stone balconies.

  Snaper lowered his gun, after a sharp glance from his partner.

  "You didn't see anything of a man in a brown beard, did you, pal?" he asked in a curious, hesitant tone.

  "No. Was he the man who did all this?"

  "Yeah. He was the man, all right. Keep your mouth shut about this. We'll take care of the guy in the brown beard, eh, Bert?"

  "Right!" Hooley growled. He was watching Clyde suspiciously. Suddenly, his

  glance dropped toward his own hands and he swore with shrill excitement. He took

  a swift step toward the reporter and the muzzle of his gun dug into Clyde's stomach.

  "What the hell did you do before we woke up?" he demanded. "A wise guy, huh?"

  "I don't know what you mean. I did nothing except to throw the sulphur candle out the window."

  "You lie! You took the gloves off our hands, you rat!"

  "There weren't any gloves on your hands, when I came in," Clyde said, steadily. "You're mistaken. And, anyway, what difference does it make?"

  "It makes a hell of a lot of difference! What's that thing in your coat pocket? Stand still or I'll blow your belly apart!"

  To his dismay, Clyde saw the camera emerge in the beefy paw of Bert Hooley.

  "I thought so! A wise guy! Trying to take pictures of our hands, eh? A finger-print camera, huh?"

  He ground the camera to a flat ruin under his foot.

  "Kill the louse!" Snaper whispered, his teeth flashing in a murderous grimace.

  "Nix! We gotta get outta here. Too much trouble already. A shot would cook

  our goose."

  "Who said anything about shootin' him?" Snaper whispered. He leaped with a

  tigerish motion to the flat-topped desk near the wall. He scooped up a paper knife and moved back toward the trapped agent of The Shadow. The weapon was poised like a dagger in his hairy fist. The point was sharp and it pricked the skin at the back of Clyde's neck like the touch of a needle.

  "Open his coat," Snaper snarled. "One jab of this in his heart and he'll go out like a light - and no noise to bring the bulls snoopin' around!"

  Hooley nodded. He caught at the front of Clyde's vest and ripped it open with a jerk that sent buttons flying.

  "Hold him tight!" Snaper breathed. "Keep your hand over his mouth, in case

  he yells."

  CLYDE didn't yell. With a sudden twist he tore himself loose from the shifting grip of Bert Hooley. The twist not only freed him, it sent him staggering backward toward the open window. He whirled and went out over the sill like a flash.

  Snaper and Hooley darted after him.

  But Clyde was too agile to be caught. With one wild leap, he cleared the end of the stone balcony and caught hold of the next He saw Snaper's gun aim at

  him and the crook's finger begin to tighten.

  Then Hooley struck the weapon upward. He shouted an order to his pal.

  Both

  crooks disappeared inside the room.

  Clyde made his way as swiftly as he could to the fire escape. He did not try to reenter through the stained-grass window. He knew that Snaper would be waiting inside to grab him. Clyde had heard Hooley's grim order and it gave wings to the scared reporter's feet.

  He raced down the fire escape. He had reached the courtyard below and was streaking toward a high board fence when he heard a faint yell above. Snaper's head was peering out the stained-glass corridor window. This time, Snaper fired.

  The bullet missed Clyde's head by a scant inch and tunneled a round hole through the board fence. But Clyde was already atop the barrier and dropping to

  the other side.

&nb
sp; He crossed a narrow back yard, opened a gate in a grilled railing and reached the street. He was a block away from the hotel. He began to run toward the corner, oblivious of the stares of pedestrians.

  He still had a chance to reach the hotel side exit before Snaper and Hooley came rushing out to make their getaway. He didn't want to intercept them; what he wanted was to watch the cab they grabbed and make a note of the license number.

  Clyde figured that the noise of Snapper's gunfire had already alarmed the hotel. The crooks would be afraid to take a chance on a get-away through the main lobby. They'd rush down the stairs and dash away through the short corridor that led to the side street.

  Clyde's guess was correct.

  Screened by the bulk of a parked delivery truck, he saw the two crooks emerge from the side portal of the Brentwood. A taxi was standing at the curb.

  They piled into it and it shot away from the curb.

  Clyde got the license number. That, and the fact that neither Snaper or Hooley had seen him, filled him with grim content. He had again established the

  fact that the two blackmailers and the man in the brown beard were deadly enemies, bent on rubbing each other out for the privilege of preying on Arnold Dixon.

  By trailing Snaper and Hooley, the identity and the motives of the man in the brown beard would be made clearer.

  Clyde was still very much on the case.

  CHAPTER VI

  MR. TIMOTHY IS PUZZLED

  WILLIAM TIMOTHY sat comfortably propped in a wide-armed chair with a soft pillow behind his back. Sunlight streamed through the curtained windows of his expensive Pelham Bay home. The house itself and the grounds surrounding it were

  nowhere near as pretentious as were Arnold Dixon's five miles to the south along

  the curving shore of the bay. Nevertheless, William Timothy had done moderately

  well in his years of practice at law.

  Clad in a silken dressing gown, with a bandaged foot propped on a stool in

  front of him, Timothy smiled as he saw that the upward trend in the stock market

  seemed to be firm and sustained. Suddenly, he gave a petulant groan and threw the newspaper aside. He reached out and felt his bandaged foot and ankle with wincing care. The foot seemed to be badly swollen.

  Timothy shifted his position in the chair. He was taking a cigar from a beautiful copper humidor, when he heard a light step in the hall outside. A knock sounded at the door.

  "Who is it?"

  "It's Edith Allen, uncle! May I come in?"

  The voice was eager. A moment later, a strikingly pretty girl entered the sunlit room.

  Timothy beamed, held out his hand.

  "Edith! Well, this is a surprise and a welcome one! What brings you all the way out here to see an old codger of a lawyer with a bad case of arthritis in his foot?"

  Edith Allen didn't answer for a moment. Tall, slim, blue eyed, with hair almost the shade of the copper humidor on the sunlit table, Edith was the sort of girl to make even an old man's eyes crinkle appreciatively. She was the daughter of Timothy's dead sister. She had an excellent secretarial job in New York City.

  Timothy was an excellent judge of expression. He saw instantly that the corners of Edith's red lips were tremulous. There was shadow in the depths of the lovely blue eyes.

  "Is there anything wrong?" he asked, gently.

  Her voice quivered. "Uncle, I had to see you. I'm - I'm frightened.

  Dreadfully so!"

  "Frightened?" He twisted sharply in his chair, unmindful of his bandaged foot. He gave her a steady, searching look. "Are you in danger of some kind, my

  dear?"

  "It's not danger," she said, slowly. "And it's not myself."

  "Well, what is it?"

  He could barely hear the name she named. "Bruce Dixon."

  Her whole manner puzzled the lawyer. She fiddled with one of her gloves, avoided the searching scrutiny of her uncle.

  "You love Bruce, don't you?" he said.

  "Yes. I - I do."

  "Are you worried because you think Bruce doesn't love you?"

  "It's not that," she said, unsteadily.

  Timothy laughed reassuringly.

  "After all," he pointed out, "there's plenty of time for both of you romantic young colts to make up your minds. Bruce has only been home three months since his - er - trip."

  "That's just it," Edith cried out. The flush had faded from her cheeks.

  They were pale now. "Is he really Bruce? Oh, uncle, I'm so unhappy!"

  TIMOTHY sat up stiffly. He sounded incredulous.

  "Are you suggesting that you think Bruce Dixon is an impostor?"

  "I don't know what to think," she whispered.

  "I'm afraid I don't either. First you tell me that Bruce loves you and that you love him. Then you say in the next breath that you think he's a faker.

  Why? You've known Bruce ever since he was a child - long before he left home after that unfortunate quarrel with his father. You grew up with Bruce."

  "He seems so different," she said, faintly. "When he was a growing boy, he

  was mean, selfish, with a nasty temper. We two, as children, used to fight like

  cats and dogs. Then he went away. He was gone for nearly ten years. And when he

  came back home, three months ago -"

  "Is he so different from the Bruce you used to know?"

  "Yes. He's kinder, more thoughtful. It seems a hateful thing to say, but he's been so - so sweet to me and to his father that I - I can't believe he's the same son. Then, suddenly, he changed again. For the last week or two, he's seemed terribly uneasy. He's broken three dates with me. He - he says he loves me, asks me to be patient and he'll explain later. Uncle, could he be a fraud?"

  William Timothy laughed. The tension left his shrewd old face. He patted Edith's smooth hand with a gentle, protective gesture.

  "You can take my word, he's the genuine Bruce Dixon," he said. "He might have fooled his father. But no fake could have misled me or Charles, the butler. Naturally, we were both suspicious when Bruce returned so ably after years of being away. So we made tests - adequate tests that no impostor could have passed successfully."

  His voice hardened.

  "We made him strip, examined him physically. And we put him through a memory test - Charles and I and his father - that no one but the real Bruce could possibly have passed. He even remembered things we had overlooked.

  Pointed them out to us when we forgot to ask.

  "No, my dear, you're being hysterical and imaginative. If Bruce is different - better, finer - it's simply because he's been tempered by life.

  He's lost his ugly qualities by those years of rubbing against experience all ever the world."

  Edith nodded. The haunted look left her blue eyes.

  "You're right, uncle," she said, finally. "I'm glad I came to you. What I really wanted was to talk with you and be reassured. You've done that. I - I feel ashamed of myself!"

  "Forget about it," Timothy advised. "If Bruce is worried and breaking dates with a pretty girl like you, there must be a reason. It's probably something trivial. I'll talk to him as deftly as I can approach the subject, and perhaps I can find out what's the matter. After all, I'm not a bad lawyer."

  Edith cleaned forward, kissed him impulsively.

  "You're a dear! I must be going now. Be very careful what you say to Bruce. I couldn't bear it if anything came between us, now!"

  "Try breaking a date or two yourself. Maybe that will bring the boy to his

  senses."

  TIMOTHY sat for a long time after Edith had left. There was a puzzled frown on his forehead. He hadn't told Edith of the peculiar visits to Dixon's mansion of Hooley and Snaper. Could Bruce actually be in league with them?

  Timothy lifted his bowed head.

  Instantly, his eyes rounded with terror. He became very still in the wide-armed chair. He was staring at the dull muzzle of a pistol projecting from

  the curtains of
the rear doorway The gun was in a gloved hand and the face above

  the hand and gun was rigid with menace.

  The gunman was Joe Snaper.

  "One yelp out of you, mister," Snaper breathed, in an ugly undertone,

  "and

  you'll get it without any noise, see?'

  Timothy shuddered as he saw the gun was equipped with a silencer.

  Snaper advanced cautiously with noiseless steps. Behind him came another man. Bert Hooley. Both were tense with a sullen rage that made their ordinarily

  pasty faces as white as waxen masks.

  "Don't kill me!" Timothy begged. "Take anything you want - but don't kill me."

  "You dirty rat!" Snaper growled. "Don t try to pull that innocent stuff!

  We're not burglars and you know it! Why did you try to kill us in the Brentwood

  Hotel?"

  "I - I don't know what you're talking about!"

  "No? You thought you were smart, didn't you? Had a bell hop dope our drinks. Let yourself in with a duplicate key when we were so dazed we couldn't hold you off. Tied us up with ropes and lit your damned sulphur candle. Left us

  to croak from the fumes before anybody in the hotel got wise and broke down the

  door. No - you don't know anything!"

  Sweat appeared in drops on the pale forehead of the lawyer.

  "Gentlemen, you're mistaken! I made no attempt to kill you. Are you actually claiming that you saw me in your hotel room?"

  "You bet! You had a fake brown beard on. You were wise enough not to do any talking. But we know it was you. It couldn't have been any one else. Dixon put you up to it. As his lawyer, you had to keep the whole thing quiet; you didn't dare to go to the cops and spill the old man's secret.

  "So you paste on that damned brown beard - the same disguise you had on when you almost killed us the night before outside Dixon's library window -

  and

  you figure you'll make a clean, quiet murder of it at the hotel!"

  Timothy tried to make his laughter sound amused, but it was strident. A thin bleat of fear.

  "I couldn't have been the man in the brown beard," he pointed out, tremulously. "Look at my bandaged foot. Gentlemen, it would be agony for me to try to walk, let alone attack you in a hotel room and murder you. I've got arthritis. My foot is so swollen that I can hardly place it on the floor without excruciating pain."