The Black Camel/Chapter 18

JULIE and Jimmy Bradshaw sat on the white sand of Waikiki and gazed at an ocean that stretched, apparently empty of life, from this curving shore all the way to the atolls of the South Seas.

“Well, I suppose I’d better be getting along downtown,” remarked the boy. He yawned, and dropping on his back, watched the white clouds drift lazily across a cobalt sky.

“Picture of a young man filled with pep and energy,” Julie smiled.

He shuddered. “Very poor taste, my girl, introducing words like that into a conversation at Waikiki beach. It must be that, after all, I have given you a very imperfect idea of the spirit of this place. Here we loaf, we dream——”

“But you'll never get anywhere,” Julie reproved.

“I’m there already,” he answered. “Why should I bestir myself? When you’re in Hawaii you’ve no place to go—you’ve reached heaven, and a change couldn’t possibly be an improvement. So you just sit down and wait for eternity to end.”

Julie shrugged. “Is that so? Well, I’m afraid I’m not built that way. Great for a vacation, yes— this place is all you say of it. But as a permanent residence—well——”

​He sat up suddenly. “Good lord, you mean I haven’t sold you on it? Me—the greatest descriptive writer in history—and I’ve failed to put over the big deal of my life. James J. Bradshaw strikes a snag—meets failure face to face—it seems incredible. Where have I slipped up, Julie? Haven’t I made you feel the beauty of this island——”

“Beauty’s all right,” the girl replied. “But how about its effect on character? It seems to me that when you’ve stopped moving, you’re going back.”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “I went to a Rotary Club luncheon once myself—over on the mainland. Boys, we gotta progress or perish. Last year we turned out ten million gaskets, this year let’s turn out fifteen. Make America gasket-conscious. Take it from me——”

“What were you saying about getting back to the office?”

He shook his head. “I thought I’d cast you for the rôle of Eve in this paradise, and what a serpent you turn out to be. Getting back to the office is something we never do over here. We don’t want to wake the poor fellows who didn’t go out.”

“That’s just what I’ve been saying, Jimmy.”

“But dear Mrs. Legree, you don’t need to be chained to an office desk in order to accomplish things. You can work just as well lying down. For instance, a minute ago I was well started on a new appeal to tourists. ‘Come—let the laughing lei girl twine her garlands of flowers about your shoulders. Try your skill at riding Waikiki’s surf, or just rest in lazy luxury——’”

“Ah, yes—that’s what you prefer to do——”

​“‘Under the nodding coco-palms.’ Don’t you like our coco-palms, Julie?”

“They’re interesting, but I think I prefer the redwoods. You draw a deep breath in a redwood forest, Jimmy, and you feel like going out and licking the world. Can’t you see what I mean? This place may be all right for people who belong here—but you—how long have you been in Hawaii?”

“A little over two years.”

“Did you intend to stay here when you came?”

‘Well, now—let’s not go into that.”

“You didn’t, of course. You just took the line of least resistance. Don’t you ever want to go back to the mainland and make something of yourself?”

“Oh—at first——” He was silent for a moment. “Well, I’ve failed to make the sale on Hawaii, I guess. That will always leave a scar on my heart, but there’s something more important. Have I sold myself? I’m keen about you, Julie. If you'll say the word——”

She shook her head. “Don’t let’s go into that, either, Jimmy. I’m not what you think me—I’m horrid, really—I—oh, Jimmy, you wouldn’t want to marry a— a liar, would you?”

He shrugged. “Not a professional one—no. But a clumsy amateur like you—why, you do it as though you'd had no experience at all.”

She was startled. ‘What do you mean?”

“All that about the ring. Why, in heaven’s name, do you go on with it? I’ve been wise ever since this morning, and as for Charlie Chan—say, I admire the polite way he’s treated you. I don’t believe you’ve fooled him for a minute.”

“Oh, dear—I thought I was rather good.”

​“What’s it all about, Julie?” the boy inquired.

Tears were in her eyes. “It’s about—poor Shelah. She took me in when I was broke and without a friend—she was always so good to me. I’d—I’d have done anything in the world for her—let alone tell a little lie.”

“I won’t ask you to continue,” Bradshaw remarked. “I don’t have to. Don’t look around. Inspector Chan of the Honolulu police is approaching rapidly, and something in his walk tells me that this is the zero hour for you. Brace up. I’m with you, kid.”

Charlie joined them, amiable and smiling. “Not too welcome, I think. But anyhow I attach myself to this little group.” He sat down, facing the girl. “What is your opinion of our beach, Miss Julie? Here you are deep in the languid zone. How do you like languor, as far as you have got with it?”

Julie stared at him. “Mr. Chan, you have not come here to talk to me about the beach.”

“Not precisely,” he admitted. “But I am firm believer in leading up. Suitable preparation removes the sting of rudeness. Making an example, it would have been undecently abrupt for me to stride up and cry: ‘Miss Julie, why do you lie to me about that emerald ring?’”

Her cheeks flushed. “You think I have been—lying?”

“More than think, Miss Julie. I know. Other eyes than Jessop’s saw the ring on Miss Fane’s finger long after you immersed in waters of Waikiki last night.”

She did not reply. “Better own up, Julie,” Bradshaw advised. “It’s the best way. Charlie will be your friend then—won’t you, Charlie?”

​“Must admit feeling of friendship would suffer a notable increase,” Chan nodded. “Miss Julie, it is not true that Miss Fane gave you that ring yesterday to obtain cash for it?”

“Oh, yes, it is,” the girl insisted. “That much is true.”

“Then she took it back later?”

“Yes—just after she returned from her interview with Tarneverro, about noon.”

“Took it back, and wore it when she died?”

“Yes.”

“After the tragedy, you again obtained possession?”

“I did. When Jimmy and I found her, I went in and knelt beside her. It was then I took the ring.”

“Why?”

“I—I can’t tell you.”

“You mean you won't.”

“I can’t, and I won’t. I’m sorry, Mr. Chan.”

“I also get deep pain from this.” Charlie was silent for a moment. “Can it happen you removed the ring because name of ‘Denny’ was engraved inside?”

“Wh—what do you know about Denny?”

Chan sat up with sudden interest. “I will tell you, and perhaps you will grow frank. I have learned that Shelah Fane was in Los Angeles house the very night Denny Mayo was murdered there. Consequently, she knew name of killer. It was scandal in her past she was eager to conceal. Perhaps, to aid that concealment, you yourself wished name of Denny Mayo kept out of all discussions. A natural desire to shield your friend’s reputation. But as you see, your actions have not availed. Now you may speak, with no injury to your dear benefactor.”

​The girl was weeping softly. “Yes, I guess I might as well tell you. I’m so sorry you know all that. I’d have given anything to keep Denny Mayo out of this.”

“You were aware, then, of that scandal in Miss Fane’s past?”

“I suspected that something was terribly wrong, but I didn’t know what. I was quite young—I had just come to Shelah—at the time of Denny’s—accident. On the night it happened, Shelah arrived home in a state of hysteria, and I was there alone with her. I took care of her the best I could. For weeks she wasn’t herself. I knew that in some way she was connected with Mayo’s murder, but until this moment, I never learned the facts. I was young, as I say, but I knew better than to ask questions.”

“Coming to yesterday——” Chan prompted.

“It was just as I told you—yesterday morning she said she must get hold of money at once, and she gave me the ring to sell. Then she went down to the Grand Hotel to see Tarneverro, and when she came back she was sort of hysterical again. She sent for me to come to her room—she was walking the floor. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. ‘He’s a devil, Julie,’ she cried. ‘That Tarneverro’s a devil—I wish I had never sent for him. He told me things about Tahiti and on the boat—how could he know—he frightened me. And I’ve done something terribly foolish, Julie—I must have been mad.’ She became rather incoherent then. I asked her what it was all about. ‘Get the emerald,’ she told me. ‘We mustn’t sell it, Julie. Denny’s name is inside it, and I don’t want any mention of that name now.’”

“She was hysteric, you say?”

​“Yes. She was often that way, but this was worse, somehow. ‘Denny Mayo won't die, Julie,’ she said. ‘He’ll come back to disgrace me yet.’ Then she urged me to get the ring, and of course I did. She told me we'd find something else to sell later. Just then she was too upset to discuss it. In the afternoon, I saw her crying over Denny Mayo’s picture.”

“Ah,” cried Chan, “that was portrait of Denny Mayo mounted on green mat?”

“It was.”

“Continue, please.”

“Last night,” Julie went on, “when Jimmy and I made our terrible discovery in the pavilion, I thought at once of what Shelah had said. Denny would come back to disgrace her yet. Somehow, I thought, his death must be connected with Shelah’s. If only his name could be kept out of it—otherwise I didn’t know what scandal might be revealed. So I slipped Denny’s ring from her finger. Later, when I heard mention of the photograph, I ran up-stairs and tore it into bits, hiding them under a potted plant.”

Chan’s eyes opened wide. “So it was you who performed that act? And later—when pieces of photograph scattered into wind—was it you who concealed large number of them?”

“Oh, no—you’ve forgotten—I wasn’t in the room when that happened. And even if I’d been there, I wouldn't have been clever enough to think of that. Some one came to my aid at a critical moment. Who? I haven’t the least idea, but I was grateful when I heard about it.”

Chan sighed. “You have made everything a delay,” he remarked, “and caused me to waste much precious time. I can admire your loyalty to this dead ​woman——” He paused. “Haie, I would enjoy to know such a woman. What loyalty she inspired. An innocent girl obstructs the police in defense of her memory, a man who could not have been guilty pleads to be arrested as her murderer, doubtless from same motive.”

“Do you think Robert Fyfe took those lost bits of the photograph?” Bradshaw inquired.

Charlie shook his head. “Impossible. He had not yet arrived on scene. Alas! it is not so simple as that. It is not simple at all.” He sighed. “I fear I will be worn to human skeleton before I disentangle this web. And you”—he looked at the girl—“you alone have melted off at least seven pounds.”

“I’m so sorry,” Julie said.

“Do not fret. Always my daughters tell me I am too enormous for beauty. And beauty is, of course, my only aim.” He stood up. “Well, that is that. Jimmy, do not let this young woman escape you. She has proved herself faithful one. Also, she is most unexpert deceiver I have ever met. What a wife she will make for somebody.”

“Me, I hope,” Bradshaw grinned.

“T hope so, too.” Charlie turned to the girl. “Accept him, and all is forgiven between you and me. The seven pounds is gladly donated.”

She smiled. “That is an offer. Oh, Mr. Chan, I’m so happy that everything is settled between us. I didn’t like to deceive you—you’re so nice.”

He bowed. “Even the aged heart can leap at talk like that. You give me new courage to go on. On to what? Alas! the future lies hidden behind a veil—and I am no Tarneverro.”

He left them standing together beneath a hau tree, ​and walked slowly to his car. Emerging from the drive, he narrowly escaped collision with a trolley. “Wake up, there!” shouted the motorman in rage, and then, recognizing a member of the Honolulu police force, sought to pretend he’d never said it. Charlie waved to him and drove on.

The detective was lost in a maze of doubt and uncertainty. The matter of the emerald ring was clear at last—but still he was far from his goal. One point in Julie’s story interested him deeply. It had been Denny Mayo’s picture that he had sought to put together the previous night.

Up to now he had thought himself balked in that purpose by some one who did not wish him to know the identity of the man over whose portrait Shelah had wept so bitterly. But might the motive not have been the same that prompted the destruction of the pictures at the library? The same person, undoubtedly, had been busy in both instances, and that person was bitterly determined that Inspector Chan should not look upon the likeness of Denny Mayo. Why?

Charlie resolved to go back and relive this case from the beginning. But in a moment he stopped. Too much of a task for this drowsy afternoon. “Much better I do not think at all,” he muttered. “I will cease all activity and put tired brain in receptive state. Maybe subconscious mind sees chance and leaps on job during my own absence.”

In such a state of suspended mental effort he turned his car into the drive of the Grand Hotel and, parking it, walked idly toward the entrance. A stiff breeze was blowing through the lobby, which was practically deserted at this hour of the day.

​Sam, the young Chinese who rejoiced in the title of head bell-man, was alert and smiling. Charlie paused. There was a little matter about which he wished to question Sam.

“I hope you are well,” he said. “You enjoy your duties here, no doubt?” Leading up, he would have called it.

“Plenty fine job,” beamed Sam. “All time good tips.”

“You know man they call Tarneverro the Great?”

“Plenty fine man. Good flend to me.”

Charlie regarded the boy keenly. “This morning you spoke to him in Cantonese. Why did you do that?”

“Day he come, he say long time ago he live in China, knows Chinese talk plitty well. So he and I have talk in Cantonese. He not so good speaking, but he knows what I say allight.”

“He didn’t seem to understand you this morning.”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. This moahning I speak all same any othah day he has funny look an’ say don’ unnahstand.”

“They are peculiar, these tourists,” Chan smiled.

“Plenty funny,” admitted Sam. “All same give nice tips.”

Charlie strode on to the lounge, and through that to the terrace. He sat down there.

His vacation from thinking had been brief indeed, for now he was hard at it again. So Tarneverro understood the Cantonese dialect. But he did not wish Charlie Chan, whom he was so eager to assist in the search for Shelah Fane’s murderer, to know that he understood it. Why was that?

A smile spread slowly over Charlie’s broad face. ​Here at last was a fairly simple question. Tarneverro’s initial act in helping to solve the murder had been the pointing out of the fact that the watch had been set back, and that the alibis for two minutes past eight were consequently worthless.

But would he have done that if he had not first overheard and understood Charlie’s conversation with the cook—if he had not known that Wu Kno-ching had seen Shelah Fane at twelve minutes past eight and that the gesture with the watch was, accordingly, useless? His prompt display of detective skill had seemed, at the time, to prove his sincerity. But if he understood Cantonese, then he was simply making a virtue of necessity and was not sincere at all.

Charlie sat for a long time turning the matter over in his mind. Was his eager assistant, Tarneverro the Great, quite so eager as he appeared to be?